A groundhopper like no other: the story of George Willmott

Who is the most obsessive football fan you’ve ever known? Not the most fixated with one particular club necessarily, but the person who was the most fanatical about the game of football. I’ll wager I can top yours… though for some reason it’s taken me 15 years to put the story in front of a wider audience.

In 2003, while studying for a postgraduate journalism qualification, I was doing a project on obsessive football supporters. I sourced a few diehard fans, typically meeting them in the pub of their choice and letting them spill their guts about the lengths they would go to in support of their club. These were largely formulaic affairs – how they got the bug, how many games they’ve been to, most memorable away trips, how many seasons it was since they missed a game and why they missed it (generally it was because somebody died). However, one fan stood out, not only as the most interesting person I spoke to for my project by a distance, but also as genuinely one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met.

His name is George Willmott and for at least seven consecutive seasons he set out on a quest: to attend a match at all 92 English league grounds in one season without missing an Arsenal game. Below is the article I wrote about George in 2003, published today for the first time.

*****

George Willmott is a football addict. His addiction began in childhood and has stayed with him to this day. Now, ten years into retirement it is consuming him more than ever and has almost completely taken over his life. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

George, 75, is an Arsenal fan. [NB – this article was written in 2003. If George is still alive, he’ll be 90 now.] If he told you that he goes to every Arsenal game in this country you might think that was impressive. If George then said that he can count the number of Arsenal home matches he has missed since the late 1940s on his bare hands you would say it was extremely commendable. But that isn’t even the half of it.

Since retiring, George has devoted his football seasons to an annual groundhopping quest which is quite possibly unique in this country.

Every season, while never missing an Arsenal game in this country, George endeavours to make an annual pilgrimage to watch a match at every single one of the 92 stadiums in the Premier League and Football League. It is worth considering the logistics of such a challenge for a moment.

Just as an experiment, next summer when the fixtures come out, consider how you might visit all 92 grounds for a game IN ONE SEASON without missing a single game of the team you support. Consider the ticketing, travel, accommodation, not to mention the inevitable solitude of the quest and, quite frankly, the not inconsiderable risk of a nervous breakdown.

Some people prefer things broken down into bite size chunks, so here’s some bullet points for you. Imagine doing all of this in one season: 

• Every Arsenal home game, including European games
• Every (domestic) Arsenal away game
• Every other league ground among the 92 where Arsenal don’t have a fixture.

Reckon you could do it? You’ve got about 270-280 days to do the lot. Arsenal games take up typically a minimum of 43 of those days (38 league, 2 cup, 3 Europe), often far more, so you’re left with about 230 days, maybe less. And – bad luck – friendlies and reserve games don’t count towards the quest. Then imagine attempting this over and over again each season.

In the seven seasons to date that George has attempted this daunting task, he has succeeded five times, falling just short on two occasions. It’s a wonder that he’s ever achieved it at all. Most football games are played on Saturdays. Arsenal play most Saturdays.

George agrees to be interviewed at his Clapham home. His little kitchen is full of commemorative mugs, one for every team in the league. It’s colourful and endearingly quaint.

Those who like to think they are hardcore football supporters may now be realising that they never knew what the top end of the scale was. To use a footballing analogy: George is Thierry Henry and we are the trainees who clean his boots. But then all groundhoppers have to start somewhere – even George.

“My first game was at Chelsea on 15th October 1938, against Arsenal,” he says. “It was 4-2 to Chelsea. I was only ten at the time and couldn’t see much. It was a bit overwhelming, all these massive men around me. So they engineered it that I went down the front and sat on the tarpaulin around the pitch. My boyhood hero Ted Drake scored one of the two Arsenal goals that day.”

Chelsea keeper Vic Woodley under pressure from
Arsenal's Ted Drake during George Willmott's
first taste of live football in October 1938.

George’s passion was born. However, he didn’t start going to games seriously until he had completed two years of military service in the Army in 1948. Highbury was rarely without him subsequently.

