Football Ruined My Life

• 111. No Hopers

  On the first day of every season nearly all football supporters experience the same surge of pride and expectation.  When they get to the ground it looks gleaming.  The grass is green and the white lines stand out in marked contrast inviting the arrival of our heroes and stimulating thoughts of promotion and championships and European football.  This emotion for most supporters doesn’t even last ninety minutes as the wretched disappointment of a 2-0 home defeat brings them back to the grim reality.  They are not going to win the League or the FA Cup (or get promotion or even avoid relegation) this season after all.  Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes wonder what drives the supporters of clubs with no hope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 110. Who Runs The Club?

  It’s an increasingly pertinent question in football.  In the days of Shankly, Clough and Ferguson it was blindingly obvious who ran their clubs.  But as the manager’s role has been split between the Head Coach and the Director of Football, that vision of total authority has become increasingly blurred.  The Head Coach might pick the team on Saturday afternoon (or possibly Friday night or Sunday lunchtime) but bizarrely, and to his utter frustration, he might not have bought any of the players he is selecting.  That could well have been the responsibility of the Director of Football and a committee.  Is this a better way to run these clubs which are now billion-pound businesses?  More to the point, does it increase the distance still further between the club and its fans?  Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler ponder these questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 109. Team of the 70s

  Following on from the previous edition, Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes set themselves the task of choosing from the English Football League as it then was, a team of the 1970s.  That’s not one individual club or national side, but a team composed of the outstanding players of that decade in some sort of logical formation that would bring out the best of them both as individuals and as team players.  It is with evident relief that all our regular listeners will realise that we can start proceedings knowing that Jamie Vardy wasn’t born until 1987 and therefore he is ruled ineligible for selection – which is going to cause Jon to scrabble around at the bottom of his Leicester City suitcase where he will no doubt find Frank Worthington and Keith Weller.  However, the decade provided so many great players that selection of a final eleven is going to be difficult. The panel has great fun seeing who makes the final cut and they are sure you will be equally enthused to decide on your own team of the 1970s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 108. The One From The 70s… with Jon Spurling

  Not unusually for this podcast, we look back – with quite some affection – to the 1970s.  Many of our listeners will also no doubt remember the decade through a haze of nostalgic introspection… but of course it was also a tumultuous ten years that not only laid many of the foundation stones for the modern game, but also witnessed the English national team twice failing to qualify for the World Cup Finals after their heroics in the competition in 1970.  Bringing a younger, but no less well-informed perspective, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by Jon Spurling – whose book Get It On:  How The 70s Rocked Football focuses on the decade that has been described as the one when football went from black & white to colour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 107. Falls From Grace

  Jim White was astonished to find that Andy Carroll is now turning out on Saturday afternoons to play in the sixth tier of English for Dagenham & Redbridge.  So it’s Jim who leads the discussion (with Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes) of players who once strode purposefully at the summit of the game but ended their careers in far less salubrious circumstances.  Bobby Moore finished his playing career in the Danish Third Division and George Best turned out for Dunstable Town when he was good enough to have still been playing First Division football.  Further back in history Wilf Mannion and Tommy Lawton fell from grace with similarly sad results.  For some it was the need to earn money at the only trade they knew; for others it was the simple love of the game which continued to attract them when their great days had finished.  It proves for the panel and listeners alike a sobering discussion of how the highs of football can be swiftly replaced by the grim reality of the lows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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