The bold claim from Blackpool F.C. manager Simon Grayson that his club could be the busiest in England during the current transfer window raised eyebrows, not in the least with supporters brought up on the slim mid-season pickings under the now deposed Oyston family, but also elicited no little scepticism as to whether the 50-year…
Disparity between Premier League & Bundesliga exemplified by Hummels’ return to Dortmund
The return of Mats Hummels to Borussia Dortmund's Signal Iduna Park highlights the widening gap between those long regarded as Bundesliga elite and their Premier League counterparts. Television money and restrictive, although hardly egregious, ownership rules designed to ensure fans remain as such in the eyes of the clubs they support, and not assets from…
Nathan Jones to rid Stoke City’s squad of its ‘final payday’ mentality
Far removed from his relative fastness at Kenilworth Road former Luton Town manager Nathan Jones has in the first few weeks of taking the Stoke City hotseat been left in no doubt of the enormity of the task ahead. Chastening home defeats to Shrewsbury, in the F A Cup, and Preston North End bookended a…
Chelsea pay the price for failing to adequately replace Diego Costa
To call Chelsea a club in crisis is akin to pandering to snowflake-generation hyperbole. To underscore the term 'crisis club' look no further than Blackpool, Bolton Wanderers, and Coventry City, not the faltering Roman revolution at Stamford Bridge. There is though a sense that the west Londoners are being left behind in the annual stampede…
Blackpool F.C. avoid an onscreen banana skin but are far from where they should be
A lot has happened in the life of Blackpool Football Club since it last appeared live on BBC television. The tangerines' 3-0 defeat of now established Premier League side Southampton nearly seven years ago formed part of Ian Holloway's attempt to return to the top flight at the first time of asking, following an agonizing…
Blackpool Football Club: The resignation of manager Bowyer the latest in a line of avoidable crises
The recent resignation of Blackpool manager Gary Bowyer is a huge blow to the club, but only the latest in a long line of negative headlines generated by the Oyston regime. To the uninitiated the raw data from Blackpool's dwindling, but still allegedly massaged attendance figures, would suggest that insufficient demand exists on the Fylde…
Amid a Toxic Backdrop Blackpool Football Club’s Youth Team Show Maturity Beyond Their Years
The unlikely appearance of Blackpool in tonight's F.A. Youth Cup semi-final acts as a neat counterweight to the manifold off-field issues that have become the ultimate ruination of the first team's prospects, which have included a fall from the Premier League to League Two in the space of five years. Now at a stage in…
City’s Shock Exit Proves the Magic of the Cup is Alive and Well
You could see it coming. Such was Manchester City's dominance last night at the DW Stadium that the longer the first half progressed without Christian Walton's goal being breached, one wondered if it could, against all odds, be Wigan Athletic's night. And so it transpired. Yielding 83% possession and on average a shot every three…
Alpine Adventures, Soccer, Central Asian Autocracies & Secessionist Politics 