The Kop Liverpool S Twelfth Man

'When The Kop is roaring it really is like having a twelfth man out there on the pitch. They're the best fans in the country - by miles.' Jamie Carragher The Spion Kop is one of the most famous, emotive and atmospheric vantage points in all of sport. The one-time terracing that could 'suck the ball into the net' - in Bill Shankly's immortal phrase - still inspires and intimidates today. Once the home of more than 25,000 swaying, singing, standing Kopites, it's now seated and can hold merely half that number, but its magic still remains. In this fully revised and updated edition, Stephen F Kelly uses eyewitness testimonies from Kopites, policemen, cleaners and referees as well as newspaper reports and the recollections of players and managers to trace the history of this amazing and fascinating stand - each anecdote wonderfully evoking the spirit of the changing times the Kop has experienced. Stirring, emotional and marvellously readable, The Kop is a must for any Liverpool fan and anyone interested in what it means to be a supporter of any football club.

Merseyside: Culture and Place demonstrates how Liverpool and Merseyside have a rich, fascinating and sometimes controversial cultural history. The result of a conference held to mark Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008, this interdisciplinary volume contains chapters by scholars working in a variety of fields, including Geography, Art, English, Marketing and History. There are many facets to Merseyside’s cultural history, and the contributors to this publication bring their own perspective to bear on various features of the area’s rich heritage. Taking in examples from the early modern era to the present day, Merseyside: Culture and Place draws attention to often overlooked cultural forms, such as sketches of the Mersey by J. M. W. Turner and the fan culture exhibited on Liverpool FC’s Kop. Each chapter in the book is based on original research and the contributors set their findings in a local, national and, in some cases, an international context. Both academics and general readers will find much of interest in a book that reflects Merseyside’s distinctive and multi-faceted character.

Jimmy Case is best remembered for a spectacular FA Cup final goal and a deserved reputation as one of football's genuine hard men. But that does scant justice to a career that covered more than 700 appearances for 7 league clubs and did not end until he retired, through injury, at the age of 41. Raised on Merseyside, Jimmy began at his beloved Liverpool, becoming a key player in the all-conquering team of the late 1970s alongside stars like Kevin Keegan, John Toshack, Ray Clemence, Phil Thompson, Kenny Dalglish and his two great mates, Tommy Smith and Ray Kennedy. At Anfield, where he was signed by Bill Shankly and guided by Bob Paisley, Jimmy won a boxful of medals: four league titles, three European cups plus a host of other domestic honours which tell the truth about Jimmy Case - that he had much more than a tough tackle and a ferocious shot. As the man himself says, you couldn't get in that Liverpool team if you couldn't play.His ambition was to play his entire career at Liverpool but fate sent him on a different route: to Brighton, where he almost won the FA Cup; to Southampton, where he played more than 200 games; to Bournemouth; Halifax; Wrexham; and a single outing for Darlington. Along the way he came up against players like Andy Gray, Graeme Souness, David Speedie, Graeme Sharp and Norman Whiteside, often with painful results. Packed with incident and anecdotes, usually funny - but occasionally sad - this is the story of Jimmy Case, a true football legend.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE FEATURED IN THE OBSERVER'S SPORTS WRITERS' BOOKS OF THE YEAR On 15 April 1989, 96 people were fatally injured on a football terrace at an FA Cup semi-final in Sheffield. The Hillsborough disaster was broadcast live on the BBC; it left millions of people traumatised, and English football in ruins. And the Sun Shines Now is not a book about Hillsborough. It is a book about what arrived in the wake of unquestionably the most controversial tragedy in the post-war era of Britain's history. The Taylor Report. Italia 90. Gazza's tears. All seater stadia. Murdoch. Sky. Nick Hornby. The Premier League. The transformation of a game that once connected club to community to individual into a global business so rapacious the true fans have been forgotten, disenfranchised. In powerful polemical prose, against a backbone of rigorous research and interviews, Adrian Tempany deconstructs the past quarter century of English football and examines its place in the world. How did Hillsborough and the death of 96 Liverpool fans come to change the national game beyond recognition? And is there any hope that clubs can reconnect with a new generation of fans when you consider the startling statistic that the average age of season ticket holder here is 41, compared to Germany's 21? Perhaps the most honest account of the relationship between the football and the state yet written, And the Sun Shines Now is a brutal assessment of the modern game.

Crowds, Community and Contagion in Contemporary Britain presents the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to re-assess the neoliberal politics, xenophobia and racism that have undermined community cohesion in the United Kingdom since 1979, and which have continued largely unchecked through the last four decades. Guided by three interconnected ideas used throughout to scrutinise the meaning of culture as a way of life – Welsh cultural theorist Raymond Williams’ structure of feeling, Jamaican-British sociologist Stuart Hall’s conception of the conjuncture and Belgian political philosopher Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism – Sarah Lowndes finds that a renewed sense of mutual regard and collective responsibility are necessary to meet the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. She begins by reflecting on public gatherings in Britain from 1945 to 2019, moving on to analyse five key examples of public gatherings affected by the pandemic in 2020 onwards: Chinese New Year, the UEFA Champions League Final, VE Day street parties, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and the cancellation of Eid ul-Adha celebrations. A thorough examination of how ideas proliferate and spread through our society, public sphere and collective consciousness, this book will appeal to scholars and upper-level students of cultural studies, cultural history, sociology and politics.

Scousers believe they live in a special place, one that has more in common with Salvador da Bahia, New Orleans or Gdansk than anywhere in England, and the city has always punched above its weight. In less than a hundred years, however, Liverpool's image has declined from a major mercantile player known as the Second City of the Empire to what some social commentators have described as a cultural backwater remembered largely as the place where the Beatles were born. In Liverpool: The Hurricane Port, Andrew Lees reveals how Liverpool's pre-eminence in the slave trade left an indelible scar on the psychogeography of the city. He also explores the roots of Liverpool's contrary nature, its rebelliousness and its hedonism, as well as some of the recent hurricanes that have battered the city, including the anger of Toxteth, the Hillsborough disaster and the murder of James Bulger. In this distinctly personal account, Lees defines the characteristics of this Celtic enclave, with her loudmouthed, big-hearted people who have created a city quite different from anywhere else in the world.

‘The perfect Christmas gift’ – Alan Brazil A brilliantly entertaining and hilarious quiz book from the country’s favourite sports broadcaster