John Gorman’s story is very much about a football man, but it is also much more than just that. After a lifetime in the game John thought he had seen and done it all. He had played, coached and managed at the top and experienced the harsh realities of survival at the lower end of the scale. There was little in professional football that he had not had to cope with. But on a cold February day in 2006 as he gazed lovingly into the weary eyes of his dying wife, Myra, he knew trying to maintain his ability to think clearly as a manager would be impossible.

Football had always meant so much to him, but love for his wife meant so much more. When her death occurred just a few days later it was the start of one of the bleakest periods in Gorman’s life, losing one job and walking away from another, as he struggled to cope and come to terms with existing without the woman he had loved since their teenage years. Gory Tales starts with that traumatic time for Gorman, expressing all the raw emotion felt by John. Having played alongside, coached or managed some of the biggest names British football has thrown up during the past 40 years, John is able to offer a true insider’s view on the game he has loved since he was a kid. Jock Stein, Kenny Dalglish, Rodney Marsh, George Best, Gazza, David Beckham and Michael Owen are all names who have featured in his career, and Gorman’s enduring friendship with Glenn Hoddle, which began back in the 1970’s when the two men were players at Tottenham, allows John ‘Gory’ Gorman to give a unique insight into the private man behind the public headlines.

John reveals the kind of pressures and expectations that come with helping to manage a big club like Spurs, and is able to give a behind-the-scenes insight into the contrast of life at a big name outfit like Tottenham, compared to jobs as manager of Wycombe, Northampton and previous experiences with Swindon Town.