“Between 1957 and 1965 I had eight seasons where I saw every match home and away,” says George. “That’s my longest unbroken record. Getting married then curtailed my efforts going to away games somewhat, but I still went to the home matches.”

So how does George plan out each season? There must be so much admin required. Allowing for Premier League and cup games, he goes to around two dozen grounds each year when Arsenal are playing away. But what about all the rest?

“I have one or two friends who go to matches with me,” he says, “so I find out where they want to go first, to see if it fits in with my plans. I try to get the midweek matches at grounds where I can get back to London after the match.

“I’ll spend an hour planning from time to time, getting some ideas. It’s really not until after Christmas that I sit down and make a list of all the grounds I haven’t visited and put possible dates against them. Before then a lot depends on which cup ties come up and which get replayed. You couldn’t do what I do by just going to league games. You need to go to cup competitions, too. After Christmas I’m hopefully getting down to the last 30 or 40 grounds.”

One thing that strikes you about George is how normal he is. For someone to attempt something this unusual, season after season, you would think they would have to be at best eccentric. George is just a charming, well-spoken, mild-mannered gent. Far from having a one-track mind, he is a keen fan of opera, enjoys reading and particularly relishes getting stuck in to a crossword.

The one sign of obsessiveness is his fondness for accuracy. He has a filing system of several boxloads of index cards, detailing every game he’s ever been to. Any time I ask about a particular fixture, George likes to be able to tell me exactly when it was and what the score was.

Yet this trait of wanting to get his facts and figures absolutely right is perhaps just force of habit. George spent much of his career as an accountant, including five years at the FA.

In January 1995, George needed a heart operation to replace a faulty aortic valve. (Coincidentally, the same operation that Arsenal’s Nigerian striker Nwankwo Kanu needed while playing in Italy for Internazionale in 1996.) George also needed a triple heart bypass at the same time.

Understandably, as a pensioner, George needed some rest after his operation. To put things in perspective, Kanu didn’t make his comeback on the football field until a year after his equivalent procedure. With the operation a success, George put his feet up for just over a month and was back at Highbury for the 1-1 draw with Leicester in mid-February.

George Willmott required the same heart operation to
replace a faulty aortic valve as Nwankwo Kanu
had while playing for Internazionale in 1996.

The operation appears to have been the catalyst that has driven George on to even greater achievements. Since the Leicester game in 1996, a European tie with Deportivo in 2000 is the only Arsenal match George has missed on UK soil. He doesn’t travel abroad to watch Arsenal, though. When they are away in Europe, George has to settle for watching on television – unless there’s a game on somewhere. He doesn’t much care for watching football if he can’t actually be there in the flesh.

“I can’t abide football on television,” he says. “I find it terrible. I don’t have Sky. I can’t see any point because if there’s a match on I want to go to it. People ask if I tuned in for Manchester United against Real Madrid – you know, great matches like that – and I say ‘No, I was watching Swindon play Plymouth’.”

On 9th November 1974, George completed his set of all the league grounds at Exeter City as they drew 0-0 with Scunthorpe United. He became the 13th member of a select group of journeymen football fans known as The 92 Club.

His achievement inspired his daughter (Ellen) and son (Simon) to follow in their father’s footsteps. Though Simon had already visited certain grounds, he and Ellen visited every ground together with their father. They completed the 92 in 1983 while in their teens, becoming two of the youngest members of the club.

“Since then I gather that somebody has actually taken a child aged two around the grounds,” says George. “That will take some beating.”

It was also after the heart operation that George started trying to visit all 92 league grounds annually. He succeeded at the first time of asking in the 1996/97 season and has repeated the feat another four times since. Only twice has he fallen short, on both occasions by just one or two grounds.

“I’ve done it five seasons out of the last seven which is pretty good going really,” he says, modestly. “I shall try again next season. I’ve been bitten by the bug now. I’ll at least want to see how many grounds I can get to.

“So much depends on the fixtures that are chosen for television,” says George with a heavy sigh. “It was annoying from my point of view last season that so many of the Football League’s televised games were kicking off Saturdays at 5.30pm, which is hopeless. If they stuck to Friday nights and Sundays I’d stand a much better chance of getting to them.”

