It is now almost seven years since Uniteds Sheffield and West Ham faced up to one another on the football pitch, the Blades gaining something of a pyrrhic victory over the Hammers with Michael Tonge described in one unmentionable daily newspaper as having turned in a performance of ‘supernova intensity’ – hard to believe given that gentleman’s typically languid style. At that point, the match seemed little more than a battle between two famous old clubs with nothing but the natural disdain of Yorkshire folk for the capital to wedge between them. A month later, however, and all hell let…
All posts tagged West Ham
Back in the Ex-USSR: Former Soviet Nationals in the Football League
Amid the relentless cacophony of last Friday’s transfer deadline day, Radio Five Live’s needlessly exhaustive coverage did include an interesting discussion on the whys and wherefores of signing players from the former Soviet Union in the light of Liverpool’s failed bid to take Yevhen Konoplyanka to the club from Dnipro. Examples were given of underperformers from the one time Russian orbit with Martin Keown contrasting Oleh Luzhnyi’s ‘OK’ performances in an Arsenal shirt to that of the beast of a player who had had Marc Overmars running backwards during a Champions League tie against Dynamo Kyiv and the mystifying failure…
Leyton Orient are Top at Christmas, but the Olympic Stadium Spectre Looms Large
As 2013 draws to a close, one club for whom it has been, on the surface, a quite ridiculously good year have been Leyton Orient, so man opposing fans’ second favourite team and a club whom we covered after a recent visit to Brisbane Road a month or so back. Now, Andy Brown, who will be familiar to many of you as @OrientMeatPie on twitter (and we can vouch personally for the splendidness of said victuals) takes a look at the current state of play in the East End while urging caution when it comes to off field manoeuvrings. … It has…
Have Football’s Boo Boys Gone Too Far?
It may have taken half an hour of the hors d’oeuvre clash between Porto and Napoli, but the largely partisan home crowd at Arsenal’s showpiece season opening ‘Emirates Cup’ have finally found a reason to become animated. Often noted for their quiet approach to both triumph and despair, the patrons of Ashburton Grove have laid to one side their sang froid and sputtered into a chorus of boos. The object of their derision, as is often the case, was so recently the object of their affection – Gonzalo Higuain, the striker spirited from Madrid to Southern Italy from under the…
Steve: "This pattern of local, long-term ownership was widespread, for a very...
The Scratching Shed: Good post. There's no question football clubs have to be better protec...
Lanterne Rouge: Cellino and Pigeon Detectives? Good grief. Recalls his fellow countrym...
JD: It's long been my maxim that once you sell out to a crook, the only wa...
Robbie Leslie: A very penetrating and thoughtful piece. Looks like we can lay the bla...
