Window Shopping

Excited about the imminent closing of the transfer window?

If, like me, you follow a team in Scotland then the answer will almost certainly be ‘no’. With the window about to slam shut (or any other similar transfer window cliché you can think of to the describe the last day of January) only one deal has taken place in Scotland in January that has involved a transfer fee. Even then the £35,000 that took Dougie Imrie from Hamilton to Paisley was hardly at the top end of the market.

Given the perilous financial state of Scottish football it can hardly come as a surprise to anyone that January has been largely free of transfer activity in Scotland. Few film crews camped outside grounds in Scotland with hoards of expectant fans swarming around them as the midnight deadline draws ever closer.

Transfer Window Deadline Day (such an important event in football is surely deserving of capital letters) is supposed to be a day of high drama. Sky Sports News displays a clock ticking down with the logo ‘time remaining’ next to it just in case we couldn’t figure out for ourselves what it means.

It’s the media circus that surrounds TWDD that truly irks this writer. What compels people to go and stand outside a stadium or a training ground on a cold January night? Were there no TV cameras there would they still turn up in the hope of seeing some star speed through the gates in a car with tinted windows? Are Sky Sports merely reporting the news and, ahem, drama of the day or are they, by turning up with film crews and cold looking reporters in tow, actually creating the drama that they then report on and declare ‘dramatic’?

Just as Christmas Eve can induce panic and generate some injudicious purchases so too can TWDD. The difference is that on Christmas Eve the worst you can do is spend a few quid on a jumper with a garish design upon it that will languish in a drawer until it goes in the charity bag. On TWDD you can spend £35million on Andy Carroll. Just about as useful as a Christmas sweater but a damn site more expensive.  

The Beatles - An Obsession

I think I have always, right from a very early age, had the tendency to be obsessive about certain things.

First obsession that I recall was for all things dinosaur related. I can still remember the acute sense of disappointment I felt when my father told me that instead of the book on dinosaurs that I had been craving he had bought me instead a book on chickens. He was, of course, kidding but  it took me a good few minutes before I realised that.

Next was Famous Five books, then the books of Michael Hardcastle. As I got older the obsession became football, one team with the huge capacity to disappoint in particular, and I had (sorry, have) the football programme collection that is almost a timeline of that particular obsession.

Recently, thanks to some cheaply acquired tickets for Paul McCartney’s concert at Hampden Park, the obsession has become The Beatles. And not just the music either, but rather anything and everything that has been written and said about them. It is fortunate, or perhaps not, that there is so much material out there to help fuel the obsession.

This morning another couple of books arrived, adding to my ever increasing library of Beatles literature. The fact that my Beatles books are already occupying a whole shelf in my bookcase prompted me to cast a critical eye over my Beatles book collection.

Hunter Davies’ ‘Authorised Biography’ seemed a natural place to begin my Beatles reading with. During 1967 and 1968 Davies was given unparalleled access to The Beatles which gave him an unique insight into their lives. Given that it is an authorised biography it is naturally a sanitised account of the band. There’s no mention, for example, of them dabbling with LSD and the obvious impact that had on their music. Davies’ preface to the 40^th anniversary issue of the book though helps create a more balanced picture, but even allowing for the ‘flaws’ that being an authorised account inevitably brings this remains a fascinating account of The Beatles. If it isn’t already in your Beatles library then rectify that as quickly as possible.

‘Balanced’ isn’t a word that immediately springs to mind when reviewing Philip Norman’s ‘Shout – The True Story of The Beatles’. As many authors have done he appears to have used Hunter Davies’ book as a source for much of his information meaning that there is little new, or especially insightful, contained within its’ pages.

It’s Norman’s obvious bias though towards John Lennon in preference to McCartney that really irks. That Paul can be a little ‘prickly’ and a bit of a control freak is a pretty well established fact but if the picture that Norman tries to paint of McCartney is any way accurate it would seem almost impossible for The Beatles to have operated as a cohesive group. Additionally his view that George Harrison and Ringo Starr were basically lucky to be in the right place at the right time is harsh, especially with regard to Harrison’s contribution, in the extreme.

