A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

“They’re all good goals Brian.” I think this might have been one the phrases I heard most regularly during my childhood; in part due to the fact that supporting Palace in the 90s meant that goals were something of a rarity but mainly down to fact that when my Dad gets hold of a saying he likes he drops it at any available opportunity. When I asked him where this particular line came from he sent me an obscure Monty Python clip about post-match interviews and the perils of getting footballers to say anything interesting. I would say “all credit to the Dads” at this point but at no point in the Python clip does anyone say anything about them all being good goals. So thanks for that one Mr Hawks. Anyway, back to goals. Some players only seem to score amazing goals. One such player was Matt Le Tissier. A quick YouTube of his greatest hits reveal the former Southampton man’s three main approaches to getting on the scoresheet. The first: the long-range missile into the top corner. T...

More from Rich Allinson and this time we’re looking at a man who won several major trophies, represented his country and worked as a postman. But who cares about all that because he played four games for Grimsby? Over to Rich. Check Ceefax: Grimsby Town sign ex-England midfielder Neil Webb. “Dad... why have Grimsby signed Neil Webb? Isn’t he a bit fat and old?” “I’m not sure but he is a bloody good player, we’re lucky to have him. He could be just what we need.” Now my father has been wrong about footballers in the past (he still maintains that Clive Mendonca should have received England honours) but I was willing to take his word on Neil Webb. After all, the Mariners had just signed a man who had played for Nottingham Forest under Brian Clough, Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson and at a World Cup under Sir Bobby Robson. Yet here he was at Blundell Park being managed by relative novice, ex-teammate and chief chicken flinger Brian Laws. Webb’s time in...

The 1998/99 season wasn’t a bad one for Manchester United. In the space of ten days they won the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League to secure a unique treble of trophies and ensure that any United fan will always have a riposte should you mention Eric Djemba-Djemba, Kleberson or, worst still, David Moyes. As the third and final piece of silverware was presented to the jubilant players in Barcelona’s Nou Camp one man stood head and shoulders above his team-mates. Not the giant goalkeeper and captain for the night Peter Schmeichel, not the goal-scoring heroes Teddy Sheringham or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and not the suspended club captain Roy Keane who, for all his faults, was never a man to ‘do a John Terry’. Instead the picture capturing arguably Manchester United’s greatest moment was dominated by the smiling face of unused substitute David May. May was widely ridiculed at the time for his enthusiasm on that famous night in Barcelona and, in some ways, it’s fair to see wh...

We welcome Mat Jolin-Beech to the fold and in today’s post we are transported back to a time when one Ghanaian striker redefined the term wondergoal twice in the space of two months and crossbars everywhere quaked in fear. Over to Mat. Think of legendary Premier League strikers. Guaranteed you’ll think of Shearer, Henry, Bergkamp, Rooney, Aguero, and possibly the best of the bunch, Dirk Kuyt . Ok, ok, maybe only in Football Manager ‘08 circles then for the last one. But, in the mid 90s, only a few years after Sky had invented football, one cult hero’s star burned bright. His name would echo across the playground whenever anyone smashed a volley in off the crossbar. “Yeboah!” A quick YouTube search brings back childhood memories of the powerhouse striker’s premier repertoire of goals, in particular, the identikit rockets against Wimbledon and Liverpool in 1995 when gracing the crisp white jerseys of Leeds United. Adding to the glory are his classic black and white Puma ...

In true Alan Partridge style we’re going to stop talking about American things and head to Norwich courtesy of Richard Allinson. Time for some great hair, great kits and questionable student nightclubs. Earlier in the week we featured Bobby Mimms and the irritating fact he wasn’t awarded a 1994/95 Premier League winners medal despite, y’know, playing in a Premier League winning team (insert one of those red faced emoji things that unnecessarily angry people use). On the complete opposite end of the success spectrum that season was a man that got relegated - Norwich City’s Jeremy Goss. Norwich is a fine city. Not my words Michael, the words of the official sign on the way in. I spent my university days there, achieving Europa League qualification levels of academic success, but what I really learned from my time in Norfolk (and much more important than the principles of strategic management, which to be fair are as dull as shit) is that Canaries’ fans are a passionate bun...

