From Salford To Tucson And Back Again

From Salford To Tucson And Back Again
By: Robert Carter

The Memories of a Globetrotting Manchester United Fan Provide
An Emotional Roller coaster of a book.

This diehard supporter bases his book on experience, passion,
hopes and fears and reminds us all why we love football.

As a supporter of Manchester United, Robert Carter has seen it
all. He has witnessed the highs, the lows, the false dawns; and
more recently, the unprecedented success of his beloved team.

He has watched the DVD’s, read the autobiographies and studied
the history, but something was missing. He couldn’t find a book
that shared the experiences of the supporter from the terraces.
A book that reminded him why he started to support United in the
first place, and why he still supports them almost five decades
later.

The only solution was to write the book himself.

‘From Salford to Tucson and Back Again’ is the result of almost
fifty years of supporting the Red Devils. It takes us from a
bygone age of terracing and camaraderie to the faceless exper-
ience of the modern football stadium.

It starts in the aftermath of the Munich Air Disaster, takes us
through the glory days of the swinging sixties and then the long
barren years before returning to glory in the early nineties.

Born in Davyhulme near Manchester, Carter spent his early years
in Swinton, near Salford. He has lived and travelled all over the
world, before settling back into his native Manchester in January 2008.

Wherever his travels took him, Manchester United was always close
to his heart. Read about a close encounter with the police in Bangkok,
how United's results affected his own playing style and about the
devotion of following the red devils through thick and thin. On a
famous day in May 1999, while United were winning the treble, this
devotion almost cost him his life.

For fan or foe, the Manchester United story is one of highs and lows,
of excitement, adventure and legends. ‘From Salford to Tucson and
Back Again’ is told through the eyes of an ordinary supporter. It is
not the autobiography of a player yet to reach his prime, or one that
will never be anywhere near as good as his ego lets him believe. It is
not written by a journalist, or anybody with an insider view. All the
stories are true, some joyous and some painful. Like every other United
fan that Carter knows, he lives and breathes football. He cries when
they win and he cries even louder when they lose.

Biography:

Robert Carter is an author, poet, motivational speaker and wannabe rock
singer. He has visited more than thirty countries on business and led
sales campaigns to around $2.5 billion in new business.

His first book, The Balanced Innovator, Turning Ideas into Reality has
helped individuals and organizations to achieve increased productivity
while improving the process of innovation. He has been the keynote speaker
at dozens of conferences on innovation and is an after dinner speaker.

Robert began his education at Mossfield Infants and Primary School in
Swinton; and at Wardley Grammar school where he attained 8 O’ Level
GCE’s. He also attended North Trafford College and Manchester Metropolitan
University (when it was still called a Poly) before completing his
education with a MBA at the University of Hertford.

He is also a Manchester United fan and his new book, From Salford to Tucson
and Back Again, the Globetrotting Memoirs of a Manchester United Fanatic
is now available from:



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Manchester United: The Biography

Manchester United: The Biography

By: Jim White

To gauge the state of the nation, first check the state of Manchester United, says Leo McKinstry

Sir Alex Ferguson, the long-serving and uniquely successful manager of Manchester United, bestrides English football like a colossus. But he did not always possess such epic stature. When he first arrived at Old Trafford in 1986, he felt overwhelmed by the scale of the job.

As Jim White relates in this wonderfully entertaining history of United, Ferguson was so gripped by nerves that, in one team meeting, he caused confusion by calling the striker Peter Davenport 'Nigel', as in the renowned actor.

Ferguson has left those early days of stumbling, tongue-tied anxiety far behind him, as he has turned United into the biggest, most spectacularly successful football club that Britain has ever known.

Only Real Madrid on the international stage can match United's awesome status. Yet the vast haul of silverware, the phenomenal earnings and global following of more than 75 million fans has come at a price.

To its critics, Manchester United has sacrificed its soul to the god of mammon. The club whose very name was once synonymous with romance and youthful panache has been turned into a ruthless commercial enterprise.

This obsession with cash is said to be reflected in the bizarre deal by which the American Glazer family, with no roots whatsoever in football, took over Old Trafford in 2005 and immediately pumped up ticket prices and the merchandising drive.

In another reflection of commercialisation, the years of rich success for United have helped to spawn a production line of books about the club. But this study by Jim White, a distinguished journalist and passionate Reds supporter himself, is of a far higher quality than most others because of both the quality of his writing and his deep understanding of United's heritage.

He is wonderful at capturing the essence of personalities in a few well-chosen lines. His portraits of the erratic French genius Eric Cantona and the rebellious Edwardian professional Billy Meredith are particularly well drawn.

