2017/18 Season Latest Topics (2024)

Condense this Big Tone.

Exhausted, no motivation, could not care less; the players? No, this match day writer.

All of you take the floor...

The two GKN Aerospace factories at Western Approach, Bristol and at Filton cumulatively employ about 1/3 of the companies' UK workforce; 484 in Bristol and 1454 in Filton. The two most important clients for GKN Bristol are BAE Systems and Airbus. I know this has little to do with today's match but it is a significant moment in the history of Bristol industry and it needs mentioning. GKN started life as the Dowlais Ironworks Company near MerthyrTydfil in South Wales in 1759. Yesterday GKN, with 60,000 employees in 30 countries, was sold by a 52% shareholder majority vote to a hostile takeover predator named Melrose Industries formed in 2003. Their motto is 'buy, improve, sell'. Although, for once, a hostile takeover has taken place by a British based and run company it is essentially an asset stripper and jobs will inevitably go. Airbus, curiously, has already gone public by saying it will stop buying from GKN. That might be hard in the short term as there are few factories in the world with the expertise to build Wing Spars as they do in Bristol and GKN supplies BAE Systems which in turn supplies Airbus. It could get a bit messy. I hope the Gov't will not regret not stepping in to prevent a takeover on national security grounds. This would not have happened anywhere else in the world and is why Britain is the most open market in the world, for good and for bad.

Barnsley mined the coal that powered the iron foundries and made the glass. They may still make glass in Barnsley but Bristolians should be enormously proud of our industrial heritage past and indeed present. In fairness to Barnsley I did give them the benefit of the doubt with 30 minutes of research and found that they canindeed stand proud today as hosting the world's largest mince pie factory, oh yes. here it is:-

Next time you buy a box of 6 mince pies think of young Doris there quality controlling out the burnt or cracked top pies to take home to Fred for his tea. 720 pies a minute they make; how does she do it?

Or perhaps, when you next go over one of those very common pot holes in your Mini, your Jaguar, your Land Rover or your Volvo think of that GKN CV Joint that beautifully distributes power from the transmission through the axle and the CV Joint to the wheels and protects you and your car from the harshness of it.

Surely our manufacturing superiority will transcend into the DNA of our players today as they descend on Oakwell? Chien Lee took over Barnsley and thus endedthe reign of the now sadly departed PatrickCryne. Lee, from Hong Kong,is also 80% owner of Nice Football Club and partners part of the shareholding at Barnsley with Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics Baseball team. Remains to be seen if they buy back the stadium and surrounding Oakwell sports venues procurred in 2002 by the council to save the club from going under. Of course, the kiss of death for City is to talk about the poor managerial record of Jose Morais; he may have assisted Jose Mourinho along the way at Chelsea, Inter and Madrid but as a number one its not great. Time will tell, but not today thanks.

Enjoy the drive up folks but enjoy it much more coming back. And remember GKN on that bumpy M6 and if it gets really bad stop at Charnock Richard for a mince pie and a cuppa tea.

I wonder if this could be the last time a thread is entitled with the name Ipswich Town included within. Suffolk County Council seem set on a path to take the fair saxon town of Ipswich to city status although should that be awarded by our monarch it likely would not happen until her platinum jubilee in 2022. The popular myth for city status to be either bestowed or exist is for a settlement to have a cathedral; this requirement ceased to be in the mid 19th century having been enacted in the 16th century by Henry VIII. Ipswich City is no more incongruous that Swansea City which, prior to 1969, was called Swansea Town. This was the last time a football club changed its name to reflect the change in status of the settlement in which it was located. Since then Derby, Sunderland, Wolverhampton, Brighton, Preston and Chelmsford have all become cities. In a recent poll 60% of local residents thought the councils idea to apply for city status for Ipswich was wrong. Money wasting and time wasting being cited as two reasons to drop the idea. I wonder though if city status might propel the club more into the limelight, attract more investment into the new city and perhaps the club and send it again toward the top flight of English football. It did not seem to do Swansea too much harm and Derby, Wolves, Brighton and Preston are all doing fairly well in the history of their clubs. A spark perhaps for the elevation of all things civic and sporting.

Conversely Bristol has long held city status, since 1542 in fact, although it is by no means the earliest. Today's cathedral was founded in 1140 and consecrated in 1148.It was originallySt Augustine's Abbeybut after theDissolution of the Monasteriesit becamethe seat of the newly createdBishop of Bristoland the cathedral of the newDiocese of Bristol afterHenry VIII's break with the Pope and thedissolution of the monasteries, the formerly monastic cathedrals were "re-founded" with secular canons.

The south west, of which I include Salisbury, is bestowed with some of the finest medieval monastic architecture in the land. The cathedral cities of Salisbury, Exeter Gloucester and Wells, particularly, come to mind. There is something remarkably whole and humbling to walk amongst these hallowed yet magnificent structures and while city status no longer requires a cathedral the very existence of one creates an aura, a resonanceand a stabilityto the place. Bristol is very fortunate to have such medieval status; something that can and should anchor the success of our sports teams now that we have the structure to support them. Ipswich will never have that, at least not for many centuries to come. I think the majority of its residents understand that and this is reflected in their refusal to endorse the idea of the council; call it psychological without necessarily understanding the historic significance. And call football a religion without understanding what it means, like they do in Liverpool, then maybe the inside of a place of worship like Bristol Cathedral can also become Ashton Gate.

A factor for not playing Ipswich TOWN again comes with promotion. I rank our chances somewhere near where the bookies are I think; around 20% which seems to factor in there are 5 teams left with a fighting chance of 6th place; down to Millwall one might suggest. And, equally considered, our diabolical run of form which might otherwise place our percentage forecast at closer to 50%. So why has our form collapsed and, more importantly, can it be arrested in time? Nine matches left, historical data considered, three points adrift all suggest we probably need 6 wins out of 9. True enough Hull City went on a late charge under Phil Brown 10 years ago and that is what it will likely take for us but you have to consider the wily Tony Pulis at Boro. Rarely do I make predictions and in the hope I am proven wrong I think our trajectory remains downward albeit with temporary arrests to that slide with occasional but insufficient wins, today perhaps being one of them.

All in all it will not be through lack of support from the City faithful. The feeling I get is the City board did not really want promotion this season, or is that just them trying to take the pressure off?If it is, and it somehow works, then more the credit to them for pulling a genie out of the bottlein these next 9 games. A solid, decent season will have become truly magnificent. Enjoy the match everybody.

Ingrained in my memory of Leeds United, more than any other, are the long powerful drives from Peter Lorimer. Perhaps because my brother, at the time a misguided fan of Leeds, would incessantly blast a goal past me in the garden and prance around in celebration screaming 'and Lorimer with a screamer blasts another past the inept Jennings' because I had that iconic green jersey and long hair at aged eight. Or he might also scream 'Lorimer drives it past Maier in yet another LEGAL goal*. So the name Lorimer stuck. To be fair he did have a cracking shot on him. Over 526 appearances for the club he scored over 160 goals. Remarkably little footage of them on the internet which is a great shame but here is one..

If there is one thing worse than a smug Leeds fan its a self righteous pompous German. And that clip encompasses it rather nicely. You have to sympathise with Leeds, dirty or not, although what they did to the Parc de Princes in Paris at the end was not condonable regardless. As Allan Clarke remembers;It was 15 years after the 1975 European Cup final when the injustice of it all truly dawned on him. He flicked on the television and caught an interview with Franz Beckenbauer, reliving the night in Paris when Bayern Munich mugged Leeds United and Leeds smashed the Parc de Princes up.

And that was before Lorimer's perfectly good strike. Ask any Leeds fan about that match, old enough to remember or know their history, and they will shake their head in disbelief of how they were robbed. It is in their DNA now; if it hurts a player that much there is no surprise it rankles the fans beyond normal.I don't like how fans seem to think they have a god given right to be in the top flight, certainly, but what i do get is that such injustices of that magnitude can affect people in subtle ways. I think Leeds fans somehow have that.

The recently departed Jimmy Armfield, manager of Leeds at the time, said in an interview to the Yorkshire Evening Post in 2008 “I always felt we were robbed,” . Says it all really.

Clarke continues;“To lift the European Cup back then you had to win your league first. There was none of this finish-fourth-and-qualify nonsense." How emphatically I agree with Clarke.

“There was no room for error in the early stages either. From round one if you lost over two legs you were out. Good Night Vienna. “But that final against Bayern Munich must go down as the most one-sided in the history of the European Cup. How a team who played like we did could end up as the losing side I’ll never know. Well, I do know. We were cheated out of it.”

Beckenbauer would later admit that Bayern were “very, very lucky.” The Germans finally made the most of Kitabdjian’s help in the 71st minute when Franz Roth finished off a move involving Muller and Conny Torstensson. Muller killed the game by converting Jupp Kapellmann’s cross on 81 minutes, 60 seconds after Armfield sent on Eddie Gray in the hope of salvation.

Riots inside the stadium were in full swing by then with seats and other missiles thrown towards Maier’s net and short-lived pitch invasions. United were subsequently banned from European football for four years by UEFA, reduced to two years on appeal. Kitabdjian needed a police escort from the pitch at full-time, though Armfield’s players made no attempt to confront him. “I was over near our supporters when he went off,” Clarke says. “There was nothing we could do about it after the final whistle, just as there’s nothing we can do about it now. “But in my mind we were champions of Europe that night. I love that our fans sing about us being champions of Europe because it reminds everyone of what really went on and how shocking that final was. “It was brushed over afterwards, no apologies or anything. It could only happen to Leeds United. “If that had been Manchester United or Liverpool it would all have been different. “But Leeds – well, if it can happen it does happen.” It hurts Clarke, you can see that!

That night in Paris, more than any I know, and there are other rather interesting injustices on Leeds we will not expand on here, keeps coming back to remind an older Leeds fan when they fail to score a goal at home to Millwall in the second tier or they spend a few wilderness years in the third tier. Fans hurt. We can relate to that although we have never experienced such highs and such, comparable, lows.

Leeds, I think, became dirtier after that match. Maybe those unsportsmanlike words from Beckenbauer baptised Norman Hunter to be the 'bite yer legs' champion. It certainly served City well in our old First Division days and maybe we need somebody reminiscent of that now but in midfield; you know that creative guy we have all been crying out for who also takes no prisoners. Or maybe Hunter is a breed no more. I like watching though..

One win in 11 against Leeds for City. We have to turn that around this afternoon. I hope all those fantastic City fans making the long and expensive trip north are rewarded. Let us get our promotion plans back on track before we get swallowed up by the chasing pack.

Bob Stokoe was probably the finest manager Sunderland ever had. That famous 1-0 victory over Revie's Leeds United, wannabe kings of Europe at the time, will forever be ingrained in the mindset of a Black Cats supporter. And on that day both he and Ian Porterfield, who scored the only goal, became instant legends for Sunderland as they lifted the FA Cup;the then second division club beat the 'mighty' Leeds. Remember those red trousers as the tall wily man ran on to the Wembley pitch to celebrate the win with his players? Or perhaps his trademark Trilby and Mackintosh?

When Bob Stokoe was cutting his teeth in football management at Bury he fell out with Don Revie, who was beginning to shape an outstanding career at Leeds United. Facing up to the bleak prospect of relegation, Revie offered Stokoe a sum of money to take things easy in a match at Gigg Lane. Revie was told what he could do with the bribe, and the two men never spoke again. "I'd heard of such things happening but I couldn't believe it was being put to me," Stokoe said one night in the long ago.

The incident was embedded so deep in Stokoe's mind that a number of years later, as manager of Blackpool, he was reluctant to agree a deal with Leeds for a talented Scottish international inside-forward Tony Green, who eventually joined Newcastle United. "I tried to get Liverpool interested," he told me. "When Bill Shankly asked me why I was set against the offer from Leeds I told him about the thing with Revie at Bury. Bill went silent. I don't think he ever again saw Revie in the same light."

