Sky Sports Football Yearbook, edited by Glenda Rollin and Jack Rollin (2006)
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THE "Bible" is back - football's longest surviving yearbook returns with a staggering amount of stats and essential information.
Formerly Rothmans, it includes full coverage of the 2006 World Cup finals and the qualifying competition, and is also the most comprehensive results service for the Champions League and UEFA Cup.
Featuring a season-by-season players' directory with an invaluable A-Z of all entries, match facts and figures for English and Scottish league matches and English, Scottish and international fixtures for the 2006-07 season, this book is an invaluable companion for all football enthusiasts, from armchair fans and pub quiz nuts to journalists.
It also includes a lengthy editorial (warning: requires use of reading glasses) in which Jack Rollin offers some harsh but fair criticism of England's World Cup failure, and makes some radical suggestions for reforming the World Cup.
He believes that the burden on players due to heavy schedules could be relieved by slashing the number of finalists to 28, thereby cutting the number of World Cup finals matches from 64 to 44.
Personally, I believe that the thousands our poor, put-upon Premiership stars earn every second is more than enough recompense for playing a few more games to entertain the fans now and then. I mean, sometimes they have to play three games a week. However do they manage to cope with the strain? (Try working eight hours a day, five days a week in an office or factory for less money per year than you earn in a week, sunshines.)
But I digress. Opinions aside, this cannot detract from what is, and what has been for decades, a superb statistical achievement that has never been surpassed. Pretty much every fact about football today (and a fair few from bygone days) is packed into the Yearbook's 1,000-plus pages... now it's up to you to spend the season memorising odd nuggets of information and regurgitating them to the wonderment of your fellow fans while you have that half-time pie. For example, do you know which 11 venues in the London area have staged full England internationals? I'm not telling you, you'll have to get the book and unearth the truth for yourself...
Review by Sam Hawcroft