by Rob Gutmann | Dec 30, 2016 | Footie
MANCHESTER City at home on New Year’s Eve. What were they thinking. And yet. And yet, it also seems kind of perfect. The collision that could define a season. The clash of the league’s two best footballing titans. On the cusp of a year. It’s a “see you on the...
by Rob Gutmann | Dec 18, 2016 | Footie
I’VE been stoically putting up with an acute bacterial infection of the tear duct in my left eye for best part of a year now. It alternates between feeling dried out, as if it’s been bathed in a bag of stinging salt, and then later sopping wet and flooding like a...
by Rob Gutmann | Dec 13, 2016 | Footie
MIDDLESBROUGH is a place in the 1990s. At least in my fuzzy mind. I think that’s when I last graced it. I recall going to their then new ground – the one that isn’t Ayresome Park — and it being situated next to what looked like a mountain of dirt, in an...
by Rob Gutmann | Dec 9, 2016 | Footie
AUGUST 29, 2015. West Ham turn up to Anfield with a renewed sense of optimism. Big Sam has gone — with the Three Lions and pints of wine firmly within his future aspirations. The hipster’s choice Slaven Bilic is in, along with a couple of new faces. That was the...
by Rob Gutmann | Dec 2, 2016 | Footie
BOURNEMOUTH manager Eddie Howe supports Everton. Eddie Howe is a blue. Eddie hates the Reds. Eddie thinks Kopites are gobshites. He hates you. He knows that Liverpool are genuine title challengers but he’s fuming about it. Eddie Howe sleeps in an ‘80s Everton...
by Rob Gutmann | Nov 29, 2016 | Footie
TIME is the killer. Liverpool fans have lived in a state of non-league title winning angst for 26 years. It’s something we could have done without. It’s a burden and then some, yet its weight has never broken us. Liverpool FC still feels like Liverpool FC. To me,...
by Rob Gutmann | Nov 25, 2016 | Footie
HE’S a funny cat Moyesy. It’s fashionable to dismiss him as just another incarnation of the British manager morph. There is no value left in the stock of UK-born managers. The nadir that the Gareth Southgate-for-England campaign represents has assured that much. It...
by Rob Gutmann | Nov 18, 2016 | Footie
MATCH Day 12. The Reds are in the box seat. The Reds are bringing their all conquering touring revue show to a town near you. Southampton, are you ready? I can’t hear you. The last away day at Crystal Palace was quite the disco for the travelling Kop. I wasn’t able to...
by Rob Gutmann | Oct 28, 2016 | Footie
IT’S a poor league this year. You hear that a lot. Or you hear that it was a poor competition a few years back, perhaps. A highly subjective relativism often delivered as if pure fact. I admit, the call always baffles me. I never understand the starting point. A poor...
by Rob Gutmann | Oct 24, 2016 | Footie
NOTHING like a free game when the heat is on. Spurs at home under all those new lights in the League Cup. A Tuesday night too. No tortuous wait ‘til Wednesday. And all in the name of what? Not the league title race, that’s for sure. Everyone wants to win this game, to...
