Birmingham City Chairman David Gold on Carson Yeung’s failed takeover bid and the departure of Steve Bruce…
“dark days”…“extraordinary circumstances came together at the same time”
“it was all out of our control”
“out of our hands”…“couldn’t do anything”…“the club was in limbo”
“headlines of turmoil and crisis”
“black storm clouds came down on us”
“no man is an island”

Who likes Chelsea? Help me figure this out. The club sociology that I am able to collect from the internet basically tells a story of how the cast of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” accidentally kissed the Beatles one magical night under a rainbow of Richard Avedon portraits, until caring too much about who Julie [...]

Seen today on…the Internet.

Always nice to catch up with my favorite bit of persistent unsubstantiated transfer gossip. Especially because I actually hope this move happens. There’s something affirming in the thought of a Lampard-Ronaldinho midfield. It seems, I don’t know, jolly.

#5 David Beckham is England’s best player.
This seemed so obvious tonight that I couldn’t remember why he’d ever been dropped from the squad in the first place. It had to be some combination of politics and petty resentment, right? But how could anyone be that short-sighted? Around that time, I remembered the [...]

I have it on good authority that Nick Hornby knows what arugula is, so it probably makes sense that the only thing anyone ever says about Arsenal is that they’re cultivated and weak. I have no idea whether Nick Hornby, from his “house right next to the Arsenal ground,” has ever included a tiny [...]

I don’t know anything about the genius of Rafa Benítez. I haven’t seen it, and I don’t know where you can find it. When I think of the genius of Rafa Benítez, I imagine a WWII-era cargo plane coming in too low over the jungle and blossoming out against the side of a [...]

I have a post over at Pitch Invasion about the issue of referee abuse in football and the ways in which the media and fans perceive the problem differently. Mostly, I’m asking readers (that’s you!) for their own opinions on the subject, as for some reason I have very little sense of what other [...]

The endgame phase has arrived for the Barclays Premier League season. Dormant hierarchies are reasserting themselves, and short-term hopes are dashed. With seven games left, Everton are now the only club with a chance of breaking into the traditional top four, and the big-club intramurals last weekend saw Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and [...]

His Majesty Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu II, the 16th Asantehene, King of the Ashanti, ascendent of the Golden Stool, has been ejected from the toilets at Loftus Road after Q.P.R. stewards caught him smoking.
At least, I think he has. The BBC and the News of the World both report that this happened to “the [...]