Much as I loved growing up in Lewisham, I occasionally have moments of wishing I had spent my formative years across the Atlantic. The vast majority of my favourite bands and musicians hail from the US. I actually quite like baseball. But then I think about the sheer geographical scale of the country and the terrifying concept of being governed by a racist, misogynist cretin and I quickly disavow the idea – at least Britain’s racist, misogynist cretins aren’t suggesting we mainline Dettol…yet. Perhaps even higher up the list than fear of governance by a reprehensible moron is the idea of growing up in a country where football means a protracted interpretation of rugby league.  Despite the fact that the USA hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1994, a tournament that sparked my lifelong obsession, the game has never truly established itself across the pond and, whilst the MLS has made major strides in the last decade, men’s football sits behind NFL, basketball, baseball and ice hockey ...

A few years ago I took a break from teaching and undertook an MA in Contemporary History and Politics at Birkbeck. This scratched an itch to get back into academia that had developed in the last few weeks of my undergraduate studies when the terrifying reality of the outside world loomed large but sadly I’d spent all of my bursary and student loan on beer, pizza and essentials such as Brondby’s home shirt. During my MA I managed to write essays on the Old Firm rivalry, the role of politics in football and a dissertation on the life and career of Walter Tull and the influence this had on attitudes towards race and ethnicity in football and the military. You might be spotting a trend here. My sister was filling her husband in on the plans for my dissertation when he replied: “only your brother would go and do a history degree and find a way to write all of his essays about football.” He had a point. In Year 3 my teacher, so sick of me only writing about the beautiful game, set a st...

Richard Allinson brings us another underappreciated goalkeeper in today’s post as well as touching on the controversial topic of ‘second teams’. Mine was always Juventus which firmly ticked the glory-supporting box but also validated my choice of haircut , boots and insistence on playing wing-back. Yes, I was a pretentious six year old. I distinctly remember Rich taking flack for his brief love affair with Blackburn on a trip to see Dulwich Hamlet in the Championship Manager Cup final in 2011 – I’ll let him defend himself below. I have to admit; I always thought Bobby Mimms’ legally registered birth name was Tim Flowers’ Understudy Bobby Mimms. As 1994 rolled around, and having grown slightly weary of watching Grimsby Town finish in lower mid-table in the second tier of English football for seasons on end, I had decided it was time to branch out and start following a more glamorous club. I quickly dispensed with Manchester United (too Lancastrian), Spurs (good kit but too ...

Tag someone and if they don’t reply in five minutes they owe you a trip to Disneyland. Pick your grandmother’s name and the last dessert you had – this is your drag queen name. And so on and so forth. Social media is awash with similar posts which, at the innocent end, are yet another way to wile away the time you’re spending on the toilet at work and, at the more sinister, are apparently devious traps used to extract personal information for nefarious purposes. Within a day of lockdown several such posts had appeared on social media including one which set up the activity you would be doing whilst staying at home alongside a football manager. Whether you were watching Netflix with Joey Barton, doing puzzles with Sam Allardyce or youth hostelling with Chris Eubank you might have had a much needed laugh during self-isolation, even if you did end up manscaping with Neil Warnock. Strangely enough souring your relationship with the fans with Sol Campbell wasn...

Recent weeks will not have restricted your opportunities to make yourself miserable but, if you want to take things that little bit further, I’m here to inform you that a solitary Freddo will cost you 28p. In other words you are getting one frog-shaped chocolate treat for 2.8x its original value. Could 2020 get any worse? Actually, scratch that last remark, I don’t want to tempt the bugger. In the innocent summer days of 1998 you may well have emerged from your local cornershop with a Freddo, a few packs of stickers and enough change from your pound coin to…well not do very much because you were 10 and had about 5p left for the week. That being said you could have excitedly prepared for the upcoming football season with Merlin’s superfluous Kick Off Sticker Collection and have familiarised yourself with the new signings set to grace the Premier League from the European glamour clubs like AC Milan, PSV Eindhoven and…Southampton. Ahead of the 1998/99 season Blackb...