With a growing media profile, thanks to his appearances on Question Time and an acclaimed documentary on racism in football, there were plenty of other opportunities, but he was determined to give it another go. Initially signing for York City before moving to Northampton Town, Carlisle was soon back in the thick of the action. As the events of the year unfolded, Carlisle looked back at his career, from his early days playing for England Under-21s, through career-threatening injuries and a battle with alcohol problems, to a late arrival at the top level with Burnley. As chairman of the PFA, Carlisle is a much-respected figure in the game; his raw honesty and penetrating insights will make readers view the game, and those who play it, in a whole new light.

     He remains the only Englishman to have won major trophies with three different clubs: Manchester United, Sheffield Wednesday and Aston Villa. At West Bromwich Albion, he was one of the first managers to promote black footballers, including Laurie Cunning- ham, who went to Real Madrid, Cyrille Regis, who became an England international, and Brendon Batson MBE. After retiring from management, Ron evolved into one of the most familiar and forthright commentators on football. Yet that career came to an end in April 2004 with a single, unguarded comment about the Chelsea defender, Marcel Desailly. Atkinson was labelled a racist and driven from the game he loves. In The Manager Ron Atkinson delves into the highs and lows of an extraordinary career that took him from non-league football to Old Trafford’s theatre of dreams in the space of seven years. He almost managed two Midlands clubs - Aston Villa and West Brom – to the league title. But behind the familiar image of the bling and one-line quips Ron Atkinson was – and remains – a deep observer of football and footballers. Here, he gives the full account of a life in football. From an awestruck youngster in 1950s Birmingham watching the supermen of Honved via a stalwart career as a lower league professional with Oxford to managing one of the biggest club in world football, Atkinson’s has been a life less ordinary. With detailed portraits of the men he worked with an against, including Bryan Robson, Paul McGrath, Sir Alex Ferguson and Dwight Yorke, Atkinson also discusses the rise of the foreign footballer; the decline of the English manager and what it is like to sing live at Ronnie Scott’s.

    Few others can offer such a remarkable insight into life at Anfield from Shankly to Houllier and beyond. Born in Liverpool in 1954, Phil later moved to his spiritual home of Kirkby where his footballing abilities were soon noticed and he quickly acquired a range of schoolboy honours before signing professional forms for his beloved Reds in 1971.As he staked a claim for a first-team place, Kop messiah Bill Shankly would memorably declare: “Aye, Phil Thompson. The boy tossed up with a sparrow for his legs and lost!”Shanks, however, was in no doubt about the young Thommo’s qualities and Phil would go on to claim a host of Anfield honours including seven League Championships, three European Cups, two League Cups and an FA Cup.The proudest moment of his footballing life came in 1981 when he led the Reds to a third European Cup with a 1-0 defeat of Real Madrid in Paris, later parading the trophy at his local pub, The Falcon.He left the Reds after winning 42 England caps before returning to Anfield in a coaching capacity under Liverpool player manager Kenny Dalglish.Despite being controversially sacked by Reds boss and former teammate Graeme Souness in 1992, he sensationally returned to Anfield as Gerard Houllier’s right-hand man in 1998, going on to revive the glory days by claiming a famous treble of trophies in 2001.Coming full circle and happy to be a fan again, he shared in the joy of the Reds’ 2005 Champions League triumph in Istanbul – as highlighted during remarkable scenes on SKY TV.

    Ex-players, close friends, journalists, managers and former colleagues reveal their astonishing brushes with the greatest football manager England never had. The stories are cherry-picked from two acclaimed books - 150BC: Cloughie the Inside Stories and Clough: Confidential. An additional 242 stories can be found in these two volumes. So, enter the whirlwind world of Old Big 'Ead and prepare to be entertained.

