Scissors Kick

“After eighteen months in charge, Mauricio Pochettino’s plan appears close to completion. Last sunday’s 4-1 win against West Ham, coupled with excellence at the Emirates, the multi-goal hammerings of Bournemouth and Manchester City, have only added to the growing belief that Tottenham can finally clear that final hurdle. After all, Champions League qualification, after five fifth place finishes in a decade, has proved notoriously elusive. Displaying energy, efficiency, inherent interchanging combined with an outstanding collective awareness, Tottenham’s early-season excellence shows no signs of slowing. A far cry from the fragile, eternally transitional shambles of recent years, Pochettino has interspersed the bulldog spirit of Harry Redknapp and Tim Sherwood with a continental strategy a la Juande Ramos and Andre Villas Boas.” Outside of the Boot

“We are a third of the way through the Premier League of 2015/16 already, so it seems as good a time as any to evaluate that greatest of football imponderables – Everton. How have the Toffees done and what can we expect to see from them going into the crucial winter slog? Up front I’m going to declare that I was one of those people who clamoured for Roberto Martinez’ head last season. Does that make me one of those intolerably excitable kneejerk types? Possibly, but plenty of managers have been given the shove at all levels of professional football – never mind the Premier League – for presiding over the type of dross that was served up by Everton during the 2014/15 campaign.” Football Pink

“The football world is obsessed with transfers and possible surprise moves; it all boils down to multi-million dollar pay cheques, club rivalries and a never-ending flow of players. Often, we only see the sport from the perspective of the premiere leagues and forget that the large majority of transfers occur in the lesser known divisions. There is a soccer transfer being made every five minutes that you won’t read about. It’s not just the big teams that are looking for new talents all over the globe. Today, almost every team has to compete with the rest of the world to find the right balance of players and hopefully discover a future star that will help them reach a new playing and financial level.” Football Pink

“Judging the calibre of a young player is often a tricky task. Perceived potential has an important bearing in any consideration and is just one of the many parameters to consider when trying to quantify the ability of football’s young stars. To add a basis to what may be a leap of faith, it is useful to look back and trace the growth, or indeed lack thereof, in young players.” Outside of the Boot

“At the age of three, Zohib Islam Amiri fled the war in Afghanistan to find refuge in Pakistan. Now he’s a football hero in his homeland. Listen as he recounts his perilous journey to safety, his pride at playing for his national team, the shock of being signed by Brazilian legend Zico and the terror of watching Taliban executions on the pitch he would later play on for his country.” BBC (Video)

“For almost a century and a half, the beautiful game has offered excitement, advancement and delight. But only, it seems, if you’re white, straight and male. Such is the dissonance between football in theory and in practice. If there is a European equivalent to the American dream it is this, the universal promise of a game that can transform regions, offer hope to broken communities and raise even the poorest from rags to riches.” backpagefootball

“David Moyes has been sacked as Real Sociedad boss. The Basque side are marooned near the bottom of La Liga – they are above the relegation zone on goal difference – and a limp performance in Friday’s 2-0 defeat against lowly Las Palmas was the final straw. This is how his 364 days in charge went.” BBC

“Venture into any bookshop today and you will find a section given over to ‘graphic novels’[1], books that talk about them, books by or about their creators. After a dip in quality and interest around the millennium, the field is now full of great writers and illustrators, challenging stories and subject areas, and even the superhero genre has undergone a bit of a reboot[2]. This piece was originally conceived as a history of how football has appeared in comics, graphic novels, whatever terminology you want to use, but in the course of researching it I had the good fortune to talk to Paul Trevillion[3] and decided that Paul and his work on Roy of the Rovers was a much more interesting and specific point of departure. And as I talked to Paul, I found myself thinking more about football than comics, but you’ll see what I mean by that in due course[4].” Put Niels In Goal