The Burden Of Expectation

It was simultaneously the most and least surprising decision of the summer. Avram Grant, who has had the gaunt, tired look of the dead man walking since his appointment last year, has been sacked by Chelsea, in a decision that adds further weight to the increasingly widespread belief that Premier League is living the last [...]

Jonathan Pearce, A Billion People & Several Sleepless Nights

Sometimes, comments that I have seen on the television or in the papers take lodge in my head, sit there and fester. About three weeks ago, though, a comment made on the television has started to overtake my waking hours, and it’s a comment that, in an almost abstract fashion, says about as much as [...]

Red Is The Colour

The best team, it has to be said, won. Manchester United have been the best team in the Premier League this season, no matter how unctuous they have been at times, and no matter how doggedly they were pursued for the length of the season by Chelsea. This afternoon’s win at Wigan Athletic was a [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

A Tale Of Two Cities

It takes quite an effort to provide a crashing comedown after making the European Cup semi-finals for the third time on four years (or whatever), but Liverpool’s ownersm seem, somehow, to have managed it. Tom Hicks’ letter to Liverpool’s chief executive Rick Parry, in which he asked him to resign, doesn’t carry any weight. In [...]

The Cure To All Woes

After the excitement comes the inquest, and the subject that has been one of the most hotly debated over the last couple of days has been this: what to do about Arsenal? Their defeat at Liverpool coupled with their less than shining form over the last couple of months or so has provoked furious brow-furrowing [...]

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” [...]