In this article i am going to look at the one position or maybe just a type of approach each club absolutely has to make for the next Premier League season.

Arsenal: Buy a left winger

The current Premier League champions will look to kick on with many of their rivals having new managers and in transition. To do this, they definitely need an upgrade on the left wing as Martinelli and Trossard are not going to take you to the next level.

Morgan Rogers of Aston Villa is the main target according to the media, but this will not come cheap, Bardley Barcola would be ideal, but PSG have said he is not going anywhere.

Aston Villa: Buy a winger

Unai Emery is a master of getting the most out of what he has got, but he needs to add a few players to his squad for the upcoming season.

Even before the rumours of Rogers leaving for Arsenal, they desperately need a winger to give them a different option as Evann Guessand and Leon Bailey have not lived up to expectations.

Bournemouth: Replace Senesi

A summer of new faces is nothing new for Bournemouth, their model of buy low sell high works well and their scouting is brilliant. So, it will be business as usual for the South Coast side but the biggest need in my view is to replace Marcos Senesi who left on a free to Spurs.

His experience as well as his quality will be tough to replace, James Hill is a great player and Bafode Diakite is a promising player, but they will need someone to help them along this season. Also new manager Marco Rose will need to get someone in to add some European experience as the Cherries will be in the Europa League this season, so a lot more games and rotation will be essential.

Brentford: Try to add depth up front

This is always a difficult one as Brentford always sign very well so whoever you suggest is not as good as the players they do end up buying.

The one aspect i do think they need is to add depth to their frontline as Igor Thiago was brilliant last season but who is going to replace him if he get’s hurt or loses form?

Seeing them linked to Burnley duo Jaden Anthony and Zion Flemming are exactly what they need, two players who stood out for Burnley who could easily come in and add great depth to a pretty good squad.

Brighton: Reinforce midfield

There has already been a lot of activity at Brighton so far this summer, Jan Paul Van Hecke has gone to Spurs but three new centre backs have come in with Pascal Struijk, Michael Svoboda and Luka Vuskovic coming in from Leeds, Venezia and Tottenham respectively.

For me they need a new midfielder even if Carlos Baleba stays, as they were often caught a little light in that area a few times last season. If Baleba goes then they will definitely need someone to replace him as he had an off-season last season and Brighton’s midfield never looked quite right.

Chelsea: Experience

Xabi Alonso is taking a big risk taking the Chelsea job so soon after getting sacked by Real Madrid last year, both clubs scream instability so can he succeed where so many have failed?

Well if he wants to do anything then he needs some experience, Chelsea have talented young players but nobody seemingly over the age of 26. They need to sign players who have been there and done it more to give Alonso plug and play players to help him win games but also to bring the youngsters on and create a good culture in the dressing room.

Granit Xhaka is a rumoured target and for me he is the epitome of what i am talking about IF Sunderland do choose to sell.

Coventry: Quality not quantity

When you are coming up from the Championship, the temptation is to spend lots of money to basically try and build a whole new starting eleven. Frank Lampard has got a good squad who score lots of goals so if they can add a good goalkeeper, centre back and a midfielder then they might have enough firepower to stay up.

First time back in the Top Flight since 2001 so they will want to make a bit of a splash but careful not to do it for the sake of showing off. Follow the Sunderland blueprint in trusting your scouts and being smart with your money. If they can do that then they will be fun to watch.

Crystal Palace: Replace Adam Wharton

Everything is changing at Crystal Palace after winning the UEFA Conference League and Oliver Glasner leaving for Nottingham Forest. Pierre Sage comes in from Lens where he had a great season last season, it will be interesting to see how he adapts to English Football.

Adam Wharton is the best player in the squad and in the summer of Midfielders will be a target for all of the big sides who need a midfielder, Liverpool, Manchester United will be the two obvious names linked and if they come in then Wharton could leave.

Palace are used to replacing star players like Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze in past seasons, so it will be interesting to see how they use their funds to find the next quality player.

My worry is that they are so good at buying these players then replacing them, what if they get one wrong?

Everton: Striker

David Moyes always prioritises clean sheets in all his sides, Everton are doing this, but goals win games and boy do they need someone to score them.

