Gone But Not Forgotten (Part 1)

Yes, indeed – yet another occasional series, this one celebrating the clubs that we have loved and lost. Nowadays, relegation from the Football League is far from the end. As Carlisle United and Doncaster Rovers have demonstrated, it can even be the jolt that a complacent lower division club needs to spring back into life. [...]

The End Of The Summer

To be absolutely honest, I ended up not watching too much of the Asian Cup. The bits and pieces that I did see, however, confirmed the following: that Australia aren’t half as good as they think they are are, that Japan and South Korea have both singularly failed to capitalise on their relative success [...]

More Baker & Kelly

The interminably long summer is nearly over. The Scottish League season starts next weekend, and the rest of Europe’s will awaken from their slumber over the next weeks or so. This evening, however, we’re taking another trip back in time to the 9th of April 1998 with Baker & Kelly. I’ll probably stick another one [...]

Ducking The Issue

St Albans City, it has to be said, don’t really have any local rivals any more. Traditionally, going back years and years, their rivals were Hendon and Enfield, but these clubs both had other, bigger fish to fry, and Boreham Wood, whilst close geographically, were not similar enough in size and stature to form any [...]

What’s In A Name?

What price would you put on the name of your club? I ask the question now because a bright spark at newly-promoted Conference club Farsley Celtic has decided that now is just the right time to consider changing the name of the 99 year-old Yorkshire club to “FC Leeds” or “Leeds Celtic”. “If we need [...]

Baker & Kelly – 4th April 2007

After last night’s marathon (and somewhat garbled) entry, I thought that I deserved an evening off tonight. So, in lieu of having very much to say (apart from how difficult it is to research the annual Football League re-election lottery properly when you only have a spare couple of hours in the evening), here’s some [...]

The Greatest Success Story Of The Last 20 Years?

What would you rank as the greatest footballing success story of the last twenty years? Inevitably, your minds are drawn towards the Premier League, the all-seater stadia and your Sky Saturday bonanza, but you’re mistaken. It took a lot of pain at Hillsborough and the pricing out of the game’s traditional working class support, but [...]

A Ray Of Light At The End Of The Pier?

You don’t expect to hear good news from the government these days, but the Home Office passed some on to my home town this morning when they gave planning permission for Brighton & Hove Albion to build a new stadium at Falmer. This saga has been dragging on for years, one hopes that it will [...]

A Hostile Take-Over?

I’ve been keeping something of an eye on the events at My Football Club for a little while. For those of you that weren’t already aware of what this is, it’s a grand experiment set up by Will Brooks which hopes to buy an English football club and run it with ordinary people running it [...]

Radio Times

I have to admit a small frisson of excitement at the news that Danny Baker and Danny Kelly are rumoured to be starting a football podcast at the start of next season. Their radio shows for Talk Radio and Virgin Radio in the late 1990s were genuinely brilliant, and it’ll be great to see them [...]