Red All About It

The possibility is starting to dawn on me that I might be cursed. I don’t mean this in the sense of someone being in ownership of a voodoo doll made in my image into which they occasionally stick pins (though I wouldn’t completely rule this out), rather the fact that my nemesis of football colours [...]

With Deepest Sympathy

About a month ago, I went greyhound racing at the Coral Stadium, in Hove. We had the best seats in the place, in the stand overlooking the finishing line. We had a (passable but nothing special) three course meal, and were given seven £1 betting vouchers, so we didn’t have to spend our own money [...]

Ghosts In The Machine

With a Wembley cup final to look forward to and an outside chance of making the Conference play-offs, you might be tempted to think that now is the best time to be a member of MyFootballClub, the website that purchased Conference club Ebbsfleet United and is now running the club. Cracks, however, are starting to [...]

An Early April Fool’s Joke

Take a close look at the picture on the left. That man is John Batchelor, and you might just be hearing quite a lot about him over the next few weeks or months. The reason for this is fairly simple – John Batchelor has launched a take-over scheme for League Two club which might even [...]

The Death Of An Icon

Some of you may have noticed the minute’s silence prior to the match between France and England on Wednesday night. This was to mark the death, at the age of 49, of Thierry Gilardi, France’s very own “Voice Of Football”. When Franck Ribery was booked for ripping of his shirt after scoring the only [...]

France 1-0 England (And Other Trivialities)

So, another Wednesday and another week of international friendlies. I’m always somewhat confused over whether we’re supposed to care or not, and you had to at least be somewhat impressed by the marketing skills of the French Football Federation, who somehow managed to convince 80,000 Parisians that France vs England was some sort of major [...]

Border City Blue

The 8th of May 1999 was a big day for Carlisle United Football Club. Members of the Football League for just over seventy years, they were the only surviving club of the three Cumbrian clubs that had once been members of the Football League (Workington and Barrow having lost their places in the 1970s), but [...]

Men Behaving Badly

The moralistic tone of the nation’s newspapers was hardly surprising. Considering the nature of the behaviour of Ashley Cole during last week’s match between Spurs and Chelsea and Javier Mascherano’s sending off on Sooper Dooper Sunday, there was something supremely inevitable about the press reaction to it all, with calls for sanctions for showing “disrespect” [...]

Spring Cleaning

In previous years, the Easter weekend was the time of year when everything suddenly became clear. This year, however, many things seem just as unresolved as they did last week. Partly it’s because Easter is so damn early this year, and partly it’s because many of English football’s more pressing tête à têtes [...]

Crossing Swords At Upton Park

In the football anthology “My Favourite Year”, Nick Hornby ruminates upon the subject of generation gap in football and the irony of seeing Peter Lorimer (in his final season at Leeds United) playing against Andy Sinton (in his first season as a seventeen year-old for Cambridge United). An icon of the 1970s lining up against [...]