Match of the Data

The best thing that ever happened to football   

A strategy memo definitely not found on the printer at Premier League HQ (because no one works in offices anymore or prints things out). But, if they did happen to have a Zoom call that they forgot to put the security settings on, what follows is a purely fictional account of a purely fictional presentation to a blue-sky thinking session by consultant Stu Richermore that might have been overheard by our crack investigative reporter Doug Out [is that good enough for the lawyers? - ed] … 

Saturday at 3pm

Joyful chaos (despite how it looks)

In many ways, normal services has resumed hasn’t it. A technology slip-up (our theory is that Michael Oliver didn’t have his watch set to vibrate), a fairly dour 0-0, a City (Kevin de Bruyne) masterclass and David Luiz playing as if controlled by a teenager wearing a headset, albeit a teenager wearing a headset that wasn’t plugged in to a console playing a game he or she had no idea how to play.

Things we learnt about the football during lockdown: a note to the reader of the future

The future, brought to you by Ask Jeeves

This can go one of two ways. In 80 years’ time, the reader of the future takes one look at this blog and is utterly baffled by talk of pandemics, lockdowns and The Queen’s Nose*. Or else said reader of the future becomes all at once furious, seething over the trivialities of a) having a blog and b) dealing only with pandemics, lockdowns and fondly remembering ‘90s TV shows that showcase Gary Mabbutt scoring a hat-trick.

It's Coming Back

GET AWAY FROM ME

Turns out we were mega-prescient, as usual, and were only a couple of days ahead of the government in declaring coronavirus to be completely over and looking forward to football coming home back now we can all just do whatever the hell we want without consequence.

The returning face of football

The new-look Old Trafford, post-covid-19

Well, it only took a pandemic that has seen more than half the world’s population on lockdown to get us out of semi-retirement. We’ve gone 10 weeks without football in the UK and so, in time honoured fashion, here we are with our two-penneth when every horse bolted weeks ago and all that’s left are the donkeys*, some onions, and the stable door smacking us in the balls. Even the horses with underlying health conditions have finished isolating and bolted. EVEN THIS METAPHOR HAS BOLTED.

Badges done. Time to change the football

"Fucking yeeeeeessssss!"

Last week we said we were off to get our badges from UEFA. We’ve got them now. And what an experience it was. For one, we now can’t move for cones and bibs at Spongers Towers. You can't even get in the bogs without doing those daft jumps over those daft bars, and that's not solely down to the fact that 'the bogs' double up as 'the cupboard'.

When is the FA Cup not the FA Cup?

Apparently much more important than you'd previously thought 

It’s been much maligned over the course of the past few years as an inferior relation to the other, more popular, more rewarding versions on which it’s modelled, and for once we’re not talking about our Tinder accounts. 2016’s never-ending festival of football hoves into view this week with the League Cup semi-finals, which see Liverpool travel to Stoke and Manchester City to Everton.

Is it a Man City? Is it a Man U? No, it’s LEICESTER CITY

"40 points? Hahahahaha."

A situation that takes place during the course of a season always refers you to something else that has happened or is about to happen, and it is this something else that explains why we all keep coming back to football, no matter our distaste. When a certain someone talks of ‘betrayal’ – a word Shakespearean in its intent – we are reminded that this sport is at once ludicrous in the loftiness we attach to it, and absolutely worthy of the attachment.

Of Cakes and Handshakes

Yaya Toure in happier times

Just when you think football can’t possibly get any more ridiculous, along comes a story about a 31-year-old man being so upset about only getting a birthday cake from his employers that he’s prepared to jack in his £220,000 a week contract and leave. A grown man. A grown man who, for the record, is not only 31 years old, but earns £220,000 a week.

Falling for Football II: Fall Harder

A 'delightful book'

Another day, another extract from Falling for Football - and this time it's a bit we've actually written. Many thanks if you've already bought the book, told your friends, or tweeted about it - it's much appreciated. We officially launched on March 10th and the book is available in paperback at www.ockleybooks.co.uk and electronically at http://amzn.to/1i2yDOx. And if that doesn't tempt you, here's the introduction to the book:

It’s easy to talk of high water marks. It’s arguably more difficult to encapsulate what made a period of time so special.

When we decided to stop merely ranting about football in one of London’s many watering holes (usually a Sammy Smith’s) and commit fingers to keyboards in 2010, little did we know what a fantastic journey we were about to embark upon.

True Football Stories, Part 6: Championship Manager

When art doesn't imitate life in the slightest

Herculean achievements, long forgotten, make for perhaps the best stories. Here's Sam Macrory with an almost unbelievable tale...

The name of the manager wasn’t important. It wasn’t important when he was appointed. It was never a concern during his long reign in charge. And not once after he had gone did anyone take the time to rifle through an index to discover more about him. All that mattered was he had been the manager. The boss. The undisputed man in charge. The star signings, the manual-redefining formations and, of course, the endless trophies. They were halycon days. His days.

