Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #348529 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Book Jacket
In an unforgettable rites-of-passage journey through the professional game Garry Nelson observes at first hand the highs and lows of life down among the lesser lights of the English football league.

Left Foot in the Grave is his critically acclaimed insight into the game from his perspective a player-coach of third-division Torquay United. No-one has ever communicated so sensitively what the beautiful game is like from the inside; and never before has English football been so authentically portrayed.

About the Book
"Vividly brings to life all the fears, traumas and joys of a manager struggling along the rough and ready road in the game's foothills" --Guardian

"Another fine read by this talented storyteller" --Sunday Times

"There is pathos, there is heartbreak, there is humour... Nelson may have spent most of his active life among football's infantry but his perception has put him in officer class" --Evening Standard

"This is the sort of on-the-wall account that flies were put on the planet for" --Hot Press

Customer Reviews

Recomended to all Championship Manager fans
A diary of a season in charge of a no hope mid-table side. On the face of it nothing very exciting but once you pick up the book you can't put it down. Sounds very corny I know, but anyone addicted to Championship Manager will be very familiar with that "Oh my god, is that really the time?" feeling. And you learn so much about what it's really like to manage a struggling football club. Definitely not about champagne and cigars.

Not only that but written by the legendary Goldstone Gaz - what more do you want?

Would Alex Ferguson Survive?
Brilliant book of Nelson's head-coach year at Torquay United, through all the season's ups (not finishing bottom) and downs (star player punching out a West Ham star international). Witty, not afraid of self-confession, and with intriguing insights into where the game has been going into the Premiership age, a must for any fan who believes that football is much more than how many millions Carbone/Anelka/Beckham/(fill in the blank with this week's overpaid whinger) wants to be paid. And Alex Ferguson would never survive without a PLC to back him.

Left Foot in the Grave?.
Telling the tale of the 1996/97 football season as player/assistant coach of Torquay United, Garry Nelson, the very definition of a journeyman footballer returns to regale us with stories of frozen solid pitches, 8 hour coach journeys to the other end of the country, un-bloodied YTS football trainees being drafted into the first team on a moments notice and the endless juggling of the financial books that a small 3rd division team must go through.

Honest to the point of abruptness Garry pulls no punches when he tells about the day to day life of the lower leagues, there's no champagne lifestyle here for the players as stories of players having to pay their own way to make it for training and for trials are the norm. Poor Torquay, without a training ground of their own, have to strap the goalposts to the top of the team bus and bring them to whatever training pitch the council have allocated that day.

Obviously as opposed to Garry's other book "Left Foot Forward" which told of Garry's playing days, this one focuses on more managerial themes and Garry has to get his hands dirty in the tragic world of suspending players and letting other go from their contracts.

The style of the book does grab you, and whilst football is a entertaining thing to watch, it doesn't quite make the same impact when written about. Garry makes a damn fine go of it though and his prosaic style serves him very well.

The book ends with Garry starting his position at the PFA, can we expect "Left Foot in Lancaster Gate" next?