All posts tagged Uncategorized

Book Review: Where’s your Caravan?

Where’s your Caravan?
By Chris Hargreaves, Published by The Friday Project,
August 2011, £8.99, ISBN: 9780007364145

What next for a lower league footballer upon retirement? A simple enough premise, but too few biographies have tackled the theme with any distinction, so Chris Hargreaves’ recent release, which engages throughout with the realities and emotions of signing off from one’s playing days, is a welcome addition.

An unravelling set of new …

Wycombe in a league of their own

Well done to Wycombe for signing up to the Government Charter for Action to stamp out homophobia and transphobia, the first football club to do so. Admittedly the Charter is rather woolly, a set of four vague pledges with no concrete targets or deadlines, but the sentiment is key, and Wanderers’ stated commitment laudable.

Of course, the news begs a critical question. Why, given that the Charter …

Which of Southampton’s players will step up?

Earlier this year, we analysed then Championship Queen’s Park Rangers in order to guess which of their stars might successfully negotiate the jump in standard once promotion was secured. Of course much of that thinking has been rendered moot by a squad overhaul that has left many of last year’s heroes either elsewhere or out of the team, although there is an argument that Alejandro Faurlin has confirmed …

EPPP exposes Football League impotence

Anyone who takes even a passing interest in the Football League, let alone obsessives like us, will be aware of Thursday’s vote to approve the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP). For those of you who remain unaware aware of its details, the EPPP can be summarized either, by its cheerleaders, as a blueprint for the improvement of the England national XI or, by its detractors, as …

Path Dependence at Derby County

In comparison to the club’s 1970s heyday, the past twenty years have been tough on Derby County - the club experiencing a slow backsliding into quarters of the lower leagues largely uncharted by the mainstream press. But, where success has been achieved, it has often been at the least expected moments.The wallet waving of the Lionel Pickering years proved to be barren ones for the club and it was …