Friday 29 April 2011

MAN UP

Here @ it's a football thing we have had enough of these cheating diving time wasting over paid players that are ruining the game we love! 


You never saw the likes of Best, Pele, Moore, Greaves, Eusebio roll around on the ground hoping that the opposition player would get a red card! It's got to stop! 


So for all you Nani's, Drogba's & Ronaldo's out there its time to MAN UP!

Thursday 28 April 2011

The ultimate Cult Hero from the 90's



The 90's have long gone, the likes of James, Giggs and Owen are on their last legs! The magical Euro 96 memories are starting to fade! Gazza's wonder goal against Scotland was 15 years ago now!


From Famous F.A Cup victories, to Double winning sides, sponsorship deals, the Adidas predator and of course United winning the treble, the 90's can only be looked back on with fondness for the true football fan. 


But one player from that generation seems to get a hell of a lot of stick from neutral fans.... even though he went on to play for England over 50 times!  that man is of course Des Walker! 


Walker was unlucky as a kid, after not making the grade @ Spurs, he was left to play sunday league for his local team but little did he know that a certain Brian Clough had been tipped off about his talents as a defender. During the early 80's Clough took Walker under his wing and advised the young kid every step of the way. In 84 Walker made his debut for Forest. It didn't take long for Desmond to nail down his place in the side. During his time @ Forest Walker played over 350 games winning 2 league cups. 


Desmond fact: During Italia 90 Walker started all of them seven  games in which England played... who out of the neutrals knew that?!


So why does Walker get so much stick from neutral fans? A short stint in Italian football might have something do with it, Sampdoria never saw the best of Walker as a result he was soon shipped back to England with big spending Sheffield Wednesday. During his 8 years @ Hillsborough Walker went on to play over 300 games and captain the team for many of them games. Walker only left Hillsborough due to the clubs financial state. 


Walker rarely missed matches but was often criticised for his inconsistent distribution. Defensively he was probably one of the best markers and timers of the tackle of all time, and incurred a remarkably low amount of bookings during the first 10 years of his career despite his often dispossessing opponents with some crunching sliding tackles from all directions. Despite not being the tallest centre-half, boy he knew how to leap! He was able to beat the tallest forwards in the air and his pace meant even the quickest and most skillful forwards very rarely got any change from him.



At the height of his career, Forest and Owls fans frequently chanted "You'll never beat Des Walker." This was turned into "You'll never meet Des Walker" as a private joke among journalists, commenting on Walker's refusal to talk to the press at this point.





Tuesday 19 April 2011

PFA PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Is it a bird, is it a plane..... it's Mr Gareth Bale!



After a slow start to his Spurs career, Bale has shown moments of pure magic this season and is finally living up to all the hype surrounding him when he first moved to the Lane.

Some Pie & Mash performances through out the season, washed down with some important cups of tea have helped Bale claim the PFA Player of the year award.

Classic

Sunday 17 April 2011

It's The Midweeker

The midweekers just got back from a fun day @ Wembley! 

Mixing it with the Stoke fans after their famous 5-0 thumping of Bolton! A pub crawl around North East London then a cheeky stop off @ his adopted 'local' Pie & Mash shop! Before he boarded the train @ Liverpool Street and headed home for a cup of tea and a reflection on the days events, what a life the it's a football thing pundit leads! 

After a look through the midweek fixtures The Midweeker has given us his predictions earlier than expected for the week ahead *Which makes a change! 


"On occasions I have been big headed. I think most people are when they get in the limelight. I call myself Big Head just to remind myself not to be."

Think you know better? feel free to let The Midweeker know!  


Monday 11 April 2011

You know you're an Old Skool Football Fan when..........

Modern Football is a bit rubbish, a bunch of prima donnas prancing about the pitch earning £100,000 a week, no player loyalty, the television coverage may be better but we're now over saturated with the game and the pundits analyse the game to within an inch of it's life.Players spend more time on the front pages of the newspapers with stories of drunken nights out and affairs than on the back pages where they truly belong. Modern times do make us cynical, but I'm an old skool football fan and the following will help you find out if you are too.


