Soccer from the Shoulder
By Tommy Docherty
From the back streets of Glasgow to the captaincy of Scotland, that’s the success story of Tommy Docherty, the brush-topped Arsenal wing-half who became a professional footballer almost by accident. Docherty, who seldom stops running and never stops talking on a football field, is essentially a realist. He admits that he owes everything he has to football, and in return he has given his unstinted devotion to the game. To him, football is a gay science, and he approaches its problems with chirpy shrewdness.
Unhesitatingly, he puts his finger on the weakness of both Scottish and English football. He analyses closely the character and play of the men he has played both with and against. He gives the footballer’s eye view of that tantalising genius, Tom Finney, and takes the reader into the atmosphere of Deepdale under that master of discipline, Cliff Britton. He has even stronger, more pointed things to say about the tactics used by some Continental and South American sides. Yet Docherty is no carping critic. He is frank, honest and full of zest. But above all he is constructive.
Docherty began his career as centre-half with a Glasgow junior club and, after a spell with Celtic, moved south of the border to Preston in 1949. He gained an F.A. Cup Finalist’s medal with the Deepdale club in I954 and joined Arsenal in August 1958, at a reported fee of £20,000. He won the first of his many international caps against Wales in 1952.
ROYAL MAIL TRACKED 48
Publisher: Stanley Paul Publications
Published: 1960
Price: £15
Hardcover: 144 pages
Condition: very good, very light foxing to some of the pages edges. Dust jacket complete with very minor shelf wear, not price clipped 15s. Now covered with our Archival Dust Jacket System. Ex library book has stamps back and front on PEP's
