Football Ruined My Life

Since we received positive feedback after our first re-run episode with one of the three founder members of this podcast, Paddy Barclay, we thought you might like to hear again Paddy talking about derby matches.  One of the pleasures of making a podcast that does not depend on its topicality is that we can reintroduce subjects which remain perennial debating points.  Paddy was well placed to comment on the bitter sectarian rivalry of Glasgow as Colin Shindler was on Manchester’s equally intense but not as violent internal conflicts.  Jon Holmes of course has to travel to Nottingham to find a local derby which strains credibility though not as much as Crystal Palace’s derby with Brighton at the far end of the A23. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Colin Shindler and Jim White open the postbag which is predictably full of scorn for the owners and operating officers of Manchester City… but also includes some well written observations on the state of football and football supporting in this country.  We have an intelligent audience, and the postbag reflects that intelligence with very little of the emotion and bile that accompanies the game online and on radio phone ins.  There are complaints too about the way we ignore the lower leagues and don’t give enough credit to the young players of today.  And there’s a surprise guest appearance of FRML’s most consistent critic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes talk to the author Dave Tomlinson about his book Doing A Leeds.  Even by the standards of traditional football chaos, what happened to Leeds United between 1996 and 2005 constituted a financial, football and psychological roller coaster.  The Elland Road club ascended at breathtaking pace to the Champions League semi-finals and plunged almost immediately into a nightmare of bankruptcy, relegation and a fire sale of the outstanding players who had got them onto the top table of Premier League and European football. David O’Leary seemed to be the manager of the future, he and chairman Peter Ridsdale forming a winning team before the latter abruptly sacked the former and was then ejected from the board he had been running.  Plenty for both panel and listeners to get stuck into – like a Norman Hunter tackle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since we’ve had two weeks off from the Premier League (and the Championship) in order to wallow in beating up Croatia and the Czech Republic as well as losing (as is our tradition) to Spain, we thought you might like to hear again the familiar, engaging voice of Patrick Barclay who took strong exception to Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler as they dismissed the Nations League as a sop to the demands of television and the financial greed of UEFA.  Listen to Paddy as he berates the other two who are nostalgic for the old Home Internationals when England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland played with themselves.  One side sees a desperation of the television companies and UEFA to ensure that no summer passes without an international tournament, leading to player burnout and spectator indifference.  The other side sees a sensible arrangement that abolishes pointless friendlies, gives every match a purpose and ensures that the weaker sides play each other and are not just cannon fodder for the big boys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this edition, Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jimmy Mulville are talking about one particular phrase and its meaning within football.  Never Go Back is a particularly poignant phrase for two of the panel when it’s used to refer to two of their heroes - Malcolm Allison and Howard Kendall.  The other name which crops up immediately in the conversation is Kevin Keegan who went back to Newcastle when it was owned by Mike Ashley and left quickly when he realised that it wasn’t the same club he had managed a decade earlier under the more benevolent patronage of Sir John Hall.  It applies to players too – players who had achieved great things at one club return to the same place at the end of their careers to find they simply cannot reproduce the magic of those early years.  For Colin the phrase also evokes the sad memory of his old City hero Francis Lee returning to Maine Road with the club in the doldrums in the 1990s only to be driven from the chairman’s office by the fury and yes, the hatred of those supporters who had once been his greatest fans.  All supporters will have their own nominations for this topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a change to our usual podcast, we bring you a special edition of Football Ruins My Life in which we consider the leak at the end of last week that Manchester City have apparently been found guilty on 114 of the 115 alleged breaches of Premier League rules. Not so much a discussion as a series of opinion pieces offered by Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White. Very much from the heart, as well as the head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There is an initial resistance by the panel to the question:  can you build a team around one player?  The instinctive response is one of scorn and derision – I mean how do you build a team around Peter Shilton?  But then the World Cup arrived and along came Messi to suggest that this was a perfectly viable topic, particularly as his performances aroused our memories of Maradona in Mexico in 1986.  Frequently we read of managers attempting to lure a very good player to a new club with the promise of building a team around him.  That must sound very enticing to an easily influenced if talented young player, but does it mean that the said manager is going to sign inferior players so that the sun at the centre of his future universe will shine more brightly?  So how do you successfully build a team around one player?  Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Jon Holmes, Colin Shindler and Jim White are talking about one particular player – and one manager and one club director and one club chairman and one trade union official and one television executive and one presenter and one analyst and famously on one occasion, one linesman... none other than the Bearded Wonder that was Jimmy Hill.  That simple list of his achievements and the different roles he played within football indicate what a unique individual he was.  It’s regrettable that in later life he became something of a caricature and a figure who could be easily mocked with his pointed chin and his cross of St. George earrings.  