Come anticipate Fabio Capello's two years as England manager with me

English football is now a "supergroup" featuring Billy Corgan, John Lennon, Miles Davis, and Liam Gallagher on one fingered piano.

actually wait, no, because 4 points for a win

look it just sounds stupid THE CLOSED-MINDED TABLOID PUBLIC WILL NEVER KOW-TOW TO YOUR SCHEMES

Also if a team only needed a point to win the leg they'd throw 11 men forward in the first 10 minutes until they got a goal then fuck off doing the victory lap for the rest of the game, paying no heed to their now irrelvant goal difference being annihilated

that'd be fucking amazing though

i like Bilic even more now that he's been punched by morris dancers and had a fry-up dropped down his beige trousers.

quick somebody make a joke about winning the leg

English football is now a "supergroup" featuring Billy Corgan, John Lennon, Miles Davis, and Liam Gallagher on one fingered piano.

And still Bobby "Boaby" Gillespie awaits George Burley's phone call

ps antifootball is now an ILX meme, to be used upon killjoys and point-missers alike

England's football victory transformed Richard Williams weather beaten canvas into a Laura Barton work of art.

England's football victory transformed Richard Williams weather beaten face into a Joey Barton work of art.

ps antifootball is now an ILX meme, to be used upon killjoys and point-missers alike YEE-HAWS

fickshed

Antifootball is a failed meme in the making if ever I saw one.

What about "failed meme" as a meme?

Jimbo just wanted to be the Peter Gabriel of Toryglen up till then

antifootball from ilx's own andorran defender xxpost

How did that happen? (xp)

I don't think that Richard Williams is a bad writer. The other day I reread his review of Dylan's OH MERCY LP from 1989 and it was as insightful and well-turned as the other 200 times I have read it.

It is strange how people want to pick out and pick on certain figures like him. Or perhaps it is not strange, given the people. I don't agree with all or half of what he says about football, but it does not make sense to me to be so vehement against this decent, eloquent fellow in a media world so full of utter scumbags.

I heard he writes all his articles from his cellar dungeon, dictating them to his young typist Maddie.

it's more the crass inference that the inclusion of theo walcott was the spur for an artistic reinvention of team england. he took his goals very well, but the good performance was aided by a) a subdued croatia side, b) some luck, c) and yes c) a slightly more patient, slow-build (continental) approach to football in all areas of the field. a very good performance, yes, but not a magic transformation.

Come anticipate England's turgid 0-0 draw in Kazakhstan with me!

well I know Pinefox dislikes Laura Barton.....I dislike Williams for similar reasons.

I have not read RW's latest article. If anyone believes in a magic transformation of this team then I think they are mistaken.

My problem with Barton I suppose is her strained 6th-form pretentiousness. I don't really think Williams has that, though it's true that he is unusually an 'aesthete' type for a sportswriter (and he's not only a sportswriter).

unusually? so you haven't heard of barnes, winter, lawton (the other 3 broadsheets' equivalents)

I hate broadsheet football writing

Lawton is comparable, perhaps more a moralist than an aesthete? (They go together, perhaps, here.) Barnes I do not read. Winter I would not trust - I assume he is a right-wing hack and I don't think he is any kind of idealist, far from it.

I wouldn't mind him being an "aesthete" except that to me it's so pompous, plus in sport a team wins a game, and history records that, in art nobody wins. Plus that metaphor above about the well worn canvas is just really bad, dull writing to me.

My problem with both of them is that they play on this idea that referencing "great works" somehow enhances their prose by default, but neither ever do it in a way that makes me think or pick particularly thought provoking parts of a "great work" to quote/use.

EG Barton quoting Proust a few weeks back and just picking some ultra simple line to back up a glowing indie review...I mean if you're going to quote those people I'm not sure just a line works anyway. The parts of Musil or Flaubert or whoever I'd want to quote are 3/4 pages long.

If you're going to write about football it helps if you know a bit about football first, then you can do all the fanndydangle I'm-a-proper-writer stuff afterwards, these guys usu. do it the other way round

ronan completely otm, nothing to add

David Lacey was even worse. Whole articles of clever clever word play saying NOTHING. Plus when he did say something he was always wrong.

I hate broadsheet football writing

I know what you mean, but I don't mind the rest of the Guardian's lot. Paul Doyle is always good, but he's usually only online.

The fact that they were ALWAYS WRONG, is what stopped me reading the Guardian's football apges

I don't mind Kevin McCarra.

Martin Kelner is good tho he writes more about TV coverage etc.

That was around the time that Arsenal were playing the best football that ever been played in the history of the universe ever ever ever - whenever that last happened, as it does periodically (xp)

Henry Winter was the most unashamed Gooner poet IIRC.

I've always wondered why there are no Arsenal fans on ILX

all living in their hampstead mansions counting their millions amirite

That's the players

all living in their hampstead terraced apartments counting their signed henry shirts

in art nobody wins

sorry but this made me laugh, maybe even out loud!

why?

just in that "they used to say i'd never make it as a stand-up but NOW who's laughing?" kinda sense.

I've always wondered why there are no Arsenal fans on ILX

Hi there! I forgot to mention because every football thread turns in to a Spurs discussion, so I ran away and hid.

Not wishing to intrude on private grief etc etc etc

Ha ha ha

you people are fucking MENTAL!

Big slagging off not just of Barton (OK) and Williams (I don't really agree but this is predictable) but also David Lacey (who knows more about football than most of us will ever know about anything), while praising www hack Paul Doyle and, and, and ...

wait for it

OK, deep breath

...

MARTIN KELNER!!!

I rest my (pillow) case.

Incidentally, I would like to reassure ILX's small contingent of Spurs fans that I will be bringing my nine game strong Aston Villa Away Jinx to White Hart Lane this Monday. Previous beneficiaries of my morale-sapping presence have included Marlon Harewood (16 goals a season West Ham vintage), Nicklas Bendtner and, perhaps most shockingly, Charlton Athletic FC.

haha....gimme Kelner over Williams any day.

well, once a week

Sorry pinefox, but David Lacey? You could not be more wrong.

Unless you were David Lacey yourself

To be honest if I was given a load of unbylined football comment articles I'd find it pretty difficult to put a name to any of them apart from maybe Martin Samuel or Adrian Chiles doing his 'remember the day West Brom stayed up' thing.

I do quite like the Fiver-style "all football is shit" tongue in cheek liveblogged coverage in the Graun tbh, it beats fucking Fletch and Cheesey and the gang

Martin Samuel is amazingly obese

yeah but there's that French football pundit who is basically their Samuel but another 10 stone heavier