A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Mat Jolin-Beech at the helm for today’s post with a message of hope for all of us. Well, some of us. The noises my left ankle make these days suggest that my ‘career’ might be a distant memory. I had the pleasure of playing in goal behind Mat during our third year at university and I can vouch that he is very good at running up and down the right and does own lime green Nike Mercurials. If anyone from Newport County is reading then there’s his character reference. Over to Mat. All football fans have the same instinct in them. That ingrained belief that, given the right opportunity and chance, they could still make it as a professional footballer. If we just had the time to spend working in the gym, training with top coaches, and playing with better team mates, we would be able to carve out a career in the big leagues – ok, maybe League 2. But a contract with Newport County still counts as being a professional. This view was set in concrete for me a few years ago when, bore...

“The game’s gone.” Whether it’s VAR, sleeve sponsors or hugely inflated salaries and transfer fees we, as in all of us over the age of thirty, all have a reason why we’ve decided football wasn’t as good as it used to be. If I had to have one complaint it would be the spreading out of games over the week so that there isn’t a day without a high profile match live on one channel or another. I appreciate this probably sounds ridiculous after what’s happened to the 2019/20 season for most clubs in England but just think back to that ‘winter break’ to ease fixture congestion and allow players to rest and recuperate mid-season. Even if you loved the thinly spread feast of football you’ve got to admit it probably wreaked havoc with your fantasy team. However, when I step back from it this is nothing new. Back in the 90s there was Monday night Premier League, League Cup, FA Cup replays and Champions League on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, UEFA Cup on Thursdays before a full weekend of Premier ...

Today Richard Allinson takes us on a trip from the World Cup to the Ryman League via Ipswich which sounds similar to some of the away days we went on while following Dulwich Hamlet in the early 2010s. We had a good laugh watching Gavin Rose’s Pink/Blue Army including witnessing Sittingbourne’s ultras stepping in to help run the clubhouse bar, Paul McCallum scoring a rank hat-trick and getting a move to West Ham United off the back of it and Faversham Town’s no.3 silencing the Champion Hill crowd with an absolute worldy. They still lost though. Over to Rich. Saturday 5pm; James Alexander Gordon; Sports Report; Out of the Blue; FA Cup weekend; Ipswich Town 4 - Grimsby Town 0. Other than the scoreline there is no arguing that the above list is irreplaceable. Win, lose or draw getting in the car and driving away from a football ground with the combination of the voice and music always felt like perfection. However, on 13 February 1993 James Alexander Gordon’s announcement missed a...

Emlyn Jones is at the helm for today’s post on a man who had as much respect for his opponents’ testicles as Tony Yeboah had for crossbars. I can confirm that everything Emlyn says about his birthday is true, including the being chucked in the sea bit. It’s worth adding that none of his valuables were damaged as he had unwittingly handed his watch over so that one of our mates could “get a watch tan”. And that’s not even the most ridiculous thing in this post. Over to Emlyn.   André Stéphane Bikey-Amougou – Reading hero, imposing colossus, occasional mental bastard. Perhaps best summed up by the phrase ‘sent off’ appearing eight times in his (fairly short) Wikipedia article. On a cheerier note, there are also two appearances of the phrase ‘triple somersault’. Bikey’s early career saw him feature for various Spanish and Portuguese sides, establishing himself at Aves. Not for the last time, he was sent off in his final game before moving to Russia. Sadly, the treatment of black play...

Back in April BT Sport aired a documentary on my beloved Crystal Palace under the title ‘The Team of the Eighties’. Narrated by Bill Nighy, it explored the fall and rise of Palace under Malcolm Allison and Terry Venables in the 1970s which led some pundits to dub a youthful, attacking Eagles’ side ‘the Team of the Eighties’ upon their promotion to the old First Division in 1979. In November Palace were top of the table and living up to expectations. Then Liverpool ruined it all. Of course they did. Palace finished thirteenth and then, having dispensed with Venables and brought back relegation expert Allison, finished rock bottom of the league in the 1980/81 season. Palace have managed to repeat several pieces of this history in my lifetime. Yo-yoing between the top two tiers? Check. Bringing back managers who weren’t very good the first time? Check. Putting faith in youth team talent? Check. The latter, and the genuinely positive, cornerstone of Crystal Palace Football Club brings...

Today Emlyn Jones brings us the story of a criminally underrated player who provided both of us with a whole host of ridiculous catchphrases during our university days. Our housemates suffered enough as it was but James Harper provided us with even more reasons to be annoying which shouldn’t have really been possible. I don’t think Emlyn was ever forgiven by one of them for deleting Emile Heskey from the England team on Euro 2000 on the PS1 and replacing him with the midfield maestro. For what it’s worth I thought it was funny – almost as funny as the superfluous reference to ‘Crystanbul’ in the post below. Thanks for that one mate. Having discussed international goalkeepers to date, I feel it’s time to talk about my favourite player for my hometown club, Reading. A tale of ping-pong, captains legbands and why I hate both Brendan Rodgers and Danny Murphy to this day. The pricks. Arsenal trainee James Harper signed for Reading in February 2001 for a fee of £400,000, a signi...

Today Mat Jolin-Beech has a look at one of the great ‘what if’ stories in English football and revisits the age-old ‘left sided problem’. Sadly, this is not a second post on Steve Guppy but at least it takes in the story of a man who took part in ITV’s Celebrity Wrestling dressed as his Napoleonic War namesake. Obviously he couldn’t hold a candle to the great Sean Bean but, as we can see below, he knew how to wear a questionable necklace. Over to Mat. England’s fabled left sided problem could have had a simple solution. It should have had a simple solution. For season after season, Three Lions’ fans were crying out for an English Ryan Giggs. A skilful, fast, tricky left-winger. Instead, we got experiment after experiment. The Bridge/Cole episode. Alan Thompson’s single cap against Sweden in 2004. The infamous Scholes solution. Steve Guppy . The answer could have come from Newcastle upon Tyne, via Torquay and Manchester. The left-winger in question: Lee Sharpe. Definitely ...