Greaves is Scoring Again!, 5 Sep 2003

By	Gavin Jackson (Addlestone, UK) - See all my reviews

This is not just a book about career statistics or overcoming self-inflicted addictions. Jimmy also looks at the social history involved in football, he examines how the philosophy of football has changed, and he discusses the metamorphasis of the beautiful game from a working class pastime to a multi-million pound industry.

If you're interested in our national sport, read this book.

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Master striker, writing with humour and warmth, 18 Dec 2003

By	Gareth Smyth "Laqlouq" (London) - See all my reviews

Greaves portrays an age of football that can be looked back on as a 'golden one', when attendances were massive and yet when players could mix with the fans in the local pub after a game. It's amazing to read that he travelled to Chelsea home games on public transport, and that when he became the most expensive player in Britain (£99,999) he still couldn't afford to buy a house.

Greaves also writes with characteristic humour, with hilarious one-liners and a dead-pan perspective about a game he always loved. Those of us old enough to remember Greaves playing will enjoy his descriptions of games and even the back-and-white photographs (including a lovely one of Greaves arriving at White Hart Lane with Billy Nicholson after he signed for Tottenham from Milan).

Greaves was a natural goalscorer of a very high-class, maybe the best in Europe of his era. Hence, despite all his successes, there was a strange edge of disappointment in his career, firstly in missing the final stages of the 1966 World Cup after an injury, and secondly in playing for a Tottenham team in gradual decline after the 1960-1 double season (Greaves arrived just after that).

But Greaves did after all win two FA cup medals and one European Cup Winners' Cup medal (Tottenham were the first English side to win a European trophy), and his optimism and zest for live would see him in good stead as he fought off alcoholism in some dark years after he left Spurs to develop a successful career as pundit and TV personality.

Wonderful book by a great player and a warm human being. Maybe it will convince some of the telly bosses to bring him back to the screen.

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