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Reply | England
at 23:38 8 Oct 2026
Every national side in Europe plays in the Nations League. Playing in the Nations League means a higher proportion of England's matches are against fellow Division A sides than in past decades. Yes there are terrible European teams, but they're in Divisions C and D, so England don't play them.
Until the mid-80s England played Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland every year. Spain, Croatia and Czechia in the Nations League is an upgrade on that.
Yes, when England are drawn in a qualifying group for a major tournament, you can look at the single worst team in the group and think "Mickey Mouse". If it's San Marino, Gibraltar or Liechtenstein, the three remaining part-timers, you'd have a point - I'll give you fully-pro Andorra too. But there were terrible teams in the 70s and 80s, you were just more likely to have heard of them, because the map of Eastern Europe hadn't yet exploded into 30-odd little bits. Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus were around for ages before they went full-time and got semi-respectable. Iceland, hopeless for decades before they knocked England out of the Euros. Denmark - bleedin' Denmark didn't have a full-time manager until 1979! Turkey were a joke team until the 90s.
Who else are we calling Mickey Mouse? Faroe Islands - just ask Claudio Ranieri what happens if you turn up expecting to run eight goals through those Viking whale wrestlers. Kazakhstan have gone from unable to trap the ball, to the Euro 2024 playoffs. Kosovo did for Jon Dahl Tomasson as Sweden manager.
So to answer your question Digswellhoop - about the same number. [Post edited 9 Oct 1:55]
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Reply | 28 Hours To Go…….
at 22:31 8 Oct 2026
Wherefore means why. "WHY art thou Romeo (when thou could have been someone else)?" The answer to a what is a that, the answer to a where is a there, the answer to a wherefore is a therefore. Simple! |
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Reply | Other than QPR....
at 13:26 25 Sep 2026
Whitley Bay FC, Scotland football, Scotland rugby, Buffalo Bills, Tcharonna Blue Jays. You run into a lot of Blue Jays fans in England for some reason - assuming that not everyone you see in a Yankees cap has the faintest idea who the Yankees are. What happened to the Jays in last year's World Series was QPR AF, and incredibly in 1993 they both had a player called Devon White. |
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Reply | C-mob
at 11:30 25 Sep 2026
"Later on the police video, I saw one of our lads stab and slash a couple of Luton. I think he was arrested and put on trial for this, but got away with it."
Was that the video in question?
That's someone's dad. That's someone's dad who likes to whinge about furriners sending fighting-age men over here in small boats.
Thatcher had many strong opinions about football fans; I'm certainly not keen to prove her right. |
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Reply | Former Coventry performance head on the 'pseudoscience' taking over football
at 16:52 22 Sep 2026
Research is all well and good, but people come to faulty conclusions all the time, and it's more often because the people collecting the data for the experts have no idea what they're doing, than because the experts are bad experts. Be ten times as sceptical of data as you are of science. |
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Reply | Former Coventry performance head on the 'pseudoscience' taking over football
at 11:50 22 Sep 2026
Ice baths stop your muscles hurting. That's it. The Guardian's science desk loves nothing more than pointing at a new development and kissing its teeth and declaring that there's little evidence for it yet. There's little evidence that standing a metre away from an exploding hydrogen bomb is bad for your health. |
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Reply | New Song For Spurs Fans
at 15:49 14 Sep 2026
Teams that go up from the Championship playing Proper Football tend to fall flat on their arses in the Prem, it's a thing. Opponents who have had to think hard about how to stop Manchester City, find nothing easier than playing a lower-budget version of Manchester City. |
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Reply | Taylor Richards gone…thank god.
at 15:12 2 Sep 2025
Laird's diary:
August 2021 - Mr. Martin told me to attack! 😊
January 2022 - Mr. Parker told me to attack! 😊
August 2022 - Mr. Beale told me to attack! 😊
November 2022 - Mr. Ten Hag told me he might recall me in January! 😁
December 2022 - Mr. Critchley told me not to attack 😯
January 2023 - Mr. Ten Hag told me to stay at QPR and not get injured so he can sell me in the summer ☹️
February 2023 - Mr. Ainsworth told me to do the haka and then not attack 😭 |
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Reply | Taylor Richards gone…thank god.
at 09:12 2 Sep 2025
To quote Boyle from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I think you may be only 99% right this time.
Richards - crap.
Balogun - let's go with crap even though we were disappointed he left us for Big Rangers.
Roberts - renovation project that didn't work out, missed the Wales World Cup squad with genuine injury, Leeds couldn't get him healthy either.
Paal - played at QPR level or slightly better for 2½ years, meant we didn't have to worry about left-back.
Iroegbunam - did fine, now a Premier League player on merit.
Laird - first-team regular, victim of four-four-f******-two, now a first-team regular for probably a better side than us.
