2019-01-01 09:15
Mark Murphy takes his personal look back at as many of the lows and lowers of football’s 2018 that he could remember before 2019 began.A ‘new’ En-ger-lund?The ‘new&rs&hell…Read More
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A blog about the World Cup. Clicky to read my incoherent rants about insane Mexicans, the dreadful England team and Clive Tydlesley.
2018-12-30 15:29
The last twelve months have been especially difficult for the news media. Incomes which were already in decline seem to now be falling off a cliff, whilst nobody has truly found a way of suc… Read More
2018-12-24 09:50
The very highest end of the professional game in England is currently riven through with local derbies. Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City forming one triad of mutual dislike a… Read More
2018-12-22 08:43
Pity the supporters of Fulham, a trip to Newcastle United pushed upon them three days before Christmas with their team at the bottom of the Premier League for a match which may go some way t… Read More
2018-12-21 21:02
I live, it’s reasonable to say, a fairly busy life. I work around fifty to fifty-five hours a week, have two young children and try to keep on top of this place, including recording a… Read More
2018-12-19 20:34
Occasionally, football and politics are inextricably linked. Ex-Bahraini international Hakeem Al-Araibi is an on-and-on-going example, the victim of some bizarre international ‘co-oper… Read More
2018-12-18 15:00
For this week’s 200% podcast, we’re joined by the author Daniel Gray to talk about his new book, Black Boots & Football Pinks, as well as the value of nostalgia in modern foo… Read More
2018-12-18 08:11
In the immediate afterglow of a particularly tumultuous match, our critical faculties aren’t necessarily as sharp as they might otherwise be. We get swayed by the result, emotionally p… Read More
2018-12-16 15:24
The compare and contrast is obvious. On the one hand, there’s All Or Nothing, Amazon’s peer behind the curtains at Manchester City. Opinion remains divided over whether it’… Read More
2018-12-15 11:18
This morning, we introduce another series of Match Of The Past. Every Saturday morning, we’ll bring you a match from the archives that corresponds with one of this weekend’s fix… Read More
2018-12-14 20:58
When he first signed for Manchester United as an apprentice at Easter 1958, Phil Chisnall probably didn’t give a great deal of thought to Liverpool Football Club. His new club was stil… Read More
2018-12-13 15:49
Thirty years ago this month, John Barnwell left Meadow Lane after an unsuccessful eighteen months trying on the shoes of his predecessor, Notts County legend Jimmy Sirrel. He was replaced as… Read More
2018-12-12 07:27
If those connected with the club are to be believed, everything is set to turn out fine for Billericay Town. Glenn Tamplin may no longer be involved with the club, but they are repurposing t… Read More
2018-12-11 18:02
This week on the 200% podcast our topic of conversation is Swindon Town, a football club which has had more than its fair share of ups and downs in recent years. In the interests of research… Read More
2018-12-11 08:05
In some respects, the entirety of the racist abuse hurled at Raheem Sterling and the reaction was simultaneously surprising and completely unsurprising. Given the current socio-political cli… Read More
2018-12-10 12:29
Football, it can often feel, has an almost unique capacity to disappoint and frustrate. Bolton Wanderers supporters travelling south-east to Norfolk for their match against Championship lead… Read More
2018-12-08 08:47
Well, friends, after 25 episodes it’s time for The Saturday Movie Club to close its shutters. There are only so many curios out there, so it’s time to change tack. This means tha… Read More
2018-12-07 12:55
In his 2007 autobiography “Ollie”, Ian Holloway described the atmosphere in the Wimbledon changing room towards him after he joined the club from Bristol Rovers in 1985. At that… Read More
2018-12-05 20:42
I was drunk when I thought I must have misheard the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) plans to replace the Martin O’Neill/Roy Keane dream/nightmare national management team.I was m… Read More
2018-12-04 20:50
It may be difficult to believe from the title, but this week’s podcast is on the subject of Matthew Le Tissier. Mr Southampton. More than five hundred appearances, and more than two hu… Read More
2018-12-02 20:28
l, BeforeI’ve been a Tottenham Hotspur supporter for forty years, now. It’s a polite but distant relationship. I spent the first five years of my life in a flat behind the Angel… Read More
2018-12-01 08:00
David Vine had, in some respects, a most curious career. He got his first job in television in 1961 with Westward Television in Plymouth, but in 1966 he also joined BBC2 without the knowledg… Read More
2018-11-30 13:11
It was always likely that Sol Campbell’s first managerial appointment would be accompanied by a cacophony of media noise. The former England defender’s outspokenness about the fa… Read More
2018-11-29 13:17
There were two matches played last night between former champions of Europe. In Eindhoven, Barcelona continued their predictably stately glide towards the latter stages of the Champions Leag… Read More
2018-11-28 08:08