In 65 years of watching football, George has been to a staggering 1,628 games at Highbury (including friendlies). One wonders how high the total number of games at all grounds might be. Short of totting up all of the entries on each of his countless index cards, this would be almost impossible to work out. One thing is certain, though. Over six and a half decades, George has seen some great games, countless wonderful goals and many tremendous players.

“My favourite ever Arsenal player was a goalkeeper, Jack Kelsey,” says George. “He played from the early 1950s for about ten seasons. He was a Welsh international who unfortunately got injured in a friendly match against Brazil which ended his career.

“Although it has been said about a lot of goalkeepers, he had enormous hands. If he went into a full-length dive for a shot, he wouldn’t push it round the post, he would catch it at full stretch."

Jack Kelsey, the former Arsenal and Wales
goalkeeper and George Willmott's all-time favourite
player, demonstrates his enormous hands.

“Tommy Docherty took a free kick once up at Preston and it was going right into the top corner of Kelsey’s net. As Docherty started to celebrate, these enormous hands came out of nowhere and caught the ball.”

So does George appreciate the enormity of his achievements? You would be hard pushed to find anyone else with the determination to match his feats. Most fans (this writer included) couldn’t stomach long trips to Carlisle, Plymouth, Hartlepool and Swansea every year, even if their own team was playing. To go on such long journeys as a neutral – just for the love of the game – requires something more than enthusiasm. You wonder if he realises that he is totally addicted to football. This question is put to George as gently as possible.

He grins. “I think one can safely assume that, yes.”

*****

Postscript (Feb 2018): I sadly lost the telephone number and address I had for George many years ago, so I’m sorry to say I don’t know if he is still alive. If he is still around, I hope he is still enjoying his football. But if he has passed on then I hope all who knew him will remember him for his incredible dedication to watching football. I told George back in 2003 that I hoped to get this story published somewhere with a sizable readership of football fans, so I hope he wasn’t too disappointed that I failed. I did at least pass him a copy of the above article at the time it was written, which he said he’d enjoyed reading.

I sat on this story for years after I graduated, with the idea of getting it published in a national newspaper, football magazine or website. Observer Sport Monthly were impressed with his accomplishments but didn't want the story. At one point, The Guardian were quite keen but they said they needed something to peg it on, such as a strong Arsenal angle in the news that this could sit neatly alongside. In retrospect, I probably wasn't pitching it very tactfully and editors must have wondered what sort of copy they'd receive if they commissioned me. I never really found a suitable peg and the years sort of drifted away. Eventually it felt like the moment had passed and the story has sat on various laptops of mine ever since.

Fifteen years since I wrote it, I thought I should probably publish it for posterity, rather than George’s unusual story be lost. At least this way there is one account of his impressive achievements on the internet.

If you’d like to use George’s story anywhere, you are free to take it, edit it, use excerpts, or do what you like with it. I’ll appreciate a credit as the author, of course, but on this occasion I mainly just want people to know the story and imagine themselves in George’s shoes. 

George was obviously not groundhopping for recognition, but simply out of a deep love for the game. But hopefully in future the occasional groundhopper will stumble across this story and be inspired in some way by his accomplishments. Even groundhopping, a pursuit that is both endlessly nerdy and yet strangely pleasurable, needs poster boys and George Willmott is certainly that.

Nice one, George.

Claudio Ranieri Q&A at the Italian Cultural Institute: the best bits

Claudio Ranieri tonight gave a question and answer session at the Italian Cultural Institute in central London. He spoke with great eloquence and passion about football and his incredible achievement with Leicester City last season. 

It was a pleasure to be in the room and listen to Ranieri impart his wisdom and wit and get to see a side of his personality that he perhaps doesn’t generally offer up to football journalists. Despite his impeccable manners and all-round decency, the impression that strongly came across is that Ranieri is a hugely motivated coach who is driven by his will to win. Even today you could tell that he is not basking in his and Leicester’s spectacular success. Instead, he is fully focused on next season and trying to make the bookmakers eat their words once again.

