A smart and irreverent guide to running a football club, brought to
you by the team behind the acclaimed The Price of Football podcast
Imagine setting up your own Sunday League football club and seeing it
rise to the lofty heights of the Champions League, taking all the risky,
rewarding, sometimes dodgy and increasingly big money decisions along
the way. Comedian and financial idiot Kevin Day and football accountant
and financial expert Kieran Maguire have imagined just that with all the
humour and savage insight of their massively popular The Price of
Football podcast.
As (the made up) West Park Rovers rise through the divisions, towards
the Premier League and Europe, Kevin and Kieran take readers on a
rollercoaster ride through the often murky - and frequently bizarre -
world of football finance. Along the way to hopefully making a fortune
(albeit an imaginary one), they outline the challenges, opportunities
and pitfalls their club encounters, while Kieran attempts to stop Kevin
bankrupting them both in the (fortunately fictional) process.
Their preposterous but somehow believable journey uses meticulously
researched examples from football's rich history of financial chaos
(like the chairman who set fire to his own ground to claim the
insurance), interviews with big names and anecdotes from their own lives
(like Kevin bumping into Sylvester Stallone at Everton and Kieran doing
the accounts for the Russian mafia) as well as contributions from those
in the know, including Gary Lineker, Gary Neville, Stephen Fry, Henry
Winter, Karen Brady and Delia Smith (to name just a few), to follow the
money and discover what's really going on behind the scenes of the
beautiful game.
