Fear, fascination, and the 'swelling power' of fans uniting behind players
Football is a game about players watched by fans — monetised by clubs. What happens if fans start cutting clubs out?
Tag
Essays
A collection of 126 posts
The Premier League, managers, and minding the gap
Here was a look behind the scenes of a Premier League club, a chance to taste the sauce they call their science, and it made me wonder if Don Goodman and Andy Hinchcliffe might qualify as deep footie thinkers after all.
Even heroes need something to do
The declines of Gelhardt and Meslier are regarded as mysteries but their underperformance might be quite simple: neither of them, in different ways, has had enough to do.
What if Leeds, the one club city, had two?
Leeds would be a very different place after a century of intra-city rivalry, maybe solving professional Mancunian and Factory Records impresario Tony Wilson's 1990 assessment of Leeds as a city full of "fucking psychopaths".
The path to 105 points is through Ethan Ampadu's knee, probably
If away form was that easy, Leeds United would have been the first Premier League champions as well as the last First Division champs.
There goes Jonny Howson
Let's have a party and invite everyone. Even if they play for Middlesbrough now.
Spoiler alert
Daniel Farke's Leeds exist in an anxious atmosphere of TripAdvisoring the heck out of a pub before crossing the threshold but a football team can not, no matter how predictable it might seem, guarantee anyone a good time.
What's the use of a referee?
Referees are oddly positioned in football because refereeing matters a great deal to them, requiring great effort for much less reward than the players screaming at them, and what they do doesn't seem to matter as much to anybody else.
Directions of deference
Brenden Aaronson, Thomas Tuchel, Bielsa against Suarez, Leeds against Sheffield United, surveys, bathroom facilities and cheap fans melting in the sun.
A good cigar
A lot of this is just wanting to cut and paste favourite players into highlights of history. Like Mateusz Klich who, ideally, would like to cut and paste United's 2020 promotion into another era altogether.