On Saturday 28th April 2019, Coventry City are due to host Shrewsbury Town in a League One match at the Ricoh Arena. There is, of course, every chance that they may well have a home play-off… Read More
2018-11-27 17:31
We had to have a week off last Tuesday, but we’re back this afternoon with our 141st podcast and this week the subject is style over substance. Is winning with trophies more important… Read More
2018-11-25 18:54
It’s a seductive image, in its own way. From the perspective of a dour European, numbed by the creeping corporotisation of the game in this particular part of the world, the smoke bomb… Read More
2018-11-20 13:18
The pervasiveness of “the market” into our lives can feel all-consuming at times, but there can be little doubt that, once a commodity has been fully commercialised, its value ca… Read More
2018-11-19 17:34
Upon the blowing of the full-time whistle at Wembley yesterday afternoon, the England players hugged and celebrated. True enough, there are greater achievements in international football tha… Read More
2018-11-16 21:09
For a second, you’re fooled. A team wanders past in an Arsenal kit, and you wonder whether this might not be as per the DVD box. Then you start to realise the other shirts, the state o… Read More
2018-11-16 08:01
Sometimes, your perception of somebody can get stuck on a loop and become outdated. I tend to think of the public attitude towards Wayne Rooney in this respect. Somewhere in our collective s… Read More
2018-11-15 10:01
So, the “poppy season” and the wearing mass-debate about (not) wearing poppies is over for a… few weeks.Of course, a poppy “season” defies logic; a commemorati… Read More
2018-11-14 13:58
So farewell then, Richard Scudamore. It’s difficult to judge the record of a man who has been in a position that is by its very nature divisive by any other means than looking at… Read More
2018-11-13 11:59
This week’s 200% podcast is dedicated to the anti-heroes and shithouses amongst us. From the “stoppers” of the 1960s and 1970s through to the masters of the dark arts of th… Read More
2018-11-13 07:21
Say “Fifa corruption” and, if they don’t suddenly remember a prior engagement, people will almost certainly think: May 2015, the US Department of Justice indictment and arr… Read More
2018-11-12 12:14
Supporters of Football League clubs awoke to a bit of a shock this morning, with The Sun reporting that sixteen clubs from the Football League Championship are threatening to break from the… Read More
2018-11-10 09:33
It is a difficult time to feel terribly romantic about Brazilian football, considering recent political events there, not to mention public support for a far-right politician from some high… Read More
2018-11-08 19:31
As visual metaphors go, it couldn’t have been starker or more savage. A week ago on Monday, when Tottenham Hotspur played Manchester City, the star of the evening was the Wembley pitch… Read More
2018-11-06 19:35
This week’s 200% podcast is club-specific. In 1991, Nottingham Forest were one of the top division’s more experienced names. They’d just made the FA Cup final, had won the… Read More
2018-11-05 18:40
The early 1980s were a panicky time in English football. Attendances had been falling for some time and there didn’t seem to be anything happening that was going to arrest this trend… Read More
2018-11-03 12:28
Perhaps this, then, is how it ends. Farewell, football as we knew it. You grew almost as organically as might be possible in an imperfect world, but it was probably always inevitable that it… Read More
2018-11-03 08:59
I was twenty-one years old, in January 1994. Pretty close to the middle of the target audience for Fantasy Football League to start on BBC2. And in a sense, I found the premise interesting … Read More
2018-11-02 19:20
Football has changed considerably over the last few decades and it will continue to do so. This new series for Fridays here on 200% marks the passing of football as it was, kicking off with… Read More
2018-10-31 18:09
Regular readers will know that I have a greater respect for ex-players-turned pundits in Gaelic football and hurling than association football’s equivalents.Gaelic Games have a higher… Read More
2018-10-31 12:38
It’s funny, how these things come in cycles. In 1999, Barrow AFC were liquidated and demoted from the Football Conference to the Northern Premier League. In 2009, Chester City were rel… Read More
2018-10-30 16:15
It was barely remarked upon at the time, but Charlton Athletic’s reaching the League One play-offs at the end of last season was probably a more significant achievement than many gave… Read More
2018-10-30 13:54
This week’s 200% podcast moves on to the world of the silver screen. Football and the movies have a long and not especially distinguished history, but why should this be? Can scripted… Read More
2018-10-29 11:05
As Leicester City laid siege to West Ham United’s goal during Saturday afternoon’s Premier League match at the King Lower Stadium, my 200% podcast colleague Edward Carter turned… Read More
2018-10-28 19:54
It was never quite home to the supporters of the club, but it was the best that they could manage at the time. When Brighton & Hove Albion lost The Goldstone Ground in 1997 and moved to… Read More
2018-10-27 08:51
