James Pennington

In the world of tweets and Facebook commentary, opinion and debate is not hard to come by in modern football. Throw a #hashtag on your thoughts, and they’re there for the world to see. After England scraped through against Ukraine last night to claim top spot in Group D in Euro 2012, the twitterati was […]

What difference a single game can make. Against Wigan just days earlier, the knives were immediately pulled out on Manchester United and their chances of taking home a record 20th Premier League title. The pressure of the run-in was finally getting to them, said the doomsayers. Wigan, struggling to avoid relegation to the Championship, bossed […]

Lightning, it appears, does strike twice. Two years to the day after Fabio Capello stripped John Terry of the England captaincy, the FA through its chairman, David Bernstein, made the same decision in far more controversial and emotive circumstances amid the allegations of racism currently surrounding Terry and his July court hearing. And so for […]

On a night when their main title rivals Manchester City were disposing of Stoke City at the Etihad, the red side of Manchester maintained the pressure with an away trip to Fulham that could barely have been easier. Three first half goals saw them pull clear of an insipid and frustratingly inconsistent Craven Cottage outfit, […]

Settling into football management at any level is not easy for anybody, least of all a 34-year old who is attempting to steer one of the world’s wealthiest clubs back to the top of both domestic and European competitions. Yet this is the charge for Andre Villas-Boas at Chelsea, with the wealth of the Roman […]

The start of La Liga is upon us... As we all know, this year's La Liga coverage is enhanced 10x with GolTV still bringing us their quality coverage along side newcomers ESPN, who will have one game a week on ESPN or ESPN2 as well as numerous other matches on ESPN Deportes. The week's matches […]

As has been well documented over the past few seasons, Valencia CF have seen better days. A dismal 10th place finish in 2008 was followed by a respectable, but still disappointing 6th place finish in 2009. On the field, a love hate relationship with David Villa, spats with Quique Sánchez Flores, the epic flop of […]

After getting the nod from The Gaffer to start posting on La Liga Talk, I was in search of the first article I'd sink my teeth into. Drugs? Football Players? FIFA Agents? 600 pounds of blow? Oh come on now, this can't be real? Today in Spain, eleven people were arrested, five of which make […]