I’m just going to come out and say this, as simply as I know how. Arsenal goalkeeper Manuel Almunia moved into a house that was built on the site of an abandoned psychiatric hospital, and now his wife is being haunted by the ghost of “a monk-like figure with a candle in his hand.” [...]

The taxonomy of football is a difficult and unrewarding science, but two families of attackers that I think we would all recognize are the shambling/slouching/mesmerizingly ill-fitting rogues and the barrel-chested/candid-thighed chargers. The first sort look deceivingly broken-down and loose-limbed, as though their bodies were assembled out of parts that didn’t quite match; away from [...]

Dimitar Berbatov taking the penalty kick that drew Spurs level in the Carling Cup final yesterday: coolness so pronounced that it almost seemed rude to Chelsea, a matter-of-fact confidence taken to the point at which it began to resemble arrogant detachment. It was as if Berbatov felt such scorn for the thought that Petr [...]

Hyperlinks, or “links,” provide Internet users with a simple way to navigate from one Web site to another. Say hello to the latest groundbreaking feature from The Run of Play.

We won some awards. (Soccerlens)
A new scarf raises questions about the meaning of being a fan. (Dave’s Football Blog)
Stop complaining about Nani’s “disrespect.” Just…just [...]

Tom and Daryl have both written nice posts about Paul Gascoigne, who was arrested and detained as a mental-health risk yesterday after a series of bizarre incidents in English hotels. The collapse of this great player has been covered with admirable sadness and tact by nearly everyone who’s written about it, and I’ll only [...]

I know William Gallas is supposed to have undergone a complete transformation and become a leader with a heart of oak since he signed for Arsenal, but I’m not seeing it; there’s too much desperation in his mohawk and his eyes. Compared to the group of calm bankers and war-heroes-after-the-war in the Milan defense [...]

I’m writing this from an abandoned tower high up in the Alps, by the light of a paraffin candle and the glare of the moon on the snow. It’s been an…interesting few days. You may recall that I’d been challenged to a duel by the Arsenal email autoreply system after I sent it [...]

People who say that soccer is boring and people who say that soccer is beautiful are usually talking about the same thing, which is that the game makes it hard to tell the difference between intention and accident. The game takes very graceful people and makes them clumsy; you’re an acrobat, it says, now [...]

In what I can only assume was a perfect storm of reader enthusiasm, rampant cheating, and the fact that I put a huge banner about it at the top of the site, The Run of Play has won both Soccerlens Blog Awards it was nominated for, Best EPL Blog and Best Blog You’ve Never Heard [...]

I’ve written a post for Pitch Invasion about the association of Bristol Rovers and the old American suicide ballad “Goodnight, Irene.” It’s a kind of parallel history of Bristol Rovers and the American musician Leadbelly, who popularized the song in the 1930s and ’40s before Rovers fans took it as their anthem:
Black [...]