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Hard Yards
'A great, authentic read that serves as a timely reminder that there is "super" to be found in every league' Colin Murray Gus Poyetdeclared it to be the toughest league in England. Neil Warnock believes it to be the tightest division in Europe. Norwich bossDaniel Farkewent further 'The Championship, without any doubt, is the toughest league in the world.' The second tier of English football has a well-deserved reputation as the most exciting league in football. Anything can happen, and often does. In The Hard Yards, Nige Tassell - author of the modern classic The Bottom Corner - tells the Championship's hidden stories, taking the reader on an entertaining and eye-opening tour of the 2020-21 season, one like no other. From Bournemouth up to Middlesbrough, Swansea across to Norwich, and all points in between, he interviews players, managers, chairmen, backroom staff, fans and broadcasters to reveal exactly what life is like one step below the Premier League bubble. The groundsman in charge of keeping the pitch in shape, the TV reporter covering several matches every week, the veteran player who lives and breathes the league, the long-suffering supporter - they all have tales about what makes this tier so hard, so gripping, so unpredictable. The Championship is a league brimming with heart and soul, where the divide between triumph and despair, Premier League ecstasy and lower-league agony, couldn't be any narrower. With stakes this high, drama is guaranteed. 'With this enlightening book, Nige Tassell absolutely nails the brilliant and the drama of the Championship. A screamer into the top corner! Chris Sutton 'The F. Scott Fitzgerald of football writing' Ian McMillan
320 pages, Hardcover
Published September 29, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 6, 2022
Solid, workmanlike performance, with lots of on the ground interviews and background data. But like the Championship itself, there are no Kevin De Bruyne moments of brilliance to lift it up to the next level.
March 29, 2022
This review first appeared at Soccer America:
When you emigrate and fall into soccer small talk with people you've just met, then it's only natural they'll want to know which team you support. My answer to that is always the same: Lincoln City. This inevitably leads to follow-up questions. Who? Where? What? Why? Once that's cleared up, then the next question will always be: "Yeah, but who's your team in the Premier League?"
The answer to that is: it will be Lincoln City, should they ever make it to the Premier League. That's not something likely to happen soon, but last season they were one playoff game away from England's second tier, The Championship. Veteran soccer writer Nige Tassell is not wrong to label it soccer's "toughest league" in the sub-title to his latest book, a month-by-month analysis of the 2020-21 season that took place mainly behind closed doors because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Where the Premier League is a morally dubious, cash-centric jamboree focussed on the same group of fast-spending fat cat clubs scrambling for the four lucrative Champions League spots, the Championship is a more intriguing playground that has one eye on the EPL's vast but filthy lucre, and another on the lower exit to League One -- the third tier of English soccer featuring teams like Shrewsbury Town, Burton Albion and Accrington Stanley, but also crawling with fallen former EPL teams like Portsmouth, Sunderland and Ipswich Town.
A less predictable league does not necessarily mean a level playing field, though. Queens Park Rangers coach Mark Warburton points out that sides coming down from the Premier League "have parachute payments that are multiples of our own squad budget. That's a fact. Is it a level playing field? No, it's not. But life's not a level playing field. You have to deal with it."
It might be worth offering a less stoical and more cogent criticism too. Teams still comfortable on EPL money often go straight back up at the first time of asking -- this was true last season, with Norwich being promoted as champions and Watford going up in second place. Only third-placed Brentford bucked the trend by returning to the top flight for the first time since 1947 (via the playoffs). On the downside, Sunderland's ongoing struggle to exit League One (ended in the playoffs last season by ... Lincoln City) is an example of how quickly catastrophic, headless financial planning can see you plummet from the top flight to relative obscurity.
