A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Whether you love it or loathe it the tabloid press is an integral part of both British society and the beautiful game. While the decline of print media, and the Leveson Enquiry, has curbed its power its influence extends far beyond its dwindling readership and, perhaps, no more so than in its contribution to the English language. Robert Hutton’s excellent ‘Romps, Tots and Boffins…The Strange Language of News’ goes further to define the language of the press as a separate entity, known as ‘journalese’, where formal discussions are always “crisis talks”, large sums of money are routinely “trousered” and all award ceremonies are “glitzy”. In amongst these are the “bigwigs”, “chiefs” and “tsars” who dominate the worlds of law, business and the civil service, the “crooners” and “rockers” who make up the music industry and the “playboys”, “vice girls” and “love rats” held up for public disdain. Football (or, more often for the press, “soccer” or “footie”) has accordingly always provided a nu...

It’s amazing what a global pandemic, several boxes of old football stuff and Peter Fear ’s curtains can do but, 399 posts after an attempt to stay sane, here we all are. Throughout this time the UK has had four Prime Ministers, two monarchs and economic twists and turns that mean buying a Freddo now probably requires a mortgage. In the footballing world England’s men have reached two consecutive European Championship finals while the Lionesses have won two consecutive European Championships , Leicester City and Crystal Palace have won the FA Cup and Watford have had fifteen different managers . Plenty of other stuff has happened too and whether or not any of us here has remained sane is probably best put to our long suffering partners, children and friends. When live football was taken away from us its absence convinced the four of us that we really missed it. This ignores the fact that my attendance at Selhurst Park since Palace returned to the Premier League is worse even than m...