Hayden Hackney coming in next to James Garner in midfield will give Everton a good base but also be a dream for any forward players. Thierno Barry and Neto are decent strikers but if Everton want to progress then they need a consistent goal scorer, Liam Delap is a name linked but that feels a little underwhelming.

If they can add a striker then they might push into the top ten but that depends on funds and also who is available, if they can find that person then it could be a fun season and if not then more of the same for the long suffering Evertonians.

Fulham: Buy a striker or two

Raul Jiminez has left Fulham to go back to Wolves, now this will leave a massive hole at the top end of the pitch. Marco Silva has left to join Benfica so it looks like Alvaro Arbeloa will become the new manager after his brief stint at Real Madrid.

The first thing he will need to do is buy a striker as they squad does not have many glaring holes in it apart from striker. Ricardo Pepi was a player they looked like they were going to sign from PSV but that deal fell through, hopefully they can resurrect it as they need to start well next season as they could easily be dragged into a relegation battle while they are transitioning to a new era after so many years of Marco Silva.

Hull: Buy Joe Gelhardt

Coming up through the Playoffs can leave you on the back foot when it comes to planning for the next season, for Hull they are having to drastically alter their plans as theirs was an unexpected promotion.

There will be a lot of incomings as they look to try to stay in the division, however there is a very simple thing they can do to please fans and the squad. Joe Glehardt has been on loan with Hull for the past two seasons and last year he really blossomed into a great player, now they will need to convince Leeds to let him leave permanently and i think if they get the right bid then they will do. Sometimes it’s not a case of adding players to your squad when you come up; it is a case of keeping that squad together.

Ipswich: Buy a proper number nine

Kieron McKenna has left the club following promotion to the Premier League so Gary O’Neil joins from Strasbourg to take the Tractor Boys back into the top flight a year after relegation.

The squad will need a little bit of tinkering to play the way O’Neil wants but they will need something they have not had since Liam Delap left last season in an out and out number 9.

Chuba Akprom has made his loan spell permanent from Ajax but they still look at little light for them to stay in the league. They will need to work fast as a good start is key to staying up, otherwise they may as well start planning for the Championship again.

Leeds: Upgrade Winger

Leeds had a good season in staying in the league, but they will need to push on now and aim to pull away from a relegation battle for the upcoming season. Harry Wilson is a very good signing on a free transfer from Fulham but i feel they do need another as last season they were not as creative as they need to be.

IF Dominic Calvert-Lewin stays fit then they should have a steady source of goals but they need players to step up and provide them as well as score them, Daniel James, Wilfred Gnonto, Lukas Nmecha, Brendan Aaronso and Noah Okafor don’t exactly strike you with confidence if you are a Leeds fan to deliver consistently.

Liverpool: Salah replacement on a budget

How do you replace a legend of your club? But how do you do that and also fill key holes in your squad?

The answer is you are going to have to be very frugal and savvy; Yann Diomande will not be going to Liverpool to solve their wide problems. This is good in the sense that they can now move on to different targets.

Now they will need to go and buy his replacement without blowing the whole budget like they did last season with Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak, normally this is where Liverpool excel but there is so much pressure to get it right then it becomes very easy to get wrong.

Manchester City: Sell to buy

This sounds like a weird thing to say for a Manchester City team who have broken the British record transfer fee for Eliott Anderson but stick with me, they have to balance the books and also move on players who don’t fit with new head coach Enzo Maresca.

Jack Grealish, Savinho, Omar Marmoush, James Trafford and Kalvin Phillips (Remember him?) all need to leave. Marc Guehi and Antoine Semenyo came in January to boost the team so this squad should not need too much change, but they will need to make sure they get some cash in for some players whilst getting a hefty chunk off their wage bill.

Manchester United: Midfield, Midfield, Midfield!

Michael Carrick is now the permanent manager at Old Trafford; his first task this summer is to ironically rebuild United’s midfield which hasn’t been good since he retired. They made a good start signing Brazilian midfielder Ederson for Atalanta, they still are short and need at least two more for me.

Losing out on Elliott Anderson to Manchester City and Matheus Fernandes to Spurs is a blow, but there are plenty of midfielders out there if you act quickly.

This is a key rebuild as a good window puts United on a good track to challenging again in the next few years, but a bad one could hamper the INEOS era already.

