A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

We celebrate five years of our blog in this post and we would like to start by saying thank you to anyone who has read, shared, commented, contributed or suggested content. It’s insane to think that the Covid-19 lockdowns which inspired this were so long ago and the fact that anyone is still engaging with it now that they have the ability to have actual friends or lives is incredibly flattering. When we started suggesting ideas for this collaborative effort we thought it might be time to be a bit braver than our usual tributes to genuine global icons , club heroes and substitute goalkeepers . Today we come for three players we believe to be overrated. They are clearly all excellent footballers (and we really can’t talk ) and some of them might be really nice blokes (see above) but there’s just something not quite right for us. We’ll start across the Channel with Emlyn Shepherdson-Jones and someone who might prove us all even more wrong than we probably are. When the call came through...

This post is a leaving present for my colleague Rupert Try who is off to pastures new at the end of the month. Having come across our blog due to my shameless self promotion our subject was the first name he put into the search bar. As an Arsenal season ticket holder it’s good to see Rupert still carries a torch for the Gunners’ mediocre years ahead of the glory that visited Highbury with Arsene Wenger. That or he’s still haunted by the programme images of the man below’s horrific leg break. All the best in the new role mate and I hope this does the trick for you. The Merlin’s Premier League 95 Sticker Collection was my first proper foray into sticker collecting (having shared the 1994 World Cup book with my sister) and, looking back, it is an absolute treasure trove of 1990s nostalgia. The likes of Simon Rodger , Stuart Nethercott and Ian Walker provide curtains inspiration to rival Nick Carter of The Backstreet Boys while members of Manchester United’s infamous ‘ Class of 92 ’ make ...