Unless your team was unfortunate enough to be struck by bad weather (particularly Barnsley), you may realise we are now at the halfway point of the Championship season. 23 games gone and all of sudden ambitions become a bit clearer for clubs. The championship can be one of the most exciting leagues in the world […]

As we head into the festive season, English fans are wrapping the present they give themselves before every World Cup – the gift of unbridled confidence in their national football team. And yet, as they have for the past 40+ years, those English fans are likely to stick their thumb in the Christmas pudding […]

Martin Tyler, the world's number one football commentator, was on ESPN last week with Bob Ley to provide his reaction and analysis to the draw that will see England play the United States in the 2010 World Cup. In addition to Tyler's analysis of that match, he also discusses the other groups and how he […]

No matter which way you look at England's opening game of the 2010 World Cup against the United States, the biggest winner will be the Premier League. Sure, the headlines will be focused on the World Cup but after the tournament is over, the long-term winner of the increased interest in this game will be […]

In the weeks leading up to the biggest match of the new decade, there'll be plenty of psychological mind games played out in the press between the players and coaching staff of both England and the United States. But those mind games will be nothing compared to some of the warfare played out in the […]

Simon Kuper and Stefan Syzmanski titled the American version of their new book Soccernomics (review is here), but their title for the release in the UK is Why England Lose. In the book, Kuper and Syzmanski identified the US as a rising power in soccer and England as a permanent disappointment to their rabid fans. With […]

For years, the tabloid newspapers in England have been renowned for overhyping the expectations of England's chances in the World Cup. Those wheels have already been set in motion and now The Sun newspaper, which has a daily readership of 7.9 million, have declared that England's group — which includes the United States — will […]

England and the United States in the same World Cup group is a draw that is made of dreams for me. Not purely because I'm an American citizen and a British citizen, but because it'll shut a lot of people up. Whether that's the egotistical English journalists that feel that a game against the United […]

As it's World Cup draw week, I thought I'd share one of my favourite football stories with you, about the first ever World Cup, though it was only for domestic sides at the time.I heard this story for the first time when I was nine, due to it being made in to a television drama […]

Hello. My name is Fabio Capello. Over the past 18 months, I have been hailed as the savior of English football. Under my stewardship, England easily qualified for the World Cup Finals next year in South Africa. Granted, our qualifying group was fantastically weak, and in our friendlies against other big nations like Spain and […]

Unless you only prefer to read the opinions of actual celebrated and well-recognised figures in football, you've probably come across Stan Collymore's ludacris proposal to "make the Premiership better". If you can't be bothered to read through it (and I don't blame you), Collymore basically thinks around 20-25 teams who he believes to have the […]

I think it's apt to finish this series with perhaps the player who is often held up as the reason that allowed footballers to earn the wages that they do in this day and age. Yet, to simply think of Johnny Haynes' only contribution to football was being the first player to earn £100 per […]

In the annals of Arsenal's history, one name conjures images of a bygone era, baggy shorts and a dead eye for goal. In the record books, his name still stands alone for the most goals scored in one season, with 44 in the 1934-35 season. In the modern era, first Ian Wright and then Thierry […]

The sight of Ledley King pulling up when Didier Drogba was running towards the Tottenham goal in Sunday's London derby left me with a resigned feeling of deja vu. Even on one leg, a training regime of swimming twice a week and the frailties of the midfield formation that wasn't working, King was keeping Drogba […]

Jermain Defoe has had a fantastic start to the new season, with goals for England and Spurs; including his 50th for the club in the 2-1 win at West Ham. His hat trick and all round performance against Hull City was clearly his best performance in a Spurs shirt in either spell. When he rejoined […]