IT WAS 23 JANUARY 2004 and Manchester United had finally got their man. Over £12 million was the eventual fee United paid Fulham for Louis Saha – brought in to lessen the…
Tag: premier league
ASK CHAIRMEN, MANAGERS AND FANS to provide their opinion on football agents (or intermediaries as they should now be called) and they will likely all return the same view, that they are…
Football, in a broader sense, is a sport of tug of war between the needs of many and the needs of one, even though they need not be mutually-exclusive all the time.…
‘Boring James Milner’: as nicknames go, it’s not the worst dished out in England over the last few decades. He could have been called Shrek, or likened to a vegetable. His style…
Back before the days of Twitter and smart phones, there was a time when I had a pager. A little rectangular thing with a monochrome display and no reply facility, it swiftly…
Javier Hernández had been in Madrid for almost eight months and had not contributed anything significant in his capacity as a striker for Real Madrid, the giants of world football. When the…
How Leicester City would fare in their inaugural Champions League campaign was one of the most intriguing aspects in the aftermath of the most Hollywood season English football has witnessed for years. Would…
The look on Nathan Dyer’s face said it all. With Leicester City captain Wes Morgan and manager Claudio Ranieri standing to his right, Premier League title lifted proudly above their heads, Dyer’s…
There’s an old saying that everything that can be interpreted can also, by design, be misinterpreted. Which camp the oft-besieged figure of striker Nicolas Anelka falls into is a matter of opinion.…
Few footballers carry themselves in the same way as Daniel Agger did. A legend at Liverpool and Brøndby, this is his story of what could have been
Momentarily paralysed, the familiar looking man in his mid-30s had to rely on the help of strangers to get home. This wasn’t a one-off occurrence. In extreme instances, an ambulance had to…
All eyes were drawn to Cristiano Ronaldo when the final whistle blew after 120 gruelling minutes. The injured captain burst into tears on the touchline as the emotion hit him. Portugal had…
On the southern fringes of Rotterdam’s eclectic centre, deposited between train tracks and the River Maas, Stadion Feyenoord encapsulates many of its city’s nuances. Better known by its moniker De Kuip (The…
SOMETIMES IN FOOTBALL, it’s difficult not to feel sorry for goalkeepers. Yes, in the modern game they may be protected species, but they’re still faced with the answerable putdown of having a…
When Sheikh Mansour sanctioned the purchase of Manchester City back in September 2008, many neutral supporters believed that the Arabian Deputy Prime Minister would leave the club soon after. That, however, was…
The Liverpool class of 1987/88, featuring Aldridge, Barnes and Beardsley, is rightly considered by many to have been the greatest English club side ever
It’s always hard if you’re seen as the sidekick in a successful partnership. Ricardo Carvalho has often had to play second fiddle to bigger names in the various teams he’s played for…
The meaning of Zlatan – ‘the golden one’ – has always revealed a lot about him, at least to those that admire the striker. If football numbers are any sort of indicator…