The Championship: Who's going up and who's going down?

The Championship is arguably the toughest football league in the world. Anyone can beat anyone on their day and a couple of wins can take you from relegation fodder to play-off material. There are only eight more games of this madness left before the crazy world of the play-offs get under way, so le...

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Arsenal, Norwich, Liverpool, Newcastle: The top 10 FA Cup giant killings of all-time

Luton Town became the first non-league club in 24 years to beat a top flight side on Saturday as the Hatters beat Premier League Norwich City 1-0 at Carrow Road. Paul Buckles men rode their luck against the Canaries, but super sub Scott Rendell wrote his name in FA Cup folklore with a winner 10 mi...

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Whose name is on the FA Cup? Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City, Man United?

The FA Cup Third Round gets under way this weekend and everyone is dreaming of Wembley. Even the big boys, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City, Man United and Spurs will all be looking forward to a sunny day under the arch in May. But who will win the FA Cup this season? Chelsea are the current ...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Posh shock Cardiff and McGhee runs out of Gas

No team seems able to stamp their authority on the Championship this season and on Saturday Peterborough United proved what a tough league it is by winning at Cardiff City - the Welsh side hadnt dropped a home point in 10 games. Posh went to South Wales as the bottom placed side and without a w...

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Could Charlie Austin or Tom Pope shine at Anfield or Villa Park?

The time has arrived, early season optimism has evaporated as autumn has dawned. Cliched excuses like Its early days or This team needs time to gel have long passed their sell by date. Disillusioned fans have read the spin, now they want results. This criteria could be applied to half of the Ba...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Dons end Blades' run and Appleton arrives at Blackpool

League One saw a meeting between the two pre-season favourites for promotion and MK Dons were able to end Sheffield Uniteds unbeaten start to the season. It took a last-minute penalty to send the game the way of the home side and Blades boss Danny Wilson was livid with the decision. Its been a st...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Ollie gets a Palace welcome and it could be Dons v Dons in the cup

Its a truism of football that managers usually take over teams when they are in trouble and the last incumbent has resigned or been sacked. Thats certainly not the case at Crystal Palace though, where Ian Holloway has inherited a bunch of players full of confidence and fairly fizzing on the park...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Middlesbrough enjoy another away day and Bournemouth down Tranmere

Saturday proved to be one of strange results in the Championship, as most of the frontrunners fluffed their lines. But Middlesbrough once again demonstrated their talent for getting a result playing away from the Riverside. Their 1-0 win at Brighton delivered a fourth successive away win for To...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Barnet fluff their lines but Tranmere put on a show

Not since the days of Stan Flashman and Barry Fry has so much attention been directed at Barnets modest Underhill ground. On Saturday Edgar Davids - yes, that Edgar Davids - took his place in the home dugout. Apparently the former Ajax, Milan and Barcelona star has become a player-coach at the ...

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Burnley: Would you welcome Coyle back to Turf Moor?

Burnley start their search for a new manager after Eddie Howe decided to return home to the south coast and former Clarets chief Owen Coyle is favourite to land the post. The recently axed Bolton boss is 2/1 on with some bookmakers to return to Turf Moor, but do the fans want him back after the way ...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A more civilised way to talk about football perhaps, but it all comes down to Rooney’s gash in the end

Any long time readers of this column will be acutely aware of my ill feelings towards the current football malaise we reside in: the international break. A fortnight long forced abstinence of domestic football with only a scattered group of international fixtures to keep us going. Mercifully...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Harry has a new game as Redknapp makes his Match Of The Day bow

All in all, it’s fair to say that the summer of 2012 will be looked back on with a great deal of fondness by the vast majority. Sure the weather failed to resemble anything remotely “summery”, and we may of had to put up with the usual bunch of sycophantic ne’er-do-wells in the Big Brother h...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Mackail-Smith double sinks Burnley

