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 largely outweighed his ability on the field. In Taylor, Clough found a champion, who canvassed for him to play and helped nurture a talent that was eventually realized on the field.

But much more famously, Clough and Taylor became the most successful management duo in the history of English football, winning the Football League with lowly Derby and then with Nottingham Forest, where they also managed to win the European Cup twice.

But the magic of their footballing romance was equaled in intensity by the acrimony of their falling out. It is such a remarkable story that we take it up here for the second time, having just done Clough’s autobiography in our previous episode.

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 league, when he took over Fourth Division Hartlepools in 1965. It was a less than glamourous beginning to one of the most storied managing careers in English football.

Together with his righthand man, Clough brought lowly Derby County to the English Championship before going one better with their local rivals Nottingham Forest by not only winning the league but also the European Cup. And then retaining it.

It is a remarkable story about a remarkable man. With Al as Peter Taylor to Johnny's Brian Clough, tune in to find out what the Ademola Bookmen thought of it all.

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 was often getting himself in trouble albeit for more cheeky antics than anything else. Despite attaining a level of immortality in his native Liverpool, he only played 26 times for England. The second half of his career was sadly blighted by injury.

This book was written during a dark spell for Fowler, while he was playing for Man City, but it was released shortly after he rejoined Liverpool. Tune in to find out how Al and Johnny found this one. And please do press that like button.

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 went on to build the footballing cathedral of Barcelona, to borrow a line from his protégé and heir, Pep Guardiola.

A true great both on the pitch – the greatest European of the 20th century to some – as well as off the pitch, with a coaching philosophy that has gone on to conquer world football. But is the book any good? Tune in to find out.

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 morsel to one side for a moment, Noble played a million times for West Ham and never for England (or indeed for Ireland). Have a listen and see how Al and Johnny got on with Noble’s 18 year career at his home town club.

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 his 2011 book Savage! (complete with exclamation mark in the title) Robbie says that people should meet him before they judge him. If you are not particularly interested in meeting him but would like to judge him, join us for our latest episode and listen to us discuss the travails of 90s and 00s most recognizable Premier League ponytail.

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 Championship/Premier League team, the book covers Warnock’s likes (wingers, Scott Parker, his son William, the British Monarchy) and dislikes (Shaun Wright Philips, Graham Poll, the design of the Premier League trophy).

Tune in to find out more about what it is that makes football’s most dislikeable looking man tick and find out what Al and Johnny made of Warnock's offering to the literary canon.

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 even - on the life of a Premier League footballer.

Ultimately, the thing that most people interested in this book want to know is, is James Milner as boring as they say. Tune in for Episode 14 to find out.