A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Today marks the second anniversary of this particular corner of the internet. What started as a response to lockdown and boxes of unpacked stuff through the medium of Peter Fear quickly turned into a good way of keeping four mates in touch and then grew into something terrifyingly all consuming. We really couldn’t have done this without the support of our long suffering wives, girlfriends and children and all the great people we’ve interacted with along the way. Thank you all so much. This is probably our most democratic post to date. First of all we had a chat in our WhatsApp group about potential collaborative ideas and picked three options to put to the good people of Twitter: favourite kits, first games and players we wanted to be growing up. With a whopping 54% of the vote favourite kits romped home which is probably a good thing as I don’t actually remember much about Palace’s pre-season friendlies in 1995 and none of us have actually grown up. With this decided we narrowed it d...

Today Richard Allinson delves deeper into some of the more interesting transfer dealings of the last few decades with some suggestion that it’s not just about what you do on the pitch but how you look while doing it. Good news for the likes of Alessandro Del Piero but probably not great news for Phil Jones . Over to Rich. Sometimes, football managers and their chairmen don’t see eye to eye on signings. Take José Mourinho and Roman Abramovich’s fallout out over the latter’s insistence on signing Andriy Shevchenko to partner Didier Drogba upfront at Stamford Bridge. José wanted Samuel Eto’o, Roman didn’t, and so Chelsea signed the Ukrainian striker. In all honesty, getting a Ballon d’Or winner as second prize isn’t bad, and as José was apparently also making eyes at Milan Baros at this time, it could’ve been much worse.  Next, and still involving José Mourinho, we have the time when experienced football man Ed Woodward overruled his multiple title winning manager and decided that s...

Today Emlyn Jones stretches our brief somewhat to bring us a tale of business intrigue and local rivalry through the medium of one of 1980s and 1990s football’s greatest magazine freebies. While the more attentive of young football fans may have used these to map out the rollercoaster journey of the season I used to stage elaborate draws in order to choose my Championship Manager saves. So thank you team tabs for all the joy I experienced at Field Mill. Over to Emlyn. A couple of weeks ago, the fantastic 90s Football Memories tweeted a picture of the Shoot! Magazine League Ladders for the 1996/97 season; a Team Tabs wallchart with 112 small card shirts representing each side from the top four tiers of English football alongside the top two Scottish divisions. Slots in the chart allowed speccy little statto kids (like me and, having shared the image with the Sticker's Worth 500 Words WhatsApp group, every other contributor to the blog) to shuffle them around to reflect the latest ...

The announcement last week that the British government had frozen Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich’s assets as part of the sanctions being levied against Russia has had a wide ranging impact on the Stamford Bridge club. Supporters have been prevented from purchasing match tickets or merchandise and the club has effectively been placed under its second transfer embargo in recent memory. Whether or not the lifting of this will be celebrated by the signing of several overpriced Bundesliga stars and the sacking of a supposed club legend is yet to be seen but spare a thought for Dutch side Vitesse Arnhem who have benefitted from nearly thirty loan transfers from the Blues. During their time at Chelsea the likes of Nemanja Matic, Patrick van Aanholt and Mason Mount have all had successful spells in the Eredivisie spring boarding them on to greater things. Vitesse have not been the only beneficiaries of Chelsea’s inflated squad and impressive youth set up in recent years. Crystal Palace are cur...

Today Mat Jolin-Beech takes a look at a World Cup and European Championship winner who scored over 200 goals in spells in his native France, Italy, Germany, England and the USA and oozed class on and off the pitch. The days where such a talent would turn up outside of Europe’s self-appointed elite clubs may well be long behind us so it’s a good job some nice lads churn out a bi-weekly nostalgia blog. Over to the nicest of the lot. There was a period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when clubs were seemingly able to make some mad, surprise and unexpected signings . We here at A Sticker’s Worth 500 Words admire and encourage these types of signings. We’d love Norwich City to sign Samuel Eto’o for example or for Peter Crouch to make a return from retirement to boost Bournemouth’s promotion bid. There is always a chance that everyone’s favourite Geordie striker (not Alan Shearer ) Andy Carroll could come back and look to give someone’s season a boost. Hi Reading and West Bromwich Albio...

Just over three years after his arrival at The New Den Mark McGhee departed Millwall in October 2003 citing his strained relationship with club chairman, and future Dragon’s Den star, Theo Paphitis. McGhee had led the Lions to the top of Division Two in his first season in charge and taken them to the play-offs in the 2001/02 Division One campaign. Despite Paphitis allowing the likes of Lucas Neill and Phil Stamp to leave there was a strong squad in place with ambitions to push towards the promised land of the Premier League and therefore the rumour mill was working overtime churning out potential successors to Mark McGhee. This reached fever pitch when it was suggested that a high-profile former footballer and talented young manager with an FA Cup, League Cup, Cup Winners’ Cup and Super Cup on his CV may be taking up the reins at Millwall and one of my school friends decided that staking out the training ground was a better use of his time than his GCSEs. He felt vindicated when a sw...

Today Mat Jolin-Beech takes a look at a midfield stalwart who more than made up for his lack of hair with his commitment on the pitch. Rather than go for the questionable hair transplant like his one-time Everton colleague Wayne Rooney or slap on a syrup like Bulgarian keeper Borislav Mihailov today’s subject embraced his baldness and led Mat down today’s particular wormhole. Over to Mat. While commuting into work on the train the other day, I had a football podcast on. Nothing new there; just a way to ease me back into my latest return to the office. I can’t remember how they ended up getting onto the topic, I think it was Granit Xhaka receiving his millionth red card for Arsenal, but the group of guys on there started talking about footballing hardmen. The question: who were genuinely hard footballers? Dennis Wise ? An annoying little sod but not actually that hard. Granit Xhaka? That was met with laughter. Someone even had the minerals to shout out Lee Cattermole! Thomas Gravesen ...

Welcome to our 250th post. Quite how we’ve managed to churn out so much nonsense about football old and new is testament to the level of obsession that we share for the beautiful game but also is entirely reliant on the unbelievable number of people who have read, shared, liked and commented on it since March 2020 . Thank you all for your support and patience. We hope you enjoy today’s collaborative effort. Back in March 2013 Wealdstone fan Gordon Hill was not happy. As he saw his beloved Stones struggle against eventual champions Whitehawk at The Enclosed Ground in their Isthmian League Premier Division clash he chose to voice his displeasure. “WHAT A SHITHOLE!” Considering that the Hawks’ home ground can hold over 3,000 spectators this seemed a little harsh. “YOU’VE GOT NO FANS!” Again the fact that a side which had not played above county level since 2010 required provision for so many supporters suggested misplaced criticism. “YOU’VE GOT NO GROUND!” Even Hill sounded like he doubt...