This book, chronicled from the perspective of a fanatical ten-year-old soccer fan, through disillusioned adolescence, to an adult "who should know better", examines the absurdities, idiosyncrasies and traumas of everyday life and football. While Chelsea were undoubtedly the football team at the heart of fashionable London in the late 1960s, it proved to be the quiet backstreets around Highbury and Finsbury Park which led a sombre schoolboy from Maidenhead into a 20-year obsession with football, and Arsenal FC in particular. Nick Hornby became hooked after seeing Arsenal beat Stoke City (1-0 from a penalty rebound) in 1968. 24 years later this book is an attempt to understand football as an obsession. Interweaving his personal and familial upheavals with the varied fortunes of Arsenal over two decades, Nick Hornby has produced a genuine insight into what it is like to be a fan.
Combining anecdote with a wider commentary on the state of the game, the book touches upon many issues; from pre-match entertainment to the availability of FA Cup tickets, hooliganism, the tragedies at Heysel and Hillsborough, non-league and school football, and Arsenal's reputation as the most boring team in the Football League.