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 Carlisle
Moonlighting in a Blizzard while avoiding Two Footed Tackles with Rod
A quick pointer to some of the other activities which the denizens of The Two Unfortunates have been indulging in lately before we hunker down to the serious business of today’s league programme – myself at the Mad Stad and Lloyd at Sixfields. First, if you would relish an hour or so’s chat about the Football League, Lloyd made his debut on the most recent Two Footed Tackle podcast and the results can be enjoyed here. Joining Lloyd to talk about the League 2 promotion battle, the seeming financial clover of AFC Bournemouth and which sides may be joining us next year…
Football Fandom’s Blank Generation
In Blank Generation, Richard Hell’s notorious hymn to disaffected youth, the auteur claims himself a ‘cartoon long forsaken by the public eye’ – a totem for a column of society with nothing to say and no voice with which to say it. It gets to the very core of why ‘punk’ (the movement and the statements, not the often desperate excuse for music) formed and proved pertinent anthems for a section of that social grouping for whom God Save the Queen was less a call to arms and more the snot nosed outpourings of a confused loon from North London….
The Monday Profile: Ben Marshall
Flash back to the 31st of January 2010 – shot shy Carlisle United are desperate for an experienced front man to come in to help out the earnest pairing of Scott Dobie and Joe Anyinsah, the then still errant, gangling giraffe Gary Madine and the bunged-up blunderbuss Richard Offiong. By mid-morning the signing of a striker had been announced, in the form of 18 year old Stoke City man Ben Marshall, a youngster who’d had earlier spells with a pair of League Two Towns – Northampton and Cheltenham. To say the Cumbrian faithful were unimpressed would be to understate it….
MK Dons: ever so ‘umble
This hasn’t been a plum week in the history of MK Dons. Their dumping out of the cup at the hands of Premier League QPR on Tuesday night followed a weekend of sincere apology from all involved at the club after the farcical cancellation of their League One match with Carlisle. The game was the only weather casualty in the entirety of the professional game across England and Scotland – a mind blowing situation that owed much to bad planning and which was unbecoming for a stadium which was one the England 2018 bid’s chosen host venues. To their infinite…
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...