Similarly, he beautifully describes the famous forward line of Denis Law, Bobby Charlton and George Best as United's 'Golden Trinity', the trio that captivated the public in the 1960s, with Law 'spiky and rebellious', Charlton 'noble and upright, the last Corinthian,' and Best 'the mercurial gadfly, hedonistic, self-absorbed and self-destructive.'

He is also good at explaining the natural authority of Sir Matt Busby, who hid his inner steel beneath a coating of Catholic charm, and the flawed exuberance of perma-tanned Ron Atkinson, the 1980s manager whose tolerance of a heavy-drinking culture among players contributed to the club's decline before the Ferguson era.

Some of the book's details can be alternately hair-raising or thought-provoking.

He reveals, for instance, that the nervy forward Albert Quixall used to indulge regularly in a repellent practical joke where he would place a pile of excrement, wrapped as a present, in another player's locker.

He also refers to the intriguing question, first raised by the commentator Stuart Hall, as to whether Best's suicidal alcoholism was caused by a troubled sexuality.

Like so many league sides, Manchester United had its origins in the dark northern smog of the late Victorian age, when a group of Lancashire railwaymen formed the Newton Heath club. Its facilities were poor, its pitch a quagmire, but, with determination and the backing of patrons such as the Tory politician A. J. Balfour and the Guardian editor C. P. Scott, the team became a force to be feared, changing its name to Manchester United in 1902 and building the finest ground in the country soon afterwards.

As White's book shows, the history of United has often been a mirror to wider developments in English society. So, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, United struggled badly with dwindling finances, yet in the consumer boom of the 1950s, it was full of verve.

In the same way, Best symbolised the excitement of the youthful working-class revolution of the mid-1960s, while United's dismal form of the 1970s, resulting in its only relegation since the War, reflected the wider economic crisis of Britain in decline.

Even today, the sense of conflict within United between its footballing soul and the dictates of commercialisation has a parallel in the post-Thatcher, de-industrialised Britain, a land losing its national identity and dominated by a global super-rich elite.

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Wayne Rooney: The Way It Is

Wayne Rooney

The Way It Is

“Coleen bought me an Aston Martin from her own money.
It was a birthday present that she gave me before the big
day. On my actual birthday she gave me a Jacob watch,
inscribed with my name and date of birth. I love watches.”
And so on, and so forth. Who on earth is this actually aimed
at? It’s not an autobiography; it is a prospectus for Paul
Stretford’s Proactive Sports Management Ltd. It’s also an
insult to the intelligence of the reader, although quite frankly
anyone who buys it after seeing Rooney posing on the cover
wearing a Coca-Cola T-shirt – he has a contract with them
– probably hasn’t got that much grey matter to offend.

The book ostensibly traces Rooney’s career to date, from
boyhood scamp at Everton through to what he is now: an
England player and cash-cow marketing vehicle. Along the
way it touches lightly on the many controversial incidents
that have befallen the Manchester United striker in his short
career, and tries ever so hard to place the Proactive-approved,
positive spin on them.

For instance, the tensions between Rooney and David Moyes?
The Everton manager was jealous of the attention that the
youngster was getting and was put out that he wasn’t invited
to his 18th birthday party. And while Rooney has a poor memory
concerning certain matters – such as who actually introduced
him to the bookmaker with whom he ran up a debt of over 50
grand, or the details of the contract dispute that saw Stretford
dragged to court – he can recall every single negative thing
about his time at Goodison. It’s really no surprise that Moyes is
taking legal action.

The incident with the grannies in the brothel is skimmed over –
it’s something that all young lads do, apparently – although he
manages to get in another apology to the ubiquitous Coleen.
Surely the ghost-writer, Hunter Davies, could have suggested if
people want to read about her dress sense or that she was in the
school production of Bugsy Malone they can go and buy her book.
She has written one, apparently. It must be fascinating.

Who would have thought that, 35 years after he wrote The Glory
Game, Hunter Davies would be trying to pass off the following as
the words of a 21-year-old footballer: “That is why we have a
publicist. We need to monitor dialogue with the papers and we
need someone who can speak to them when stories are wrong or
misrepresented.” There really is little else. All the moderately juicy
bits that Proactive have allowed, like the fact that he likes to sleep
with the hoover or the hairdryer on, have all been serialised to
death already.

The only thing that surprises with this sort of wretched tome is that
the people handling the players do not use the opportunity to at least
try to make them seem somewhat likeable and, well, normal. Rooney
used to seem more normal than most but, droning on here about his
cars, his holidays and his property portfolio, he looks like just another
unashamedly crass gobshite who happens to be lucky that he’s good
at kicking a ball around a field.

But who knows, some people may enjoy reading it.



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