I could only take Stokoe's word for this but matters moved on when allegations of bribery, mainly involving a match against Wolverhampton Wanderers, were levelled at Leeds in 1973, leading to a probe by theDaily Mirrorwhose hard-bitten investigative team sought my assistance on the basis of what they assumed to be a friendship with Revie. Says Ken Jones of the Independent.

To my mind Bob Stokoe epitomised all that was decent in the game of football. Widelyregarded as utterly straightforward and honest. He was also a sentimental and compassionate man.At Charlton he missed a game due to the death of his dog. Along with poor results, it led to his dismissal immediately after a defeat at Crystal Palace. "The business with the dog was bound to work against you," I remember saying. "It's the way I am," he replied.

Stokoe Joined Sunderland on the 29th of November1972 when they were 4th bottom of the old Second Division after just 4 wins in 18 matches; 45 years later, almost to the day, saw Chris Coleman join Sunderland also as manager. He has presided over just 4 wins in 14 matches. Prior to Colemans arrival they had won just once in the league. And while Coleman finds himself currently unable to address the slide started by several managers before him Bob Stokoe went on a remarkable run of only 5 defeats in 32 games culminating in that famous FA Cup win after beating Arsenal and Manchester City along the way. The fact it was against Revie must have been remarkably sweet for the man.

Sunderland finished 6th that season and narrowly missed out on promotion for two more until they were finally promoted, 4th time lucky for Stokoe,as 1976 Champions alongside City and West Brom of course. In some ways, knowing what I now do about the man, I am glad he was not at the helm the following season as Sunderland went straight back down in part because Coventry and City played the ball around the park.Of course, one cannot say it was the reason because a season is long and arduous and the writing was long on the wall for the Black Cats having lost their first 9 games back in the top flight and prompting the very honourable Bob Stokoe to tender his resignation. In fact during his long managerial career, which ended with a short spell back at Sunderland to try and halt their slide into the third tier, he was never sacked by a club. He always resigned. Those days are seemingly all but gone.

In recent times Sunderland appear to have been rather mis-managed withpoor transfer decisions, large amounts of money being spent and then finding themselves with lemons with little or no sell on value. These failures ultimately come down to an owner who perhaps allowed too much leeway with past directors of football and manager's in equal measure. Whether Sunderland will once again fall into the third tier remains open to question as the season reaches its final third but thus far there appears little evidence that Chris Coleman can achieve what Bob Stokoe did 45 years ago. I bet they wish he was still around.

City have a rather decent record against the Black Cats enjoying marginally the greater number of victories. This would be our second double of the season. We must stay within striking distance of 2nd spot. Enjoy the game today.

Thanks to Ken Jones of the Independent for much of the Don Revie wording.

Candy Crush. Well, I would like us to crush Derby this evening that is for sure. Our second 6 pointer haul this season that would be if I am not mistaken.

King Digital, the firm behind what I can view from afar as an irritatingly addictive computer game, is run my Mel Morris the owner of our opposition.

I recall my frequent squashed journeys in a London Tube carriage with so many people transfixed by little fruit icons jumping around on a small phone with silly little squash and pop noises emamating from each device in a cacophany of time wasting nonsense. Seemingly Mr Morris bought Derby off the back of that; the world makes less and less sense.

A bit like the morons who broke into my colleagues rental in the centre of Porto last night and made off with two passports and two lap tops rendering this match day a challenging smart phone experience.

I shall end with this marvellous rendition of 'King, where are your people now' by UB40. And perhaps someone will begin the chant at Pride Park when City have started to put a smile back on my face with a goal or three.. by George we need it. Now.. Where is that British Consul number...

Enjoy the game everyone.

Good afternoon All.

Do not drink the Clevedon water. That message arrived slightly too late for me and I have been off the grid for 24 hours. Now fighting fit again and ready to go to the match in my continuing presence in England. Aiming to take in as many matches as I can. The voice is almost recovered from Tuesday.

Since I cannot find anybody having stepped into the breach I offer this measly portion as todays match day on a shoe string.. thats it folks. Lets all make our contribution today and bring home a very much required three points.

Normal service will be resumed for Derby. Is that our next match? I can't keep up with it. So many matches, so little time. Two new signings; welcome to Liam Walsh, with a decent cameo on Tuesday and Ryan Kent. Loose the earrings on the pitch fella. Cheers me dears.

Enjoy the game.

A very happy new year to everyone. Why does the hammer never complain of the noise? I think we will need to be amidst 5,000 noisy Bristol City fans when our team rifles in a late winner before the thundering noise that erupted from the Atyeo Stand on Saturday afternoon can be expunged from the collective mind. That moment was a hammer blow and remains suspended in time. It was horrible. It could have been avoided but we move on. But we also learn and we can do that with reflection too.

For millions of years the earth lived in virtual silence and then there was man and then noise.The modern ageknows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.” Or there is the cheese grating, nail removal, agony of thunder from the away end. And no time for quiet reflection here although I hope the management and players have done so to banish the negative and go again today against another Chinese owned West Midlands club.

Winning in Aston and we will quietly, not, but swiftly move on. I hope we silence the Holte End.

We are, by and large, Bristol City fans because of our birth place or our 'birth right'; usually bequeathed upon us by our Father. Or perhaps, for a few bothnear and far, we drift toward the Robins because we stumble across a match in the past or present and see how much heart, toil and not a little passion emanates from the average Bristol City team. Our foreign friends who follow the club from Sweden or Holland or even Romania or Moldova can choose any English club they want but they follow Bristol City. That is marvellous. The collective respect of a club that, at least in my life time, no matter how bad it can sometimes become, tries often beyond the call of duty to perform. We attract and soak up new fans, passing the baton fromfather to son and from obscure events in time. Like the filipino TV that crashed in the bar while showing a Premier League game but flickered back to life with a streamed Bristol City match and a converted fan at the end of it. Are any of these reasons to support a club any moreunderstandable than Prince William's who says he started supporting Aston Villa because 'he wanted to be different from his friends' . Perhaps we have fans like that and we would welcome them of course but it does seem rather odd for a future monarch to hold such a reason and then to pick a team from Birmingham. Oh well.

Lee Johnson says that Aston Villa, today,is a rapid opportunity to extinguish the pain of Saturday whenI applauded all of the City players who, after the ridiculously crowded December schedule, were spent and many sank to their knees on the pitch. A collective spirit and disappointment not often seen amongst players these days. This brotherhood can carry us to the Premier League.

Thank youto everyone in this photo and to all the other players and back room staff, board and ownerfor making our season, so far, a very memorable one. Long may it continue.

To all those travelling to Birmingham today; you lucky so and so's! And do not leave without 3 points.

My thanks to Wallace Stegner in his Angle of Repose.

I hope on this festive and new year weekend everybody has enjoyed a warm, hearty and joyful Christmas. I was pipped to the post with the Boxing day match day and was going to briefly reflect on my first game as a City fan so I will do it now; the 5-0 win over Coventry City in 1978 when I was a nipper. There were 22,354 at the old Ashton Gate watching in awe at Joe Royle banging in the goals. A remarkably similar crowd, 23,116, watched us beat Reading earlier this week. I truly believe City will be back in the top flight of English football very soon. Interestingly Royle scored in every round of the League Cup in the year our next cup opponents won the trophy, 1977. More on that story soon.

City played Wolves six times in our last ascent and journey to the old First Division. And like our overall record against todays opponents we did not fair too well, losing four of them and only winning once. In fact overall we have won just 15 games against a Wolves tally of 35. We have never played Wolves on December 30th and regardless of that, records count for nothing. This season Jamie McAllister 'saw huge positives' from City's 3-3 draw at Molineux on September 12th in what for Wolves was a rather poor attendance of just 23,000; something City will very likely surpass this evening. The fixture is poised to be a cracker.

The timing of it, along with Cardiff City very gracefully doing their bit to ensure it is a top of the table clash, battling it out live for national and international television viewing pleasure, could not have been better scripted. This is the pride of the West Country versus the miningheartland of the Black Country. This is the stable, long term investment vision of a Bristolian versus the splash the cash get promoted fast Hong Kong Chinese Fosun Group majoring in insurance and investments. Fosun’s ultimate vision is to provide clients with a one-stop solution integrating wealth, health and happiness. Lofty ambitions indeed.

On the 20th of December this year they bought out Asahi's stake in Tsingtao Beer for HK$6.6 billion;Are they expecting an excuse to celebratein the field of sport anytime soon? It does look highly likely that Wolves will be playing Premier League football next season where they rightly feel they deserve to be having spent the bulk of their existence yet, like us, they did reside for 2 seasons in Division 4 in the 1980's. We missed out playing them.

As a youngster I never really liked Wolves and reflecting back on that now I cannot really understand why. I had a generally positive feelingtoward West Brom and Aston Villa and broadly neutral with Birmingham City but Wolves held a rather unhealthy dislike in my mind. Bizarre, I must say. Perhaps, as a child, I found the colour of their kit repulsive and in later years I think that was rather cemented when Steve Bull would terrorise defences with a clearly washed out 'gold' shirt. Strange how certain obscure and unimportant things remain in the mind and taint or twist our view of things and so it remains. I was rather sad when Villa and the Baggies fell into Chinese hands but somewhat more sanguine when Wolves went the same way. Birmingham had long fallen and was a bemusem*nt when Carson Yeuong was shackled by the Hong Kong authorities. The West Midlands is all Chinese now save for Jeff Bonser's Walsall; with their neighbours all gone the unlikely prospect of a third tier team falling into foreign hands, especially Chinese, hasperhaps increased marginally. Hold out Jeff!

Fair play to the new owners of Wolves though, buying a club for £45 million and heavily investing in a manager and players; for one West Midlands club it seems to be going according to plan which is a lot more one can currently say for Birmingham, West Brom and even Aston Villa. The day when football clubs are predominantly owned by people who hail from these shores may have gone and we can lament that at will but, pride aside, bringing money into England can only be good. We must only hope that President Xi's aim for China to invest and dominate the game of football does not mean taking control of overseas leagues as well, however, I fear it might and we should at least be wary of it. In the meantime we can but beat these foreign owned scoundrels on the pitch. I hope that includes today.

Enjoy the game folks, I certainly will; let us roar the team on to a deserved victory and move the club front and centre.

And a very happy new year to you all.

Close to Sandown Park near Esher Green in Surrey lies the shortest trunk road in Britain. The A3009 is a mere 170 yards long. As delusions of grandeur go this must be the pinnacle as far as main roads are concerned. The rather aptly named Ebenezer Place, meanwhile, is officially recognised as the shortest road in the world located in Wick, Scotland.The A6011 is less well known for any records but at only 2.1 miles long remains one of the shortest A roads in the UK.

TheA6011was formerly part of theA52, before that road was moved onto a nearby ring road. The road has three western termini. The A6011 runs along Meadow Lane, Nottingham, from theA60north ofTrent Bridgeto a roundabout on theA612. There's also a spur along County Road past Notts County's football ground back to the A60. The mainline turns off Meadow Lane and crosses the Trent overLady Bay Bridge(where parts ofSmiley's Peoplewere filmed) and passing the City Ground(the two are the closest pair of grounds in England as many reading this will know). A signalled junction with theA6520joins us to the former route of theA52. We now pass between Lady Bay and West Bridgford, before becoming dual carriageway. There's a signalled junction to access the National Watersports Centre (at Holme Pierrepont) before the road ends on meeting the A52 at a roundabout inGamston.

A certain Edgar Purnell Hooley was passing a tar works in 1901 when he noticed a barrel of tar had been spilled and, to reduce the mess, someone had dumped gravel on it. A year later he patented the process and the first road to be tarmacked was the A6011 or, back then, called the Radcliffe Road in West Bridgford. Tarmac was not invented by the Scotsman John Macadam.

