A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

This week Mat Jolin-Beech heads to the seaside to take a look at a cult hero with an enviable record. Whenever a club is promoted there are always the naysayers predicting that certain players will struggle in the league above but this post’s subject made a mockery of such pessimism across the pyramid. No wonder Tangerines’ fans sang his name. Over to Mat. Strikers are an odd bunch. The heroes for the fans on the terrace, the difference makers, the poster boys, the ones who get all the glory. Within this bunch there are those who make history. The most Premier League goals – Alan Shearer . Most professional goals – Cristiano Ronaldo. Most World Cup goals – Miroslav Klose But then you get those who have, how shall I say, slightly more niche records. There is a select group of players who have scored in England’s top four divisions. This elite group includes Billy Sharp, Steve Claridge, Steve Finnan, and Robert Earnshaw. Taking this record up another notch is one Brett Ormerod. He is the...

In the last round of fixtures for whatever the Nations League actually is Germany came to Wembley to play out one of international football’s most compelling fixtures. Back in 1966 England apparently did quite well against West Germany in the final of their home World Cup although the more cynical (or German) of observers might point out that Geoff Hurst’s second goal only stood due to the intervention of Azerbaijani linesman Tofiq Bahramov. Rather than being castigated for his controversial call, or forced to look at a little telly for five minutes while someone drew some colourful lines on the replay, the Azerbaijani FA renamed their national stadium after him following his death in 1993. Although the celebrated official stated in his memoirs that he believed the ball had very much crossed the line rumours abound that when asked in person why he had awarded the goal he had simply responded: “Stalingrad”. The siege of the city now known as Volgograd during the Second World War lasted ...

Today Richard Allinson takes a look at one of his footballing heroes who is one of a long line of shot stoppers who well and truly demonstrated that experience can outweigh youth . A member of Blackpool ’s ‘Hall of Fame’, an Anglo-Italian Cup winner and a pioneer in terms of nutrition and kit it’s something of a shock it’s taken us this long to talk about him. Over to Rich to do the honours. John ‘Budgie’ Burridge was a childhood hero of mine. Like Burridge, I was absolutely addicted to football. Just by way of an example, Budgie used to take a ball to bed with him at night, whereas I slept in my shin pads and goalkeeper gloves. Also, like me, Budgie had curly hair and played in goal, and so therefore his hero status was never really in doubt. My rationale for idolising Dave Beasant stuck broadly to the same template too. And to think, they were both also on the books at Grimsby Town. They lived my dream. If only I’d had any ability to go with my bouncy hair and number one jersey… It ...

Today Mat Jolin-Beech reminds us all of a great football game which has perhaps slipped under the radar due to the domination of the Sports Interactive behemoth and its iconic predecessors . I had a lot of fun with Wycombe Wanderers in the 2001 incarnation of this particular title although I wasn’t quite as ambitious as Mat with his acquisitions. Perhaps I should have made more use of the cheat codes. Over to Mat to explain himself. Back in my pre-Football Manager days , my football management sim of choice was LMA Manager in particular the 2004 edition on the PS2. This was not as in depth as the current version of THE football management sim and seemingly one the Manchester United scouting department uses. There were a couple of different things that made this game stand out. The first were the cheats. The three that I remember are: the one for unlimited funds (or some vast fortune that made Newcastle United’s owners look poor), another that guaranteed any transfer to go through rega...

Today we are taking on another request post from Rob, the man behind the excellent ShootingStars account on Twitter, and making further use of his excellent card collection for good measure. Make sure you’re giving him a follow for a daily dose of football nostalgia from the last season before Sky invented the beautiful game . Rob was honest in his reasoning behind this particular suggestion referencing “the Seaman chip” but also asked to find out a bit more about today’s subject’s career before his move to North London. Apologies in advance that there’s a lot more about the former than the latter mate. When the wonderful people at the Department for Education decided to restructure the GCSE curriculum in 2015 for no apparent reason it signalled the end for GCSE History coursework or “Controlled Assessment” as it had come to be known. One of the main reasons for this was that many respected educational establishments were a bit sketchy in their approach to this rather ambiguously ti...