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Craig Bryson 2013/14: A Season Primed for the Premier League
Since their infamous 11-point Premier League season in 2007/08, Derby County have without a doubt been the most successful club not to make it back to the top flight. Eight consecutive top 10 finishes, four of which saw them reach the play-offs between 2012 and 2020, and still that seemingly cursed points record has repelled…
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Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know – Football’s Most Controversial Owners
Football news in England is currently gripped with stories of Financial Fair Play. These measures were introduced by UEFA to limit spending by football clubs and make them more sustainable. While FFP dominates the headlines, it got me thinking. What about the owners whose actions extend beyond the realms of club finances? Which club…
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Aden Flint 2014/15: An Anomaly in the Dying Art of Goal-Scoring Defenders
Whenever the topic of goal-scoring centre-backs in English football arises, there is one man who often springs to mind. After an extraordinary 19-goal season in 1990/91, Manchester United’s Steve Bruce set an unbeatable precedent in a subsection of the game that has slowly dwindled ever since. During that year under Sir Alex Ferguson, Bruce…
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The Biggest Fallen Giants in European Football
As any Football Manager enthusiast will tell you, resurrecting a formerly successful club and leading them to the heights they once scaled is one of the best feelings in the world.They’re probably wrong as drugs and sex are things that exist but they wouldn’t know about that since they are locked in their rooms playing…
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The Biggest Fallen Giants in German Football
There is nothing like German football, from the dedicated fans vehemently protesting any attempt to corporatize their teams or league to their stadiums laden with beer and bratwurst that are home to fans of all ages, as football is often seen as an affordable family outing. One of the most interesting particularities of the…
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What Goes Up, Must Come Down, Must Come Back Up Again – The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Inter Milan
It has been a roller-coaster few decades for Inter Milan — we’re taking a look at the club’s transformation over the past 30 years. The 1990s – Not Everyone’s Golden Age Ask any Italian football fan and they’ll say football peaked in the 1990’s. It’s easy to see why. The decade started with…
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Teofilo Cubillas – Part 1: The Rise Of El Nene
Name the best South American football players to grace a field and many will cite either a Brazilian (Pele, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Zico or Jairzinho) or an Argentinean (Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona or Mario Kempes). But if you were to ask who was the best South American player of the 1970s, the first name on the…
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Tactical Analysis: How Marcello Lippi’s Italy Won the 2006 FIFA World Cup
The mid 2000s oversaw a dramatic shift in European football’s power dynamics as the once-dominant Italian clubs collective crowns started to slip. A combination of ageing squads, the infamous Calciopoli scandal which tarnished the league’s formerly gleaming reputation and the subsequent expulsion of Juventus, Fiorentina and Lazio, who were the best teams in the country…
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Manchester United’s Transformation of 2005/06: When Success Came in Spite of New Ownership, Not Because of It
As Manchester United gear up for a hopefully more prosperous era under the minority ownership (for now) but likely near-full stewardship of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS, memories of the early years of the Glazers have come flooding back, when success came not because of the new men in charge, but in spite of them. …
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Batigol: The Early Years
Mention the name Gabriel Batistuta and one word springs to mind – Batigol. It was the nickname used lovingly to describe the striker that terrorised defences in Europe during the 1990s and early 2000s. His exploits for Fiorentina and then Roma are well known, but it is his early days that are less explored, a…
