Author Archive

The immediate past is traumatic and the future as yet unclear. Portsmouth fan Leon Tricker assesses the mess at Fratton Park

As the Chelsea players went up to collect their 2010 FA Cup winners’ medals, all you could hear ringing out across Wembley was the Pompey Chimes. We had dared to dream that we really could win the Cup again, a final act of defiance from fans, players and a manager united in adversity. But what do Portsmouth now have to show for seven years in the  Premier League? We’ve got the same “stadium” we’ve always had, the same antiquated infrastructure, a shattered reputation and a mountain of debt. Fans up and down the country have expressed anger at Pompey’s predicament. But if you feel you’re missing out on something don’t worry – your club could be next.

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In their third year in League One and having lost in the play-offs for the last two seasons, Leeds were desperate to claim promotion at The Valley against hosts already guaranteed a top-six finish. Barney Ronay reports

This was supposed to be a Leeds United promotion party. That was the idea, or at least the mathematical possibility, at the start of a balmy late-spring afternoon in the Kentish London suburbs south of the River Thames. By the end of a match that started at chest-jabbing, off-the-ball-bust-up speed and just sort of took things from there, it still felt like a Leeds United promotion party; that is, a painful, soul-searching, but still aggressively defiant type of party. A party attended, perhaps, solely by feisty, gin-swilling, leopard-print-clad divorcees continually on the verge of a Gloria Gaynor party piece.

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Footballers are increasingly viewed by extremes in the press. James Calder worries that we have become too quick to judge

I haven’t heard much about Titus Bramble lately. I can’t say I’ve followed his career assiduously but I’m definitely hearing less about him than I used to. Time was when he seemed to be everywhere – pranging cars, giving away soft goals and attracting cheap gags from anyone with an opinion on the game. Once the epitome of “comedy defending”, the term of choice for caustically humorous bloggers and writers everywhere, Bramble seems to have slipped out of the public eye. Well, out of my eye anyway.

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Simon Goodley looks back on a successful but deeply uncomfortable season

I have an awful admission to make. I am a Notts County fan (that’s not it) and a strange thing has happened to me during our farcical season. Having had nothing much to celebrate since we won the old Third Division championship in 1998, I spent the majority of my team’s League Two title-winning season hoping that our challenge crumbled.

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A promising career undone by lifestyle choices. Graham Willgoss tells the tale of a good-looking footballer who made quite an impression on Harry Redknapp

Portugal has produced its fair share of gifted footballers who have embraced style over substance. None, however, has done so more openly than Dani da Cruz Carvalho, the twinkle-toed attacking midfielder-cum-striker known simply as “Dani”, who spent nine games at West Ham on loan from Sporting Lisbon in the late winter of 1996.

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