Footballers

Generally I avoid Book Festival events - to me they should all be free as the whole thing is about promoting book sales and therefore should be covered by the publishers' marketing budgets. However there is clearly a willing audience more than happy to pay approaching Fringe show prices to hear authors discuss their books for an hour. On the grounds that it's worth checking in on it every so often to at least update my prejudice I got a couple of tickets this year - the workshop yesterday and then a football-themed event today. Two footballers on the 1980s and 1990s who I remembered watching in their heyday - Pat Nevin interviewing Tony Adams about his latest book, Sober. A follow-up to Addicted. I actually watched both of them playing live for their respective London teams in the 1984/85 season when I was a student in London. Adams was just getting into the Arsenal team at that time, while Nevin was a bigger part of the Chelsea team. And while I preferred the atmosphere on the North Bank to the thinly veiled hostility of the Shed I would much rather watch Nevin. Even when warming up when he seemed to delight in just playing with the ball at his feet, only reluctantly leaving the pitch to get ready for the kick-off like a child out in the street being called in for their tea. And years later I saw his penultimate game, back in Scotland playing for Motherwell against United in Mo Malpas's last home game for the club. Anyway, clearly I wasn't the only one interested to see these two greats as the Main Theatre space was packed - what, maybe 6-700 people. At £12 a pop that's probably £75K - wonder how the rest of the budget works out? Anyway it was an interesting interview - Adams talked about football as well as his addiction and his recovery. His take on Arsene Wenger was interesting - not a great coach of football technique, so when the players he had inherited or bought in from elsewhere ran out and he had to develop younger talent it didn't work as well. And while he had previously said it was important for a manger to recognise his own weaknesses and bring in others to fill those gaps in later years he seemed to stop following his own advice. 
Earlier in the day I had gone down to Innerleithen with L and the rest of The Eclectics as they did a short set in the Music Festival down there see extra). A pleasant trip down there and from what we saw a good little festival. Maybe next time go down and stay longer. We gave E a lift and had a good chat on the way back about football.