Newcastle United: Sign Smartly

There is an old picture from when Kevin Keegan confronted angry fans after the club sold Andy Cole to rivals Manchester United in 1995; you could probably recreate it with Eddie Howe in for Keegan.

Anthony Gordon has moved to Barcelona, Sandro Tonali has joined Spurs and with rumours of Lewis Hall, Tino Livramento and Bruno Guimaraes on the way out, then it’s tough times on Tyneside.

However, if they can use the money to reinvest smartly then this might help them, Ewen Jaouen joins from Reims to be the long-term goalkeeper and Bazoumana Traore is on his way from Hoffenheim to replace Gordon, so they are moving.

But they need to be smart and not spend for the sake of appeasing the fans as they will be happy seeing good players on the pitch.

Sunderland: FInd more gems

I loved Sunderland’s’ business last season as they signed a lot of players but they all proved to be top quality signings, Granit Xhaka, Brian Brobbey, Noah Sadiki to name but a few.

They will be a good destination for players to go and play so i would think a lot of agents will be nudging players towards Wearside, maybe not since the Peter Reid era has there been such happiness in the city.

If i am to be a little picky then maybe another midfielder and someone to lock down the Right-Wing position but i trust whatever they do and they aren’t many clubs, you can say that for in football.

Tottenham: Find a goalscorer

Let’s face it for Spurs fans it has been an awful few months, Arsenal won the league and Spurs nearly fell into the Championship. But maybe there is some light ahead for Tottenham in the Roberto De Zerbi era; they have opened the chequebook after blowing the dust off it, but good signings have come in.

Andy Robertson will add experience; Marcos Senesi and Jan Paul Van Hecke will add quality to the defence, whilst Sandro Tonali and Matheus Fernandes will revolutionise their midfield in theory anyway.

The big question for me is who will score the goals in this team, Domicic Solanke is a good player but after his injuries it might be time for Spurs to cut their losses and move on.

Richarlison has never been prolific in front of goal; Mathys Tel is a young player who needs time if he is part of De Zerbi’s plans. So, they need to really sort out what they are doing going forward as a goalscorer could be the difference in progressing the project or it failing before it even starts.

When Gareth Southgate left as England manager after his 8-year spell, everyone tried to dissect his legacy and assert, was he a successful manager or a flop? There are a lot of people forgetting just how bad a mess he inherited.

Roy Hodgson’s reign never really gets the scrutiny that it should do but that is more due to everyone wanting to forget the Euro 2016 defeat Iceland as he resigned straight after. But the World Cup should have been the end for Hodgson, but he limped on to the Euros in France 2 years later.

A pretty terrible campaign ended with a pitiful defeat to the tournament’s surprise team in Iceland, despite them taking the lead which makes it all the more embarrassing.

Relistening to the analysis of that game was eye opening but it should not have gotten to that point, Roy looked like yesterday’s man and England looked sitting on the kid’s table of World football.

Hodgson was not the people’s choice, that was Harry Redknapp, but Harry brings his own problems. Whereas Roy is a very safe choice and for the FA it’s always the choice that causes the least hassle that they will take.

Euro 2012 was not great as they went out to Italy on penalties, but most people forgive a manager one tournament to find their bearings, they breezed through qualification as England always did but a tough group of Italy, Uruguay and Costa Rica lay in wait in Brazil.

England went into this tournament as they do most of them in comfort after qualifying easily through a very easy group, so expectation was high as they won the group without losing a game and racked up 31 goals.

As usual qualification is mostly routine for England barring the Euro 2008 fiasco but there was a sense they could do well in Brazil, although if you look at the squad picked then there was more reason for concern rather than optimism.

Wayne Rooney was the only world class player England had that was anywhere near his prime, the squad had ageing players like Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard as well as young players like Luke Shaw, Ross Barkley and Raheem Sterling.

The rest of that squad boasted mostly a squad full of squad players as this team looking back felt like the in-between team from the end of the Golden Generation circa 2008 and the next generation who came of age in Russia in 2018.

Roy Hodgson is a naturally cautious coach so this kind of felt a bit of a weird appointment as most people want England to be more attacking, whereas Roy is more naturally cautious in the way he sets his team up.

His ill-fated short stint as Liverpool manager should have been the red flag for the English FA that this could and inevitably would a bit of a disaster, he couldn’t handle the expectation of a big club and all that went with it and his natural pragmatism would put him at odds with fans and certain players.