If you can't call on parachute payments, what is the best financial strategy to succeed? That depends on if you're dead set on reaching the promised land of losing every week to Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United, or if you just want your club to be an important part of the community. Luton Town's chief executive Gary Sweet says his club believes in a model "where you shouldn't have to rely on the generosity or the egotistical nature of an owner to constantly plough money into the business. We operate on something called an optimum loss model. You spend as little money as possible on players to achieve your ambitions, because the more money you spend on players, the more you ultimately have to charge your supporters. We don't want to rip them off. The opposite in fact. We want to give them value. But that gives us an absolute finite limit on what we spend on our players. It's a really simple model."
Sweet points out that besides the soccer club, "there's nothing else in Luton that connects that broad church of people, of characters, of backgrounds, of religions, of race. We are the glue of all that." The club's new stadium is being built even closer to the center of town than the current Kenilworth Road, because "you glue the hub, not the edge of the spindles." Contrast that with nearby Reading FC, who announced operating losses of of £43.5 million in the 12 months to June 2020, giving them an overall deficit of £138 million. "The problem is wages," soccer finance expert Kieran Maguire tells Tassell. "The average wages Reading are paying is about eighteen grand a week. If you spread that across the squad, immediately we find that the club is paying more than twice the amount in wages that it is generating in income."
For all that spending, Reading finished seventh -- seven points shy of a playoff position, and just five places and eight points above the more frugal Luton. This is not, however, a book about soccer finance, even though economics are crucial to the league's outcome. Tassell travels up and down the country in the depressing time of lockdown, watching games in empty stadiums and talking to players, coaches, locked-out fans, administrators and to backroom staff in, say, the laundry room at Birmingham. Or to Dan Sparks, the groundsman at Ashton Gate, the home of Bristol City, who describes how tough it is watching games and seeing your carefully cultivated playing surface take the strain, "sighing at the continuing vogue for knee-sliding celebrations that gouge scars into the turf." When a player scuffs up the penalty spot after a spot-kick has been given and the ref isn't looking, Sparks laments how "he really did a job on it. We knew it wouldn't recover in a week or two. We'd have to put grass seed down and it would be a full four weeks before it was fully grassed again. We were pulling our hair out sat in the stand."
Tassell has a real knack for prompting his subjects to say something interesting about the game. Watford and former Manchester United goalkeeper Ben Foster talks about how, after the game's over, soccer "is the last thing I think about, ever. The moment I leave the football arena, whether that's training or a match, not one thought about football passes through my brain for the rest of the day. Whether we win, lose or draw, as soon as I'm on that coach [bus] -- maybe even as soon as I'm in the shower -- I know that game's done. There's no point in wasting any emotional energy on worrying about this or that."
Foster worries about young players who, "the second they get off the pitch and are back in the dressing room, they check their Twitter and Instagram feeds to see what people are saying about them. They'll never meet these people in their lives, but the words they say permeate these players." Millwall's forward Jed Wallace, meanwhile, is honest in describing how the season in mostly empty arenas "felt a little bit boring. As a footballer, you thrive off the atmosphere of the crowd, so even winning goals late in the game haven't felt the same this season." Wallace also notes that the quality of play was worse because of the packed, Covid-dictated schedule: "This season, everyone's got a long throw. Because everyone's so tired, teams have been concentrating on set plays. There isn't the energy required to open teams up."
Voices like that make this book a really engaging read from September through to May, and which should prompt the reader to take a closer and much more regular look further down the English league pyramid. Just below the over-hyped, self-styled "greatest league in the world" is one of the hardest, but also most variable and intriguing flight of 24 soccer teams -- hovering between the extremes of six-time European champions Liverpool FC, and what in English soccer are commonly referred to as 'the likes of Lincoln City.'
When you emigrate and fall into soccer small talk with people you've just met, then it's only natural they'll want to know which team you support. My answer to that is always the same: Lincoln City. This inevitably leads to follow-up questions. Who? Where? What? Why? Once that's cleared up, then the next question will always be: "Yeah, but who's your team in the Premier League?"
