“At 1.30pm on Saturday afternoon I was handed my ‘Get out of jail free’ card. This was supposed to be a treat for Lolly, but my little battle hardened football daughter finally admitted defeat on her heavy cold and declared herself unfit to go to West Ham versus Blackpool. I had a five minute window to decide. Go to Upton Park and undoubtably come home as depressed as Avram Grant on a good day, head down the M23 to watch Lewes amongst the Lewes Lunatic Fringe as they played St Albans City or even pop down the road to Thamesmead Town for a new adventure.” (The Ball Is Round)

“For over a hundred years football programmes have been the vital accompaniment to any match. Even the smallest, most insignificant game is normally commemorated by the issue of a matchday programme. I know some people who will not count that they have been to see a game unless they can get a programme or at least a team sheet.” (The Ball Is Round)

“Yesterday everybody screamed the praises of one Gareth Bale, one week after a certain disreputable website sang his praises by comparison to the Garbage Pale kids. That disreputable website was this one. And I admit my mistake. Gareth Bale is a shining example of athleticism, a white knight, the hero at the end of the fairy tale who smooches the princess, slays the dragon, and lives happily every after. But Pippo Inzaghi is not. Which is why I love him.” (futfanatico)

“We’ve got something a little different for our Video Of The Week this week. Match Of The Eighties will be back later on in the week, but for now it seems like as good an idea as any to ease ourselves into Monday morning with some highlights from this weekend’s FA Cup Fourth Qualifying Round matches from the weekend just passed. We’re starting off with FC United of Manchester, who were at home yesterday afternoon against Blue Square Premier side Barrow. With the draw for the First Round Proper already having been made, United already knew that their reward for winning this match would be a local derby against Rochdale if they could get past a team two divisions above them.” (twohundredpercent)

“So today, the meat and potatoes as it were of this series: what might more cooperation between independent blogs and on-line newspaper football sites actually look like? Before I dive in, I think it’s important to point out that I’m not going to lay out concrete models with specific revenue streams and publishing formats, but rather point out general features that would make a union more desirable than the current situation, where the only mutual connection between newspapers and blogs comes in the form of hyperlinks. I should also mention that discussion of the obstacles to this kind of union will be examined at length in a future post, but feel free to start shredding in the comments.” (Pitch Invasion)

“This is brilliant. You can check out more laugh out loud football comics on the excellent Things Fall Apart by C. Anderson.” (Footysphere)

“Few football coaches have grabbed the public’s attention through sheer force of personality in quite the same fashion as Brian Howard Clough. An intoxicating mix of intelligence, arrogance and abrasiveness, Clough was the antithesis of the mid-twentieth century stereotype which saw British managers as gentlemanly sorts who played the game to strengthen their moral fibre rather than to win at all costs.” (The Equaliser)

“Most people involved in modern football receive considerable media training from quite an early age. This manifests itself in several different ways, from the studied mind-games and self-promotion of Jose Mourinho to Michael Owen, who has spent well over a decade as a professional footballer without having ever managed to say anything of note in an interview. There are still some people left, however, an increasingly small number, who come from a different era and don’t seem to have been taught the art of talking a lot whilst saying very little. It is these people that, whether intentionally or not, provide us with considerable entertainment with occasional glimpses into the inner workings of their minds.” (twohundredpercent)

“Is it racist to chant ‘His dad washes elephants’ at an African footballer? And if you were at a match and complained to the stewards and the police that it was racist, would you expect to get thrown out? The Crown Prosecution Service isn’t sure they’d get a conviction because ‘it doesn’t mention a particular race or culture’ – but then neither does making monkey noises. And a 60-year-old vicar got thrown out of Wigan’s DW Stadium last season, after he complained about the chants and that his complaint about the alleged criminal offence was not being taken seriously. When he refused to go back to his seat and asked to speak to a senior police officer, he was ejected from the ground. I know – I was that vicar.” (WSC)

“After 55 minutes of Scotland’s Euro 2012 qualifying group game with Liechtenstein last Wednesday, I made a promise to myself. If the score remained Scotland 0 Liechtenstein 1, I would never watch another game of football as long as I lived. I wouldn’t look at scores, or tables, or anything. If people started talking about football, I’d stick my fingers in my ears and start singing ‘Giiiiiiirls just wanna have fun’ in a really loud and annoying way until they moved off. But of course the score changed, and Scotland gloriously won the game with a brilliantly contrived 97th-minute header. The most amazing thing about that goal, though, was the number of fans still in the stadium to witness it.” (WSC)

