'Red or Dead' left in the shade by 'The Damned United'.

Ed Higgs sat down at his laptop. His laptop, his life's work. His life's work in his laptop. Ed Higgs opened up his laptop. Ed Higgs logged onto The Bread Roll Blog. The Bread Roll Blog of secrets, of lies. Of lies and of secrets. Ed Higgs waited. Waited. Always waiting. Waiting for more lies, for more secrets. And Ed Higgs began to write about the new book by David Peace. 

When I heard about the novel, my first feeling was one of immense excitement. Peace's first football novel, The Damned United is easily the best of its kind, albeit in that fallow area of literature, the sports book. The story of Brian Clough's ill-fated period as manager of Leeds United has been made into a moderately good film, but it does not contain the poisonous moodiness of the novel. This is somewhat unsurprising, as Peace's unique selling point as a writer is his wonderful capacity to create an authorial voice, something impossible to replicate on screen.

Read this.

When I heard it was to be about Bill Shankly, I felt some disappointment. I pride myself on knowing an awful lot about football, but when it came to Shankly, my knowledge was relatively sparse. I knew he was incredibly successful, I knew he was the first to declare that football is 'more important than life and death', but beyond that, I was fairly ambivalent towards him.

I should have taken that as an invitation to leave the book well alone. Football loves to lampoon, to criticise and to bait. Plenty of people have mimicked Brian Clough, snarled 'yous a bunch of fucking idiots' in the style of Sir Alex Ferguson, and punned upon Jose Mourinho's 'The Special One'.

But Shankly?

Therein lies the problem. Bill Shankly is too nice. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't sat there urging the novel to take a twist whereby Shankly reveals a desire to brutally murder Bob Paisley and burn down the Kop. Alright, maybe a little bit. And the book does contain historical appeal, even literary appeal. The style, mimicked in my italicised opening paragraph, isn't even that grating. Alright, alright, it's fairly grating, but like I say, as a literature student, who am I to argue if a writer wants to experiment? A bit of post-modern never hurt anyone.

The problem with any novel roughly based on historical events is there's only so much tinkering with the plot that a writer can do. We all vaguely know the story: Shankly takes a struggling Liverpool and turns them into a power-house, via a love-affair with the city and the supporters. We are, like it or not, reading about the rise and rise of Liverpool Football Club.

Meanwhile, Clough takes a brilliant Leeds side, is despised from the start, and is sacked after 42 days of non-acceptance and bitterness from both parties. Clough hates Leeds, and the only reason he took the job is to prove his arch-rival Don Revie wrong. Yet in that story, David Peace ensures that everyone (aside from Johnny Giles who later sued him) is a winner. Neutrals understand that Clough is not the problem at Elland Road, and this is why he will go on to have a very successful spell with Nottingham Forest. Readers recognise that Leeds are the pantomime villains, a role which their supporters still relish. And, despite the bitterness seeping through the pages, Clough retains his popularity with the reader through his family ties, biting wit, and 'bromance' with assistant manager Peter Taylor.

I'm happy to love Shankly. It's impossible not to, he's bloody annoyingly perfect. I'm happy to love the book, despite Peace's style. But I can't, as much as I try, enjoy reading a success story of Liverpool Football Club. Shankly forever has Bob Paisley at his side, another demi-god of football, and another reminder of how this is only going one way- you are reading the rise and rise of Liverpool Football Club. It's by no means stomach churning, and Peace, as a gritty Yorkshireman himself, does not do schmaltzy sentiment (strange for a man who immerses himself in the past as a method-writer). Nonetheless, this is the house that Bill built, and I can't help but feel, in my paranoid Birmingham City state, that I'm reading about how Bill Shankly somehow contributed to our 7-0 FA Cup defeat by Liverpool in 2006.

Only hardcore Liverpool fans need apply.

The Damned United had light and shade, even beyond the pages. Light in Clough's meteoric rise as Derby manager (on the page), light in his back-to-back European Cup victories (off the page). Dark in his damned spell as Leeds manager (on the page), dark in his battle against alcoholism that eventually killed him (off the page, but hinted at in the book).

Red or Dead is a book perhaps better suited to the Anfield club shop than Waterstones. Shankly is all light. And, in the twenty-first century, if you're all light in the world of football, then frankly, nobody really cares.