The answer to that is: it will be Lincoln City, should they ever make it to the Premier League. That's not something likely to happen soon, but last season they were one playoff game away from England's second tier, The Championship. Veteran soccer writer Nige Tassell is not wrong to label it soccer's "toughest league" in the sub-title to his latest book, a month-by-month analysis of the 2020-21 season that took place mainly behind closed doors because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Where the Premier League is a morally dubious, cash-centric jamboree focussed on the same group of fast-spending fat cat clubs scrambling for the four lucrative Champions League spots, the Championship is a more intriguing playground that has one eye on the EPL's vast but filthy lucre, and another on the lower exit to League One -- the third tier of English soccer featuring teams like Shrewsbury Town, Burton Albion and Accrington Stanley, but also crawling with fallen former EPL teams like Portsmouth, Sunderland and Ipswich Town.
A less predictable league does not necessarily mean a level playing field, though. Queens Park Rangers coach Mark Warburton points out that sides coming down from the Premier League "have parachute payments that are multiples of our own squad budget. That's a fact. Is it a level playing field? No, it's not. But life's not a level playing field. You have to deal with it."
It might be worth offering a less stoical and more cogent criticism too. Teams still comfortable on EPL money often go straight back up at the first time of asking -- this was true last season, with Norwich being promoted as champions and Watford going up in second place. Only third-placed Brentford bucked the trend by returning to the top flight for the first time since 1947 (via the playoffs). On the downside, Sunderland's ongoing struggle to exit League One (ended in the playoffs last season by ... Lincoln City) is an example of how quickly catastrophic, headless financial planning can see you plummet from the top flight to relative obscurity.
If you can't call on parachute payments, what is the best financial strategy to succeed? That depends on if you're dead set on reaching the promised land of losing every week to Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United, or if you just want your club to be an important part of the community. Luton Town's chief executive Gary Sweet says his club believes in a model "where you shouldn't have to rely on the generosity or the egotistical nature of an owner to constantly plough money into the business. We operate on something called an optimum loss model. You spend as little money as possible on players to achieve your ambitions, because the more money you spend on players, the more you ultimately have to charge your supporters. We don't want to rip them off. The opposite in fact. We want to give them value. But that gives us an absolute finite limit on what we spend on our players. It's a really simple model."
Sweet points out that besides the soccer club, "there's nothing else in Luton that connects that broad church of people, of characters, of backgrounds, of religions, of race. We are the glue of all that." The club's new stadium is being built even closer to the center of town than the current Kenilworth Road, because "you glue the hub, not the edge of the spindles." Contrast that with nearby Reading FC, who announced operating losses of of £43.5 million in the 12 months to June 2020, giving them an overall deficit of £138 million. "The problem is wages," soccer finance expert Kieran Maguire tells Tassell. "The average wages Reading are paying is about eighteen grand a week. If you spread that across the squad, immediately we find that the club is paying more than twice the amount in wages that it is generating in income."
For all that spending, Reading finished seventh -- seven points shy of a playoff position, and just five places and eight points above the more frugal Luton. This is not, however, a book about soccer finance, even though economics are crucial to the league's outcome. Tassell travels up and down the country in the depressing time of lockdown, watching games in empty stadiums and talking to players, coaches, locked-out fans, administrators and to backroom staff in, say, the laundry room at Birmingham. Or to Dan Sparks, the groundsman at Ashton Gate, the home of Bristol City, who describes how tough it is watching games and seeing your carefully cultivated playing surface take the strain, "sighing at the continuing vogue for knee-sliding celebrations that gouge scars into the turf." When a player scuffs up the penalty spot after a spot-kick has been given and the ref isn't looking, Sparks laments how "he really did a job on it. We knew it wouldn't recover in a week or two. We'd have to put grass seed down and it would be a full four weeks before it was fully grassed again. We were pulling our hair out sat in the stand."
