Reading FC 2006 and 2012: a Comparative Perspective

“Reading’s extraordinary canter to the Championship title provokes inevitable comparison with the feat of their forebears of half a decade ago. The 106 points amassed by that vintage set a record and if we are yet to cover the 2005-6 Royals in our Great Football League Teams series, that’s not to ignore the best second tier XI of all time.” thetwounfortunates

The downward spiral

“Late March, and if you listen carefully you can – in the parlance of a certain puce-cheeked knight of the realm – hear the sound of bums starting to squeak. So, time to cast an eye over the teams who this May are most likely to be swapping the preening pros, plastic fans and prawn sandwiches of the Premier League for the Bovril, goal celebration music and cheerleaders of the Championship. In descending order…” thetwounfortunates

Chopping and Changing at Blackpool

“Ian Holloway’s introduction of three substitutes in the 64th minute of yesterday’s 3-1 defeat at Reading seemed like a strange tribute to Barry Fry, master of the ‘threeplacement’ in his heyday at Birmingham City. That said, it’s also a sign of one of Blackpool’s major problems this season; a campaign that has, nonetheless, been punctuated with lots of good things.” thetwounfortunates

Football – the last bastion of Social Democracy?

Hubert Robert – Architectural Composition with the Pantheon
“I know what you’re already thinking. That I’m going to argue something entirely inarguable. That in between skimming the dressing room copies of Nuts and Zoo the average Premier League footballer is more likely to clutch a well thumbed copy of Ayn Rand’s hymn to self interest, ‘Atlas Shrugged’ than the collected writings of Tony Crosland. And you’d be right of course. Modern football is awash with greed – with car swerving prima-donna Ashley Cole its own John Galt – a rifle toting poster boy for the ‘we’ll do what we like’ generation.” thetwounfortunates

Great Football League Teams 31: Liverpool 1961-2

“I grew up during a period of near total domination for Liverpool Football Club but one thing I shall always remember is a notebook my Dad had stored away in which he had kept a record of all the FA Cup results for several seasons in the early 1950s.” thetwounfortunates

From Blue Square Premier to Football League

“Over recent months, we have called upon regular followers of non-league football in order to guess at which players might stand a chance of forging a career in the Football League, should they wish to take the opportunity. First up was Michael Hudson; the proprietor of The Accidental Groundhopper website running the rule over the Northern League. Then, Barry from The Cold End highlighted the Isthmian League’s potentialities. Now, regular TTU staffer Scarf analyzes those players operating in the most likely breeding ground of all, while sharing his forthright views following half a season’s Conference watching.” thetwounfortunates

Speaking out on the Internet: Present Status and Future Prospects

“One of this website’s latest followers on Twitter, Simeon F. W. Pickup states his interests as ‘Reading FC, Atheism, Labour. In that order.’ Although Ed Miliband’s negligible impact on the polls may have something to do with his party being relegated behind Brian McDermott and Richard Dawkins in Simeon’s thinking, I did read this as tongue in cheek. Nonetheless, therein lies a message.” thetwounfortunates

Match Of The Week 2: Stourbridge 0-3 Stevenage

“Southern League Premier Division side Stourbridge finally ended their greatest ever FA Cup run at the hands of League One Stevenage at the War Memorial Athletic Ground earlier today, thanks to two goals from Chris Beardsley and a late third from Robin Shroot.” twohundredpercent

Book Review: There’s a Golden Sky

“It’s often been asserted that the one remaining advantage mainstream media has over bloggers is the issue of access to the game’s personalities – Jonathan Wilson made this point on establishing The Blizzard earlier this year and Kevin McCauley expounded on the subject in an overview of a spat between blogger Les Rosbifs and Teamtalk that fired up the twitterati last week.” thetwounfortunates

Which of Southampton’s players will step up?

