EFL My Concubine - Football League and beyond 2016-17

I bet you could find an old Chinese folk story about a Jordan Rhodes merchant who accrues great wealth but loses the respect of his peers and ends up a rich league 1 player by the age of 30 dies a lonely and desolate figure.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3hg_PAW8AAbYV-.jpg

Mitchell Dijks (Ajax) on loan to Norwich, decided to wear the most fitting sweater ('oelewapper' translaties to idiot/moron/etc)

Rhodes to Wednesday looks totally on now, quite a collection they have now.

Akinfenwa not in the squad for Wycombe tonight, that will set tongues wagging.

lol! super dave edwards on for a hattrick maybe

it's "deadly" fyi

cant stop laughing at brentford 3-0 villa

There's no reason why any of you should particularly care about this, but it's been a really weird season for Exeter so far: after 5 games: zero points. After 17 games we'd scraped together a miserable 16 points, and went to Orient needing to beat them to go above them in the table. Everyone was hunkering down for that long familiar slog to avoid relegation.

The last 11 games we've won nine and drawn two (scoring 24 and conceding 5 in the process), and we're now fourth in the division, a full 25 points above Orient. The manager seemed genuinely annoyed that we conceded two in beating nasty old Wycombe 4-2 last night (they were the first goals we'd conceded in 2017).

It doesn't feel quite real.

jesus, the state of the bottom of L2. It looks like Crewe and Notts Co don't even deserve a place in the FL!

http://i.imgur.com/vtQPT1c.jpg

will never grow bored of this splendid name

Apparently unrelated to our best-ever 'keeper, and possibly best-named player, Dick "Pincher" Pym.

John Gilbert "Jack" Cock is an interesting old character from 20th century football. He was a decorated hero and Great War survivor and had a phenomenal goals to game ratio.

1914–1919 Huddersfield Town 18 (9)
1917–1919 → Brentford (guest) 48 (52)
1919–1923 Chelsea 99 (47)
1923–1925 Everton 69 (29)
1925–1927 Plymouth Argyle 90 (72)
1927–1930 Millwall 115 (77)

It all happened with terrible suddenness. I had gone down to Griffin Park with the idea of playing with Brentford Reserves. The first team was in South Wales, due to play Aberdare. Before realised what was happening a telegram had been thrust into my hand by my workman friend with the excited words, ''Here you are, Cock — a chance of a lifetime." That telegram asked me to go to Wales immediately to play against Aberdare. It was still morning, and I had just half an hour in which to get to Paddington Station, and catch the train for Wales.

Hard times for Yorkshire teams in the Conference, currently, I note.

Especially York, they have been direly run for so long now. The last time I was at Bootham Crescent me + the bro were wondering whether we were going to get crushed to death on the overcrowded terrace if Town scored, and we nearly did. At the time our top scorer Stead had been sold to Sunderland to "live the dream"!

erm.. not to Sunderland to Souness managed Blackburn!

Yeah, poor old York.

I note, by the way, that the National League agrees with me that the North of England begins at Gloucester.

that is possibly taking the concept of The Northern Powerhouse a little bit too far imo :p

I think in the old re-election days there have always been odd teams dumped into the north or south leagues. At one point in that era Wigan nearly joined the Scottish Football League.

Those were golden days.

I agree tbh. I'm a bit of an ageing stuckist with football and wouldn't be renewing my season ticket if we went to the prem.

Bishop's Stortford were in the Conference North (or whatever it was called at that point) a few seasons ago. I don't think anyone would claim the north starts just past Harlow.

Manchester Stansted

I could imagine other teams getting into conspiratorial shenanigans against these north/south invaders. Like in the fashion when Town and Barnsley stopped playing at 2-2 when they knew it would save them and relegate Peterborough.

38 seconds

nukey kind enough to play like complete slags for the remaining 44:22. we should be ahead

wahey

nice one!

lol! I just won £14.11 from a 50p treble with a QPR draw.

a+ comedy og well earned. no coincidence there's a bit of steven taylor in karl darlow's face

smithies da god now widely accepted as our second best ever keeper behind phil parkes

I am really glad Smithies has been a hit, just for 2012 Wembley alone he will always be a ledge with me.

really good keepers are just soooo comforting. like big tribal dads scooping u up in their gloved hands when u fall over and scrape ur knee

have to confess my admiration for the shelv as a neutral (cos speaking as a partisan the manky cunt should have been off off off). a magnificent tv soap baddie bestriding games, cannot take ur eyes off him

10 minutes ago i was gonna say something gloaty about the thick racist cunt tbh

o yeah forgot about that

i guess what i rly mean is it's unusual to witness the visionary 50 yard ball constantly being made to seem nefarious

Rafa Benitez 'surprised' and 'disappointed' over Newcastle's lack of transfer activity

what an entitled arrogant prick. He is having a boo over the Townsend deal collapsing and probably feels people should move heaven and earth for a manager of his stature. He will have to struggle on with that lack of depth for now though.

I generally think Thursday night football is a terrible idea, but fuck it I'm going tonight.

I think it's a good idea when Superleague isn't on because it's £1.50 a pint night

one of the reasons why sometimes televised game in pub can be >>>> attending the game.

not tonight!

never seen a brighton game where lewis dunk didnt deserve sending off. get tae fuck

doesn't he have some dodgy assault shit in his history too

Like all proper centre halves but yeah

same incident as the rodgers lad iirc

that was as thorough a roasting as you'll see

rtc!

omg i genuinely didnt mean that

lol

that first half was something I won't forget in a along time. I almost feel sorry for Leeds on sunday - they'll already be planning some kind of conditional surrender after seeing this vid of us making Brighton look like Bradford in disguise