There were plenty of media in the room (and I hope some of them will write stories based on Ranieri’s quotes that are widely shared and read), but there was also no shortage of (mostly Italian) members of the public, from ages 7 to 70, all grateful for an audience with the reigning Premier League champion.

Italian football expert and author John Foot was posing the questions, before it was opened out to the floor for people to ask their own. Almost everything Ranieri said this evening was interesting. Below is a roundup of some of the many quotable things he said tonight. 

Claudio Ranieri took questions from John
Foot (right) at the Italian Cultural Institute

On being given the chance to join Leicester and come back to England and the Premier League…

I was so happy, so pleased to come back to the UK and coach a Premier League team, especially after my experience with Greece. It was completely different there. I didn’t feel like a trainer. Coming back to the most beautiful championship in the world made me happy.

I had a great chemistry with the president straight away. We hoped not to suffer too much and to reach 40 points. The idea was that we would fight for two seasons. Then after that we would fight to qualify for the Europa League, and then finally we would fight for the Champions League. This was my plan.

On being asked when he first believed Leicester could win it…
When Hazard scored! [laughs] In all honesty, it was when we heard the final whistle. This is the truth.

On the magnitude of Leicester’s achievement and the good feeling it has generated…
Everyone was on our side – except for Tottenham. It was not a miracle, but it was pretty incredible. Only later will we be able to really tell this story. Now we are still too close; it’s like an erupting volcano.

On what makes this Leicester side special…

Normally not all 11 players ‘play’. A team is strong when at least eight play and three are dragged behind. We had all 11 playing every single match, with one idea – trying to win.

On his coaching methods at Leicester and whether he is a ‘quiet leader’…
It would have been difficult to get angry at Leicester this season! I would have to be really nasty to have got angry with them. I never told them off or made them feel guilty. Instead, we would analyse mistakes in training and try to correct them. I always tried to encourage. There was no blame. We tried to improve individuals and the team. This relaxed and united the squad. 

On the time he substituted Totti and De Rossi at half-time while managing Roma… and went on to win the game…
It’s lucky I won! Otherwise I would have been crucified outside the Stadio Olimpico.

On the mindset of Italian football fans…
We are more critical, more tactical. Here in England there is a cultural aspect that differs; people want to see a good game, the team winning and fighting to the end. In Italy, sometimes the whys and wherefores weigh too heavily on the players.

On those people – even among his friends – who said he was a loser because he always came second…
Any town in Italy breathes football. You have to win. I was very happy in my career but some friends thought I was a loser until a month ago. I have always pushed back against this. I always had a will to win a great championship. But now that I have done it, I am focused on trying to win the next one. My strength is that I have an honest, transparent relationship with my players. I am really sorry if some of them can’t always play, but they know that the common good is the team.

People said I was a loser, but those people forget the contexts in which I came second. I’m not a loser. I never felt like one. I believed in myself. I haven’t changed – the people judging me have changed.

On managing Gianfranco Zola at Chelsea…
By coming here, [Zola] has been [Italy’s] best ambassador. At Chelsea, when we got off the bus, even the opposition fans would clap Zola.

On whether having no superstars at Leicester made them easier to coach…
[In my career] I have trained everybody and anybody. I started with inter-regional football. It’s difficult to speak about the type of players you coach. It always depends on how the team goes – and so I can say that Leicester is wonderful and always full of sunshine!

On the bookies quoting pre-season odds of 5000/1 on Leicester to win the title…
The bookies were wrong. They said I would be the first to be kicked out [sic]. They made a mistake. It’s wonderful. I am sorry, though, for the fan who cashed out his bet [before the end of the season] – his son was in a wheelchair and the money was important. But some people did win, at least.

On the resilience of his Leicester team…
There were times when we were two goals down and we were able to come back and win 3-2. These changes in the wind gave strength to the group. I told my players, ‘I don’t care if you lose, but fight to the very last second’.

