Ajax – Underestimate Them At Your Peril This Season
Every story needs an adequate setting, whether it’s a novel, a biography or this football article, and what a better place to be on the 8th of May, 2019 than in the Netherlands. It was a cold night, like any other Dutch night in May, but the streets were warm with excitement as practically anybody… Keep Reading
La Masia and Barcelona – Once a Highrise, Now a Stuttering Stagnation
La Masia de Can Planes, or La Masia for short; translation: ‘The Farmhouse’. Once an old Catalan farmhouse, this iconic location no longer produces milk and eggs, but has been producing some of the finest footballing talents the world has seen in recent decades. This is F.C Barcelona’s academy, one of the staple names in… Keep Reading
Josef Bican: The Greatest Goalscorer You’ve Never Heard Of
The players that enthral us the most have always been the goal scorers. Defending is an art and there are few things as beautiful as a pinpoint 60-yard pass. However, it’s the players that score which are hailed as heroes, especially in this digital, statistic obsessed age. That being said, it’s weird you’ve probably never… Keep Reading
Shearer vs Owen: Grow Up You Twits!
The Twitter spat involving Michael Owen and Alan Shearer makes both former England frontmen look a bit stupid, writes Andy White. The decision by Michael Owen’s PR team to serialise his new autobiography in the Daily Mirror has got to go down as one of the canniest managerial moves of the season so far. One… Keep Reading
Leeds United, Mike Tyson and… The Simpsons?
Now this is going to sound strange, but as unlikely as it seems, there really is a way of drawing a parallel between the once heavyweight champion of the world, the once champions of Europe, and the undoubtedly still champions of 6 o’clock television. Let’s start with Leeds United then. A team with an immense… Keep Reading
Monaco: A Fallen Giant Desperate to Rise Again
A giant of European football has fallen and is struggling to get back on its feet. Yes, Monaco’s va va voom has turned into a damp squib in recent seasons with the club slowing falling from heights it once peaked at. The decline at Monaco has quickly descended and there is real worry across the… Keep Reading
Solving England’s Midfield Puzzle for Euro 2020
As the international week gets under way, Gareth Southgate can be largely happy with the progress of his side since the World Cup. However, the midfield remains problematic. Southgate has switched from 3-5-2 to a 4-3-3 formation, and England now have a lot of options for the midfield trio but little time to decide who… Keep Reading
Newcastle fans – Is it time to give Steve Bruce a break?
Steve Bruce’s arrival at Newcastle United in July was met with a huge backlash from a significant proportion of Magpies supporters. The Northumberland-born Toon fan was low on everyone’s wish list (if he even appeared on any wish lists!) for the St James’ Park hotseat and thousands took to social media to ridicule his appointment.… Keep Reading
Once Upon a Time in… Burnley: Why Sean Dyche is Football’s Answer to Quentin Tarantino
On Friday, I went to watch “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” with my girlfriend at the cinema. If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t care for spoilers, then I can promise that this article will reveal nothing of importance to the film… but I can also promise that that is exactly what a… Keep Reading
Marcus Rashford: Expectation, Reality and Hunting for Good Will
I was going to open this plea for sanity with a philosophical quote about the virtues of patience or something similarly clever, but why overcomplicate things when something simple would suffice? That’s the sort of thing that keeps getting Marcus Rashford in trouble isn’t it? Manchester United’s home-grown line leader continues to polarize opinion as… Keep Reading