Tag: premier league

Andrew Cole: the defining Manchester United years

Football songs seemed to reach a peak in the 1990s. At the start of the decade came Italia 90, which spoilt us with Luciano Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma and World in Motion by…

The flight of the Magpies: star strikers and broken wings

ENGLISH TEAMS ARE OFTEN CRITICISED FOR THE LACK OF A SOLID GAME-PLAN. There’s sometimes a dearth of continuity caused by the constant culling of managers, leading to confusion as players have to…

The demise of Scottish managers and brighter times ahead

FIFTY OF SO YEARS AGO, the Galapagos Giant Tortoise was a species on the brink of extinction. Human expansion, destruction of indigenous land to make way for agriculture and an amount of…

What Xabi Alonso meant to me: the Liverpool years

Xabi Alonso’s retirement from football has loomed large for some time, but it’s only now that the end of his playing career has arrived, that the reality has sunk in for me.…

Peter Crouch: the most unlikely member of the 100 club

All logic dictates that Peter Crouch should not have had a particularly successful career. That is not to say he lacks talent – as the old and tired maxim goes, “he’s got…

Jimmy Bullard: laughing all the way to the top

Football is a serious business – don’t let anybody fool you into thinking otherwise. Even without touching upon the desperate and very real need for vindication felt by those sat watching nervously…