4.8.2023: Sheff Wed 1 Southampton 2, Championship
Even Henry Winter didn’t see it through to the end of the season this time. Sports departments are cutting budgets, reporters are getting laid off, fewer and fewer of us are getting sent to games. Every summer, I wonder if I’ll get the call again come August. When it comes, it’s a relief. But I know it might not come next time. So just in case it doesn’t, I’m writing all this down: 31 games, across five English men’s divisions and the Women’s Super League, plus assorted other matches. I was so lucky to get to go to such a wide variety of games. I’d be so lucky, too, to get to do it again.
I started with the very first match of the English league season, a Friday night in summer, right in the middle of the Women’s World Cup. If you weren’t paying attention, you could easily have missed the Championship’s kick-off.
Southampton, on a fourth manager in nine months, were trying to piece themselves back together after falling out of the Premier League, and in the process of working out which players to sell before the transfer window closed. Sheffield Wednesday were trying to piece themselves back together after following an extraordinary League One play-off promotion – 4-0 to Peterborough after the first leg of their semi-final, and they still won! – by losing their manager.
Every team down to the under-eights in the local park tries to play like a Pep Guardiola side now, but Russell Martin believes in possession football more than most. Southampton’s stats proved it – 991 passes attempted, 931 completed, 80 per cent possession, 23 efforts on goal, seven on target. Two goals, a win scraped with three minutes left. I wrote at the time that it was impossible to tell if Martin would succeed. By Sunday, May 26, and the last game of the English league season, we knew.
12.8.2023: Rotherham 2 Blackburn 2, Championship
A day of choices in South Yorkshire, all of which – or almost all of which – revealed character.
Choice 1: On the drive across, I listened to Radio 5 Live as England laboured against Colombia in their Women’s World Cup quarter-final. When I got to Rotherham, though, the media room television was showing the Championship match between Coventry and Middlesbrough. Which match mattered more? No right answer, just a decision that reveals something about the person who made it. The TV was switched over for the final minutes of the Lionesses game, suggesting that whoever made the initial choice was open to a change of mind. That says something about a person too.
Choice 2: In the match programme, Rotherham defender Tyler Blackett was asked this: You have two options: Either you can change one thing about your past or see into your future – what are you picking?
“I think seeing my future would take the excitement of what was to come away,” he says. What followed for Rotherham over the season would be difficult to class as excitement, but the joy of being a football fan in August – and clearly it’s the same for a footballer too – is that you don’t know what lies ahead for your team.
Choice 3: Three minutes into the second half, Rotherham’s Fred Onyedinma headed in a free-kick to put Rotherham 2-0 up. His celebrations carried him into the crowd, for which he was booked. Two minutes after that, he was fouled by a Blackburn player, and awarded a free-kick. How to react? Keep calm? Walk away? Onyedinma waved an imaginary card at the referee, calling for his assailant to be booked. But doing that is a cautionable offence – a new rule for the new season. So a second yellow card for Onyedinma, which meant a red. Impulsiveness and naivety can prove costly.
Choice 4: Blackburn’s Sammie Szmodics had a shocking first half, missing a penalty, giving away a goal with a poor pass and collecting a yellow card. How to react? Sulk? Hide? No. For 75 minutes, Szmodics contributed little to be positive about for Blackburn. Then he scored twice in three minutes, and suddenly, he was man of the match.
Choice 5: For my reports, I needed post-match reaction from both Rotherham manager Matt Taylor and Blackburn defender Joe Rankin-Costello. Unfortunately, both were conducting their media duties simultaneously. How to react? Be prepared. I stuck a digital recorder on the desk in front of Taylor as he was questioned by others in the media room, and interviewed Rankin-Costello with the audio recorder on my phone in the corridor outside. Nothing clever in what I did. Just a lesson learned from bitter experience.
19.8.2023: Chesterfield 1 Oldham 1, National League
The giddiness of summer was a long way from wearing off. There was a marriage proposal before the game and a pitch invasion at the end; acts seizing on a moment with long-term consequences. Both were televised, as TNT Sports showed the match live in a Saturday lunchtime slot.
Chesterfield, who would run away with the National League, had one of their off days, but were winning when James Norwood poked in an Oldham equaliser five minutes into stoppage time. Visiting fans swarmed on to the pitch; one pushed over home goalkeeper Harry Tyrer. “I’m hearing that Tyrer the goalkeeper might have been hurt by a supporter,” said the TNT commentator, which seemed an odd way of phrasing things. Although it might have explained why I hadn’t been able to make out a commentary team on the gantry during the match.
After the pitch had cleared, and the ground had largely emptied, Oldham’s unused substitutes came out to warm down. One of them, Shaun Hobson, got into a verbal dispute with a group of home fans still milling around. “Go home,” Hobson shouted. “If you were any good, you’d be in the bath now, not warming down with the subs,” shot back a supporter. Hobson gave a sarcastic thumbs up. If only someone had been filming that.
27.8.2023: Sheffield United 1 Manchester City 2, Premier League
I used to cover Premier League games regularly. Then I had a bit of a career change, just at the point when Covid came along, and didn’t go to any matches at all for 15 months. When I started to feel my way back in again, I focused mainly on the Championship. The result of all this is that, as a reporter, I’ve largely managed to avoid being at games that use VAR.
In fact, when I went to watch promoted Sheffield United face defending champions Manchester City, it was only the third Premier League match I had attended since the introduction of VAR in 2019.
It hasn’t been the miracle cure that was promised, but it was never going to be. The laws of football, with their room for interpretation, are always going to invite odd refereeing decisions. Technology can help in some ways, but it can’t remove that room for interpretation. Result: We still get odd decisions, but now they take longer.
