Come On You… Reds?

There are, in all likelihood, three years until the next General Election in this country, but that doesn’t mean that the electioneering hasn’t started already. There was a time in this country, of course, when we football supporters were pariahs, deemed worthy of David Evans lamentable and deplorable membership scheme, and blamed for Hillsborough and [...]

State Of The Nations

Apropos nothing, I got involved in a debate today over the involvement of a British football team in the 2012 Olympic Games. It has dawned upon me over the course of the afternoon that this is a subject that I haven’t tackled on here before, so (stifle your yawns, boys and girls) here we go. [...]

Grandstand: An Obituary

So, farewell then, “Grandstand”. The BBC’s flagship sports programme closed for business after nearly forty-nine years on Saturday, so today we’re going to take a moment to say goodbye to it once and for all. The BBC had initially announced that the programme was to be scaled down and phased out by 2009, so the [...]

Another Saturday And Sweet FA

Well, the FA Cup Fourth Round kicks off in half an hour or so, with Luton Town playing Blackburn Rovers at Kenilworth Road. It’s probably too much to ask for Luton to repeat the entertainment that they gave us last year, when they raced into a two goal lead against Liverpool in the Third Round. [...]

The Chairman Of The Board

So after 17 years, Lennart Johansson has been ousted, and Michel Platini is the new President of UEFA. There are those that are concerned about this, primarily because he was endorsed by Sepp “Weak” Blatter. Now Blatter has many faults, but he has backed the winning horse here, in my humble opinion. Platini wants to [...]

History Repeating Itself

An update from the Surrey/London border tonight. It would appear that I called the AFC Wimbledon ineligible player saga incorrectly. Rather than the problem being the loan player (see the previous post on the matter for further details – it’s in the January archive somewhere), it would appear that the issue was Jermaine Darlington, who [...]

The Mad Old Lady

As some of you may recall, I spent much of the summer alternately chuckling and raging over Juventus’ demotion to Serie B and their subsequent lack of grace in throwing around various threats about what they would do to the Italian FA as soon as it became clear exactly how much it was going to [...]

Derby Days

A few weeks ago, I congratulated the Nationwide Conference for scheduling a round of local derby matches for Boxing Day. Never mind that I couldn’t go: it provided a big boost to crowds at a level of football where match day revenue means more or less everything.
Bearing this in mind, why on earth did [...]

Moving The Goalposts

So… goalposts. They’re an absolutely integral part of the game, but you don’t really hear that much about them, do you? Before every World Cup, there’ll be a debate about the balls that they’re using. How much lighter they are than before, what colour they are, how long it’ll be before they just give up [...]

Gamblers Anonymous

How typical it is that, on the weekend that the FA schedule the big four to be playing against each other, that the most interesting story of the weekend should come at The Madejski Stadium, during Reading’s 3-1 defeat of Sheffield United, where Neil Warnock and the Reading assistant manager Wally Downes were sent off [...]