Football Ruined My Life

In this episode Colin Shindler and Jim White are delighted to welcome one of the few Economics graduates to play for England and manage successfully in the Premier League.  Steve Coppell’s potential career as an economist was somewhat overshadowed by 360 games as a right winger for Tranmere Rovers and Manchester United, despite being forced to retire at the age of 28 because of a bad knee injury....

The panel discuss the players they most feared because they were really good players and always played well against their own team... or players who were basically hatchet men who set out cold-bloodedly to injure their best player.  When we talked about goalkeepers Pat Jennings came into the former category and you have to say nobody could dislike Pat who always seemed such a pleasant self-effacin...

Ronnie Radford was a workaday midfielder playing for such legendary clubs as Worcester City, Bath City and Forest Green Rovers but in January 1972 he was playing for Hereford United in an FA Cup third round replay at Edgar Street on a quagmire of a pitch in front of a capacity crowd. With less than ten minutes to go and Newcastle comfortably 1-0 ahead Radford won a tackle in the Newcastle half and...

Now that England have already qualified for next year’s World Cup finals, this makes all the remaining matches in the group completely pointless from an England perspective.  The November international break seems to have arrived 25 minutes after the October one.  These tedious autumn and spring international breaks also extend the football season which now starts in the middle of the Test match s...

In this episode, Andy Hamilton, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes resume their role as selectors as they choose the best team of the 1960s from the English Football League as it then was.  That’s not one individual club or national side but a team composed of the outstanding players of that decade in some sort of logical formation that would bring out the best of them both as individuals and as team p...

Colin Shindler tries to convince Jon Holmes and Jimmy Mulville that the 1960s was English football’s most glorious decade.  Not just the world cup triumph of 1966, though that obviously features significantly at the heart of the decade.  Secondary school was dark, depressing and alienating.  Football by contrast was light, colourful and inclusive.  All it asked of you was to enjoy playing and supp...

We all remember Brian Clough’s infamous 44 days as manager of Leeds United, a fractious period of time which compared favourably with Liz Truss’s time as Prime Minister of the UK - and of course the lettuce that lasted longer than either of them. Colin Shindler recalls with ghastly clarity Steve Coppell’s 33 days in charge of the disaster that was Manchester City in 1996.  Both these short-lived p...

On the first day of every season nearly all football supporters experience the same surge of pride and expectation.  When they get to the ground it looks gleaming.  The grass is green and the white lines stand out in marked contrast inviting the arrival of our heroes and stimulating thoughts of promotion and championships and European football.  This emotion for most supporters doesn’t even last n...

It’s an increasingly pertinent question in football.  In the days of Shankly, Clough and Ferguson it was blindingly obvious who ran their clubs.  But as the manager’s role has been split between the Head Coach and the Director of Football, that vision of total authority has become increasingly blurred.  The Head Coach might pick the team on Saturday afternoon (or possibly Friday night or Sunday lu...

Following on from the previous edition, Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes set themselves the task of choosing from the English Football League as it then was, a team of the 1970s.  That’s not one individual club or national side, but a team composed of the outstanding players of that decade in some sort of logical formation that would bring out the best of them both as individuals and as te...

Not unusually for this podcast, we look back – with quite some affection – to the 1970s.  Many of our listeners will also no doubt remember the decade through a haze of nostalgic introspection… but of course it was also a tumultuous ten years that not only laid many of the foundation stones for the modern game, but also witnessed the English national team twice failing to qualify for the World Cup...

Jim White was astonished to find that Andy Carroll is now turning out on Saturday afternoons to play in the sixth tier of English for Dagenham & Redbridge.  So it’s Jim who leads the discussion (with Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes) of players who once strode purposefully at the summit of the game but ended their careers in far less salubrious circumstances.  Bobby Moore finished his playing career...

