by Steve Graves | Apr 30, 2012 | Footie
LAST week the media fell back in love with Chelsea, lauding the Stamford Bridge side for their landmark dethroning of Barcelona. It’s hard to see what all the fuss was about, really – after all, it was only a repeat of their efforts in 2009, when a 1-0 win at the...
by Steve Graves | Apr 23, 2012 | Footie
This is a low. A league campaign falling apart around our ears, Champions League qualification a long-forgotten dream, the club’s director of football sacked days before a cup semi-final. And yet. And yet… And yet there’s an odd kind of optimism...
by Steve Graves | Apr 11, 2012 | Footie
Most Liverpool fans agree the coming summer will be our most important since, well, the last one. The break between seasons will be a test of many things and many people at the club, from owners to management to playing staff. It’s inconceivable that there will not be...
by Steve Graves | Apr 8, 2012 | Footie
An affection for a rival club’s player can be a worrying, unsettling feeling. We’re not talking about a dalliance with a lower-league cult hero or an obsession with Napoli’s latest languid heartthrob here. This is riskier – a penchant for a...
by Steve Graves | Mar 29, 2012 | Footie
The life of the top-level professional footballer today is almost uniquely privileged, yet also strikingly banal. Clubs, sponsors, agents and often players themselves conspire to create a perma-bubble force field around the stars of the game to keep them as detached...
by Steve Graves | Mar 15, 2012 | Footie
Wednesday’s Champions League meeting between Chelsea and Napoli encapsulated everything that’s great about the competition. A clash of styles and cultures, a seesaw dynamic crafted by the two-legged system and some technically superb goals. Floodlit theatre of the...
by Steve Graves | Mar 7, 2012 | Footie
14 May 1988, Wembley Stadium The final whistle blows. Bobby Gould and Don Howe leap from the bench and embrace. Wimbledon, against all reasonable expectations, have won the FA Cup. In fact it’s a false start (or finish), referee Brian Hill having actually whistled for...
by Steve Graves | Feb 20, 2012 | Footie
I DOUBT I’m alone in feeling not just delight at Liverpool’s comfortable FA Cup win over Brighton, but a certain measure of relief. For the first time in months it felt like the game was free from subtext, that Liverpool’s number 7 was a footballer...
by Steve Graves | Feb 17, 2012 | Footie
SOME football websites exist purely to create controversy. Shock value is their currency, getting a rise out of a group of fans considered a good day’s work in the minds of their creators and contributors. The Anfield Wrap is emphatically not among them. I’d be...
by Steve Graves | Feb 15, 2012 | Footie
HITACHI, Crown Paints, Candy, Carlsberg, Standard Chartered. Japanese electricals, paint, washing machines, beer, financial services. Which company’s product are you most likely to buy? Which is most likely to be found in a house in L4? Let’s try another....
