By the normal standards of The Blizzard a touch on the patchy side but, as ever, there’s plenty worth reading. Editor Jonathan Wilson’s deconstruction of Jose Mourinho’s career and current travails is a sharp, extended take that’s light years ahead of the necessarily shorter columns littering newspapers and websites over the autumn; Dermot Corrigan’s piece on football being used to help treat Alzheimer’s patients is an obvious publicity piece but shows the better side of the game and how it can be used; there’s a lovely section on the revival of the Austrian national side; the Greatest Games section really isn’t about a game at all but instead puts football into perspective against world events and the musings on applying the Peter Principle and chaos theory to football make this the finest Theory section yet. Bravely, the magazine even branches out into poetry – I’m not sure it quite works, but that the magazine can be this bold five years into its existence is a healthy sign.

On the downside, the Bobby Manager fiction is really just lightly amusing filler by now. However, it remains the gold standard of football writing. ( )