rightsaidfrank
Player Valuation: Free Transfer
1.Boxing Day Booze Up : Nothing better than waking up from the prior day festivities with a day off but without all the responsibility. Boxing Day football is a tradition – think snow, think darkness, think Bovril. And a full set of fixtures to chance your arm.
2.The convenient red cards we see the fixture before the Christmas period: James McClean at the weekend with a ‘mistimed tackle.’ John Terry a few years ago versus Everton. These players wanted Christmas off to spend with the Mrs and were willing to go to extreme lengths to do so.
3.Local or regional derbies throughout the lower leagues. A tradition to limit travelling often means a short distance to watch your team, with the highlight undoubtedly this year being the biggest derby outside the football league with Woking taking on Aldershot on both Boxing Day and the first fixture in the New Year.
4.For the weekend warriors amongst you living the Ladbrokes life, we can flutter all day every day. And it’s all on the Tele. Apart from you West Brom – sorry about that.
5.Hearing the old footballing cliché that foreign players go missing when the temperatures drop. And people say xenophobia does not exist in modern football.
6.Players wearing gloves. Do me a favour.
7.If Jeff Stelling wearing a Christmas hat doesn’t epitomise Christmas, then your parents clearly could not afford Sky. The Christmas music that accompanies all Sky adverts, a novelty snowman kicking around a football, and a montage of Kammy’s gaffs across our screens. This is what European football is missing.
8.Oversized gentleman not adorning any clothes. AKA, fat blokes topless. The supporters from Newcastle & Portsmouth particularly spring to mind.
9.For the lower league fans – tuning your radios for any news as to whether the frozen pitch is playable, for the non-league fans, your team asking for volunteers to help shift the snow.
10.It’s a tradition. Boxing Day football is as much a part of Christmas as Lynx Africa Box Sets, insisting you carve the turkey, & pretending you don’t like Eastenders but secretly cannot wait to find out who killed Archie. You’ll be doing it all again next year so don’t take it away from us with a Winter Break.
2.The convenient red cards we see the fixture before the Christmas period: James McClean at the weekend with a ‘mistimed tackle.’ John Terry a few years ago versus Everton. These players wanted Christmas off to spend with the Mrs and were willing to go to extreme lengths to do so.
3.Local or regional derbies throughout the lower leagues. A tradition to limit travelling often means a short distance to watch your team, with the highlight undoubtedly this year being the biggest derby outside the football league with Woking taking on Aldershot on both Boxing Day and the first fixture in the New Year.
4.For the weekend warriors amongst you living the Ladbrokes life, we can flutter all day every day. And it’s all on the Tele. Apart from you West Brom – sorry about that.
5.Hearing the old footballing cliché that foreign players go missing when the temperatures drop. And people say xenophobia does not exist in modern football.
6.Players wearing gloves. Do me a favour.
7.If Jeff Stelling wearing a Christmas hat doesn’t epitomise Christmas, then your parents clearly could not afford Sky. The Christmas music that accompanies all Sky adverts, a novelty snowman kicking around a football, and a montage of Kammy’s gaffs across our screens. This is what European football is missing.
8.Oversized gentleman not adorning any clothes. AKA, fat blokes topless. The supporters from Newcastle & Portsmouth particularly spring to mind.
9.For the lower league fans – tuning your radios for any news as to whether the frozen pitch is playable, for the non-league fans, your team asking for volunteers to help shift the snow.
10.It’s a tradition. Boxing Day football is as much a part of Christmas as Lynx Africa Box Sets, insisting you carve the turkey, & pretending you don’t like Eastenders but secretly cannot wait to find out who killed Archie. You’ll be doing it all again next year so don’t take it away from us with a Winter Break.
how are you?
