It is the search for insight that makes you buy the books the managers have read and in Stoner, written 50 years ago by the American novelist John Williams, there was a true encapsulation of Roy Hodgson, who is stepping down as Crystal Palace manager after the weekend aged 73.
It was in October 2013, after a 2-0 win over Poland had secured England’s qualification for the 2014 World Cup, that he revealed he’d read a few pages of the novel before turning out the light on the eve of that pivotal game.
It is the story of an unsensational academic who is patient, earnest, enduring and steadfast in equal measure, and who pursues and finds a cherished inner space as the world crowds in.