AFTER a long career in finance, working for major, highly-regulated institutions, coming across many of the companies in the football industry has been something of a reality check. For three years, I have combined my successful financial writing career with my freelance football activities, which date back to the late 1980s. For most of my working life, I was involved in an environment that was disciplined, well-run, had reasonable levels of accountability and, effectively, you worked long hours and were well paid. As a writer, I could not have earned anything remotely close to my salary from a media company. My entry into the football industry has been an eye-opener in many ways, and it just doesn’t stop at the financial contrasts between finance…