Archive for the ‘League One’ Category

Top football celebrations ever

Posted: October 28, 2011 by onefootinthegame in Awards, Champions Leuage, Championship, Championship playoffs, England, FA Cup, International football, La Liga, League One
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After Super Mario’s ‘Why always me?’ T-shirt last week we then saw those crazy Scandinavia chaps trying to teach some pub team the fishing celebration and it got us thinking about celebrations. So many to choose from, impossible to order them. But here are some of our favourites:

Marco Tardelli, 1982 the passion of being the best in the world

The passion, the tears, the beating of the arms like king kong, the relief of months of stress.

Italy had taken a huge beating from the media pre tournament and had gone into media blackout. Rossi was back and misfiring in the early group stages where Italy drew their 3 games (sound familiar?). After beating Argentina and arguably the best Brazil side ever, Italy beat West Germany in the final. Tardelli eyes bulging lets off months of stress in what, in my opinion is the great celebration ever. Still makes the hairs stand up on end.

Honourable mention for Grosso Semi final 2006 too. Oh and the phenomenal pass from Pirlo.

Robbie Fowler lines it up…

Robbie Fowler in his pomp. Cheeky, bending over infront of Le Saux and banging them in for fun.

This celebration would probably lead to 4 weeks suspension and a sending off nowadays. Back then it was just great fun (this blog doesn’t promote drugs in any way).

Best bit about this celebration was that manager Gerard Houllier, suggested it might be a Cameroonian grass-eating celebration, picked up off team-mate Rigobert Song. Yeah…right.

1994 World Cup…Stand up (or knee down) Mr Finidi George.

The 1994 World Cup was full of great celebrations. Maradona (see below) and Bebeto’s now legendary baby swinging celebration (the baby that celebration played for the Brazil U17’s last month).

But our favourite was Finidi George, scores a goal for his country and then goes to the corner flag to urinate like a dog. Unbelievable stuff.

Henry’s arrogance

I didn’t like the vast majority of Henry’s celebrations, actually I hated them all. But something about this celebration was great.

About 35 yards out the referee is telling Henry to put the ball further back, after swinging in a fantastic goal he stands still, Ballotelli like and just asks (shouts) at the ref – is that enough? Is that enough.

Diego smacks it up

As mentioned above 1994 had so many great celebrations, this was probably one of the defining moments in Maradona’s footballing career.

After shedding weight and getting back into the team, Maradona picked up where he left off in 1990. Little did we know he was high on a cocktail of drugs.

The celebration was a hint though…

Sticking a flag in hell

Before he was a mild manners pundit Souness was not only a great player but also a less good manager. This celebration wasn’t after a goal he scored but after the Turkish Cup Final against the bitterest of bitter rivals Fenerbache.

Most people would want to get in, get the result and get out. Not Graeme. Souness decides that putting the Galatasary flag in the middle of Fenerbache’s pitch was the best way to play down the tension…Fantastic to watch though.

Gazza

So many Gazza celebrations, so little time that it could be a blog on their own (tweet us if you want to write it).

Here are our favourites:

Euro 1996

FA cup Semi Final

Lazio madness

But the most contraverisal…against Celtic because someone told him…Gazza celebrates with a loyalist gesture. Oh Gazza.

We’ve missed loads so get over it, but link your favourites below.

No relegation from the Premier League? On one condition…

Posted: October 17, 2011 by onefootinthegame in Championship, Championship playoffs, England, FIFA, League One, Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur
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EPLSo the end to relegation from the Premiership is back on the agenda again.

According to the head of the League Managers Association the idea has sprung from the owners of foreign owned clubs. They don’t want to see their investment threatened by the small matter of actually having to win football games. 


As the supporter of a club outside the Elysian fields of the Premiership my immediate reaction was to start frothing at the mouth and ranting about how football is disappearing up its own, Sky tattooed, arse, but then a thought occurred to me. Would this really be such a bad idea?

Obviously, if you left this up to the Premiership clubs it’d be a right stitch up. Fortunately the FA have to ratify the plan. So if I were the sitting in their headquarters in Soho Square I’d tell the Premiership they can have their permanent top division, only here’s how we’re going to determine the membership. 

First, the clubs who are promoted this season from the Championship via the automatic spots and playoffs will be members. It’s only fair. That’s the basis on which everyone started this season. 

Second, and here’s the radical bit, the rest of the Premiership would be determined by a lucky dip of the other 89 football league clubs. Except MK Dons that is, because they’re not a real football club anyway. 

I’m sure the Premiership clubs won’t like this plan. Mostly because there’s a bloody great chance they wont be in the division anymore. But that’s no argument as to why the historical quirks of fate which have resulted in the Premiership’s current incumbents should be set in stone. 

Because if we’re going to have to swallow a stale diet of top level football, we might as well freshen the whole thing up before we do it. 
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All hope abandon, ye who enter in?

