A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Today Emlyn Jones bravely takes a look at a man who combined football wizardry with political fanaticism in a way which only he could have managed. To say the very least today’s subject went a bit further than slagging Jacques Chirac off on a bed sheet and don’t get him started on Robot Wars: "Robot Wars is not a sport. Guys just play with remote controls. Now, if they were wired up and got an electrical shock each time their robot got hammered, then, yes, it would be a sport." Quite. Over to Emlyn. Politics and football are two oft-separate worlds that occasionally collide; several former players have gone on to stand for and indeed hold office, including Romario, Theo Zagorakis , Andriy Shevchenko and George Weah. It's rare for players to declare allegiance to a political party or philosophy during their playing days, though by no means unheard of, not least in the Italian leagues. The views espoused have traversed the entire political gamut, from dedicated communists ...

In February 2003 Sven Goran Eriksson’s England took on Australia in a friendly match at the famous Boleyn Ground. Never one to shy away from handing out some international caps the Swede decided to substitute his entire starting eleven at half-time in an attempt to bring through some new talent to provide back up for the supposed ‘Golden Generation’. Captain David Beckham was replaced with Owen Hargreaves . Ashley Cole was replaced with Paul Konchesky for the first of his two caps for the Three Lions. Former Tottenham Hotspur captain Sol Campbell gave way to future Spurs’ skipper Ledley King . At the other end of the pitch former boy wonder Michael Owen came off for debutant Wayne Rooney who became his country’s youngest player since James Prinsep back in 1879. Just over a year later Prinsep would also lose his longstanding record as the youngest ever FA Cup finalist when Millwall’s Curtis Weston came off the bench in the last minute of their 3-0 defeat to Manchester United. There...

Today Emlyn Jones brings us a story that has everything a 90s football nostalgic could want. Political turmoil ? Check. Serie A success ? Check. Real Madrid shithousery ? Check. Coventry City ? Oh most definitely check. What a time to be alive. Over to Emlyn. Andy Carroll 's unexpected arrival on a relatively meagre wage of £1,500 a week has been a rare glimmer in Reading's miserable season. Strong performances have made him an unquestionable bargain, being trumped in the value stakes only by Dani Alves re-joining Barcelona at 38 on a salary of €1 per month. Bizarre and unexpected transfers could be articles all of their own; scouting failures such as the infamous Ali Dia , Sir Alex Ferguson declining to watch Bebé in person, or Arsène Wenger playing a bit too much Championship Manager 4 and deciding to sign Kim Källström despite him having a near broken back. Occasionally top teams pick up duffers, such as Jonathan Woodgate's ill-fated Real Madrid stint, or the same team i...

Today Richard Allinson goes, quite literally, to the heart of the matter with a look at arguably football clubs’ most recognisable feature. All the important points Rich raises were clearly not up for consideration when Puma unleashed their reprehensible range of third kits on the world although perhaps when such concerns were raised the cool kids behind the designs just decided to talk over them. Over to Rich. Recently, my beloved Grimsby Town decided to change their club badge. The new one was apparently “… constructed wholly upon a grid of geometric shapes that are compositionally harmonious in their relation to each other, and the scale of components such as line weight and negative space have been optimised to allow the crest to be used at any scale – digitally and physically.” Fancy words, but in all honesty, it would be of much more interest to me if our players were harmonious in their relation to each other .  Football clubs getting a new badge is something that has alwa...

Back in January the impoverished La Liga giants Barcelona scraped together just enough from the collective piggy banks of their owners to bring Spanish international and former Manchester City forward Ferran Torres to Camp Nou for a measly €55m. Quite how a club that posted losses of £440m at the end of the 2020/21 campaign and attempted to save their backsides through the introduction of the risible European Super League was able to stump up such an exorbitant fee for someone who has so far scored 27 goals in his 155 professional appearances might make little sense on the surface. However, it transpires that by convincing French defender Samuel Umiti to sign a contract extension with a wage decrease and palming Phillippe Coutinho off on to Steven Gerrard’s Aston Villa magically freed up the necessary cash to convince the number crunchers at UEFA’s Financial Fair Play committee that this was legitimate. When any business begins to struggle the first casualties are staff and football i...

Today Richard Allinson brings us the fascinating story of an excellent player who was an integral part of some of the 1990s most exciting sides. The pedants among our readership might point out that this post exceeds the supposed 500 word limit we allude to in our name but we’ll make an exception for today’s subject. Over to Rich. "... ladies and gentlemen, England will be playing four-four-f***ing two." Mike Bassett Maybe it is the fact that my formative years were spent watching Alan Buckley's free-flowing Grimsby Town sides, but in my opinion, you can't beat 4-4-2 with two real wingers as a formation. There is just something about a wide-man beating his fullback with a trick or pace and getting the ball in the box that makes me think that it is the only way to play the game, and in the 1990s, no one epitomised the role of the tricky winger better than Ruel Fox.  After weeks of fruitless trials with hometown club Ipswich Town, Fox secured himself a trial at local ri...

Today’s post has been requested by Dave Mathieson and features one of his beloved Oldham Athletic’s leading lights from the 1990s. If you don’t follow Dave on Twitter already make sure you do – particularly if you’re a fan of Harchester United. Thanks for the suggestion and the considerable notes Dave provided to help with this. We hope, in his words, this “does the great man justice”. The death of Edward the Confessor in January 1066 sparked off a series of events which led to the Battle of Hastings and the establishment of Norman rule over England. For more on this I would recommend the not-at-all biased account presented in the Bayeux Tapestry which makes it clear that Harold Godwinson fully deserved the arrow in the eye/hacking to pieces he received after he went back on an oath he’d made to William of Normandy regarding the destination of the English throne. What the Bayeux Tapestry omits is the fact that the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada actually thought he had a far stronger c...

Today Emlyn Jones brings us the fascinating story of a gifted footballer via the classic route of Championship Manager albeit with a significant detour through the food industry. Emlyn and I once considered pitching a food programme based around our own culinary skills interspersed with interviews with a niche collection of guests from the worlds of music and sport. As you will find out in today’s post it’s probably best that this project never made it out of the hungover train journey it took place on. Over to Marcus Wareing Emlyn. As I'm sure was the case for many, I had a fair amount of free time available in the limbo period between Christmas and New Year. In between Bacchanalian cheese and wine feasts, and chomping residual Quality Street, I downloaded the 1996/97 Italian version of Championship Manager as a sure-fire way of filling a few hours/days. Utilising the time honoured "close eyes, wiggle mouse, click" method of team selection gave me the very fortunate se...