The Sports Bookshelf

Headline have revealed the cover for Bend It Like Bullard, the in which Jimmy Bullard, the former Wigan, Fulham and Hull City midfielder who was forced into premature retirement because of persistent knee injuries, dispenses his own Twelve Pillars of Football Wisdom. Bullard, 35, earned a reputation for playing practical jokes during his 13-year career in the professional game and Headline say his sense of humour shines through in Bend It Like Bullard. "We are extremely excited to be publishing Jimmy's first book," Headline announce in the publicity accompanying the cover picture. "We've read it, and trust us, it's hilarious." According to the publisher's blurb, Bend It Like Bullard is "a rip-roaring, life-enhancing, hilarious memoir from a football cult hero; very much in the same vein as recent bestsellers from Paul Merson and Jeff Stelling." Bullard, who grew up in the East End of London, worked as a painter and decorator but,

Given his reputation for taking no prisoners in his verbal exchanges with members of the press, journalists have been taken aback at how charming and patient Sir Alex Ferguson has become since announcing his retirement, particularly when he has been promoting his autobiography. Yet it is a side to the former Manchester United manager that media professionals of a certain age remember well from the distant days in which Fergie was still trying to win friends as well as influence people. In his own new book -- Don't You Know Who I Am? -- BBC broadcaster Peter Slater recalls the old Alex as hospitable, co-operative and as accommodating a manager as any with whom he might wish to seek an audience. "My first contact came in the autumn of 1981," Slater writes. "I was sports editor of Radio Orwell in Ipswich, and Ipswich Town, the UEFA Cup holders, had been drawn to start their defence against Aberdeen, managed at that time by Alex. "The first leg was at Po