True Football Stories, Part 5: Stanley Bagshaw

This story DEFINITELY did happen

Everyone loves an unlikely adventure don't they. A caper. We welcome back semi-regular Dan Forman with one such remarkable story of a young lad from Huddersgate. 

When the editors first approached me about this series some time before the last World Cup, I had the idea of writing about a prodigious young boy who so mastered tactics and the transfer market on Championship Manager that he got a break at a professional club in the ultimate Moneyball-style experiment. But then Andre Villas Boas happened.

A (very selective) review of the year

Oh boy...

It was most refreshing to see 2013 become the year in which football finally started to move away from the hysteria over managerial movements, controversial on- and off-pitch incidents, minute scrutiny on even the tiniest perceived slight or indiscretion, ridiculous transfer fees and generally threatening to disappear forever up one of those particular proverbial arseholes at any given moment. EXCEPT THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN, DID IT.

The Premier League's REAL big two

'Jake f*cking WHO?'

It might feel a bit 'same shit, different year', but there are changes afoot for the ways in which pundits will be boring you to tears this season. And it might even be an improvement. Dan Clark looks forward to the return of the Premier League.

The scene is set: ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go’ will be heard from the comfort of my living room couch this weekend as the sun rises on yet another glorious new Premier League season. And of course this new 24/7/nine-month festival of football will all be delivered in crisp high definition with every angle covered, the best up-to-the-minute reaction and all the talking points covered. At least that’s the Sky Sports version.

Man, I've not heard anything about Jose Mourinho for a whi- OH WAIT

The quietest man in football

If anyone was in any doubt who the ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate’s favourite football manager is, doubt thee no longer. Suffice to say it’s not Harry Redknapp, not any more. Suffice it also to say that the manager in question is all too aware of his illustrious standing among the nation’s sport scribblers and doesn’t so much shy away from the limelight as pour some paraffin on his head, stick a fuse in his ear and run towards it making rude comments about its mother.

Never Mind The Bollocks

"Yes, I WILL be doing this every week."

Close season transfer speculation/gossip/bullshit, for me, reached its zenith in the (probably balmy) summer of 1996. When my peers and I were young enough not to know better and had yet to be infected by pessimism, especially as England had come desperately close to their first final of my lifetime until that ultimate of bastards Andreas Moller snatched away the dream in a way only a bastard of German heritage can.

ZE GERMANS ARE COMING

"More of the same lads."

A swing of David Beckham’s (RIP) right boot, a flash of Alan Shearer’s not-as-bald-or-boring-back-then forehead and that was that. England one goal, Germany no goals. GERMANY KEINE ZIELE! And so a delirious nation decamped from the pubs they were watching in to… erm, some more pubs to sing inappropriate songs about German aircraft and Lothar Matthäus’ parentage, celebrate England’s victory over the arch enemy and make bold predictions about the destination of the Euro 2000 trophy, before going home to re-enact the match on their brand new Playstation 2 (one for you there, research fans).

Through The Looking Glass

"The watch comes with the job son."

Mulleted bunder-inducer and Hannah Montana’s dad, aka Billy Ray Cyrus, may well have unwittingly (or otherwise) foretold the average Manchester United fan’s reaction to the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson with his 1992 smash hit ‘Achey Breaky Heart’. Not so much with the lines ‘you can tell my arms to go back to the farm’, of course, but with the iconic chorus. Because it seems to me that, understandably, there’s a numbness and something of a denial, certainly afflicting United fans of my age (rapidly approaching 30) who have known nothing but a Fergie-filled world.

The Award's In The Bag

"By my calculations, we are only about £100m away..."

This week, Roberto Mancini moved into what was surely an unassailable position as front-runner for manager of the season and overwhelming favourite for best manager in England.

Mancini’s plucky Manchester City, second place in the Premier League and a mere 16 spots and 34 points above the trapdoor relegation zone, defeated Champions-elect Manchester United, an achievement matched (as indicated by Mancini before the game) by precisely no team ever before, with the exception of Everton, Spurs and Norwich earlier in the season. An award hasn’t been this sewn up since Lionel Messi stitched the Ballon d’Or to his face in 2009.

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

'I may well have peaked.'

 

Two men. Two very different career paths. Here's Spongers regular Dan Forman on a talent who may not have been as wasted as most would lead you to believe.

Nicolas Anelka? Under the beanie hat, is that you on the bench at Celtic Park? I thought you were in China? I thought your career was effectively over, notwithstanding the still-very-large pay cheque. But now you're back? At Juventus? In the Champions League big time live on ITV. How had I missed this news? In my personal fantasy football career I am Nicolas Anelka. And I had thought my personal fantasy football career was over too - because it never contained any kind of pay cheque.