The Monday Profile: James Collins

Posted by on Aug 15, 2011 in The Monday Profile | No Comments
Following my side’s two successive relegation seasons after a decent stretch in the Championship, I’ve now reached the point at which I’m struggling to recognise opposition players. Hell, I’m even having trouble with our own.It’s only been two years since those halcyon days when I was accustomed to seeing the same faces and was able to build up personal beef with individuals (since you ask, I never had much time …

The Monday Profile: Kenny Miller

Posted by on Aug 8, 2011 in The Monday Profile | 2 Comments
Seeing Kenny Miller pounce with alacrity on Rudy Gestede’s cut back at Upton Park yesterday, despite the fact that the pass was a little behind him, reminded me of the dangers of writing off seasoned strikers. A couple of weeks ago, I was told to don my tin hat by esteemed Oval Log blogger Stefan Bienkowski after suggesting that Miller was “a poor man’s Craig Bellamy” and if it’s unlikely

The Monday Profile: Taiwo Atieno

Posted by on Jul 25, 2011 in The Monday Profile | No Comments

One of the curiosities of African football has been the relatively undistinguished performance of national teams from the east side of the continent. Ethiopia and Sudan may have won continental titles in 1962 and 1970 but that was before the era when most countries participated, and the cultural and ethnic make up of those states is quite different from the the cluster of countries that tends to be referred to

The Monday Profile: Zander Diamond

Posted by on Jul 18, 2011 in The Monday Profile | No Comments

Scouring Scotland for players has its hazards of course. Remember Craig Levein’s unhappy spell at Leicester and Tommy Burns’ at Reading? James McFadden, Barry Ferguson and others were quasi megastars in the goldfish bowl, only to act the part of “any other player” down south - sometimes even less than that, as was the case with Kris Boyd and the majority of his Middlesbrough cohorts after the implosion of Gordon …

The Monday Profile: Kevin Nolan

Posted by on Jun 20, 2011 in The Monday Profile | 2 Comments

Throughout a decade of parks football, the singular most irritating action I saw repeated time and again was the re-emergence of a dominant opponent at one’s own club’s lower level, having seemingly bidden goodbye to him the season before when his club won the league.

Being “a winner” is a state often eulogised in our game, but is it fair to eschew Billy Ocean tendencies and give up the “Going”

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