As featured in The Guardian\
It’s the final Wednesday Dispatch, so what better way to bring a cracking season to a conclusion than by handing the Sofa over to someone who sits on it every day. Mrs Theoharis never knew what she was letting herself in for. Let her explain.
Read more on So I Married A Football Blogger by Nina Theoharis…
When I turned thirty I had what can only be described as the early onset of a post-quarter-life-midlife-crisis. I was consumed by the desire to do something kerr-ay-zee, so I took myself down to the local tattoo parlour on the eve of the 2008/9 season and booked myself in for an hour or so of self-inflicted skin-scratching, pricking, searing pain. On my right shoulder now resides a cockerel balanced on top of a football. It’s there forever. Forever, ever? Forever. And I hate it and love it in equal measure. It’s there now as a permanent reminder with its ink-stained durability, of the despairing futility that being a supporter of a football club brings. It’s a nihilistic pursuit, with little if any reward. Because like Spurs, I cannot ever erase it. It’s part of me now, for better or for worse.
“Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà-vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before” – Steven Wright
It’s probably fair to assume that it hasn’t been the best week in Alan Davies’ career. Listening to the now infamous Tuesday Club podcast, in which the ‘comedian’ managed to alienate most of Liverpool with his misguided comments about Liverpool Football Club’s refusal to play on the fifteenth of April, it comes across as the snide rantings of a pernicious classroom ‘wit’ who elicits cheap laughs from his gang of sycophantic mates at the expense of the kid with a weight problem/spots/lack of sexual experience. It was malicious in its tone and as a consequence, he has been under fire all week with some equally distasteful comments being aimed in his direction from some in the football community.
Chapter 33: In which our hero gains a promotion, takes on the Dutch and continues to look utterly dashing.
The call came one Tuesday afternoon whilst Wing Commander Scottisworth Parker was enjoying a brief moment of R&R at his gentleman’s club, deep in the heart of Marylebone. He had spent the morning fulfilling his role as Housewife’s Officer of Choice by posing for a promotional advertisement in which he side-parted his short back and sides with a leading hairstyling wax. By three o’clock he was firmly ensconced in a leather armchair, sucking on a pipe whilst mulling over the latest issue of The Chap, paying great attention to an article within concerning the correct procedure in which one must button up one’s waistcoat.
Read more on The Amazing Adventures Of Captain Scott Parker…
For Ray Dimond
When it comes to the team I hate most in football, it’s not Arsenal who have subjected most of my years supporting Spurs to one humiliating capitulation after another whilst watching on enviously as the trophies and plaudits washed across the hearths of both Highbury and The Emirates. It’s not even Chelsea, who spent years playing the playground bully holding the school squirt’s attempts to land a blow on his chin at arm’s length. West Ham? They’ve always been a minor irritation but have never come close to raising my hackles to such an extent that I lose the ability for rational thought.
That particular ‘honour’ will always belong to Coventry City. It’s not their association with Richard Keys that sets my teeth on edge, although that doesn’t help. No, the genesis for my myopic brand of loathing can be pinpointed to one particular sunny day. 16th May, 1987. On that day, I awoke to find a seven inch vinyl copy of Chas ‘n’ Dave’s FA Cup final song, Hot Shot Tottenham, gleaming with promise and hope at the edge of my bed placed there lovingly by my mum; it was better than Christmas. And from about eight in the morning to when the television build-up began around noon, I played it continuously on a loop. The outcome of that day we all know, but what truly stung was the realisation that cup win number eight was not as the Cockernee Duo promised, “coming up” and neither were Spurs, “the team, the cream… the best you’ve ever seen”.
Here I am, emphatically and unequivocally cementing a u-turn. Like most Spurs fans, my plea is clear: don’t go Harry! Alas, it seems that last Wednesday’s tumultuous events have paved the way for the wrongly accused Mr Redknapp to be the next in line to take up that ominous ‘poisoned chalice’ that is the England manager’s job. After all, if all and sundry are telling us it’s an inevitability, then it must be so. And there’s the little matter of Harry’s stating that he is fully “focused on Tottenham”. I’ve heard that kind of talk too many times before. One Sulzah Campbell springs to mind.
Read more on Don’t Go Harry: Why Redknapp Should Stay At Spurs…
Some time this year.
The world of football was in mourning last night as the lights were finally extinguished on an institution that had influenced and shaped much of the footballing landscape of the last century. Liverpool Football Club, arguably the greatest club side ever to grace Britain, if not Europe, was terminated after nearly two decades of serial decline.
Read more on Liverpool Football Club, 1892 – 2012 – An Obituary…
Dispatch No. 100
If you want someone to blame for the ninety-nine Dispatches that have preceded this one, blame Nick Hornby. It was never meant to last this long, you know. It was just something to have a bit of fun with. You weren’t meant to read any of these things I’ve written. I’m riddled by my own obsession with putting a semi-cogent piece of writing together every Sunday. And to cap it all off, an Arsenal fan has done this to me.
No matter how many times they tried, the enemies of Rasputin could not kill him. Like some beheaded zombie who continues to drag its carcass towards you, the mad monk just kept coming back for more. And that’s how I’ve been feeling lately about the return to the popular consciousness of two foes that I thought had been vanquished and banished to the dark recesses of the dog-eared history book or yellowing newspaper clipping in a dusty archive. Yes, Margaret Thatcher and Thierry Henry are akin to Robert Patrick’s T-1000. Seemingly indestructible and hell-bent on rising from the dead.
The many conundrums faced by mankind; is there life on Mars? Can we solve the Israel-Palestine conflict? Is Bruce Forsyth ever going to retire? But what you actually wonder the most is how one would go about comparing Premier League clubs with the bovine species. Dispatches From A Football Sofa has ‘udderly’ lost the plot and only gone and done it for you…
In Defence Of Luis Suarez by Rachael Singh
What’s The Point Of Scottish Football?
Captain Caveman: The De-evolution of John Terry
Alan Davies Is Here All Week
Liverpool Football Club, 1892 – 2012 – An Obituary
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