WHERE to start. The match at Wembley has destroyed my week and my life. The pain is too much to bear. I rarely go out these days. I can’t communicate with my family and friends are becoming fading memories. This is all since Sunday tea-time. And then I realise there’s...
THERE are moments when we doubt Wembley. Like when they needlessly play semi-finals there. Like when we sense the smugness in its association with a national side we feel little affinity with. In these moments, Wembley, you seem so very far away. Then there’s the...
THESE are the moments. Let’s not deny it to ourselves. Why the game got us. Why we became locked into its ways and wiles. We’re always in it for the prizes. Scaling peaks is what sport is all about. Don’t decry any summit. A challenge is a challenge. We have risen to...
IT will be a bit of a shame to lose Villa. The away trip, not the team. It’s an old-school red brick football factory — and one of the last of its kind. Handily, it’s in the middle of the UK and is an unambiguous there-and-back-in-a-day away job. No...
AND the rain will come down. We’re going to Leicester. We will drive into the wet and windy night for the Reds. It is all about Leicester. And we won’t get home ’til tomorrow. And we are doing it all for Leicester. Not for City. For what the Reds must do. The...
IT’S replaced the cliched “come-and-get-me plea” — the Instagram like of a picture of the Liver Building. The tweet that has a picture of a man wearing a red hat. The Facebook post with a link to an image of some ace-looking new Adidas trabs....
SUNNY days. Shades of yellow. Shades of green. Greg Downs. John and Kevin. Bonds their name. Jan Molby’s debut. Fashanu’s goal. Fashanu’s game. Ronnie Whelan’s goal. Ruel Fox. In a white suit. In a disco. In the 1980s. Flashback snapshots. Hazy recalls of Norwich when...
THIS Liverpool team still feels like a bit of a stranger. Our sides usually reveal themselves in a few familiar guises. Time tested shapes. The balance between good, bad and average, just so. A compelling midfielder here, a top goalscorer there. A rock at the back, a...
THE death of hope. The January-February requiem for a season. So often the case. The ground hog campaign. It’s a very familiar cycle. August’s boundless optimism, yielding to September’s anxiety, making way to an October-November of expectation ebb...
WEST Ham are having a very ‘West Ham-my’ season aren’t they? They’re eighth in the league. They’ve more or less stopped winning matches (one win in their last nine). They’ve had some big results and some shockers. Their season reaches its usual January...
