Well done to some and good luck to Roy

As we hope you are all aware here at Jumpers we revel in the lighter side of the game – the fun and sporting contest as opposed to it all being about taking things too seriously and the size of the cheque. So, for us the past few weeks have thrown up some interesting developments:

Chelsea overcoming Barcelona in style. Now Barca are without question one of the great teams with some amazing players so we must say congratulations to Chelsea though we feel that a suspended player should not be allowed to lift the trophy. We will say nothing about if balls were over the line in FA Cup games as we are tired of it already.

Wigan’s scalps, most recent was the 4-0 thrashing of an inform Newcastle but add to that the other results against the top placed teams and we have to thanks them for providing us with the upsets.

Reading’s Championship – it seemed as if they came from out of nowhere to regain premiership status. We now hope that West Ham win the play-offs. Jumpers being a bit of a Jurasic Park does not believe in play – offs. It’s a league not a cup. Finish 3^rd and automatically promoted. Simple.

Lastly Roy as England manager. Maybe not the media choice but we think a good one, a man who cares about the game. So well done Roy and the best of English.

England v Holland

Well most of you probably know that here at Jumpers we are far from being fans of meaningless friendlies, yet ocasionally, as rare as an outstanding football administrator (OK nothings that rare) we find ourselves thinking good idea.

That good idea is tonights clash between England and Holland - why this one we hear you ask.

a) Holland are a class European side whom we might well have to meet in the Euro Nations, this is a good warm up game.

b) With Capello walking and one of our footballoing heroes getting the caretaking job we feel that he needs a game under his belt to prove if he is worthy of taking the Three Lions to the Nations this Summer.

c) Not much else on telly......


Back to "Psycho" well not only was he one of England's all time gteat players this man is a real Lion Heart - as aplayer he was scarred of nothing that walked on two legs yet did then and still does wear the England short with an almost humbling pride. I feel it is time for the big change out with the old etc. Remember how well Germany did in the last World Cup bringing in the Under 21 manager and team to take over why should we not do the same.


GOOD LUCK TO STUART AND THE TEAM

FA Cup 4th round and our own failings.

As  we look our fantasy league ratings and our increasing stack of losing football coupons, picked three teams to win on Saturday and they all lost!!!, we must reflect on our own abilities in the modern game.

Still we are pleased to see that the FA Cup 4^th Round provided a couple of shocks and that is what we love about the competition, Champions League may be the top competition but you just don’t get Crawley beating Hull – the FA Cup still holds the romance of the game and a hint of jumpers for goalposts.

Potential shocks in the 5^th round – Stevenage v Spurs a potential embarrassment and who would write off either Crawley or Brighton.

Crawley's winning goal

Football Quotes:

Most football teams are temperamental. That’s 90 percent temper and 10 percent mental.

Doug Plank

He had an eternity to play that ball but he took too long over it.

Martin Tyler

Liam Brady’s been playing inside Platini’s shorts all night.

Jimmy Magee

12

With 12 minutes remaining, Henry scores his 12th goal against Leeds in 12 appearances wearing the number 12 shirt in 2012.

You couldn't make it up could you.

Rocky

Legends Past

Jumpers would like to pay a small tribute t the football greats who left us in 2011:

Mike Doyle

Most famous as part of the great Mercer – Allison Man City side of the 60’s / 70’s. Mike was an England international defender who late played for Stoke. In a distinguished career, he won League, FA Cup, Cup Winners Cup and England honours.

Socrates

The Brazilian legend, who may have never won the World Cup (he captained the Brazil side of 1982, some say the greatest team never to have won it). He spent a large part of his career playing in Italy.

Gary Speed

The Leeds and Newcastle legend and Welsh international became one of the Premiership most consistent players in his day rarely missing a game. He later, up to his premature death, managed the Welsh national team.

Jimmy Adamson

In a career in which he was never capped, Jimmy achieved almost all the possible football goals. He captained Burnley to league championship and FA Cup final and was in 1962 (the year of his runners up medal) also Footballer of the year.

Neil Young

Another of the Mercer – Allison City team, Neil was possibly most famous for scoring the winning goal in the 1969 FA Cup final (against a very young Peter Shilton)

Nat Lofthouse

Another FA Cup winning goal scorer (1958) Nat spent his whole career at Bolton and is possibly their greatest legend. At developed into a great international centre forward and footballer of the year.

