The Glory Game: Year in the Life of Tottenham Hotspur

Fabulously crafted book that follows a complete season. This isn't a reproduced diary but a look at the working that make the Tottenham clock tick. Players, Wives, Coaches, Directors, Secretaries and Supporters all bring the season together.

Read it.


Honest Reporting of a classic period   January 31, 2004
Christopher Paterson (Ex-Pat/California USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

A book that belongs in every football fans library, this master piece was published before any of the other journalist style accounts of the game filled your screen. Honest and critical appraisal of an average season in the early seventies before things started to go wrong for Nicholson. Younger readers might be forgiven for wondering why Spurs were the subject of the book. At the time of writing Spurs were regarded as the "Manchester Utd of the south" and the media eye was as firmly on them as it is on Chelsea and Arsenal today. The book follows the club thoughout the domestic and foreign season and covers every aspect of daily club life and every personality from staff through fan. I still feel the author is condesending at times and I understand the club was not thrilled at the time with the book, but credit to them for opening their doors and exerting no editorial control. Imagine getting similar access for an expose at any premiership club today. In short a must read for every Spurs fan and also every intellegent football devotee out there. Like the authors namesake wearing the club shirt today, Davies' book has a lot of style.


glorious in it's sideburned depiction   January 9, 2002
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

this book perfectly encapsulates spurs, and more widely, seventies football. tottenham hotspur were (and still are) a glamorous, charismatic club who attract a lot of media attention , both positive and negative - and this book is a fascinating insight into the runnings of a first division team from the manager, the players and all the backroom staff - no physios then of course, but hard trainers who told you to 'run off' that cartilage tear! the depictions of such luminaries as jimmy greaves, alan gilzean and the mercurial bill nicholson are exact - leaving no stone unturned. if somebody is blunt and impolite, even downright rude, it is stated in it's liniment-tainted way. this book is basically how it was!
my favourite passage covers the away european cupwinners cup tie in foreign climes. drawn away to a french side, bill lambasts the team at halftime due to their lack of application - and they promptly go out in the second half and proceed to gain a 0-0 draw, with barely any more effort. good result in hindsight, but that is not enough for bill - and he hammers that home to the players in typical unforgiving style.
a warts n all depiction of the way football was before the huge injection of cash and the new found interest in the premier league. definitely worth a read!


A book that spawned a new type of football writing   July 17, 2001
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

Don't let the fact that this book follows the 1971/2 Tottenham Hotspur club put you off from reading it (even if you're a Gooner). The Glory Game was the first in-depth look at what goes on at a football club, both on the pitch and behind the scenes. The fact that it's Spurs is inconsequential - it could have been any First Division club. Davies' account is easy-to-read, the chapters seem to fly by, and I found myself excited to know what happen next in Spurs' season, even though it took place 30 years ago! This is the standard that other season diaries of clubs should be measured against - sadly, most fall well short.


An essential read for all soccer fans   April 21, 1999
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

As a fly-on-the-wall documentary of a top flight team in the early seventies this book won deserved praise at the time of its publication. If anything, given the advent of commercialism at all levels of top standard sport in the UK, the book makes even more fascinating reading these days as it offers a glimpse into a world now gone, where a player's worth was not a purely monetary value but was determined by his peers, where a manager's vision was allowed time to bear fruit, and where players were discouraged from portraying themselves as anything but what they were - salaried employees in a fickle business. Davies' style of journalism, in which the players are allowed to speak for themselves, makes this book an insight also into the opinions, fears and prejudices of professional footballers - a refreshingly honest alternative to the 'spin doctored' and ghost written accounts that normally pass as the opinion of today's breed. For those of you genuinely interested in the recent history of the professional game and those also who would like to peek beneath the veneer of today's football club/corporate business hype this book makes essential reading. Spurs fans amongst you who might stumble pronouncing Ginola but have no problem accepting the concept of a Welsh midfielder called England - regard this book if not as your bible, at least as one of the principal epistles of your faith! (Pay particular attention to the player profiles at the back of the book and the hopes for his future expressed therein by a certain young player called Joe Kinnear - now there was a guy going places!)