Author: John McGee
TTU Go Predicting: A Club-by-Club League 1 Preview 2014-5
When asked by the esteemed editors of this site to compile a preview to the League One season I had to first humbly remind them that my own team, Carlisle United, were cruelly and indignantly relegated to League Two at the end of last year. There followed a degree of brow furrowing consternation before an uttered agreement that ‘I’d do’. Whether that’s true, I suppose, rests in my summary …
Reflecting on Relationship Between Britpop and Football
Unless you’ve been hiding under a stone for the past month you’ll have noticed the media, and in particular the BBC, working itself into a frenzy over the 20th anniversary of ‘Britpop’. To many this level of nostalgia for a musical movement which was, if anything, merely the collection of a handful of zeitgeist wresting retrograde magpies sticks in the craw. ‘Britpop’ wasn’t a cohesive genre, less still a …
Hull City: Mes que un Club, Mes que un Juego?
I blame Barcelona. Barcelona and Bill Shankly. ‘Mes que un club?’
But what if that club isn’t more than a club? What if they aren’t a great bastion of Catalan nationalism, the collective klaxon of an embattled inner city working class, a cultural front against Francoism, a buzzing wave of souls embodying a Socialist ideal?
What if they’re just Watford? Or Newport County? Or Hull?
It doesn’t matter any more. …
Football and the Benefits of Immigration
The eminent economist Jonathan Portes, Director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, likes to cite two examples in attempting to convince audiences of the merits of free movement of labour. The first is his own field — economics — where collaboration between academics trained within country traditions has produced the field’s most innovative work, and seen real international powerhouses established in the UK, the USA and …
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 …