Book Review: Living the Dream

ONE THOUGHT his club was a BBQ restaurant. Another had never seen a match. There are messiahs and men on the run, philanthropists and fraudsters, a gun-runner, fake sheikhs and others who don't exist. Some even like football.
The adventures of British football's foreign legion of owners are as diverse as their backgrounds. Even the successes are scarcely credible: an oligarch and a sheikh rescued their clubs from the abyss, turning them into grateful global enterprises.
In his fascinating new book, Living the Dream … or Enduring the Nightmare? theSun columnist Bob Holmes takes us to oblivion and back – and lives to tell the tale.
Once faceless men in suits who just wrote the cheques, football's new breed of mega-rich owners can be more interesting than the players – and in some cases, need as much watching.
Not all end in tears. Roman Abramovich took 10 minutes to decide he wanted to buy a club and £2 billion later, Chelsea is transformed.
Ditto Man City. Where Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai monks, porcelain elephants, and Sven-Goran Erikson didn't work, Sheikh Mansour's oil riches and Garry Cook's enthusiasm did.
There's even a Malaysian connection through Shebby Singh's misadventures at Blackburn, and QPR's rollercoaster ride under Tony Fernandes.
Living the Dream ... or Enduring the Nightmare? is a must read for all football fans. Because it is divided into sections on each club, it is easy to dip in and out of and will give readers a new insight into the euphoria and mayhem of foreign ownership of EPL clubs.