Nottingham has given the world a lot of things such as discoveries that led to the Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine or MRI Scanner invented by the recently and sadly departed Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham withPaul Lauterbur from the University of Illinois.When Mansfield presented his ideas at a symposium in 1977, he recalls facing a silent audience. Sir Peter wasn't entirely surprised, since his method could theoretically speed up the process of producing images from an hour to a fraction of a second.

Nottingham also gave usIbuprofen discovered by Dr. Stewart Adams in 1961;Turning on the taps is a fairly everyday thing, but the technology has its origins in Nottingham. Arnold-born Thomas Hawksley was an engineer for the Nottingham Waterworks Company and developed the first high-pressure water supply at Trent Bridge; Okay, in health terms this shouldn't be in here. But Player's began as a small shop in Beast Market Hill in 1860 and went on to become one of Nottingham’s best-known brands. John Player was the first tobacconist to offer pre-packaged tobacco. Before this, smokers would have to buy it loose by weight; It is pretty hard to imagine a time without traffic lights, but after seeing thousands killed on the roads, in 1866 Nottingham High School pupil John Peake Knight set about trying to solve the problem. His system had a revolving gas-powered lantern with a red and a green light with the first one placed near the House of Commons in London;Lace made by machine has played an important role in the industrial life of Nottinghamsince the 1760s when net was first made on the stocking frame. By the early 1900'sNottingham was the lace capital of the world with one third of the entire population earning their living in the trade, two thirds of them women. The trade may be a shadow of its former self but lace is woven into the fabric of the city; Yes, the Sally or Salvation Army was founded in the East End of London, but it was the brainchild of Sneinton man William Booth. As well as whipping out the instruments to play Christmas songs, the Salvation Army is also one of the biggest distributors of humanitarian aid in the world; HP Source from 1895;The Video Cassette Recorder from 1963 and more bizarely the Flying Bedstead from 1953 which, remarkably, was a precursor to the Hawker Harrier Jump Jet prematurely retired by the Government and looked liked this..

Arguably far more important than all of those things is Nottingham's 'Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem' an 1189 pub purporting to be the oldest in England, not the UK. Perhaps when we visit the City Ground next year a fan or three can pay the place a visit pre or post match and report back to us all.

AND.. TO FOOTBALL.......

....That other passion for all of us on this forumare a few other firsts for Nottingham. We of course know all about County being the oldest club but Forest hold a few interesting statistics of their own.

Over the Trent from Nottingham based County, in West Bridgford, Nottingham Forest were the first team to wear shin pads and introduce goal nets and crossbars, and a whistle for the referee most of which was down to one man;

Forest chairman Sam Weller Widdowson, who previously played for the team and indeed cricket for Nottinghamshire, introduced the novel idea of defending. Heplayed a 2-3-5 formation, with the 3 in the midfield known as half backs, being largely defensive,rather than a 1-2-7 which most teams used. Earlier in his career Widdowson was credited with those shin pads, havingcut them down from cricket pads and tyingthem to the outside of hisfootball stockings. Initially ridiculed they soon caught on and are, to this day, regulation.When Widdowson later became a referee he officiated the first ever match that used goal nets. Widdowson is perhaps one of the most underrated and uncelebrated innovators of the game. He played once for England in an international against Scotland in 1880 with England going down to a 9 goal thriller 5-4.

Born in April 1851, sixth of 10 children, Widdowson was named after Sam Weller from The Pickwick Papers, his father’s favourite Dickens character. He was 14 when Forest were formed in 1865, 15 when he became a regular member of the side and 22 when he was made captain in 1873, promptly introducing a new formation that was to become the default in English football at least until Herbert Chapman came up with the WM system in the 1920s. This involved, according to the Evening Post, “one goalkeeper, two backs, three half-backs and five forwards, with himself as sole leader of the attack. In this line-up the second centre forward dropped back to the centre of the half-back line to act as a purveyor of passes down the middle of the field to the attackers.” A 'purveyor'of passes; what an exquisite use of the wordin describing a footballer at work on the field of play.

And Widdowson was to be involved in more novelties: in 1878 the FA used a match between his Forest side and Sheffield’s Norfolk FC to trial for the first time an alternative to the referee’s white flag, which officials used to wave when displeased, and then asked for his thoughts on the experiment. Following his positive feedback, the whistle was formally introduced.

“No man did more than this famous all-rounder to bring careful thought and inventive genius to the game,” wrote the Nottingham Evening Post in 1950. “But then everything Sam Weller Widdowson did in sport had the hallmark of class, and the brilliance of a genius.” Nottingham Forest didnot seesuch genius again perhaps until its most successful manager of all time came along, Brian Clough and I wrote a fair few paragraphs of this dour yet erudite man in a previous Match Day.

Mark Warburton presides over the 2017 Forest team which are yet to draw a match this season. Will Forest fancy their chances at Ashton Gate today? We expect a victory but 'there are no easy games' as we all know which we often repeat to ourselves like a mantra, but it is very true especially in this Championship division.

Enjoy the match today.

On August 9th, 2014 Bristol City played Sheffield United at Bramall Lane and won by 2 goals to 1. It was the first game of that remarkable title winningseason which none of us will ever forget. I sat virtually alone in a bar in Manila watching it live. As I recall we all thought then that this match was chosen as a season opener for League One because we were the two teams most likely to be promoted.The Blades ultimately failed in that endeavour as they had done before and after and remained in the third tier for 6 long seasons. This evening, the same fixture, is live once more for the first time since that campaign. And while that match was important for both teams to start with a win the match this evening ison an entirely different and elevated plateau. Chris Wilder was United's 7th manager during their latest spell in the 3rd tier and the only one to get them out of it. Danny Wilson, like his two tries with us, failing to promote the Blades through the play offs.

Sheffield United have spent 23 years in the top flight in the modern era, since 1945,but only 3 since the Premier League was formed in 1992. Their last being a single season under Neil Warnock in 2006/7in which many would argue should and could have been many more had it not been for West Ham United. We will recall they were relegated controversially instead of West Ham who had Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tevez having joined on loan from Brazillian side Corinthians in 2006. Innocent enough except they were owned by a third party, an Iranian businessman called Kia Joorabchian. West Ham were accused by the Premier League of incorrectly hiding the details of the contracts of the two players.The Premier League set up a disciplinary tribunal to try West Ham, who in April 2007 pleaded guilty. The tribunal fined West Ham a record £5.5m, but decided not to deduct points.West Ham were also ordered to end their arrangements with Joorabchian's "third-party owners." The club claimed to have ripped up the contract, and taken ownership of Tevez's registration. Tevez scored three crucial goals in the three victories which followed; West Ham stayed up, Sheffield United were relegated.Sheffield Unitedthen took action against West Ham directly. West Ham had claimed they had ripped up Tevez's contract and employed him directly while Mascherano had already been transferred to Liverpool.

Under FA rules, the case was referred to arbitration, a private legal process where the parties agreed to abide by the decision. The arbitration chairman, Lord Griffiths, ruled that West Ham had not truly ripped up Tevez's "third-party" contract, and that Tevez had been instrumental in keeping the Hammers up. The clubs ultimately agreed a £15m sum in whichto compensate Sheffield United for the cost of being relegated. Blades players also pursued compensation from West Ham for loss of earnings and Fulham and Wigan also looked into compensation as they had finished below West Ham that season. That all left a nasty taste in the mouth of many who felt West Ham had got off rather lightly especially considering the loss of revenue to the Blades that was far in excess of the £15 million they received. And here we are 11 years later and Sheffield United are still feeling the affects of that injustice. Chris Wilder, for the first time since then, has given the club an exponential increase in positivity not seen since their Neil Warnock days. To any layman looking in that would look like a level of 'laying the ghost' of West Ham is nigh.

Naturally not at our expense but I would like to see the day when the Blades go to the Olympic Stadium and give West Ham United a damn good hiding on the pitch. That time may not be that far away especially if we indirectly do the Blades a favour this evening and help to perpetuate their time in the 2nd tier; because West Ham could very well be coming down!

And on another but rather unrelated note, marvellously reminded to us by Startibart.., we reflect on a 50 year anniversary, if that is what we can call it, of a postponed debut for John Galley. One of 3 brothers, easily the youngest, who played league football. That match was a home fixture to Villa. Interestingly it is snowing quite heavily right now in Aston which might affect the M5 and M6 and onward to Sheffield where it is not snowing but where it will be -2 by the time the match kicks off; if indeed it does. This might be the first postponed fixture of the season but I sincerely hope not for all of you braving it including my brother. Anyway, back to Galley..

An amazing signing by Dicks as he arrived at Ashton Gate in a plaster cast on his leg from Rotherham.Big strong centre forward who could score with his heador right foot. Big favourite of the East End who's sung"We'll walk a million miles for one of your goals John Galley". Turned out to begood signing for Dicks as it helped City stay in the old second division. - Says Gavlin on OTIB from December 2013. And as 22A reminds us Galley finally made his debut 3 weeks later scoring all 3 goals in City's 3-0 win at Leeds Road, Huddersfield.

Back in those days City did not meet Sheffield United that much although we did in September 1970 when we drew 3-3 at Bramall Lane but lost the return fixture at Ashton Gate in March 1971 by a single goal. The Blades were promoted to the top flight that season but were relegated the season City went up and by the time we came down they were down in the third tier and falling to the fourth in season 1981/2. We missed them again because they remained one season and were promoted back to Division Three and passed us on the way down. It is quite remarkable, actually, how City and United have contrived to miss playing league matches together since the 1970's.

Tonight is our first fixture since February 2015 when, many may recall, they got their own back for their loss to us on the opening televised match of that season. We lost 1-3 at Ashton Gate by which time it was merely an irritating little blip in our cruise to the title. That being said, it might have been the first time that someone coined the term about the Blades being forever there, at our shoulder, and so here we are again seeing them just behind us in our shadow once more. I think this might be a regulation win. On the other hand we might have a hiccup or possibly we could nullify each other to a draw. I don't do predictions but if did they would be dream like ones where John Galley scores a hattrick, thumps the cross bar, nearly scoring his forth that reverberates around the ground, and the chant 'we'll walk a million miles for one of your goals John Galley'would be heard as far away as Hillsborough. But enough eulogising. City have perhaps the best group of players since those early 70's days. They know what they have to keep doing; show up and play your game and don't be shrinking violets like you were against Preston. After all, Bramall Lane is theoldest continually used sports venue in the world.

Safe travels everyone and help City bring back the goods.

Middlesbrough was a very unimportant place, then came iron ore discovered in the Eston and Cleveland Hills. A port was built on the River Tees to transport the material around the country to build ships. And so It boomed for about a century and then it died. Middlesbrough is a very unimportant place. That last sentence is not true.

Middlesborough cannot lay claim to being a tourist bastion but it did turn iron ore into steel althoughthat industry has long gone as has refining oil sometime around 1990 and some years after the then ICI sold to Petroplus a Dutch group which, like ICI, is also now defunct. Teeside though does still lay claim to having thelargest chemical plant in Europe, apparently, but likely the claim should more accurately say the largest agglomeration of multiple chemical plants that were spawned when ICI was broken up. Most of this employment lies in the massive works atBillingham and Wilton north and south, respectively, of the town of Middlesbrough. Ammonia, which was the first major chemical to be developed on Teeside, was planned to be used for making bombs for the Great War although the plant was not finished until after hostilities had ended. The manufacturing process for making ammoniahad been pinched from Germany, well partly; BASF were the the first to make ammonia in 1913. Plants in Sheffield, France and the USA were also copied and that knowledge enabled Teeside chemical production to be pioneering.

