Comments on: Zola to West Ham; Also, Which Other Savagely Naturalistic Writers Should Manage in the Premier League?

By: Brian Phillips

Brian Phillips — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:22:39 +0000

@Fredorrarci I thought it might take me a year and half to get the joke. But it only took 30 minutes!

By: Fredorrarci

Fredorrarci — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:56:49 +0000

Whatever happened to that player Zola used to go on about? You remember — that Jack Hughes fella?

(And it only took me a year and a half. I am the Leonard Cohen of blog commenters. Eyethangewe.)

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:37:04 +0000

I’m not even bitter that I didn’t think of it: I’m just glad someone did.

By: mafu

mafu — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:08:31 +0000

Oscar Wilde – Watford

during which period he pens The Ballad Of Reading’s Goal , an impassioned plea for the use of video technology

By: SteveH

SteveH — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:29:03 +0000

In order of increasing inanity, I nominate:

Richard Russo to manage the Rochester Raging Rhinos — He’s very much at home in upstate New York and likes his work-a-day heroes. The alliteration may get old, especially if headline writers start adding terms like “romp” and “roil” to the mix, but it’s a risk we might be willing to take. I also wanted to make sure that a US team was included.

Stephen Hawking as gaffer at Wolves — If anyone could figure out how to turn the clock back 50 years, it would be him.

Eduardo Galeano to manage Brian’s fantasy team — It just struck me today how the format and lyrical flow of Soccer in Sun and Shadow has been emulated and I daresay surpassed in The Run of Play.

Jackie Collins to run Harchester United — my wife’s guilty pleasure on FSC has done for women in the football front offices what Sarah Palin could do for the executive branch.

By: ursus arctos

ursus arctos — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:08:11 +0000

That one has me reeling, as I am at a complete loss on how to fit Ivan Campo or Sam Allardyce into an Austen plot. It would have been a bit easier when Nicholas Anelka was still there.

Anyway.

Newcastle United – Eugene Ionesco.
This can only be Theatre of the Absurd.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:24:57 +0000

Bolton – Jane Austen. Really boring, difficult to get through, leaves you underwhelmed in the end (at least from the few novels of hers I’ve read).

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 11:46:00 +0000

And let’s not forget that Wodehouse also went down amid cries of treason with the entire nation against him.

By: roswitha

roswitha — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:28:35 +0000

Oh mafu, exquisite.

By: mafu

mafu — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:13:01 +0000

Equally at home in the drones club of Soho Square or the verdant prelapsarian idyll of Bisham Abbey ahead of a major tournament, PG Wodehouse could do a job for England – consistently selecting his cast from a small and familiar pool, then launching them on an intricate jaunt that is notable not so much for the generally predictable nature of its resolution, but for the exquisite freshness of wit and invention in the scenes of farce, confusion and bungling that lead up to it.