Smart Money

Alex Duff uncovers the history of Brentford FC with the fastidious care that has come from his own time supporting the club * Financial Times *Like Moneyball (2003), Michael Lewis’s hit book about the use of statistics in baseball, Smart Money is both informative and entertaining * Economist *Smart Money, Alex Duff’s history of the club, ranges nimbly from the town’s sulphurous, Victorian peak, to bookmaker dens in Bangkok, to Sam Allardyce gulping down energy drinks in sweltering Florida * New Statesman *Engrossing … more than two decades after (Moneyball was published in 2003), Duff has finally brought football’s equivalent to the bookshelves * Off the Pitch *For a long time, Brentford have essentially understood football better than other clubs … Smart Money provides insight into how they did it * De Correspondent *

Alex Duff is a distinguished sports business reporter, having worked for Bloomberg News for fifteen years. His first book Football’s Secret Trade (Wiley & Sons, 2017) about the football transfer market was serialized in the New York Times and Guardian, and featured in the Daily Mail. His second book Le Fric: Family, Power and Money: The Business of the Tour de France (Constable, 2022) was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award and named as one of the ‘Best Summer Reads’ of 2022 by the Financial Times. It was praised in the Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement.