“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)

“A name that has unfortunately been lost in the mists of time, regularly overshadowed by those who followed in his footsteps, Jack Reynolds is arguably one of the most important figures in the history of twentieth century European football.” (The Equaliser)

“So, just how do you follow an act like Roy Hodgson? Since Fulham’s own chairman appears unable to express any appreciation for just what he did for the club over the course of two and a half seasons, let’s take a moment to remind ourselves just how good a job he did. Arriving midway through the 2007/08 season with the team apparently destined for relegation, he kept them up with a terrific late season run. The following season he steered them to seventh and qualification to the Europa League, then last season of course he took them all the way to the final of it and to within a few minutes of a penalty shoot out that might have won it for them. All achieved on a relative shoestring – at least insofar as there is such a thing in the Premier League these days.” (twohundredpercent)

“It may surprise some younger readers to learn this out, but when Bill Shankly retired from Liverpool Football Club and football in 1974, Everton were historically as successful as his club had been to that point. Liverpool had, in 1974, eight championship wins and two FA Cup wins, while Everton had seven championship wins and three FA Cup wins. To that extent, the man that blasted a hole between the perception of the two clubs in Liverpool was Bob Paisley and, by 1990, Liverpool had eighteen championship wins to Everton’s nine, and the blue half of Merseyside have been firmly regarded from the outside as the junior partner in the city’s football landscape ever since.” (twohundredpercent)

“England’s Premier League has introduced new ownership and financial regulations for the upcoming season in an attempt to avoid a repeat of Portsmouth’s downfall last season. Under a series of owners, Portsmouth ran up debts of more than $159 million to creditors, including the British government’s revenue and customs authority. The league said Tuesday that it now requires prospective new owners to prove they have sufficient funds to sustain a club for another year and can now contact the government directly to check that clubs are up to date with taxes.” (SI)

“It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling as if every season is likely to be a struggle for Bolton Wanderers, but their recent Premier League history doesn’t really bear this out. After they returned to the Premier League in 2001 they struggled for a couple of seasons but, broadly speaking, they have had a decent record since then, managing four consecutive finishes in the top eight during the middle of the decade. Even last season, they pulled clear of the relegation places during the second half of the season and ended up nine points clear of the relegation places, in fourteenth place in the table. Bolton Wanderers supporters will probably be looking for a season of consolidation and improvement over the coming nine months, and there is nothing to suggest that their team won’t be capable of exactly this.” (twohundredpercent)

“The first decade of the new century saw Blackpool take a most modern route from the basement of the Football League into the Premier League. A decade ago they were in what we now know as League Two, but they will start the new season in the Premier League having been promoted three times via the play-offs. They’re the the first team to have managed this, but will this promotion prove to be a step too far? The obvious statement to make is that they are the pre-season favourites to return from whence they came, but there are reasons for Blackpool supporters to feel optimistic about the new season.” (twohundredpercent)

“Blackburn Rovers finished last season in a creditable tenth place in the Premier League but, with just over two weeks left until start of the new season do Blackburn supporters have cause to be concerned that, this season, the trapdoor may be a little close for comfort? They have, after all, had an exceptionally quiet summer in the transfer market and, if the bottom half of the table does feel as if it is likely to be a pretty congested place to be over the next nine months, the dread possibility of a return to the Football League may loom in the back of supporters’ minds, though these doubts may start to recede if the club passes, as it is expected to, into new ownership although, as supporters of many other clubs will testify, moving into new ownership is far from a guarantee of future success.” (twohundredpercent)

“Between the battle at the top of the table and the chaos at the bottom of it, the achievement of Birmingham City in finishing in ninth place in the Premier League last season feels as if it was rather overlooked. It was their first season back after promotion the year before and, significantly, it was their highest league position since 1959. Those that continue to look back at the 1970s as being somehow the halcyon days of the club (which, one rather suspects, may at least in part have entered into local folklore because of the club’s dominance of their cross-city rivals Aston Villa) would do well to look at last season’s final Premier League.” (twohundredpercent)

“Supporters of both Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United could have been forgiven for choking a little if they happened to see this article on the BBC’s website today. On the front page of the site was a story that would certainly leave both sets of supporters with a feeling that their hearts were beating in their throats – that Spurs were looking at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford as a possible alternative to redeveloping White Hart Lane.” (twohundredpercent)

“What do football fans enjoy seeing most, aside from goals for their team? The couple of pre-season friendlies I’ve been to this summer were fairly typical of what I usually witness during a season, in that moments that drew most applause involved skill – a player in possession beating an opponent, quick interchanges of passing, accurate shots forcing goalkeepers to make diving saves. The physical engagement that is reckoned to be one of the essential characteristics of English football – players getting stuck into tackles and visibly expending energy throughout the game – rarely stirs spectators in quite the same way.” (WSC)

“England are out – finished, end of story. We did not go out on penalties, nor were we ‘very unlucky’. We were well beaten by a team that were man for man better than us. The Media may cry foul about Lampard’s goal, or the fact our pampered players play too much football, but isn’t it time we simply faced up to the fact that actually we are not as good as we like to believe?” (The Ball Is Round)

“Judy Garland’s Dorothy followed the yellow brick road to Kansas; Manchester United believe their path to play the city’s Wizards tomorrow is paved with gold. Whether it is the ideal preparation for a 10-month English season remains to be seen. Last weekend United played in Toronto. Next weekend they play in Guadalajara. Besides Canada, Mexico and the American Midwest they will have also fitted in matches in Philadelphia and Houston before returning to England, via a game in Ireland, for the Community Shield.” (Independent)

“One of the perceived anomalies in European club football is the presence of the six Welsh clubs in the English league system. What a lot of people don’t realise, however, is that historically the Football League was the pinnacle of a system that encompassed both England and Wales, and that prior to the launch of the Football Conference in 1979, Welsh football clubs mainly competed in regional leagues that were the pinnacle of non-league football in England and Wales.” (twohundredpercent)

“‘This can kick-start English football and it would, over time, move us forward with a huge leap. That would not, obviously, happen immediately, but given two or three years it would start making a clear difference.’ So says Howard Wilkinson, architect of the original plan for The Football Association to build a National Football Centre at Burton-on-Trent.” (Pitch Invasion)

“Earlier this week, Owen Gibson of the Guardian reported that the FA were considering making a change to the FA Cup (under a banner of revitalisation for the competition) in order to help create a mid-season break, in order to the England squad. The change is one that would seismic across English football, and that change would be scrapping FA Cup replays. Even in the article itself, the suggestion is that the scrapping of FA Cup replays would only free up one midweek date, and that midweek date would be filled by a set of fixtures allowing for a two week break, or in other words, one Saturday off. However, far from revitalising the competition, it may be the beginning of the end for the world’s oldest football competition.” (twohundredpercent)