Craig Mackail-Smith is an unusual name for a Scotland striker but the Brighton player showed his international pedigree at Turf Moor on Saturday with two quality strikes, one of which would grace a goal of the season compilation. The striker made the difference in a 3-1 win which didnt flatter th...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Mischievous Murray makes Match Of The Day 2 anything but the Muppet Show

It already feels like the 2012-13 season has been going for months. Arsenal and Tottenham have had about three different periods of crisis already; Sir Alex claims Wayne Rooney isn’t pulling his weight, despite only having played one and half games; and Aston Villa manager Paul Lambert is al...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Wycombe washed out but its raining goals in Blackpool

Saturdays games saw the rare occurrence of amatch being abandoned due to health and safety reasons. With thunderous clouds overhead and lightning flashing, Wycombe Wanderers and Bristol Rovers were called off well into the second half of their League Two contest. Rovers were the most aggrieved by...

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Leeds, Forest, Wednesday or Blackburn: Who will win promotion from the Championship?

Ian Holloway’s Blackpool have made an unbeaten start to the new campaign. The Tangerines have scored 10 goals in three games against Millwall, Leeds and Ipswich Town, conceding just one in the process, and are looking good for a promotion place. However, trying to predict the Championship i...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Neville looking sharp as Sky’s fantasy football begins

The beginning of a football season is always a curious period. Our much-cherished teams turn up at 3pm on opening day looking ever so slightly different from the last time we saw them. New kits, new colours if you live in Cardiff, new players and sometimes even new managers. Whatever misty remnant...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Fleetwood fire blanks and Pompey players get to know each other

A new football season always throws up some unusual stories on day one but there can have been few beginnings to a campaign quite like Portsmouths. Amazingly Pompey came away with a point from their first League One encounter despite sending out a whole team of debutants. Before he joined the sou...

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The 10 worst opening day defeats in the modern game

The new football season in England kicks off on Saturday and everyone will be going into the first game full of optimism and hope for a successful season. Unfortunately, some fans may be left crying in their beer come Saturday night. You see, football can be a cruel, cruel game. It can take that op...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: An Olympic hangover means Dixon’s debut fails to inspire

It’s been a gruelling few weeks for fans of sport hasn’t it? Ever since Spain cemented their place as football’s frontrunners at Euro 2012, there has been a disorientating vacuum of sport on television and no amount of frantic bashing of the Sky remote has been able to render any nourishment for s...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Team GB and the BBC could do with heroes like Neymar and the incredible Hulk

I don’t know about you, but even though the Olympics are yet to actually begin, I’m pretty sick of them already. I’m fed up of seeing clowns from the Government on Sky News demanding that the underclass should stop complaining that they can’t afford a pint of milk and just swoon in admiration at t...

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Is this the worst football kit ever?

Players and fans are supposed to wear their shirts with pride, but sometimes the tops are so hideous they make you utterly ashamed. Arsenal fans have complained about their Dennis the Menace away kit, Manchester United supporters have hit out over their new tartan home kit and some Liverpool fans a...

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Fantasy Football 2012/13 is here

Do you think you can do a better job than the professor Arsene Wenger? Could you out-muscle Mancini at defending title winners Manchester City? Then this is your chance to prove it! Squarefootballs Fantasy Football is back for another season and we want as many participants as possible. Last season...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Carlisles united as Clarke delves deep into racism in the game

Can you feel it? We’re in that disorientating period in the football calendar when everything’s not quite right. There’s no football on the TV; other sports like cricket and bloody cycling are beginning to barge their way onto the back pages, and most distressing of all your squads on Fifa are all...

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Bergkamp, Gazza, Larsson, Fowler, Shearer or Beckham - which former star would you like back at your club?

Scottish football is in a sorry state right now as the Rangers debacle rumbles on, but today (Friday the 13th) Charles Greens newco Rangers are due to find out whether they will be gracing the first or third division of the Scottish Football League. Its been a crazy few months for the men from Ibro...

