We can imagine no better way of celebrating our century of podcasts than by dipping into the postbag containing your emails.  Every week we encourage you to write to us and you do so in comforting numbers.  Once again, the tone is largely positive with people wanting to contribute their own memories to the topic they’ve just listened to or correcting our very fallible memories.  We look forward to these occasional episodes because it enables us to connect with our audience and we’re very grateful that you take the time and trouble to write - if only because it reassures us that we’re talking about the topics which you think and

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Prompted by reports of the last men’s game to be played by Everton at Goodison Park, the panel discuss the emotions that fans feel when they leave their traditional home for pastures new – the nostalgia for times past and the excitement mixed with some trepidation at what lies ahead. Jon and Colin have experienced this sensation as Filbert Street and Maine Road closed their doors for the last time and now the Old Evertonian Jimmy Mulville joins them to discuss this particular phenomenon.  As football grounds modernise it is an emotion likely to be shared by the majority of football supporters across the land.  Football is a game heavily influenced by tradition.  How does a new ground manage the emotional response of supporters to a new stadium?

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Was 1985 English football’s darkest year?  There could be a number of nominations for this much coveted title but 1985 contained the tragedies of Heysel Stadium and the Bradford City fire.  Weeks before these events the sixth round FA Cup replay between Luton Town and Millwall degenerated into a shocking riot.  The average attendance at a Division One match in 1972 had been over 30,000.  By 1985 that had slumped to just 18,374.  No British team had qualified for the Euros in France in 1984 so no British television channel bothered to cover it, so low was the interest in the game.  Football in 1985 said the Sunday Times was a slum sport played in slum stadiums and increasingly watched by slum people.  Jim

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David Pleat has been in football so long that most supporters have forgotten that he started out as a player for Nottingham Forest, Luton and Shrewsbury Towns, Exeter City and Peterborough United.  He has been a sensible pundit on radio and television for many years following a successful managerial career at Luton Town, Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City, Sheffield Wednesday and Nuneaton Borough.  David has now published his very interesting autobiography Just One More Goal which

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Andy Hamilton returns to join Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes as they discuss the contentious subject of football pundits.  By pundits, they mean those know-it-alls who are either very wise after the event, are outstanding at stating the bleeding obvious or are as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to predicting the future.  Yet somehow, they have become increasingly important in the broadcasting of football on radio and particularly television.  Indeed the BBC Director General, guided by the new BBC Head of Sport, recently told us that audiences would prefer to listen to the pundits rather than watch the highlights of the match.  Contentious?  We should say so.  In the days of Kenneth Wolstenholme and David Coleman, John Motson and Barry Davies there were very few pundits besides Jimmy Hill and we related largely to those commentators unless there was a World Cup panel.  Why have the pundits become so

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This week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by Omid Djalili to ask the question, “How English is the English football pyramid?”  Of course, football reflects society and since we all began watching football, British society has changed out of all recognition.  If you look at old football matches on The Big Match Revisited on ITV4 on Saturday mornings and other archive film programs you can see how different it was 40 years also ago and how widely British society has changed since then - not just off the field but also on the field.  There is no question that many of the imports into the game from the rest of the world have been a blessing, not least skilful players who have added to the pleasure of the crowds who went to watch them.  However, the sheer number of players playing in the English football game who are not English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish might be to some a cause of concern.  The idea of the one club man who spent his entire career with his local club has passed into History.  Is the globalisation of the game something to celebrate or regret?

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Jim White returns to contribute to the last in our series of podcasts about the England managers which takes the panel from Sven to Thomas Tuchel and the glories that lie ahead for the England football team - which is usually a reminder that they haven’t won anything since 1966.  In the name of Allah go, they said to Bobby Robson.  Yanks 2 Planks 0 the Sun helpfully pointed out to Graham Taylor.  We know that the press, not just The Sun, can be very hostile and extremely rude to England managers.  Are the national managers judged by a different yardstick from ordinary club managers?  Are the press just waiting for England managers to fail so they can pile in on them?  Jim White tries to defend his profession.

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In this edition of the podcast, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes are joined by Andy Hamilton to talk in a very headmasterly tone about Onfield Behaviour which quite frankly is bringing the good name of the Football Ruined My Life school into disgrace.  In a Champions League quarter final this season two Real Madrid boys in the Lower Sixth, Rudiger and Mbappe, were shown on television after a fortunate win over their rival boys school Atletico Madrid making obscene gestures.  Rudiger was appearing to make a throat-slitting motion, apparently towards the Atletico crowd, while Mbappe was shown seemingly making a crotch-grabbing gesture.  Both boys then had to report to Mr Infantino’s study after Assembly where it would appear nothing at all happened to them.  Government regulations unfortunately no longer permit Sir Stanley Rous to give both those boys a severe caning which would have happened in the more enlightened 1960s.  Has onfield behaviour deteriorated so badly in recent years or does football simply reflect an increasing disregard for authority which can be seen in so many facets of society in the 21st century?

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We’re all fans.  That’s why we make this podcast and that’s why presumably you all like listening to it.  Fan sentiment is something we suspect we all feel strongly about but probably in our different ways.  It’s not just foreign owners, ludicrous transfer fees, and (present company excepted) cynical agents taking money off both their clients and the clubs.  Today’s panel (of Jon Holmes, Colin Shindler and Jimmy Mulville) consider how fans like all of us are being slowly alienated from the clubs to which we’ve given a lifetime of devotion.  Colin even has sympathy for Manchester United fans who are appalled at the antics of their club since it became apparent that Jim Ratcliffe was not a knight on a white horse but a panic-stricken tax exile in a limousine trapped in a car park, surrounded by angry fans.  We can’t help but accept that our clubs have to change, it’s inevitable but is it still our club?  It’s a question we all ask ourselves, some with increasing anxiety.

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In the first podcast Football Ruined My Life has done since the untimely demise of Patrick Barclay, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by the Daily Telegraph sports columnist Jim White.  Forced to restart the episode because the Producer had failed to press the record button first time round, eventually the panel turn to the “the poisoned chalice”. They consider the story from the sad night of defeat on penalties in Turin to the singularly appropriate day in 2000 when Kevin Keegan resigned the job in the toilets at Wembley Stadium after a 1-0 home defeat by Germany.  In between came the nadir of Graham Taylor and the oh-so-nearly efforts of Terry Venables before Glenn Hoddle was defeated by the players’ decision to embrace his original tactics but reject his rather strange insistence on utilising the assistance of a faith healer called Eileen Drewery.

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