Hodgson’s success in his career had been taking teams and moulding them into more than the sum of their parts, taking teams lesser fancied to make a big splash and less inclined to be the team dominating proceedings.

Looking at the squad, he did take some young exciting players who had good seasons like Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling, Luke Shaw and Ross Barkley but no John Terry and Ashley Cole left the back line very inexperienced and weak.

Losing such experience was a bigger factor than thought as there was a lack of tournament nous running through the squad. Now with a tough group it was thinking that this would be a very tough watch, but England could maybe grind their way through it.

Oh, how wrong we were, and it always seemed England would do ok and maybe sneak out of that group but not go much further than that. A three-way battle to see which of England, Italy and Uruguay seemed obvious but nobody seemed to tell Costa Rica that (This World Cup will always remind me of Chris Waddle pronouncing Costa Rica on the Radio and it was my highlight from this tournament)

Costa Rica had upset Uruguay in the first game so the stage was set for both Italy and England to put a marker down or maybe play out a draw that would see both take a step towards the knockouts.

The whole nation thought Raheem Sterling had scored after a few minutes, but it just hit the side netting, that might have been as good as the tournament got for England.

Italy and Andrea Pirlo dictated the tempo of this match and that was a schoolboy error from Hodgson who should have learned his lesson from when he did it to England 2 years previous in knocking them out in Euro 2012, he didn’t match Italy’s three-man midfield or get pressure on the key player for the Azzurri.

It was a dummy from Pirlo which set up Italy’s opener from Claudio Marchisio and seemed to flatten England, however England struck back through Daniel Sturridge two minutes later and there was a thought of maybe this is a different team.

Half time and they were in this game and could go on to win it however this is where the inexperience comes into play in Antonio Candreva dummying Leighton Baines and sending a lovely cross into the box, where Mario Balotelli snuck away from Gary Cahill to score the winner 5 minutes after half time. Italy controlled the rest of the game and England squandered chances to level it up and put themselves in a big hole before the Uruguay game.

Luis Suarez (Arguably with all his controversies became the successor to Diego Maradona in the Enemy of England) came back from injury for Uruguay and of course he would score a header off a lovely pass from Edison Cavani, England looked done until Rooney scored his first World Cup goal to keep their tournament alive.

Then a long punt up field was headed backwards off Steven Gerrard straight to Suarez who didn’t miss and knocked England out of the World Cup. They were still in it, but Costa Rica beat Italy the next day to put themselves through and England out before some teams had even played their second games.

They rotated in the final game, but Costa Rica were through, so the game felt an anticlimax and a 0-0 draw just about summed this tournament up for England. No real spark but some good experience for the young players coming through but overall, for England fans it all felt very meh, a bit par for the course since 2008 as England seemed to slowly decline.

A big problem for the FA is managers they hire who seem to do the opposite of what they intended, in the past they hired managers known for one thing who would do the opposite of what made them great. Hodgson seemed to set up a little more attacking than he used to set up normally; a 4-2-3-1 formation doesn’t scream solidity to me for this manager and this squad of players.

As for Hodgson this should have been a big warning to the FA that he was not the man to lead England, but they were committed to him until 2016, let’s face it if they had sack him there was not an obvious candidate to replace him so why would they want to risk getting it wrong when they could do nothing?

The Debacle against Iceland was inevitable really as Hodgson had stayed on and England just seemed to regress and hit its rock bottom; this tournament however should have really been it for Roy.

England had not performed as badly in a tournament since Euro 2000 with Kevin Keegan except he beat Germany but still lost to Portugal and Romania, I do think you need a bad tournament now and again in hindsight more for a good excuse for difficult conversations about players/tactics and management.

This tournament kind of summed England up in many ways in a team with talent but for every bit of promise they show there is a very basic mistake lurking in the background, always enough to keep you interested but never enough to give you total satisfaction.

The team had come away from the Golden Generation of a decade ago and not only had the standard fell but so did a lot of people’s interest in this England team, Brazil was a disaster for England that was made worse by watching the new and Improved Germany win the trophy.

So, I am going to kick off with those players that went under the radar and maybe just miss out on being in the best team of the decade. Also, as it is the 1990’s, we will be playing 4-4-2.

