Something Is Going To Have To Give

At one end of the scale, of course, there are crocodile tears, hype beyond hype and more money can most people could ever realistically manage to be able to imagine. Manchester United returned to England today, curiously now being lauded as one of the greatest teams in the history of football on account of winning [...]

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, [...]

Saturday Afternoon With The Radio

I awoke yesterday morning with a sense of chilling foreboding. London, the city in which I was born, appears to be suffering from some sort of collective nervous breakdown and has voted in Boris Johnson as its mayor. It’s an encouraging way to start the day. Gripped by a slight but niggling hangover, my thoughts [...]

AFC Wimbledon 3-1 AFC Hornchurch

It would probably be fair to say that, for AFC Wimbledon, this season has been a story of “two steps forward, one and seven-eighths of a step back”. It started with quiet optimism that, having stalled in the Ryman League Premier Division for the previous couple of seasons, this year would be the year in [...]

Tuesday Night Fever

The Premier League has two weeks to play and the Football League finishes next weekend, but for the semi-professional clubs that make up the sprawling pyramid of the non-league game, the normal league season has already ended and the play-offs are about to start. First introduced in 2004, the non-league play-off system has been highly [...]

Lewes 3-0 Weston-Super-Mare

It has probably been the strangest seven days in the history of Lewes FC. The club won the Conference South last Saturday in front of a crowd of 1,700 and it must have felt, to their regular supporters, as if the sky was the limit. The events of the last week, however, have plunged the [...]

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 [...]

Lewes 2-0 Dorchester Town

There’s something not quite right about going to the football on your own, but it was a late decision to visit The Dripping Pan on Saturday afternoon. As things stand, though, it’s too good an offer to turn up. A nervy midweek 1-0 win against Fisher Athletic has pushed Lewes to within touching distance of [...]

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 [...]