Scottish football: How a 16-team league revamp can benefit all clubs

The notion of returning to a 16-team top tier in Scotland has been mooted for the past few seasons and with Rangers dropping out of the top tier it has never looked more likely that the 16-team division will come to pass. There are two major issues at stake with such a proposal. The ...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Bad luck stories abound as the Scots take on Wales in a clash of the misfiring

It’s a universal truth that some people are just plain unlucky. These desperate souls, through no real fault of their own, just get a rough deal in this bad ol’ world and spend their days enduring an avalanche of ungodly misfortune and rudimentary shite. And don’t suffer the misapprehension that t...

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Scotland’s five best teams in the past decade

When you think of Spanish football only two names come to mind, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Scottish football is exactly the same, with the rivalry between Celtic and Rangers known around the world. The famous Old Firm derby looks like it will be off the calendar for at least four years following th...

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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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Squarefootball Fantasy Football 2012/13

The new Premier League season kicks off in less than two weeks which means time is running out to select your fantasy football teams. Do you think you can do a better job than the professor Arsene Wenger? Could you topple Mancini at Manchester City? Really?! Then this is your chance to prov...

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Scottish football: Can anyone other than Celtic win the SPL?

The SPL gets under way this Saturday and following the demise of Glasgow Rangers nobody can see past Glasgow Celtic for the title. Neil Lennons men finished 20 points ahead of their fierce rivals last season and a whopping 31 points ahead of third placed Motherwell. The gulf in class is obvious, but...

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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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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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Keane, Ferguson, Mackay or Souness: Who is football's No1 hard man?

These are the men that put the fear factor into football. The men that gave their opponents nightmares. Here we celebrate the top 10 tough-tackling hard men that we all hate to love. 1. Roy Keane Born and raised on a tough estate in Cork, Roy Maurice Keane is the undisputed king of hard men...

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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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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: 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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: No handshake for Evra and no love lost between the partisan pundits at Sky

Think about this for a second. How many times do you think you have seen Luis Suarez’s hand this weekend? Ten times? Twenty? A hundred? I’m sure I’ve seen his wandering hand more than I’ve seen my own two in the past 48 hours, such has been the swirling media-frenzy since he refused to settle his di...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Serious lessons to learn from Fashanu’s footballing family

I’m fairly certain we can all agree that football has its fair share of problems. If it is not the shady transfer dealings of murky agent types skulking around the bins at Tottenham’s training ground, it is the ignorant grunts of ill-informed morons as they boo a man purely for being the brother of ...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A prosperous week for Liverpool in the cups but off the field is a different story

The days leading up to the weekend’s FA Cup Fourth Round ties were not particularly pleasant for many football fans, a week in which the unseemly and murky face of football was glaringly apparent. Many column inches were devoted to the tax-evasion trial of Spurs manager Harry Redknapp, as well as th...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Confusion reigns at City as Coleman fluffs his lines

Have you played Football Manager 2012? You may wonder how a game brimming with data, facts and incalculable statistics comes to contain such a dearth of information. Well, in the early stages of the games development, some spotty oik is charged with the task of finding someone close to each of the 7...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: An incident-packed week at the BBC leaves Savage short of support and Lineker lost for words

They say a week in football is a long time and it can certainly be said that there was enough controversy, incident and wonder crammed into the last seven days of football to keep Joey Barton’s Twitter account going for years. The fallout from the Manchester derby, the return of Scholes and Henry, t...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Manchester disunited but the magic of the FA Cup is alive and well

The much talked about magic of the FA Cup was present in abundance this Sunday during the huge third round Manchester showdown, in fact there was more magic contained in the 90 minutes than during a Paul Daniels swingers party. Chris Foy’s card tricks, a disappearing City captain and most mystifying...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A football overkill but Fabregas’ Barcelona adventure keeps us watching

At the top of this article you will see, if you can get past the crass, self-congratulatory overuse of my own name, that the tagline for this column mentions that there isn’t enough football on the TV. Obviously this pithy line is actually nonsense as there is in fact far too much football clogging ...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Stelling and his merry mates bring festive cheer and genuine fear in the absence of any football

If we boil it down, there are two distinct ways to spend the festive period. You either endure the holiday wallowing in a pit of desperate desolation, alone with no hope of joviality, good tidings or communal kinship. Sat crestfallen in front of Eastenders on Christmas night, nursing a bottle of gin...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A battle of wits ends in defeat for Worthy’s warhorses, but football marches on

Let’s face it. Our footballing heroes don’t have the greatest reputation when it comes to brainpower and academia do they? A cautionary glance at the post-match interviews every week on Match Of The Day show us superstars struggling to grasp the complexity of questions such as, “How do you feel the ...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A love-in for O’Neill as marvel Martin ruins Rovers’ day

It was clear at 1pm on Sunday what the overriding theme of the day was going to be on Sky Sports’ Live Super Sunday. Ed Chamberlain, growing more and more comfortably into the role of football anchorman, opened the afternoon’s football coverage by loudly proclaiming, “Sunderland’s new era begins tod...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: The rise and fall of the sprightly Savage is far from a waltz in the park

Do you remember the first time you ever saw Star Wars? That intoxicating and bedazzling rush of pure unadulterated excitement as you sat slack-jawed, unable to wrench your eyes away from all the bright lights, whizzing space ships and questionable acting? And perhaps you also remember the desolate f...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A hair-raising spectacle on Saturday turns to sombre reflection on Sunday

Take a look around you. Chances are that if you are reading this in a public place; a library, at your office while you should be working or perhaps even on the Tube, then someone close by is displaying some facial hair that seems to be a little out of place. These moustachioed menfolk are either un...

