“I truly believe [Financial Fair Play] FFP is gone. I think it’s better to open the circus door and let everybody enjoy.” It is not often that I find myself agreeing with the Premier League pantomime arch-villain and self-avowed “Special One”, nor is it a position I want to find myself in too often in […]
Reading the thoughts of uber football expert Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian last week (https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jun/26/dont-be-tempted-to-think-klopps-blueprint-has-superseded-guardiolas) in the immediate aftermath of Liverpool being crowned champions, one fact from his piece stood out: “It is a measure of what an astonishing season this has been from Liverpool that if Manchester City had won every match they played […]
Yet more technology controversy. 100 days after Coronavirus pandemic-enforced lockdown, the Premier League returned but it wasn’t the same as we remember it. After a minute’s silence to remember those who have sadly fallen victim to this unprecedented and devastating virus, referee Michael Oliver sounded his whistle to signal the fulfilment of Project Restart then […]
So here we are then, after a hiatus of just over three (very long!) months, assuming nothing goes dramatically wrong between now and 6pm this evening when Aston Villa are due to get the Premier League back underway with their clash with Sheffield United, English football is back. It will still be football but based […]
Cards on the table time here: for all the enjoyment to be had in delving into the retro football archives and reminiscing in football nostalgia, I truly and deeply miss football. The way that it neatly gives you an almost parallel reality to normal life (whatever that means at the moment!) and gives us football […]
First Daniel Levy and Tottenham caused ructions across not only the sporting world but also the wider scale British media when they became the first club brave/ wise/ foolish enough (please delete as appropriate!) to announce that they were going to cut the salaries of all non-playing staff by 20% and put them on furlough […]
I wrote on this page last week that “Football cannot of course in any way be immune from the impact of the pandemic that we are all facing”, not exactly a Nostradamus-like profound prediction of how things could turn out, more a realisation of the inevitability that football could simply not just carry on oblivious […]
Liverpool falter at Watford So that’s it! After 422 days Liverpool’s hugely impressive run is at an end. A shock 3-0 defeat at Vicarage Road by Nigel Pearson’s Watford, who started the day in the midst of a relegation dogfight a whopping 55 points behind the runaway leaders, finally brought the seemingly unstoppable Red juggernaut […]
There is always a frisson of excitement for football obsessives when the battle-lines are redrawn on the European front and the Champions League and Europa League start their knockout phases. With the domestic season having turned into a procession thanks to Liverpool’s utter supremacy, this season the continental stage potentially offers more intriguing competition. After […]
UEFA’s announcement last Friday that Manchester City would be banned from participating in European competition, (in their case the Champions League), for two seasons for breaches of Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, may have been several years in the making but it was still somewhat surprising as most of us doubted whether UEFA would actually […]
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