Turncoat: How I Stopped Supporting Arsenal and Found a New Team

by Matt Coughlan

Turncoat is the light-hearted story of one disillusioned Arsenal fan’s quest to find a new team while rediscovering the simple joys of watching football. From sneaking out of bed to see Michael Thomas’s winner against Liverpool, to holding a season ticket for 16 years, Matt Coughlan was a dedicated Arsenal fan. Then came the move to a new ground, kick-off times always being shunted around and the goalposts being moved when billionaires injected vast sums into rival teams, so the height of ambition became finishing fourth. He became disillusioned with the modern game and drifted away from it, but he missed being part of the conversation in the pub and correcting friends on points of trivia. He started to watch non-league football and searched for a new team to follow. On his journey, Matt rediscovers a love for the sport, gets into club boardrooms, talks with officials, finds out about community-owned clubs, learns about some historic old clubs and watches a mixed bag of football. But does he find a new team to support?

320 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2023

Reviews

[Jonny Brick · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is useful that we get a four-year spread which begins in 2019 and goes right through 2023. But I wanted even more on Arsenal and less reportage of non-league cloggers, which often drifted into groundhopping. (There's an app called Futbology, and users of the app will love this book.) Hashtag United and Clapham Community come off very well, especially in the way they support women's teams, but by the tenth chapter of deep non-league football I wanted a tighter edit.