“With three losses from their opening three matches, Stoke City have a problem. Their third season back in the Premier League has begun with three losses and it is only the dismal form of West Ham United that is keeping them off the bottom of the Premier League table, although there is an element of falseness about their position, since two of their three defeats have come at the hands of Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur – both matches that it might have been unreasonable to expect them to win. Still, however, there is cause for concern at The Britannia Stadium this evening that they may be set to hit the buffers. This is exactly the sort of match that they have excelled at grabbing by the scruff of the neck over the last couple of seasons, and they need to get back into that habit this evening.” (twohundredpercent)

“Next weekend West Brom fans will display a banner supporting new signing Peter Odemwingie, a reply to the racist one Lokomotiv fans hung following his transfer from Moscow. The messageboard reactions I read to it this week were perhaps typical of a lot of British fans: ‘Shame on Lokomotiv, respect to West Brom!’; ‘An intelligent answer’; ‘Brilliant, a worthy reply’. What is perhaps more surprising is that these were written by Russian fans on the championat.ru forum. However, with the 2018 World Cup hosts announced in December, and the English newspapers seemingly now all onside, this is not an element of Russian football culture that will see much daylight in the UK.” (WSC)

Fabio Capello
“The announcement of the England squad for an international fixtures has become more of a media circus than ever before since the appointment of Fabio Capello. His love/hate relationship with the tabloid media is currently stuck firmly in the hate column, with The Sun leading the calls for his dismissal albeit in a rather childish and uneducated way.” (A Tactical View)

“This weekend marks the first ‘Non-League Day’, a concerted attempt to try and persuade supporters of the biggest clubs in Britain to take a step back from the thrills and spills of the Premier League and the Championship (since they have a day off anyway, on account of the weekend’s international matches) and take in the sights, sounds and – yes – smells of their local non-league club. By Premier League and Football League standards, even a relatively modest turn-out would make a great deal of difference to many non-league clubs, particularly the smaller ones, so we are throwing our full wait behind this concept and, to mark it, we’re giving over the rest of this week to non-league football, kicking off this evening by taking a look at the competition that was, for eighty years, the pinnacle of the non-league game: The FA Amateur Cup.” (twohundredpercent)

West Ham / Millwall
“They hunt in packs, fuelled by cocaine, hooked on violence and occasionally wielding chains. Some are as old as 65. They use mobile phones and the internet to arrange showdowns with rival “firms” at agreed locations away from prying CCTV cameras and police surveillance. This is the profile of the 21st-century football hooligan, a breed of “fan” who, although decreasing in numbers and visibility, is recognised by the football authorities and police as never having gone away.” (Guardian)

“So it is that the love affair between the British press and the Italian comes to an end. England’s friendly match against Hungary last week was what it was – a team in transition playing a mediocre team in a pre-season friendly match – but there was no way that Capello could ‘win’ this match, especially after his response to a leading question over the future of Sir David of Beckham. The press were looking for a reason to stick the knife into Capello and twist it and this question coupled with his answer to it gave them all the ammunition that they needed, although no-one has yet indicated the real reason why this may be.” (twohundredpercent)

“This week, it was with no small amount of delight that I took delivery of this season’s Sky Sports Football Yearbook (or ‘Rothmans’ as all football fans still refer to it). I haven’t had one for a long time – not since my teens – and had forgotten what a pleasure it is to leaf through its thin, cheap pages. Reassuringly still edited by father and daughter team Jack and Glenda Rollin, it does a brilliant job of reminding you all the stuff from previous seasons that you’d forgotten about – particularly the most recent season.” (Narrow The Angle)

“For a team that won three league titles in the 1950s, and has four FA Cup wins to it’s name, last season was as good as it’s been for a whole generation of Wolverhampton Wanderers fans, seeing as it will be 29 years since the club last embarked on consecutive seasons in the top flight. Mick McCarthy made some controversial decisions last year – his fielding of a virtual reserve side at Old Trafford by far the most standout one. Some of his other decisions now seem hypocritical, considering how defensive Wolves were last season, and how McCarthy spent the last few weeks of June criticising every World Cup minnow who dared to play for a draw in the group stages.” (twohundredpercent)

The Premier League Previews 2010/11, Part 19: Wigan Athletic – International Men Of Mystery
“One of the dangers of writing these predictionless previews, as our Premier League previews have been on twohundredpercent this year, is that it’s very easy to fall into the trap of saying nice things about everyone. When it comes to football, my nature is always to look on the positive side anyway – I’m at a loss to explain this because I can assure you I’m one miserable git in every other walk of life, but on Saturday afternoons I become the eternal optimist. So it is that, while I’m in no sense a Wigan supporter, when I come to look at Roberto Martinez’s squad and make my best assessment of how they’ll do, it’s easy for me to look on the bright side and think – yeah, they’ll be fine.” (twohundredpercent)

