Search results for ""author simon hughes""

_________'WE ARE LIVERPOOL - THIS MEANS MORE.' JÜRGEN KLOPPAllez Allez Allez is the inside account of Liverpool FC during the Klopp era, including the 2018/19 campaign which saw the club compete in the most gripping Premier League title race in history and become Champions of Europe for the sixth time.Featuring access to management, players and staff, Allez Allez Allez explains how Liverpool have emerged from what Jürgen Klopp described as the “depression” of 2015 to achieve feats that have eluded an entire generation of supporters.Through original research and exclusive interviews, Simon Hughes takes readers into Melwood, the club’s training ground, and behind the dressing room door. He takes them to Chapel Street, where the club’s business is determined, and to America, where it is owned. He takes them into Anfield, where many of the most important moments are defined, and he takes them on to the pitches of the Premier League and the Champions League, as we revisit how Liverpool stormed their way to the top of the Premier League this season.

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Cricket defines Englishness like no other national pastime. From its earliest origins in the sixteenth century (or an early version played by shepherds called creag in the 1300s), through the formation of the MCC and the opening of Lord's cricket ground in 1787, to the spread of county cricket in the next century, when the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack was first published and the Ashes series was born, this simple sport of bat and ball has captured the imagination of the masses. Throughout its 500-year history, cricket has been a mirror for society as a whole, reflecting the changes that have brought us from the quintessential village green to Freddie Flintoff's pedalo, from W G Grace to Monty Panesar, via a fair number of eccentrics, heroes and downright villains.William Hill Award-winning writer Simon Hughes, no mean player himself, has lived and breathed cricket his whole life and now takes his analytical skills and typically irreverent eye to charting the history of English cricket. But this is no dry, dusty tome. It is the story of the mad characters who inhabit the game, the extraordinary lengths people will go to to watch and play it, the tale of a national obsession. It debunks the myth of cricket sportsmanship, showing the origins of sledging and match-fixing in centuries of subterfuge, corruption and violence. And it takes us beyond sport, to the heart of what it really means to be English.

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Between 1980 and 1993, Simon Hughes was a regular on the county circuit, playing for Middlesex until 1991 before moving on to Durham at the end of his career. In that time, he played alongside some of the great characters in cricket: Mike Brearley, Mike Gatting, Phil Edmonds and Ian Botham. This is not an autobiography of a good county pro, but a look at the ups and downs, the lifestyle, the practical jokes and sheer hard yakka that make such a poorly paid, insecure job appeal to so many. Now a respected journalist and broadcaster, Simon Hughes has written a brilliant, amusing and wrily self-depracating book, packed with hilarious and embarrassing anecdotes about some of the greatest cricketers of the last 20 years.

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During the 1980s, Liverpool Football Club dominated English football, winning six league titles, two European Cups, two FA Cups and four League Cups. In Red Machine, Simon Hughes interviews some of the most colourful characters to have played for the club during that period. The resulting interviews, set against the historical backdrop of both the club and the city, provide a vivid portrait of life at Liverpool during an era when the club’s unparalleled on-pitch success often went hand in hand with a boozy social scene fraught with rows, fights and wind-ups.The players featured here include John Barnes, Bruce Grobbelaar, Howard Gayle, Michael Robinson, John Wark, Kevin Sheedy, Nigel Spackman, Steve Staunton, David Hodgson and Craig Johnston, as well as first-team coach Ronnie Moran. Their candid, ribald and sometimes scathing recollections provide an antidote to the media-coached, on-message interviews given by today’s players and combine to offer a unique insight to this exciting time in the club’s history.