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Get your Christmas football books here

With Christmas around the corner, attention will be turning the old chore of shopping for the festive period. The dreaded question is about to raise its ugly head. What do I get for the football fan in my life? As usual the great and the good of the football world are telling their story. There ar...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A test of comedy quizzing is passed with help from the inspiring Irish

Ok, before we go any further let me first congratulate the Irish team on their impressive qualification for the European Championships next summer. There was the inevitable party mood for the second leg of the Republic of Ireland v Estonia match last Tuesday and I’m sure there are not many that begr...

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Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, Birmingham: What game would you like to erase from your club's history?

I think it is safe to come out from behind the sofa now. The trick and treaters have gone into 12 months of hibernation, giving the nation’s doorbells time to recover. The BBC can put the series of Halloween movies back into cold storage. Just how many were there? As football fans we too have exper...

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Stoke City And Greece: Why Should 'Pretty' Success Matter?

The European Championships 2004. Ah, what a tournament. The Greeks told every single one of us that fairy tales can come true. They defeated France and Portugal along the route to triumph and won a major international tournament for the very first time as rank outsiders. Unfortunately, what came...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: ITV begin to repay their debt with a feast of Man City delights

It’s the 12th June 2010. Seven thirty-four on a warm summer’s evening. My friends and I are huddled around my television, just as a million more expectant eyes are doing at the same moment up and down the nation. Then pffft … nothing. A moment’s darkness was followed by some guff about Hyundai cars ...

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Could ex-players as referees ever work?

Ah, referees. Nasty men in black, the forever stern officials of our game, often painted to be rather humourless beings who get out of the house on Sundays to escape their nagging wives and only serve to annoy us. There is a theory, which Roberto Marinez brought up back in January of this year,...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: A bad week for JT just gets worse and worse as the news hacks attack!

It’s been a bad old week for Chelsea and England captain John Terry hasn’t it? The on-going racism row between Terry and his accuser Anton Ferdinand has been front and back page news since the incident occurred a week ago and the story shows no signs of halting. Like most I have seen the footage...

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Arsenal, Coventry and Leicester: Can a new ground be blamed for a lack of success?

It has been a traumatic decade for followers of Coventry City. The Sky Blues were relegated from the Premier League in 2001 and in the proceeding 10 years the Midlands club have rarely threatened a return to the big time. You could argue that the club’s move to the Ricoh Arena has hindered their pro...

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Manchester United got off lightly: Here's five of the worst results ever

Manchester City rocked the champions at Old Trafford, hitting Fergies men for six, but Hugh Larkin recalls five of the worst beatings of all time. As Chris Pettit reminded us elsewhere on this site - Manchester Citys spectacular 6-1 victory at Old Trafford was the second jaw-dropping scoreline of t...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Mancini’s Manchester magicians spoil the party… and this column

Why always me? This week I was going to talk to you about the light-hearted Sky Sports knockabout quiz Take It Like a Fan. I was armed with reams of faint praise for the show and was readying my keyboard for a glittering review and even a possible recommendation for you all to check it out. But al...

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St Johnstone: Who will replace McInnes as Saints' manager?

Following the success he achieved at McDairmid Park, Derek McInnes was always going to be poached by a club in England. Not only had he guided St Johnstone to the SPL, he did so playing some damn fine football. After leading the Saints to the top half of the table, he has decided now is the right ti...

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Can any player, including Messi, be considered 'the greatest'?

Ah, the Champions League. Bringer of drama, stopper of dreamers, platform for Ray Wilkins to say ‘my word’ 50 hundred thousand times. And there are other things that are nearly always discussed, certainly when seeing the two dominant Spanish sides play. The great debate has moved from trying to ...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Football on Sky is becoming a fairytale thanks to Wilkins the Wizard

So we were repeatedly told that it was the ‘biggest club game in world football’ as Liverpool and Manchester United met at Anfield on Saturday for the ever-intense North-West derby. The fevered atmosphere was apparent at Sky for Live Ford Football Special and there was an almost fairytale mood in ...

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Outside the Box – Football on TV: Rooney and Savage liven up the tedious break in play

There are not many things that evoke a true hatred and frustration in my usually dreary and featureless disposition, in fact there are only three: anybody who thinks the enjoyment of a night out is heightened by the commencement of dancing, any television programme in which the words “Piers” and ...

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