Injury Time

A Telegraph Best Book of 2025. A News Statesman Book of the Year 2025. ‘David Goldblatt is possibly the best football historian there has ever been’. Dominic Sandbrook ‘David Goldblatt is the greatest British sportswriter of the 21st century … Injury Time is an absolute classic.’ James...

Edward is throwing a dinner party with Binny, his mistress. Aware that she has long been denied those small intimacies that his wife takes for granted – choosing a birthday present for his sister, for example, or sorting his socks – he wants to give her a chance to feel more involved in his life, to socialise with some of his friends (the discreet ones). Things are a little awkward to begin with, but everything seems to be going well. Then some uninvited and rather forceful guests arrive, and it doesn’t look like Edward is going to make it home on time…

As a player, Thom Callaghan was defined by the winning goal he scored in an FA Cup final. The goal wasn't the blessing he imagined it would be. His whole career was defined by that brief moment of glory. With his playing days over, Callaghan, still a local hero, is tempted back to his old club as caretaker manager. His task: to rescue it from relegation. He's got the job solely on the recommendation of his former boss and mentor Frank Mallory, now desperately ill and responsible for the team's precipitous decline.