The Blizzard

"If Euro 2012 seemed unusually vibrant it was in part because of those echoes, the resonance of a million instant verbal salutes, a million demands for a retweet for this fascinating piece on the Czech Republic’s mildly innovative use of the attacking long throw-in."In Episode Forty Two we look back to 'The First Twitter Tournament' by Barney Ronay from Issue Six, which explores the changes in the press and the impact of social media on the 'most tweeted sporting event of all time'. The relationship between reporter and spectator has been fundamentally altered, and the 'access' that was once the preserve of pork-pie-hatted men with notebooks is now democratised and available to all. If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.Issue Six, like all issues of The Blizzard, is available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while print versions are available from £6 + postage (RRP £12). You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.

"Perhaps the death of optimism is just what happens when you reach middle age, that you recognise how cruel and capricious the world can be, how the brightest dreams are sullied and perverted, and so cynicism becomes the natural mode. But in the summer of 1996, it felt like everything was moving in the right direction. Perhaps every generation goes through this, but looking back, two decades on, it’s hard to escape the thought that we blew it."Episode 41 of the Blizzard Podcast features 'The Best Summer of My Life', Jonathan Wilson's editorial from Issue Twenty One which is available to subscribers now and goes on general sale from the 10th June.Something of a Euros special, the issue features articles on Pavel Vrba, Leonid Slutsky, André-Pierre Gignac, the Albania-Serbia drone controversy, as well as looking back to games at Euro 84, Euro 76 and a photo essay on the great Hungarian sides of the 50s. If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.Issue Twenty One, like all issues of The Blizzard, is available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while print versions are available from £6 + postage (RRP £12). You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.

“There was no fooling the 18,000 spectators at Old Trafford. “Play up, you rotters!” they screamed. The fix was on. They knew it, as Manchester United went through the motions against Liverpool on 2 April 1915, winning 2-0 in a listless performance.”In Episode Forty we revisit ‘The Silenced Crowd’ by Richard Fitzpatrick from Issue Ten, which looks at the greatest scandal in British football in the first half of the twentieth century, as a group of players from two of the country’s greatest sides colluded to fix a match. If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.Issue Ten, like all issues of The Blizzard, is available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while print versions are available from £6 + postage (RRP £12). You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.

The second half of the Blizzard's live Q&A event held at the WS Society in Edinburgh on 19th May. Featuring a panel of Jonathan Wilson, Philippe Auclair, Alan Pattullo and Kevin McCarra, hosted by Daniel Gray.The panel took questions from the audience and Twitter on a range of subjects including unintelligent footballers, the upcoming European Championships, safestanding and other Scottish football chat, the best goals they’d ever seen scored live and the Chablis in the Auxerre press room.Don’t forget that Issue Twenty One of the Blizzard – something of a Euros special – is available to pre-order now and will be released on 7th June to subscribers, and on a general pay-what-you-like download basis on 10th June to coincide with the start of the tournament.If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.All issues of The Blizzard are available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while print versions are available from £6 + postage (RRP £12). You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.

The first half of the Blizzard's live Q&A event held at the WS Society in Edinburgh on 19th May. Featuring a panel of Jonathan Wilson, Philippe Auclair, Alan Pattullo and Kevin McCarra, hosted by Daniel Gray. The panel took questions from the audience and Twitter on a range of subjects including unintelligent footballers, the upcoming European Championships, safestanding and other Scottish football chat, the best goals they’d ever seen scored live and the Chablis in the Auxerre press room. Don’t forget that Issue Twenty One of the Blizzard – something of a Euros special – is available to pre-order now and will be released on 7th June to subscribers, and on a general pay-what-you-like download basis on 10th June to coincide with the start of the tournament. If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.All issues of The Blizzard are available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while print versions are available from £6 + postage (RRP £12). You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.

“Perhaps, in this age of quasi-franchises and superclubs, when the structure of the competitions and the nature of globalisation makes the rich richer so they exist at an impossible remove to the rest, this is all that remains of the traditional mode of support: football not as an expression of provincial industrial pride, but as a reminder of it.”In Episode Thirty Eight we look back to ‘A Sentimental Journey’ by Jonathan Wilson, including a chat with the man himself to put the article in a bit more context. In a world of superclubs, just what is the point of ordinary teams? Is the nature of David overcoming Goliath the only ‘true’ version of success, and can clubs who habitually inhabit the latter stages of the Champions League truly celebrate achievement that doesn’t act as consecration of a lifelong quest, but merely represents the fact that it was ‘their turn’ to win?There's still time for you to win a signed Sergio Aguero Manchester City home shirt, too - for full details head to www.theblizzard.co.uk/podcasts - but be quick, the competition closes on Friday 13th May.If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.Issue Fifteen, like all issues of The Blizzard, is available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while print versions are available from £6 + postage (RRP £12). You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.