Tassell has a real knack for prompting his subjects to say something interesting about the game. Watford and former Manchester United goalkeeper Ben Foster talks about how, after the game's over, soccer "is the last thing I think about, ever. The moment I leave the football arena, whether that's training or a match, not one thought about football passes through my brain for the rest of the day. Whether we win, lose or draw, as soon as I'm on that coach [bus] -- maybe even as soon as I'm in the shower -- I know that game's done. There's no point in wasting any emotional energy on worrying about this or that."
Foster worries about young players who, "the second they get off the pitch and are back in the dressing room, they check their Twitter and Instagram feeds to see what people are saying about them. They'll never meet these people in their lives, but the words they say permeate these players." Millwall's forward Jed Wallace, meanwhile, is honest in describing how the season in mostly empty arenas "felt a little bit boring. As a footballer, you thrive off the atmosphere of the crowd, so even winning goals late in the game haven't felt the same this season." Wallace also notes that the quality of play was worse because of the packed, Covid-dictated schedule: "This season, everyone's got a long throw. Because everyone's so tired, teams have been concentrating on set plays. There isn't the energy required to open teams up."
Voices like that make this book a really engaging read from September through to May, and which should prompt the reader to take a closer and much more regular look further down the English league pyramid. Just below the over-hyped, self-styled "greatest league in the world" is one of the hardest, but also most variable and intriguing flight of 24 soccer teams -- hovering between the extremes of six-time European champions Liverpool FC, and what in English soccer are commonly referred to as 'the likes of Lincoln City.'
May 20, 2023
Another great book from Nige Tassell. This covers the season during Covid when either no fans or limited were allowed in the ground depending on where you were in the country, it all sounds so weird now.
May 4, 2024
Overall a decent review of an interesting but grim season of Championship football – the Covid-closed campaign of 2020-21.
The whole affair is dominated by the lack of fans. This is a quality that unfortunately makes the author's job a lot harder – all the narratives and the drama just feel a touch inappropriate, like gossip at a funeral. The fans' absence is painful and consistent throughout almost the whole year. Football without fans is a horrendous prospect; the book can't keep going on about it, but also can't ignore it. And it still feels too recent to relive (but when will it not?).
I'm not sure who the target audience is, either – maybe a niche of football fanatics who only really know the Premier League? Perhaps this was meant to sell in the States? Because anyone who needs all this spelt out for them probably isn't going to care enough to read this book. And while I myself had sufficient passion to get reading in the first place, I mostly knew it all already. Little new was revealed.
While the book is a well-arranged sequence of vignettes based on numerous interviews from an excellent cross-section of those working in and living through football, the reader's interest levels will vary. Its greatest value may be as an historical account, a chronicle of what was going on on the ground in this most surreal of football seasons. The book's time-capsule quality already makes it a fascinating read just three years later, illustrating the difficulty of connitting to saying anything about players and clubs outside the established top few. It is a testament to how quickly things change in the game, that so many key figures from this campaign have now moved on – some up, some down; some still there, but having been to hell (or heaven) and back in the interim.
The prose suffers from being a tad overwritten, its hackneyed expressions and careless metaphors making for quite a bumpy read, even for someone who lives and breathes this stuff. Sometimes it felt a bit too literal, and not romantic enough; more preoccupied with form than substance. Some very boring ancillary details is followed by a brilliant moment killed stone dead by a laboured description. The best moments often come from the quotes, and their arrangement, from some of the better interviews. Then you feel connected to real people, real life and real stories. But it was a tough ask to create an atmosphere in this season that didn't have any. I suppose I ultimately consider the subject matter unworthy of this veneration – because of its coincidence with the pandemic and its crowd restrictions. I would rather have read about any other season with all these people.
The whole affair is dominated by the lack of fans. This is a quality that unfortunately makes the author's job a lot harder – all the narratives and the drama just feel a touch inappropriate, like gossip at a funeral. The fans' absence is painful and consistent throughout almost the whole year. Football without fans is a horrendous prospect; the book can't keep going on about it, but also can't ignore it. And it still feels too recent to relive (but when will it not?).