Posted: May 12, 2011 by onefootinthegame in Cardiff, Cardiff City, Championship, Championship playoffs, League One, Players
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In the first part of his masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, Dante is accompanied by the Roman poet Virgil as he travels through the circles of hell where punishments fit the crimes of those cast below into Satan’s lair. I have no idea what fans of clubs who consistently have to compete in the playoffs have done in previous lives, but it must have been pretty bad to justify the psychological torture that they are forced to endure at this point of the season.

The playoff system is at once exciting, hopeful and cruel. For some it’s an exciting novelty, for others it’s the inevitable end to a season that promised much but failed to live up to expectations.

Though exciting for all concerned, the playoffs offer differing types of excitement. For neutral observers it’s the thrill of seeing teams put everything on the line with massive prizes up for grabs, not least in the Championship playoffs where a place in the promised land of the Premiership beckons. For fans of the clubs involved its like a mini cup run for teams that often don’t get to play in the latter stages of the cups, and a chance to potentially have a day in the sun at Wembley.

For the hopeful the playoffs can be a joy. Teams that have been on the outskirts of the playoffs for most of the season and have managed to sneak in with a late charge can embrace the role of underdogs with nothing to lose and everything to gain. This can be a great boost, contributing to a ‘what the hell, lets have a go’ attitude that higher placed sides may not be able to muster.

For those fans that sit in optimism corner, with positive outlooks and hope in their hearts, it can offer an extra chance to redeem a season that hasn’t gone quite as well as it could have, but could end up with the outcome that was sought from the start.

But the playoffs can be cruel. For teams that have been chasing automatic promotion and missed out by a whisker it can be an ignominy to have to face teams that may have been 10 or more points behind them all season. The pressure of being favourites while having to recover from the psychological blow of missing out on the automatic spot can often be hard to bear. For those perennial playoff contenders the hope that’s raised only to be dashed once again can be exceedingly cruel, as yet again a season that promised so much ends in disappointment

At this time of the season, everything is heightened. Injustices are more unjust, bad refereeing decisions sting further, goals are sweeter, the game is studied and analysed and mulled over in more depth. It can be all-consuming. But the fact is that three of the four teams involved in each division will be disappointed. And it’s the mill of hope, despair and crushing, crushing failure that get to you. Though failure in the playoffs cannot match Judas’ punishment in the centre of hell, where he is perpetually chewed and skinned in Satan’s bloodred maw, in the immediate aftermath it can often feel that way. I’ll just be happy if I manage to get through this whole thing without too many tears or too much vomit.

The Five Most Annoying Habits of Football Journalists (bloggers?) & Pundits

Posted: February 22, 2011 by onefootinthegame in Carling Cup, Champions Leuage, Championship, FA Cup, Keys and Gray, La Liga, League One, Liverpool, Premier League, SPL, Steven Gerrard
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Frank Lampard, a footballer from England.

Image via Wikipedia

1. The Premier League era

Yes, it’s an obvious one that annoys us all, but it’s probably the single most irritating habit of all commentators, and it reared its head again after the recent 4-4 result between Arsenal and Newcastle when one BBC pundit pointed out that this was the first such comeback in “the Premier League era”. So what? So bloody what? Some of us, millions of us in fact, remember football before 1992. There were records then too – over 100 years of records and history as it goes. It was even on TV. In colour! What is this obsession with the arbitrary era beginning in 1992? After all, all that happened was that the top division decided to keep their own TV money and ‘rebrand’ Division One as the Premiership. There was even the same number of teams. We don’t refer to Manchester United as the best team of the Rumbelows Cup era, do we? It’s bad enough when Sky do it to protect the Premier League ‘franchise’ but you expect more from the BBC.

2. Quarterback role

What? A quarter what? Is that a burger? This is one that has crept into football journalism and punditry over the last decade and it makes my blood boil. It seems that we’re not content with describing midfielders as ‘attacking’ or ‘deep lying’ or even ‘holding’. Hell, if you’re feeling particularly flamboyant, you can even describe them as playing ‘in the hole’. But ‘quarterback’?!?! Football is not, and never has been, an American sport. I first heard this during Sven Goran Eriksson’s ill fated experiment with David Beckham as a deep lying midfielder (another ‘DB7′ vanity project) launching balls up to England’s forwards. Since then, it has crept into use for any midfielder who has no pace and sprays long passes about. Not to mention it’s a fairly grandiose title for a player who simply horses it into the mixer. Does this make Paul Warhurst a quarterback? And what next? Will we introduce other sporting positions into the football lexicon? Will we soon be describing Iniesta as a world-class point guard? Will we laud Ryan Giggs as the best silly mid-off in the Premier League era? (see what I did there?)

