Many of you will have been lucky enough to receive this book for Christmas. Apparently the club shop has already sold over 3,000 copies, which must make it the number one best seller in Burnley. Its publication was certainly keenly awaited. I was desperate to read it, and so worried that no one would buy me a copy for Christmas that I ended up buying one as my present to myself.
Chances are if you got this book for Christmas you’ll have already read it from cover to cover at the first opportunity. If you don’t yet have a copy – get one.
When mine came via post from the ever-reliable online club shop, my brother was down over the weekend for the Gillingham game. With a few drinks inside us we stayed up some way into the night picking out and reading aloud choice chunks of text.
It’s that kind of book, full of stories, bursting with incident, and a lot of fun to read. Don’t, of course, expect a great work of literature. Hey, it’s a football biography, for heaven’s sake. It’s not a genre I’d personally claim great familiarity with, but I’ve read one or two in my time and my impression is that Stan the Man is more entertaining than most. (By comparison I read Ian Wright’s book Mr Wright when we signed him and it was pretty dull.) Intellectual stimulation is not what you seek from the football ‘autobiography’, but rather a glimpse behind the scenes and a good laugh, and you certainly get that here. The tale is told with economy and punch in fluent tabloidese by Tony Livesey, himself a Claret, who apparently gathered material from chats in Stan’s kitchen, one of the key locations in the book, along with the Kettledrum. Livesey has summed the book up as ‘something happens on every page’ and that’s a fair description.
Unlike the soulless millionaires who populate today’s game, Stan does at least have a story worth telling. That story is one of struggles, setbacks and betrayals, which make for a gripping read.
It’s presented as a sort of football everyman story, hence the subtitle A Hard Life in Football. It would be of interest to anyone who suspects football is about more than glamour and success, although I suspect it will be of most appeal to supporters of those clubs Stan’s been involved in – which happily guarantees a wide audience, as Stan has worked for many clubs. Supporters of Bury will probably enjoy recollecting a time of success that already seems kind of mythical. Chelsea supporters will learn about a period – Ian Porterfield’s spell as manager – that they will have tried their best to forget.
And indeed, what’s the point of producing a book unless you get to settle a few scores? Porterfield and Stan’s arch nemesis Neil Warnock both come in for heavy criticism, although I’m still not clear what Warnock did to get so much under Stan’s skin in the first place. Stan’s clashes with Warnock provide genuine laugh out loud moments, while he delights in Porterfield’s later failures with the Trinidad mob.
It’s clear that Stan holds grudges. Indeed, the impression you get of Ternent from this book is not wholly favourable, and it’s to his credit that Stan doesn’t always try to portray himself and his actions in a flattering light. Sometimes discretion might do him some favours, but the book is better for lacking that discretion. As well as holding grudges, you get the impression that Stan tends to think he’s always right and isn’t averse to a bit of a scrap. Indeed, the book is littered with punch-ups. Stan seems to be permanently on the point of giving someone a slap. Doubtless some dramatic licence has been employed in this emphasis on action rather than contemplation, but be warned (if warning you feel you need) that there is plenty of aggression in this book.
There’s loads of ‘bad language’ too. I don’t have a problem with that – it’s the language footballers use, and there’s no point pretending otherwise – but I will pause for a moment to savour the irony that a club which just the other year issued a stern statement condemning the use of ‘foul language’ will be making money by stocking in its shop a book which is full of it.
The picture that emerges of Stan is of a bloody-minded, highly motivated and fiercely competitive individual. Someone like that might be hard to love, but as I’ve said before, you’re not required to like Stan. He doesn’t need to be likeable, or diplomatic, or be good at PR. Those things aren’t in the job description of football manager. Stan’s job is to produce a successful team, and this he has done. And those qualities, of stubbornness, determination and single-mindedness, aren’t necessarily the qualities that win friends, but they’re ones you need if you’re going to take a failing football club and make it successful.
It’s the Burnley stuff that will interest us most, of course. We are provided with an insight into the rage that motivates Stan to succeed as Burnley manager. He has, it seems, never forgiven Burnley for letting him go as a young professional after letting him play so few games. It’s like he’s been wanting to prove us wrong ever since. The book reveals his initial doubts about coming to Burnley – he was mad at the club for overlooking him in the past – and how close we came to missing out on him. No sooner does he join us than Stan thinks he may have made a horrible mistake. If you ever wondered how much of a mess our club was in in 1998, read this book. Stan recalls that we only had three decent players – all of whom are still with us – while most of the others were hopeless, including a whole bunch of defenders who couldn’t defend. What a relief it is to those of us who thought this at the time to know that the man in charge realised it straight away! I was a bit sceptical of those ‘not my team’ claims Stan made in the early days, after some heavy defeats, but now I can see what he means.
Of course, the better times came. For Stan the moment of epiphany comes on that bright afternoon at Scunthorpe when promotion is won and he realises it matters to him more than his earlier successes, and the reason that it does is because he’s a Claret.
Encouragingly, Stan reveals he is fixated on the idea of managing in the Premier League, and competing with the often over-rated managers there. Such is the picture of determination and struggle against the odds that emerges from these pages, you still wouldn’t back against it.
The temptation in writing this review has been to quote all sorts of anecdotes from the book, but as you should have the pleasure of discovering them yourself I’ve tried not to spoil it. This really is a book no Burnley supporter should be without, and if you don’t have it, you need to get it. It’s as simple as that.
If that wasn’t reason enough, Stan has said he didn’t do it for the money and will donate his royalties towards the fund to develop Gawthorpe, thereby investing as a true Claret in the future of the club. If that doesn’t make you want to get a copy then nothing will. Best to buy it from the club shop – click here to use the excellent on-line service – so that Burnley FC make some money from the sale too.
So what are you waiting for?