Goalkeeper: Tim Flowers

Goalkeepers are very difficult to place in something like this as the good ones are rated, but to find someone who needs more praise is a little rare. Putting a title winner as underrated maybe a little bit of a stretch, but being the second-best English goalkeeper behind David Seaman doesn’t put you in the front of most people’s minds.

Flowers was at Blackburn for 6 seasons and was very consistently good in each, but it is the first three seasons where he showed just how good he was. The 1994/95 title winning season proved how good he was, but in particular a huge win against Newcastle at Ewood Park proved he was a massive part of that title win.

Seaman was the dominant and obvious England Number One once Peter Shilton finally decided to retire about 5 years too late, Flowers only got 11 caps and should have been more, but he can always pull out his Le Tournoi medal and how many people have one of those.

Right Back: Earl Barrett

A key cog of Joe Royle’s brilliant Oldham team of the late 80/90’s Earl “The Pearl” Barrett was one of those solid dependable players you just took for granted if you were around in the 90’s.

He earned a move to Aston Villa for a fee that still stands as Oldham’s record transfer fee received for a player for £1.7m, an absolute bargain for Villa as they went close to the Premier League title when they bought him in 1992/93 or the year modern football was born.

Always available and brilliant full back that did not have some of the qualities other full backs possessed; most were capable of blood and thunder tackles where Barrett was a different kind of player but very very good.

Centre Back: Sol Campbell

Before Sol Campbell made the highly controversial decision to join Arsenal on a Bosman in 2001, he was the shining light in the mediocre 90’s for Spurs.

Campbell was one the best emerging defenders in the 90’s, becoming one of the best from 1996 onwards as he was quick and tough but also could play a little which most English defenders couldn’t do or would not get credit for until years later.

The irony of him playing next to Tony Adams for England then replacing him in the next decade is not lost in North London. He honed his skills playing under multiple managers who never really got the best out of the rest of the team but Campbell was always consistent.

Campbell never competed for a league with Spurs so inevitable he wanted more in terms of trophies and testing himself against the best in Europe. His move to Arsenal paid off massively, but his time at Spurs was basically a player full of potential at a club that had no real ambition as a single League Cup win was nowhere near enough.

Centre Back: Ugo Ehiogu

Like fellow Centre Back in this team Sol Campbell, Ehiogu had the prototypical build of a defender for the game in the 90’s. A tall, tough tackling and dominant in the air defender but Ehiogu had a lot more to his game than the cliches.

A very quick player who could act as a stopper if needed but possessed an ability on the ball that was a lot better than most gave him credit for.

Partnered next to one of the all-time great defenders Paul McGrath in the Aston Villa backline formed a very tough but brilliant partnership. He played over 230 league games for Villa before his transfer to Middlesbrough in November 2000 for £8m, Villa got one of the most solid defenders in the first decade of the Premier League for a snip.

Sadly Ehiogu is no longer with us as in 2017 at the age of 44, he suffered a Cardia Arrest at the Tottenham training ground where he was working as a coach. Tributes poured in from fans, writers, ex-teammates and people who knew him best, describing him as a superb player but an even better man.

Left Back: Ian Harte

He may have come to the fore towards the end of the decade but Harte was a brilliant full back in a very exciting Leeds team under David O’Leary.

Maybe a lack of pace stopped him from being top class but he was always reliable when called upon, a true wand of a left foot meant his passing and crosses were an attackers dream.

A free kick specialist who chipped in with lots of memorable goals for Leeds, he may be a player who gets overlooked outside of Yorkshire but was a very dependable defender who always put in a good shift.

Centre Midfield: Jeremy Goss

Goss was a late bloomer who became one of the standout players in Mike Walker’s Norwich City team in the early years of the Premier League. Norwich took everyone by surprise finishing third in the 1992/93 season, Goss was a big part of that with his play in the middle of the pitch.

Not a great goal scorer but certainly a scorer of great goals including a Goal of the Month winner against Leeds in 1994 and the last goal at the Kop at Anfield before it became all seater (Probably much to the annoyance of International Team mate Ian Rush).

His crowning moment was a winner against Bayer Munich in the UEFA Cup in the 93/94 season, showing just how far he and Norwich had come under Walker. Relegated in the 1994/95 season, but he had a peek in the top league few players can say, hard working tenacious midfielder with a bit of magic thrown in from time to time.

