IT’S a good time to be playing Derby. The mighty Rams have scored just two goals all season and are not quite their usual indomitable selves. Excellent. We smell sheep’s blood. We will feast on their lambs. I’m bang up for a game like this. Feel’s like a nice little...
BURTON in midweek put us back on track. Burnley, though not forgotten, seems a less painful memory off the back of five unanswered League Cup goals in the East Midlands. The League Cup always seems to do us a little favour here and there. And that’s what it is this...
THE first four of Liverpool’s goals are finished from inside the six-yard box. There’s an avalanche of caveats that can be applied to a result such as this one but the most pleasing aspect, the one which rises above all of those caveats, is the fact that...
THEY said it would never happen again. A once-in-a-lifetime event. An opportunity for a public display of civic unity. A chance for an entire city to stand together and say, “You know what? This is us. You can knock us down, you can walk all over us. But you won’t...
I DON’T know about you but I had a great day out. One of them where everything comes off. Our minibus turned up when it was supposed to, the driver wasn’t a Bluenose and he was sound (well in, Paul). We got to London without hitting any traffic, found a...
I LOOK across on 65 minutes or so and Raffy Gutmann, aged six, at his first final, is in tears; tears rolling down his cheeks. He’s in tears and really it isn’t unreasonable. I have no solace to offer. None whatsoever. If I was six years old I would be...
THE easiest way to win a cup final is to be the better team. Even if you can’t be the better team on the pitch in the 90 or 120 minutes, you can have the better players to win a shoot-out. Despite what people tell you about it being a lottery. Manchester City...
THERE are moments when we doubt Wembley. Like when they needlessly play semi-finals there. Like when we sense the smugness in its association with a national side we feel little affinity with. In these moments, Wembley, you seem so very far away. Then there’s the...
THESE are the moments. Let’s not deny it to ourselves. Why the game got us. Why we became locked into its ways and wiles. We’re always in it for the prizes. Scaling peaks is what sport is all about. Don’t decry any summit. A challenge is a challenge. We have risen to...
