TFN’s Pre-Season Picks

Huddersfield Town pre-season training at Canalside.

It’s that time of year again. Players are returning to their clubs to start training and pre-season has begun. The False Nine have scoured the schedules of clubs up and down the country and picked out some of our favourite pre-season friendlies…

1. Whitehawk vs. Brighton and Hove Albion – 6th July, The Enclosed Ground

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Brighton won many plaudits last season for the attractive football played under Gus Poyet and new manager Oscar Garcia has promised to maintain this style. As a former Barcelona player and youth manager, Garcia is no stranger to attacking, free-flowing play. In his first friendly at the helm, Brighton take on Whitehawk, a local non-league side who won promotion to the Conference South last season. Recently, a plan was floated to change their name to ‘Brighton City’ in order to put them on the map but for now they remain as Whitehawk. Does this represent something of a local ‘Brighton Derby’ then? Ties between the clubs are not uncommon and Whitehawk are managed by former Brighton winger Darren Freeman. Continue reading

The 23 Transfer Target Strikers to watch this Summer: from Lewandowski to Andy Carroll

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With a host of top clubs on high alert for a new frontman to lead the line, David Dodds looks at the 23 strikers making up the most sought-after shopping list in world football this summer…

This summer is going to be fun. After the failure of last year’s transfer window to deliver the gross manifestations of über-affluence we’ve now come to expect, plenty of clubs will be looking to splash out this summer. One thing this window looks likely to be defined by is the lucrative movement of blockbuster strikers to the titans of contemporary football. And, as always, cash-strapped teams will also be on the prowl for a new man up top.

So here’s a look at some of the men whose painfully-protracted transfer sagas are likely to dominate media narratives this summer: players whose exorbitant transfer fees we’ll either be laughing about or lauding this time next year; cheaper options whose progress is worth keeping an eye on; a crop of youngsters so good they’ll leave you questioning how the striker could have ever been declared dead; and just a jolly good chance to acknowledge the entertainment value of speculation. Whether such media pressure lifts them to the status of icons or causes their careers to crash and burn is another story all together. Continue reading

TFN Meets Futbol Intellect’s Maxi Rodriguez

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The False Nine talks to Maxi Rodriguez from the excellent Futbol Intellect about his highlights from 2012…

Favourite Moment:

The wonderful thing about soccer (football) and sport in general, is that despite the decades of history, and the way in which every event is somehow linked to a larger contextual background, is that there are still moments which are so unexpected and unique that you don’t quite know how to respond to them, other than with a sort of mindless jubilation. Continue reading

Chaotic Entertainment Exposing Premier League’s Decline

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Further European humiliation for Premier League clubs has exposed a number of flaws in the English game; is entertainment alone enough? False Nine editor James Dutton discloses some uncomfortable truths…

Who remembers the Olympics? They were great weren’t they? That now iconic fortnight when the country soaked up the sun and basked in the world’s spotlight; when London temporarily justified its self-gratifying tagline as the centre of the known world. Continue reading