"The image of reinvention, conjuring up some kind of Google-land, can also, while understandably wanting to attract businesses, veer into overstating the case. If this had happened so successfully, this “remarkable economic transformation”; including the outlay of public money to create “sport city”, then hitting the jackpot with Abu Dhabi, why are the areas right around the stadium still mired in England’s worst deprivation?"In Episode Thirty Seven we revisit ‘City and the City’ by David Conn. Looking at the takeover of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour (and at its previous owner, Thaksin Shinawatra), David places the mega-rich gulf owners' stewardship of the club in the wider economic landscape. What does their ownership of the club mean for the city itself? Why is there still a juxtaposition of investment in sporting facilities in the east of the city while it's still home to some of the most deprived boroughs in the UK?

There's also an opportunity for you to win a signed Sergio Aguero Manchester City home shirt - for full details listen to the episode, or head to www.theblizzard.co.uk/podcasts

If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.Issue Nine, like all issues of The Blizzard, is available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while print versions are available from £6 + postage (RRP £12). You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.

“The nickname denoted a certain time in technology. Perhaps today he would have been ‘the Twitter scorer’ or ‘the Instagram attacker’. In the days before social media, Roy Essandoh was ‘the Teletext striker’, the man who went down in football folklore for being signed because of an article that appeared in blockish type on television screens and who scored an injury-time winner for the lower-league underdogs in an FA Cup quarter-final.”In Episode Thirty Six we look back to ‘One Hit Wonders’ by Richard Jolly, our Eight Bells feature from Issue Nineteen. Some players flicker brightly and briefly in the footballing consciousness, and from Jimmy Glass to Roy Dwight, Steve Morrow to Roy Essandoh, we feature some of the players whose names have gone down in history, albeit not with the longest of entries in the footballing Who’s Who.

If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.Issue Nineteen, like all issues of The Blizzard, is available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while print versions are available from £6 + postage (RRP £12). You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.

“Just as a newly-formed political party would be best off finding the point on the ideological spectrum where it can find the biggest ‘space’ (assuming this party has absolutely no ideological principles and is solely concerned with the pursuit of power), an intelligent playmaker given a free role will venture to the position on the pitch where he can find the most space.”In Episode Thirty Five we look back on ‘The Search for Space’ by Michael Cox, from way back in our pilot issue, Issue Zero, in March 2011. He looks at how a theory of political polling reflects something similar in football tactics. As New Labour were exploiting the ‘median voter theory’ in the mid-to-late 1990s, a number of Premier League imports – Bergkamp, Zola and Cantona – were exploiting spatial theories on the pitch. If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.Issue Zero, like all issues of The Blizzard, is available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while a limited edition print version is available from £12 + postage. You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.

"When Ferguson moved into management in 1974, part-time at East Stirlingshire for £40 a week, the game was much less lucrative, broadcasters usually only supplied football punditry for special events (FA Cup finals, internationals, World Cups and so forth) and the principal career options for retiring footballers were: opening a sports shop, running a pub and becoming a manager"In Episode Thirty Four we revisit ‘Echoes in Eternity’ by Paul Simpson from Issue Sixteen, which attempts to answer the question of which manager has had the greatest influence on future generations. Ferguson’s ‘enfants’ span Europe (Blanc at PSG, Solksjaer at Molde, Berg at Legia Warsaw), and closer to home his players have managed, assisted or trained at just over 50 clubs. Is he the most influential manager of all time, however? What about Revie, Clough, Shankly or Paisley? From overseas, where do Bielsa, Sacchi and Cruyff fit in? And why does ‘the Professor’ Wenger have such a comparatively low hit-rate?If you have any feedback comments or suggestions email [email protected] or find us on Twitter @blzzrd.Issue Sixteen, like all issues of The Blizzard, is available on a pay-what-you-like basis from www.theblizzard.co.uk. Digital downloads cost as little as 1p each (RRP £3), while print versions are available from £6 + postage (RRP £12). You can also find us on the Kindle and Google Play stores.