At Bramall Lane, there were some odd decisions, mainly made by the referee, a few with technology thrown in. And I couldn’t help but feel, as I watched on, that there were one set of rules for Sheffield United and another for Manchester City. Paul Heckingbottom, United’s manager, pointed out afterwards that his team were not awarded their first free-kick until the 56th minute. At one point, City defender Josko Gvardiol went down theatrically, clutching his face, after an aerial challenge with United’s ineffective, and not particularly physically imposing striker Will Osula. Somehow, City were awarded a free-kick anyway.
It was strange because City didn’t need all these decisions. They dominated possession, and chances, and were miles better. They fully deserved their win, though they only got it when the brilliant Rodri, with world-class technique, lashed in a goal with two minutes to go.
I thought Sheffield United might be OK in the Premier League. I was wrong. Heckingbottom wondered how crucial the lost point might be for United at the end of the season. Not very. But City, who turned a draw into a win thanks to Rodri’s contribution, ended up winning the league by two points. Fine margins for some, at least.
As for VAR… well, VAR wasn’t the problem here. It isn’t the problem at all. As we’ll all find out if the Premier League scraps it.
30.8.2023: Sheffield United 0 Lincoln City 0 (pens: 2-3), Carabao Cup
I knew after this that Sheffield United were screwed. Yes, they made nine changes, but their opponents, League One Lincoln City, made five, and didn’t look troubled too often. United’s performance was poor; they had no complaints about losing on penalties. “We were bored ourselves watching it,” said Stuart McCall, United’s assistant manager.
Soon afterwards, I bumped into a journalist who watches a lot more of Sheffield United than I do. By then, United had collected one point from five Premier League games, but their four defeats had all been by a single goal. To an outsider, maybe they weren’t that far off.
He reckoned they were screwed, though, because they’d lost their opening two games, to Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest. “You don’t win those games in the Premier League, and you can get on a run where you’re facing a load of top-eight sides and suddenly you’re 10 or 11 matches without a victory,” he said. Four days after we had that chat, United lost 8-0 at home to Newcastle, and everyone knew they were screwed.
20.9.2023: Huddersfield 2 Stoke 2, Championship
Huddersfield had announced two days beforehand that this would be the final match of Neil Warnock’s second spell as manager, so much of the work in the press box that evening was spent trying to figure out who his replacement would be. According to Talksport, a “mystery foreign boss” was lined up. The Yorkshire Post went for Darren Moore, the former Sheffield Wednesday manager. Other sources suggested Nathan Jones, in and out at Southampton in no time, and a friend of Huddersfield technical director Mark Cartwright. Then Chris Wilder, one of many to be in and out at Watford in no time, pitched up in the directors’ box as the match kicked off.
Had Warnock fallen out with Kevin Nagle? Huddersfield’s American owner later said no – he’d just found the right manager to take over. In his post-match news conference on the night, Warnock came across as demob happy – cracking even more jokes than usual. “I don’t know who the new manager is,” he said, “so obviously I don’t like him, because they haven’t told me who he is.”
Later, a couple of us saw Huddersfield’s head of media in a corridor and kept firing names at him. No luck – the media officer was too savvy to let slip any clues. I remembered a very public mix-up around a previous Huddersfield managerial appointment. “Is it Martin from Wakefield?” I asked. “YES,” said the media officer – relieved, I think, that the grilling was over and we could all go home.
It wasn’t him, obviously. The Yorkshire Post and Talksport would both be right, as it turned out – a sign itself of a Huddersfield season heading for a tailspin.
3.10.2023: Stoke 0 Southampton 1, Championship
Control the controllables. That’s what development coaches like to say in over-long corporate workshops before splitting you all into groups, each with a giant sheet of paper and 400 Post-it notes. And they’re right. There are some things in life you can control, and some you can’t. For instance, if someone has built a successful career out of selling corporate training built on half-baked behavioural theories filleted from out-of-date business management manuals in airport bookshops, you’re not going to change them. They’re an uncontrollable. You can, however, control whether you develop a mystery virus that keeps you at home on the day of the workshop.
Similarly, football managers can control their team selections and tactics, and to a certain degree, who gets signed and sold. But they can’t control refereeing decisions in tight games.
My notes for this match tell me that Stoke signed 17 players between July 5 and September 1, and that after their home defeat by Southampton, they were 18th in the Championship. This is not a recipe for managerial longevity, and sure enough, Alex Neil was sacked two months later. The technical director went in February.
Stoke were on the wrong end of several borderline – and not so borderline – refereeing decisions against Southampton. The Sentinel, Stoke’s local multimedia outlet, was sufficiently outraged to headline its live text entry on the night’s decisive moment: ‘GOAL! Stoke 0 Southampton 1 – Referee.’
Before the match, the PGMOL – the referees’ management body – had already told Stoke that they had been wrongly denied five penalties since the beginning of the season. “That’ll be another one tonight,” Neil said afterwards. “To have six after 10 games is a ridiculous number, considering we’ve actually had zero.”
You had a point, Alex. And I’ve written it down on a Post-it note. But you know which column it’s going in, don’t you?
6.10.2023: Manchester United 2 Arsenal 2, Women’s Super League
There was a moment – in the early autumn, before Luke Littler came along – when Mary Earps was the most famous sportsperson in Britain. In front of a massive Sunday lunchtime audience watching the Women’s World Cup final on the BBC and ITV, Earps had saved Jenni Hermoso’s penalty and then screamed ‘fuck off!’ It would be too simplistic to say that moment summed her up – and in any case, I can’t say that as I’ve never met her – but I think it’s fair to suggest that, to her new fans, Earps’ personality was as much of an appeal as her goalkeeping ability.
The game against Arsenal was Manchester United’s first at home after the World Cup. There were more than 8,000 fans at Leigh Sports Village, and I suspect the presence of Earps in United’s team hadn’t done the attendance any harm.
