Football, we’re often told, has a morality problem. Players dive (if foreign) and go to ground too easily (if English). Players (foreign) wave imaginary cards. Fans sing offensive songs, abuse referees, name rape victims on social networks. God, everybody’s on them...
Problems. Jay-Z dealt with his by emphasising the positive. He’s a glass half-full kind of guy. Notorious B.I.G. was more downbeat, seeing the kind of causal link between the accumulation of capital and the emergence of personal challenges with which Rosie Redknapp,...
By Ben Thornley WHEN Howard Webb failed to point to the spot after Andy Carroll had been hauled down in Stoke City’s penalty area on Saturday, Anfield’s inhabitants reacted with a blend of fury and astonishment. They should not have been surprised,...
Author’s note: This is not about Luis Suarez, or Liverpool, or the Football Association, or the rights and wrongs of the case which led to the striker being suspended for eight games and fined £40,000. Enough has been written on that subject by my peers and superiors...
UNBEATEN at home, safely through two rounds of the League Cup, Merseyside Derby winners and well within reach of fourth place. By any objective measure Liverpool are on the up, with the prospect of being three points off the top of the table after the coming weekend’s...
AMONG the seemingly positive phrases in football’s lexicon, ‘versatile’ is one many fans treat with trepidation. ‘Morale-boosting win’ is another – superficially good news but more pregnant with subtext than Demi Moore watching season four of The Wire. A...
By Phil Blundell STATISTICS. They’re a recent phenomenon in the game of football, and I’ll be honest, they drive me up the wall. Football is not a game suited, in general, by statistical analysis, and the new craze of associating any little statistic to back up some...
DIPPING in to Arsenal’s first-leg win over Udinese last week on Five Live, I was struck by a comment from co-commentator Lee Dixon. Praising some intervention or other on the part of Thomas Vermaelen, Dixon referred to the Belgian as a ‘centre-half’,...
JUSTICE can be delayed but not avoided, the truth hidden but never truly buried, the facts obfuscated but never fully erased. RESPONSIBILITY. It’s the word on everybody’s lips in response to the rioting which spread around the UK last week. Particularly keen on the R...
BARCA. These days we’re reading more and more on the subject of Barca. Guardiola this, and La Masia that – every trophy they add to the cabinet comes with fresh proclamations of their righteousness – it’s not only fashionable to do so,...