So, I watched an episode of 30 for 30 called The Opposition prior to watching this, about the 1973 coup d’etat in Chile, the mass murder of political opponents by Augusto Pinochet and… Read More
2018-10-26 07:47
The notion of what constitutes a “crisis” within a football club is, of course, relative. For the megaclubs, secure in the knowledge that the money will always flow and trophies… Read More
2018-10-25 17:40
It looks like being another tight season in the Football League Championship. After last night’s results, there are just ten points between top of the table Leeds United and Bolton Wan… Read More
2018-10-24 12:07
This season marks the twentieth anniversary of Manchester United’s greatest ever season, which ended in unspeakable drama at the Camp Nou when, from out of nowhere, Alex Ferguson&rsquo&hell…Read More
2018-10-23 22:22
In the end, they found themselves before the government. The long-standing wrangle between Dulwich Hamlet and Meadow Residential LLP, the American company who came to own their Champion Hill… Read More
2018-10-23 16:42
This week’s 200% podcast sees the soccer bag smile very kindly upon us indeed. In this week’s episode, we try to imagine that as of today. this very minute, Jose Mourinho is fire… Read More
2018-10-22 16:52
When a deal was signed to bring regular highlights from the Football League to a television audience, the chairmen of some clubs were less than happy at the development. They believed that i… Read More
2018-10-21 10:13
The last time that we stopped by at National League North club Nuneaton Borough, at the very end of last season, its future seemed to be in limbo. The owner, Lee Thorn, had put the club and… Read More
2018-10-20 07:13
If the ushering in of the Premier League in the summer of 1992 also involved the sweeping of a broom through some of football’s dustier corners at the same time, there were perhaps no… Read More
2018-10-19 16:06
Keith Houchen occupies a very special place in the history of the FA Cup for his diving header for Coventry City in the 1987 final against Tottenham Hotspur. It’s a much-repeated goal… Read More
2018-10-18 12:00
Some things never change. When the original Wembley Stadium was built in 1922, the site chosen was that of Watkin’s Folly. The completion of the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1889 set off a… Read More
2018-10-17 18:26
I recently posed this question on Facebook: “This whole “UFC” stuff. It’s an absolute abomination, isn’t it?”I got no response, a silence which I have opt… Read More
2018-10-17 12:26
Intercontinental club football has never quite taken off to the full extent that some might wish that it would. Since the advent of air flight it has been possible for clubs to travel greate… Read More
2018-10-16 13:39
Edward is back from his holidays this week, so our subnormal service returns this week with free-kicks. Whether they’re stroked with delicacy into the very top corner of a goal or thum… Read More
2018-10-15 12:26
Football in the media in the UK was, for many years, a stultifying experience. On the television, there were only a small number of matches shown live throughout the course of an average sea… Read More
2018-10-14 19:33
It was on this weekend last year that I took my elder son Dylan to his first football match. He had no interest in the game, of course, but he did have an interest in eating chips and drinki… Read More
2018-10-13 07:55
With the international break upon us, this weekend sees the return of Non-league Day, that one day per season when, with a clear schedule across much of the Premier League and Football Leagu… Read More
2018-10-12 10:45
My club, Kingstonian (Ks), won the FA Trophy, at “the old” Wembley Stadium, in 1999 and 2000, a fact which looks more remarkable with each passing season, as the Ks ply their nom… Read More
2018-10-11 12:04
It has become one of the truisms of recent times to suggest that relegation doesn’t mean automatic promotion back the following season. Repeatedly over the course of the last couple of… Read More
2018-10-10 16:25
There’s a different voice introducing this week’s 200% podcast. Edward is sunning himself in the south of Italy this week, so I was very fortunate to have football writer Steven… Read More
2018-10-09 17:00
It’s Non-League Day on Saturday, so the game below the Football League is taking centre-place here on 200% ahead of this weekend’s round of matches. Football is a far broader chu… Read More
2018-10-07 17:28
It’s now been one hundred and thirty years since the Football League was founded, and we tend to look upon the modern game as having some degree of meritocracy about it. True enough, t… Read More
2018-10-06 12:42
The Children’s Film Foundation was very much a product of its time. It was founded in 1951, two years after the proposal of what became known as the Eavy Levy by the then secretary of… Read More
2018-10-05 19:00
It frequently feels these days as though there is no news story that can’t – or won’t – be made more depressing by the reaction to it. It’s taken a while to fil… Read More
2018-10-04 19:20
So…when Scotland’s Football Association (SFA) drew across-the-board criticism for their disciplinary procedures, Scotland’s Professional Football League (SPFL), and its (t… Read More
2018-10-03 06:20
This week’s 200% podcast asks the vital question of who would make up our dream football punditry panel. Will there be space for Glenn Hoddle? (Spoiler alert: no.) Can we invoke the sp… Read More