A crowd that size did catch out quite a lot of officials, though. Nothing was very well organised – a steward tried to chuck me out of the ground before kick-off, claiming I had the wrong pass, and I was only saved when Alan Keegan, United’s matchday announcer, stepped in on my behalf and alerted a media officer. The game, however, was terrific, and played in a great spirit. This was my first-ever Women’s Super League match, and after months of witnessing players booed for taking the knee in sour atmospheres at men’s Championship games (yes, yes, not all men’s Championship games – but more than enough, thank you), it was refreshing to hear the gesture loudly applauded and cheered.
Earps played well enough, Arsenal’s former United striker Alessia Russo was unperturbed by pantomime booing from the home support, Arsenal’s Sabrina d’Angelo made the second worst goalkeeping error I was to see all season (you’ll need to scroll down to April for the worst), and Cloe Lacasse saved them a point with a 25-yard thunderbolt right at the end. Great entertainment. I knew I’d be back.
8.10.2023: Wolves 1 Aston Villa 1, Premier League
I was trying to think, just now, of the most forgettable film that I’ve seen. Not a bad film – that would stick in the memory too much – but one that sort of did all the things you’re supposed to do when you make a film, but without leaving any kind of lasting impact. Slick, but uninspired.
This is really difficult, because by definition, it’s likely to be a film I’ve forgotten seeing. But I think I would have to go for The Adam Project, which had Ryan Reynolds playing a time traveller, who has to battle evil and right the wrongs of the past and all that stuff, and it’s all very wholesome and charming, and all the plot twists are more or less where they should be. It was a very pleasant way to spend nearly two hours, and yet later on I could barely recall a single thing that had happened in it.
Anyway, Wolves versus Aston Villa was like that. I think, increasingly, a lot of Premier League games are like that.
I looked at my notes on this match to try to refresh my memory. There was a sending off. (Was there?) There were 14 minutes of injury time in the second half. (Why? Did someone invade the pitch and start eating a three-course meal in the centre circle?) There was a flare-up between the two managers at the end over a non-handshake. (How had I forgotten this?)
I wrote a long blog post about this match the day after it happened, where I discussed how much I’d enjoyed it, because it was a passionate local derby scrap rather than a cautious tactical battle. And there’s no reason for me to have made that up. I’m sure I did enjoy it.
And yet, without prompts, the only thing I can remember about the day now is that on the way home I was stuck in stationary traffic on the M6 in Cheshire for about three-quarters of an hour.
Is this how the Premier League works now, as an extended version of The Adam Project? Is the intention that you are entertained and gripped in the moment, but afterwards you largely forget what you’ve seen?
I know it’s more likely that I’m just getting old, that I’ve reached a stage of life where I place too much emphasis on the cultural moments of my youth, dismissing the modern in favour of warm nostalgia. I don’t think that’s what was going on here, though. For when I covered my next Premier League match, six months after my visit to Molineux, I saw something I will remember for the rest of my life, the football equivalent of the Rosebud scene from Citizen Kane, the ‘Here’s Johnny’ smash through the door from The Shining, the fake orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. The first sighting of the fin in Jaws.
5.11.2023: Chesterfield 1 Portsmouth 0, FA Cup first round
A thrilling FA Cup tie, in front of a noisy crowd, on an early Sunday afternoon, produced an upset, with the National League leaders beating the League One leaders. Everything that makes the competition great, yes? Except, except… something didn’t fit the narrative.
I knew, from my previous visit to Chesterfield in August, that manager Paul Cook only did post-match interviews for television – he’s send out his assistant Danny Webb to face all other media. And, really, I needed quotes from Cook for my report. So, seated at the back of the stand, I braved ITVX on my laptop, pulled up its stream and listened to Cook’s post-match interview. Where he was asked about the possibility of a long FA Cup run.
“No, not for me,” Cook said, before referring to a chat he’d had near the end of the match with Portsmouth manager John Mousinho. “I like to concentrate on one competition, as people know. I said to John at the end of the game: I hope it’s not a draw.”
A manager of a non-league team, coming out against FA Cup replays. When their scrapping was announced five months later, that angle felt somewhat underplayed. But Chesterfield and Portsmouth, who both went on to win their divisional titles and promotion, knew their priorities.
9.11.2023: East Fife 4 Forfar 5
Jamie emailed me in early September, asking if I could do a shift swap with him. He didn’t mention he was ill. He didn’t even say he’d be taking some time off. I put two and two together when he disappeared from the rota. Soon afterwards, our manager pulled us all aside one by one to tell us Jamie would be off for a while. We had a whipround, and we all signed the get well soon card, telling him we missed him and needed him back at work as soon as he was well again. Some of us messaged him too.
It happened so fast. On the first Tuesday in November, we were taken individually to a quiet area of the building, on a separate floor, and told just how serious things had become.
But even then, I didn’t think the end would come so quickly. On the Thursday evening, I got a phone call at home, from a devastated senior manager, and we both talked in platitudes, too shocked to form the words to express how we felt.
Jamie was the same age as me. He was married, with two young children. His wife gave an incredible speech at his funeral; warm, funny, full of love. I don’t know how she got through it.
I knew Jamie as a work colleague, and my favourite memory of him was one from the office. You might know the tale – but you won’t know he was the person behind it.
During a Sunday afternoon shift in July 2018, he noticed, with great excitement, that a Scottish Challenge Cup match between East Fife and Forfar Athletic had gone to penalties. And the score in the shootout: East Fife 4 Forfar 5. Jamie, who loved his classic comedy as much as he loved his sport, saw the story straight away.
If you Google ‘East Fife 4 Forfar 5’ now, the top entry is the BBC Sport website report. I wrote it, but it was Jamie Strickland’s idea to write it. Without him, it would never have been done the way we did it.