It all happened in Billingham and Grange Farm to be precise. Doris McKorkindale, her 9 siblings and 14 children were given an offer to vacate their small pig farm to make way for a behemoth of an ammonia plant. The 'Government Nitrogen Factory' was born operational from late 1918 and taken over by the private company Brunner Mond in 1920 merging with other companies in 1926 to form Imperial Chemical Industries or ICI. Production of ammonia centred around its use in fertilisers but this returned to munitions with the onset of WW2. The technologically advanced Wilton plant came later, officially opening in 1949. It was a showpiece of Industrial Britain and ICI was on top of the world. Middlesbrough, so named in the 7th century by monks who stopped here in the middle of their journey from Whitby Abbey to Durham. So, essentially, the place, even then, was considered worthy only of a piss break and a brewmuch like when one stops at Membury en route from Bristol to London.

It was at least a brave new world when chemicals came to town and Teeside sat mighty and proud as the corner of Britain for making dirty and smelly ones; we owe them a debt of gratitude though for helping to see off the huns with ammonia for incendiaries. Aldous Huxley certainly thought so and after visiting the works at Grange Farm in Billingham he was inspired to write his book 'A Brave New World' in 1931. Perhaps this piece of music resonates the appropriate tone to a better time for Middlesbrough as experienced in those rather depressing days of 1984. Alan Parsons naming this album after the plant.

As for what Middlesbrough, the town, stands for?RGsErimus("We shall be" inLatin) was chosen as Middlesbrough's motto in 1830. It recallsFuimus("We have been") the motto of the Norman/ScottishBrucefamily, who were lords of Cleveland in the Middle Ages. The town'scoat of armsis an azure lion, from the arms of the Bruce family, a star, from the arms ofCaptain James Cook, and two ships, representing shipbuilding and maritime trade. We shall be or we have been? You decide.

As for the visiting Middlesbrough Football Club today; They represent the town quite probably more than most football clubs represent theirs. Why? Because when you go to Middlesbrough it feels like a disjointed amalgam of built up areas with no real heart; possibly because the current town hall is the second in the town's history located significantly further south than the first breaking the heart of a place if ever there was a cause. The football club provides the glue like no other place because it really needs it.

I do love that second song from Alan Parsons. Eye in the Sky.. what a classic song that was. Just let the album play out in the build up to today's match.

Come on City lets jump back into 4th place today please and see off the proud Teesiders .

Leonid slu*tsky is banned from travelling to the United States and his no doubt not inconsiderable assetsin the country have been frozen. He also has similar asset sanctions in place in Canada and the European Union. I refer of course to the 49 year old Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs and namesake of the manager of Hull City a close friend of Roman Abramovitch. slu*tsky, the manager, had hoped to bring the likes of Tammy Abraham to Hull City when, in the close season, he announced his intention to guide his new charges back to the Premier League at the first time of asking. That we are at the point where, if the press are to be believed, slu*tsky is in the last chance saloon it illustrates a remarkable fall from grace.

I have to remind everyone that I have no time, whatsoever, for the majority of Russians in power today, not a particularly startling remark considering many of us will feel the same. 22 Oligarchs literally raped and pillaged a nation, initially accompanied by the wraith of the then newly elected Putin but who soon would all became his 50% partner making Putin the richest person in the world overnight. The brutality of a regime, thenceforth, to anyone who named and shamed him and anybody close to him catapulted the countryas, most decent people's, most hated country on the planet and so it remains. I digress but remember this; In 2009, Russian tax accountantSergei Magnitskydied in a Moscow prison after investigating fraud involving Russian tax officials. While in prison, Magnitsky developedgall stones,pancreatitisandcalculous cholecystitisand was refused medical treatment for months. After almost a year of imprisonment, hewas beaten to deathwhile in custody. The Magnitsky Act, passed in the US Senate in 2012 and campaigned for by Bill Browder*, seeks to punish, by asset freezing and visa refusal, of the Russian's involved in the brutal murder of a man who was an attorney, a proxy in fact, of Bill Browder a US/Russian citizen now living in the UK, now with British nationality, who previously set up the Hermitage Fund with a billion dollars of investments in Russia; you can guess what happened to that.

Remember the Magnitsky Act; for in an umbrella framework it could, one day, freeze the assets of Putin which, incidentally, are reputed to be in excess of £200 billion. ALL of which was stolen.

Back to slu*tsky, the manager. For all we know as clean as a whistle although his time as manager of the Russian national team would have brought him into contact with his abhorrent paymasters. So, his fall from grace may be completed today. It would appear, according to many reports, that he is in his last chance saloon with the likes of Nigel Adkins and Paul Lambert poised to take over if they lose against City. With 1 point from a possible 6 City have gone from the relative comfort of a 5 point cushion inside the top six to just 2. Not only do we need to win today but it would give me great pleasure to see a British manager back in charge of Hull City. We have reached a ridiculously low point, and I make no apology for this and there is nothing personal in it, by having a Russian managing an English club. slu*tsky, the manager, maybe a decent chap but he has no place in our game. All Russians, in my book, are supposed guilty until proven innocent.. and isn't that feeling just so prevalent inour general psyche and mind set, wrongly I admit, because of the person in charge in the Kremlin. One day his day of reckoning will come.

Hull City, Hull Comets, Hull Tigers; the East Riding. Humber Bridge is a white elephant and an irrelevance; I hope the football club soon become the same, an obscure lower league club from which they came. We owe them a good beating, lets do it City. Enjoy the bridge, take a few pics, don't gloat at the win, be humble and get out.

Benjamin Huntsman is revered in Sheffield. Not because he scored the winning goal that saw Wednesday go on to win their inaugural top flight title in 1903, nor because he was the first to organise proper black outs from the bombing raids of the Luftwaffe in the second world war nor that he went over the top at the Somme in 1916 where we lost nearly 60,000 men on the first day, the largest number ever for a single day, by the British military. The name Huntsman is not revered for these things but he likely could have been had he been around. Huntsman is revered for inventing the 'Crucible Steel Process' in 1742 following years of experimentation from his Handsworth, south Sheffield Foundry.

He was the first person to cast steel ingots. Until the mid-18th century, the quality of steel produced was unreliable. Steel was made by heating iron bars, covered with charcoal, for up to a week. The end product was called "blister steel". Blister steel was then turned into "shear steel" by wrapping blister steel bars into a bundle and re-reheating them before forging the bundle. The heat and action of the forge hammer welded the bundles together to the required size. Although this steel was used to make razors, files, knives and swords, the process was extremely laborious and no more than 200 tons a year were produced in Sheffield in this way. Benjamin Huntsman's invention of the crucible steel process changed all of that. He was the first person to cast steel bars, producing tougher, high-quality steel in larger quantities (from less than 200 tons of steel a year to more than 20,000 tons, or 40% of total European steel production, a century later). The demand for Huntsman's steel increased rapidly and, in 1770, he moved his factory to a new site in Attercliffe in the Don Valley. This area later became the main location for the huge special-steel making industry of Sheffield.

Thesagacity of Huntsman caused him to be looked upon as the 'wise man' of the neighbourhood. He even practised surgery as an empiric, and was regarded as a clever oculist, but he always gave medical aid free of charge.

The wealth created in Sheffield and by steel was a joint effort however; Huntsman was pivotal in that he enabled the mass production of cutlery for the first time and Britain soon dominated world production.

A year after Huntsman's invention came another Sheffield cutler,Thomas Boulsover(1705-1788), who devised a means of fusing a thin layer of silver to copper to produce silver plate the famous 'Sheffield Plate' that looked like silver but was far cheaper, and was to take silver-plated cutlery into the dining rooms of almost every middle class family in the land. Boulsover noticed that silver and copper had fused together very strongly after heating. Experiments showed that the two metals behaved as one when he tried to reshape them, even though he could clearly see two different layers. Boulsover carried out further experiments in which he put a thin sheet of silver on a thick ingot of copper and heated the two together to fuse them. When the composite block was hammered or rolled to make it thinner, the two metals were reduced in thickness at similar rates. Using this method, Boulsover was able to make sheets of metal which had a thin layer of silver on the top surface and a thick layer of copper underneath. This silver plate was, of course, cheaper than silver and was very popular for items such as candlesticks and teapots.

In 1856 another cutler namedHenry Bessemer introduced a new method of producing steel, using a special furnace called a convertor. This came after years of experimentation. The Bessemer process was able to produce much larger quantities of refined steel than the crucible process. It was worked by blowing air into the bottom of the furnace so that it bubbled through the molten iron. This burned carbon from the iron producing a great deal of heat as it refined the metal.

The 150th anniversary of this invention is being celebrated. One of Bessemer's converters can still be seen atKelham Island Museum. Well worth a visit I can tell you.

And we must most definitely mentionChemistHarry Brearley.In 1907 Brearley returned to Sheffield from abroad to take charge of the Brown-Firth Research Laboratory. Five years later he was investigating the corrosion of rifle barrels. As a result of his investigations, he developed a chrome alloy steel which was much more rust resistant than the steel which had been used until then. This is now known as Stainless Steel. Brearley's chrome steel formed the basis for the wide range of stainless and special steels which are now used so widely. And his successor Dr. Hatfield further developed this process with what today is known as 18/8 steel. Or, if one is spending a little more, 18/10 which denotes the amount of chromium to nickel.

John Brown who had taken out the first licence to produce what was to become known as Bessemer Steel created the 'The Bessemer boom' and made Sheffield the kings of world steel. Its products were sent all over the world. In 1871, two firms, Browns & Cammells,exported to America three times as much railway track as was produced by the entire American domestic industry. By 1880, production of Bessemer steel was over a million tons out of a total production of about 1.3M tons. Quite remarkable. Sheffield was probably second to nobody asthe driver of industrialization of Britain, its empire and the world at large. We all of us owe an enormousdebt to the steel city of Sheffield. But no ground will be given, no quarter ceded, and no effort relinquished in the pursuit of a victory today between two undisputed kings of industrialization.

And as Confucius once said; "It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop".

Or as Sir Winston Churchill said; "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts"

City will have more days like Leeds Utd before this season is out and one never knows the mindset after yet another laborious international break, we will soon find out.

Hillsborough is always a very nice away day. Hope you all enjoy the journey and help bring back the points.

There are more than 10 million sheep in Wales which accounts for over 80% of the Welsh agricultural economy. In New Zealand, while the number has fallen as the country has diversified into beef and swine, there are 30 million sheep. That is about 1 person for every 7 sheep and in Wales the proportion is 1 for every 3. The subject of sheep is relevant to the subject of football because in the relatively distant past a sheeps bladder was used in the manufacture of a football although it was usually procured from the pig family. I have no statistics on the best sheep bladder but if one assumes that the wool from the Welsh mountain sheep has historically been considered of inferior quality to the English sheep, according to Robert Trow-Smith in his book 'A History of British Livestock Husbandry' , the so too the internals. Sheep have often been used in a derogatory fashion, including on this forum, to talk about football fans from the other side of the bridge. Aside from it being a slight on a football fan, debatable for some, it is also for the sheep. And since I have written much about Cardiff, the city and Cardiff the club I was left with Cardiff the fan. May I request, therefore, that the large part of this opening to a thread is not considered my own personal slight on a Cardiff fan but merely to put forward or hypothesise on the subjects place in the hyperbole of the average English fan and how it all really came about.

To set the tone, in the lightest possible way, I derived a commercial from Toyota which, at the time of airing on New Zealand television in 2006, caused an equal measure of hilarity and outrage. The diaspora of British ancestry in New Zealand may very well have pointed toward a Welsh and English divide in those polarised opinions but, alas, that we shall never know. Perhaps it is more subtle in the New World.

The New ZealandAdvertising Standards Authoritydetermined the phrase 'sheep shagger' , as depicted in the TV commercial, was not viewed as offensive to the majority of New Zealanders. And so ended the issue. I have a friend who lives in Christchurch and he echoes my opinion that in New Zealand the authorities tend to debate an issue firstly and then, if they cannot decide, they usually allow it to be trialled and if nobody is hurt and if there is benefit to the local community then whatever it is one usually finds it being adopted. This pragmatic approach seems to have placed New Zealand in good stead down the years. I suspect this commercial would not even be aired let alone be debated, after the event, back in the motherland.

