Any Old Iron

On Sunday, Teddy Sheringham, aged 40 years and 210 days, scored the goals that might just keep Alan Pardew in his job. There’s no question in my mind that any decision to release Pardew on the basis of West Ham’s recent form would have been foolish in the extreme (and West Ham are by no [...]

Knights Of The Wrong Table

Sportsfreak examines the extraordinary performances of the NZ Knights; arguably the world’s worst professional football club.
There was much excitement a week ago when the NZ Knights team scored not once, but twice in their “A”-League match against Adelaide FC. This trebled their goal tally for the season in the ninth match as they broke [...]

The Weekend Ends Here

I’m more or less 90% convinced that St Albans City are cursed in the FA Cup. As I said on Friday, we were wipe for a hearty booting up in the air at Yeading yesterday, but no-one would have expected the way that they managed to cock it up. Just six minutes had been played [...]

David vs David’s Older Brother

The FA Cup reaches the fourth qualifying round stage tomorrow. I should probably not get excited about this. These days, we’re told that the league is the be-all-and-end-all. The cup matches provide “relief from the grind of the league programme”. The FA Cup is a mere trinket, at best to be regarded as a potential [...]

Fortune’s Always Hiding

Roy Of The Rovers’ cohorts will have to wait, I’m afraid. Far more interesting stuff is emanating from the Boleyn Ground, where West Ham’s season has gone from rumours of something like a fairy-tale future to complete, unmitigated disaster in the space of less than two months. And that’s without even taking into account the [...]

Theatre Of Dreams

I was idly thinking about the arrival of Dennis Wise at Leeds United this morning. I’ve covered Leeds’ woes on here before and, I have to confess, chuckled quietly to myself at every stuffing they’ve taken this season, and it’s a sign of how far they’ve come that their newest manager has arrived at Elland [...]

Come On You Rovers!

Melchester Rovers. Is there any more evocative name in the history of English football? Well, yes. To be exact about it, there are dozens – but I’d bet a pound to a penny that you wouldn’t be able to think of a more evocative non-existent football club name. Melchester Rovers were the team featured in [...]

The Consumer Society

Loathe as I am to wish to be seen to flogging the proverbial dead horse, events at Hillsborough on Saturday, where a crowd of 300 people demonstrated against the sacking of manager Paul Sturrock, felt almost like a nostalgia trip. You don’t see this sort of thing any more. Particularly when you take into account [...]

Split Ends

Quite asides the myriad of other objections that I hold towards it, one of the more dispiriting things about midweek European football is the way that it buggers up the weekends after it. In the Premiership, there were no matches of any major significance. Chelsea, thanks to a judicious amount of profligacy in front of [...]

Nil Satis Nisi Optimum

This is a clearing up exercise, really – all the things that I have been pondering over the last few days. I haven’t spent this week only thinking about old football computer games, I promise. Firstly, I have noted with interest a couple of mentions elsewhere to Reading and Wigan Athletic not being “proper football [...]