TOP TEN FOOTBALL MISSES

Sorry to dissapoint but we have gone for the funny element and not the glamour. Good old fashioned football misses, what we have linked in is an old, remember Mark Hately anyone? Top Ten.

Should fellow bloggers wish to send us their Top Ten of the Misses sense we might well include. While talking fashion would also welcome Top Ten Players (best eye candy etc).



And keeping with the funnier side our comment from the past:

For Years I thought the club's name was Partick Thistle Nil.

Billy Connolly

OUR FRIEND IN THE NORTH  (ROCKY)

 Speaking of havin a larf, the FA idea of keeping hold of Capello until after the Euro doesn't rub.  We should bin him now and replace him with someone with big enough balls to let go of our aging rock star footballers and get some youngsters to cut their teeth on the European Championships prior to the World Cup.  We don't really care about winning the European Championships for two reasons: 1) We aren't good enough.  2) It's not the World Cup.  Any footballer who will be too old for the World Cup, shouldn't get a place in the European comp.  That's my opinion.  Thank you for listening.  And don't get me started on Sepp Blatter. 

Jumpers has recently been taking quite a liking to Mario Balotelli, when not scoring goals and wearing the best celebration t-shirt to date he scores goals with nonchalance and just looks as though it was nothing and now we have the saga of his  new Maserati.

The Sun reports that the Manchester City star picked up his new 187mph, £100,000 Italian supercar on Monday, but was pulled over by police on Tuesday on suspicion of speeding.

And in the season of goodwill it is with some surprise that we hear that Anelka is off to China, firstly we did not realise that they had professional football and secondly this must rank with Lineker to Japan and Beckham to USA for the more unusual transfers.

While not our favourite player as the following shows he knows how to put the ball in the back of the net.

And the Ref Gets

After a weekend of good results for England and Wales to mention two we must congratulate person, unknown, who placed a large sum on both winning their games. It was a good weekend for us too as we finally got four predictions right and won a few quid ourselves (thanks Leyton Orient and Notts County).

Well now for our own favourite topic the fun side of the game. Who can remember one of our own favourite moments when Paul Gasgoine, at the time playing for Rangers, showed the ref the yellow card. Well here it is:

Mario Balotelli putting the fun back into the game

What a weekend of football, after a reasonable midweek in Europe, Super Sunday lived up to it’s name with a 1-6 thriller at Manchester and QPR turning over Chelsea. Add Arsenal and Spurs both winning their games and Premiership fans were left with plenty to savour, talk and groan about – the perfect Sunday.

As we hope you know here at Jumpers we like tom look at football the way we believe it should be a sport which is fun and entertaining, with the occasional pop at officialdom – well we have our moment of the week and who else but Mario Balotelli.  What can we say, in our opinion (apart from thanks Hull for letting my bet down but well done) he scores a good goal and with the sort of humour this game needs reveals a shirt with the most in-offensive slogan “Why always me.” – a bit of fun and officialdom’s answer a yellow card.

For those that missed it:

SHOULD ROONEY GO 2012

Well the question that seems to be on every ones lips is should Rooney be taken to Euro 2012 despite the fact he will miss all the qualifying games…….According to Graham Taylor (did not exactly cover himself in international glory as England Manager) he should. Well here at Jumpers we take a different point of view.

Although we agree that Rooney is a good player he is also, as proven, a liability and is now (along with Beckham) the only player to have been sent of twice while playing for England as the following stats show:

Most yellow cards 

David Beckham, 17 ^[92]

Most red cards 

David Beckham, 2

Wayne Rooney, 2

List of all England players sent off

·      Alan Mullery, 5 June 1968, 0-1 vs. Yugoslavia in Florence, 1968 European Championship ^[93]

·      Alan Ball, 6 June 1973, 0-2 vs. Poland in Chorzow, 1974 World Cup qualifier

·      Trevor Cherry, 12 June 1977, 1-1 vs. Argentina in Buenos Aires, friendly ^[94]

·      Ray Wilkins, 6 June 1986, 0-0 vs Morocco in Monterrey, 1986 World Cup ^[95]

·      David Beckham, 30 June 1998, 2-2 vs. Argentina in Saint-Etienne, 1998 World Cup

·      Paul Ince, 5 September 1998, 1-2 vs. Sweden in Stockholm, 2000 European Championship qualifier ^[96]

·      Paul Scholes, 5 June 1999, 0-0 vs. Sweden in London, 2000 European Championship qualifier ^[97]