Goalkeeper: Kelvin Davis
“Earlier this year, we analysed then Championship Queen’s Park Rangers in order to guess which of their stars might successfully negotiate the jump in standard once promotion was secured. Of course much of that thinking has been rendered moot by a squad overhaul that has left many of last year’s heroes either elsewhere or out of the team, although there is an argument that Alejandro Faurlin has confirmed our belief in his ability, that the jury is still deliberating on Adel Taarabt (well…a one man one at least) and that Sean Derry has defied the years and our lack of faith in him.” thetwounfortunates

Book Review: An Illustrated Guide to Soccer & Spanish

“Although perhaps too much can be made of the so-called language of football, it’s true that the game possesses its fair share of linguistic quirks. The Football Lexicon, co-authored by occasional Two Unfortunates contributor John Leigh, did a marvellous job highlighting these and the overuse of the word ‘adjudged’ as well as the currency of Hollywood Passes, playmakers and those mysterious channels displays the oddness of the sport’s idiom.” thetwounfortunates

Excerpt: ‘An Illustrated Guide to Soccer and Spanish’
“Soccer in the United States, just like the country itself—even if the National Team and some, um, less liberal sections of the population have yet to fully realize or embrace it—is being shaped by Latino culture. Just listen to Jurgen Klinsmann, the new—and German!—head coach of the U.S. Men’s National Team, in his introductory press conference. We really don’t have an identity as a soccer-playing nation, but as we, hopefully, start to develop one, Latino culture will and should have as big of an influence as any.” Good Men Project

amazon: An Illustrated Guide to Soccer & Spanish

Conversations with Paul Binning (Bristol City)

“Following Keith Millen’s exit from the managerial post at Bristol City earlier this week, we are very pleased to welcome Paul Binning for our latest interview. Paul trades under the name @cider1977 on Twitter and runs the consistently enjoyable blog, The Exiled Robin. He also contributes a regular feature on social media and football that appears in the Bristol City matchday programme and I was lucky enough to pave the way for this conversation when I met Paul in person at Bedminster Cricket Club last week. Here are his thoughts on the interregnum at Ashton Gate…” thetwounfortunates

Conversations with Danny Brothers (Northampton Town)

“Our latest conversation is with Danny Brothers, author of a number of posts for us including a look back at Northampton Town’s 1996-7 play-off winning side. Danny runs his own blog and this has the obligatory moniker, A Load of Cobblers, although he spreads his net beyond the watershed of the River Nene to League 2 as a whole, joining forces with our last interviewee Ben Mayhew and Maxi Hobbs for an enjoyable preview of the season back in August. Here, Danny gives us his views on Gary Johnson, Adebayo Akinfenwa, the challenge of the oval ball game and the club’s current home at Sixfields…” thetwounfortunates

The Under-20 World Cup: A Football League Perspective

“In June, Ben Piggott ran the rule over the fortunes of Football League players in that month’s European Under-21 Championship, with Aron Gunnarsson and Mikkel Andersen in particular enjoying less than fruitful campaigns. Now, the man behind the illustrations that adorn this website turns his attention to the recent Under-20 World Cup, a tournanment that has been covered expertly by Two Hundred Percent and ended up with a somewhat Lusophone finale…” thetwounfortunates

The Shrinking Cities

“In a recent post on the economic geography of football for The Two Unfortunates, I examined how a region’s economic wealth can have a large impact on the wellbeing of the game. Clubs feed off the prosperity or otherwise of their hinterlands and the role of government and business in a local economy has far reaching effects. Firms that cluster together can achieve mutual benefits as the amenities required for the successful running of a soccer club tend to be in plentiful supply. These include transport infrastructure, hotels, supermarkets and manufacturing suppliers, but the most important commodity of all is the fans.” In Bed With Maradona

An Economic Geography of Football

“Heading to Ryton for last Saturday’s Northern League Day, I was once again treated to one of the classic vistas of UK travel. The sweeping arc of the train as it approaches Newcastle upon Tyne is a dramatic one – the Tyne far below, Victorian palaces on the opposite shore, the Millennium Bridge and Baltic Arts Centre gleaming in the sunshine and St. James’ Park visible on the horizon. It seems a confident city these days; its smart central business district thronged with consumers, a quintessential regional centre.” the two unfortunates

Great Football League Teams 13: Millwall, 1987-88

“Some clubs are more keenly aware of their history than others. Despite the unkind but largely accurate chants sometimes aimed at us by opposing fans, Millwall is one of them. Take the annual Dockers’ Day celebration. Each season, a match is dedicated to the memory of the flat-capped stevedores and warehousemen from among whom much of the club’s support was drawn in the middle 20th century. A number of ex-dock workers are given the VIP treatment for the day and a team from the distant past is invited to provide autographs for fans, before the whole motley crew is paraded on the pitch.” thetwounfortunates

