Hello, and welcome to Unexpected Deilirium, a collection of writing on the history, culture, governance, finance and often rank incompetence of football.

Why should I subscribe?

Good question. So here’s my answer, and it’s as honest as it can be.

My name is Ian. I live in Worthing in West Sussex. I am a single father of two with children aged 7 and 9 (I have them five days a week, and they spend their weekends with their mother).

Because of this, I feel that my best outcome in terms of being able to manage work with my parental responsibilities is to freelance and to write this Substack. So this is one of my main money-makers. Self-employment gives me the critical flexibility to live my life at my own admittedly unusual tempo.

I wrote Twohundredpercent for years. It won awards. I was with F365 for almost two years, and I was not released because of the quality of my output. I can also be found—occasionally, but I’m hoping more regularly—in the pages of the venerable When Saturday Comes, as well as the most excellent Fotmob. So here I am, doing everything I can to ensure that, through a combination of this and freelance work from home, I can scratch enough of a living to get by. They deserve the security I want to be able to offer them.

So that’s why I need you to subscribe, and it’s why I’ll be so hugely grateful if you do so.

Ideally, I’d like to get back doing more of the investigative work that I was doing on Twohundredpercent a few years ago, but it’s time-intensive and the amount of time I have free for it will be dependent upon how many people are subscribed here. If there does turn out to be enough to support me and the kids, then that’s what I can do. It would get fresh content more than once every day. It could become what Twohundredpercent would have been had it ever been a full-time site.

We’re producing one podcast a week, at the moment. Podcasts take a lot of time and effort to edit and put into place, but we do feel that they’re worth it and again, if it’s anything like successsful, we may have space for others, too. If you may be interested in SPONSORING this podcast, then do please get in touch.

I also understand that times are hard, and that some of you may not be able to afford to pay for a full subscription. I’m looking into ‘pay what you can’ options now, but if you can’t pay anything at all then do drop me a line by email or—ideally, since I will check that more often—Bluesky DM, I can gift you a free one. I understand that being ‘financially embarrassed’ is, well, embarrassing. You don’t have to explain yourself to me and I certainly don’t need proof of your situation. But I would ask that you’re honest with me. This is, after all, my job.

But I trust my audience over that. Just for the record, I need you to subscribe for free to do this, because I have to have a subscription to upgrade. I assure you that this isn’t some sort of weird data-gathering exercise programme. And many thanks to the person who (inadvertently) gave me the idea to do this. You may not even see it, but if you do happen to be reading this and thinking it could be you, it probably is.

At present, the whole site is open, but due to a lack of paying subscribers I am going to have to start paywalling it again from the start of January. Not the whole of it, but part of it. More on that to follow throughout December.

How do I subscribe?

There are buttons all over the place on here which should direct you to where you can subscribe and set up a paid subscription. There’s even one at the bottom of this. Payments go through Stripe, which so far as I’m aware—and such is my nature that reader, I Googled them—is a perfectly reputable payment platform. Subscriptions cost £5 a month or £50 a year, or you can send me whatever donations you wish. There are always ways. I also have a Ko-Fi, for those of you who enjoy tipping. As mentioned above, sponsorship of the podcast is available. If you’re interested in that, please do drop me a line.

I would like to contact you; how can I do this?

The best way to get in touch with me is via Bluesky Direct Message. My Bluesky account is right here. Instagram messaging also works, too.

But not everybody reading this will have access to Twitter, so I have a work-only email address now, and you’ll be able to get me there, too: iankingfootballwriting@gmail.com.