JCS - "So, you take him on, and you put medical staff around him to try and get more minutes out of him. Enter Ben Williams, and Clarke-Salter is probably his biggest success story to date." |
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Reply | Taylor Richards gone…thank god.
at 00:38 2 Sep 2025
Taylor's crime was being brought in by Mick Beale and not being very good. That's it. Most of the million football players in England aren't very good. Fair play to Brighton, they rinsed us for a League Two player. He gets pelters for his availability from people who would have complained about him being in the side if he WAS available, so he couldn't win. |
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Reply | If we go down , does anyone give a shit.
at 15:51 26 Aug 2025
The worst thing about being relegated is all the games you have to lose to do it.
Once we're in League One we'll adjust to the new reality, win more games than we lose, and have a chance to get a young core in place that propels us straight through the Championship.
Really the best that can be said for life in the Championship from a sustainability point of view, is that it's where you have to be to get promoted to the Prem. If your plan is Premier League in five years, you're literally better off spending years 2 and 3 in League One than having to loan in Ronnie Edwards/Jamal Lowe/Andre Gray/Nakhi Wells just to stay in the Championship. |
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Reply | RND joins on loan
at 15:05 26 Aug 2025
And Waterloo Sunset, Gooner-dom notwithstanding. |
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Reply | Protesting together
at 14:59 26 Aug 2025
The main issue I can see with all those suggestions is that Pigbag is already in a minor key 😉 |
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Reply | RND joins on loan
at 14:45 26 Aug 2025
I'm nicknaming him Maestro - "Norrington-Davies" is the orchestra conductor's equivalent of Lennon-McCartney 🤓 |
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Reply | Taxi for Marti
at 16:40 15 Aug 2025
Clubs aren't deciding in round 1 whether to take the League Cup seriously. The optimal strategy as practiced by almost everyone is to treat the rounds up to the quarter-final as slightly more intense friendlies, and then start taking it seriously if by sheer luck you happen to win all your games and find yourself in the semis. |
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Reply | If Celar is the answer what's the question 🤔
at 23:54 10 Aug 2025
Mostly this, yeah. Celar for me is the epitome of a Replacement Level Player, to borrow a Moneyball term. He knows the game enough not to embarrass himself, but we could find another player kicking around on a free who will contribute exactly the same.
Look at it this way, if we'd had a guy called Gianni Sellers on trial from Concord Rangers, 13 caps for British Virgin Islands, YouTube channel packed with worldies, manager says he's got the best nose for goal he's ever seen at that level, and then he copies Celar's performance against Preston kick for kick. Would you be worried about missing out on a generational talent if you didn't sign him up? Or would you think, nah, not ready for this level, and we've got Lloyd and Kolli as medium-term projects already? |
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Reply | QPR: The Modern Circus of West London – Column
at 16:54 4 Aug 2025
Interesting facts, and all credit to Gareth Dixon for his role at QPR, but this piece was definitely given to an AI at some point in its life cycle with the instruction "make this sound prettier". |
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Reply | Morecambe FC RIP
at 15:14 3 Aug 2025
Here's my favourite little factoid for the "reality hits" side of the argument:
Here's every team in last season's League Two ranked by average home attendance.
Bradford City (17762)
Notts County (10626)
*AFC Wimbledon (9745)
Chesterfield (8505)
Doncaster Rovers (8057)
Port Vale (7622)
Carlisle United (7425)
Swindon Town (7229)
Milton Keynes Dons (7025)
Walsall (6470)
Tranmere Rovers (6389)
Gillingham (6268)
Grimsby Town (6067)
Crewe Alexandra (5397)
Colchester United (4998)
Newport County (4239)
*Cheltenham Town (4198)
*Morecambe (3410)
*Barrow (3381)
*Bromley (3111)
*Fleetwood Town (2995)
*Harrogate Town (2968)
*Salford City (2849)
*Accrington Stanley (2556)
And here's the same for League One.
Birmingham City (26326)
Bolton Wanderers (21325)
Huddersfield Town (18817)
Charlton Athletic (18112)
Wrexham (12781)
Reading (12535)
Barnsley (12211)
Wigan Athletic (9946)
Stockport County (9630)
Blackpool (9619)
Rotherham United (9330)
Peterborough United (9151)
Lincoln City (9004)
Bristol Rovers (7880)
Leyton Orient (7875)
Mansfield Town (7769)
Northampton Town (6629)
Cambridge United (6597)
Exeter City (6513)
Shrewsbury Town (6207)
*Wycombe Wanderers (5413)
*Crawley Town (4393)
*Stevenage (4005)
*Burton Albion (3254)
The asterisks are the NEW teams in the EFL post-1986 - the ones who came up from the Conference/National League who hadn't previously dropped into it.
This is the kind of correlation that statisticians dream about - EVERY team who came up since 1986 ranks below EVERY team who was voted in pre-1986, in both divisions. With the exception of AFC Wimbledon for obvious reasons. |
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