War and Pearce

The results are in. The Root and Branch is officially over and luckily for Magic Spongers, it has achieved absolutely fuck all. Stuart Pearce gave us a glimpse into the future of English football at the very top level on Sunday. And it is marvellous, we have to say. "When you have reached pass number five, punt it long. You will then not see the ball for two minutes. In this time, show passion and pride; the Bulldog Spirit if you will. Get ball back. Repeat".

The Barcelona way of playing is, of course, impossible to replicate. That's why Juan Mata and Javi Martinez, of Valencia and Athletic Bilbao respectively, looked so much like their English counterpa... oh.

The English Patience

You can’t hear it in the car park. You poke your head around the door to the club shop, but nothing. Through the sliding glass doors and into reception, you can’t hear it. Going up the stairs and into the bowels of the stadium, slowly a dull thudding starts to play on the eardrums. Along the corridor, it’s now clearly in earshot. Past the gym and along to the manager’s office, a repeating bang-bang-bang, of forehead on wood, is clearly audible. Through the door and the manager is sitting there, Premier League scout opposite, looking exasperated.

“I don’t understand”, the manager says. “He’s a kid who’s hardly ever played for the national team, who’s never played in the Champions League, who doesn’t have any medals, who’s never moved clubs so has no sell-on clauses and who hasn’t played 100 club games in his career yet. And he’s worth MORE than £10m?” “But boss”, the scout says, exhaling with the air of a man about to attempt to explain the finer points of physics to an intellectually reticent monkey – this isn’t going to make sense, but it’s fundamental truth – “he’s English.”

Managerial Merry-Go-Round

Silly season is here again, says Drew Kearns. But it's not just the players taking the bloody piss...

June 2nd 2011. Remember this date when you pull on that new replica shirt in August as it was the day silly season started this year. With Mark ‘Sparky’ Hughes resigning/leaving/quitting/gardening/not renewing his contract at Fulham, the bi-annual merry-go round begins. January flirts with the idea of mass movement in the world of football, but even with the introduction of the winter transfer window it doesn’t hold a yellow ticker to the beast that is the summer months - a barren wasteland for all football fans where rumour, gossip and inaccuracies grow like wildflowers.