Football Ruined My Life

By Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes, Paul Kobrak (and the late Patrick Barclay)Sports Soccer Football

Football Ruined My Life episodes

October 30 156. Paddy Barclay and Derby matches
Since we received positive feedback after our first re-run episode with one of the three founder members of this podcast, Paddy Barclay, we thought you might like to hear again Paddy talking about derby matches. One of the pleasures of making a podcast that does not depend on its topicality is that we can reintroduce subjects which remain perennial debating points. Paddy was well placed to comment on the bitter
sectarian rivalry of Glasgow as Colin Shindler was on Manchester’s equally
intense but not as violent internal conflicts. Jon Holmes of course has to travel to Nottingham to find a local derby which strains credibility though not as much as Crystal Palace’s derby with Brighton at the far end of the A23.

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44 min
October 23 155. Postbag
This week Colin Shindler and Jim White open the postbag which is predictably full of scorn for the owners and operating officers of Manchester City… but also includes some well written observations on the state of football and football supporting in this country. We have an intelligent audience, and the postbag reflects that intelligence with very
little of the emotion and bile that accompanies the game online and on radio phone ins. There are complaints too about the way we ignore the lower leagues and don’t give enough credit to the young players of today. And there’s a surprise guest appearance of FRML’s most consistent critic.

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55 min
October 16 154. Leeds United’s Implosion
In this episode Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes talk to the author Dave Tomlinson about his book Doing A Leeds. Even by the standards of traditional football chaos, what happened to Leeds United between 1996 and 2005 constituted a financial, football and psychological roller coaster. The Elland Road club ascended at breathtaking pace to the Champions League semi-finals and plunged almost immediately into a nightmare of bankruptcy, relegation and a fire sale of the outstanding players who had got them onto the top table of Premier League and European football. David O’Leary seemed to be the manager of the future, he and chairman Peter Ridsdale forming a winning team before the latter abruptly sacked the former and was then ejected from the board he had been running. Plenty for both panel and listeners to get stuck into – like a Norman Hunter tackle.

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40 min
October 09 153. The One With Paddy Barclay – The Nations League
Since we’ve had two weeks off from the Premier League (and the Championship) in order to wallow in beating up Croatia and the Czech Republic as well as losing (as is our tradition) to Spain, we thought you might like to hear again the familiar, engaging voice of Patrick Barclay who
took strong exception to Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler as they dismissed the Nations League as a sop to the demands of television and the financial greed of UEFA. Listen to Paddy as he berates the other two who are nostalgic for the old Home Internationals when England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland played with themselves. One side sees a desperation of the television companies and UEFA to ensure that no summer passes without an international tournament, leading to player burnout and spectator indifference. The other side sees a sensible arrangement that abolishes pointless friendlies, gives every match a purpose and ensures that the weaker sides play each other and are not just cannon fodder for the big boys.

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44 min
October 02 152. Never Go Back
In this edition, Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jimmy Mulville are talking about one particular phrase and its meaning within football. Never Go Back is a particularly poignant phrase for two of the panel when it’s used to refer to two of their heroes - Malcolm Allison and Howard Kendall. The other name which crops up immediately in the conversation is Kevin Keegan who went back to Newcastle when it was owned by Mike Ashley and left quickly when he realised that it wasn’t the same club he had managed a decade earlier under the more benevolent patronage of Sir John Hall. It applies to players too – players who had achieved great things at one club return to the same place at the end of their careers to find they simply cannot reproduce the magic of those early years. For Colin the phrase also evokes the sad memory of his old City hero Francis Lee returning to Maine Road with the club in the doldrums in the 1990s only to be driven from the chairman’s office by the fury and yes, the hatred of those supporters who had once been his greatest fans. All supporters will have their own nominations for this topic.

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42 min
September 28 151. SPECIAL EDITION - Manchester City
In a change to our usual podcast, we bring you a special edition of Football Ruins My Life in which we consider the leak at the end of last week that Manchester City have apparently been found guilty on 114 of the 115 alleged breaches of Premier League rules. Not so much a discussion as a series of opinion pieces offered by Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White. Very much from the heart, as well as the head.

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19 min
September 25 150. Can You Build a Team Around One Player?
There is an initial resistance by the panel to the question: can you build a team around one player? The instinctive response is one of scorn and derision – I mean how do you build a team around Peter Shilton? But then the World Cup arrived and along came Messi to suggest that this was a perfectly viable topic, particularly as his performances aroused our memories of Maradona in Mexico in 1986. Frequently we read of managers attempting to lure a very good player to a new club with the promise of building a team around him. That must sound very enticing to an easily influenced if talented young player, but does it mean that the said manager is going to sign inferior players so that the sun at the centre of his future universe will shine more brightly? So how do you successfully build a team around one player? Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes discuss.

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41 min
September 18 149. The One About Jimmy Hill
This week Jon Holmes, Colin Shindler and Jim White are talking about one particular player – and one manager and one club director and one club chairman and one trade union official and one television executive and one presenter and one analyst and famously on one occasion, one linesman... none other than the Bearded Wonder that was Jimmy Hill. That simple list of his achievements and the different roles he played within football indicate what a unique individual he was. It’s regrettable that in later life he became something of a caricature and a figure who could be easily mocked with his pointed chin and his cross of St. George earrings. Yet no single figure made a bigger impact on English football in the second half of the twentieth century than Jimmy Hill. It was Hill who suggested three points for a win which stopped both teams playing
for a draw twenty minutes from time. He never received the honours that his innovations merited and his final years suffering from dementia made for a sad end which Football Ruined My Life is determined to correct.

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40 min
September 11 148. The One with Steve Walsh
There are times when the panel like to turn the spotlight on those men who do incalculable good work behind the scenes of a football club but remain largely anonymous. Such a hero is Steve Walsh who for many years has performed the job of Head of Recruitment, most famously at Leicester City where he spotted and brought to the club Jamie Vardy, N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez who between them were the spine of the team that won the Premier League in 2016 and cost the equivalent of what it would cost to take a finger nail from Erling Haaland on loan. In a fascinating behind the scenes look at how clubs sign players these days, Steve compares what happens now with what happened when he started out as a scout. The difference in the money is of course breathtaking but also the extraordinary scouting network over which a Head of Recruitment presides. No longer does manager have to travel midweek to watch a player in the Scottish Second Division but a combination of a world wide scouting network and endless footage captured by cameras in every league in every country provides the information on which millions of pounds can be spent without the manager ever seeing the player in action until he arrives at the club. No arguments this week but a series of fascinating revelations.

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45 min
September 04 147. Which Players From The Pre-1992 Era Would Be Stars In Today’s Football?
In this episode Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Andy Hamilton set out to annoy everyone with a discussion of which players from the pre-1992 era – the year when the world of English football changed with the arrival of Sky Sports and the Premier League – would have been stars in today’s
football. It is arguable that great players will always be great players whatever era they play in and this discussion is therefore entirely pointless, but it is impossible to set a topic for three football enthusiasts without an inevitable disagreement. We can only hope that these points of disagreement don’t lead to tempers being raised to be followed by verbal fisticuffs if such an interesting oxymoron can be said to exist. To see
if Colin, Jon and Andy turn into the Argentina players at the end of the recent World Cup Final tune in to this podcast.

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49 min