Paul Heckingbottom was dismissed by Preston North End on 13 September 2026 after six defeats in the opening seven Championship matches left the club 23rd. One phrase in the club’s reasoning matters far beyond the manager. There had been “significant investment in the playing squad.” That should make everybody interested in Preston stop for a…
There is a reason I continue to believe in the project. It is not because building a professional football club in Los Angeles is easy. It isn’t. It is because the opportunity has never really been about putting 22 players on a pitch and building some seats around them. The bigger opportunity is to work…
THE ARGUMENT IN 20 SECONDS Football clubs should be allowed to borrow money to build themselves. They should not be required to carry financial risk because somebody wants to buy them. Manchester United showed the long-term cost. Liverpool showed how badly it can unravel. Burnley shows why the question still matters. The owner should finance…
I met Nigel Benn and his son Conor in Australia in 2013. Conor was still a teenager. No controversy. No press-conference character. No social-media trial. Just a young lad with his dad. And thirteen years later, the thing I remember most is remarkably simple. They were a lovely family. That memory has stayed with me….
Shortly before the Premier League season started, I published my predictions for all twenty clubs. Liverpool champions. Brentford sixth. Aston Villa fifth. Everton seventh. Manchester United tenth. Tottenham eleventh. Newcastle thirteenth. Some of those predictions looked ridiculous to people. Good. They were supposed to challenge the market. Because my original article was never really about…
There is an arrogance in football recruitment that nobody talks about enough. Too many clubs approach the transfer market like ordering a takeaway. Open the menu. Pick the striker. Ring the club. Agree a fee. Wait for him to arrive. Maybe throw in a winger while you’re there. Football does not work like that. The…
For three years, I worked in a strange corner of football. I was an FA-registered intermediary. Most days were less glamorous than people imagine. Motorways. Training grounds. Service-station coffee. Calls from the car. Meetings that went somewhere and meetings that went nowhere. I spoke to players, agents, managers, coaches, owners, recruitment teams and sporting directors….
I was at Wigan against MK Dons tonight. Wigan won. But I left thinking about the striker. He kept coming short. Wide players came inside. There was not enough running beyond. Not enough of a winger taking a full-back on, reaching the line and whipping one across the box. Too much football in front of…
American soccer keeps looking to Europe for answers. It should spend a night watching professional wrestling. Not because football should become fake. Because wrestling understands something football often forgets. The competition is sport. Everything around it is storytelling. MLS should study WWE. MLS NEXT Pro should study NXT. USL should study AEW. Not to copy…
I have criticised MLS. Hard. I have criticised USL even harder. I have called MLS too commercial, too protected and too detached from some of the things that make football matter. I have questioned USL franchise fees, protected territories, player pathways and the economics of asking owners to spend millions before they have built anything…