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TTU Go Predicting: A Club-by-Club League 2 Preview 2016-17
Accrington Stanley
Regardless of whether Accrington went up last year, their team was destined to be broken up, such was their quality. With Matty Crooks and Josh Windass having already signed pre-contract agreements in January to join Rangers, Stanley have since seen fellow starters Piero Mingoia, Tom Davies and Ross Etheridge leave for a trio of League 2 rivals, rendering their squad bereft of the sheen that turned so many …
Eamonn Dolan, 1967-2016
When I first met then Exeter City manager Eamonn Dolan he stopped our interview midway through to give tactical advise to a youth team player. “I knew he was heading off and I wouldn’t get to see him until after his game at the weekend.”
When I spoke to him about seven years later to get a quick bit of background on a Reading player for an article I …
Newcastle United are Going Down but Looking Up
Saturday 7th May. A leisurely, idyllic afternoon spent at the open-air thermal spa-heated pool at our campsite in southern Tuscany. The skies, which had been cloudless and brilliantly blue for days, gradually turned first a bruised purple and then a stunning near-black. And then — just as news filtered through that Newcastle could only muster a 0—0 draw at Villa while Sunderland had twice come from behind to beat …
Another set of half-baked proposals from the Football League
Two summers ago, I stood on the stoop of a pub in Oxford and was interviewed over the telephone by the We Are Going Up podcast about the proposals to introduce reserve teams of Premier League clubs into the Football League.
Met with a volley of outbursts and snorts as it was, the idea was given short shrift in most quarters (aside from Mark Warburton — a man who …
The Argument: Is There Too Much Football on TV?
When did being a football fan start to feel like such hard work? It’s not that there’s more football in the world than there used to be. What’s changed is the availability and exposure of it all. Anybody with the right sort of television package, mobile phone contract or internet connection should never go more than 24 hours without a game to watch. Live football dominates the sports channels’ …