An altogether better account of Paul McCartney can be found in the pages of Howard Sounes’ ‘Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney’. This book benefits from being the most recent account of his life dealing with his tempestuous relationship with Heather Mills.

A further strength of the book lies with the relatively brief account given of The Beatles early years given how well documented that period already is. The most interesting sections of the book deal with McCartney’s marriage to Linda and his time with Wings, including his ill-fated trip to Japan and spell in jail.

Still on the subject of Paul McCartney, Peter Carlin’s biography is also worthy of a place on your bookshelves though his account stops before McCartney’s relationship with Heather Mills really started to turn sour.

Returning to The Beatles by far the best book I have read thus far has been Peter Doggett’s ‘You Never Gave Me Your Money : The Battle for the Soul of The Beatles’. This really is essential reading for any Beatles fan. It is a fascinating and detailed account, focusing on the Apple days, of the tangled business dealings that ultimately lead to bitter court appearances and the demise of The Beatles. The book explores in detail a subject matter that is only briefly touched upon, by the then surviving members, in The Beatles Anthology, as delightful as that is.

To round off, for now, my look at some Beatles books we flick through the pages of Ken McNab’s ‘The Beatles in Scotland’. As the title suggests, this book explores The Beatles’ Scottish connections. This doesn’t just focus on their tours through Scotland, including their very first tour when they went by the name of The Silver Beatles, but also John and Yoko’s prolonged visit to Scotland following a car accident and a look at the ‘Scottish Beatle’, the unfortunate Stuart Sutcliffe.

The personal accounts from those that “were there” and the wide variety of photographs are the book’s strengths. The major weakness being the apparently rather slipshod approach to research which sees some rather basic errors committed.

With a number of titles sitting in my ‘to read’ pile and an almost unlimited amount of source of material this will be a subject that I am bound to return to at a later date. In the meantime all recommendations gratefully received. 

You'll Never Win Anything with Kids?

So another season passes by without Partick Thistle adding to their 1921 triumph in the Scottish Cup.

Saturday’s defeat at the hands of Queen of the South was a massive disappointment, of that there can be little doubt. Disappointment in a football sense as the team didn’t play anywhere near as well as they can do, and disappointment in a financial sense as the potential of some much needed income that a prolonged cup run might have produced is lost.

The reaction from the Thistle fans to this defeat has been one of anger. The frustration is understandable. Queen of the South aren’t by any stretch of the imagination an especially good team. First Division side defeating another First Division though isn’t surely a result of any great note?

The calls for the removal of the manager, and a radical restructuring of the football side of the Club’s operation certainly seems to be out of perspective with the result.

The wisdom of the Club’s Youth Development scheme has been called into question in some quarters. The lack of players from the youth system in the current Thistle first team has been sited as justification for scrapping the youth development structure in its’ entirety.

That, to this writer at least, seems a foolhardy course of action to follow.

A successful youth policy takes years to develop. It isn’t just about those at the oldest age group, under 19, for whom the natural progression is now into the Thistle first team. That age group should be the tip of the iceberg.

Beneath that level there should be teams of varying age groups whose development is nurtured through its’ various stages. A lack of players from the youth system in the current first team, and it is unfair to suggest that there has been no success in that front, is no reason to abandon a youth structure that includes boys still in their very early teens. 

Developing these players into potential future first team players is a task that requires as much patience as it will hard work. There will naturally be those that don’t make it. The number growing as they get nearer to full professional contracts and the Thistle first team.

The current Head of Youth Development at Firhill, Gerry Britton, has only been in his post for a few years. Nowhere near long enough for his labours to have borne fruit, but significant progress has been made. He, and his band of coaches, need to be given the time to continue their work in trying to create an enviable youth structure.  One not unlike Hamilton’s which has earned their club significant transfer fees. 

  

The work that needs to be done in terms of Youth Development should be allowed to be continued irrespective of the fortunes of the first team at any given time.  

Welcome

Have decided to start a blog. How long I continue with it is anyone's guess.