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Following the success of Simon Hughes’ Red Machine and Men in White Suits, books which depicted Liverpool FC’s domination during the 1980s and its subsequent fall in the 1990s, Ring of Fire focuses on the 2000s and the primary characters who propelled Liverpool to the forefront of European football once again. With a foreword by Steven Gerrard, this is the third edition in a bestselling series based on revealing interviews with former players, coaches and managers. For Liverpool FC, entry into the 21st century began with modernisation and trophies under manager Gérard Houllier and development was then underpinned by improbable Champions League glory under Rafael Benítez. Yet that is only half of the story. The decade ended with the club being on the verge of administration after the shambolic reign of American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett.In Ring of Fire, Hughes’ interviewees – including Jamie Carragher, Xabi Alonso and Michael Owen – take you through Melwood’s training ground gates and into the inner sanctum, the Liverpool dressing room. Each person delivers fascinating insights into the minds of the players, coaches and boardroom members as they talk frankly about exhilarating highs and excruciating lows, from winning cups in Cardiff and Istanbul to the political infighting that undermined a succession of managerial reigns.Ring of Fire tells the real stories: those never told before by the key players who lived through it all.

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Batsmen are the poster boys of cricket. They are the richly rewarded andrightly celebrated stars of the game: Sachin Tendulkar, Vivian Richards, Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting, A.B.de Villiers and Kevin Pietersen. This is a story about them. Their hopes and fears, their triumph and torment. It is a book about the real feelings that batsmen experience and probes into their minds to see how they deal with one of the most precarious jobs in sport, in which life and death are one ball apart. Simon Hughes hero-worshipped the famous batsmen of his youth, and dreamt of scoring a hundred for England. His flawed attempts to make runs in a 15-year professional career are the prism through which he reflects on how some talented boys turn into great batsmen, and others lose their way. Now universally known as The Analyst, Hughes assesses what ingredients a batsman needs to succeed. He delves into sports psychology, showing that what goes on in the mind is the key to batting. There is no right way or wrong way to bat. This book reflects the diverse range of batting personalities and styles. Hughes spends time with many of the legendary players - from Garfield Sobers to Kumar Sangakkara - revealing what made each of them so prolific, and the secrets behind Sir Donald Bradman's phenomenal output. He chronicles the way batting has evolved and answers the fundamental question: are batsmen born or made? Written in the same wry, sardonic style as the award-winning A Lot of Hard Yakka, it is the most insightful and entertaining book about batsmen ever published.

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In Men in White Suits, Simon Hughes meets some of the most colourful characters to have played for Liverpool Football Club during the 1990s. The resulting interviews, set against the historical backdrop of both the club and the city, deliver a rich portrait of life at Anfield during a decade when on-field frustrations were symptomatic of off-the-field mismanagement and ill-discipline. After the shock resignation of Dalglish and Graeme Souness's ill-fated reign, the Reds – under the stewardship of Roy Evans – displayed a breathtaking style led by a supremely talented young group of British players whose names featured as regularly on the front pages of the tabloids as they did on the back. The Daily Mail was the first newspaper to tag Evans’s team as the Spice Boys. Yet despite their flaws, this was a rare group of individuals: mavericks, playboys, goal-scorers and luckless defenders. Wearing off-white Armani suits, their confident personalities were exemplified in their pre-match walk around Wembley before the 1996 FA Cup final (a 1-0 defeat to Manchester United).In stark contrast to the media-coached, on-message interviews given by today’s top stars, the blunt, ribald and sometimes cutting recollections of the footballers featured in Men in White Suits provide a rare insight into this fascinating era in Liverpool’s long and illustrious history.

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By James Pearce, Oliver Kay, Simon Hughes and Other Award-Winning Writers of The Athletic As Liverpool ended their 30-year wait to be crowned champions of England, they were followed by their equivalent from the world of sports writing: a team of elite talents, assembled to leave all competition trailing in their wake. This is the story of Liverpool’s title win in the longest season, as told by the writers of The Athletic, with their blend of inside access and expert analysis; great ideas and beautiful writing. Articles include profiles of each of Liverpool’s title winners by their former youth team coaches; Oliver Kay watches Sadio Mane score against Manchester City in the company of the striker’s family, in his hometown in Senegal; James Pearce spends 90 minutes analysing Virgil van Dijk; plus there are exclusive interviews with Jurgen Klopp, and the club’s US owners. Read the stories behind a unique and historical season from a team of writers every bit as good as the footballers they were following.

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