A long break and my first published book!

I've taken a long break from writing blogs on my own website (something I tell clients to avoid at all costs) due to being extremely busy! Work and everything else in life has piled up and this went to the bottom of the list.

One of the things I have been doing is completing a book which is now close to publication! It is called 'For the Love: How Football Supporters Can Change the World', and it comes out of years of football and community organising.

It's about the power football supporters have, the challenges we face and how we can organise to overcome them. At the same time, how organising at the game gives us a unique (and arguably unparalleled) power to transform our communities.

It was born from a deep love for everything football gives aside from what happens in the actual games. Supporters are the lifeblood of the game, and we are stronger together than apart. I have spoken to supporters and organisers from up and down the UK and the leagues to get their first-hand perspectives, something I often think is missing from coverage of the beautiful game.

I'll post more detail following release on the 6th July, but for now here's the blurb:

What does it mean to be a football supporter in the 21st century?

Every club is fundamentally an expression of its community, but many are leaving the people and places that made and sustained them behind in pursuit of vast riches and other abstract goals like ‘sportswashing’ the reputation of nation states.

Rising ticket prices, breakaway leagues and the erosion of the grassroots pyramid can make it all seem hopeless for the average working-class supporter.

However, football supporters are organising, overcoming tribalism, and rediscovering the ties that bind them together to fight back against billionaire owners and powerful broadcasters. The same tactics, cooperation and solidarity are also being harnessed to reestablish the link between football and its communities to transform life for working class people up and down the country.

Football supporters are the biggest organised group of people in every town and city across the UK. We are considerably more powerful than we know, and we can use that power to go beyond simply saving the game we love.

This book shows how supporters can use that collective power to take back our clubs and the game from disconnected owners, and revolutionise our communities at the same time.