    There’ve been big highs, but a fair share of lows too. When I have to make difficult decisions, I make a point of avoiding newspapers, phone-ins, Twitter – all of it. But there’s always a load of armchair-pundits waiting to start on me. Being a manager has never been easy, but between the fans and the media it often feels impossible to get it right.In It Shouldn’t Happen to a Manager, I talk about how different the job is now from what it was like when I used to play. For one, managers used to drive up and down motorways all day to scout for players – now there’s so much analysis and global scouting. It’s a different thing, completely. In this book, I share everything I’ve learnt from a lifetime of both wins and losses, and wisdom from greats like Cloughie and Ferguson. I’ll tell you about what actually happens in the dressing room, including when Clough smashed the door off its hinges; the bust-ups at full-time, like when I kicked a tray of sandwiches on Don Hutchinson’s head; and the times when I had to swap an arm round a player’s shoulder for a boot up the arse. It’s my guide to being a manager, the Harry way.

    unsparing, honest' GQ magazineKieron Dyer's memoir, Old Too Soon, Smart Too Late, is the first intimate and unsparing portrait of the failures and excesses of the generation of English footballers made rich beyond their wildest dreams by the post-1990 World Cup boom in the game and the explosion of the Premier League. It shares the same brutal honesty and self-awareness of the bestselling No Nonsense by Joey Barton and GoodFella by Craig Bellamy.In the public mind, Kieron Dyer came to symbolise so much of what was self-destructive about a group of football players known collectively as the 'Baby Bentley generation'. Nicknamed 'The King of Bling' by the tabloid press, Dyer was caught up in many of the scandals that characterised the history of a talented crop of players who promised so much and delivered so little, a generation whose wages and lavish lifestyles began to alienate them from the fans who once worshipped them.The brash young man is gone now, and in his place is the quiet, caring, wise man who was such a favourite on I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here! in 2015. Dyer narrates, in uncompromising detail, how a generation of talented English footballers, taken out of working class childhoods and presented with a world of glitz, glamour, wealth and temptation, failed to cope with the riches that were presented to them and often fell apart.Old Too Soon, Smart Too Late is about a moment in time, a social and historical record of English football at the start of its gold rush. For Dyer, the end of the book brings a measure of personal redemption and peace but for the English game, there is only a lingering sense of waste and regret for an opportunity lost.

    . . an in-depth excavation of the murky and mysterious world of football business. Smith's candid and often shocking book reveals the true workings of football business that take into account things few of us even could even imagine . . . The Deal answers some of those questions and leaves you wanting more. It is an educational tool that most fans could do with researching' Joe Short, ExpressFootball analysis has grown at the same exponential rate as the sport's popularity and yet one of its most intrinsic elements remains tantalisingly opaque: the role of 'agent'. The Deal is a unique and fascinating perspective into the business of sports management through the eyes of 'Mr Football', 'super-agent', Jon Smith. 800,000 watch their professional football team play each week and TV pulls in audiences of around 600 million. Despite these phenomenal figures, the complex money-making scene behind sport is one of its biggest mysteries. The Deal will be an unprecedented insight into this world, showing what goes on as players and big money change hands. The Deal is also the story of one of the shrewdest and most successful businessmen of our time. Documented through Jon's personal rollercoaster of high-flying success to near bankruptcy, the book's over-arching narrative will offer an inspiring personal journey as well as insider knowledge of brokering deals at a high level and under extreme pressure. The Deal will appeal strongly to buyers of business books as well as a significant number of sports fans interested to know what goes on in the back room of their favourite sport.

    Ever wondered how a transfer deal is done? What a manager says during his pre-match team-talk? What he screams from the techincal area? What goes on in training sesions, and on those long away trips? How a manager carefully builds a team, and what he does when the planning is disrupted by injuries? How he lifts a team after a crushing defeat, and keeps their feet on the ground after a resounding victory? How the man in charge handles the ever-present danger of getting sacked in the ultimate results business? In short, how one of today's top professional footballer managers somehow copes with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, with having to live, breathe and sleep football 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? Then read The Gaffer.

     As a player, he established himself as one of the leading midfielders of his era, being named PFA Player of the Year in 1985 and credited with being the fourth best footballer in the world. He won numerous honours with Everton, including two league titles, one FA Cup and one European Cup Winners’ Cup during the most successful period in the Blues’ history. He also won 13 England caps, playing at the 1986 World Cup – where a date with destiny at the ‘hand’ and feet of Diego Maradona would provide a lasting, painful memory. As a manager, his journey has taken him from Manchester to Sunderland, India to Thailand, each step a voyage into the unknown and sometimes into difficulties and even controversy. This is the unique story of a footballer who got to the top and yet never forgot his roots, who mixed with the powerful but has never been afraid to challenge authority. Told with typical forthrightness, Peter’s book will capture the imagination of football fans far and wide.