Centre Midfield: Rob Lee

A player enticed from the bright lights of London for Newcastle and became a star for the Toon Army, Kevin Keegan bough him to Tyneside and Lee did the rest adding to the superb team Keegan built there.

He told Lee if he joined then he would play for England and he did, Lee was a stalwart of that side that became known as ‘The Entertainers’. Lee was what most midfielders were in the Premier League in the 90’s, being all action players going forward and defensively.

His ability to arrive late in the box helped him chip in with goals, but his passing and winning the ball back made him key to drive his side forward. Lee’s style was a perfect foil to some of the superstars around him in Faustino Asprilla and David Ginola; he was a fan favourite and easy to see why.

Left Wing: Marc Overmars

Now if do not remember Marc Overmars then go and see just how devastating he was for Arsenal in the early years of Arsene Wenger, Olympic sprinters would do well to catch him and the man who made Des Walker look slow when Holland played England in the qualifiers for USA 94.

He only had three seasons at Arsenal but he made those count, having had injury problems at Ajax it was thought he was past his best. He soon made everyone eat their words, terrifying full backs until he left in 2000 to Barcelona.

Forget the pace for a moment but Overmars could really play, two footed player who could score and make goals opening up Arsenal to a new dynamic which helped them become Champions in the 1997/98 season.

He might only have been in the league for a short time but his impact was devastating at times, doubted after his knee problems but showed why he was so highly rated before he came to England and left with a bigger reputation.

Right Wing: Darren Anderton

Alright here is your amnesty for the Sicknote Jokes; this seemed to be a national punchline for him to add to the Andy Cole needs 5 chances to score one that seemed to do the rounds in the 90’s.

A very talented player who had his careers marred by injuries and maybe by not making the move to a club challenging for honours, Sir Alex Ferguson tried to sign Anderton in 1995, but he chose to stay at Spurs.

He was a teammates dream in many ways, a winger who was clever with good vision and passing which would make everyone else’s job a whole lot easier.

Sadly, for him that his nickname stuck as he was a notable fixture in both Terry Venables and Glenn Hoddle’s England teams, his tactical flexibility was an underrated asset. I feel he should get a lot more love than he gets, but Spurs fans will always rate him as do his fellow pros so for that he is in this team.

Striker: Emile Heskey

In the 90’s there was a plethora of Strikers in the Premier League and i will cover a lot of them in future pieces, English strikers were the best they have ever been with quality and depth in abundance.

We all know Heskey from his time at Liverpool being the foil for Michael Owen, it worked perfectly. But it is his time at Leicester that showed a lot of promise.

He was a great foil for his striker parters as he used his size, strength and movement to become an ideal partner to play with.

He did not score as many goals as his counterparts; his time at Liverpool will be harshly remembered for doing a lot of the dirty work for Owen. But he was a very promising striker in the 90’s who maybe could have been more selfish, but that was just not his game as he was happier making goals than scoring them.

Striker: Dean Holdsworth

Not many players make the leap two divisions up then look totally at home in any league in any country; Holdsworth joined from third division Brentford to Wimbledon for the inaugural first season of the Premier League.

He finished third in the Golden Boot race behind Teddy Sheringham and Les Ferdinand with 19 goals, not bad for your first season in the top flight.

Wimbledon were known as the “Crazy Gang” their in your face style and personalities rubbed most people the wrong way, they caused plenty of upsets and punched well above their weight for years until their relegation at the end of the decade.

Holdsworth was a very good finisher and a pain to play against, i mean he wouldn’t trouble an England squad in the 90’s but someone who consistently scored goals for a lower mid-table team would be a certainty for at least one cap now.

Next time out in this series, we jump into the decade that gave us Mourinho, Pizzagate and The Wally with the Brolly with the Underrated team of the 00’s.

This Summer’s World Cup in North America will be 32 years since the last one in 1994, European Champions Spain will be the hot favourites to lift the trophy, but should they have already lifted the trophy the last time?

Now we rewind to 1994 and the greatest tournament of all was heading to the USA; Soccer was going to get the razzle dazzle that only America could provide.

Spain before 2008 had always been the nearly men of international football in the talent was there but something always seemed to get in the way be that mentally/selection/tactics.

