• Tacit Tactics
    Here is the A plan: we play four-four-two, with half-backs cutting in from either wing. Two centre backs routinely clearing to midfield men who play the forwards through. Here is the main man: the ref’s lips will blow when wayward sinners wildly lunge, and bring (unless requested for the quickly-taken sting) the wall to ten […]
  • Big Yellow Taxi for Mourinho
    He dug up the pitch and put up a parking lot, with a flat back ten and the team bus parked on the pen spot. Mourinho’s catenaccio: a smaller crowd off the field than is on. He dug up the pitch and put up a parking lot. He took all the skills and put them […]
  • Premiership Punctuation
    *| = hit the post.. o*o = a clash of heads. ^^^^ = waterlogged pitch. “o” = through the keepers hands. /o = through the keepers legs. = midfield diamond. + = cross. +/ = high cross. ] = high wind. ( ) = who ate all the pies? )( = winded. % = 50-50 […]
  • The Long Game Closes
    No punts over the top, we’ve done with sweeping. Instead, a slow build-up through midfield creeping. We pass out to the flanks, the winger crosses. Strikers nod their thanks. The long game closes. We contemplate the worth of this endeavour- the pass, the run, the swerve, the bullet header. Results our team achieves- all wins, […]
  • Football Matters
    It mattered that some early-season Saturday a Butcher’s shop would close at twelve, and a factory klaxon release a greased and grimed assembly line to their bicycles, Lambrettas and Reliant Robins. It mattered that the toast was buttered and the tea was strong enough to stand a goalpost in, and that the radiogram played Orange […]