Blog Archives
The Football Shake-Up Q&A, Part Three
What measure, if any, could taken at the top of our game (Fifa/UEFA/The FA) to help prevent clubs falling into financial difficulty?
The Football Shake-Up: Plymouth Argyle & financial crisis in the lower leagues
The Football Shake-Up series will be taking a look at our beloved game and the problems it faces today. We will be discussing ways to improve the lot of the fans, the clubs, competitions and much, much more. If you’d like to contribute to the series, please get in touch. What would you change about the way football is run to make it better?
Since May of this year, Plymouth Argyle Football Club has been in administration. With debts of £17m and players and staff unpaid in nearly nine-months, talks of a strike have been confirmed by manager Peter Reid as the search for a new owner of the 125 year old club have stalled.
UEFA Champions League Group-Stage Draw 2011/12
UEFA Champions League Group-Stage Draw 2011/12
To see who the English are up against, who defending champions Barca have drawn and where minnows Otelul Galati will travel to for the trip of a lifetime, have a look here!
Take the bone from this dog
“People who love soft methods and hate iniquity forget… that reform consists in taking a bone from a dog.”
- John Jay Chapman
As Sepp Blatter settles into his fourth term as President of the FIFA Family, we have in recent weeks seen an outpouring of opprobrium toward the increasingly sinister and opaque world of international football governance. As more and more members of the so-called Executive Committee are linked to corruption charges, the average football fan is left wondering, if not the ineffectual national associations such as the FA, nor the wider federations such as Michel Platini’s obsequious UEFA, nor the pocket lining overlords in Zurich, who exactly is looking after our beloved game?
The answer, quite simply, is no-one. Unless of course you count those long-neglected, put upon and persecuted people, us, the fans.
Sir Barinold Winston-Smythe on… Le Pen, Lennon and the LSE
Sectarianism in the small village of Glasgow. Fascism in the former colony of France. Children of warmongering despots engaging in the tutelage of England’s future finest. A ruddy disgrace in the opinion of this simple travelling nobleman. During one’s travels athwart the globe, the pleasure to meet abhorrent blatherers espousing their preposterous manifestoes and ridiculous policies has proven a regularly commonplace travail. Many a whisky has been supped, heavily digesting the sordid opinions of those thankfully unable to act upon their twitching prejudices – we of course, always provided the stiff back, the stern frown and solid handshake of English disapproval and these transgressors would know, Her Majesty’s Royal Union looked determinedly down upon such outrage.
Sir Barinold Winston-Smythe on… World Cup TV rights
Today has been a day immeasurable in the usual realms of victory. Today our principles have been rewarded, our sensibilities realised, our determination proven just. All the while we were sticking it to Messrs Platini and Blatter at the same time. A good day.
