The TFN Alternative Season Preview

Surreal football

James Dutton and David Wild offer up an alternative vision of the season ahead. Expect surrealism, silliness and absurdities in The False Nine’s very alternative season preview…

AUGUST

In the now customary curtain-raiser to the new season, the Community Shield is fought over by the two trophy winning powerhouses of David Moyes and Owen Coyle, now in charge of Manchester United and Wigan Athletic respectively. Having taken the unorthodox tactical decision to don trousers for the occasion, Coyle’s men are the surprise winners. Having inspired his new side to a comfortable 2-0 victory, the former Bolton and Burnley manager tells the press that his sights are fixed firmly on a triumphant Europa League run, “I was born to manage Wigan Athletic, and I was born to beat the likes of Asteras Tripolis and Hapoel Ramat Gan.” Continue reading

Football on TV: How will you be following your club on the box this season?

FootballTV

Following the launch of BT Sport, this season supporters have more choice than ever before when it comes to watching football on TV. Kelvin Goodson of broadband comparison website broadbandchoices.co.uk looks at the options available.

Unless you’ve been in a self-induced coma since May so the close season would pass more quickly, the chances are you’ve heard of BT Sport. The launch of this new group of sports channels means there is now more choice when it comes to watching football on TV in the UK than ever before.

However, with great choice comes great complexity – some of the options now are available about as straightforward as a Garth Crook monologue, so read on to get the skinny on all the different ways you can watch football on TV this season… Continue reading

Liverpool: Suarez, Reina and the Hypocrisy of Loyalty

Liverpool Echo: "LFC's Pepe Reina tweets removal van picture as he packs up to go to Napoli."

Liverpool Echo: “LFC’s Pepe Reina tweets removal van picture as he packs up to go to Napoli.”

With the usual fire, brimstone and vitriol whirling around Luis Suarez’s future, Jon Wilmore considers whether Liverpool have a leg to stand on after ditching Pepe Reina…

Liverpool are outraged. Their fans are outraged, their manager is outraged, their club mascot, presumably, is outraged. How dare Luis Suarez make clear his intention to play football in another kit. It’s disrespectful, is what it is: disrespectful for a player to ask to leave and classless for another football club, namely Arsenal, to do their best to make that wish come true.

Elsewhere on Merseyside, Jose Manuel Reina is in the process of packing up the last eight years of his life and all his worldly possessions from his Liverpool home. He’s recently informed his wife and newborn child that they’ll be moving to Italy this summer, for how long, well, we don’t really know. In less than 12 months, Daddy might be looking for work somewhere else.

With claims that his abilities had begun to deteriorate over the past two seasons, for some neutral observers it seemed that time could well be called on the once impregnable Spaniard’s reign in goal sooner rather than later. Yet, as Reina and his young family wave goodbye to their adopted city, did Liverpool show – in line with the expectations and feelings of their fans – the class and gratitude to at least bid their loyal servant a fond farewell? No, that’s right. They loaned him out, quietly through the back door, without telling him first. Continue reading

AVFC: Lambert’s faith in youth set for big pay off

Lambert villa

After overcoming a tough first year at Villa Park, Greg Johnson reckons great things are just around the corner for Paul Lambert’s young squad…

Football management is a profession beset by cautious conservatism. In the constant race for results a coach must be ruthless in their methods in order to secure their long-term future and continued employment. Well-meaning plans and nice ideas carry little weight under the financial stakes and pressure of the professional game where dropping out of your sub-tier within a division can be almost as damaging as relegation itself.

Arsenal’s string of consistent top four finishes are often mocked for their faux-trophy status yet for clubs who fall out of that select group, regaining entry can cost as much as effort and money as a fully invested title challenge. This reality has dawned slowly on Liverpool’s initially naïve owners and their vast array of sentimentally optimistic supporters. Similarly, Aston Villa’s slump from the top six has seen the club struggle to stand still as the slope leading back up the table grew ever more slippery thanks to the resurgence of Tottenham Hotspur and the bump down effect of Manchester City’s extremely well funded Champions League insurgency.

Last season Paul Lambert injected the decisive radicalism Villa needed to not only stop the rot that had crumbled their Europe bothering foundations, but to build a platform to recapture those heady heights once more. Continue reading

Nicklas Bendtner: the Danish party boy who refused to grow up

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As the Danish striker’s time at Arsenal comes to a close, Hugo Greenhalgh wonders where it all went wrong for Nicklas Bendtner…

In the same way that a stereotype can often contain a heavy dose of truth, a brief, personal anecdote epitomised all the expectations of a certain footballer. On a recent flight back from Copenhagen I was convinced I had seen Nicklas Bendtner boarding the same plane. But what was a Premier League footballer doing flying EasyJet? Arriving at London Gatwick I called, ‘Nick’. He turned around to reveal a puffy-eyed and scruffy visage, topped off with a backwards baseball cap. ‘Where have you been?’, I asked.

‘Vegas.’ Continue reading

Luis Suarez to Arsenal: where have all the suitors gone?

Luis Suarez

Greg Johnson wonders why Europe’s biggest clubs aren’t in for Suarez who is said to be the Premier League’s best player and desperate to leave Liverpool for Champions League football…

A broken promise and broken hearts – last night Luis Suarez confirmed fans’ worst fears when he broke his silence to make public his desire to leave Liverpool Football Club. Claiming that the club had promised him a sale should they fail to qualify for the Champions League last season, he told Sid Lowe of The Guardian:

“[Liverpool] promised me something a year ago just as I promise that I would stay and try everything possible to get into the Champions League. They gave me their word a year ago and now I want them to honour that. And it is not something with the coach but something that is written in the contract. I’m not going to another club to hurt Liverpool.”

Or should that be, “I’m going to Arsenal” since the North Londoners are currently the only club to have made any official approaches or noises about signing the forward. According to a sizeable portion of Liverpool’s fans and commentators sympathetic to the club, not only is the wrist kissing pariah the greatest footballer currently playing in the Premier League, but one of the top five or ten players in Europe, if not the world. Continue reading

LUFC: “We’ve always been Leeds, but for once we’re United”

Luke Murphy Leeds

Leeds fan Kyle Hulme is excited by his club’s new lease of life as it emerges from the shadows of Ken Bates’ reign…

It can be difficult to write about your own club. Constantly fearing your own bias you can quickly fall the other way completely, find yourself typing out controversies in a rather scathing tone. Before you know it you’re calling Neil Warnock words that could get you arrested, or worse, blocked by Caitlin Moran.

I say usually, because today that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Leeds fans find themselves in quite an unusual position – optimism surrounding our club is at a ten year high, yet the expectations for this season are, dare I say it, rather realistic.

This seemingly substantiated optimism is born of all the work that’s been done by the club of late off the pitch. When GFH Capital purchased the club from Leeds fans it saw us embark on a typically rollercoaster-like ride; first we were rich, then we were poor, then Bates looked set to remain as President and supporters no longer knew where they stood.

But since the end of last season, the situation has begun to change. Continue reading