Instantly, the report caused arguments all over social media – was the score the right way round? Was it Eric Morecambe’s tongue-twister, as we’d said, or did another comedian come up with it first? It made the Radio 4 late news bulletin. It was reported by NBC, the Bangkok Post, USA Today. It was tweeted out by Stephen Fry.
Jamie’s reaction to the media storm he had caused was a mixture of bemusement and pride. I really miss him.
10.11.2023: Blackburn 1 Preston 2, Championship
People react to the shock of bad news in different ways. I knew I’d be no good sitting around at home with too much time to think. Offered the chance to spend a Friday night watching Blackburn play Preston, I said yes.
It felt as if time had slipped out of sync. On the drive up, I listened to the Radio 1 chart show, which announced the Beatles were number one, with a song that sounded like a lost museum piece. At number two was Prada, which features Raye singing the lyric: ‘Twenty-two, I’m in Paris, baby, got a stripper’s tits in my face, uh-huh.’ I wondered if anyone was streaming both.
Preston won with a last-minute header from Liam Lindsay, and it meant a lot to their fans to win a Lancashire derby, but it didn’t feel all that significant in the wider scheme of things. And as it turned out, it wasn’t.
12.11.2023: Everton 0 Chelsea 3, Women’s Super League
Emma Hayes had announced a week earlier that she’d be stepping down at the end of the season after 12 years as Chelsea manager. This was one of those horrible November afternoons; damp, dark before it properly gets light, a cold that gets into your bones. I was still feeling it for about two weeks afterwards.
Hayes and Chelsea found a way to win in uninviting conditions. The Women’s Super League hasn’t really yet developed enough competitive depth to give every match a sense of jeopardy. A lot of games, like this one, feel like a lower-division side hosting a top-flight team in a cup tie. Everton were very competitive for 45 minutes, but Chelsea’s superiority wore them down. Aggie Beever-Jones scored as a late substitute – she got a lot of goals during the season after coming on against tiring opponents.
Afterwards, Hayes was asked if she was worried her players might drop their standards now they knew she was leaving. “Have you ever worked for me? Not on my watch, it doesn’t happen,” she said. “I’ll pull the rug, I’ll find a way if you sit still or you drop off. It won’t happen while I’m here.”
18.11.2023: Stockport 2 Colchester 0, League Two
“Like many fans, I have never contemplated becoming a sportswriter,” declares Nick Hornby in Fever Pitch, a book he was paid to write about football. (Although it’s not really about football, is it? Etc.) “How could I report on Liverpool versus Barcelona, when I would rather be at Highbury to watch Arsenal versus Wimbledon?”
I know Hornby is taking the piss out of himself, as he does for most of the book, but I’ve never been on board with this view. I like going to watch a wide variety of teams. I had a go at being one of those reporters who covered the same club every week, and it wasn’t for me.
Sometimes, though, even the sportswriter who drifts around from here to there to everywhere gets the chance to cover their own club. It’s happening a bit more often now Stockport are on the up again. There was a definite buzz at the game against Colchester; I spotted Daniel Taylor from the Athletic, putting the finishing touches to a long read on the club’s success (in which, remarkably, he managed to get an interview with media-shy owner Mark Stott); at half-time, as injured loanee Louie Barry was paraded before the fans, a smartly dressed woman on the end of the press box asked me to identify him. It was only after she’d thanked me and walked away that I realised she was Jules Breach, there for ITV’s EFL highlights show.
Victory was Stockport’s 12th in a row, a League Two record, and although there were blips after that, promotion was secured relatively straightforwardly. It’s nice supporting a team who are successful. But I’m going to keep doing it from a distance, and when time allows.
25.11.2023: Bolton 7 Exeter 0, League One
“I was up at quarter to four, to scrape the ice off the car and catch the bus up,” said Tony Leach, an Exeter fan for more than 60 years, when I spoke to him outside Bolton’s ground before kick-off. I didn’t get chance to catch up with him afterwards to ask whether he regretted bothering.
As Bolton led 2-0 at half-time, one 40-something journalist in the media room said of Exeter: “I think I could play up front against this lot.” No-one disagreed.
Some clubs would have sacked Gary Caldwell afterwards. He seemed uncertain, during his post-match media duties that Saturday, if he would still be manager by Monday. Exeter, owned by their Supporters’ Trust, pride themselves on stability, though; they have had three permanent managers in 17 years. On a run of one point from nine matches and plummeting towards relegation at that point, their form slowly improved. A nine-match unbeaten run towards the end of the season banished any lingering fears of a tumble into League Two; the board’s faith in Caldwell looks a lot more justified now.
26.11.2023: Liverpool 4 Brighton 0, Women’s Super League
There’s an old saying that goes along the lines of: “There is no such thing as a stupid question.” Once upon a time it was attributed to Confucius or Einstein; these days it tends to get credited to a YouTuber in the Phillippines. And so society evolves and survives, or something.
The quote’s not true, anyway. I proved it in the closing minutes of the first half of a comfortable Liverpool win at Prenton Park, as Dutch forward Shanice van de Sanden drove in a low shot to score. Van de Sanden had missed a League Cup defeat by Manchester United four days earlier after becoming a mother. I didn’t know anything more than that, and though it was fairly easy to piece everything together and make assumptions, I felt it was best not to do that.
So I turned to a couple of Liverpool officials next to me in the press box and said: “You know how Shanice became a mother in midweek? It was her partner who gave birth, wasn’t it?”
Laughter. A reporter sitting near us said: “That really would be a story if it had been Shanice, wouldn’t it?”
So I looked stupid. But at least I could make things clear in my match report with confidence.
It was a cold day. So cold that as he faced a media huddle at pitchside afterwards, Liverpool manager Matt Beard expressed concern that my hands were turning blue. Van de Sanden, though, didn’t seem in the slightest bit bothered about the temperature. “It’s been a crazy week just becoming a mum and scoring for my baby girl,” she said. “It’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.”
