Our latest entry in the Hopeless Teams series comes from Stefan Swift, co-editor of that hip Brighton fanzine The Seagull Love Review. Following his sidekick Sam Swaffield’s excellent assessment of Brighton’s current season over on the 72, Stef considers an unhappier time for Albion supporters when, less than four years ago, a club legend well and truly blotted his Seagulls copybook. The prodigal son was announced as the new manager of Brighton and Hove Albion in the summer of 2008. It was a momentous occasion. The return of Micky Adams marked the beginning of a Brave New World. The return…
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Hopeless Football League Teams 7: Doncaster Rovers, 1997-98
In Matt’s previous house there was a photo on the wall. It was of himself, sat on the grass, legs crossed, head bowed beneath his baseball cap. The picture was taken at Belle Vue as Doncaster Rovers took on Hull City. The date, Saturday 4th April 1998. The time, just after ten past three. The piece of grass on which Matt was sitting, the centre-spot. This was just one of many stand-out images from Doncaster Rovers’ 1997-98 season. That afternoon, if Rovers failed to win, the inevitability of relegation would become a reality. And so with knowledge that the press…
Hopeless Football League Teams 5: Chester City, 2008-9
For the fifth in our Hopeless Teams series, we delve back relatively recently into the past by welcoming Richard Bellis. Richard co-runs Richard and Neil’s Football Blog with his brother Neil and was the proud recipient of a nomination in the recent NOPA football blogging awards run by Picklive. 2011, however, largely saw Richard and Neil occupy themselves with the production and dissemination of The Blue & White Fanzine, a new print publication mainly devoted to the reformed Chester FC: a luscious object designed by our own Michael Kinlan and featuring contributions from TTUers William Abbs and myself. Here, Richard looks…
Hopeless Football League Teams 4: Sheffield Wednesday, 2002-3
Given the uncanny coincidence that artworks with the same title scooped the NME Album of the Year and Palme d’Or Awards in 2003, it’s appropriate that one of the blogosphere’s finest polymath’s should contribute the fourth in our fledgling series of hopeless teams. For Chris Ledger is none other than the brains behind Obscure Music and Football, a site with a sometimes unhealthy predilection for Salad (the band that is), the musical career of one Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne and the witticisms of everyone’s favourite xenophobe, Steve Claridge. Here, Chris looks back on one particularly rotten Sheffield Wednesday shower and Lord knows he had…
Hopeless Football League Teams 3: Birmingham City, 1993-94
The term ‘rollercoaster season’ is over-used – but Birmingham City’s 1993-94 campaign certainly deserved that label. The season started with high hopes, which quickly subsided, only to rise again, then fall once more, then rise a final time, before being dashed at the very death. But if it ultimately ended in disappointment, it was also a season which marked the beginning of a long overdue turnaround in Birmingham’s fortunes. For at the start of the 1990s, the club was at a very low ebb. Since the the mid-70s, a slow and steady malaise had set in at St Andrews, when…
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