I'm not sure who the target audience is, either – maybe a niche of football fanatics who only really know the Premier League? Perhaps this was meant to sell in the States? Because anyone who needs all this spelt out for them probably isn't going to care enough to read this book. And while I myself had sufficient passion to get reading in the first place, I mostly knew it all already. Little new was revealed.
While the book is a well-arranged sequence of vignettes based on numerous interviews from an excellent cross-section of those working in and living through football, the reader's interest levels will vary. Its greatest value may be as an historical account, a chronicle of what was going on on the ground in this most surreal of football seasons. The book's time-capsule quality already makes it a fascinating read just three years later, illustrating the difficulty of connitting to saying anything about players and clubs outside the established top few. It is a testament to how quickly things change in the game, that so many key figures from this campaign have now moved on – some up, some down; some still there, but having been to hell (or heaven) and back in the interim.
The prose suffers from being a tad overwritten, its hackneyed expressions and careless metaphors making for quite a bumpy read, even for someone who lives and breathes this stuff. Sometimes it felt a bit too literal, and not romantic enough; more preoccupied with form than substance. Some very boring ancillary details is followed by a brilliant moment killed stone dead by a laboured description. The best moments often come from the quotes, and their arrangement, from some of the better interviews. Then you feel connected to real people, real life and real stories. But it was a tough ask to create an atmosphere in this season that didn't have any. I suppose I ultimately consider the subject matter unworthy of this veneration – because of its coincidence with the pandemic and its crowd restrictions. I would rather have read about any other season with all these people.
May 9, 2023
Would probably give this 3.5/5 but you can't do half stars. It was an enjoyable read and very much reminded me of Michael Calvin's books with how it is written. It was good to see the differenet perspectives of people in a club, managers, coaches, directors, groundsmen and fans. However, whilst not a fault of the author, the book is hamstrung by it being the COVID season so a lot of focus is on the lack of fans in stadiums which is fine reading about for part of the book but it feels like it is the main theme of the book rather than what an exciting league the Championship is to follow, and reading about the fans not being in stadiums isn't all that interesting after a while. I was also thinking that the author was going to be visiting every club in the league, whereas it ended up just being Bournemouth, Derby, Middlesbrough, Brentford and Wycombe.
June 10, 2024
An entertaining and informative journey through the Football League Championship season of 2020/21, the season with no fans at matches, or very few. Most clubs are covered, seasoned Championship players and reporters interviewed, manager changes analysed. Perhaps not quite enough on Queens Park Rangers for my liking, but on the other hand there was plenty on Wycombe Wanderers. You can't have it all. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would love Nige to cover every season like this. A top quality book on the English Football League. Highly recommended for Championship football watchers like myself.
April 30, 2023
A great overarching idea destroyed by two elements – Covid-19 and a schematic writing. The first one destroys a large part of the idea to describe the league's unique atmosphere. The second one makes for a repetitive read in the middle part of the books where every mini-story follows the same narrative and is supported by sub-par figures of speech.
January 20, 2022
Comprehensive chronicle of a crazy 2020/21 season. Useful insights from Neil Warnock, Mick McCarthy and Ben Foster, along with a big supporting cast. Successfully sells the intrigue and excitement of the second tier.
October 7, 2021
A book about a special season in championship during the pandemic. I liked it.
August 28, 2022
Fascinating and in-depth account.
July 26, 2025
Fresh angle of writing. Enjoyed the insights and access. Would recommend. Despite the clear difficulties of playing in the championship the romance remains alive.
December 20, 2022
I love most football books, but this was one i especially liked as it is recent history. Even though my team is in the premiership (Villa), i remember the struggles we had to get out of the championship, with the playoffs etc. It is, in my opinion, the True league, not spoilt buy big money teams.
Well researched and recommended reading.
Well researched and recommended reading.
June 4, 2023
Not bad . Bit boring
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews