On a surface level loyalty can be seen everywhere; from the shirt a person wears to the badge a player kisses. But football is not generally conducive to the one-club player nor is it a field where loyalty exists as an absolute. Even a cursory look highlights…

Sky Sports estimated that more than 3,000 11-a-side teams have folded since 2007. This plays in stark contrast to Trevor Brooking’s desire, voiced back in 2005, for a better grassroots system. His logic was simple: ‘if you want quality at the top, you have to have a broad base at the…

It’s not a new debate nor is it one to do strictly with football, or money, but just why is it that English players, in large, refuse to travel abroad and make their home in other countries? I thought about this whilst reading Ruud van Nistelrooy’s response to…

"A dynamic force is a very terrible thing" –Stanley Baldwin A few months ago Tim Vickery’s blog sparked a crisis. He highlighted that, as with anything worth loving in life, an entity’s greatest asset doubles as its greatest shortcoming. I’d started writing this a while ago – after Ujfalusi injured Messi…

Having had two days to consider the ludicrousity (yes, the events that transpired deserve their very own word) of what happened in Newcastle on Saturday, I have now made peace with the fact that no logical explanation will suffice: irrespective of a sending off, an injury, poor refereeing decisions and individual mistakes, there is…

While watching the first half of the Arsenal v Ipswich game on Tuesday a thought popped into my head ‘Nicklas Bendtner is playing quite well on the right’. The whistle for half time was blown and I settled in for some half time banter with Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer. Both…

We have passed the half way point of the season, the title race is starting to heat up and the dog fight to avoid relegation is becoming more and more intense with every passing game. There are still four months left of the season to unfold in front of us…

Sunday’s match between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane has set tongues wagging about the disparity of fortune in what fans want from their football – entertainment, high quality, or success. Ideally, supporters of their team would like…

Michael Carrick, Owen Hargreaves, James Milner and Gareth Barry. All reasonable English, middle level Premier League players, never fail to deliver but never really excel. Steven Pienaar, Rafael Van Der Vaart, Mikel Arteta and Nemanja Vidic. Arguably the stars of their respective teams. Coveted by teams…

We can all dream right? Arsenal fans have been waiting five years now for a trophy but these are the things I’d really like to see. Central Defensive Dream: Arsene Wenger, in a bid to aid his weakest on field position, decides to invest some of the clubs profits…