This is Pat Nevin’s second memoir, a follow up to his first successful memoir ‘The Accidental Footballer’. It covers the period with his less glamorous clubs – Tranmere Rovers, Kilmarnock and Motherwell and reflects on a time of what he calls, ‘extreme madness, higher levels of fun and deeper levels of pain…’

Few others have seen football from as many angles as Nevin. He was a top player, international, PFA chairman, a chief executive, served on boards, a columnist and TV and radio pundit.

Nevin’s memoir is unlike many footballers’ memoirs which concentrate on the high life, the successes, and dramas of being a professional footballer. He is far more insightful about the football industry and has much more to say than the average player.

He is not afraid to discuss the difficult times such as, the death from cancer of his mother, the premature death of his friend Tommy Coyne’s wife, and his own son’s autism.

Nevin enjoyed an eventful but enjoyable time at Tranmere under the stewardship of idiosyncratic manager Johnny King. Tranmere played attractive attacking football and went close to promotion to the Premier League on several occasions, but they couldn’t quite make the step-up to round off his time at Prenton Park.

When Nevin returns to Scotland he joins Kilmarnock under manager Bobby Williamson. Everything goes well until he suffers a compressed fracture of the cheek bone in training. Kilmarnock achieve a fourth-place finish in the SPL and qualify for Europe, but the Directors of the club don’t honour their commitment to give the players bonuses and Nevin is rightly upset.

He is offered the opportunity to take over as CEO at Motherwell while continuing playing. It is the first such role in British football at the time. It is inevitably very demanding, especially as he has a long commute from his family.

Despite owner John Boyle’s initial enthusiasm, financial problems begin to mount, and the club is soon £4.4m in debt. The off-the-field problems, player conflicts, and media attacks are recounted as well as Nevin’s earnestness and remarkable honesty.

For example, during a game against St Johnstone Nevin trips over his own foot in the box and the referee awards a penalty. But Nevin tells the referee it wasn’t a penalty, and it isn’t awarded much to the shock of the players around him.

Motherwell finish fourth in the SPL as they beat Rangers 2-0 in Nevin’s last ever game, but he is asked to break up the team in the close season to alleviate the financial problems. He also has the difficult task of sacking manager Billy Davies when inevitably the following season’s results aren’t good enough.

The ownership has broken all their promises to Nevin, and they put the club into administration despite all his best efforts to find another solution.

He leaves with his head held high with his love of the game still intact and quotes American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who famously said, ‘God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.’

Nevin has managed to provide a deep insight into the workings of professional football in Britain. It is a remarkable story and thoroughly recommended if you want to know how football really operates.

Football And How to Survive It by Pat Nevin. Published by Monoray. Price £15.30.

This review first appeared in the September/October 2023 edition of Late Tackle magazine.