Close to the sun with Patrick Bamford
It's our shared bruises from our Icarus natures that I hope, eventually, will unite Bamford and Leeds in feeling less raw and more joy, pride and super-happiness.
Tag
Essays
A collection of 164 posts
Sitting on the dock of the Bay window
This is what you get for buying a football club in the 2020s. Your key performance indicator is now the most rotten of metrics, social media vibes, and you owe your livelihood to Fabrizio Romano tweeting something positive.
How Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Leeds United just might work
An experienced Premier League striker who has scored two consecutive seasons in double figures and played and scored for England, who just needs to stay fit and recover the form he showed under Carlo Ancelotti for the next few years to become the prime of his career — and he's free?
Not ignoring Igor
Still and always footballers will yawn through the presentation, listen to a coach babbling down the phone, and then do what they want anyway.
Getting the Carl Shutt blues
At some point in the intervening years I stopped associating this shirt with club legends like Danny Mills, Teddy Lucic and Paul Okon.
Transfers, guesses and data panic
English football seems to be shifting its emphasis towards NFL style front-office departments as a means, I suspect, of making investors feel better about their gambles.
Sentimental stitching
The game has been so successful in selling loyalty back to fans that the thing loyal fans hate most is the idea that a marketing campaign might work and attract new fans — ugh!
Marcelo Bielsa among the critics, Uruguay 2025 edition
Uruguay's poor form has been, one reporter wrote, 'not a surprise, but the chronicle of a disaster foretold'. Marcelo Bielsa, of course, has heard the arguments. He doesn't agree with them.
New models at a new Elland Road
When the old West Stand goes down, almost 70 years of tradition will go with it. Meanwhile Leeds are going up, to the Premier League, where everyone is looking for something new. And expensive.
Parades go by
"Memories like this can’t be bought. There will never be another day like this," Howard Wilkinson told the crowd in the Town Hall, and even the other days like that weren't quite like it.