I’m trying hard to imagine what I would have wrote back in 2005, no doubt I would have tried to tie the fortunes of Latics to those of the victorious Ashes team tried to point to lessons in the way that England approached that series for the way that Latics should approach their first tilt […]

Everton will give you Dixie Dean, Newcastle Jackie Milburn.  You’ve got Jimmy Greaves, Rodger Hunt, Geoff Hurst and I guess, more recently, the likes of Lineker, Fowler and Shearer.  These are strikers whose abilities have faded into the mists of time and become mere myth and legend.  The men who become the stopping off points […]

Are we really going to pretend that we didn’t expect that to happen, or that losing 5-0 to United is more disastrous than being beaten by Wolves?  The Champions coming to town, stung by their own ‘end of the world’ midweek defeat was never going to that enjoyable an experience and with so many points […]

Latics 0-5 Manchester UnitedSaturday 22nd August 2009 Is that it?  Is it time to sack the manager, bin the game plan get back to lumping long balls and running around in circles?   If you were even thinking of thinking yes to any of those questions then you’ve obviously forgotten what happened the last time Arsenal […]

The Arndale, Aflecks, Aspecto.  The Smiths, The Roses, The Mondays.  The Ritz, The Hacienda, The Roadhouse.  These are the things that come to my mind when I cast it eastward up the East Lancs.   It occasionally drags up images of goalposts, crowds and sky blue shirts, but always sky blue, never red. Is it strange […]

Latics 0-1 WolvesTuesday 18th August 2009 It’s hard to comment on a performance like this one without ending up sounding like a right old whinger “Oooh, they bullied us, but… But…”, “The referee was terrible”, “sob, we were tired”.  You’ve heard it all before, in fact I’ll guarantee that you’ve been there. The short and […]

… and she had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.  When she was good, she was very, very good and when she was bad, she was horrid. It struck me on Tuesday that this little rhyme from my childhood described how this season’s total football experiment might end up looking.  However […]

Oh my god, what have I turned into.  I used to call myself a football fan and pride myself on what was going on elsewhere.  I followed the careers of such luminaries as Jermaine McSporron and Danny Schofield.  These days I’m so insular that I’ve just realised I know nowt about Wolves and if I […]

Or Please Release Me, Let Me Go. If it were another player then I’d be tempted to ignore it.  But it’s not another player and they probably wouldn’t have done it anyway.  Earlier in the week, I labelled Lee Cattermole guilty on the basis that he’d taken the 5th, there’s no chance of the same […]

…it’s losing with style. “If we’re going to lose, we’re going to lose in style.  You have to be brave” What more could you want from a manager coming out of his first Premier League in charge?   You might be ready with the accusations of naivety, no one gets anywhere in this division without a […]