BEHIND THE BESTSELLERS

Football's a funny old game, as former Spurs and England star Jimmy Greaves regularly remarked on Saturday TV while previewing the weekend's action in the 1980s and 90s. Publishing is a funny old game too.

The English Premiership season is but seven games old but already three footie grandmasters of the 60s and 70s are kicking their proverbial balls around the autobiographical goalmouth.

There's Greavsie: The Autobiography, which recounts the striker's 465 goals, how he missed England's 1966 World Cup triumph and why his career with Chelsea, AC Milan, Spurs and West Ham nosedived into alcoholism.

The descent nearly killed him, as it almost did George Best, who has penned Scoring At Half Time.

Completing the trio is Nobby Stiles, the Manchester United and England player who has released After The Ball: My Autobiography. A hard-tackling rather than hard-drinking star, Stiles was never identified with glamour due to his work rate, lack of hair, appalling teeth and a name that became rhyming slang for haemorrhoids.

Is it not a tad early for a Christmas push? A Hodder & Stoughton spokeswoman offers a firm rebuttal: 'Not at all, sales snowball. The raft of sports books is purely and simply due to the Christmas build up. Sporting biographies sell very, very well at Christmas.'

As well as Stiles, Hodder is gift-wrapping cricketer Michael Vaughan's memoirs and the life of wayward but now born-again rugger bugger Jason Robinson.