3. Makelele role

This is a bit of a mangling of numbers 1 and 2. Some cerebral football journos seem to think that there was no such position as holding midfielder before Claude Makelele, hence they’ve named it after him. Sure, he was great at it but he wasn’t the best ever and by no means the first, unlike Cruyff’s turn. It’s a bit like referring to centre forward as the Kevin Campbell role. Depending on your age and personal bias, you could equally call Makelele’s position: the Keane role, the Hamman role, the Robson role, the Dunga role, the Souness role, or even the Nobby Stiles role. The possibilities are endless. How about the Terry Yorath role?

4. First name terms

Brian Clough must turn in his grave at the familiarity with which today’s pundits refer to players. It’s frighteningly common to hear Jamie ‘My Trousers Are Made Of Chrome’ Redknapp referring to how well Frank played today, or how good Stevie was. Who? Frank? Frank McAvennie? Frank Sinclair? Oh, Frank Lampard! He’s not our cousin, ‘Jamie’. We just know him as ‘Lampard’ (or possibly something less flattering). It’s not just Redknapp, they’re all at it. I heard Steve Claridge refer to him as Frank the other day – as if Claridge is a good friend of Lampard’s! It’s a peculiarly English affliction though, reserved for the Anglo-Saxons in the Premier League – Wayne, Jamie, Ashley and so on,. I don’t hear anyone referring to Dimitar, Kolo, or Yossi. Given his difficulty with pronouncing Benayoun, David Pleat probably should call him Yossi. But then he’d probably end up calling him Jossy or Yassir.

5. World class

The term ‘world class’ is bandied around in football more often than the term ‘bandied around’. It’s used to describe everything and everyone (see also: ‘legend’). A pass or a tackle can now be ‘world class’, even if delivered just once by a carthorse right-back. Surely the term ‘world class’ must have some boundaries on context and longevity? Surely if Zidane scoring his third goal in a World Cup final is ‘world class’, the same can’t be said of a half decent cross whipped in behind Bournemouth’s defence by Danny Cadamarteri? It used to be that only the very best or the most special were deemed ‘world class’. It used to be that ‘world class’ was reserved for those players that had consistently delivered at the very pinnacle of the game. This week, I heard of a “world class performance” by Chris Eagles.

Build it and they will come. Brighton reborn?

Posted: September 29, 2010 by onefootinthegame in League One
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“May we live in interesting times,” runs the proverb. For Brighton fans, top of the league and with a brand spanking new stadium nearing completion, things might, in the immortal words of Barry Davies, be getting “interesting, very interesting.” However, over the last decade and a half you’d be forgiven for wishing life was a hell of a lot duller.

Rewind. It’s 1996/7 Brighton are 13 points adrift at the bottom of fourth division [let‘s keep things simple]. The ground’s been sold. We‘re not just heading out of the football league, we‘re heading out of existence.

Somehow the gap is clawed back. The Seagulls go into the final league game of the season in a head-to-head shoot-out against fellow relegation candidates Hereford United. A dramatic 1-1 draw keeps Brighton up and condemns Hereford to the Conference.

League status has been secured, but we’ve no longer a ground. Homeless we spend two years making a 120 mile round trip to play home games at Gillingham. We’re not so much treading water as desperately thrashing around in an attempt not to drown.

In 1999 we return to Brighton after finally persuading the Council, Football League and local residents that home games could be played at small Athletics track called Withdean. With a tiny capacity and uncovered temporary stands on three sides, the “theatre of trees” is hardly anywhere you’d call home. It is at least in Brighton. The six nil drubbing of Mansfield in the first game back makes things easier.

Over the next 5 years there’s two championship’s, a relegation, and a play-off final win. Off the field the club is fighting for it’s financial life. We flog star man Bobby Zamora and Mark McGhee  sweet talks his old mate Gordon Strachan  and then Celtic manager into buying Adam Virgo for a much needed and frankly unbelievable £1.5m. I don’t imagine anyone stopped to wait for the ink to dry on that cheque before hot footing it out of Glasgow.

There’s lots of fundraising. Dodgy records and naked player calendars. When ideas run out the chairman resorts to just asking fans if we could please just send them some cash. I buy the record and send a £100. I pass on the calendar.

Meanwhile there’s the fight for the new ground. This drags on. And on. And on. Millions of pounds we can ill afford bleed out of the club. Eventually it’s goes to the then Deputy PM John Prescott for a final decision. He gives the green light. Time to celebrate. Unfortunately not. The decisions appealed because there’s a technical error in the ruling. We have to waste time and money going through the whole process again.

Tony Bloom arrives. He bankrolls the new stadium. Work finally begins on the stadium in December 2008. There’s chopping and changing of managers and some relegation scraps.  Gus Poyet arrives. He gets off to a shaky start. But slowly players adjust to the little known practice, especially in the third division, of passing the ball.

Present day. Construction on the Amex Stadium is well under way. The team are top of the league. This time next year we could be playing Liverpool in the Championship. But whoever we play or whatever division we’re in, I’ll be celebrating. Celebrating the fact the club still exists and that we’ll be playing in our own ground for the first time in 14 years. That’ll be interesting enough for me