Tag: League Two

FootballOpinion

This Week’s Lower League Week

David Stringer

Yesterday, this week’s Lower League Week went up at Bornoffside.net.

Coventry, after refusing to pay the rent on their stadium for almost a year, have finally ended up facing consequences for their rudeness. (Though they’ve objected to their punishment on a legal technicality.)

Leyton Orient chairman Barry Hearn has responded to West Ham moving into the nearby Olympic Stadium and threatening his ‘community club’ by thinking about moving the club outside of the community.

Southend and Stevenage have both changed their manager, while Northampton and Burton are on very long winning streaks at home.

And the organisers of the Football League Trophy have apparently decided that the trophy was too well respected, and responded by inviting Soccer AM hosts Helen Chamberlain and Max Rushden to sing the national anthem. Yeah, that should fix that problem.

Click here to read The Lower League Week – The Laughably Inept Edition

FootballOpinion

Bornoffside Bits

David Stringer

After missing the first scheduled Lower League Week of the year due to other commitments, today a Lower League Fortnight has gone up at Bornoffside.

In it, I write about lower league involvement in three different cups, Dean Saunders waiting for the moment he starts being quite good to leave his job (again) Port Vale spending money, Notts County’s chairman surfing the web, and Graham Westley was booed by his own fans on his anniversary.

Click here to read The Lower League Fortnight: Glory of the Cups

Not THAT kind of cup, silly!
                                                        Not THAT kind of cup, silly!

I’ve also had another in the series of African Cup of Nations previews published, this time for Togo.

Click here to read African Cup of Nations Group D Preview : Togo

All Bornoffside previews for the competition (and subsequent coverage) can be found at the Africa 2013 section

FootballOpinion

T’was the Season to Be Jolly…

David Stringer

Over at Bornoffside.net, my weekly round-up of Leagues One and Two, the Lower League Week, has returned for the first time this year, cleverly disguised as The Lower League Christmas. (Okay, maybe not so clever).

Football in the midst of World War One. Back in the days when players wore their international caps while representing their nation.
Christmas day football in the midst of World War One. Back in the days when players wore their international caps while representing their nation.

In it, I covered the form of Gillingham, Port Vale and Tranmere over Christmas. All of them are battling for the title in League Two, Two, and One respectively, and all of them surprise challengers for one reason or another.

Leon Clarke has signed for Coventry, Hartlepool United have broken two club records in the last month, and Barnet’s management team have broken up. Bristol Rovers have appointed a new boss, who’s helped to force his Plymouth equivalent out of the door. Rotherham have a transfer target which is either delusionally ambitious, or a sign of how far the Scottish league has fallen, dependent on how things turn out.

And there’s evidence that it’s not Lazio, Roma or Millwall who have the most extreme fans in Europe, but Oldham. I also round up the other significant news over Christmas.

All of that can be found in The Lower League Christmas

Comedy, FootballOpinion, Recaps

Hey – I forgot I had this blog!

David Stringer

Nine days without posting – if I don’t write more often, I’ll never clog up people’s inboxes.

Right. After spending a few days away, I missed a week of lower league column for Born Offside, and compensated with Born Offside’s first ever Lower League Fortnight.

Knowing my issues with reliability and consistency, I’m sure it won’t be the last time that happens.
This issue covered transfer movements, changes in management, Bournemouth paying a huge £800,000 transfer fee…it’s crazy, a tell thee.

I’m so happy to have signed for Bournemouth. Yayyyyyyy.

This past week, Fabio Capello, the Italian manager of the England national football team, walked out. It was the culmination of a long series of irritating events – the media attacked Capello for not walking on water, Wayne Rooney did something stupid and Capello didn’t stop him from doing it so is therefore dangerously incompetent, John Terry may or may not have said something potentially hugely offensive and faces a trial for it, Capello wanted to stick by him, his bosses didn’t, Capello told Italian television he wanted Terry to remain as captain.

Continue reading “Hey – I forgot I had this blog!” →

FootballOpinion

Born Offside – Lower League Week

David Stringer

Just a brief post to tell everyone reading this (and statistically, that means you’re probably a random googler who was searching for a picture of a mountain or jawless zombie) that my latest column for BornOffside is now up.

In it you’ll be able to read about Les Parry at Tranmere, Paolo di Canio’s actions at Swindon, and Giles Coke making a bad impression at Bury, which is pretty much  the same thing, right?

Go on, you know you want to.

FootballOpinion

The Third Week Since Last Friday

David Stringer

My new column is now up on Born Offside.
Once again I offer a brief summary of the events in the lower leagues of English football, the big events this week and in recent weeks.

Yep, still what the  cool kids are talking about

Anyone foolish enough to have wasted their time reading the first two columns (and it’s foolish to wsate time reading anything I write) will notice I’ve given each column a name.
A name should be something that in some way summarises or explains what’s within.
Being an observant sort, I noticed, after completing the column, that a majority of the subjects are, in one way or another, are moving up.
Some are players moving to bigger clubs, one is a club moving up the leagues, and so on.

It’s called creating a theme, and I am truly a master at it.

Click here to read my latest column

FootballOpinion

Two Weeks in a Day

David Stringer

Being an indisciplined and irregular writer has many interesting consequences, for the writer, employer, and reader. For instance, there’s the curiosity as to whether a planned feature will appear, wonder over how long a character will remain on a cliffhanger, and the legal mystery of what happens to expenses if that lazy so and so doesn’t finish off the work for once, grrr.

You can just tell he’s disappointed with me

One of the positive consequences for the reader is that, at times, several features appear all at once.
Yesterday (okay, technically this morning you damn pedants) I mentioned I’ve started writing for Born Offside.

Well, you lucky lucky people, the second edition is now online.

Try not to get too excited.

The hope is that, when the feature gets settled in, it’ll start appearing early in the week, so you may even be able to read a third edition within a few days.

You can read the second edition, Glory of the Cup, here.

FootballOpinion

Last Saturday’s Week

David Stringer

Okay, catching up a little with the blog.  Firstly, I’m planning to start writing regular features pretty soon, promise.

I’ve now started writing for bornoffside.net – an up and coming English football website that I think will get a fair bit bigger over the course of the year.
You should start reading now, so you know all about Born Offside before your friends, bug them about how cool it is when they’ve not heard about it, and, eventually, they’ll grudgingly accept that you did know about Born Offside before them, so you must be really cool.

This is what cool looks like

My feature on Born Offside will be a weekly column, recapping the biggest events in the lower leagues. So, if you want to know about the goings on at Bristol Rovers and Swindon Town (and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you?) you’ll be able to read my weekly column.

The first edition of The Lower League Week went up on August seventh