Yet no single figure made a bigger impact on English football in the second half of the twentieth century than Jimmy Hill.  It was Hill who suggested three points for a win which stopped both teams playing for a draw twenty minutes from time.  He never received the honours that his innovations merited and his final years suffering from dementia made for a sad end which Football Ruined My Life is determined to correct. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are times when the panel like to turn the spotlight on those men who do incalculable good work behind the scenes of a football club but remain largely anonymous. Such a hero is Steve Walsh who for many years has performed the job of Head of Recruitment, most famously at Leicester City where he spotted and brought to the club Jamie Vardy, N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez who between them were the spine of the team that won the Premier League in 2016 and cost the equivalent of what it would cost to take a finger nail from Erling Haaland on loan. In a fascinating behind the scenes look at how clubs sign players these days, Steve compares what happens now with what happened when he started out as a scout. The difference in the money is of course breathtaking but also the extraordinary scouting network over which a Head of Recruitment presides. No longer does manager have to travel midweek to watch a player in the Scottish Second Division but a combination of a world wide scouting network and endless footage captured by cameras in every league in every country provides the information on which millions of pounds can be spent without the manager ever seeing the player in action until he arrives at the club. No arguments this week but a series of fascinating revelations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Andy Hamilton set out to annoy everyone with a discussion of which players from the pre-1992 era – the year when the world of English football changed with the arrival of Sky Sports and the Premier League – would have been stars in today’s football.  It is arguable that great players will always be great players whatever era they play in and this discussion is therefore entirely pointless, but it is impossible to set a topic for three football enthusiasts without an inevitable disagreement.  We can only hope that these points of disagreement don’t lead to tempers being raised to be followed by verbal fisticuffs if such an interesting oxymoron can be said to exist.  To see if Colin, Jon and Andy turn into the Argentina players at the end of the recent World Cup Final tune in to this podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Jimmy Mulville, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler examine ex-players who become owners.  It used to be that players saw how managers behaved and thought they could do better when they retired.  Now with the increase in players’ affluence, they have seen how the clubs they played for were run and have decided that they could do it as well, if not better.  This philosophy underlay the actions of Derek Dougan at Wolves, Francis Lee at Manchester City and a man who remains perhaps the biggest enigma.  Terry Venables, after a distinguished playing and managerial career, was desperate to take the last big step into ownership and decided to partner Alan Sugar when they took over Tottenham Hotspur from Irving Scholar in the 1990s.  Well, we all know what happened then but is it ever possible for an ex-player to buy, own and then successfully run a football club?  And do fans want such an owner or would they prefer to stick to Middle Eastern nation states and American hedge fund managers?  Tune in and find out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1974, Leeds United won the First Division by five points, transforming themselves from the ugly side known as Dirty Leeds.  It was Don Revie’s greatest triumph as a club manager.  At the end of that 1973-4 season Alf Ramsey was sacked. Don Revie was his obvious successor as the FA had no intention of ever appointing Brian Clough.  In March 1975 England beat Germany at Wembley with a standout performance from Alan Hudson.  The press was ecstatic as England ended the season three points clear at the top of their qualifying group for the following year’s Euros.  Just two years later Revie resigned before he was sacked and went to manage the UAE team for a lot of money for which he was widely reviled.  His time as England’s manager is pointed to as England’s nadir. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White discuss how things went so wrong so fast for Revie’s England? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After a long hot summer, Colin Shindler welcomes back our favourite football podcast with the start of what will be our 5th series. And it begins on the same day as the Premier League season kicks off - Friday 21st August, with a special (they're all special) look at England under the stewardship of Don Revie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In our last edition before the World Cup break, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes are joined by the distinguished author and journalist Duncan Hamilton. Duncan has written almost twenty books on various aspects of football and cricket including three William Sports Book of the Year winners. Among those twenty are biographies of George Best, Harold Larwood and Neville Cardus, a fascinating portrait of Brian Clough called Provided You Don’t Kiss Me and his latest Answered Prayers about Alf Ramsey and the winning of the World Cup. You would think that there was nothing left to say about 1966 but by concentrating on the rather tortured character of Alf Ramsey, Duncan makes us relive that whole experience with fresh insight. In particular Duncan promotes the importance in Alf’s life of the Spurs manager Arthur Rowe, the now almost forgotten manager of the Tottenham Hotspur side that won the League Championship in the 1950-51 season. His tactics came to be called “push and run” and in Alf Ramsey, Rowe found a willing student. To discover all sorts of fascinating details about Alf and the 1966 World Cup triumph download the latest podcast. And just to re-iterate: Colin, Jon and their indefatigable producer, Paul, are arriving at the World Cup like all the players – utterly knackered. In order to recharge the batteries, they will have a close season where they will not be found drunk and disorderly in a nightclub in Ibiza. Instead, they will be back bright eyed and bushy-tailed for the new season towards the end of August. If you really can’t wait till then and you want to see them all in operation you will be able to find them at the Nevill Holt Festival in the glorious Leicestershire countryside near Market Harborough at 4.45pm on Saturday 13 June. