Author Archive

As the press pick apart Liverpool's fall from grace, Tottenham and Manchester City's Champions League 'play-off' sparks a punfest in Fleet Street

Liverpool began the season hoping to win a 19th League championship. They ended it with 19 defeats. Rafa Benítez guaranteed supporters a top-four finish, but the club dropped to seventh place in the league, went out of the FA Cup in the third round and faced the ignominy of being knocked out of two European competitions. To put it mildly, the 20th anniversary of their last Championship-winning season has not been their most memorable. Putting it mildly, however, is not one of the charms of British newspapers. If the facts were difficult reading for Benítez, he will have wanted to avoid the back pages.

Read more…

Despite the big-name status of Roy Keane, many Ipswich fans have been underwhelmed by their manager. Csaba Abrahall on a disappointing year at Portman Road

Notable mostly for a club-record number of draws, it has not been an exciting season for Ipswich Town. Even the threatened drama of a relegation battle never really materialised and lower mid-table mediocrity has been the ultimate outcome. For a club that has enjoyed an eventful professional career, this could well be the most tedious season ever.

Read more…

Ian Plenderleith examines a philosophical approach to the game which could make watching international football more bearable for England fans

As we approach the World Cup and lose all sense of proportion about football’s importance, it’s worth asking just why we follow the game at all. A column by Andrew Guest at pitchinvasion.net asked a pertinent hypothetical question: If England win the World Cup, will their fans be any happier one year from now than if they had been knocked out in the second round by a goal that Carlos Tevez surreptitiously bundled in with his fist?

Read more…

Football's culture of greed will eventually have dire consequences, both for clubs and for those in charge of the game

Two men have presided over a period of financial crisis in their respective spheres, with large businesses being crippled by debt while many smaller ones hover in the verge of extinction. The first, Gordon Brown, became associated with crisis to the extent that he was deemed to be a liability, and has duly stepped down. The other, Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, sails serenely on. In fact he’s positively bullish.

Read more…

Cameron Carter examines the dramatic effects of a draw away to Blackburn and more reshuffling on the Match of the Day sofa

It is one thing for the tabloids to whip up a bit of national tension – the diagrams of tarsals and metatarsals were being searched out again as soon as Wayne Rooney hit the ground against Bayern Munich – but when the BBC start creating drama from the raw material of Nothing Much it edges beyond a joke. When Chelsea drew at Blackburn on March 21, journalists and football pundits took this as a cue for a Chelsea-disintegrate-under-pressure story. On Easter Saturday’s Match of the Day, as Chelsea scored their second against Man Utd, Jonathan Pearce piped: “It looked like their title hopes had disappeared two weeks ago at Blackburn… but now!…”

Read more…