The End is Nigh. Match preview: Leicester City v Atletico Madrid

"10% possession lads. That's all"

It’s not very often that Life throws us a bone here at Spongers HQ, probably because if that hateful bastard did decide to throw one at us it’d somehow break all our windows just as we’d agreed to sell Spongers HQ based on its incredible windows. That’s the kind of relationship we have – Life is generally only interested in building us up to tear us down.

The Runs #4: Macclesfield Town and the Ince Effect

"HOW MANY defeats?"

Over to Spongers' own Rob MacDonald, who couldn't even manage to stick to the blueprint and just write about one run.

The joy in supporting a team that seldom achieves is rarely the accolades or silver pots. It’s the sublime and often accidental skill, the flashes of inspiration amid the darkness and brutality of potato patch pitches and lower league football; the fleeting moments when the impossible dream seems almost possible.

Reflections On The First Day Of The Season: Part Two

'If only I'd won those first eight games'

Disclaimer: This isn't really about the first day of the season. Rob went off-message. That's just how we roll.

It’s always nice to see football back. It’s always nice to feel the flush of expectation on the first day, whether it’s over the fact that York might get promoted, Macc might finish somewhere that doesn’t end in ‘teenth’ or relegation and life will stop shitting on us long enough to let one, just ONE, of the £680 accumulators we routinely put on actually come in.

Richard Butcher 1981-2011

There seems something particularly unfair about the fact that, after the Football League’s most romantic of weekends – the Third Round of the FA Cup – tragedy should strike one of its smallest clubs for the second time in less than a year.

O Come All Ye Platefuls

Like people in all walks of life, footballers come in different shapes and sizes. If you wanted to classify them into types, you can normally stretch to something amounting to ‘nippy winger’, ‘commanding centre-back’, ‘powerful striker’ and ‘midfield terrier’. All are valid classifications. One other type though, is a bit more cult than all the others, inspiring affection and comedy in equal degree. At this festive time of indulgence, and given the evisceration of Levante’s Sergio Ballesteros on Twitter, we tip our caps to the ‘fat lad’ – a man who in Magic Spongers terms, is just as much brilliant shiny apples as he is stupid smelly onions.

The League of Extraordinary Inconsistency

Just over a week ago, Macclesfield were 2-0 down at home to Oxford United and the referee had just blown for half time. About an hour later, they were celebrating a 3-2 win. Just over a week later, by contrast, the Silkmen were on the receiving end of a defeat – an abject one at that – in arguably the most winnable of their recent fixtures, away at Barnet.

Barnet had lost their last two matches, while Macc were playing well on the road. A lot of people point to Saturday’s result being indicative of the competitiveness of League Two – an argument often extended to lower league football, where there are no bankrolled behemoths and for some reason, spending big is just as likely to guarantee you a 10-point deduction as it is a promotion.

Macc For Good

Five years ago, Macclesfield drilled Stockport 6-0 at Moss Rose. They finished near the bottom of the league, despite contesting a playoff semi-final the season before. With the most recent Cheshire derby yielding a very different outcome – and Macc failing to finish much higher in all the seasons since – Kat Norris highlights the tribulations of supporting perennial underachievers.

Moving On Up

Stevenage celebrate promotion

Watching Macclesfield play at Stevenage last weekend I was struck by a couple of things. The first was that it is very difficult to achieve things in a game of football (like attacking) when the ball spends seven minutes of every ten either in the air or out of play. The other was that it was almost universally agreed before kick-off that the sides promoted from the Conference, Stevenage and Oxford, would ‘do well this year’, with the only justification being that ‘promoted teams always do well’.

A 2-2 draw for the Silkmen was received well by most of the Macclesfield faithful. An 89th minute equaliser was hard to swallow, but again, the opinion prevailed that we would have taken a point before the game. Even Gary Simpson, speaking after the match, reckoned that, “We battled hard away from home against a side who I still believe will be one of the front runners this season.”