And I was glad, at that moment, that I’d asked my stupid question well in advance.
1.12.2023: Preston 0 QPR 2, Championship
I arrived at Deepdale expecting the game to be off. The pitch was frosted to such an extent that the groundstaff had to paint the markings blue. QPR head coach Marti Cifuentes was concerned enough to ask the referee about the likelihood of a postponement. Sky Sports’ Friday night live offering, though, went ahead, and the visitors managed the conditions better, winning with second-half goals from Paul Smyth and Chris Willock.
Afterwards, the room used for the post-match press conference was packed out with a dozen journalism students from the University of Central Lancashire. I mentioned to their tutor that I had studied journalism there 24 years earlier. She was interested enough to pass this on to her students, who reacted with the bored indifference of those more engaged with the now than ancient history. We all get to be old eventually, if we’re lucky.
12.12.2023: Huddersfield 1 Preston 3, Championship
Recorded about six weeks before this match, and released about six weeks after it, was an episode of Richard Herring’s podcast featuring Blackburn Rovers fan Steve Pemberton. There’s an extraordinary clip on YouTube, in which Herring, very subtly, very cleverly, appears to absolutely school his interviewee, as they discuss Inside No.9.
“There are a lot of episodes,” Herring says, “I would like to ask you what do you consider to be the most median, average episode?”
(Classic comedy structure to the question, by the way: Always put the funny bit as near to the end of the sentence as you can, so you don’t end up talking over audience laughter.)
The audience laughs. Pemberton closes his eyes, nods, pauses. He’s more than smart enough to spot the trap, but he also knows there’s no easy way out of it. Herring, under cover of asking a stupid question, seems to be going right for the jugular, picking away at an idea that Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, for all their comic sensibility, don’t have very much of a sense of humour about themselves. The host fills the gap while waiting for his guest to answer. “Wasn’t the greatest, wasn’t one of the shitty ones,” he says. “It was all right. Which one?”
“Well, I think even the median one would be really good,” Pemberton says, eventually, before finding a way into the gag by pulling out his phone and declaring that he’s ranked all the episodes in order. Maybe the two of them had worked out the joke between them in advance after all. Maybe.
If Leicester City were the best, then Preston were the Championship’s most median, average team in 2023-24. If you were going well, you’d beat them. If you were in a slump, they’d beat you. Won 18, lost 19.
Huddersfield were in a slump by mid-December. The appointment of Darren Moore wasn’t working. They were dreadful against Preston, deservedly beaten, and with only two wins in nearly three months since the managerial change. “The only thing we can take from this is that in four days we have another game to get this out of our system,” Moore said afterwards.
They won one of their next eight league games, and Moore was gone by the end of January, replaced by the “mystery foreign coach” Talksport had hinted at in September, Andre Breitenreiter. Then they got relegated, and he left too. So who was Huddersfield’s most median, average manager during the season? Probably Neil Warnock. When’s he ever been described as average before? Breitenreiter top, Moore bottom, I’d say.
“Kidnap!” Pemberton shouts, after scrolling through his phone for a few seconds.
“Now you’ve got the list, you’ve got to tell us what’s top and bottom,” Herring replies.
“You’re going to get me in trouble now,” Pemberton protests.
As I’ve mentioned, in the Championship, Leicester were the top team, Preston were the median. Bottom? Rotherham, obviously.
“I’m trying to think of a bad one,” Herring says. “I didn’t like the Teatro dell’Arte one.”
Yes, Rotherham. The Wuthering Heist of the Championship.
14.12.2023: Real Betis 2 Rangers 3, Europa League Group C
I was asked to cover this match at five hours’ notice, so either someone pulled out or there had been a cock-up on the organisational front. When I got the call, I was sitting at home in Manchester. Much as I would have loved a trip to Seville, organising flights and accreditation that late in the day would have defeated even Challenge Anneka, and so my reporting was done from the dining room table.
Neither La Liga nor the Scottish Premiership are leagues I follow closely enough to write about knowledgeably off the top of my head, making this an exercise in cramming facts and backstory quickly enough not to look stupid in a 650-word on-the-whistle report.
One of the reasons I’ve sustained a career in journalism for 25 years is that I’m OK at this. Some journalists excel in conducting searching interviews, some have the contacts to unearth the exclusives everyone else wants, some craft analysis and colour pieces with wit, expertise and turns of phrase that will stick with you for a generation. My skill is to be able to turn out passable copy to a required word count on stuff I knew nothing about five hours earlier. What can I say? It bought me a house.
My cramming told me, among a lot of other things, that Rangers had lost in the Europa League final in a penalty shootout on their previous visit to Seville 19 months earlier, and that forward Cyriel Dessers hadn’t been very good for them since arriving at the club from Cremonese for £4.3million. Well, Dessers scored, Rangers won and, against most expectations, qualified for the Europa League last 16. Who doesn’t love a redemption story?
6.1.2024: Blackburn 5 Cambridge 2, FA Cup
A story about waiting: You can still find reports online that tell you Sammie Szmodics scored the first hat-trick of his career for Colchester against Exeter in a 2017 League Two fixture. However, you can also find other sources that tell you he only scored two in that match.
This wouldn’t normally have caused me a problem. But he scored a first-half hat-trick – a really well-taken one too – for Blackburn against Cambridge in a thoroughly entertaining FA Cup third-round tie.
I needed to file a report quickly after full-time. And I needed to know whether or not it was the first hat-trick of his career.
Luckily, a small group of us got the chance to ask him afterwards. And the answer?
“This is my first one,” he said. Case solved? Not quite. There was a twist.
“I got one at Colchester, took the ball in, and then it came up on the telly that the first one was an own goal, so I had to give the ball back.”
Good grief. A hat-trick snatched away from you, and a six-and-a-bit year wait to get one that counted?
