This week’s special guest on the podcast is the distinguished historian Dominic Sandbrook, author of magisterial histories of Britain from 1956 to 1982 and of course a co-host of the podcast The Rest is History.  More to the point, however, he is a passionate supporter of Wolverhampton Wanderers whom we have shamefully neglected in our previous 134 plus podcasts, mainly because we have been waiting to get hold of Dominic.  In Who Dares Wins, his history of Britain from 1979 to 1982, he not only references the 1980 Wembley final in which Wolves beat Clough’s Nottingham Forest but he utilises the names of Wolves players on a far larger scale.  If you listen to this edition of the podcast you will discover how and why he does it.

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This week Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the sort of player who should have played for their country but never did, players who lacked the ebullience to stand out from their more aggressive and extrovert team mates and players -  wherever they operated in the football pyramid.  Players who were the unshowy but reliable… who got the ball, made ground and passed accurately to a colleague in space.  On

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This week Colin Shindler, Andy Hamilton and Jon Holmes gather to discuss whether there are more 17 and 18 year old players coming into the game than there used to be in the postwar years.  Has the abandonment of the A and B sides and more significantly the reserve leagues – like the Central League and the Football Combination – changed things for the better?  Can young players learn much by sitting on the bench watching the first eleven play or would they learn more by playing games in a reserve team?  How effective are the academies in speeding talented youngsters into the first team?

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It’s the view of Football Ruined My Life that many football supporters used to buy broadsheet newspapers specifically to read Geoffrey Green or Brian Glanville or David Lacey or Hugh McIlvanney – four hugely respected titans of the art of writing about football matches for the next day’s paper.  In this edition, Jim White of the Daily Telegraph joins Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler to explain why his own career has coincided with the long slow decline of the influence of the football journalists.  There was a time

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This week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by the investigative journalist Michael Crick whose appearances down the years on Newsnight and Channel 4 News have made him a familiar face on our television screens.  Despite being a friend of Colin, he is a longtime supporter of Manchester United, having had the decency to grow up in Manchester.  In this episode he talks about the power of nationalism and how it has affected the game at both club and international levels.

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There was a time before 1966 when crowds were a lot friendlier and less angry than they are today.  Supporters of opposing clubs stood together on the terraces and policing was relegated to one copper on a horse outside the ground as you came in.  Crowds in the immediate postwar years were large and though the grounds were already starting to crumble, club directors saw no need to spend money updating them.  The food and drink were mostly disgusting and toilet provision was virtually non-existent.  But there was no hooliganism and nobody got stabbed or was hustled to hospital with a dart sticking out of his eye. Omid Djalili, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes ask what does that tell you about society in the early postwar years?  And why did it change?  

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Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler ask the question “Has the match day experience improved over the

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The television interview with a British manager after a match has become quite a rare bird, although recent events at Manchester United and Chelsea have slightly altered that perception.  Prior to those appointments, Eddie Howe, Sean

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Recently we had the Africa Cup of Nations with that absurd ending rescued by the grown up behaviour of Sadio Mane.  During the course of the competition we were constantly reminded of how much Mo Salah means to the people of Egypt.  However, Omid Djalili, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes also look at the downside.  When Luis Suarez was sent off for biting for the third time in the 2014 World Cup after taking a mouthful from the shoulder of the Italy defender Georgio Chiellini – they wonder whether the people of Uruguay were sympathetic to the way Suarez’ assuaged his hunger pains or whether they were properly embarrassed.  Football throws up heroes and villains on a regular basis.  How much impact do their actions have on the perception of their country?

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When the Football League started in 1888 there were six clubs from the Midlands and six from Lancashire.  Now look at the Premier League.  Of the

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