Play Up Sky Blues

This is the only trivia book a Sky Blues fan could ever need, packed with facts, stats, anecdotes and history about Coventry City. From cult heroes and extraordinary escapes to FA Cup glory and championships, it's all here – can you afford not to own a copy? FIND OUT . . . Which City star was once allegedly arrested for espionage. How a lick of paint once kept City in the top flight. Which star striker has been busy inventing a whole new sound. How Jimmy Greaves helped City win the FA Cup. Which competition City are unbeaten in for 30 years.

At last! The award-winning Baker & Kelly bring you the most entertaining, radical and unreliable football book ever published. The Two Dannys argue the toss, spill the beans and chew that fat about everything and anything from the biggest questions down to stuff they have frankly invented themselves. Which club has the handsomest fans? Who is the greatest player of all time? Pele? Maradona? Puskas? Rougvie? Have foreign players helped or hindered the English game? Well, Marco Boogers, well? And who was the greatest football dad, Fred Baker or Andy Kelly? Now with even more footballing facts, myths and legends, the paperback asks (and answers) hard-hitting questions, such as, what was the greatest ever World Cup? Just how much pathetic World Cup tat can one own, Danny Kelly? And where do all those beautiful women in the crowd come from? A cornucopia of footballing fun and well-crafted wisdom that is certain to sell like beer-flavoured crisps. Baker & Kelly: Sometimes right sometimes wrong - but always certain.

Why would a normal teenager throw his heart and soul into an average Third Division football club for almost a decade, only to walk away from them at the height of their success? After abandoning that club for 20 years, what would cause him to rekindle his passion in a conversion-like experience, and then stick with the club for the rest of his life? The answers lie in the psychology of attachment. This is the story of James Adams and his support of Coventry City, from the days of Billy Frith to Mark Robins. It's an account that delves into the crucial yet poorly understood psychological aspects of football fandom to uncover truths that every football fan can relate to. Join James on a rollercoaster ride as he asks important questions of himself and his life alongside a backdrop of footballing highs and lows, including three Wembley victories and four promotions, as well as FA Cup debacles for the Sky Blues. Attached to Coventry City is a highly personal, honest and reflective account of the unusual story of a lifelong football fan.

This collection of memoirs and newspaper articles, (previously printed in The Coventry Evening Telegraph), charts the fascinating story of an ordinary boy growing up in extraordinary times. Les Ryan offers a priceless snapshot of working class life during the twentieth century. Starting from his birth during the First World War, Les' memoirs progress through 1920s poverty and strife, the 1930s Depression, early manual jobs, his time spent serving in the army during World War II, the tough post-War years working on a car factory assembly-line and his time working as a Special for the Coventry Police during the 1960s. A priceless piece of social history with tales of sadness, joy and hilarity.

Play Up Sky Blues is the story of the unforgettable season when charismatic manager Jimmy Hill led the Sky Blues to the First Division for the first time in the club's history. It describes the ups and downs of an incredible season, and the stories behind all the men who brought about this unprecedented success.

SHORTLISTED FOR BEST SPORTS WRITING AT THE SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023 "Sheer joy" – Patrick Barclay "Exhilarating" – When Saturday Comes "Perfect" – Josh Widdicombe "★★★★★" – FourFourTwo Four years after the crowning glory of 1966, and a decade after the abolition of the maximum wage, a brash new era dawned in English football. As the 1970s took hold, a new generation of larger-than-life players and managers emerged, appearing on television sets in vivid technicolour for the first time. Set against a backdrop of strikes, political unrest, freezing winters and glam rock, Get It On tells the inside story of how commercialism, innovation, racism and hooliganism rocked the national game in the 1970s. Packed with interviews with the legends of the day, this footballing fiesta charts the emergence of Brian Clough, Bob Paisley and Kevin Keegan and the fall of George Best, Alf Ramsey and Don Revie, presenting a vibrant portrait of the most groundbreaking decade in English football history.

The word ‘unique’ is often wrongly used but, in the case of A Game of THREE Halves, the author’s story is indisputably one of a kind. No other writer has worked on the inside for both Aston Villa and Birmingham City while keeping an eye on local and national footballing affairs for more than seventy years. During that period he met, and sometimes worked with, many of the best-known personalities in world football: from Pele to Cruyyff, Busby to Ferguson, Matthews to Cullis, Wright to Banks, Hill to Coleman, Saunders to Atkinson, Best to Francis, and many more. From war-time football to the present day, across eight decades, football has changed so much that not even the ball, apart from still being spherical, is the same as before. The fight to remove the maximum wage, the initially steady and ultimately explosive growth in pay, the arrival and development of European football, the curse of the hooligan, the introduction of the Premier League. A flavour of these developments can be found in these pages. This is not an anorak’s football history, but a lively collection of real-life anecdotal memories laced with controversial personal comment. The object of the exercise is simply to be a ‘good read’ while hopefully introducing a touch of football and social history. Here can be found such unlikely characters as an armed robber, an exorcist, some terrified sky divers, half a moustache that ‘went missing’, a factual hungover ‘Biggles’ and a shoot-to-kill former iron curtain guard. This is a look at football like no other.