On being asked by a small kid in the audience how it felt to win the title…
I can’t explain. It’s a wonderful feeling; a moment of deep satisfaction. I saw many happy people. This is something I like. I’m happy that I was the person who could synergise this team. We could feel in the dressing room that the whole world wanted us to win. But it’s impossible to say [how it felt]. Happiness maybe? I don’t know! [Addressing the kid:] When you eat Nutella, how do you feel?!

On living in Leicester…
When I joined Leicester, I only knew the city from my time at Chelsea. I like to live within the city – I want to breathe what other people breathe. I tell the players that we are the representatives of the city of Leicester. I go to the supermarket with my wife and I push the trolley. I don’t like to hide.

A fruit and vegetable seller asked if I would sell fruit for him if we won the title – so now I’ll have to go and do it. Maybe I’ll go at 6am when there’s nobody there!

On whether he’ll change his methods next season…
I need to continue with these players in the same way. We are looking for new players, too. Psychologically, I don’t know… I need to feel it. After the first game last season, I told the players, ‘You’re so strong, but you don’t know just how strong you are’. You only see me when I’m playing with journalists but inside the changing room I am quite different.

On being asked by another kid: ‘Where did you get “dilly ding, dilly dong” from?’…
It comes from a long time ago. A former Cagliari player sent me a bell – I used to use it to say, ‘You’re getting it wrong… dilly ding, dilly dong! You’re sleeping! Wake up, you’re getting it wrong!”

On whether Leicester’s title win will usher in a new era and make football a ‘passion’ for people again…
No. This has been a bubble. This is unique and won’t change anything. People say maybe others can do what Leicester did? But a lot of money will be spent and only one team can win the league each season and the others will have lost a lot. It won’t change. Money governs everything. I really hope there won’t be a Super League or this will make things worse; the spirit of the game will disappear.

On coaching being a balancing act…
If we win, I bring the players down. If we lose, I bring them up. You can’t transmit any negative energy. You must keep the players away from pressure. It’s a balancing act for every coach to keep the windsurfer on the wave.

On his top three career experiences…
Cagliari, which was my springboard; Valencia, which was my first time abroad at the age of 47, where I learned another language and won a cup; and this one [Leicester].

On whether there is anything he misses from Italy, or any aspects of Italian football he would like to see introduced in England…
No. When I go to a country I want to enter into that country completely, to understand it. I think to myself: how can I be a part of this and improve what has been given to me? I just bring what I have accumulated over my years of experience.

On all the praise he is receiving in the weeks since Leicester won the title…
Things change. In two months these conversations will be ashes and I start from scratch. I’ll put my accolades to one side. We will have to fight to be in Europe – the minimum aim is the top 10. No team will buy me back now – I have no will to move.

On whether he’d want to coach the Italian national team…
The experience I had with Greece was not a positive one. With the Italian national team, maybe it would be governable [sic], but at the moment I feel the need too much to be out on the field every day. People ask if I’m stressed. No! I’m stressed when I don’t have a team to coach. I need this daily relationship. Maybe in 5, 6, 10 years [my feelings] may change. [At this point he glances at his wife in the audience.] My wife is shaking her head.

When asked if he has any advice to any managers of teams (not necessarily footballing or even sporting)…
Would it disappoint you if I said I don’t know? I know I have empathy with my players, but I don’t know how I do it. I am myself. This is the way I am. I am given a task by my president and this is the law to me. I left big teams more than once because this spell with my boss had been broken and so I could no longer lead my team.

On whether he would like to sign any Italian players for Leicester…
I never look at nationality or the colour of somebody’s skin. I see if they are integrated in our changing room. Depending on the country I’m coaching in I want an English ‘soul’, or a Spanish ‘soul’ – because those players are the pillars and others must adapt. If you take away that DNA then you lose something.

On the wider significance of Leicester’s Premier League win...
People falling in love with [Leicester’s win] is about something bigger. I could have been anybody, but people needed this in order to believe in the idea that we must never give up.