·      David Batty, 8 September 1999, 0-0 vs. Poland in Warsaw, 2000 European Championship qualifier ^[98]

·      Alan Smith, 16 October 2002, 2-2 vs. Macedonia in Southampton, 2004 European Championship qualifier

·      David Beckham, 8 October 2005, 1-0 vs. Austria in Manchester, 2006 World Cup qualifier ^[99]

·      Wayne Rooney, 1 July 2006, 0-0 vs. Portugal in Gelsenkirchen, 2006 World Cup

·      Robert Green, 10 October 2009, 0-1 vs. Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk, 2010 World Cup qualifier ^[100]

·      Wayne Rooney, 7 October 2011, 2-2 vs. Montenegro in Podgorica, 2012 European Championship qualifier

(SOURCE WIKIPEDIA)

Another point is we have other players who are also capable of scoring goals and we need to get past the qualifying stage to start with.  We would welcome your views.

As Carlos Tevez faces not only the wrath of Man City but also his golf club and as our QPR friend waxes lyrical about the wealth of West London’s newest addition to the premiership once again we wonder is money ruining the game? Yester Year Sir Stanley Matthews was roasting the worlds finest for £20 a week and even the likes of Pele and Best never commanded a fraction of what some of the modern day mediocre stars do, the game is expensive to watch and has lost it’s characters – please officialdom don’t destroy our heritage anymore.

Well that’s the rant over, as we get ready to watch Shamrock Rovers, a team of part timers who have become the first Irish team to reach this stage of a European Tournament (that’s more like what we want at Jumpers)

Oh well now for the nostalgia:

Stanley played top level football until he was fifty - he never knowingly brought the game into disripute and was always an example to school children everywhere.

GoalKeepers Should Always Be Aware

What can happen if you spend too much time celebrating

Atfer an extended break....

As the new Season has started here at Jumpers, after an extended summer break, we have the usual questions. Is a collective term of Football Officials called Incompetence? Further, more is a collection of football administrators a corruption. In addition, as importantly can we finally get some football tips right.

Our plea to the authorities is that the game should be entertaining and have character not a load of over coached dummies and people to afraid of being brought to book by the FA. Oh how we miss Clough, Docherty and Allison. The Bests and Bowles of this world – the game needs them. During the season we will often hype back to those days as we finish bottom of the fantasy league!

Enough for now just to leave with a few blasts from the past:

“There was no point in him coming to team talks. All I used to say was, “Whenever possible pass the ball to George.””

Sir Matt Busby on who else the Late Great George Best

“Anyone who uses the word quintessentially in a half-time team talk is talking crap.”

Mick McCarthy gets to the point.

“I used to play football in my youth but then my eyes went bad so I became a referee.”

Luton’s most famous fan Eric Morecambe

And from our overseas Correspondant - wit and wisdom

·                                 So Chelski go for the Porto coach, bet Icerink is really happy this morning, walks out on Turkey into .....One thing you can be sure of with Abram the bitch, he will shit on anyone . True personal integrity.

I I see Adebayor could be off to colder climes , Surely Harry wasn't seriously thinking of taking him but then he must be getting desperate as all his players worth anything are talking about moving on, notice how quiet Gormless has been!! And Man Shitty haven't signed anybody new yet, do you think people are starting to realise they are really a sham, always were and always will be also rans like Villa. Now there's a laugh, just stolen a wannabe Fergie manager who noboby else wants and refferees aren't scared of and players ignore, ho hum happy day.

 

It is rumoured that a certain missing lord and newspaper magnate could well make a surprise attendance at next FIFA meeting , if they can get a certain horse saddled, and that has as much credibility as Sepp Blatter or that other french (spit) paragon of virtue monsewer Platipus.
I understand Comrade Abramovich has a penchant for managers like  he has for suchi, he sits there and they go past him until he sees one he might like then he picks it , tastes it , if it's not to his liking he puts it back and tries another, seems though he 's already tried one but can't make up his mind ,so he is going to have another go. Turkey are happy they were trying to work out how to tell the Dutchman to piss off without having to pay him. And what about Allerdyce, jeez, the season hasn't even started and the Hammers board have given him a vote of confidence, I wouldn't even bother to unpack me lunch if I were him.

Kosher Kid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

England V Switzerland

I know that we like to look at the light hearted, funny side of the game but England's perfromance against the Swiss was in our opinion beyond a joke. Oh where ismn our noble game?

