Tony Adams, Alex Ferguson and Kenny Dalglish are all here, and so is Howard Wilkinson, the chairman of the League Managers Association, who showed Cooper around the FA’s national football centre in Staffordshire, and introduced her to the England manager, Gareth Southgate. Seven long years after her last book – its subject was flat racing – this one, if the gossip is to be believed, was further held up by sensitivity readers and a publisher who wanted “more sex”. I loved the early books in which Rupert Campbell- Black figured, but this one is just too much of everything. However, the book was so jam packed with different personalities lurching from crisis to crisis, it lacked some of the warmth and depth of her previous work and made it hard to invest in the big storylines and relationships. And if you’re not into football – and I’m not – you’ll probably be skimming the match-action scenes.

I think the books accurately reflect the time they were written in, but they also put female pleasure front and centre of any romantic entanglement,” she says. I could almost imagine that possibly her ideas were in the book, but written by someone else to assist at some points. Jilly sweeps the reader up in the agony and the ecstasy of football, on and off the pitch, just as thrillingly as she has done in the equestrian world. But she does note that “many years later”, Southgate was kind enough to send her a signed England shirt, together with a note congratulating her on having finally finished writing her book.

As someone who grew up on Jilly Cooper books - Imogen, Octavia, Bella etc before the big sellers like Riders, I was so excited for this.

But as their new and indelibly competitive Chairman, he won’t stand for anything less than an Everest climb to the top of the Premier League.As Searston's new owner, he won't stand for anything less than victory in the Premier League, despite the odds being stacked against him. Jilly recaptures her magic with the old favourites, Rupert and Taggie, and bringing in lots of new characters who very quickly feel like family. If you don’t believe me, you can’t have been a teenager in thrall to the storytelling of Jilly Cooper CBE in the Eighties and Nineties. I’ve read every single book by this author, and often re-read them - they’re like a comfort blanket.