On Days Like These: The Lost Memoir of a Goalkeeper

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The effect on his son due to his untimely death and the honesty the author gets from the family, although sad is important for the reader to understand.

Joe (seated right) is pictured as a young lad with his father Les Sealey and his mother and brother. I was telling myself it was making me feel better but it was pushing things deeper and deeper down, making me do more regretful stuff and slowly killing me.Joe hopes to publish his dad’s memoirs later this year, after old family friend Les Clitheroe gave him a typed manuscript that Les had written, charting his footballing career from early days at Coventry and Luton and on to Man United. The personal book belonging to Les Sealey was discovered in a loft and has been left untouched for 20 years. On Days Like These is his third book and follows his acclaimed biography of Marcelo Bielsa, The Quality of Madness , which was shortlisted for The Daily Telegraph Football Book of the Year. He was by far and away my favourite at a young age – though, credit to Andy Dibble, he probably found himself as my second favourite after that penalty save at Wembley which won us the Littlewoods Cup. When you’re in football everything is done for you, I didn’t understand that’s not available in the real world.

Unlike most football biographies, this is tale of true emotion, if you are a United fan it brings to life one of the most important eras of the club. Dad being dad, and I don't know how he managed to do it, he ended up playing again less than four weeks later in the European Cup Winners’ Cup final against Barcelona. In the 90/91 season, Sealey was Man United’s first-choice keeper and as mentioned, played in the League Cup Final and then was part of the team that beat Barcelona 2-1 in the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final. Working on the book had been an eye-opening experience, teaching Sealey new things about his father, his enduring influence on others, and his relationship with West Ham. In them, Sealey frankly discusses his career, most notably his time working under Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford where he reveals much of what went on in the changing room.One of Sealey's pupils at West Ham was Stephen Bywater who wore the number 43 on his shirt as a tribute to his former coach. He went home for a ham sandwich and a cigar, then to a pub quiz because he had promised to be there. I can't think of another book like this one that does this with both the game of football and its relationship to fathers and sons.

On one side of it, Paul is being held back by four of his team-mates screaming: “If that’s what you think, why don’t you sell me, you c---? That story is intertwined with Joe’s own, of his thwarted career, his eventful life, loss and recovery; the saving of a keeper. Thirteen years after Sealey died at 43, his son Joe was handed a box of cassettes his dad had recorded. But he told me there will be no shortcuts and if you want to do it, you have to do it the hard way, so from the age of 12 I was training as hard as I could, as often as I could.

Joe and Nicole, who runs her own recruitment business, are parents to two daughters and son Remi, who is now a promising footballer himself currently playing for Huddersfield Town, having previously played for Manchester United’s youth team. The main part of the process was that she touched his knee, said it was too high and that the swelling would be gone in three days. In December 1989, Alex Ferguson needed an experienced backup to his out-of-form number one, Jim Leighton.

I don't think you'll ever see that again, with that type of injury, anyone doing anything like that. Sitting in the Wembley bath afterward, he spoke to Ferguson, who agreed to let him go straight home to Essex rather than travel back to Manchester. In the summer of 2001, aged 18, in the space of two weeks Joe lost first his career to injury, and then his father, at the age of just 43, to a freak cardiac condition.

Harford recounted one episode when Luton were hammering Newcastle 4-0 on Kenilworth Road’s plastic pitch. He played as a goalkeeper, most notably in the top flight for Coventry City, Luton Town, Manchester United, Aston Villa, and West Ham United. He conceded a penalty, cleaning out Steve Hodge and Nigel Clough scored – Forest went on to win 3-1. On last night's The Real Housewives of Cheshire, Joe revealed his late father's autobiography had been found and would be on sale in 2021. From those, the author Tim Rich recreated Les’s voice and wrote one of the football books of this year or any other – On Days Like These: The Lost Memoir of a Goalkeeper.