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Search: 'MK Dons'

Stories

Jumpers For Goalposts

How football lost its soul
by Rob Smyth ansd Georgina Turner
Elliot & Thompson, £11.99
Reviewed by Pete Green
From WSC 301 March 2012

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Jumpers for Goalposts is predicated on the simple idea that over the past 20 years football has become shit. From Alan Shearer's anti-punditry to corruption at FIFA; from idiot fans on the internet to the abject Italian players who blamed their failure to beat Denmark on the rough weave of their socks. As a catalogue of all that is wrong with the game, the book is accurate and thorough. As rhetoric, it is stylish and irresistible.

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Letters, WSC 277

Dear WSC
In response to my letter published in WSC 275, Mark Brennan Scott accepts that we send someone to each of the weekend’s Premier League games, to commentate live, but not unreasonably asks whether Match of the Day commentators ever “re-record bits they are unhappy with”. Not exactly, but the beauty of an edit rather than a live game is there is scope for tweaking both the sound and visuals by transmission time. Every now and then, a commentator will, for example, misidentify a goalscorer and then correct themselves, in which case we have been known to remove take one in the edit. I’ve found a copy of a letter I had published in WSC 240 in which I said: “If a commentator gets something wrong at the time we may even spare him his blushes at 10pm by removing the odd word.” That remains the case, but most of the time the commentator’s natural reaction works best. If it takes a couple of replays before they identify a deflection or suspicion of handball, that will nearly always feel more authentic than trying to look too clever after the event. In shortening a game for transmission, we may occasionally “pull up” a replay or remove a few words, but would almost never re-record any section of a commentary unless there’s been a technical problem. Furthermore, in all cases the commentators go home after the post-match interviews and a producer back at base edits the pictures and sound recorded at the time. In early days of the Premier League, only two or three games had multi-camera coverage and commentators present, so there were occasional attempts to add a commentary to single-camera round-up games, for example, for Goal of the Month. However, not every commentator was a convincing thespian and one or two “Le Tissier’s capable of beating three men from here and curling one into the top corner. Oh my word, he has…” moments did slip through. With multi-camera coverage and a commentator at every game, that no longer happens.
Incidentally, call us old-fashioned but there was a degree of pride in this office in MOTD’s recent use of “crashed against the timber” as cited in Steve Whitehead’s letter. Better that – or maybe “hapless custodian” – than some unpleasant modern notion like “bragging rights”.
Paul Armstrong, Programme Editor, BBC Match of the Day

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Looking for legitimacy

The announcement of England's 17 preliminary World Cup venues was supposed to get the stuttering 2018 bid back on track. Instead, the inclusion of Stadium MK has caused yet more controversy

England’s 2018 World Cup bid has not been going well. Members of the organising committee have squabbled repeatedly and it has been suggested that the government want FA chairman Lord Triesman to step down as the bid leader. Meanwhile, some of the FIFA voters who need to be wooed have complained about the high-handed manner displayed by members of the bidding team.

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Division One, 1989-90

Jon McLeod looks back on the season Liverpool were last crowned champions of England.

The long-term significance
Tremors that would come to shape the landscape of English football were felt in 1989-90. UEFA announced that clubs would be readmitted to European competition following a five-year ban due to the Heysel disaster, while Aston Villa appointed the first foreign manager in the English top flight when Jozef Venglos replaced England-bound Graham Taylor at the end of the season. Liverpool claimed their last title to date and Alex Ferguson dodged the bullet at Man Utd.

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League ladders – League Two 2008-09

Dave Jennings reviews a League Two season which proved difficult for a number of teams who started with point deductions whilst the teams at the top struggled to find consistency

Right from the beginning of the season, the League Two table served as a reminder of the ever-present economic perils at the humblest levels of English professional football. The three teams that would finish at the bottom appeared to have been effectively chosen by the authorities before the opening day. Luton’s cause looked hopeless from the moment their 30-point deduction for various monetary transgressions was confirmed, and it seemed a reasonably safe bet that they’d head for the Blue Square Premier in the company of either Rotherham or Bournemouth, who would surely struggle to overcome the 17-point handicaps loaded on to them for their financial failings. However, all three clubs managed to retain relatively strong squads, and the latter two both reached safety, Rotherham recording results that would have put them in the play-offs but for their points penalty.

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