InPrestatyn the phrase was the subject of a 2013court case, after Anthony Taaffe, yes that was his surname, fromBolton and a guest at a holiday park inGronant, called an off-duty policeman and security staff "a bunch of sheep shaggers". In Taaffe's defence he claimedthat the phrase was "a term for people living in the countryside". He also admitted a second similar offence in which he called a police officerat the custody unit to which he had been taken, a "Welsh sheep shagger". Taaffe was fined £150 after he admitted racially aggravateddisorderly behaviour. They clearly don't like it 'up and at em' in Wales.

There is not a lot of depth or need for such in understanding where this expression derived; in New Zealand, Like Wales, there are more sheep than people and Australia and England respectively have derogatively used the term because of it. Although the following conversation may have happened at some point in history and places a slightly different slant on the origin making out that the Welsh are perhaps rather cunning and the English, taking something at face value, deferentially fair.

In the Lleyn Peninsula and on the upland plateau between Abergwessin in Brecon and the Devils Bridge in Cardiganshire, to this day, live the purest breed of Welsh sheep. In almost all other areas of Wales the sheep is an amalgam of English and Welsh breeding. The Rhiw Sheep of these two areas is a small tan faced animal light in frame and fleece and virtually unfattable. No wonder Sheep from out yonder were bred in much greater numbers leaving these skinny mountain runts to engage in other obscure pursuits or provide meagre rations of sheepwool for tea towels and old rags. Wales will forever be known for sheep regardless of whether they are of a majority English blood line.

The Yorkshireman in charge of thehighest placed Welsh team in the football pyramid crosses the border this morning full of outward bravado and not a little confidence. The Welsh may or may not have the last say on this thread. Marvellous folk they are really entrusting their rise to an Englishman who has certainly so far been doing is usual sterling job. That Wales even haveteams in an English league is a unique anomaly that much of the world would not understand. I don't really understand it either but thats for another day. Many say this match is a barometer of how much the club have progressed. I doubt it and, moreover, we should simply place faith in the management to do their homework, set up their team and motivate them with their usual knowhow. The end result will not be season defining but it will be very satisfying to witness broad smiles on our faithful flock come 5pm.

In 1902 the Manchester City and Wales player, Di Jones, cut his knee on a shard of broken glass during a pre-season match. The wound became infected and he died. City refused to accept liability because it was a friendly. Jones, they maintained, was “not working". There was no insurance cover in place, so his wife and children received nothing.

Until 1961 the maximum wage for a football player was capped at £20 per week and £17 during the close season.

The intervening years saw many instances of threatened walk outs over pay yet it was not until Fulham's player Jimmy Hill under the auspices of the Professional Footballers Association that the players 'walked off the job'56 years ago.

The first player to benefit from the abolition of the maximum wage was Johny Haynes of Fulham who must have thanked fellow Cottager Jimmy Hill profusely in what was a life changing moment for many players. Haynes' salary jumped five fold to £100 per week and he became the first in history to do so.

And from the relative hardship and 'slave' like contracts that footballers were subject to came this militancy of revolt which not only changed the wage settlement but also the contracts under which players were subjected. Jimmy Hills' predecessor and first PFA Chairman was Jim Guthrie of Portsmouth whor*lied less on Hills' PR skills and more on old-fashioned militancy which he thrust it into the heart of the debate over pay.

Johny Haynes made a club record 594 league appearances for Fulham spanning 18 years from 1952 to 1970 and scoring a very impressive 146 goals as an old fashioned inside forward. Haynes died at the rather young age of 71 in 2005 but he is eternally remembered with his statue outside Craven Cottage. His England career is equally impressive with 56 England caps and 18 goals and he also captained the national team and took part in two world cups. Haynes was knownas a precocious passer with neat and tidy control of the ball and his England career would surely have sent him to the 1966 World Cup were it not for a car accident which curtailed it. Driving at night along the Blackpool front after a Fulham-Blackpool game, he was involved in an accident which left his knee severely damaged. He fought his way back to play for Fulham, but was never again called upon by England though he was still only 31 when England won the 1966 World Cup.

Craven Cottage is always for me a favourite London venue. Having lived or worked nearby in the past it was a brisk walk for a 3pm or evening kick off during what I recall fondly as balmy late summer evenings in days gone by. I particularly recall that season when Kevin Keegan was in charge and City were fighting tooth and nail with them at the top of the 3rd Division. Those were particularly remembered matches. I hope the evening kick off today is at least a dry one. Enjoy a nice pint of Fullers and enjoy the game y'all and help City bring back the 3 points.

My thanks to the EFL for much of the text of this match thread and I humbly remove the word 'Official' from this day forward; what was I thinking. !

40 years, 5 months and 9 days. Highfield Road. It was a fixture pile up at the end of the 1976/77 football league season and a rare Thursday evening kick off in Coventry that would bring the curtain down on the entire season for Coventry and Bristol City.City would be safe with a draw, but Coventry needed a win to be certain of survival unless our opponents today somehow construed tolose. It was such a big event that supposedly one Bristol judge adjourned his court early so that jurors would be able to get to the game.

Perhaps most of us have forgotten but the controversy that was to unravel was set in motion by Jimmy Hill; So large was the crowd eager to watch the battle at Highfield Road that the kick-off was delayed by 15 minutes at his request. Coventry's well-known managing director, and future Match of the Day presenter, Jimmy Hill asked for a delay to ostensibly to let in fans who had been held up by traffic. How remarkably convenient that delay would turn out to be.

Coventry took an early 2-0 lead, but the Robins fought back and towards the end of the second half, the teams were tied at 2-2when news came through that Sunderland had been beaten 2-0 by Everton in the match which had kicked off at the earlier regulation time. That would meanbothCity and Coventry would stay up if the score remained the same. According to the Friday edition of the Daily Mirror, Jimmy Hill then “raced to the announcer’s box with the result [from the Sunderland game], screaming ‘Get it on the board’ ”.

For the last five minutes City passed the ball about between defenders and goalkeeper without a single challenge from Coventry.

According to a contemporary report in the Guardian “what had been an intensely physical contest dissolved farcically”. The point apiece was enough to keep both teams in the top flight and send Sunderland down.

Sunderland understandably were not happy about what had happened and Jimmy Hill was reprimanded by the Football Association, but the scores and Sunderland’s relegation stood.

Many Sunderland fans held a lasting grudge against Jimmy Hill and when Sunderland played his then club Fulham, in 2008, he waved to the Sunderland fans in response to their less-than-friendly chantsand had to be ushered away by police for his own safety.

While City were complicit, and understandably so, it was Jimmy Hill who set the wheels in motion.

A year earlier of course both Sunderland and City had been promoted to the top flight with Sunderland winning their first ever Division 2 league title on what, today, looks a meagre ration of 56 points. They won the title mainly because of a virtually impenetrable Roker Park; winning 19 of their 21 home league fixtures and losing none. A phenomenal record. Conversely, they lost 10 away from home exactly double the number of defeats City suffered who were runners up on 53 points and ahead of West Bromwich Albion on goal difference.

Three years after making history as the first postwar FA Cup winners from outside the top flight, Sunderland finally made their way back to the First Division after six years away by winning the Second Division title under the stewardship of Bob Stokoe. Little were they to know how they would spend only a year back.

Sunderland moved to the Stadium of Light in 1997 and City are unbeaten there; admittedly we have only madeone league visit drawing 1-1 in 1998. The Black Cats won the return fixture by a single goal in March of 1999and our respective fortunes for that seasoncould not have been more different:-

Pos Team Pl W D L F A Pts
1. Sunderland 46 31 12 3 91 28 105
2. Bradford City 46 26 9 11 82 47 87
3. Ipswich Town 46 26 8 12 69 32 86
4. Birmingham City 46 23 12 11 66 37 81
5. Watford 46 21 14 11 65 56 77
6. Bolton Wanderers 46 20 16 10 78 59 76
7. Wolverhampton Wanderers 46 19 16 11 64 43 73
8. Sheffield United 46 18 13 15 71 66 67
9. Norwich City 46 15 17 14 62 61 62
10. Huddersfield Town 46 15 16 15 62 71 61
11. Grimsby Town 46 17 10 19 40 52 61
12. West Bromwich Albion 46 16 11 19 69 76 59
13. Barnsley 46 14 17 15 59 56 59
14. Crystal Palace 46 14 16 16 58 71 58
15. Tranmere Rovers 46 12 20 14 63 61 56
16. Stockport County 46 12 17 17 49 60 53
17. Swindon Town 46 13 11 22 59 81 50
18. Crewe Alexandra 46 12 12 22 54 78 48
19. Portsmouth 46 11 14 21 57 73 47
20. Queens Park Rangers 46 12 11 23 52 61 47
21. Port Vale 46 13 8 25 45 75 47
22. Bury 46 10 17 19 35 60 47
23. Oxford United 46 10 14 22 48 71 44
24. Bristol City 46 9 15 22 57 80 42

It has been a long time then since we have locked horns with Sunderland. And after some truly shocking transfer decisions by the club many of which have been failures and financial disasters the club find themselves in a well publicised meltdown off the pitch;On it the aftershocks are clear for all to see. Sunderland, many say, will be lucky to avoid administration. 6 top flight titles, 2 FA Cups and now on the precipice. They love their football in the North East; I don't think there is any doubt they are more passionate than most butthey have had their fair share of heartbreak, as a cumulative football lot, having lost 3 of their previously 6 league teams, Gateshead, Darlington and most recently Hartlepool all falling down the football pyramid. That Sunderland are in imminent danger is not in question but they will remain a dangerous wounded animal for any team that takes them lightly. As we have seen in this division, quite possibly the most exciting in world football, any team can beat any other. Leeds beating us and falling at home to the Blades last night, a case in point.

I travelled through that part of England a few years back and that was not the first of my visits. The entire rural area, particularly up and down the coast,always struck me as ghostingly beautiful yet interspersed with large towns and conurbations that were blots on the landscape. I always think of the area when I listen to Tunnel of Love by Dire Straits when Mark Knopfler sings about Spanish City, Cullercoats and Whitley Bay. Spanish Citya smaller versionof Blackpool's Pleasure Beach in fact immortalised the Dire Straits song by playing it every morning upon opening.

And now I'm searching through these carousels and the carnival arcades
Searching everywhere from steeplechase to palisades
In any shooting gallery where promises are made
To rockaway rockaway from cullercoats and whitley bay out to rockaway.

MKnopfler.

The depression of the cities of the North East seems to make way for nonstop beauty once past the ghastly town of Blyth and its river of the same name. I nearly bought a property in Blyth once; I dodged a bullet there I can tell you. All the way up the coast to Bamburgh, Lindisfarne and Berwick one cannot really find a greater beauty in contrast to what came before. The North East football map is a glue that binds those towns and cities together against depression and loss and without it there is a something missing for many communities. I have heard it, read about it and seen it. I would find the relegation, the administration even, of such a great club as Sunderland a truly sad loss to the game. I believe many would not have mourned the relegations of Manchester City or Leeds United to the third tier in recent times, many also not Sheffield United or Wednesday and the litany of other medium to large clubs with glorious histories of success;I think many morewould mourn Sunderland's demise. And they have only ever spent 1 season in the 3rd tier in 1988/89 and went straight back up as Champions. The rest of their history, since 1880 has been in the top 2 divisions.City finished 5th that season by the way.

To the 2000 or so traveling today my hat, once again, is doffed to you. A remarkable effort for such a long and expensive journey. Help bring back the spoils folks.Do try and see some of the countryside especially north of Blyth, truly beautiful part of this great country.

Come onthe Robins.

