Black Boots and Football Pinks

Critics Review

• A heartwarming, occasionally emotional and often very funny meander down Memory Lane… A book of considerable charm, worth the price of admission for the phrase “hair wax applied methodically and in a style that considered Charles Buchan’s Football Weekly a mirror” alone.

  The Observer

• A funny, affectionate and nostalgic celebration of quirks … It would be easy to get the tone wrong but Gray’s touch is exquisite. A book with so much warmth you could slip it into your pocket for games in winter.

  The Times

• The perfect stocking filler…a wonderful little book.

  Sunday Sport

• [Gray] effortlessly paints pictures that transport you to a place and time … both clever and endearing

  The Football Pink

• Often funny and absolutely authentic.

  The Herald, Sports Books of the Year

• Fifty taken-for-granted gems of Britain’s footballing past have been preserved for posterity…an unabashed love letter to the beautiful game. Back of the net.

  The Sunday Post, Books of the Year

• [Gray’s] poetic prose makes him the John Cheever of the penalty spot and the Joan Didion of the halfway line.

  Ian McMillan

• Wistful and affecting.

  Michael Calvin

• [Daniel Gray] is a very fine writer … funny, warm and, sheesh, this lad can turn a phrase in the way Juninho would Samba his way past a defender for his beloved Boro.

  Glasgow Herald

• An affectionate, tongue-not-quite-in-cheek lamentation for all that’s been lost from the game… Slight yet robust like a winger of the old school, this book jinks, charms and scores

  When Saturday Comes

• Brilliant writing.

  Jonathan Northcroft