2018-10-02 07:12
Der Spiegel has a reputation to protect. The left-leaning, weekly political magazine has, after all, a long history of uncovering misconduct and malpractice within German political life. In… Read More
2018-09-29 08:52
“Old Ron Martin had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm there was f**k all…”Essex and England opening batsman and ex-captain Alastair Cook retired from test match cricket… Read More
2018-09-26 07:39
In a tweet sent last week, the question was asked of which players we’d all select to make up winning a five-a-side team from situation comedy characters. We went with this over there… Read More
2018-09-22 10:33
To paraphrase Shirley Bassey, “if there’s a wrong way to do it, a right way to screw it up, nobody does it like…the Scottish Football Association (SFA).”This week&rs&hell…Read More
2018-09-19 07:19
This week’s 200% podcast is on the subject of referees. There have been studies which have confirmed that for a human being, with its puny bag of flesh body with all of its limitations… Read More
2018-09-15 09:49
It’s been five and a half years now since Aldershot Town became the last Football League club to be pushed into administration. Considering how many clubs have done so since the game&r&hell…Read More
2018-09-12 08:08
This week’s 200% podcast turns our attention to the concept of a “Holy Trinity.” Manchester United had one between 1963 and 1973, but could only turn the talents of three o… Read More
2018-09-09 13:59
The 130th anniversary of the first weekend of the Football League came on a weekend interrupted by an international break. Such is the nature of Modern Football. The world’s oldest foo… Read More
2018-09-05 17:33
I am ancient enough to remember the last team to win four All-Ireland senior football championships in-a-row.Kerry beat Offaly in 1981, about as comfortably as their seven-point winning marg… Read More
2018-09-05 06:28
The latest 200% podcast takes another trip down memory lane, and this week we’re straight in with John Barnes. The former Watford and Liverpool winger was one of the finest of his era… Read More
2018-09-04 15:58
Contemporary social media behaviours, such as ‘whataboutery’ and ‘false equivalence,’ may have been brought into widespread public consciousness by United States pres… Read More
2018-09-02 07:50
We’re all growing older, and the past increasingly feels like a foreign country. For those of us in our forties, the world in which grew up broadly doesn’t exist any more, and mu… Read More
2018-08-31 07:58
It would have been “so 2018” if Galway’s Joe Canning had pointed his long-range, last-seconds free in Sunday’s All-Ireland Hurling Final, to complete the mother of al… Read More
2018-08-29 11:17
Time, then, for this week’s podcast. Following on from my hiking japes the week before last, my last couple of days have been characterised by a virus that came and went thankfully qui… Read More
2018-08-25 09:42
With four games of the Championship season played, Queens Park Rangers sit at the bottom of the table with no points, having scored just two goals and having conceded thirteen. This morning… Read More
2018-08-21 19:27
It may be a day late, but this week’s 200% podcast is finally upon us, and this week our jumping off point for discussion is the transfer of John McMinn from Hibernian to Aston Villa… Read More
2018-08-20 18:10
And then there were four. Dublin and Tyrone in football’s 2nd September final, Limerick and Galway in hurling’s 19th August final.Last weekend, Galway were still in with a shot a… Read More
2018-08-11 08:40
Bradford, Hillsborough, Heysel. Chapocoense, Il Grande Torino, The Busby Babes. The history of football is pock-marked with tragedy off the pitch, and perhaps the worst of all came at the Es… Read More
2018-08-10 06:46
Good morning, podfans. It feels as though it has been a long time, but we’re back and ready to go for the new season with a bumper podcast previewing the new season across the Premier… Read More
2018-08-09 16:03
Ireland’s Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is undergoing increasing scrutiny for its nationalist trappings, flying the Irish ‘tricolor’ flag and playing/singing the nation… Read More
2018-08-09 06:16
And then there were five. Dublin, Monaghan, Tyrone in the football. Limerick in the hurling. Galway in both. Just.Last weekend nearly ended both Galway’s hopes, though. They again prov… Read More
2018-08-03 17:17
The bunting has been swept into a bag for next time. The acrid smell of beer thrown into the air in celebration has been washed away. The last couple of weeks have felt like footballing noma… Read More
2018-08-01 16:40
The Gaelic Football got good, the other week. Hurling’s response? “Hold my beer.”There should be a commemorative DVD of this year’s Munster provincial hurling champio… Read More
2018-08-01 16:29
Modern football nationality is complex. And the World Cup brought many of those complexities to the fore.Switzerland’s Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri irritated Serbians with the Koso… Read More
2018-07-29 09:04
Gaelic Football’s ‘Super-8s’ took one weekend to become ‘much-maligned.’ But Sunday’s games were so good that I thought I was watching the hurling.The ups… Read More
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