This tournament was no different with Italy and Brazil were highly tipped to do well as were Germany, Colombia became a pick closer to the time due to the demolition job of Argentina 5-1 a year before and a surprise pick from Pele himself.

La Roja had some fantastic players in their squad with Pep Guardiola, Luis Enrique, Fernando Hierro, with a lot of players in their primes. The frontrunners in the Bookies eyes were Germany (Current Champions) Brazil, Italy, Argentina & Holland.

Spain were a very Dark Horse going into the tournament at 20/1 according to World Soccer Magazine, but a vast majority of the players had good seasons had some momentum behind them.

They always seemed to have a mental block that stopped them from achieving their potential but also sometimes it comes down to bad luck and not being good enough.

The 93/94 season ended with Barcelona being humbled 4-0 in the Champions League final against AC Milan, but they did win La Liga, so a lot of their players were going into this tournament with a bit of disappointment with something to prove hopefully.

They won their qualifying group ahead of Jack Charlton’s Ireland and reigning European Champions Denmark scoring 27 goals so confidence should have been high, they drew a tricky group with holders Germany as well as South Korea and Bolivia.

Also, this was the first World Cup with three points for a win but also crucially the first World Cup after the Back-Pass rule had come into effect, a crucial point in time for football fans old enough to remember how dour games could be with it.

Javier Clemente was an interesting character to put it mildly as a manager but a very successful one, leading Athletic Bilbao to back-to-back La Liga titles wins in 1982-83 and 1983-84.

He had taken over in 1992 and in qualifying he only lost one game away to European Champions Denmark 1-0, a reverse in the final game in Spain was enough for them to finish top of the group.

There were no real surprises in his squad with Clemente staying loyal to the players who helped Spain to qualify for the tournament.

So on to Dallas for the opener and a tricky game against South Korea, Clemente went with a 5-4-1 lineup but after 25 minutes Spain were in big trouble.

South Korea started very well but one long pass opened the Spanish defence and Miguel Angel Nadal (The Uncle of the great Rafael Nadal) clumsily bundled down the onrushing South Korean attacker and received his marching orders.

Spain got in at the half goalless due to great goalkeeping from Santiago Canizares but came mightily close to conceding early in the second half but for another super save from Canizares at his near post.

South Korea were in the ascendancy but Spain won the ball back in the Korean half and broke quickly Jon Goikoetxea found Julio Salinas for a tap in to put the Spaniards in front.

The Koreans looked stunned and due to some comical pinball in the box Goikoetxea headed Spain into a 2-0 lead, the experience and class had punished the better team and that should have been all she wrote.

Hong Myung- Bo’s deflected free kick gave South Korea hope; it also brought out the nerves in the Spanish and made for a nail biting final few minutes. The Koreans got what they deserved in a point after Seo Jung-won equalised right at the death, Spain let a lead slip or were lucky there was not much time left for them to throw away the game completely.

Next up was the small matter of World Champions Germany but Captain Andoni Zubizarreta was back in goal, Nadal was replaced in defence by Fernando Hierro who drops from Midfield.

A face you might know in Pep Guardiola replaces Hierro in the middle of the park; the final change is Jose Luis Caminero for Julen Guerrero in the attacking midfield role.

This is not the cagey game you would think so early into a tournament as both teams really go for it, Goikoetxea hit a cross that somehow looped in to put Spain 1-0 up.

Then Jurgen Klinsmann heads the ball into the net in the second half although i do think it is already over the line, but a goal is a goal however it goes in.

Both teams trade chances in a pretty exciting game in the Chicago heat, Spain having drawn the first two games got a stroke of luck with South Korea drawing 0-0 with Bolivia in the other group game, so for Spain a win in the final match and they are through.

A raft of changes for the final game against Bolivia but it is a stroll for the Spaniards with Guardiola scoring an early penalty, Caminero scoring two sandwiched between a deflected Erwin Sanchez Bolivia’s only ever goal at the World Cup.

In the Round of 16 they drew Switzerland who came through a tough group with the Hosts the USA, Romania and Colombia so a team not to be underestimated, their manager was also Roy Hodgson years before his big success in the Premier League.

Clemente was always shuffling his pack, so you never really knew how he was going to line up or what formation he was going to play.