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Special report: Following football from the disabled area

On August18, 2012, Charlton Athletic visit St Andrews in the Championship. Personally speaking the fixture is a trip down memory lane. You see Birmingham City v Charlton Athletic was the first game I saw in the flesh. The date was September 15 1979 and the Blues won 1-0. Immediately I was hooke...

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England: World in Motion or Three Lions - What has been the greatest song?

England take on France this afternoon in their first game of Euro2012 but expectations of Roy Hodgson guiding the country to glory are as low as those racist yobs in Poland and Ukraine who are grabbing all the headlines. Music could hold the key. England have had some notable tournament songs i...

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Euro 2012 Fantasy Football invitation

Calling all fantasy football fans. Have we got a treat for you. If you think you are a better manager than Englands Roy Hodgson or that you could leave Germanys Joachim Low feeling really down in the dumps then why dont you prove it? Weve set up our own Euro 2012 mini-league with the Sun and youve...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Chelsea win, but there were plenty of losers in the final day of football

There are some days that it simply doesn’t pay to be a non-football fan. We have a tendency in this country to lurch en masse into things and render them inescapable to the more indifferent among us. We latch on to an event, a past time, even a television talent show and let it consume us until we...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A final day fanfare for Sky and the Blues

It all came down to this then. It’s been a gruelling journey, epic in its fluctuating fortunes as the favourites for the crown jostled back and forth. Each weekend millions looked on, eagerly cheering their chosen heroes, willing them to put in the performance that would clinch the prize they so ...

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Squarefootball's Championship Team Of The Season

There have been a number of top class displays from players in the Championship this season, some will even be polying their trade in the Premier League next season. But who has made it into Hugh Larkins Team of the Season? Squarefootballs Hugh Larkin has kept his eye on the ball in the world outsi...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A long time ago in a Stadium far far away, ITV began their FA Cup Final coverage

The 2011-12 football season will probably be looked back upon with a real intrigue in future decades. It has been a long, incident-strewn expedition encompassing an abundance of controversy, drama and despair. It is hard to remember another campaign with more extraordinary talking points. The Luis S...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A bad week for some as United falter and the Olympics fail to inspire

It ended with Liam Gallagher bopping along to his own record at the Etihad last night in the her-uge title showdown between the Manchester giants on Live Ford Monday Night Football. Basking in his own genius is probably a nightly ritual for Gallagher junior but what certainly hasn’t been a regular o...

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What has been the greatest Premier League game ever?

We have just witnessed two of the greatest Champions League semi-final clashes of all time. Chelsea were heroic against the Spanish giants Barcelona while Bayern Munich kept their nerve to beat Real Madrid on penalties at the Bernabeu to set up a mouth-watering final in May. However, the Premier...

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The top 10 dives in football history

Manchester United’s Ashley Young and Chelsea’s Didier Drogba have caused controversy over the past fortnight by diving to win penalties and going down quicker than your average High Street hooker. Ashley Young started it all off by winning a cheap penalty against QPR’s Shaun Derry, when the tough m...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Time is running out for the Football League Show but Reading and the Saints defy the odds

Back in the hazy midsummer days of August 2011, while hoards of frenzied teenagers were marauding their way through the streets of London setting fire to police cars, looting Poundland and generally ruining Boris Johnson’s holiday; I was indulging in a regular pre-season pursuit. Like every footba...

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The View Outside The Premier League - Charlton Champions But Sheffield Pair Sweat

More and more of the big issues were decided this weekend and Charlton Atheltic finally achieved what they have been destined for ever since the season kicked off. Chris Powells squad have been front-running since September and no-one has ever looked like catching them. With the Addicks confirmed a...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Tevez, title races and titillation in a terrific week of football TV

Well, it was a helluva’ few days in the Premier League title race last week wasn’t it? The fortunes of the twin Manchester clubs are weaving increasingly erratic patterns as the burden of the top trophy begins to heap its weight on their slumping shoulders. The last seven days or so have seen a numb...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Charlton Finish The Job But Doncaster Drop

