Doldrums You would be hard pressed to justify the opinion that Jack Charlton’s success with the Irish team was a double-edged sword. For all the glorious years we spent near the top of world football, the relative doldrums we have experienced since 1995 have been a real come down for the fans. Only for those […]
Premiership season preview It’s that time of year again – the one where I show myself to be the worst predictor since Nostradamus. So in alphabetical order here is how I see the league turning out. Arsenal Last season (LS): 2nd In: Phillippe Senderos (Servette, undisc.), Gael Clichy (Cannes, £250,000), Jens Lehmann (Borussia Dortmund, £1.5m). […]
Sell sell sell If you had have told me that Tottenham would spend the summer off-loading deadwood, I would have told you that lucid dreaming is as good as life will get for Spurs fans. But it’s true. Glenn Hoddle and ENIC have finally done what should have been done twelve months ago – sent […]
Rebuild As another disappointing season comes to a close, there is one major question that is on the lips of some Spurs fans – well me anyway. Glenn Hoddle – do we rebuild with, or without him? There have been a lot of excuses made for Glenn, and some might say that he deserves to […]
Celebrate. Come on. My fiftieth column should be a happy occasion. A ticker tape procession, a deluge of well-wishers filling up column inches in your regular tabloid. ‘He’s always been a light in the sea of dark,’ said one fictitious well-known actor. ‘He scares the bejaysus out of your average commentator,’ uttered one non-existent journalist. […]
Old men I’m baffled by what I’ve just witnessed on TV. Former Irish internationals and regular television pundits, Eamonn Dunphy and Johnny Giles, have just poured scorn on the appointment of Brian Kerr as the new Ireland manager. Am I being naive to believe so strongly that Kerr is the best appointment? Or are Dunphy […]
Absence Absence makes the heart grow fonder they say. Well after ten months living in the rather physically and socially isolated environment of New Zealand, I think I can safely say that this is a load of bollocks. Moving 20,000km away from Spurs manager Glenn Hoddle has not made me any more accepting of him […]
Question mark A big question mark hangs over Premiership sides this season, and one might say, over the big European leagues as a whole. As small clubs go to the wall (Clydebank and Airdrie in Scotland, folded this year), big clubs feel the pinch (Valencia, Lazio, Chelsea and Leeds are reportedly tens of millions in […]
What a tournament! It’s not just the surprises that has been the making of the 2002 World Cup. Well okay, it has I suppose. While the illustrious talents of Zidane, Crespo and Petit have been licking their wounds, glory has been the keyword for the likes of unemployed defender Gary Breen, the Premiership player that […]
Where it all began It was World Cup 1998 where I first began writing these occasional columns, in fact it is probably the most negative fact to come out of the whole experience. So here we are once again. Who will win? Who will be the stars? Who will be the turkeys? And how many […]
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