Epl

It is simultaneously the most gripping and the most frustrating sporting competition in the world.

The standard of play really is amazing (and yes, we should stop comparing it to the A League), and manages to captivate millions of fans across the world every season, even though they all pretty well know what the result will be.

I’m talking, of course, about the English Premier League. If you’re not an aficionado, then fear not. Two weeks into the season, here is a simple team guide to get you up to date.

Continue reading "It’s predictable as English weather, but I love the EPL" »

We’re only a couple of weeks into the football season but certain things have become very clear, very quickly: Sydney FC aren’t going to hold onto their title, while the two Manchesters will have to prise Chelsea’s from Didier Drogba’s cold, dead hands.

Domestically, the A-League is so open you’d get better odds on the federal election result than the league title. So what can we take from an instructive weekend?

1. Sydney FC have a lot of work to do. The champions were outplayed and outfought by Brisbane Roar and the chinks in Vitezlev Lavicka’s side are getting bigger by the week. At the back, they’re really feeling the absence of Simon Colosimo, who left for Melbourne Heart. Foxe and Keller are about as mobile as Easter Island heads. And deprived of Bridge and Brosque on the weekend, they offered little threat upfront - but even with both fit, Sydney are still too light to make an impact. And talking of impact, has anyone seen marquee man Nicky Carle? Lavicka’s put posters on all the lamp posts round SFS but no one’s taking any of the little tear-offs. 

Continue reading "Football lessons: the Chelsea show is on again" »

Take a sniff, breathe it in – you know what that is? That’s the smell of deep heat and hair gel - real football is back.

It was almost three weeks between the end of the World Cup and the domestic competitions starting up again. Felt like I’d lost a limb. But after week two of the A-League and the return of the English Premier League, it’s worth taking a look at some of the early lessons of the season.

1. The A-League is still impossible to predict. Two weeks in, we’ve had three three-all thrillers, and last weekend the two most consistent teams in the competition were punished. Reigning champions Sydney FC went to North Queensland and produced a first-half’s entertainment comparable to An Audience with Kyle Sandilands.

Continue reading "Five lessons from the start of the real football season" »

Over the past eight games between Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United, the tally stands Melbourne 8, Adelaide 0. I’d hate to be an Adelaide supporter.

I would literally be tearing my hair out, punching the bed, slamming doors, kicking the cat, and quite probably losing friends and alienating anyone I knew in Melbourne.

I should qualify that I have nothing against Adelaide; I’m actually a fan. They’re an honest team with some good players, they play good football and in Aurelio Vidmar have one of the best young coaches in the country.

Continue reading "Why Adelaide fans love losing to Melbourne" »

The A-League is by no means the best football in the world, but as a competition, it’s better than the EPL.

I spend my week talking and writing about football and my weekends watching it - but I can’t get a single round of the A-League right in my tipping comp.

It’s an ongoing joke in the office that the editor of a weekly football magazine can’t get his tips right. Things are so bad even my art director’s beating me – trumped by a crayon monkey!

Continue reading "The A-League has it all over the English Premier League" »

As someone who writes mostly about sport for a living, I’m supposed to be drooling in anticipation of the English Premier league season which kicks off this weekend. I’m not. Here’s why.

1. It only just ended

There were just 81 days between last season’s final game and this season’s impending first encounter. And that’s not to mention the pre-season tours where teams played important “practice matches” (as in, flexed their brand muscles) in such football hotbeds as Bangkok and Surfers Paradise. Enough! I need some breathing space. An on-again/off-again relationship simply doesn’t work when the off is shorter than the on.

Continue reading "I’ve had enough of the English Premier League" »