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we’ll be following on our discussion of football in the 1980s with an entirely self-indulgent session of selecting the team of that decade. To help Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler to do so they are delighted to be able to call on the services of Steve Coppell, a man who was playing for Manchester United and England at the start of the decade and at the end of it was the manager of Crystal Palace. It’s hard to think of anyone better suited to evaluating the talents and characters of the players of that decade. There have been two previous podcasts on teams of the 1960s and 1970s so we can usually rely on Jon to supply the goalkeeper, the position awarded in the 1960s to Gordon Banks and in the 1970s to Peter Shilton - except that now a new rule is in operation. Like Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year, no player can be selected more than once so what is Jon going to do now that he can’t start off his team with his client Peter Shilton again? Listen and you’ll find out… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this podcast episode Jim White, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes turn their attention to one of the darkest decades in recent football history - the 1980s. It wasn’t all bad. We got to the quarter finals of the World Cup in 1986 and were unlucky to lose to a goal punched past Shilton by the Hand of God. We had a fascinating rivalry at the top of the game between the two sides based in Liverpool one of whom was not Tranmere Rovers. Three different English sides won the European Cup between 1980 and when we were banned from Europe after Heysel. However, if you look at the crowds during the decade there was a steep decline. The hooliganism was bad and getting worse, the government hated the game and everything to do with it and television was accordingly losing interest. The decade was the last chapter of the game as it had traditionally been played in this country and it culminated in one of the great finishes to the League Championship as Arsenal won at Anfield. Tragically too, it was the decade of Bradford fire and the Hillsborough disaster when 96 innocent people died needlessly. What are your feelings about football in the Eighties? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week the Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the year 1970, which, to their collective astonishment, is 56 years ago. It’s Colin’s favourite year and much treasured by the 20-year-old Jon. Meanwhile the teenage Andy Hamilton skipped school to watch Chelsea beat Leeds in an infamous FA Cup Final replay (and was found out) and ignored his O level revision to watch Brazil v Uruguay in the World Cup semi final (he failed his Latin and had to resit). Everton won the League, City the League Cup and the European Cup Winners Cup and England got knocked out of the World Cup at the quarter final stage when the whole world (never mind the whole of England) was eagerly anticipating an England v Brazil World Cup Final. It was the end of the decade and somehow the excitement that had been generated in the 1960s disappointingly began to diminish thereafter. If you ask us to nominate a year when football ruled our lives and hadn’t yet ruined them, it was 1970. Much to discuss, much nostalgia to wallow in. Please join us in our indulgence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes look once more at the emails you’ve sent us since we did our last postbag at the end of last year. We encourage you to write to us every week and you do so in comforting numbers. Once again the tone is almost entirely positive with people wanting to contribute their own memories to the topic they’ve just listened to… or correcting our very fallible memories. We’re happy to acknowledge our mistakes even if on some occasions we have been grossly libelled. We look forward to these occasional episodes because it enables us to connect with our audience and we’re very grateful that you take the time and trouble to write if only because it reassures us that we’re talking about the topics which you think and talk about and also it’s a comfort to know that at least we’re not just talking to ourselves. The subjects range widely, reflecting the breadth of the listeners’ interests but there is genuine anger at the travesty of the World Cup draw and the sycophancy of the FIFA Peace Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tony Woodcock was one of Jon Holmes’ earliest clients, a superb player who scored 139 goals in 437 appearances for Nottingham Forest, FC Koln and Arsenal besides the 16 goals scored in 42 appearances for England. This record compares favourably with Jon and Colin Shindler’s combined contribution of no goals at all at professional level. It is therefore entirely appropriate that we leave the discussion on the art of goalscoring and how it has changed in the past forty years entirely to Tony. Along the way we get his insight into the weird and wonderful art of management as practised by Brian Clough and a detailed description of what happened when Tony was transferred to FC Koln much to the displeasure of Mr Clough. We also learn what happened when Tony took a DNA test to discover where his skill as a professional footballer might have come from. The results were surprising, even to Tony. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Jim White, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes wonder if the gap will ever narrow between the Championship and the Premier League. In 1964 Leeds United were promoted from the Second Division and in their first season in Division 1 they lost the League Championship to Manchester United only on goal average (as it then was). In the 1976-77 season Nottingham Forest finished third in the Second Division – well behind Chelsea and champions Wolverhampton Wanderers. The next season they won the First Division, the year after that they won the European Cup and then retained it the following year. Clearly that is never going to happen these days. More relevant is that last season all three clubs who had been promoted the previous year went straight back down again. This year at least one will go down and possibly two of the relegated sides in 2025 will come back up again. Will any club in the future be able to replicate what Forest did? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices