About TTT, and Why subscribe?
Why Subscribe, Who I Am, Etc
I (Paul Tomkins) have been writing about Liverpool FC for 25+ years, including well over a dozen books, and five years as the official LFC website columnist (2005 to 2010).
The Tomkins Times was created in 2009, complete with a pioneering paywall, since when we’ve maintained a steady stream of paying subscribers. The site moved fully to Substack in 2022. (The old site is here, frozen in amber.)
The site expanded over time with editors and writers, most of whom have been with the site for 14 years now, albeit some have left to take up impressive roles in football and other sports.
At the current count, the number of awards that both and I and the site have received, when all added together, stands at precisely zero.
Due to illness (M.E.) dating back to the 1990s, I had to give up my design career; and having been a semi-pro footballer in between years as a season ticket holder at Anfield, I haven’t kicked a ball since I was 28 (and then had to give up my season ticket circa 2002). A keen writer, I took up football writing as a hobby around 1999, which then became my vocation circa 2004 when writing my first book.
I’m mostly housebound, but do have better days when I get out and do things, including making it to up to a handful of games a season.
I try to mix my knowledge and experience of life and football across a holistic approach, albeit I’m no definitive expert in anything (that said, I’ve written books and academic papers on transfer spending, and I did a deep dive on refereeing data that was unique).
One of my earlier books, in 2006, was on data and stats from the 2005/06 season, so I was a pioneer in that area, before the data got so big (and specialists so smart) that I’m now a data user rather than a pioneer.
Someone asked ChatGPT-4 in 2023 about me, and while not a fan of generative AI in general, this is what it said:
For those still reading, I also sometimes write about how football affects my life, and how my life affects being a football fan.
More About Me and TTT
I’m not a journalist, and don’t seek contacts.
However, since 2009 I’ve been contacted by and/or invited to meet people at Liverpool FC at almost every level of the club (managers, owners, execs, sporting directors, etc.), that have given me insights (including emails exchanges over a number of years), even if I retain my independence and always tell people I’m not looking to do anyone’s PR (not that they ask).
I’m not in any ‘loop’ or ‘in the know’, but I’ve occasionally been party to insights that help me know how the club operates, from many perspectives.
(Also, I was put on a blacklist by the previous owners’ and their lackeys in 2010, as an ‘enemy of the club’, so I don’t just back owners – just as I’ve been very critical of managers I don’t think are good enough, and supportive of those I think are, during their difficult times.)
I’m from a football background (father and grandfather played to a good level), playing for the school U11s at the age of eight, albeit I was not big or strong enough at the age of 12/13 to deal with the brutes of the long-ball football of the 1980s.
At 19, after returning to playing, I was offered a trial at Leeds United after starring in the college/University league, just before I had a near-fatal asthma attack in December 1990, which is when my more serious health problems started to gradually emerge, and could never quite get fully fit without understanding why (until diagnosis in 1999).
As such, this site has provided a steady income since 2009 in the way that books, with their sporadic sales and minuscule royalties, do not. I’m very grateful for its existence and to subscribers, but people don’t pay me to agree with them 😜
Over the years, like-minded people have joined the TTT team and/or become subscribers (and some have gone on to have impressive jobs in football and sport**), but at this point I’m not really interested in building or expanding, but just continuing to exist at a manageable, bill-paying level, with my integrity still intact.
In the hysterical algorithm age, getting noticed normally means acting increasingly insane. I stopped using Twitter years ago at just under 100,000 followers, and deleted my account in the summer of 2024, as the whole premise seeds division and extreme (I see it as an ‘escalation engine’); YouTube seems almost as bad.
(** Head of analytics at a Big Six club; tactical analyst in a European league; role at Opta, and currently Principal Data Scientist at Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League; and some full-time journalists, multiple future book authors, and/or a few Substackers.)
Not running adverts in 15 years has allowed me to focus on content with what I see as integrity.
Again, I also don’t just agree with the ‘customer’. I’m not known for suffering fools gladly!
I don’t write to please my audience, nor to actively displease them. I just try to focus on things as I see them, and see my job as to calibrate expectations and assess with data, eye-test and common sense, based on decades of experience.
I struggled at school for various reasons (one of the less sinister ones being that I played football when I should have been doing homework), but discovered at age 25 that I had a Mensa-qualifying IQ (I didn’t join), and that made me realise that I have a good general analytical intelligence.
I’m also smart enough to know that the more I get to know, the more I know there is to know (Dunning-Kruger should be taught in schools.)
Sometimes I know for a fact that I’m right about something; sometimes I know it’s extremely difficult to be right about something, especially as none of us outside a club has a fraction of the information that those within a club work with, let alone the hives of intelligence therein.
No one has a divine right to just subscribe and post to this site; posting rights are initially given to everyone, but can, and do, get taken away if people don’t interact in the expected manner.
We’ve spent enough years hashing things out to have a general consensus, but within that, we can all debate the finer points. I don’t want to argue over extreme views, such as with the rabid #FSGOut crowd.
If anyone is unhappy about that I’m equally happy for them to conclude that this is not the site for them.
Otherwise, I welcome viewpoint diversity, as long as it’s fact-based and defendable, and I always enjoy learning new things and having my own mind changed, if the argument is persuasive.
Site rules are fairly simple: be respectful, use proper English (no text-speak, use punctuation, etc), and as we all like to swim there, don’t piss in the pool. Match threads are usually locked during games top stop things boiling over. Full site rules can be accessed here.
Other TTT Substacks
When moving from WordPress in 2022 (which we had to do as the subscription software was failing and beyond repair) there was going to be a fatal loss of income during the switchover, which seemed very catch-22.
So I created other Substacks (see below) to cover the shortfall, and for our two main editors, Chris Rowland and Daniel Rhodes, to also try and make their own income if I couldn’t guarantee payments at that early stage (when having to cancel all existing subscriptions via the old site and hope everyone signed up anew; it took over a year to get back close to the original level).
I’ve also written two novels, and created my own personal Substack, that I’ll look to make more use of in time.
As of the autumn of 2024 I’m in the process of moving house, to downsize and de-stair (a new word), and live closer to the coast where there’s fresher air to help with my health.
As ever, I’ve no idea how long I’ll keep doing this, but after passing 15 years, TTT remains more successful than I ever expected. By simplifying my life (and finances) I hope to keep TTT running until I’m no longer walking.
In the meantime, tell your friends!
Ps I had c.100,000 followers on Twitter (or whatever it’s called this week) at @paul_tomkins, but I deleted my account completely in the summer of 2024.
Various other links to my existence can be found here.
TTT Network
To further fund the site and its contributors, as well as this, the Main Hub, I devised different sub-Substacks, or spokes, to create the TTT Network.
Rather than raise the price, The Main Hub is £4.99 a month, and the additional spokes are priced more cheaply (the cheapest option Substack allowed at the time).
The link below explains what each different spoke offers. (It’s a smörgåsbord approach!)
There will be free newsletters and paid newsletters, with the aim to replicate TTT, as it was, as closely as possible on Substack, but with the many added benefits, and new features.
As well as getting emails of the articles, this Substack (TTT Main Hub) will have commenting, as close to the same format as is possible, and with the same rules as before (no dickheads, thanks). Thank to existing subscribers for your patience, and welcome to anyone new who is coming along for the ride!
(The old site still exists as an archive only.)
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