This week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by the author Daniel Gray to discuss his 2013 book “Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters” – a fascinating travel book about England as seen through the less glamorous clubs of English football and the communities that support them.  It’s time that clubs like Crewe and Chester and Bradford City were given their due air time and Football Ruined My Life...

Jon Holmes, Jim White and Colin Shindler speculate (if present trends continue) about what football will look like in the year 2050 when it is very likely that none of them will be around to feel embarrassed by how badly they got things wrong.  Colin mischievously teases Jon to consider what will have happened to Leicester City in 25 years time.  Will there still be a Premier League such as we cur...

In this episode Colin Shindler, Andy Hamilton and Jon Holmes examine Alan Hansen’s notorious observation that you don’t win anything with kids. It’s rather a shame that his reputation as one of the leading pundits has been slightly tarnished by the fact that he said those words on Match of the Day on the day Manchester United had been well beaten by Aston Villa at the start of the 1995-96 season....

This week the panel discuss that most prized of assets on a football field – what we all used to call the creative or scheming inside forward, now called I suppose the creative midfielder which isn’t as euphonious in my opinion but it’s only my opinion. However it would include players like Danny Blanchflower and Paddy Crerand who both wore the number 4 shirt and played at right half. The point is...

We all know that that’s what the foreign owners want.  Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the reasons why we shouldn’t just wave bye bye to the top six elite clubs in the Premier League and let them all just bugger off and join what nearly every football supporter fears will be the inevitable European Super League.  For them there would then be no fear of relegation but instead th...

This is a particularly emotive topic.  Do we on this podcast give too much credit to the football of our youth and not enough to the Modern Game? We probably do – some might even argue it’s not the football of our youth we want back but our youth itself.  And they could be right.  Who wouldn’t want to be 20 years old again with a body that actually worked properly?  But one reason Colin Shindler,...

We can imagine no better way of celebrating our century of podcasts than by dipping into the postbag containing your emails.  Every week we encourage you to write to us and you do so in comforting numbers.  Once again, the tone is largely positive with people wanting to contribute their own memories to the topic they’ve just listened to or correcting our very fallible memories.  We look forward to...

Prompted by reports of the last men’s game to be played by Everton at Goodison Park, the panel discuss the emotions that fans feel when they leave their traditional home for pastures new – the nostalgia for times past and the excitement mixed with some trepidation at what lies ahead. Jon and Colin have experienced this sensation as Filbert Street and Maine Road closed their doors for the last time...

Was 1985 English football’s darkest year?  There could be a number of nominations for this much coveted title but 1985 contained the tragedies of Heysel Stadium and the Bradford City fire.  Weeks before these events the sixth round FA Cup replay between Luton Town and Millwall degenerated into a shocking riot.  The average attendance at a Division One match in 1972 had been over 30,000.  By 1985 t...

David Pleat has been in football so long that most supporters have forgotten that he started out as a player for Nottingham Forest, Luton and Shrewsbury Towns, Exeter City and Peterborough United.  He has been a sensible pundit on radio and television for many years following a successful managerial career at Luton Town, Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City, Sheffield Wednesday and Nuneaton Borough....

Andy Hamilton returns to join Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes as they discuss the contentious subject of football pundits.  By pundits, they mean those know-it-alls who are either very wise after the event, are outstanding at stating the bleeding obvious or are as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to predicting the future.  Yet somehow, they have become increasingly important in the broadcast...

This week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by Omid Djalili to ask the question, “How English is the English football pyramid?”  Of course, football reflects society and since we all began watching football, British society has changed out of all recognition.  If you look at old football matches on The Big Match Revisited on ITV4 on Saturday mornings and other archive film programs you can...

Jim White returns to contribute to the last in our series of podcasts about the England managers which takes the panel from Sven to Thomas Tuchel and the glories that lie ahead for the England football team - which is usually a reminder that they haven’t won anything since 1966.  In the name of Allah go, they said to Bobby Robson.  Yanks 2 Planks 0 the Sun helpfully pointed out to Graham Taylor.  ...