Going to Burton, going for a burton and being as happy as Larry, dead or alive.Laurence Olivier famously remarked that he was as 'happy as Larry' after leaving Brighton following a season of performing there. Not considered a dump by any means but I think I would be happy too. As for Burton perhaps a lot easier to be happy to leave notwithstanding the superb array, even to this day, of beers which I wrote about in a match day back in August 2016. 'Going for a burton' has somewhat lost its use in recent decades.It seems popular to suggest one of the following might be responsible for the origins of the expression;

To 'go for a burton' refers to the beer brewed in the Midlands town of Burton-upon-Trent, which was and still is famous for its breweries. RAF pilots who crashed, especially those who crashed into the sea, that is, 'in the drink', were said to have 'gone for a burton'. Some commentators have referred to a pre-WWII advert for Burton's Ale, in which a place at table was vacant and the missing person was said to have 'gone for a Burton', that is, gone to the pub for a drink. That would be a very strong candidate as the origin of the expression if only any record of the adverts were to be found - and surely they would be evident if they ever existed. Until any do come to light it's reasonable to call the said adverts mythical.

'Go for a burton' is a reference to the suits made by Montague Burton, who supplied the majority of the demobilization suits that British servicemen were given on leaving service after WWII. (Note: Monty is also a contender as the source of theFull Monty). Any serviceman who was absent could have been said to have 'gone for a burton'. This does seem the less likely of the two explanations, as it doesn't quite match the meaning of the phrase. 'Gone for a burton' was used to mean dead, not merely absent, and Montague Burton didn't supply shrouds, as far as I know.

The first sounds more palatable to me

http://www.otib.co.uk/index.php?/topic/178595-the-official-burton-albion-v-bristol-city-match-day-thread/

Burton Albion Football Club is on a marvelous adventure that the Brewers and the Taylors will know all about from their previously humble beginnings. In Burton's last set of accounts at Companies House they made a gross profit for the year ended 31st May 2016 of just over a £1 million. That is no small achievement especially when it is on a meagre turnover of £4.2 million. They are probably most fans' second club in the Championship in terms of, shall we say, likeability. Everybody likes an underdog and for a club, founded only in 1950 to be playing in the Championship, the 5th best league in the world, frankly, is astonishing. Perhaps the biggest blemish on their copy book is the record defeat to a certain Bristol Rovers. Now, correct me if I am being too partial here, but don't you think most Burton fans would prefer to have that record set by a far more illustrious football team like, for example, Bristol City? Inshort, if our club thrash them tonight at Ashton Gate by a greater margin thanthe Gas mob then every Burton fan deserves to buy every City fan a bottle of Burton Ale. I mean, the ignominy of having that record from a League 1 or perhaps it was a league 2 team hanging like a cloud over one's head. It is a bit shameful.

I think there is little left for me to say this wet Manila evening other than to wish the lads well and hope Lee Johnson conveys a far more positive team talk than he did when interviewed about the match yesterday.

Short and sweet. I'm going for a Burton. See y'all.

"Your football is s---!" they shouted. "Your football is s---! Mick McCarthy, your football is s---!" Ipswich fans last season.

McCarthy shook hands with his opposite number, Kenny Jackett, and began the long walk from the benches on the halfway line to the tunnel in the far corner of the stadium. As he walked, the fans he passed intensified their volume, booing him all the way. Near the entrance to the tunnel, one man unleashed a ferocious staccato, first violin to the swelling symphony of catcalls around McCarthy.

"W---er! W---er! W---er! W---er! W---er! W---er! W---er!"

McCarthy, chin stiffened, eyes focused forward, didn't react. He simply strode down the tunnel and into the dressing room before the heavy, blue doors shut firmly behind him.

Whether at a World Cup or in the Premier League, he imposes principles from above. He makes a point of shaking the hand and learning the name of everyone at the club. He insists that his players be polite at all times, that they greet visitors to the club with courtesy. His staff are fiercely loyal; his personal assistant, Francesca Manning, bristles when we discuss the intensifying dissent in the crowd. Yet the team aren't scoring goals, and they aren't winning games.

That was last season.

Ipswich Town is a most peculiar football club. If you didn't know their history, you might be tempted to consider them one of those provincial English oddities, an entirely unremarkable team drawing regular crowds of loyal locals but attracting little attention from anyone else. But the past is littered with rueful ex-footballers who underestimated Ipswich in a similar manner and paid the price.

In 1962, Alf Ramsey won the league with Ipswich. In 1978, Bobby Robson won the FA Cup, and the UEFA Cup followed in 1981. This was after poor results had the fans calling for his head, but chairman John Cobbold's response was to award Robson a new contract.

"There is no crisis at Ipswich until the white wine runs out in the boardroom," he said at the time.

In 2001, their first season back after a five-year absence, George Burley had Ipswich in the Premier League title race until they ran out of steam in the final weeks of the season and slipped to fifth. It has been some time since there was anything to celebrate at Ipswich.

In spite of a poor season last year McCarthy has finished in respectable upper half positions in his previous seasons managing Ipswich on a very meagre budget and with the club regularly posting a loss for the year as most if not all clubs do in the Championship not on a parachute back up. He received a lot of abuse last season. But like I recall Sean O'Driscoll saying on many occasions he repeats the mantra of 'I do not read the press'.

He goes on to say, "But reading it is just self-defeating. Why would you want to read or listen to peoples' comments if they're being critical? It's a bit like social media, which I'm not on, either. So if you see somebody say they're Mick McCarthy on Twitter -- or 'Twitter,' as I like to call it -- then it's not me."

Mick McCarthy is easily the longest serving manager in the Championship having been appointed in November 2012.

Mick McCarthy and Eric Blair have something in common. Well I think they do. They both take solace from walking the banks ofthe River Orwell, a majestic and hypnotic body of water. Eric Blair was so enamoured with it that he took its name and became George Orwell taking much of his writing inspiration from his time meandering its course.The River Orwell flows entirely within the county of Suffolk. It is only about 20 km long and flows from the River Gipping to the River Stour estuary. The Orwell enters the North Sea at Harwich, near the port of Felixstowe. And of course the Orwell flows through Ipswich that place that is proud to have produced two of Englands better managers, Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson but the club remains a peculiar place. Is it perhaps because Ipswichis said to be the longest inhabited town in the United Kingdom? Perhaps the people are just, well, more grounded, obscure, happy and sad and satisfied with it all than words can convey?

Mick is no mug. Inspired perhaps by his solitude or the fresh air where he allows himself the luxury of inner patience with all the nonsense of short term clamours for change at the first sight of failure. Ipswich have form for holding on to a manager and this season, at least so far, it seems that patience by owner Evans might pay off. Playing Ipswich at Portman Road might just provide City with their toughest challenge of the season to date. How many people would have said that at the start of the season? Not I. And that is what makes this division so challenging, so stressful, so exciting and oh so unpredictable.

To all those hardy souls going to Suffolk today do enjoy the trip. There is certainly plenty to see in the fair county and the town itself has much to offer; if ye shall seek ye shall find. Aldburgh for fish and chips might be a bit far out of town but just reward if you do; the best in Britain.

Cheers ye'all.

p.s. thanks to ESPN for much of the story on Mick.

The Indians called it Saqumsketuck and if there are any Podunk Indians left perhaps they still do.That was in the early 1600's when the first settlers from Hartford travelled the short distance to what is now called Bolton and along the Podunk River. Probably the first of 13 Bolton's around the world outside the original that is. Many of those first settlers were from Bolton, Lancashire and, even now, there is a significant Bolton Wanderers following in the town of nearly 5,000. However, like England, they have a Manchester just 6 miles up the road so the pull of supporting a more successful team is likely a strong one. On October 20th, 1720 Bolton became a town and as late as 1774the inhabitants were still claiming allegiance to King George III. Good chaps.

Early industries in Bolton included distilleries, hat manufacturers, cigar manufacturers, and a gristmill.The Bolton Quarry was sending flags of stone to Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans as early as 1820. It is interesting to note that much stone from Bolton went to build a number of significant monuments in Washington DC and while such transactions were usually paid for with pounds, shillings and pence there were occasions when bartering was used. In fact this became common place when most states that were using British sterling did not have parity of exchange with each nor with the UK itself. This created a demand for bartering as a way of somewhat leveling out possible arguments. Tobacco from Bolton was one such product used to pay for other goods.

Most of the other Boltons around the world are so named because of a founding forefather's name and most are in the USA with one in Canada and another in Australia.Boston, Connecticut though isalone in gaining its name from Bolton in Lancashire or so my research seems to suggest. But there is, rather interestingly, a Bolton in Pakistan. Well actually it is a market in Karachi but was not faring too well recently when its main building caught fire.

Prior to this rather upsetting mishap Bolton Market Saddar Karachi was a largeWholesaler and Supply Store, located inM.A Jinnah Road, Saddar, Pakistan. It hada huge variety of items available in bulk quantities at very low prices. You could find all types of stuff like, toys, old books, caps, hats, shoes, electronic items, bobby pins to sports goods, plastic goods to kitchen utensils, cosmetics, artificial jewellery, spectaclesand all kind of watches.

A Bolton with perhaps a more interesting past is Bolton in Ontario.Originally called Bolton Mills, this Canadian town was founded around 1822 when a James Bolton helped build a flour mill. It's now home to 26,000 inhabitants. The 1996 hurricane thriller, Twister, was partially shot there, as well as the 2005 action movie, Four Brothers, starring Mark Wahlberg.

But most Bolton's arerather small or quiet spots that have seen gradual decline in the latter half of the twentieth century and that is how Bolton in Lancashire must have felt at times as well and maybe is perpetuated with a football team that many thought might be on the up again only for reality to start consuming the psyche once more this season with a transfer embargo and Phil Parkinson wondering now what he has to do to to turn the already faltering Championship club around. Not happy days, again, for being a Bolton fan. Maybe if you are a Bolton fan you should just say 'damn to the world',kick back in your old walnut rocker with a straight up bourbon in your goodhand and take a listen to that raw blues singer Bo Carter, who wrote 'Let Me Roll Your Melon', 'Banana in Your Fruit Basket' and 'Please Warm My Weiner'.

And if you did so in Bolton in the very fine southern state ofMississippi you would be a very well respected visitor because Bo Carter was born and raised in that there Bolton.

I have no idea if Bolton Wanderers even register in the deep south but what I do know is that they are heading south and we are not gonna bat an eye lid if we give them a helping hand tonight. In fact, I believe it is our solemn duty, partaking in a favour if you will, to thrash them to kingdom come like we jolly well did two seasons ago so that those fair people in Lancashire can say to those hapless owners who are arguing amongst theyselves to wake up and do something positive for the long suffering fans. Amen to that brothers and sisters. You'all enjoy the game now.

And I found a few Bolton fans in Connecticut or maybe this is the US Academy.

Remember the film 'Never Let Me Go' ? I always wanted to see it simply because it had a scene on Clevedon beach and the Pier. The rest of it, while well acted and starring Keira Knightly and Charlotte Rampling, I found dark and disturbing. Norwich has long been a creative centre where such productions began their life.

What makes a city a literary giant? According toUnesco, it takes a rare and rarified combination of editorial initiatives and educational programmes, lashings of libraries, bookstores and cultural centres, plus a vibrant literary event scene. In short, it’s the extent to which literature plays an integral role in the urban environment and the only two citiesin England to have earned the status so far areNorwich in 2012 and Nottingham in 2015. There are 20 currently around the world. Why is it that we seem to have a plethora of 'best city for this', 'world cultural capital for that', 'city with the best theatres' etc? The more 'lists' there are the more diluted the reading experience. I find it all rather tedious and a sort of 'dumming down' of things to read about. Is it partly because lists are easier to digest when there is an inxorable move toward on line reading over print? I think so. I am completely and utterly bored and I am sure, also, are most of you.