Ranieri: "I really hope there won’t be a Super League; the spirit
of the game would disappear." [Photo: @iiclondra]

Note: Ranieri was speaking in Italian and a simultaneous translator was provided. As a non-Italian speaker, this service was necessary for me. While the translator did a superb job, in the event that any bilingual journalists write up any of Ranieri’s quotes with slightly different phrasing to that which I have used above, please assume that their version is more authentic to precisely what Ranieri said in his native tongue.

Kia Joorabchian on Carlos Tevez in Munich: the complete interview transcript

Controversy erupts on Manchester City's bench in Munich

Today at the Leaders In Football summit, held at Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge, a hastily arranged Q&A with Carlos Tevez's representative Kia Joorabchian was organised. Asking the questions was former executive director of the FA David Davies. 

Below is the full transcript of their conversation about the incidents in Munich last week, when Carlos Tevez is alleged to have refused to come off the bench for Manchester City in a Champions League game.

I do not offer any comment or opinion on the contents of their discussion, and instead leave you to make up your own mind. The press will of course select some choice quotes for their stories in tomorrow’s papers. But for completeness, here’s everything Joorabchian said on Tevez before the discussion moved to more global football matters.

DD: Did Carlos Tevez refuse to play for Manchester City at any stage?
KJ: Well there’s an internal investigation going on, so whatever I say here is my opinion and not Carlos’s. I haven’t spoken to him about it. What the investigators think and what Carlos thinks is their issue. I’ve tried to keep at arm’s length from it. I am party to some extra information that I hopefully will not divulge today! The main thing is that what happened was an issue of a lot of confusion. While I don’t believe that it’s correct for any player to behave in a manner that is contrary to that of his club, events have been judged prior to the real outcome coming out. We didn’t actually see what really happened. We only saw the TV footage, which shows it in a different light.

What’s your interpretation of what happened then?
My interpretation of the footage is that there is a lot of arguing going on down on the bench when Edin Dzeko comes off. They showed Carlos warm up during the first half with two other players. In the second half when they showed the bench, we didn’t see Carlos and they then showed that he and Nigel De Jong were warming up. He was warming up even as De Jong comes on. We then see him walk back to the bench, and as he’s walking back to the bench there’s a god-awful row between Roberto Mancini and Dzeko. We see this row carrying on and Carlos then sits down. We see this row continuing, we see the physical trainer is talking to Carlos, and Carlos then stands up to go towards somewhere. There is some more shouting and he sits right back down. So, that’s what we see from the video footage. And from then on we are going by what Mancini says.

Do you believe he refused to play?

I know Carlos in totally different light to most people in this room and around the world, since he was an 18-year-old boy. You can criticise him for anything, but one thing you can’t criticise him for is his commitment on the pitch, or for not wanting to play. There have been several times at Manchester City and throughout his career where he’s taken injections, played with swollen ankles or in situations when doctors have told him not to play. There was a situation at Corinthians where the medical department came to me before the Libertadores semi-final with River Plate and said “Carlos cannot play, he is not fit”. I then hear that there is a massive row going on and people were saying “You need to get down to the dressing room ASAP”. I go down and the coach says: “You’ve got to help me out. Carlos wants to kill the doctor.” He then played the full 90 minutes.

So you’re saying that this is a misunderstanding and he didn’t refuse to play?

This is my opinion that he didn’t refuse to play. Throughout his career he has been one who fights to play. He joined City when he had offers from Real Madrid and Manchester United. United gave him an offer, as did Madrid and City. He was one of the first players to join City’s new vision. It is a great vision. I have the honour of knowing Sheikh Mansour and sometimes that vision is not portrayed properly. Carlos was brought in to help and start that vision. So he feels very differently towards the club. He had a very intense feeling at end of his first season when they missed out on qualifying for the Champions League. He took that very personally. In the second season his performances on the pitch were outstanding.

There are a lot of issues around this. Carlos does speak English, but his English is not good enough to host a full-blown interview.

But did he say, as he was interpreted as saying, “I did not feel right to play, so I did not play”?

