Rob O'connor

Argentina’s susceptibility at the back is almost as well documented as their attacking threat. No one in Argentina has much faith in makeshift full-back Marcos Rojo, who is generally considered to be the weak link. The solid but unspectacular central defensive pair of Federico Fernandez and Ezequiel Garay will have to be willing to provide […]

Brazil opened the World Cup with an uneven 3-1 win over a stubborn Croatia in Sao Paulo thanks to two goals from Neymar. Brazil’s talisman opened his account for the tournament with a long range effort to level the scores after Marcelo had put through his own goal to give Croatia a shock lead at […]

It’s been a sorry start to the season for Carlisle United both on the pitch and in the stands. After three years of steady progress up the League One table, the club are struggling to dust themselves off from the tumble that left them lodged in a disappointing seventeenth last term. There is cause for […]

With World Cup 2022 dominating opinion columns and threatening to destabilize a competition still nine years away from us, the World Cup has never faced such an uncertain future. With the embers still warm from the fires that accompanied the Brazilian riots this summer, even the once untarnishable brand of the franchise is looking weathered, […]

It is firmly advisable that one needn’t even attempt to come up to speed with developments in this summer’s – probably the next eight summers’ – most absurdly gripping parlance without first flushing a number of distractingly obvious thoughts out of the mind. In getting to grips with the decision – looking more likely with […]

It’s no surprise that a clash of corporate and ethical interests has finally produced a stand-off. The outcome however has a predictable feel. When you’re as big as the Premier League, you can’t expect to maneuver delicately through every glitzy cocktail party without spilling the odd drink on some fairly expensive outfit. With so many […]

With the Premier League title sewn up last season before there was snow on the ground and doomed QPR sucking all relegation fodder towards them like an expensive black hole for most of the season, there was a conspicuous dearth of competition at the top and bottom to get the pulse racing in last season’s […]

Anyone who wants to make a conveniently sweeping judgment about the relative growth of any given industry in the domestic and, increasingly, global market need not look very much further than the names and logos ironed across the front of Premier League replica shirts. Soccer, it seems, is the new sex. It sells. It also […]

Competition for the prize for last season’s biggest crisis club was one of the most hotly contested and morbidly gripping tussles up and down the divisions. Portsmouth provided the latest, and hopefully final, volume in their beginners guide to self-destruction whilst Aldershot Town tore up two decades worth of progress following liquidation to leave themselves […]

As the Premier League was kicking and screaming its way into the world in 1992 amidst talk of a revolution in the way football was played and watched, there was a less seismic but equally historic development unfolding much further down the pyramid. As the First Division clubs packed up their things and left to […]

A generation from now, naughty children around the world will be hushed into submission by whispers of a hideous and sinister figure from the darkest corner of history. Disobedient little ones will tremble at the mention of his name, balk at stories of his villainous deeds and offer prayers that wherever he is now it’s […]

Anyone following the FIFA PR machine as it trips and skids its way through its response to the chaos unfolding in Brazil could be forgiven for thinking we’re in pantomime season. As the Confederations Cup quickly turns from close-season money spinner into a full frontal exposure of a nation in crisis, the villainous outline of […]

Poor old Gus Poyet. The former Brighton boss must feel like somebody’s been sneaking into his world and pulling threads with the way his career has been unravelling lately. Since his side blew their favorites tag to go crashing out of the Championship play-offs to a Crystal Palace team in wretched form on May 13, the […]