I couldn’t bear to think about the proper future, so I just tried to make things better for the next twenty minutes or so, over and over again.

I have less time, less tolerance for bullshit, more interest in good taste, more confidence in my own judgement. The culture with which I surround myself is a reflection of my personality and the circumstances of my life, which is in part how it should be.

Sequels are very rarely a good idea, and in any case, the success of the book changed my relationship with the club in some ways.

I burst into tears and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.

You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then?

You wouldn't believe that so much could change just because a relationship ended.

I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience. I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control, and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically.