Author: Lanterne Rouge
Back in the Ex-USSR: Former Soviet Nationals in the Football League
Amid the relentless cacophony of last Friday’s transfer deadline day, Radio Five Live’s needlessly exhaustive coverage did include an interesting discussion on the whys and wherefores of signing players from the former Soviet Union in the light of Liverpool’s failed bid to take Yevhen Konoplyanka to the club from Dnipro.
Examples were given of underperformers from the one time Russian orbit with Martin Keown contrasting Oleh Luzhnyi’s ‘OK’ performances …
Eye Witness Assessment: Blackpool’s Alarming Slide
Although Blackpool almost suffered an equal fate to that of their fellow Lancastrians Bolton on visiting Reading on Tuesday night, the tone and manner of defeat was quite different.
Don’t misunderstand me, this was wretched from the Tangerines – an almost hopeless lack of quality exposed cruelly by the new directness Nigel Adkins has instilled recently – the team simply blown away by the home team’s marked superiority.
But …
Leicester City have the Championship Points Record in Their Sights
One hundred and six, one hundred and six. We’ve got the record, one hundred and six - so Reading supporters are known to proclaim – to general bemusement from opposing fans, it must be said. After all, setting new bests in a league which isn’t actually the best is perhaps not all that much to shout about.
But that greatest ever Championship side from 2005-6, the individual components of …
Book Review: Grobar: Partizan Pleasure, Pain and Paranoia
Grobar: Partizan Pleasure, Pain and Paranoia by James Moor
Published by Pitch Publishing
2013, £12.99
The season long memoir has become a favoured format in the world of football writing in recent times and its apogee came with Tim Parks’ widely admired A Season with Verona. This new book from James Moor adopts the approach to cover one year in the life of Serbian giants Partizan Belgrade, admitting …
Eye Witness Assessment: Bolton Wanderers are in Intensive Care
Amir Khan would be proud. As double whammies go, fans of Bolton Wanderers have been on the receiving end of two sledgehammers this January.
First, after several years of heavy punishment on the financial front, the latest body blow landed as the club’s parent company Burnden Leisure Limited announced a new high for its debt of £163.8 million.
Then, following a mini-recovery and an encouraging 1-1 draw with …