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Tom Palmer's Captain Fantastic is the sixth Football Academy book, a football story for 8 year olds about a captain trying to hold his team together when everything starts going wrong.
United's under-twelves were flying before Christmas. Now they've lost three players and the New Year opens with a six-nil thrashing at Tranmere. Ryan's the captain and he takes it all very personally.
His mum doesn't help (she's on the touchline arguing with the referee AGAIN). Then Craig, who isn't a dirty player normally, flies into a wild two-footed tackle and gets sent off.
Craig has been angry and silent for weeks and nobody knows why. Your reader finds out before the team does. Straight after the match he takes a bus and a train on his own to visit his dad in prison.
From there it's a story about a secret. A team-mate's dad, who works as a solicitor, spots Craig at the prison. Then Ryan finds out too. Should he tell Steve, the manager? Or keep out of it, like Craig wants?
The story hops between different people's heads. So you see how lonely Craig feels, while his team-mates just see him kicking off at training.
Ryan's side of it is super relatable. His mum comes to every game but she's SO embarrassing. When he finally tries to talk to her about it (over a cup of tea, while she's playing FIFA on his PlayStation) it goes about as badly as it could.
There's plenty of proper football too. The drills, the manager's marks out of ten for every player and a trip to watch the first team will go down well with football fans. Ryan even bumps into the brand-new United manager in the car park. He hands Ryan a whole envelope of tickets!
Craig's dad is in prison and the visit is described quite closely, with the scanners, the guards and a hug goodbye that's tighter than usual. His parents are divorced and his mum wouldn't come with him.
For a child with a parent who's away, or a family going through a hard time, that could feel very close to home. For a reader who likes a football story with real feelings going on off the pitch, it's a thoughtful one.
This one picks up partway through the season and a lot of what's happened before is only mentioned in passing. So if they're new to the series, start at the beginning with Boys United, where Jake turns up for his trial at the very same Academy.
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