Hack attack - a relationship so misunderstood
Football and media: It’s a marriage of convenience that doesn’t always serve its intended purpose. Any relationship where the two entities co-exist as part of a financial arrangement is going to be uneasy. And without the media, football would be a barren industry, with little income to call upon. Those nine-figure transfer fees, those six-figure weekly wages, that huge exposure of the Premier League...remove the broadcasters and all of this is nothing. It simply wouldn’t exi
Jul 133 min read
Farewell Hoppy: the champion talent-spotter
I remember vividly a conversation with Steve Hopcroft sometime during 2019. It was an exchange expressing surprise that West Bromwich Albion had sold Morgan Rogers to Manchester City for an initial fee of around £4m, there or there abouts. ‘Hoppy’ wasn’t so much shocked that Rogers had gone, but more so that he had done so for such a small fee. “He will be worth more than £60m one day.” (or words to that effect: I just remember the value more than the syntax) As it happens, S
Jul 73 min read
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