On The Pitch

  1. You remember when Ray Wilkins had the middle name of "Butch", not sure why, but he did. Maybe it was an ironic nickname? Maybe he's anything but butch in private? His nickname after last week's Champions League Quarter Final is of course now Ray "Stay on your feet" Wilkins.
  2. Players could pass back to their own 'keeper and he could pick it up, wonder around his own area for about half an hour before finally deciding to kick it up the field straight to his opposite number in the away goal. Classic football!
  3. Moustaches on footballers, back then they were proud to show their maleness through their facial hair, nowadays it's all bum fluff and shaven eyebrows.Barton he may not bring a lot to the world of football but he did try and bring the 'tache back this season........bless him.
At The Ground
  1. Standing at football. Just think, there are experiences at football that the youth of today will never experience again at the top level. One of those was being crammed in like sardines on the terraces, getting to know your fellow supporters a little too intimately sometimes and have someone piss in your pocket.
On the Box
  1. Saint n' Greasvie, two names that will mean very little to the young football supporters of today. But they were the Morecambe & Wise of the punditry world.....ok maybe that's pushing it, more like the Cannon & Ball! But with coverage of football and cameras right up the player's noses (Wayne Rooney) don't you wish we could go back to the more simpler days of analysis? "He stuck out his leg and there it was on the back of the net", "Over the Moon" "Sick as a parrot". We've all watched the game, do we need to still be discussing it from every imaginable angle four hours later?
  2. FA Cup Finals were better in the late Seventies early Eighties that is a fact. But so was the coverage, the day was always sunny and it was on both ITV & the BBC so you had the choice of Brian Moore or John Motson. The coverage seemed to start at breakfast time and TV had full access to the teams, even on the coach! But more than most efforts Sky can throw at us these days, it was entertaining.
  3. Following your team home and away if you couldn't go was much more of a challenge. The majority of households have Sky today and Jeff Stelling and the boys have become a staple for the armchair fan on a Saturday afternoon. But when you were younger following your team and getting news on all the actions took a bit more effort and imagination. Grandstand & World of Sport with Dickie Davies would give you a half time and full time round up, but other than that you were pretty much in the dark as to the progress of your team television wise. The other options were to listen in on the radio, provided you could get a decent signal of course and as long as they were covering your game or for the die hard fan there was ceefax, it was kind of like one of those old computer adventure games, with your thumb hovering over the refresh button waiting for the scoreline to change in your favour. But that was as old Roy Castle used to say dedication!
Away from The Game
  1. For your weekly fix of footballing news, when the back pages had too many words and not enough pictures Shoot & Match were the schoolboy magazines of choice (apart from the ones you found in bushes over the park!) they offered all the latest gossip from your heroes as well as full page pull outs of your favourite teams in all their pre-season group photo glory. At the start of the season Shoot also gave away those league ladders things that no one ever kept up with and actually used....
2. Got, got, got...........NEED!! The familiar playground cry as your mate thumbed his way through your wad of Panini stickers that you didn't NEED!! yourself. Collecting football stickers was up there with conkers, knock down ginger & British bulldog as a favourite pastime in those hazy lazy days of childhood. When we were younger the footballing world was a smaller place and the latest packet of Espana '82 stickers offered a treasure trove of shiny club badges or new players with unpronounceable names and amazing facial hair from exotic named places like Algeria, Iran and Wales.....
Some of those stickers were like the equivalent of Willie Wonka's Golden Ticket and that was where the wheeling n dealing in the playground came into play although by just looking on ebay it seems that not every kid got into the spirit of things as you can get yourself a full set of unused Espana '82 stickers for over three hundred quid...........you can bet it was the smelly kid with the lazy eye who never actually filled his book.


So Modern football = rubbish or possibly I've got my rose coloured spectacles on again?
What are your favourite football related memories of growing up?


  
"You are the ref "was another staple of schoolboy magazines and they've recently been updated. The answer to number 2 is, if it's Gary Neville getting punched in the face you either hold him down so he can be hit or join in!

Saturday 2 April 2011

Won't Get Fooled Again?

So yesterday it was that time of year when everyone's a "prankster", you awake bleary eyed after one to many down the The Dog Inn  (our local hostelry) to be confronted by newspapers and TV channels spouting dubious nonsense that for the rest of the year we wouldn't have a problem believing, Ronaldo being sold to Spain? Fulham player's performing the moonwalk as a goal celebration in memory of the chairman's mate Wacko Jacko? West Ham & Spurs ground sharing the Olympic stadium? In the office The Midweeker had more tricks up his sleeve than Paul Daniels, from exploding fags to plastic vomit that nearly saw poor Edison recreate one of his own. But sometimes as we've discovered the truth is far more interesting than fiction....

