The Dynamo Football Bookclub

It’s the 5th episode of Ademola Bookmen Injury Time and this week we are choosing 5-a-side teams of the best players never to win the Premier League. To keep the golf theme of the week going, it's the Colin Montgomerie Derby.    With Johnny having won the previous three encounters of these 5-a-sides (as well as the Forest-United one), Al’s pride is really what is at stake most in this particular e...

In continuation of God month on the Ademola Bookmen Podcast, we travel to the south coast to check on in folk legend Matt Le Tissier and his autobiography Taking Le Tiss The famous one-club Le Tissier scored some cracking goals in his 16 years with Southampton. This book was written in 2009 so before Matt went off the deep end a bit with conspiracy theories and the likes.  Please do check it out a...

Let’s see what our cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence machine has to say – can a team of legendary Forest players beat the mighty United?   Ahead of the Nottingham v. Manchester United game tomorrow night, Al and Johnny are picking draft 5-a-side teams for either club. It’s Al’s all-time Forest team versus Johhny’s all-time United.   This one is personal. We bought it out a day early, such is ou...

In Episode 34, we review Philippe Auclair’s book about arguably the greatest of all Premier League players and certainly the coolest – Eric Cantona.   French football’s enfant terrible washed up on the shores of British football seeking refuge from the tyranny of the French FA’s capricious officials. Driven from his home country due to his uncontrollable temper, Cantona left behind Marseilles, Aux...

In our third instalment of Ademola Bookmen Injury Time, we are doing a 5-a-side draft of red hair footballers. Yes folks, its Ginger Spice, the Red Hair Draft. Tune in to find out if Al can save some blushes and finally get a win.

In Episode 33, we review In Search of Duncan Ferguson – The Life and Crimes of a Footballing Enigma by Alan Patullo.   The highest scoring Scot in the Premier League, Ferguson is a folk hero on the blue half of Merseyside. As well as Everton, Ferguson had stints of varying degrees of success and failure with Dundee United, Rangers, and Newcastle United. But he is perhaps best known for his brushes...

Join us for our second installment of Injury Time, a prison 5-a-side draft. The quality of players who have been to prison is really quite something, rich pickings indeed. Please do tune in to find out if Al can salvage some pride after his devastating loss in the previous draft.  Music by Darragh Fenlon. 

In Episode 32, we take a history lesson with David Bolchover’s book about Béla Guttman, The Greatest Comeback – From Genocide to Football Glory. This is a remarkable and very tragic story, one that is as much about the treatment of Jews in Europe as about Guttman himself. Béla Guttman played football for mostly Jewish teams in his native Hungary and then in Austria and the US. But it’s as a coach...

Welcome to our first bonus episode - it's the Ademola Bookmen Podcast Injury Time [insert whistle sound here].   Today, Al and John are competing against each other to pick the best 5-a-side team of historic Irish Premier League players. Much less an idle barstool conversation, this discussion has an outcome. Yes, courtesy of cutting edge Artificial Intelligence technology, we can tell you whose t...

In Episode 31, we tackle the autobiography of famous Ruud Van Nistelrooy botherer Martin Keown. A member of The Invincibles, a double-double winner, and the owner of the most elbowed face in Premier League history, Keown played more than 300 times for Arsenal and 43 times for England.   In his 2024 book, Keown takes us through a career which brought him to Arsenal, Brighton, Villa, Everton, Arsena...

Was Sócrates the coolest footballer ever?   Not only did he complete a medical degree while playing as a professional footballer, captain the Brazil national team, and found Corinthians Democracy, a movement which is credited with inspiring the people of Brazil to overthrow a military dictatorship, he did it all while looking like a stone cold cool motherfucker.   In Episode 30 of the Ademola Book...

In Episode 27, we take a stroll down memory lane with Ireland’s arch controversialist Eamon Dunphy. Before he became a fixture on Irish television attacking the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Rod Liddle, Dunphy was once a footballer.   He is remembered more for his work as a journalist and television malcontent than for his performances for Ireland, Millwall, Reading and Charlton. But it was his 1...

Hungary’s ‘Galloping Major’, Ferenc Puskás was a three time European Cup winner and the winner of ten domestic titles, split evenly with five in his home country and five in Spain.   His 1956 autobiography, Captain of Hungary, was written after he led Hungary to the 1954 World Cup final but before his exploits in Spain playing with Real Madrid and a management career that saw him lead teams in ten...

