It had some enjoyable stories and interesting insights, and the gossip there certainly appeals to the majority of football fans, but considering the introduction promising to shed light on the 95% on what happens behind the curtains in the world of football that fans don't know that much about, it offered little more than what a normal grown-up football fan with realistic understanding and experience of life and human nature would already know and expect. I was looking forward to this after enjoying a smattering of the authors columns in the guardian. What I got was a badly stitched together lump of what seems like rehashes of the columns, painfully stuffed into an awkward narrative. The book would have worked much better as an omnibus of all the secret footballer articles to date. Not only that, it seems the guy is at pains to make the reader fully aware of how cultured he is away from football and how little the game now means to him. Fairly tiresome to read alongside the predictable tales of excess he seems to think no one has heard before (5 star hotels, private jets and so on). The on field stories are much more interesting and it's kind of fun predicting which player or manager he could be referring to in certain sections but overall this was very disappointing.
Meh.... Expected better, The writer victimizes footballers too much. However not a bad read overall.
—Rachel
Simply insightful at best, but a bit too self-righteous and flattering mostly.
—saoirse
Really insightful and interesting, but a bit short!
—Dais
great book, read if u enjoy footie
—Shannon
bloody brilliant
—angeline_naidu
