Blue was the Colour
By Andy Hamilton
Published September 2023
Telling of his lifelong support for Chelsea, Blue was the Colour: A Tale of Tarnished Love is smart and engaging, just like the TV series Andy wrote with Guy Jenkin, Drop the Dead Donkey and Outnumbered.
Andy grew up a couple of streets from Stamford Bridge, and was taken to his first Chelsea game by his brother when aged six. Since then, he has seen everything – from erstwhile laughing stocks to Russian-moneyed dominance. And he has strong opinions on all of it.
Taking as his starting point a Chelsea v Newcastle United game back in the 1960s and ending up at a match between the two modern clubs now owned by Americans and Saudi Arabians respectively, this is a read of warmth, wit and wisdom.
The Homecoming
By Jane Purdon
Published May 2023
Jane has written a passionate, heartfelt account of the summer of 2022, when the Lionesses dazzled the nation and brought football home. Alongside is her personal story of falling in love with the game aged seven and becoming an activist, administrator and leader, most recently as CEO of Women in Football.
Her journey takes in her early days as a Sunderland fan, her first kicks of a ball in her late teens, her pioneering work in the early 1990s to promote women’s involvement in football, and her subsequent career at the heart of the football establishment. In 1992, Jane wrote: ‘The England women’s team winning the European Championship – now that is not a fairy tale, it could just happen’.
Thirty years later this fairy tale came true, and Jane reflects on what has happened to women’s football in the aftermath of the Lionesses’ historic victory, what needs to happen next, and looks forward to the FIFA Women’s World Cup, taking place in the summer of 2023.
Pantomime Hero Jimmy Armfield
By Ian Ridley
Published January 2023
Jimmy Armfield was one of the great figures of English football.
Captain of the national team before Bobby Moore, member of the 1966 World Cup-winning squad, one-club man with Blackpool.
Genial ‘Gentleman Jim’ went on to enjoy a remarkably rich and full life and career as a manager, with Leeds United, before becoming a broadcaster of warmth and insight, then consultant with the Football Association and the Professional Footballers’ Association.
In Pantomime Hero, football writer and author Ian Ridley tells of the touchstone time when Armfield took over at Leeds after Brian Clough’s ill-fated 44 days and came up with a unique and innovative idea to restore the morale of a club tearing itself apart.
Around that amazing tale, Ridley also describes a friendship forged through the bonds of cancer with a giant of a man who was already long established as a national footballing treasure at the time of his death in 2018.