Real authors like Malcolm Bradbury do interest me though and he started a degree course at the University of East Anglia at Norwich called an MA in Creative Writing. From that course some of the best modern day writings have emerged in print and on our screens. Ian McEwanand Kazuo Ishiguro took that course and became superb writers and novelists in their own right. Among many well known novels Ishiguro wrote such as 'The Remains of the Day' , in 1989, which went on to become award winning films with an all star cast including Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson with screenplay by Harold Pinter. Ishiguro, born in Japan but raised in the UK also wrote that disturbing novel 'Never Let Me Go' . It was positively received and a master ofwriting. McEwan is well known for writing 'Atonement', also adapted for the big screen and again starring Kinghtly, as well as Enduring Love withDaniel Craig and Bill Nighy. Both authors have been highly decorated in their careers to date. Malcolm Bradbury, who passed away in Norwich in 2000 at the tender age of 68was not a prolific novelist but he left an indelible mark on the literary world not least because of his course at the UEA in Norwich.He publishedPossibilities: Essays on the State of the Novelin 1973,The History Manin 1975,Who Do You Think You Are?in 1976,Rates of Exchangein 1983 andCuts: A Very Short Novelin 1987. Some of his works made it to the big screen as well as adaptations for TV the most famous of which was The History Man which was broadcast by theBBCas a four-part serial in 1981. It starredAntony Sheras Howard Kirk andGeraldine Jamesas his wife Barbara;Isla Blairplayed Flora Beniform. Exteriors for the series were shot at theUniversity of Lancasterand inBristol.

This was the cover for his book 'The History Man'. It shows a dog buried up to its neck in an unidentifiable mass. It was painted by Francisco Goya between 1820 and 1823 directly on to the wall of his house. The dog is gazing upward perhaps in awe, waiting for the right moment, or wishing he could scale the height but can't. Sometimes City fans must feel that way; usually being thwarted, time and again, in our desire to reach greater success. The painting, part of Goya's 'dark period' after suffering two life threatening illnesses, was never meant for public display but today sits in The Prado Museum in Madrid as one of 14 he originally painted on the walls of Quinta del Sordo, his last home.

Manuel Mena, Curator at the Prado, claimed: "There is not a single contemporary painter in the world that does not pray in front ofThe Dog" so named was the painting by the museum. It was revered by the likes of Picasso and Miró andRafael Canogarreferred to it as a "visual poem" and cited it as the firstSymbolistpainting of the Western world.Spanish painterAntonio SaurathoughtThe Dog"the world's most beautiful picture".

Nobody appreciates something that comes easy as much as something achieved through toil and sweat. I too appreciate that 'image' of this dog, of 'the dog'. It seems to encapsulate life in general. At times the 'unidentifiable mass' that the dog is engulfed in might seemlike quick sand where one feels the sensation of drowning and helplessness and, at others, perhaps water that one can wade through with relative ease. Either way one should never expect life to be impossible or easy. But the dog seems transfixed and determined. I think that is what is so compelling with this painting and Ilike to think this is how City are this season. Nothing is going to stop them looking forward, working hard, taking the plaudits, enjoying it and just repeating it week in and week out.

Have a closer look.

Bit like Noble after he scored that goal against Palace in the semi final of the play offs; I remember an image of him looking up.

Whoever goes to Norwich today deserves a medal. 480 miles round trip. That is some commitment and some cost. Well done all of you and have a great day. Bring back the 3 points.

This rather well sketched gathering took place in 1884, the year of the founding of Derby County Football Club and the last of the 12 founding members of the Football League.While I doubt Derbyshire County Cricket Club ever had what looks to be rather salubrious surroundings for their meeting on February 4th, 1884 the European powers clearly did as they sat down at the Berlin Conference to carve up Africa. The depiction of this conference is interesting for the somewhat overt inclusion of the hapless native African looking on awaiting his fate and to which linguistic tongue every corner of the continent his peoples would be subjugated. The scramble for Africa had begun with King Leopold II of Belgium in the late 1870's. Before this time there were only coastal trading posts.

In 1878, KingLéopold II of Belgium, who had previously founded theInternational African Societyin 1876, invitedHenry Morton Stanleyto join him in researching and “civilizing” the continent. In 1878, theInternational Congo Societywas also formed, with more economic goals, but still closely related to the former society. Léopold secretly bought off the foreign investors in the Congo Society, which was turned toimperialisticgoals, with the African Society serving primarily as aphilanthropicfront.

By the early 1880s, due to diplomatic maneuvers, subsequent colonial exploration, and recognition of Africa’s abundance of valuable resources such as gold, timber, land, markets and labour power, European interest in Africa had increased dramatically. Stanley’s charting of theCongo RiverBasin (1874–77) removed the last bit ofterra incognitafrom European maps of the continent, thereby delineating the rough areas of British, Portuguese, French, and Belgian control. The powers raced to push these rough boundaries to their furthest limits and eliminating any potential local minor powers which might prove troublesome to European competitive diplomacy.

France moved to occupyTunisia, one of the last of theBarbary Piratestates under the pretext of anotherIslamic terrorandpiracyincident. French claims by Pierre de Brazza were quickly solidified with French taking control of today’s Republic of the Congo in 1881 and alsoGuineain 1884. This, in turn, partly convinced Italy to become part of theTriple Alliance, thereby upsetting Bismarck’s carefully laid plans with Italy and forcing Germany to become involved. In 1882, realizing the geopolitical extent of Portuguese control on the coasts, but seeing penetration by France eastward across Central Africa toward Ethiopia, the Nile, and theSuez Canal, Britain saw its vital trade route through Egypt and its Indian Empire threatened.

Under the pretext of the collapsed Egyptian financing and a subsequent riot which saw hundreds of Europeans and British subjects murdered or injured, the United Kingdom intervened in nominallyOttomanEgypt, which, in turn, ruled over theSudanand what would later becomeBritish Somaliland.

Owing to the upsetting of Bismarck’s carefully laid balance of power in European politics caused by Leopold’s gamble and subsequent European race for colonies, Germany felt compelled to act and started launching expeditions of its own which frightened both British and French statesmen. Hoping to quickly soothe this brewing conflict, King Leopold II was able to convince France and Germany that common trade in Africa was in the best interests of all three countries. Under support from the British and the initiative of Portugal,Otto von Bismarck,German Chancellor, called on representatives ofAustria-Hungary,Belgium,Denmark,France, theUnited Kingdom,Italy, theNetherlands,Portugal,Russia, Spain,Sweden-Norway(union until 1905), theOttoman Empire, and theUnited Statesto take part in the Berlin Conference to work out policy. However, the United States did not actually participate in the conference both because it had an inability to take part in territorial expeditions as well as a sense of not giving the conference further legitimacy. Perhaps President Obama had read his history before taking office as he took a few steps back in his own 21st century US foreign policy.

What became known as the 'General Act of the Berlin Conference' for the very first time set up an agreed method for the rules of dividing up lands the majority of which remain as modern day states and their borders that we know today. It was also the first time the term 'spheres of influence' was used in any treaty. The conference straddled the new year of 1884/5 and lasted several months.

Derby County rather epitomized the confidence of the northern industrialized wealth outwardly portrayed in rapid overseas territorial expansion. The conference was an intellectuals way of solving problems, forming alliances and establishing organizations. The history of Europe was full of them at this time in what set the tone and the balance of power and began to set in motion the consequences of what evolved and transpired in the two world wars of the 20th century. While those history making conferences with their tumultuous results may be long past along with their often dire future consequencesmany smaller gatherings, to establish sporting clubs, have stood the test of time. A meeting of cricketers, as was the case with the founding of many football clubs, was designed to raise funds for expanding their existing sport. Little perhaps did they know how big football would become. They may not have spared a thought for long it might take for Derby County Football Club to be the best club in England; winning the first of their twoDivision 1 titles in 1972 under, of course, Brian Clough.

Those Cricketers, while perhaps not considering future successes for their new football team, did bequeath the Ram as the clubs crest typifying the local woolen trade. They even have an ancient ballad all about it performed in a play called the 'Derby Tup' and not really for the faint of heart.The characters included a butcher with a knife and apron, a boy carrying a basin and the old tup represented by a performer covered with a sack through which protruded a broomstick with a ram’s head impaled upon it. Nice.The highlight of the play was the slaying of the ram by the butcher stabbing it in the throat and the boy catching the blood in his bowl. The people of Derby used to gild the horns of the performing rams which seems to suggest that the play may be a survival of the Roman custom of gilding the horns of animals about to be sacrificed. This play was performed in many Derbyshire villages at Christmas time (which up to the 13th century represented “New Year”) and the ceremony and ballad seems to represent the sacrifice of a ram as the old year passed into the new.

On the other hand if you have the inclination to read more Derby County football stuff it has all been committed to these pages before:-

Why I write so much about Derby I quite have no real idea. Maybe it is just a coincidence. Maybe it is because the club is still British owned, I believe, or maybe it is just because Derby is a pretty decent place with a football team that is very lucky to have such a tremendous amount of support.

back to today and frankly City have an awful record against Derby. Just look at these stats:-

Won 17, Drawn 16, lost 36.

And in the last 8 meetings we have drawn 3 and lost 5. Its time.

Enjoy the game everyone.

Note: Thanks to Originalpeople.org for much of the history lesson.

Weather is a funny old thing you know. No sooner has the dust settled on the last match day thread, where I wanted to dwell a whilefor those poor souls in the Caribbean, and along comes Tropical Storm Lannie maybe soon Typhoon. As if the Pacific will not be outdone by the Atlantic storm season the activity in the Philippine Sea takes a decided turn for the worse. Weather is a funny old thing you know.

I left work a little earlier than usual as the rain and wind had abated a tad and I saw an opportunity. Alas it lasted only a few minutes before I wasswept up along one Manila street with a sudden gust and downpour. I took shelter andloitering around the lobby, of what I soondiscovered was a hospital, I picked up a small leaflet. On the front was a circular logo in blue with a sort of cog surrounding the circle and a red and white quartered crest in the middle of it all. It looked a bit like the Rotary Club crest although I might be a mile away from that as an accurate comparison. Anyway, more to the point, the name of the crest instantly struck me because I had looked up a little about Wolverhampton Wanderers' history over lunch earlier in the day. When formed, in 1877, Wolves were called St Lukes after the local church. The name on that hospital crest?, St. Lukes. And had it not been for the dodgy weather I would likely, hopefully, never have set foot in that hospital. Weather.

I hear it might be rather inclement this evening in the Birmingham environs so all you hardy souls making your way north I hope you avoid the worst of it or at least keep out of the wet. Molinueuuewweeuuuuxxujuu, I could never spell it, is a modern theatre of football so i hope it keeps you dry.

Previous match day threads on Wolves I have talked about their history and their town and all that sort of trivia. Nevertheless here are a few bits and pieces about their past which rank as worthy of a smile or entry to my mind.

In 1938, Wolves needed only to win the last game of the season to be champions for the first time, but were beaten 1–0 atSunderlandandArsenalclaimed the title. That must have been painful for the Wolves but I bet Sunderland were laughing like nuts and Arsenal somewhat grateful.

As if that was not hilarious or heartbreaking enough they repeated it after the war and not even the magic of Stan Cullis, in his last ever match for Wolves, could stop it;-

When league football resumed in 1946, Wolves suffered yet another heartbreaking failure in the First Division. Just as in 1938, victory in their last match of the season against title rivalsLiverpoolwould have won the title but a 2–1 defeat gave the 1947 championship to the Merseyside club instead. Poor little blighters.

And then, 2 years later, they missed out again on the title on goal difference.

I guess you have to hand it to them though because with Billy Wright as captain and Cullis as manager they finally won their first of 3 titles in 1954. Wolves were, to be fair, the dominant force in English football in the 50's. I am not sure if StanCullis' 'kick and rush' football left a lasting legacy but it sure made an impression on European football at the time. Those that have researched this era of football can no doubt talk more about it. Wolves were pioneers in the style and the science of football and had super fit athletes of their day.

