Read all about it: 20 years on
It is 20 years since one of the most famous and iconic 'Pinks' went to print for the final time. The Sports Argus was a behemoth of Saturday sporting newspapers: loved by sports fans, embraced by young and old, and even used as a 'scouting tool' by Football League managers up and down the country. It was an institution in Birmingham and large parts of the Black Country. By 2006 the newspaper industry was being left behind, first by the proliferation of regional TV 'goals' hig
May 172 min read
Time to 'announce Mozza'? You bet it is
You might have noticed there are a series of plinths inside the East Stand at The Hawthorns, just to the right as you walk through the main reception doors. One of those details the list of managers and head coaches. Some managers good, some very good, some bad, some very bad, some indifferent. One entry even says: 'Alan Pardew'. I will be amazed if Albion’s hierarchy aren’t putting a call into the in-house artist to etch James Morrison’s name onto the board of ‘managers’ dur
Apr 224 min read
Albion v EFL: pending
So, which is to be? Survival at Hillsborough against Sheffield Wednesday, or in a court room (away), with solicitors locking horns? Which one of these will decide Albion's fate: the final day of the season against the Owls, or a date in front of the beak? The most bizarre of seasons is spilling over from the abysmal to the absurd. I would imagine very few had ‘charged with an alleged breach of P & S (Profit and Sustainability) rules’ on the 2025/26 bingo card. First; backgrou
Apr 145 min read
Morrison: the new loyalty scheme
(Pic: Laurie Rampling) I WAS going to make a gag about watching all 13 movies within the Halloween film series and it taking you about 20-and-a-half hours. Alternatively, there was another jest about how you could sit through 12 hours of horrors from West Bromwich Albion’s period under Eric Ramsay and it saving yourself a good seven hours to get some sleep. You choose. Either way, I can't be bothered to go down that pathway of humour; nobody is laughing right now. I’m not goi
Feb 264 min read
THE SLUM SPORT - what's it all about?
An extract from THE SLUM SPORT , the story of 1985/86. “Just tell it as it was” - the advice given me by Geoffrey Green, the great journalist of a bygone age, as I was off to cover my first football match for The Times. Chris Lepkowski has followed that advice with style with this book, The Slum Sport. The story here covers rather more than just 90 minutes, going back to the days before we had wall-to-wall coverage on TV; plotting the variations football has had with the
Feb 910 min read
Road to Nowhere...
You’ll have seen the rumours, heard the gossip, gasped at the detail, and re-posted it to within an inch of your life. There was, according to the wild west of social media, a bust-up at the Albion training ground this week. Things have been played down by those close to the club. I have my own views around it all – that’s for another day. As always the truth lurks somewhere half-way between one side and another. But the bigger question is why is anyone remotely bothered that
Feb 46 min read
In the Wrong
Why do journalists get so much transfer news wrong? It's a rhetorical question, as it happens. The simple answer is: they don't. It's those who consume the news who don't quite get it right. But the relationship between media, fans and the transfer window itself is a complex one. I stumbled across something a few weeks ago that made me chuckle, not only for its lack of understanding, but also its remarkable chutzpah. It was a platform ‘ranking’ journalists on the strength of
Jul 24, 20258 min read
