Month: December 2006

Short of any thoughts of my own, I step aside for the master: I have worked out the real reason why England have — barring the . . . etc, etc — lost the Ashes and am prepared to name the real culprits. Stand up and be blamed, Ricky Ponting, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne. It’s…

Not everyone at the BBC, or shortly to be at the BBC, is entirely ignorant of the kind of sacrifice and dedication required to make something of a sporting career. This person, for example. I’ll tell you who they are at the end of the post, but see if you can second-guess me from excerpts…

Thanks are due to Jonathan Derbyshire (in comments) for corrections to this post. Not forgotten by fans of the teams concerned! but it’s interesting, in the light of the English dominance of European club football between 1977 and 1985 to take a look at what happened immediately prior to that period. Throw in Celtic and…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MedYXgmGlLc]

The same line of thought as the previous post – I just wanted to ram home how reluctant/uninterested the English are when it comes to taking the kind of action that would produce international success. Would we be discussing our level of skill – or our need to improve it – if we weren’t falling…

Rumours are going around that Steve McClaren has said that English players are not as skilful as their foreign opponents. I say rumours, because I’ve been unable to locate a primary source for this, so let’s just use it to start the discussion. At any given point in time, there are English players who are…

Here, from that huge new Manchester United book that only the Glazers can afford, is a top 50 Manchester United players of all time: Manchester United Opus: Top 50 Players of All Time: Sir Bobby Charlton, George Best, Roy Keane, Duncan Edwards, Denis Law, Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona, Peter Schmeichel, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Wayne…

Yesterday, McClaren was in the company of Walter Smith, Laurie Sanchez and John Toshack at the launch of a road safety scheme, and took the opportunity to hand down some clues as to where he sees England going. Regular readers will know my own feelings on the matter – that we are about to embark…

It’s impossible not to feel sympathy with Alan Pardew, sacked by West Ham yesterday. It was never a comfortable berth for this talented manager, and with the exception of a short period last season when his side were playing the best football outside the top four, he has had to live with calls for his…

Courtesy of Mark Holland, here’s a link to a comparatively lengthy clip of a 1913 Tyneside Derby. The quality of the film is abysmal, of course, and the camera angles spectacularly unhelpful if you want to get much idea of what’s going on. But there’s enough there to suggest three things about the game of…