As Barcelona entertain, FIFA let us down.

As the season closes, we look at the end ceremony games. Barcelona show the world how to play football, with style and passion. Man Utd are not a bad team, then again neither are Real Madrid or Arsenal, but they are just not good enough.

Messi again amazes as he scores great goals for fun, far better than Rooney and with a much better temperament. Do yourself a favour Wayne and get Messi on video (rather than on the pitch)  – watch and learn.

We would like to give our congratulations to Swansea as via the play offs they have become the first Welsh team to play in the Premiership. As an old fashioned, bring back the brylcream, sort I don’t actually agree with the play off system firmly believing that it is a league judged over a season so the third team should go up automatically.

Now for the bile. Just what are FIFA up to? This has got to go down as one of the worst elections in history, if you can even call it an election. Sepp Blatter not even has the common decency to wait and allow another candidate to oppose him. Wait for it for what I am about to write I cannot believe myself, you may never see this published by me again….WELL DONE THE FA. Thanks for finally getting something right and standing up for what is good for the game (I can’t believe that I am giving them credit it just shows you how bad FIFA are). The English and Scottish (old alliances do die hard) may not of won but at least they tried.

Just an after thought just how many of these football administrators have played top level football…… well Sepp isn’t one for starters.

The Legend Brian Clough - Part 2

In May 1967, after various disagreements and despite relative success, with the Hartlepools board, Clough and Taylor joined Derby County, a team that had been rooted in the second division for over 10 years.

The transformation may not have been immediate but in 1969 they were Second Division Champions and in 1972, despite fierce competition, they claimed the First Division prize for the first time in their history.

By now Clough was making a name for himself as one of the great motivators, a maverick who lit up the games with his comments and his beliefs in how football should be played and run.

Controversy was never far away and after a dispute with the Derby board, over not being allowed to take his family with him on a football tour, Clough declined to go. Peter Taylor took the team instead and Derby County did not contest the Charity Shield that year. It was a sign of things too come.

Clough and another Legend

And of course more of his famous quotes:

"Players lose you games, not tactics. There's so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes."  Reflecting on England's exit from Euro 2000.


"We talk about it for twenty minutes and then we decide I was right." On dealing with a player who disagrees.

FA CUP TRIVIA

The last time two teams with City in their name contested the FA Cup Final was 1969 when Man City beat Leicester City 1-0 (this was the last time Man City won the FA Cup).

The previous meeting in the final between two teams with City in their titles was in 1956 when Birmingham City were defeated by Man City (this was the occasion when Bert Trautman broke his neck and continued playing)

The Legend - Brian Clough Part One

BRIAN HOWARD CLOUGH

In a day of the non-entity in sport, as money becomes more of a factor than personality, marketing comes before ability and all the sports seem to be the same or at least me run by the same people we can look back at the people from yester year and see what it is that we are missing.

In Brian Clough football had one of the greatest sporting personalities of all time.

Brian was born 21 March 1935 in Middlesbrough and it was with his home team that he made his name as a prolific goal scorer, his record was 197 goals in 213 league games. He later moved to Sunderland where he maintained his remarkable record by scoring 54 goals in 61 appearances before his playing career was cut short by injury.

For the record he also won two England caps, against Wales  17 October 1959 and Sweden on 28 October 1959, without scoring.

Clough started his famous managerial career as Manager of Hartlepools, with Peter Taylor as his assistant, in October 1965, at 30 he was the youngest manager in the league.

Quotes

"If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there."   On the importance of passing to feet. 


"I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one." Looking back at his success.

Sir Henry Cooper RIP

Although not football here at Jumpers4 we appreciate sporting talent and personality and it was with sadness that we learnt of Sir Hnery's death.

Sir Henry Cooper RIP

3 May 1934 – 1 May 2011

Affectionately known as Our Enry with his famous left hook (known as Enry’s Ammer) was one of the all time British boxing greats and an equally famous television personality.

As a boxer Henry was an honest and reliable sportsman who never let anyone down – perhaps his most famous bouts were against the legendary Muhammad Ali (although he lost both he famously knocked the great man down and some say out in their first bout).

Henry won boxing respect in his own right winning three Lonsdale belts outright ( a unique achievement) and held the Empire / Commonwealth titles and European Champion. He held theses titles against all comers until losing to Joe Bugner in his last ever fight.

Known for his wit and warmth he remained ever popular. Among his other achievements he was awarded OBE and knighted and twice voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year.