Grab your rollies, your loganberry IPA, and your panini sticker book folks, it's Episode 25 of the Ademola Bookmen Podcast, the hipster's choice, Andrea Pirlo.   Tune in to hear Al compare the Italian great's lips to those of James Milner and to find out whether Al and Johnny were cool enough to understand the Italian's cerebral game. Pirlo's 2015 book, I Think Therefore I Play, is another that is...

In Episode 24, we discuss A Beautiful Game by Sven-Göran Eriksson. The book was published on 17 October, less than two months after Sven died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 75.     Born in Sweden in 1948, Eriksson lived a remarkable life that saw him working in ten countries in jobs that included national team manager roles on four different continents. Most famous for his five year stint as...

In Episode 23, we discuss Full Time – the secret life of Tony Cascarino as told to Paul Kimmage. Despite having earned 88 caps for them, scoring 19 goals, the book is famed for the revelation that Cascarino did not in fact qualify to play for Ireland. Although was that really the case or were they just try to grab headlines and move copies of the book?   Twenty-four years after its publication, wi...

In Episode 22, we review the biography of Manuel Francisco dos Santos - Garrincha to you and I. In a Dylan goes electric moment for the Bookmen, this is our first biography, as opposed to autobiography. And it's a good one.    Garrincha - which means Little Bird - is remembered by Brazil of being even better than Pele. The grandchild of slaves, born with a curved spine, he led Brazil to their firs...

In Episode 21, Al and Johnny review With Clough by Peter Taylor, the book that is believed to have created the rift between the two men that ultimately led to them parting ways and not talking for seven years before Taylor's death in 1990.   The pair had played together at Middlesborough. When they met, Taylor was a jobbing sub keeper and Clough was being overlooked by a team that found his ego la...

After a couple of technical glitches, it's Episode 20 of the Ademola Bookmen Podcast. And to mark this (kind of) milestone in our podcasting journey, we have indulged Al by delving into the mind of Brian Clough, Nottingham’s most famous man not in tights.   After being forced to retire following a stellar career as a second division striker, Clough became the youngest manager in the football leagu...

In Episode 19, the Ademola Bookmen Podcast takes an ecclesiastical turn with our review of God’s book – Robbie Fowler’s, My Autobiography.   Kop legend and the eighth highest scorer in the Premier League, Fowler notched a total of 183 goals for his boyhood club Liverpool who he left in reasonably acrimonious circumstances in 2001 only to return again in 2006. While he wasn’t scoring goals, Fowler...

It’s Episode 18 and its Johan Cruyff’s My Turn for the Ademola Bookmen Podcast. Join us as we take a trip through the life of arguably the best influential person in the history of football. Cruyff won the European Cup three times with Ajax, the team whose stadium he grew up across the road from. He also invented the modern game of football with the Total Football of the Netherlands in 1974 and we...

It’s Episode 17 and we are reading Boyeln Boy by Mr. West Ham himself, Mark Noble. Having been released in November 2022, this is by far the most recent book we have reviewed. Noble famously played for only one club (if you don’t count the time he spent at Arsenal, Hull, and Ipswich) but this book is perhaps most memorable for the revelation that he’s really a Man United fan.   Putting that juicy...

Episode 16 focuses on the life and times of that most overlooked of the Class of 92, Robbie Savage. Less famous for his time as an underweight and underscoring striker in the Man United Youth Team than he is for his displays as an all tackling, all bullshiting midfielder for Leicester, Birmingham and Blackburn and others, Robbie is by his own admission something of a marmite character. Throughout...

With a career in English football going all the way back to 1967, Neil Warnock has traveled to every corner of the country. In his 2013 book, The Gaffer – The Trials and Tribulations of a Football Manager, Warnock outlines his view of the football world. It’s an old fashion view, in many respects, but a romantic one too.   Less an autobiography than an insight into the day-to-day running of a Cham...

James Milner's first appearance in the Premier League was as a substitute for Manchester United's new technical director, Jason Wilcox. He is that bloody old. 634 Premier League appearances later, he may soon takeover Gareth Barry as the player with the most appearances of all.  In 2019, he wrote Ask a Footballer, which is not so much an autobiography as it is a collection of thoughts - musings ev...