So. One thing led to another, and now here we are. The Premier League season, which once seemed so endless, is over. People have been stabbed, and champions have been crowned. We’ve had arrests, protests, lawsuits, assaults, class conflicts, scandals, accusations, media brawls, affairs, divorces, funerals, break-ins, international diplomatic crises, and unplanned encounters between [...]

Woah! What the hell was that? Hey, guys? Can anyone hear me?
Man, I wish I knew what was going on. I was just taking it easy down in the swamp, using the water to support my enormous bulk—you know, the way we do—and munching on some of the tree-leaves I was able to reach thanks [...]

If it’s true that the tents are about to be packed, the cages broken down, the sawdust swept, the clowns sedated, the daredevils shot, the lions zipped into their traveling sweaters; if it’s true that the circus is about to skip town, on a cloud of greasepaint and diesel fumes, leaving behind only crushed flowerbeds, [...]

Well, that was a nasty piece of fun, wasn’t it? I don’t have room to list all the feral little moments I enjoyed during the Chelsea-Man Utd match: there was Rooney snarling at Nani; the weird bust-up between Drogba and Ballack, which led to the gorgeous comedy of Ballack turning his back on Drogba and [...]

It’s a day of nostalgia here at The Run of Play. We’re reminiscing on a simpler time of the internet, back when it was all Winona Ryder mailing lists and intricate debates about whether David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were married in real life. “IRL,” we called it back then, in our smug, efficient [...]

Avram Grant’s eccentric press conference after Chelsea’s 1-0 win against Everton this week prompted many observers to compare Grant’s curt, uncommunicative responses to the beloved monologues of his predecessor, José Mourinho. Wondering how Mourinho would have handled the questions the media put to Grant? Wonder no more.

Q: A deserved win José?
Mourinho: Yes. No. No, it [...]

Q. Was Avram Grant’s bizarre monosyllabic press conference yesterday a devastating piece of conceptual criticism designed to expose the vapidity of the football media by giving reporters’ banal questions the answers they would actually deserve in intelligent conversation?
A. I don’t know.

Look, I feel bad, okay? I should have realized I was going too far. I should have realized that spamming pictures of freshly killed animals with crude anti-hunting captions wasn’t the best way to introduce myself. I see that now. I mean, it’s only natural. After a hard day of thinking seriously about the Darfur [...]

…damned if it doesn’t close up shop right when it starts to get interesting.
Here’s how this works: I’m going to walk you through all four Champions League quarter-final matches this week. I’m not going to make predictions, because fuck my predictions. That’s what Alan Hansen’s for. If you want a prediction, Alan Hansen can [...]