“I thought that someone could have let me know at half-time that it was an own goal, but they didn’t,” he said. “I got a photo and everything, took the ball in, and then the ref came in and took it off me.”
Szmodics, not surprisingly, made sure he didn’t let go of the match ball this time. “This one’s special,” he said.
7.1.2024: West Brom 4 Aldershot 1, FA Cup
Another story about waiting: This one, sadly, doesn’t have quite such an upbeat ending.
There was a lot of emotion at The Hawthorns when Daryl Dike scored early in a routine FA Cup win over non-league Aldershot. He’d had a miserable time with injuries in the two years since coming to Albion from Orlando City. This was his first game back after nine months out with a ruptured Achilles tendon. At half-time, his team-mates gave him a round of applause in the dressing room.
A fresh start? No. Barely a month later, he left the pitch in tears at Ipswich after rupturing his Achilles again. Having seen how happy he’d looked on his comeback, it was impossible not to feel for him.
28.1.2024: Manchester United 2 Aston Villa 1, Women’s Super League
Winning the FA Cup won’t be enough to save Erik ten Hag, by the looks of it, but it probably didn’t do Marc Skinner any harm. Skinner’s Manchester United side, Women’s Super League runners-up in 2023, underperformed during the season just completed and finished fifth, below a Liverpool side who had been in the Championship two years earlier. Winning the cup for the first time might just have kept him in a job.
January was a tough month for team and manager; they went out of the League Cup to Manchester City, were well beaten in the league by Chelsea, and even a mid-season friendly against PSV in Malta didn’t pass incident-free – a group of United fans chanted for Skinner to be sacked, and were reportedly asked to stop by a club security guard.
Even in victory, Skinner faced scrutiny: The home fans at Leigh Sports Village were unimpressed when Nikita Parris was substituted against Aston Villa when on a hat-trick. It was not the first time it had happened.
“I’ve just heard that’s the fourth time I’ve substituted her on two goals when she could have had a hat-trick,” Skinner told those of us assembled in the media room afterwards. “You’re always going to find a stat to make me look bad. That’s fine. That’s no problem. That’s the craziest stat.”
Seven days later against Brighton, Skinner did it to Parris again. Whatever the fanbase think of him as a manager, they certainly can’t claim he’s one to be blown off course by public opinion.
16.2.2024: West Brom 0 Southampton 2, Championship
Will a new owner be better than the old owner? That’s always the hope in these scenarios. Shilen Patel was starting life at West Brom with a fair amount of goodwill behind him just because he was ending almost eight years of uncertainty and underinvestment on the watch of Lai Guochuan.
Patel, a Florida-based businessman who bought Albion with his father Kiran, is not a novice at football investment, having held a stake in Serie A club Bologna for a decade. In an interview with the BBC, he talked about romance and investment potential when explaining the decision to move into second-tier English football. He’s not the sort to be chucking good money after bad, by the sounds of it. Solid business sense seems to be the key to his plan for West Brom’s future.
He flew in from the US for Albion’s first match after the takeover – knowing that it would be no bad thing to make a speedy appearance at The Hawthorns. He witnessed one of the season’s more bizarre red cards – head coach Carlos Corberan sent off for touching the ball with his foot while it was still in play, having been too eager to retrieve it when he thought it was going out for a throw-in.
Albion were beaten fairly straightforwardly; the home fans, glad to be rid of the unpopular Lai, didn’t seem to mind too much. Another defeat by Southampton almost three months later, in the play-off semi-finals, ended hopes of a quick Premier League return.
Patel had declared in his BBC interview that his business plan did not depend on an immediate Premier League return. “It was important for us to understand what the next three to five years might look like if it didn’t happen,” he said. Too many Championship clubs have sunk into serious trouble by not thinking that through enough.
17.2.2024: Walsall 2 Mansfield 1, League Two
Maybe I’m being unfair, but it felt to me that Mansfield Town were League Two’s under-reported success story this season. Wrexham had the famous owners, Stockport County the fall-and-rise narrative. Mansfield had a Clough as manager, and a high-profile husband-and-wife team in the boardroom, but both, in different ways, are older stories.
Nigel Clough still gets referred to as Brian’s son – including here – even though, as I write this, he is three weeks older than his father was at the end of his own managerial career. That’s difficult for someone of my age to get my head around, until I remember that Brian Clough left Nottingham Forest 31 years ago, not last week.
I don’t know whether upbringing has anything to do with it, but Nigel strikes me as someone who ran out of fucks to give a lot earlier in life than most of us. No tiptoeing politely around delicate subjects for him. It makes him fascinating to listen to.
A lot of managers, mulling over an incident such as the one where Mansfield captain Aden Flint was denied a goal even though the ball crossed the line, might have been content to grumble about a lack of technology in League Two. Clough linked that lack of technology to an ongoing disagreement between the Premier League and EFL over funding.
“This is the sort of thing that everybody’s fighting for because the Premier League want to keep 85 per cent of the TV money instead of the 75/25 split that the EFL suggested,” Clough said. “Maybe then we could get that sorted and introduced.”
Clough only became more circumspect when I asked if he thought Mansfield, who I thought had been unlucky to lose at Walsall, were good enough to get promotion. “Don’t know,” he said. “We won’t know that until the end of April.” We did. They were.
18.2.2024: Everton 2 West Ham 0, Women’s Super League
There are two worlds in the Women’s Super League. In one, Jill Scott wins I’m A Celebrity, Mary Earps is voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and more than 60,000 fans watch Arsenal play Manchester United at Emirates Stadium. And then there’s this one, where Grand Old Team crackles out over a tinny public address system at Walton Hall Park as Everton emerge to face West Ham in front of a crowd of 997.
Those two attendances were both recorded on the same weekend. Leaving aside games played behind closed doors, I can’t think of any other division in history to have such a wide gap between its highest and lowest attendances in a single round of fixtures.
