All Played Off

And with that, the season was over. That’s your lot – or, at least, it is until the start of the European Championships. The final weekend of the domestic season was, perhaps surprisingly, not quite as dramatic as one might have expected. Because of Euro 2008, the play-offs for the Football League were played in [...]

Football League Play-Off Preview

It’s that time of year again, when Wembley fills with expectant supporters for the play-off finals. Over the course of Saturday, Sunday and Monday, three matches will be played that decide who will be in what division next season, and it’s time to have a look forward to those three matches, starting with Monday’s match [...]

Leicester Blows

It probably won’t help them much but, for the purposes of clarification, here is a list of just some of the teams that have spent at least some time in the bottom two divisions of the Football League: Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest, Bristol City, Watford, Sunderland, Leeds United, Bolton Wanderers, Aston Villa, Middlesbrough, [...]

The Hype Factory

Such, it would appear, is the level of antipathy between Manchester United and Chelsea at the moment that the Manchester United players are now incapable of warming down on the pitch after a match at Stamford Bridge without some sort of fight breaking out. The arguments over who did what to whom and who [...]

Almost There Now

Somehow or other, it’s the end of the season already. Chelsea, for reasons best known to the Premier League, played on Thursday night, and their 1-0 win cranked up a little more pressure on Manchester United, who were reliant on a late goal from Carlos Tevez to get a point from their trip to Blackburn [...]

Falling

By five o’clock on Saturday afternoon, the Football League could have only two Welsh members left. For many, many years, there were four, but Newport County fell through the trapdoor an into the Conference in 1988 (and folded not too long afterwards), and it now looks likely that Wrexham will follow them after a wretched [...]

Shots In The Light

It has taken them sixteen long, hard years, but last night Aldershot Town were welcomed back into the fold of the Football League. Since the original club folded in 1992, the club has fought tooth and nail to win its place back amongst the top 92, and last night it became reality at last by [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]