  More than meats the eye....

With transfer fees already rocketing even back as far as 2006 maybe this is the way forward for football? Romania defender Marius Cioara was transferred for 15kg of sausages between Romanian Fourth Division teams UT Arad & Regal Hornia, to make matters worse after get fed up with too many sausage related jokes he retired from football the very next day and became a farmer in Spain! UT Arad demanded their sausages back and left Regal Hornia without meals for their team for the day.....
Meanwhile back in 2002 Norwegian striker Kenneth Kristensen was sold by league rivals Vindbjart to Floey for his own weight in shrimps!
Although maybe not food related it is sometimes the norm in this country when a non league player signs onto a league team, Ian Wright went from Greenwich Borough to Crystal Palace for a set of weights, while tracksuits or kits seem to be the main form of currency with Zat Knight, Tony Cascarino, Gary Pallister & John Barnes all being exchanged for some kits, ball and netting!

                                           Thank you & good Knighton

Those fans of a certain age will remember the scenes at Old Trafford before the first game of the '89/90 season against Arsenal, some moustached goon in full training gear ran onto the pitch during the pre-match warm up, did a few keepy ups, waved at the fans & volleyed the ball into the empty net. This wasn't one of those cheeky scallies who'd somehow blagged their way onto the hallowed turf though (see Karl Power for that), this was Michael Knighton. Knighton had agreed a deal with then Chief Executive Martin Edwards to buy Man U for £20 million pounds and had promised to take the club back to the as yet rediscovered Glory Days. Whether he had the money or not was debatable but apparently the investors he did have pulled out and the deal never came to fruition. He could be dismissed as a fame seeking charlatan with a dream of scoring at the Stretford End (which he did) and the team & kit man certainly got a shock when he appeared in the dressing room pre-game and asked for a kit, but he did go onto buy United albeit of the Carlisle variety. Still a bit of a cult hero and for that day only he had the Manchester Utd faithful in the palm of his hands. In a world of "what if's" had the takeover been successful we wouldn't have even heard of the Glazer family.
                                               
Football Crazy

  • Other "you couldn't make it up" moments came courtesy of (amongst others) mad Chelsea owner Ken Bates who introduced electric fencing to Stamford Bridge back in 1985 after it's success on his farm controlling his cattle, the planned move was rejected by the GLC and the Bradford City stadium fire finally put paid to Bates crazy plans.
  • During the World Cup of 1930 with the USA team being roughed up by the Argentinians during one game,  the American  trainer ran onto the pitch to have a go at the ref, throwing his medical bag to the floor so hard that it broke open a bottle of chloroform and knocked him spark out!
  • Leroy Rosenior surely became the shortest serving manager in English Football when he took over at Torquay Utd in 2007, he lasted all of 10 minutes, the club was on the verge of a take over at the time and with the new owners in place their chose instead to go for Paul Buckle as the Gaffer!
  • Back in the '70s of a Saturday Evening we'd settle down to watch highlights of the day's First Division football with the help of long chinned pundit Jimmy Hill, but during one game at which the ex-Coventry chairman was a mere spectator the linesman was unable to take his flag due to a calf injury, with this being before the advent of fourth officials the call went out for a qualified referee. Up stepped Hill who after changing into a track suit proceeded to run the line for the whole game! Imagine Andy Gray or Alan Hansen doing that......
  • The geordie joker Gazza's infamous antics included, arriving at a Hampstead Pub an hour after playing for England still dressed in full kit ( including boots). Booking a series of sun bed sessions for black Newcastle team mate Tony Cunningham. During Italia '90 he was often found playing tennis out in the scorching midday sun, once got on a double decker bus in London asked the driver if he could have a go & promptly drove it down Oxford Street while still full of passengers and  finally while an apprentice at Newcastle Utd took home Kevin Keegan's boots to show his mates & ended up losing them on the underground!

I hope you like that way that I've not included in the above the facts that both Micheal Ricketts & David NugentNugent even scored! See I said the truth is stranger than fiction!

What would your most insane footballing moment be? Have you been caught out by any football related pranks? Let's us know! and with the footballing world becoming more and more bizarre as the weeks go by, be sure to keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter and here on our blog with all the news made up or otherwise.......