Tom Garry of the Daily Telegraph wrote an excellent piece about this disparity, noting the sparse set-up at Walton Hall Park, describing its low single stand, its lack of terracing around the pitch, the television cameras perched on scaffolding that seemed to wobble in the wind. The surroundings, in his words, “do not scream professional football”.
The Everton fans who were there cared; they made plenty of noise to prove it. The Everton officials who were there cared; they were friendly and helpful, and clearly passionate about what they were doing. And the Everton players and management cared; they celebrated with feeling as Martina Piemonte and Aurora Galli scored in the final seven minutes to give them victory.
I suspect, as is usually the case with professional sports teams, it all comes down to finance. Everton, as an organisation, have generated a lot of unwanted headlines in the past few years related to the way that money has been spent on the men’s team. Could a little bit more of that have been spent on the women’s set-up instead? One for the boardroom to answer.
5.3.2024: Leeds 1 Stoke 0, Championship
Forty-six games per team per season in the Championship means a lot of midweek fixtures. Which means a lot of late journeys home. Which means, for those of us who live in a certain part of the country, a lot of battles with the delights of the M62.
I haven’t calculated exactly how much of my life has been spent trying to get back home to Manchester from Leeds or Hull, or points in between, from midweek Championship matches over the years. But I think if I were to add up all the hours spent negotiating wild diversions, or edging forward at the speed of a stoned slug as three lanes merged into one, I reckon it would work out as roughly the same as the length of time it took Joseph Heller to write Catch-22.
It had been a tense night at Elland Road; Leeds in the middle of an exhausting slog of fixtures, finding a way to beat an awkward Stoke team scrambling their way clear of relegation trouble. Daniel James’ fine first-half winner had given Leeds a victory, at a stage of the season where even the deserved wins come with a dusting of anxiety. It was Stoke, though, who got what they wanted come the season’s end.
At one point, I thought it might be the season’s end before I got home. There were five separate lane closures on the 50-mile drive back west. My favourite was the set of cones that funnelled me off the motorway and up a slip road near Oldham, to a set of traffic lights – then allowed me straight back on to the motorway again.
I know it’s harder, much harder, to take a team to promotion from the Championship than it is to travel between the north-west and Yorkshire by motorway. It’s just that, sometimes, it doesn’t feel that way.
16.3.2024: Accrington 2 Notts County 2
I arrived in Accrington searching for Andy Holt, and instead found John Helm. I wasn’t complaining.
Holt, Accrington’s owner, was dealing with the heat of his decision two weeks earlier to sack the popular and long-serving management team of John Coleman and Jimmy Bell. There had been much criticism over the announcement of the dismissal in a club statement running to just 43 words.
At the first game after the exits of Coleman and Bell, Accrington trailed 3-0 at home to Bradford after 38 minutes, and some fans walked out before half-time, while a banner was displayed that read: ‘They deserved better Holt – we’ll never forgive you.’
Holt had taken himself off to Chicago for a trade conference by the time of the Notts County game, which was played in a much less hostile atmosphere than the Bradford game had been. But even if he had been at Wham Stadium, I doubt he’d have spoken to me. Interviews aren’t really his thing, as he prefers to put out his thoughts on Twitter, unfiltered by reporters. His multi-thread posts aren’t shy of attacking targets he feels worthy of criticism (Premier League greed gets a fair amount of his ire, and I mean ‘fair’), but he never entirely loses his sense of humour. A rant at the start of the day usually finishes with the phrase: ‘Good morning BTW.’
So rather than sitting near Holt for a 2-2 draw with plenty of thrills, I had the company of the always entertaining Helm. The veteran commentator is 81 now, still working, and still keeping his eye in by getting out to games within reasonable distance of his West Yorkshire home when he isn’t working. As if to prove the M62 is no respecter of reputation, he told me he’d had to abandon an attempt to get to see Hull City play Leicester the previous weekend because of another traffic snarl-up.
Helm was on good form; he’ll still be going to games when he’s 100 if he’s able. There are some weeks where I wonder if I’ll still be going to matches at 50 – and that’s less than three years away now. But days like this, with good company, a good atmosphere, a back-and-forth match and a chance to have a decent chat with players and managers afterwards, make it feel I can keep going for a while yet. Maybe even long enough to persuade Holt to let me interview him.
Yeah, OK, let’s not get silly.
26.3.2024: Scotland 0 Northern Ireland 1, international friendly
The sub-heading on the front of The Herald’s sports section that morning referred to the manager as ‘Steve Clake’, and it was obvious that Scotland’s leading sub-editors were struggling for consistency as much as their leading footballers.
I was on holiday in Glasgow, the city of my maternal grandmother’s birth. A chance to take in an international match, as well as pore over typos in one of the national papers, was too good to miss, so I joined the crowds heading for Hampden.
A run of six matches without a win – including a 4-0 thumping by the Netherlands – had hardly been what Steve Clarke needed in preparation for Euro 2024; Northern Ireland had only to be well organised to extend that run to seven. Conor Bradley’s smart finish made the difference in front of a muted home crowd, their hopes of being able to give Germany a game at the Euros ebbing away with each passing minute.
There was no chance of getting a train back to my Glasgow city centre hotel, so I joined the grumbling hoards on the 50-minute walk, mostly outpacing motorists unsure whether to curse their decision to take the car or Scotland’s lack of goal threat.
The following night, I went to the Theatre Royal to watch a performance of The Woman In Black, a compelling horror story featuring a small cast, which has thrilled and terrified audiences in equal measure for more years than most care to remember. Fill in your own punchline.
29.3.2024: Preston 3 Rotherham 0, Championship
The referee blew his whistle to start the match, and almost at once, the hail descended. For 10 minutes, it bounced off the roof of the stand, clattering so loud as to stun the crowd into virtual silence. Later, we would learn that the players were actually in pain as frozen rain pinged off their heads. And then, as quickly as the storm had started, it stopped.