One of the biggest problems right after a game when questions are asked is that things get put out of context and if you don’t have a very professional interpreter then you have a problem. I speak both languages and I listened to the questions in English and the interpretation in Spanish. The interpretation was incorrect. Both questions and both of Carlos’s answers were misinterpreted. Geoff Shreeves says “What is the truth?”. Carlos says something like “the truth is, at this point in time, how am I going to be in a mental state to play?”. The interpreter then says something very different. The second question is Shreeves

Are you saying that whatever the outcome of the enquiry, he would want to stay at Manchester City?

Again, there is an investigation going on, and I don’t really want to speak about what Carlos does and doesn’t want to do.

Do you think he knows what he wants to do?

I think he feels that he has been judged before the case has been looked into. Manchester City are in a very difficult position, and Carlos is in a very difficult position. 

Wouldn’t it have been better to say “I’m sorry if this was the impression I gave to the manager”?

Just to clarify, I was not aware of the statement before he released it. But he did release a statement and it clearly said that it was a misunderstanding and he did apologise. If you look at the bench, it seems there was a misunderstanding with Zabaleta – and I’m not saying there was or wasn’t – but we should wait until the investigation has run its course and analyse its findings. And at that point both Carlos and Man City need to sit down and have a conversation.

Could the manager and player be reconciled again?

This is something for the two of them to work out. It’s a personal relationship between two people. You’ve seen this happen all through the summer with Fabregas, Nasri, Modric, the list goes on – those are just the high-profile names from throughout the summer. People handing in transfer requests, refusing to travel, refused to play – I think this is a problem in general. 

Are you actually saying [those players] refused to play?

Well, I can say that my opinion is that they refused to play, but that they refused to play in a different way. Those situations were handled in a different way; their managers and clubs handled them very differently.

So Roberto Mancini should’ve handled it a different way?

Roberto has his style of management, it’s very direct and totally different to Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger or Carlo Ancelotti. Fabregas had a big problem throughout the summer, Modric put in a transfer request and I think he didn’t play in Spurs’ first European game and it was reported that he didn’t want to play. Whether that’s true or not, we don’t know. Every manager and every club handles situations differently. Carlos’s situation has been handled in a different manner. Carlos and Roberto now have to deal with the manner in which it has been handled.

So is Carlos Tevez, as some people have suggested, easily lead? Or is he quite tough?

I think any person in the world that knows Carlos knows that he has a very strong opinion on everything. One thing he’s always said and reiterated all the time is that he resents the fact that people think he can be [easily lead]. He’s come up from the bottom and has reached the top of his game. He hasn’t done that by not being a very strong character. He’s a very, very strong independent character and if you speak to any of his teammates and managers – either current or past – they will tell you he’s a very different character to this.

Football League 2011/12 previews

I've been getting involved with offering opinions for other people's blogs again, this time helping out with League One previews.

First off, I contributed to the collaboration between two of the finest Football League blogs around: The Seventy Two and The Two Unfortunates. They've put together an epic, sprawling season preview PDF for all three Football League divisions. This is one heck of an achievement and applaud them for it. My simple contribution was to offer my thoughts for the AFC Bournemouth entry.

But whichever league club you follow, I thoroughly recommend that you take a leaf through their preview.

Following on from that, I've also taken part in Two Footed Tackle's 'Five Go Predicting' feature, in which five supporters of League One clubs give their thoughts on how things will go in the third tier this season. It's interesting to note that there's a certain amount of consensus reached - especially when it comes to Huddersfield's chances. Here's the article. 

Bournemouth in the League One playoffs.

Without really courting it, I seem to have become one of the go-to guys in the blogosphere for comments about AFC Bournemouth. I've done a couple of interviews this week, firstly with The Seventy Two, an excellent site that covers all 72 Football League clubs, and secondly with the Peterborough United Football Blog, who wanted to hear from fans of the other three clubs in the playoffs.

Do have a look. Whatever happens in the playoffs, it's been an incredible two years to be a Bournemouth fan.