The Premier League Previews 2010/11, Part 18: West Ham United – Owner Over-Occupied?
“It’s been an interesting few years when you look at the financial side, and the stewardship of West Ham United. When the club were last relegated in 2003, chairman Terence Brown played a canny hand when dealing with players exiting the club. Unlike other relegated clubs in previous seasons, who proclaimed a firesale the moment their fates had been sealed, and followed it up with almost weekly media proclamations that they had to sell players, thus reducing the value of said players, Brown made it clear: West Ham did not need to sell. Brown even went as far as turning down a transfer request from Jermain Defoe, submitted less than 24 hours after the Hammers had been relegated.” (twohundredpercent)

“It feels like we’ve been here before. West Bromwich Albion are promoted back to the Premier League, and have played some beautiful football to get here. Having spent eight seasons in what is now called the Championship, West Bromwich Albion have become a bit of a yo-yo club, so to speak, having not spent more than two seasons in the same flight since. And while they can only continue that trend this season, they must certainly look to this season to lay the foundations to break the spell next season.” (twohundredpercent)

“Good evening everybody. Well, both of you. Sorry, us. It would be easy for me to begin tonight’s commentary by wondering about the pointlessness of it all: an international friendly being contested by two groups of players who almost certainly have no interest in playing it and chronicled on a minute-by-minutely basis by a reporter who has no interest in watching it for people who have no interest in reading about it.” (Guardian)

England 2-1 Hungary – Video Highlights, Recap, and Match Stats – Friendly – 11 August 2010
“England played their first match since the disappointing exit from the 2010 FIFA World Cup with a friendly match against Hungary. The England side saw several changes from the World Cup with call-ups of new players and an emphasis on younger players.” (The 90th Minute)

“Following the 1-0 win against Manchester City that secured Champions League football for the club for the first time in their penultimate match of last season, Tottenham Hotspur players celebrated as if they had just won the Premier League itself. In some respects, this was understandable – consider, for example, what this must have been worth to them in bonuses alone – but in others, it was the end of one battle and the beginning of another. As Arsenal supporters have not tired of reminding them over the summer months, finishing in fourth place in the Premier League didn’t actually guarantee Spurs place in the Champions League proper. Rather, it granted them a place in the final qualifying round for a place in the Champions League.” (twohundredpercent)

“It is a reflection of the financial rewards on offer in modern football that teams have to do what they have to do on the pitch in order to survive and that sometimes what they have to do isn’t that pretty. Stoke City’s promotion into the Premier League just over two years ago was something of surprise in itself and they were, accordingly, widely tipped – the point of unanimity – to drop straight back into the Football League. Two full seasons on, however, they are still there and without having to spend too much of that time worrying that much about getting relegated back. They’re not often that pretty to watch and there are plenty of purists that would like to see them crash and burn, but Stoke City are still in the Premier League, and it is likely that they still will be come the end of this season, too.” (twohundredpercent)

The Premier League Previews 2010/11, Part 15: Sunderland – An Unknown Quantity
“They spent four years bouncing between the Premier League and the Championship, the rubber ball that is Sunderland finally seems to be coming to rest. The question now facing Steve Bruce is how to make the next leap forward and take his team into the top half of the table. The jury, currently, is out on whether he will be able to manage it this season and, for Bruce, this might not be particularly good news. Sunderland’s average attendance crept over the 40,000 barrier last season, and how long the club’s supporters or owners will tolerate lower mid-table finishes is open to question. They have had three since they returned to the Premier League in 2007, and the concern is that stagnation or worse – a return to pitched battles against relegation – may follow if they don’t improve this year.” (twohundredpercent)

“Yesterday, Laurence McKenna, Kartik Krishnaiyer and myself focus on some of the issues that have carried over from the summer into the beginning of this Premier League campaign. On today’s edition of the EPL Talk podcast, we move to the clubs, talking about which teams we feel are going to make-up the bottom half of the league and potentially battle relegation. We start the conversation by discussing the newly promoted clubs – Newcastle, West Brom, and Blackpool.” (EPL Talk)

“In 1929, pioneering firm British Talking Pictures Ltd went to Wembley and made a – talking picture! of the FA Cup Final. It was what Mitchell and Kenyon would have done, but by 1929 new tech chose other, newer vehicles. Considering its subject, this film is astonishingly early.” (More Than Mind Games)

“Yes, it’s summer, which means most of Europe is on vacation. And yes, it’s the silly season when transfer speculation is rife and the season hasn’t kicked off yet. But I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really disappointed with the level of football journalism post-World Cup. That pertains to both the blogosphere and traditional news organizations. Hopefully coverage will pick up as soon as the season begins. But right now, if you eliminated the preseason friendly and transfer speculation articles from most football blogs and online newspapers, you wouldn’t have much to choose from. And even with what is leftover, the quality and creativity is quite poor.” (EPL Talk)