According to the modern era fan Wolves play slick football under their Spanish (?) coach and many, on their forum, seem to have a respect for the way we play our game and that tonight will generally not be easy for them. Some pointing out that if City play theusual 'nice passing game' (is that fair or myth? I have no idea) then Wolves will win. I suppose that suggests that if City try a Millwall rear guard type of action a point or more might be on offer. I wonder how Lee will set up then.

Enjoy the game folks and I hope we at least give a good account roared on by the usual vociferous City away support.

St Lukes 1 City 1 .. fatal for me to make a prediction so I used a non sensical name for them.

Hurricanes. Magnificently destructive. Heartbreaking in their aftermath.

The entire population of Barbuda has now been safely evacuated by the Antigua government. 1600 people have left what remains of their homes behind in the aftermath of the most powerful hurricane in recorded history. In a week of unprecedented storms in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, not to mention the biggest earthquake off the coast of Mexico's Pacific coast in a century, we are returning from a fortnight hiatus in league football. Spare some serious thoughts for the remaining path of Irma, re-strengthened to a Category 5 overnight as it tears through the northern province of Camaguey, Cuba. Before that it made a direct hit for my brother in Anguilla, following its destruction of Barbuda, St Maarten/St. Martin, St Barts, the British and US Virgin Islands, the Turks & Caicos Islands and parts of southern Bahamas. Not to mention causing severe flood damage in parts of Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Haiti. Now it heads for Florida where a mandatory evacuation is in progress. Miraculously whatsapp still functions in Anguilla and all are well but the island is devastated as all of those mentioned are to a greater or lesser degree. Then, just to rub some more salt in and as the chain saws go silent again another category 4, near 5, approaches with landfall in about 10 hours over Anguilla. At least Barbuda, also to be hit again, is deserted and quiet now waiting to be finished off by Jose. With Hurricane Katia in the Gulf you have to go back to 1950 to find 3 hurricanes simultaneously wreaking their havoc across the Caribbean. We may look back at the record books 50 or 100 years from now and say this is when global warming smacked us in the face to wake us up.

If only 'Football Saturday', which we all love so much, could detract all of those poor souls experiencing a nightmare, again. My friends and family in Cuba are safe and sound and the island uses its Soviet era efficiency to mobilise the masses to safety; although that does sound a little like an oxymoron I admit. I think Cuba takes a more pragmatic approach to getting people to safety, probably through necessity, than does the USA. The latter tends to become whipped up, excuse the pun none intended, by CNN and Fox News showing a mass exodus north on I95, massive lines at Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports that creates not a little hysteria. While the UK Gov't is criticized by its apparent lack of response yet before Irma arrived they had Marines positioned, they are already cleaning up and have Anguilla airport open, the hospital electricity back and shelters rebuilt and they are doing the same on the BVI. Transport planes have been flying more supplies and troops in and more support is on the way. I would say its under control but like the Florida Governor says, you cannot help people during a storm. The two countries likely not to cope too well are the Dominican Republic and Haiti and they will be the last to moan. These humble people will be glad of any support and it will come.

10 dead so far, 60+ in the Mexican earthquake in numbers that will surely rise. I thought it appropriate to say a few words about these tragedies before we, privileged to be out of harms way, can enjoy our Football Saturday' lest we always take such pleasures for granted.

Now, who are we playing? OH yes, Jaap Stam's Reading. What a poor record we have in recent times against a team which seems somewhere between Division 4 Elm Park and Steve Coppell Premiership in my mindset; I cannot remove that juxtaposition of Reading from my mind. I mean no ill will toward Reading whatsoever but they seem incongruous as a Premier League or even a Championship football team. I cannot explain it. One thing is for sure though; Stam has them on an upward spiral once more so much credit must go to him. City could turn up and blow them away with Taylor, almost like a new signing, along with the other new faces; ie City will be a real threat to Reading because of this unknown quantity. But, by the same token, we may be undone by that very fact; City may not gel if Lee Johnson gets his formation wrong, his pre match team talk too off pat and makes the wrong substitutions when it does not work. He has a very mixed record under such pressures.

Hopefully the relatively short distance down the boring M4 motorway will swell the away bank at the Madjeski and help the club avoid a defeat and at least put on a performance worthy of the money Steve Lansdown has sanctioned in transfers. Enjoy the match you'all and say a prayer that Hurricane Jose turns north soon and avoids the Northern Leewards.

It is January 31st, 1858 and the world's largest ship islaunched, sideways, from Napier Yard, Millwall.

Such were the technical difficulties of building such a large ship, 692 ft, that itwas the very last of its kind from the J. Scott Russell leased yard at Napier. The ship was the SS Great Eastern designedby Isambard Kingdom Brunel; The maritime connection is a strong one between what is generally known today as the Isle of Dogs and Bristol. Much of the timber and concrete sub structure used for that famous launch remains today amongst the docklands housing developments that sprung up long after the Millwall docks, that came in1860, and the thousands of terraced docker houses had gone. Millwall football club itself has not played in Millwall since 1910. The success of ship building forced them out and they have played in various locations of Bermondsey ever since. They even dropped their nick name 'The Dockers' and became the Lions as we know them today.

Bermondsey was the most bombed part of London in WW2. The Germans called it Target Area G. It had previously been a very wealthy part of London with an Abbey that had rivalled Westminster with an estate that spread across many homecounties and even as far as Somerset *. There was a history of faith on this site as far back as the 8th century when it was granted privileges by Pope Constantine for a monastry at 'Vermundesai' becoming the Priory of St Saviour attached to the French Abbey of Cluny in 1089 and well noted in the Domesday Book. Perhaps not so bizarrely for the time the Abbey was dissolved in 1537 by Henry VIIIand the estate was acquired by Sir Thomas Pope (founder of Trinity College Oxford) who broke up the Abbey buildings and built a mansion for himself. Today, however, the Abbey and its original site, has been extensively dug by archaeologists.

On January 7th, 2017 another long standing Bermondsey resident saw news of its possible fate plastered across the press. Millwall, already no strangers to moving, faced the real threat of beingforced out by Lewisham Council so said the Daily Mail. Kent Live announced that Millwall fans are "not happy about the prospect of moving 50 miles into their county". While the Bermondsey land in question does not include the New Den it does engulf the ground and with a category 2 Academy, like our very own, the club would rightly be very fearful that the leasehold facilities they would lose nearby, such as training pitches, would deprive them ofAcademy 2 status. In short, their prized academy players would leave to local rivals. For this reason Millwall would have to move to preserve that status. In September 2016, the Labour run council approved plans for those CPOs as part of a mass regeneration project for Bermondsey. Both Bermondsey & Rotherhithe, under Southwark, and Lewisham councils are overwhelmingly Labour councillor run.

More recently it appears they have won a stay of execution in the CPO battle and will, for now, be able to remain exactly where they are. So what was once famously known as the London Larder, maker of Garibaldis, and is often coined that again today with the famous Borough Market will, for now, have a football club in it. But the subterfuge and shenanigans lurk. A previous senior Labour councillor of Lewisham, Mushtak Malik, is CEO of Renewal the very company seeking the development. But enough of that for now. Maybe we will revisit this on another match day.

Lets welcome Millwall fans today folks and hope their mad mad element stay away. We all know the vast majority of football supporters are decent folk.

Enjoy the match.

* maybe later.

Few people would stop to consider the UK having more tornadoes and twisters than the United States. But that is exactly the case. The United States suffers terrible twister violence but only in a relatively small area, proportional to their massive country, in Kansas and Oklahoma. Few other states have twisters certainly with any seasonal regularity. A glance at a map of Britain tells a whole different story and a study by the University of Manchester has revealed that this fabled land has more twisters than any other on earth. Such is the frequency of twisters or tornadoes it is estimated that there is a 5% chance of one occurring within 6 miles of any given locationin the country. So what, you might reasonably ask, has this got to do with a football match between the two BCFC's?

Well, quite a lotreally. The corridor between Bristol and Birmingham is a hotspot of twisters. And while London to Reading is the Twister Corridor capital of the world with a 6% chance of one occurring each year only slightly more than Bristol to Birmingham and through to Manchester.A 2005 twister in Birmingham recorded speeds of 130mph injuring19 people, causing £40million of damage and tearing up more than 1,000 trees. And, in just two minutes, a tornado in Kensal Green, North-West London, wrecked property worth £10million in December 2006.

According to a Guardian newspaper article, just a week after Birmingham was battered by a tornado, residents in Bristol witnessed a giant twister sweeping across the skies over the southern suburbs.

The twister formed on Monday shortly before 7pm as the skies clouded over after a sunny afternoon. The Meteorological Office had confirmed the twister, which was up to 1,000 ft (300 metres) long, came close to causing widespread property damage.

"It was a classic funnel cloud, but quite a large one. They are usually measured in tens of feet, but this one was hundreds of feet, if not a thousand," said Damien Lee, a Met Office spokesman. "Had it made contact with the ground, it would have definitely caused localised damage to houses and trees."

The twister swept across a 15-mile area, including the suburbs of Whitchurch, Hartcliffe and Keynsham, and eyewitnesses said it lasted for 15 minutes. The spectacle was captured on camera by Mark Gwinnell, 42, as the twister passed over his Whitchurch home.

"There was a terrific sound and I looked out of the window and saw this twister coming," he said. "I knew I had to get a photograph of it. It was a huge tunnel of swirling air which got faster and faster."

Paul Knightley, of the PA Weather Centre, said the twister was technically not a tornado because it failed to touch the ground.

The centre logged up to four funnel clouds across the country yesterday and possibly one tornado. "Funnel clouds and tornadoes happen when you have an unstable atmosphere, where you have warm air rising from the ground and cold air above it," said Mr Knightley.

In 2015 the Mail on Sunday wrote an article headlined with this:-

England has more tornadoes per area than any other country.

The Tornado and Storm Research Association advises that two tornadoes in Britain are known to have reached T8; their antiquated nature necessitated great caution in assigning intensities, so it is possible that they may have been even stronger. The first, also Britain's earliest known tornado, occurred onOctober 23, 1091. The church atSt. Mary Le Bow in central Londonwas badly damaged, with four rafters - each 7.9 m long or 26 ft being driven into the ground (composed of heavy London Clay) with such force that only 1.2 m or 4 ftprotrudingabove the surface. Other churches in the area were demolished, as were over 600 (mostly wooden) houses. OnDecember 14, 1810, another T8 tornado tracked fromOld Portsmouth to Southsea Common also causing immense damage, although no deaths, it is believed. Some houses were completely levelled and many others were so badly damaged that they had to be demolished; chimneys were blown down and the lead on a bank roof was "rolled up like a piece of canvas and blown from its situation".

Manchester University goes on; Tornadoes are impossible to spot on satellite images and weather radar images aren’t always accurate either. They can show rotation where a tornado doesn’t occur and sometimes tornadoes occur where rotation is not shown on the radar. So the only way we know about them for sure is from eye-witness reports.

Kelsey added: “It seems that most tornadoes in the UK are created along long, narrow storms that form along cold fronts, whereas most tornadoes in the United States are created by isolated storms, which are more similar to the beautiful super cells you see in the movieTwister. Even in the United States, tornadoes formed along cold fronts tend to be weaker than those formed from super cells. That could be one reason why tornadoes in the UK are much weaker. But the process for how tornadoes form along cold fronts is not yet very well understood. Understanding why is my current research project.”

The valley and escarpment corridor from Bristol north with the Cotswolds away to the east, the Malvern's a little further north to the west and on to the Wyre Forest around Kidderminster are prime breeding grounds for twisters as history tells us and how many times I have driven that route and seen dark clouds quickly gathering away to the east and west reminds us that these storms gather quickly. It is a phenomenon that is widely publicized in Kansas or Oklahomabut less written from the shires of England.

And as Birmingham City might not be ready for our own new Swedish Tornado spare a thought for those Twisters as you travel north and south on the M5 today; you will not receivea warning perhaps otherthan those gathering storm clouds and they are more common that the majority of us realise.

UTC. Good day all and safe travels.