SVEN: THE FINAL RECKONING by Joe Lovejoy (Collins Willow, £7.99): THE updated version of Sven Goran Eriksson's biography includes new chapters on Euro 2004 and the crisis at the FA but, like the Swede himself, it promises more than it delivers.

The section on this summer's tournament in Portugal is as disappointing as England's quarter-final defeat, offering little in the way of tactical insight or technical analysis.

Instead we are left to pore over more revelations concerning Eriksson's affair with FA employee Faria Alam, although most of these amount to little more than tabloid tittle-tattle.

He telephoned her every day during Euro 2004, she knew the FA were out to get him from the start - it's hardly Watergate.

The best chapters try to get to the bottom of Eriksson's coaching methods and conclude that he is something of a maverick. It is to be hoped that his thinking is clearer to David Beckham than it appears to be here.

LEEDS UNITED: TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS by Phil Rostron, (Mainstream Publishing, £9.99)

OR as it should be titled, "How not to run a football club".

Rostron probes events at Elland Road over the last four years to examine how a side can go from the semi-finals of the Champions League to the brink of extinction, accumulating debts of £100m along the way.

While the book is of particular interest to fans of Leeds United, it should also set alarm bells ringing at both Sunderland and Newcastle.

The Black Cats know all about suffering relegation from the Premiership at the same time as a transfer market collapses, while supporters of Newcastle will note with caution former Leeds chairman Peter Ridsdale's observations about the devastating consequences of missing out on the Champions League for two seasons in a row.

Rostron mixes newspaper reports from the time with retrospective interviews to provide an overview of events, including Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate's infamous court case and the tragic deaths of two supporters in Istanbul.

Published: 11/01/2005