We’ve covered the second tier’s January transfer window winners - now for the losers…Nottingham ForestThe Tricky Trees may be routinely sweeping aside the opposition with the sort of free-flowing football any neutral fan would be happy to pay good money to see (or at least they were until Saturday’s defeat by - of all teams - Derby), but there’s a potential fly in the ointment: the thinness of their squad, particularly by comparison with their main promotion rivals ourselves and West Brom. Should the second half of the season bring injuries and loss of form, as it surely must, they…
All posts tagged Peterborough
The Thursday Preview: Crystal Palace Vs Peterborough
I speculated in December as to what odds you could get on a Championship club entering administration this season and, less than two months later, it’s all kicked off at Palace after murky creditors Agilo Ltd, a Cayman Islands-registered company, got the administrators involved. The Eagles were, along with Watford, the subject of that post but while Lord Ashcroft came to the rescue of the Hornets before Christmas, there was to be no last minute reprieve here, despite a rumoured last minute intervention by Ron Noades. The former Palace Chairman spoke smarmily on Sky Sports News about the situation yesterday…
Plot strands coming together
As we have hinted at in our new series Championship Letters, the resemblance between a league season and a great work of literature is marked, and the form with which the easiest parallels can be drawn is the long, winding novel, full of unexpected developments and richly portrayed characters. Bearing this in mind, the events of Tuesday January 26 would appear to constitute the beginning of the home straight for most “readers” of the second tier – it was a day pregnant with significant happenings and telling results and one can begin to see the varying strands of a complicated…
Transient Reputations
If the Championship could for one minute merely be likened to the surface of the world, as opposed to the entirety of the cosmos as Lloyd and I tend to view it, the rupture to its tectonic plates brought about by the crude sackings of Darren Ferguson and Alan Irvine has now been uneasily righted by their re-emergence at Preston and Sheffield Wednesday. Each had engineered a mini-renaissance at their previous clubs and for both Lilywhites and Posh, 2009 will be seen as a folkloric year.Granted, Preston’s tame surrender in the play offs doesn’t compete with unbeaten league and cup…
Book Review: Big Fry
Big FryBy Barry Fry and Phil RostronPublished by Collins Willow2000, From 1p (Amazon), 978-0002-189491Barry Fry’s autobiography is now ten years old, but I thought it would be informative to return to it as a Nineties period piece - a time capsule shedding light on the wheeler-dealing of that decade and before. Old school managers like Harry Redknapp and Tony Pulis are currently undergoing a revival in esteem, but there are currently very few in the Championship, with perhaps only the former Master and Pupil Warnock-Blackwell combination properly fitting the description.Fry is honest about his lack of attention to detail, exceedingly…
Lanterne Rouge: 'Jarvo' has this to say: Cheers Rob. Little to add (other than that th...
Pigo: Thanks for the charitable Wolves nod at the end there, Olly. Been read...
Mike Roberts: Cracking article, but as a middle aged former skinhead I've got to poi...
