Name: Riding the Rover Coaster
Author: Matt Jones
ISBN: 978-1527253179

Riding the Rover Coaster by Matt Jones – Book Review

Book Reviews
Riding the Rover Coaster by Matt Jones – Book Review

December 14, 2019/
Phil Woods/
Book Reviews /

The first thing I have to say about Riding the Rover Coaster, is that every owner of every football club from the big 6 downwards should have a copy on their desk. It is also the last thing I’ll be saying as a reminder. This is the story of the last decade of Tranmere Rovers, a football club that was being run into the ground, but ended the decade back where they started. This is the inside story of how not to run a football club then the complete opposite, how you should run a football club.

First a little background for those who don’t know what happened to Tranmere. They were a League One (3rd tier) team at the start of the decade, in fact, they were one of the top sides in the division, just missing out on the playoffs by a single point. Instead of using that as a launchpad to success, this signalled the start of the decline, the club promoted their physio to the manager’s role, following a short unsuccessful period with ex England hero John Barnes being in charge. Escaping relegation was now the aim of the club. Without giving too much away, Riding the Rover Coaster charts the clubs decline out of the football league, two relegations meant that fans were watching Tranmere play Guiseley and Solihull Moors instead of Portsmouth and Coventry. At one point they sat in 17th place in the National League, just above the relegation places to go down to the National League North, where Kings Lynn and Spennymoor ply their trade (no offence to those clubs, just a description of how close Tranmere came to disaster. Then things turned around, 3 visits to Wembley later and Tranmere rose back to League One and are now facing the likes of Sunderland and Ipswich.

This book isn’t just the story of what happened though, this is the inside story, interviews with ex-managers, players, club owners and supporters organisations. All of them baring everything, explaining what was going on at the club during its downfall. This book has nearly 400 pages describing how it felt as the club hit rock bottom, then you can almost feel the passion of their rise back up the leagues.

In a season where we’ve lost a league club (Bury) due to dodgy ownership, several other clubs teetering on the edge and clubs in the championship losing money hand over fist, this is a book that everyone involved in a football club should read, learn from the mistakes Tranmere made, then learn from arguably the most competent owners of a football club, Mark and Nicola Palios, how to turn a failing club into a self-sufficient and successful entity. Mark Palios used to be the chairman of the FA, he understands football and through this book you can see what they did and how they turned it around.

Onto the writer, Matt Jones, he’s a journalist by trade, but ‘Riding the Rover Coaster’ is his second book about Tranmere in recent times. This book is well researched, full of inside knowledge, managing to speak to the right people to find out what really happened. It’s a great read for every Tranmere fan, but also an important read for everyone who has anything to do with running a football club. In a time when fans are losing, or close to losing the clubs they love, clubs that have a century-old history, this book is arguably the most important football book in history. Never mind books about the success of Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal and the like, never mind all the autobiographies of former players and managers, this book could breathe life into some clubs who are in trouble, it could be the saviour of some clubs too.

Riding the Rover Coaster also contains some brilliant photos by Richard Ault, pictures that capture the emotions of everyone involved.

It’s a simple conclusion, it’s exactly what I said at the beginning, buy this book if you run a club, buy it if you’re a Tranmere fan (it’s a must-read), buy it if you love a feel-good story about football and buy it if you like football full stop. It doesn’t matter who you support, this is simply a brilliant book about football in the lower reaches of the English football pyramid. It’s unlikely to end up as a best seller due to the fact it’s about one football club, but it deserves to be, and writing this review for a national website might just be the start it needs.

I’m going to go all out with this book, it deserves five stars, so that’s what it’ll get, meaning for its subject matter it’s definitely perfect.