BY DAVE BOWLER

THE FOOTBALL BUSINESS
David Conn (Mainstream, £7.99)
Twenty years ago, the common wisdom was that football clubs needed to start running themselves like businesses. The result? The corridors of power infested with the likes of Sugar, Hall, Bates and Ellis, now in a position to do real damage; clubs changing managers according to Stock Exchange diktat; football clubs no longer calling themselves football clubs. That was a good idea! Conn lays bare the hypocrites, the self-serving money men who sold the league down the river with the advent of the Premiership and the subjugation of the poor majority by the avaricious few. Most of all, he reminds us of the dangers of Murdoch, whose newspapers desecrated the dead of Hillsborough and once called football "a slum sport played by slum people". Football, notably the Premiership, saved Murdoch from going broke. Bugger. 5/5

EXTRA TIME: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY WILLIE MADDREN
Willie Maddren (MND Fund, £12.30)
Willie Maddren was one of the rocks of Jack Charlton's Middlesbrough in the 1970s. At 26, a knee injury finished his career. In the 1980s, his first job in management came as Boro were going bust. A decade on, Maddren was struck by Motor Neurone Disease, a muscle-wasting illness that is killing him. Somehow, Maddren has pieced together an uplifting tale worth telling, which will raise money for the fight against MND. There are good stories about Graeme Souness' womanising and Jack Charlton's temper, but it's Maddren's optimism that's truly illuminating. Buy a few copies for all your moaning mates and give them a proper sense of perspective. Available from Willie Maddren MND Fund, 30 Silver Street, Stockton-on-Tees, TS18 1HT. 4/5

GAZZA AGONISTES
Ian Hamilton (Bloomsbury, £9.99)
Elegant and eloquent, Hamilton's brief look at the life and times of Paul Gascoigne will appeal to both sides of the divide. Gascoigne emerges as a giant, Shakespearean character; in equal parts tragic, heroic, comedic and foolish, a jumble of contradictions, a compelling figure at once obnoxious and endearing, a genius betrayed by his advisers and, ultimately by himself. It's the most accurate portrait we have of the most influential English footballer of the post-1966 period and is compulsive reading. After all, which other footballer could get beaten up by nuns? 4/5

THE GREATEST FOOTBALLER YOU
NEVER SAW - THE ROBIN FRIDAY STORY
Paul McGuigan and Paolo Hewitt (Mainstream, £7.99)
The wild and woolly tale of the George Best of the lower divisions. Robin Friday typifies the 1970s maverick, a brilliant ballplayer who burned the candle at both ends and in the middle. Utterly unpredictable, impossible to handle, his career went down the pan amid an excess of drink, drugs and women. Told by Reading's coach that, if he just settled down, he'd play for England, Friday replied: "Yeah, but I've had a far better time than you've ever had in your life." People say there are no more Fridays in the game, there are no more characters. But there are. There's not much difference between Friday and Gazza. And look what we've done to him. 3/5

THE OFFICIAL MANCHESTER UNITED ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA
(Manchester United Books, £25)
Honestly, there's no conspiracy against United, no irrational hatred of the Reds here. But bloody hell - £25 for 160 pages? There are lots of nice photos, pen pictures of every United player ever, team line-ups, all the things you'd expect. Not much analysis, no critique (you'd be daft to expect any), but pleasant enough. As far as this goes, it's not a bad product, but for the money, it doesn't go nearly far enough. At a tenner, it might well be worth it. This is cynical merchandising gone mad in the run-up to Christmas (it's closer than you think!) and makes replica kits look like value for money. 1/5