EFL My Concubine - Football League and beyond 2016-17

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

Izzy Brown is worth ten Jordan Rhodes, who was telling Look North earlier in his own inimitable fashion about how he has always wanted to play for Wednesday, and now he can hang out with his fatha in matching dad+lad C+A shirts at his favourite ground.

u already know monk will now have his boys in for double sessions of kicking old tesco bags into the air as hard as possible

gl to Vieira or whoever they put on Mooy, they'll need at least three shredded wheat that morning

lol! big lumbering Heff with the late winner. Monk's bitter Dream is currently my fave jazz album.

Then Heff say's to the Sky reporter "It's my fucking dream to score late winners"

I feel like I'm high on stimulants at the moment, now officially the best season since the Warnock days.

"I can only speak for myself, in my world where I've been brought up my values are to have humility and to have respect and a bit of class," Monk told Sky Sports.

"When I don't see that [from David Wagner] I feel upon myself to make sure that is put right.

Yeah right, shoulder barging into someone who has just got the better of you in a sporting event is pure class, you bitter little prick!

https://twitter.com/GeordieRob85/status/828239611923161091

lol!

I felt like doing some vintage Rivals messageboard era style trolling/flaming on WACCOE. I think my ban from 2003 was on a different IP!

Excellent Colin story:

Funniest incident

I was on the bench for Plymouth and we were 3-0 down at half-time. Neil Warnock came into the changing room. He was ranting and raving, swear words galore. He picked on one of the defenders who he was particularly annoyed with. There was a big metal tea urn in the room. He picked it up, chucked it in the air and headed it! ‘That’s how you f*****g head a ball!’

The room was so quiet, no one dared laugh, but we could see the blood start trickling down his face. The physio Norman Medhurst ushered him into the physio’s room leaving Mick Jones and Kevin Blackwell to give the team-talk. We got the game back and drew – he came in with a big bandage on his head, laughing.

http://www.thenonleaguefootballpaper.com/latest-news/step-five-and-below/18280/good-bad-and-the-ugly-ex-plymouth-exeter-weymouth-and-current-exmouth-town-striker-lee-phillips/

An old school pal of mine played for Warnock at 3 different clubs and was quite mild mannered, tee-total and from a strict christian family. I always wondered if his background of having quite terrifyingly strict disciplinarian parents made him an ideal Warnock player or at least conditioned him to respond well to that style of coaching!

still some way behind the all-time best ever plymouth manager story...

Shilton was player-manager, or rather goalkeeper-manager, at the time. Plymouth were slipping into trouble in the old Third Division, the fingers of relegation closing round their necks for the second time in three years, and Shilton was trying to encourage his players to believe they could clamber away from the bottom three and rise like a “pheasant from the flames”.

After a slightly awkward silence, someone tentatively pointed out the word he might have been looking for was “phoenix”. Shilton, standing in front of his players as a double European Cup winner and the record England appearance-maker, paused for a few moments to take it in, the realisation dawning that his motivational speech had not gone quite as planned. He needed a line to reassert his authority. “I knew it began with an F,” he said.

I can't remember the fine details, but there is a piss funny 90's Andy Payton story about him going on the run to avoid a drink driving rap and being found by the police hiding in his lover's wardrobe.