20 Years of New Stadia

“It’s now over twenty years since the publishing of Simon Inglis’s seminal The Football Grounds of Great Britain, a book that predated Hillsborough and the first of the breed of stadia, Scunthorpe United’s Glanford Park. So, I thought it would be informative to analyze some of the successes of the subsequent period: an era that has seen great change impinge upon the game. Debate as to what the turning point was – the aforementioned disaster, the setting up of the Premier League, Italia 90, MDMA, all seaters, Fever Pitch and even Michael Thomas’s 1989 winner at Anfield for chrissakes – all have their apologists and the changes have often not been for the better but, as far as stadia is concerned, and away from Goodison or Fratton Park, our forefathers wouldn’t recognise the match going experience as we would. Which clubs have gotten it largely right?” (thetwounfortunates)

Paulo’s discovery of attacking

“We are delighted to publish below our first guest post from David Bevan, Head Honcho of the estimable new Football League website, The Seventy Two. It has been an enjoyable few weeks sharing ideas with David and we look forward to further fruitful cooperation. Here is David’s take on the early days of Sousa-ism at the Walkers.” (thetwounfortunates)

TTU 2010/11: Season Preview: Championship (Part One)

“Our week of 2010-11 previews starts here and, rather than sound off with our own views once again, we decided this year to canvass the opinion of fans of all the league clubs. Thankfully, we have been overwhelmed with a warm hearted response and no little wit. The Championship previews appear today in two parts, with Leagues 1 and 2 to follow later in the week. Here goes and needless to say, the opinions are those of the contributors and not necessarily The Two Unfortunates…” (thetwounfortunates), (TTU 2010/11: Season Preview: Championship (Part Two))

Blurring the Lines

“I’ve started tweeting in earnest over the past few days, and while I can’t deny that it has plenty of shortcomings, I have definitely come across some interesting things that would have otherwise passed me by. I’ve learnt that Mark Kennedy won’t miss the smell of monster munch on the Cardiff team bus after he leaves South Wales and, perhaps more constructively, that European Football Weekends is an absolute cracker of a blog.” (thetwounfortunates)

The Thursday Preview: Algeria Vs Slovenia

“Last week, we previewed a friendly international involving a clutch of Championship-tinged stars and in the end, it was Robert Koren and Slovenia who prevailed, with a 3-1 win over New Zealand in Maribor. Hence, the Slovenes will go into their first World Cup finals match for seven years with confidence. Laying in wait are the Desert Foxes of Algeria; the match taking place this Sunday in Polokwane, the capital of Limpopo Province, a venue to put alongside Orlando, Saitama, Seogwipo and Uddevala in a roster of obscure host cities.” (thetwounfortunates)

Divided We Stand: the Problem of Parachute Payments

“The Premier and Football Leagues reached a deal over restructured solidarity payments from the former’s coffers two weeks ago, but with the Play-Offs and pre-World Cup mutterings taking precedence there’s been frustratingly limited coverage of the landmark agreement in the national press.” (thetwounfortunates)

Play Off Nostalgia: Reading Vs Bolton (1995)

“Reading have ever been a club that have relied on momentum; in 2003 and 2007, they followed promotions with trailblazing seasons, but 1994-95 was just as monumental. The silky passing side constructed by Mark McGhee, Second Division Champions in 1994, immediately launched a challenge to go one better. ‘And now you’re going to believe us…we’re going up AGAIN’ was the refrain from the Elm Park terraces and not even the Scotsman’s Yuletide departure for Leicester, nor the initially underwhelming purchase of Lee Nogan – ‘no discernible attributes’, I remarked to a mate one March evening at the New Den – could stop the Royals reaching the play offs by season end.” (thetwounfortunates)

Health Club

“I can’t be certain, but would hazard a guess that if at 5.45pm on Sunday 24th May 2009 you’d turned to me and cheerfully opined that relegation from the top flight should be welcomed as just the tonic my beloved Newcastle Utd needed, I’d have been inclined to disagree, possibly violently. Hindsight being a wonderful thing and all that, but you’d have been proven right. Far from being (as the mainstream media would have it) a nightmare in which we found ourselves ostracised from the ‘big time’ and haunted by former glories (well, near-glories), this season has actually proven to be one of the most enjoyable in living memory.” (thetwounfortunates)

