Book review: Steve Coppell: On a Wing and a Prayer

Put simply, Steve Coppell was the most successful manager Reading Football Club has ever seen. The architect behind the record-breaking season that saw the Royals promoted to the top flight for the first time in their history and the man who nearly took them to Europe the very next year, Coppell is a true Reading legend. Yet he is also so much more. The flying winger that helped Manchester United to an FA cup victory and represented England at the 1982 World Cup, Coppell was described by fellow profession Martin Buchan as more valuable than Best, Charlton or Law. In management he is not only a Reading legend, but a Crystal Palace one too, having also taken them to the promised land and the FA cup final with a team built up with the likes of Ian Wright, Nigel Martyn and John Salako. Steve Coppell is, put simply, a legend.

Stuart Roach’s biography neatly intersperses Coppell’s playing career with the club management that he began as Crystal Palace boss at the tender age of 29. As a Reading fan, the temptation is always to skip to the chapters involving our club, but the author draws out the interesting back-stories that define Steve Coppell as a player, manager and man from his numerous interviewees. The structure of the book alternates between player and manager, which does disrupt the flow of the story, but also guards it from going stale.

Despite Roach’s connections with Reading, he supports the club and previously wrote Reading between the lines, a diary of the clubs maiden season in the Premier League, it is actually the numerous chapters on Coppell’s time at Crystal Palace that provide the most insight into the man. Not unlike his time at Reading, Coppell gradually built up a team that could compete at the highest level, but struggled to maintain that form as his side began to break up. The gulf between the top teams and the rest was less extreme back then though, and Palace were able to enjoy a third place finish and an FA cup final under Coppell’s tenure.

His story at Reading makes up the final few chapters and, in keeping with the rest of the book, is told through the eyes of those that worked with him, namely the former Reading captain Graeme Murty and Glen Little. Both have plenty of stories to tell about the man, but still find it difficult to shed much more light onto the private demeanor that Coppell has always maintained. The chapters serve to jog the glorious memories that Reading fans have of the most successful period in their history, but struggle to tell us anything we didn’t already know about the man that spearheaded them.

The one thing that this book lacks is the one thing that Roach admits he had little chance of getting; input from the great man himself. But unless Steve Coppell breaks the habit of a lifetime and writes his own tell-all book, this is the most complete and colourful representation you will ever read of the man who has brought so much to football. And what more could a Reading fan wish for than that?

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