Once upon a time, the PFA Awards were the undisputed measure of a season’s most valuable players. Voted for by the Professionals themselves, the response to their announcement was one of awed hush and consent – how could mere onlookers presume to know better than those involved in the rough and tumble of the actual sport? But the saccharin, sentimental and simply silly award of the 2009 Players’ Player award to Ryan Giggs changed all that. In one fell swoop, footballers were shown to be as susceptible to a bit of old fashioned press lobbying as the rest of us….
All posts tagged Barnsley
The Monday Profile: Kallum Higginbotham
For our profile this week, we welcome back Craig Telfer, author of a deservedly well received post recently identifying those players in Scotland who might attract the attention of NPower League Clubs in the coming months. Craig runs his own blog dedicated to Stenhousemuir FC, Who the hell is Akabusi? and here turns his attention to a former SFL man already plying his trade south of Hadrian’s Wall, but finding opportunities difficult to come by. These are uncertain times for Huddersfield Town’s new forward Kallum Higginbotham. Once one of the most coveted players in Scottish football, the 22-year-old has found…
The Cost of going to Football: a possible solution
The success of Starbucks, Costa and Caffè Nero in recent years underlines perhaps more than anything Britain’s ignorance as a coffee appreciative nation and football fans forced to once again imbibe another watery latte at staging posts along our motorways and railways lines will count this as yet another among a host of less than satisfying aspects of the away trip. Service station architecture may have been eulogised in some quarters but Tebay services’ scooping of an Egon Ronay’s British Academy of Gastronomes’ Grand Prix award in 2009 is the exception rather than a rule. Herded like cattle into these box like…
The Monday Profile: Ricardo Vaz Tê
Bloated Premier League squads need ballast and amid the burnt ends of Match of the Day episodes, the fleeting few minutes of highlights from the KC, Molineux or DW Stadiums have been notable for their late cameos from players unfamiliar – your Henrik Pedersens, Okelsandr Yevtushoks and Itzhak Zohars – the men you feel yourself reaching for the Rothman’s successor volume to run the rule over, or, laptop on knees, Wikipedia. For over half a decade, one such gentleman was Ricardo Vaz Tê. ‘He looked decent when he came on’ became a mantra as the former Portugal under-21 international strutted his stuff…
Book Review: Confessions of a Football Reporter
Confessions of a Football Reporter …another Biggs at Large By Alan Biggs, Published by Vertical Editions, August 2011, £12.99, ISBN: 9781904091516 In the second of three book reviews we should be publishing this week, we welcome back Ian Rands of A United View on Football. Ian was lucky enough recently to secure an interview with football journalist Alan Biggs – the BBC’s go-to guy for South Yorkshire football for many years. From my perspective, Biggs is comparable with the likes of Jimmy Armfield as a purveyor of a brand of warm spirited, genuinely interested reportage – a tradition that seems to be slowly in decline in the…
James: Are the wealthy middle classes really the ones to back a football team...
Lanterne Rouge: Garath McCleary on signing for Reading today:
"It's amazing to be a...
Lloyd: On the Oxford / Reading thing, Lanterne, you write that "there is no c...
Ben: Yes, it does loom a bit, doesn't it? Moxey's comments on the ground re...
