Craig makes it a 'clean' sweep

His words are carefully chosen and even the alleged fallouts with Richard Gough and David Robertson hardly set the pulse racing.

Brown is at the height of his career and no careless words in an autobiography are going to jeopardise his future.

Therefore, the reader must be sustained by a simple retelling of biographical fact and some entertaining trivia.

The bare bones of Brown's life are built into a an impressive body of work.

The work ethic has been instilled in the Browns. Their father went to the RAF as a PE trainer and emerged as a squadron leader. Craig remarks laconically of this flight to the top that his father ''did quite well''.

The boys have done good, too. Jock is the supreme being in Paradise, Craig is the higher power among Scottish coaches, and another brother must content himself with merely speaking to God in his capacity as a minister.

Indeed, David Holmes once offered Craig a job as a Rangers director thus raising the frightening possibility of the Old Firm being renamed the Family Affair.

Brown's injury ravaged football career is well-documented. He left Rangers when he was third choice at left half. ''The other two were an amputee and a Catholic,'' he remarks with self-deprecation. His career at Dundee included a championship medal before he embarked on his coaching career which took in Clyde and Motherwell before he joined the Scotland fold.

All this is honest, decent and truthful. It is also slightly boring.

The trivia leavens this heavy fare.

Did you know that Archie MacPherson was a very tricky winger? That Craig is an expert at country dancing? That the Scotland manager once graced the pop charts with Hammy and the Hamsters? That Jock Stein grappled with the Motherwell groundsman? And that Dundee once reached the semi-final of the European Cup?

I know, I know, the last one is the hardest to believe.

Craigs skirts with controversy when he talks of losing a semi-final with Rangers amid controversial refereeing decisions. ''I do feel they had more than 11 players on their side,'' he pointedly remarks.

But he normally sticks to the middle path, never veering into violent criticism or courting unseemly controversy.

He, rightly, has a good conceit of himself as a coach but few secrets slip out. His man management style is sound but hardly revolutionary.

What intrigues this reader is what is not said. Brown was seconded to Alex Ferguson for the 1986 World Cup. This adventure, surely the biggest thing that had happened to his career up to then, is dismissed in a few pars. It is submerged by pages of Brown's association with Clyde which surely has limited interest for those, admittedly few, who do not have the Bully Wee's best interests at heart.

What Brown has written makes few demands on the reader and will happily fill a few, lazy hours on the beach.

It is more interesting to speculate, however, on what Brown might produce when freed from his constraints as an SFA employee. This book is never in danger of bringing the game into disrepute. The cynic might respond: ''And more's the pity.''

Brian Woolnough's biography, Glenn Hoddle: The Man and the Manager (Virgin, #5.99), is in contrast feisty, opinionated and seeks the heat of controversy with the unerring aim of an Exocet missile.

As befits a Sun writer, Woolnough seems unconcerned with stepping on toes, even coming into the tackle slightly late.

In truth, it does not explain the Hoddle enigma. How does a man with such a self-professed faith possess such a dearth of confidence in himself? Woolnaugh merely presents the case, rounds up witnesses, and leaves the reader to come to a judgment.

The arguments for and against Hoddle as a player at international level are bravely explored.

His limitations as a manager are investigated. Hoddle's track record is merely promising.

Brown keeps cool in his polished monochrome prose. The greater expectations of the English media and fans will ensure it is a hotter summer for Hoddle.