Match Of The Week: Blackpool 2-1 Nottingham Forest

City Ground 25 Sept 85
“From up on the north-western coast of England has come one of the surprise stories of the season. Very few people would have anticipated Blackpool surging into the Championship play-off places this season, but Ian Holloway’s team have managed it while other clubs with bigger ambitions such as Middlesbrough and Ipswich Town have struggled. Even though Holloway tends to divide opinion, few would deny his achievement in taking a club with an average home crowd of just over 8,000 – the second lowest in the division after Scunthorpe United – to the brink of a place in the Premier League. Blackpool’s geography means that a Premier League place may mean more to them than most – derby matches against Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers as well as matches against the four massive clubs from Liverpool and Manchester would lay in wait if they can negotiate their way through the play-offs.” (twohundredpercent)

The Thursday Preview: Blackpool Vs Nottingham Forest
“Speaking as a fan of a club that’s just been relegated, I am more than relieved to see the back of this season. It’s been an utterly forgettable campaign; one so full of misery that I’m physically struggling to muster the enthusiasm to log on to the messageboards and the like these days. What little interest I had left for 2009/2010 was effectively killed off by David Conn.” (thetwounfortunates)

Blackpool 2-1 Nottingham Forest – Video Highlights and Recap – Championship – 8 May 2010
“The English Championship began its promotion playoffs with the a first leg match between Blackpool and Nottingham Forest on Saturday, May 8, 2010. It should be a very competitive and fierce match with a chance to play in the Premier League on the line. Blackpool would host the first leg while Nottingham Forest is hosting the second in the midweek.” (The 90th Minute)

The Championship: Winners and Losers

“The end of the season is a time to reflect on the nine months just gone. As we approach the season’s finale, it is time to consider: Who has overachieved, and who has flattered to deliver? Who has surprised us and who has underwhelmed us? Here we take a look at five clubs who have sparkled this year, and five more whose once bright lights have somewhat dimmed.” (thetwounfortunates)

Book Review: Hunting Grounds

“In Hunting Grounds, Scottish journalist Gary Sutherland undertakes a season long journey around the grounds of all 42 Scottish League clubs, offering a good introductory overview for those encountering the world of Scottish football beyond the Auld Firm, whilst also presenting the hardcore fan with some heart warming stories powered by Scotrail and Tennents.” (thetwounfortunates)

The Monday Profile: Yann Kermorgant

“Cornish footballers have been notably thin on the ground over the course of the history of the game with Nigel Martyn, Matthew Etherington and Exeter City legend Tony Kellow the most famous of a very rare bunch indeed. Oddly, the case is different across the Channel, where Cornwall’s close cultural brethren in Brittany have produced more than a few well known stars. Amongst these, one finds ex-Rangers boss Paul Le Guen, current Champions League starlet and the latest to be afforded the label, “the new Zidane”, Yoann Gourcuff, ex-Nantes star Yvon le Roux, French league title winner Patrick Colleter and Laurent Viaud, who became a scout for Liverpool.” (thetwounfortunates)

The Cost of Ambition

“Of the three divisions in the Football League, the Championship is possibly the most fragmented both in terms of the relative sizes of its member clubs and, by extension, their ambitions. Whilst, with four or five exceptions, there is not a huge difference between the size of the clubs in Leagues 1 and 2, there exists great inequality within the Championship in this respect. There are, of course, many parameters dictating how big a club is – history, budget, stadium – but if we take attendance as a barometer, we can see that Newcastle get over five times the average attendance of Blackpool and Scunthorpe. As with everything in football, the pound sign rules supreme.” (thetwounfortunates)

Eight Out of Work Managers

“Paul Hart’s instalment at Crystal Palace last week continued the trend for this 2009-10 Championship season to resemble an episode of Swap Shop. We have remarked more than once in recent months how Chairmen have spent a minimum of time over their re-staffing decisions: the first name that springs to mind has become the main axiom. Hence, the newly sacked have been deemed the most suitable to take clubs forward – current experience has been valued above all and we have Darren at Preston, Brian at Burnley, Alan at Hillsborough and now Paul at the Palace.” (thetwounfortunates)

Headline Grabbing Savage

“Headline grabbers are hard to quosh and Derby County’s trip to Reading last night provided a big example of such showmanship as Robbie Savage spent the best part of an hour between the sticks, his first spell in goals in his career. The disruption to the Rams’ evening allows only for assessment with caveats. Savage was the fray’s third incumbent in the goalkeeping position.” (thetwounfortunates)