    The game has been his life, and his enduring passion.Souness has written a perceptive and opinionated autobiography. It chronicles one of the most successful and colourful careers in the history of British football. But it also provides an intriguing assessment of the game which has dominated his existence, drawing extensively on his incredibly rich and varied experiences as a player, manager and pundit.The result is a shrewd, incisive and hard-hitting memoir, at times tinged with hindsight and regret, which also grapples with many of the major talking points affecting the game today. It is shot through with Souness' trademark tenacity and wisdom, and with fantastic anecdotes from his glittering career.In many ways, Football: My Life, My Passion is the story of the last half-century of British football writ large.

    A tall, lean striker with the world at his feet, Ferguson seemed destined to develop into one of Scotland's most successful exports, but anger, and a number of injuries, hampered his progress. Ferguson has scored the most goals of any Scot in the Premiership but also shares the record for Premiership red cards. In 1995, he became the first professional footballer to be jailed for an offence committed on the pitch. It earned him a three-month sentence in Glasgow's infamous Barlinnie Prison and a twelve-match ban from the SFA. Bruised by the experience, he walked away from the Scotland team and blanked the media from then on. Featuring contributions from numerous top players, this explosive biography uncovers the real Duncan Ferguson. The author delves into Ferguson's personal and professional life and reveals that there is more to him than the media portrayal of a Scottish hard man.

    In his car were the drugs the team needed if they were to have any chance of playing a competitive part in the 1998 Tour de France. The car was searched, he was immediately arrested and so the story that has been undermining the sport of cycling since the death of Tommy Simpson in 1967, finally broke. Imprisoned for sixteen days, sacked from the Festina team and ostracised from the sport to which he had dedicated his life, Willy Voet at last was able to tell the truth. His sensational story will change cycling forever.Cocaine, amphetamines, EPO, heroin - all these are now considered not optional but necessary, not to win but just to compete in the Tour de France. Details of how these drugs are obtained, mixed together to make cocktails, administered and concealed are all included in this graphic and uninhibited account of how drugs brought cycling to its knees.

    This is it. This is really the end. I was now a matter of seconds away from the moment all the numbers stopped for ever. My career total of National Hunt winners would remain at 4,348 after this, my 17,546th ride. All the stats, the numbers that had governed my life for the last two decades, they were just a few hundred yards from being stilled for ever. My whole career, my whole adult life, had been built on making those numbers click upwards as fast as I could, but in a couple of furlongs they would never move again.Deciding to retire was the most difficult decision I've ever had to make. Fortunately I was able to go out at the very top, and being able to say that makes me a very, very lucky man indeed. And now, in this book, I've been able to look back over my entire career - both good and bad moments - and see it in its entirety: the biggest wins, the disappointments, the injuries and the tragedies, my wonderful family, and the amazing horses and the fantastic personalities I've worked with.18,000 people turned up to that final race at Sandown, and I can now look back on my career with immense pride and gratitude. But that chapter of my life is closed. This book is the final word on my riding career - it's time to move forward.

    He also describes his enduring friendship with the ‘kid from across Dublin’s Tolka Park’, Eamon Dunphy, and his career on RTÉ2’s football panel, where Giles’ intelligent and insightful analysis have made him an even more well-loved and respected national figure.

    This is what football is really about. One man’s story of a career in the lower leagues.Chris Hargreaves has been a professional footballer for twenty years. Having started out as a youth team player at Everton he made his debut for Grimsby Town in 1989 and was earmarked as their first million pound sale.It never happened.Instead he went on to play for Scarborough, Hull City, West Brom, Hereford United, Plymouth Argyle, Northampton Town, Brentford, Oxford United and Torquay United.Where's Your Caravan? is the sort of football memoir we don't see enough of these days - an account of life in the lower leagues. It takes us from his wild youth - lots of sex and drugs and drink - through to domesticated family man - school runs and flatpack furniture with plenty of football in between.