Of course, it was the same for both teams, so there had to be another explanation as to why Rotherham were quite so bad. Three down at half-time, they became the first side in England’s top four divisions to concede 80 league goals during the season. There were still, as March ended, without a victory in 2024. Relegation wasn’t quite mathematically certain, but it wasn’t far off.
Leam Richardson, who had only been their manager since mid-December, was already at the point of questioning his players’ commitment in public.
“The past three weeks haven’t represented me very well and haven’t represented the players very well,” he said afterwards. “So we’ve got to make sure we do that in the next seven games.
“I’ll take the criticism because I’m involved in it. I’ll be judged at the end of my tenure, whether that’s [another] two months, two years, four years, whatever it is.”
Nineteen days, as it turned out.
30.3.2024: Liverpool 1 Manchester City 4, Women’s Super League
It was still there, on the ledge running the length of the Prenton Park press box. I’d noticed it on my previous visit, when Liverpool had beaten Brighton so convincingly, but it must have been there much longer. I’d been tempted to use it, just as a precaution, but had stopped myself on spotting the dates on the bottle. Hand sanitiser, half-emptied. Production date: May 2020. Expiry date: May 2023.
So it had been in place longer than both Gareth Taylor (appointed Manchester City manager 10 days after the sanitiser was produced) and Matt Beard (re-appointed Liverpool manager in May 2021).
Its lifespan had covered two monarchs, three Prime Ministers and 10 permanent Watford managers. But only one Women’s Super League winner. Chelsea had been champions every year since the beginning of the decade and, for most of 2023-24, they looked on course to mark Emma Hayes’ final season as manager with a fifth successive title. There was plenty of talk of Hayes finishing with a quadruple – league, FA Cup, League Cup, Champions League.
Manchester City’s win at Chelsea in February had set up the possibility of a proper title race, though. With a handful of games to go, it started to look as if goal difference might be a factor. In successive games at the end of March, City scored four at Brighton, three against Manchester United and, perhaps most impressively, four against an overperforming Liverpool side. A 12th successive league win put them three points ahead of Chelsea, albeit having played a game more. City were four matches from a first league title since 2016.
Beard had suggested in his pre-match programme notes that City would win the league. The furthest Taylor would go, when I asked afterwards if his team were favourites, was that it was a good time to be top. “We’ve got a lot to do,” he said. “It’s four games, which doesn’t seem like much, but we’ll just tackle the next game and go from there.”
As Chelsea fell short in three cup competitions over the following month, and tumbled to a league defeat at Liverpool, even Hayes suggested the title race was over. Then City lost Khadija Shaw, their leading scorer, to injury, and were beaten at home by Arsenal. Chelsea hit 15 goals in winning their final three league matches, and the title race was decided on goal difference after all. And with Liverpool moving their home games to St Helens next season, that bottle of hand sanitiser will never be part of a Women’s Super League season with different champions.
Unless the club take it with them. Which would just be weird.
13.4.2024: Burnley 1 Brighton 1, Premier League
“I have a three-year-old girl who still believes in rainbows and unicorns. Maybe that’s with me. But I genuinely believe were going to stay up. Maybe I’m the one who believes in rainbows and unicorns.”
Craig Bellamy, Burnley assistant manager
My dad tells me he’s fallen out of love with football these days. He still follows the results, and has a rough idea of what’s going on, and who’s winning what, but he doesn’t go to matches any more.
The fun’s gone from the game, he says. It’s all a bit too slick, a bit too stony-faced. I can see what he means, sometimes. I watched a Premier League match on television, on the final day of the season, and the way the stands created shadows over the pitch, the way the stadium looked like 10, 20, 30, 100 other stadiums, the build of the players, the perfect green of the pitch, the way the goalscorer ran towards the touchline camera to celebrate, the way 50 other players had celebrated during the season… there was a split second, just a split second, where I became disorientated, and felt I was watching a game of FIFA.
I’m starting to go that way, I can tell. I can remember moments from games back in the 1980s – not just the bits you can see again on YouTube, but journeys to matches, first impressions of new grounds, sights, smells – yet I can struggle to recall details of a game I saw six months ago.
But I’m not there yet. I still go to games with a hope that I might just see something extraordinary, an incident that everyone will be talking about when I get home, a moment that will still be there in my old age.
I didn’t know at the time that Burnley versus Brighton would be my last game of the season; it was just the way things panned out. But it meant the last significant moment in my final match of 2023-24 was something I will never forget as long as I have a memory.
Eleven minutes from the end. Burnley, needing a win to strengthen their Premier League survival hopes, were leading Brighton 1-0. Sander Berge rolled a pass back to Aro Muric, his goalkeeper. Muric went to put his foot on the ball, to control it, ready for the next pass. Except… it rolled under his studs. Gasps from the stands. Muric chased back, but he knew. The ball trickled into the net.
The memories evoked! Lee Dixon chipping David Seaman from 30 yards. Iain Dowie heading powerfully into his own net at Edgeley Park. Chris Brass smashing the ball in off his own face at Darlington. This joined the list. One of the great own goals.
Craig Bellamy, Burnley’s assistant manager, did the post-match media duties as Vincent Kompany was serving a touchline ban. There was a commendable attempt to support Muric, saying the goal was a consequence of the team’s style of football, the wish to play out from the back. He went on discuss Burnley’s chances of avoiding relegation, and it was here that he started talking about unicorns and rainbows.
They went down anyway. They’d have gone down even without the error by Muric, who was generally excellent for his team in their survival fight. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That’s not what made me fall in love with football. No. It was the did-you-see-that moments, good and bad. Those are our rainbows. You need the sunshine. But you need the rain too.
Mike Whalley 
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