Transported Out

“A common strategy for managers taking a team up into the Premier League is to “give the lads who got us there half a season, it it doesn’t work, bring in new blood”. A parallel technique has largely been used over the past couple of seasons on descending into the Championship. Newcastle decided to bank on those who ushered the club down to usher them back up and this is a policy that appears largely to have succeeded. True, some particularly coveted jewels were offloaded in Owen and Martins, but the Magpies’ decided to gamble on an automatic return.” (thetwounfortunates)

Keith Alexander

“Just hours after England manager Fabio Capello cited the large amounts of money paid to top players as a cause for concern in the modern game, football fans all over the country were shocked by the sudden death of Macclesfield manager Keith Alexander. Whilst he had previously suffered health problems, his death at just 53 years of age puts the hyperbole surrounding every aspect of our national sport into perspective.” (thetwounfortunates)

Are battle-weary Baggies running out of ammunition?

“The muddy, bloody battlefields of the Championship appear to be taking their toll on West Bromwich Albion’s promotion challenge. Ok, I exaggerate a little. The pitch at Plymouth was poor, though hardly Somme-like, and some of the injuries have been sustained in training or warm-up rather than in the rough-and-tumble of match action. Yet Albion looked like shell-shocked soldiers during a tame second-half surrender at Bristol City on Sunday afternoon.” (thetwounfortunates)

A Different Way

“After the success of his first post, we’ve welcomed back Scarf with open arms. Here, he considers Swansea City and the factors that have led to them holding such an enviable position today. On Monday 21 April 2003, Swansea City hosted Exeter at the Vetch Field. Sitting 90th of the 92 teams in the Football League, they lost 1-0 to the team directly below, putting them in grave danger of relegation. Both clubs were in a horrible mess; deeply in debt, neither owned their grounds and both were experiencing serious off-the-field disruption.” (thetwounfortunates)

Trigger Happy

“Our first guest post for some time comes from Stockport County fan and activist Simon Holt (aka ‘Scarf’), who casts his opinion on Peterborough’s new manager, Jim Gannon, who enjoyed a successful spell at Edgeley Park between 2005 and 2009.” (thetwounfortunates)

The John Terry Moral Conundrum

“There isn’t much about the recent “tabloid revelations” concerning John Terry that don’t sink the heart somewhat. The allegations, the fact that it was his best friend, the coercion into an abortion, the money; all of it leaves the reader with the pronounced sense that truly we are living in the last days of Rome. It’s difficult to read more than a couple of paragraphs on the subject without starting to feel a little bit grubby and wishing that you were doing something a little bit more worthwhile with your time.” (twohundredpercent)

Sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe calls John Terry’s England captaincy into question
“Any hopes Terry might have had that the storm would abate appear misplaced. ‘On the field John Terry is a fantastic player and a good England captain,’ said the Sports Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, ‘but to be the captain of England you have got to have wider responsibilities for the country. If these allegations are proven it does call into question his role as England captain’.” (Telegraph – Henry Winter)

No one likes a bully, John Terry
“The man in charge of Burnley FC’s public address system clearly has a sense of humour. On Saturday, just before the teams arrived on the pitch for the Premier League game between the local team and Chelsea, he played Bryan Ferry’s version of Let’s Stick Together. As the visiting team were led out by their captain John Terry, the opening line crooned out around the stadium: ‘The marriage vow is very sacred’.” (Telegraph)

Forward! Barnsley

“Mark Robins would have more than a case for being the best manager of this Championship season but his players let him down today. The former C. D. Ourense and Panionios man has been scathing of his players in his post match comments and little wonder: they didn’t muster a shot on goal in the 1-0 reverse at the Madejski Stadium and such meek capitulation to a team occupying the penultimate slot in the table will not be countenanced in future.” (thetwounfortunates)

DVD review: The Damned United

“David Peace’s work has been a modern day staple of visual adaptations for the past year or so and the author is one of those writers whose books can often be found on the shelves of those who, as The Daily Telegraph might term it, ‘don’t read books’, an explorer of yoof issues to cast alongside Irvine Welsh, Howard Marks and Nicholas Blincoe. In truth, and without wishing to denigrate those authors, Peace’s ambition extends beyond this.” (thetwounfortunates)

Plot strands coming together

“As we have hinted at in our new series Championship Letters, the resemblance between a league season and a great work of literature is marked, and the form with which the easiest parallels can be drawn is the long, winding novel, full of unexpected developments and richly portrayed characters.” (thetwounfortunates)