Weve reached the time of the season when the big issues are sorted and pride of place goes to Charlton Athletic who nailed promotion the Championship by winning at Carlisle. Its been a remarkable effort for a squad that was almost completely reconstructed over the summer. Manager Chris Powell is on...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A tough week of watching tough men taking tough action; and then there was Gary Neville on Super Sunday

There are many boulevards open to footballers when the time finally comes for them to hang up their boots, delete Sir Alex’s number from their Blackberry and say goodbye to the pantomime-drudgery of the Premier League. Obviously, the twin favourites for many pros are either a cushy job coaching the ...

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Did Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley really play football together?

As football fans, in our lives rarely is there a greater spectacle than a mouth-watering Champions League semi-final between two expensively assembled sides. Rarely is there a more exciting prospect than the thought of Arsenal and Manchester City at loggerheads, with both teams in need of three ...

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Enckelman, Popavic, Ferdinand or Riise: Who has scored the greatest own goal in Premier League history?

Arsenal have been credited five five own goals this season with Laurent Koscielny to blame for two of them, but who has scored the greatest own goal in Premier League history? The top flight in England celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and we at Squarefootball have been marking the ocassion...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: One year on from Keys and Gray but is Sky burning any brighter?

It’s been around fourteen months since the corridors and offices of Sky Sports were rocked irrevocably by the now-infamous sexism scandal surrounding part-man, part-ape Richard Keys and his bosom buddy Andy Gray – the worthy winner of Nuts magazine’s 2006 ‘TV Personality That Most Resembles a Baby...

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The View Outside The Premier League: Blackpool Shake The Saints And Sheffield Pair Are Locked Together

Blackpool reminded everybody what a progressive side they are by steamrollering league leaders Southampton at Bloomfield Road. The result shouldnt have been too much of a surprise - the Tangerines performed superbly when they visited St Marys earlier in the year. Consistency has eluded Ian Hollowa...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A tough week for the ‘football family’ but the future’s looking bright, and looking orange for the Toon Army

It has certainly been a difficult old week in football. Quite rightly, the grave events surrounding Bolton’s Fabrice Muamba dominated all stratums of the game over the past seven days, and by extension all of the football coverage too. This resulted in a strange ambivalence amongst the week’s acti...

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Taggert, Mendes, Cantona or Keown: What has been the most shocking incident in Premier League history?

There is never a dull moment in the Premier League. Whether its teams going goal crazy, controversial transfers or referees going blind, the top flight in England produces more talking points than the Conservative MPs Christmas party. Over the past few weeks weve been asking for your views on the g...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Failure, hope and horror – just another weekend in the lives of Leicester City and ESPN

Despite the fact it has reached the ‘business end’ of the competition, I have so far abstained from reviewing ESPN’s FA Cup coverage; this is for two purely righteous reasons. Firstly, I believe that everyone should have the opportunity to watch England’s foremost domestic cup competition and I a...

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Gordon, Szczesny, Schmeichel or Hart: Who has made the greatest save in Premier League history?

Over the past few weeks we have been celebrating all thats great about the Premier League, as the worlds most watched league marks its 20th anniversary. Weve picked our ultimate Premier League team and weve looked at the greatest goals ever scored, but this week were turning our attention to the goa...

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Beckham, Best, Henry or Cantona: Who were the coolest footballers to ever live?

We would all like to be footballers, right? The money, the women, the cars. Oh, and the playing of football. That’s pretty good. But some are cooler than others. Too cool, even. So cool they make everyone else look like silly, awkward, emasculated chumps. So who were the 10 coolest footballers to e...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A mad Mario meets a melodic Manc and the result is perfect harmony

The twin worlds of football and music have not always been cosy bedfellows. Lest we forget the audio abominations that still stain jukeboxes up and down this land: ‘Fog On The Tyne’, that god awful attempt by Ant and Dec to appeal to people other than 12-year old girls during the 2002 World Cup, ...

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