This kind of tactical acumen would be lauded now with various Tacticos bursting with excitement at the thought of it, alas it was 1994 and tactics in England were still a dirty word, but the tide was turning slowly.

Both teams traded early chances before a moment of controversy as Switzerland thought they had a foul on the edge of the Spanish box, the referee waved play on and Spain took full advantage.

Fernando Hierro ran from the halfway line and ran straight through one of the highest lines you will see in a game of football, appeals for offside for a returning player fall on deaf ears but then Hierro cooly slots home and Spain take the lead.

With fifteen minutes to go the game was still close, Spain had thrown away leads twice in the tournament, so nothing was going to be taken for granted.

Sergi Barjuan made a run inside from the left and a deft touch found Luis Enrique who did not miss, Spain were deadly on the break and when Albert Ferrer was fouled by the Swiss Keeper Marco Pascolo it was Txixi Begiristain to wrap up the tie from the spot.

3-0 to Spain and suddenly they looked like a big threat in the tournament with their movement, their ability to score goals at will.

However, their reward was a game against the one side they just could not get past in Italy who just squeaked past everyone’s new darlings Nigeria.

Now if Spain had taken a little bit to get going then they looked like Usain Bolt compared to the Italians, they lost their opening game to the Republic of Ireland 1-0 in one of the biggest shocks of the tournament.

The next game they beat Norway 1-0, but Gianluca Pagliuca was sent off after 20 minutes, thus earning him the dubious distinction of being the first Goalkeeper sent off in a World Cup game.

Arrigo Sacchi was already under immense pressure after the opening game, so when Pagliuca was sent off, he made a decision that baffled everyone.

He took Roberto Baggio to bring on a goalkeeper, the boldest of decisions and if Norway had won that game they would have gone out. Alas Dino Baggio (No Relation) scored to save Sacchi and keep them in the competition; they fumbled their way through the rest of the group stage just qualifying as one of the best third placed teams.

Roberto Baggio came into his own in the knockout phases; we will touch on this a little later on. But Sacchi was very unpopular back home as Italy were strong in players but a little vulnerable as a collective so the perfect chance for Spain surely?

So on to the game in Boston, the first 25 minutes are a little cagey with only a few half chances. That is until Donadoni plays the ball into Dino Baggio’s path then he decides to have a go from distance, firing one Zubizarreta with no Spanish player anywhere near him.

Spain in fairness to them did respond well but could not muster a real clear-cut chance, this Italian outfit knew how to defend a lead and had enough on the break keep Spain from over committing.

They did come out of the blocks a lot faster than the Italians, this was rewarded just before the hour. Winning the ball back in midfield, they broke on the left then Sergi pulled the ball back across the box.

A slip from the Left Back Otero meant he missed it, but it kindly fell to Caminero whose shot to a deflection on it’s way in. A slice of luck but football is a game of fine margins so sometimes you need the Gods on your side, now the scores were level who would go on to win it?

Goikoetxea then took a thumping shot from an acute angle to force Pagliuca to make a smart stop, but whatever he could do, Zubizarreta could do tipping over a Nicola Berti shot to keep it level.

The clock rolls on to the 82 minute and probably the moment of the game for Spain, time seemed to stand still in the worst possible way.

Nadal on the halfway line with no pressure clips a lovely ball in behind the Italian defence, Salinas the substitute for Sergi ran onto the ball while some of Italians waited for an offside that never came.

Salinas is in on goal with a chance to win it but for some reason he hesitates, Pagliuca gets very lucky as the hesitation gives him a chance to save it whereas that should have been curtains for the Azzurri.

Now if you watch football enough then you know what is going to happen, there comes a change in the winds that you can just feel like a Fisherman predicting a storm coming whilst looking out on a calm sea.

Spain turn the ball over deep in Italy’s half but in three passes they get it to Beppe Signori who hooks the ball on towards Roberto Baggio and gets flattened for his troubles, but this is the moment.

Baggio running on to the ball with just the keeper to beat is the nightmare scenario for any Spanish fan, he does exactly what you expect him to do and with such aplomb even after a heavy touch.

While Salinas was jittery and nervous with his chance minutes before Baggio looked totally calm and elegant, drifting around the goalkeeper then even from a tight angle managing to find a finish.

A mere mortal with the same chance would have fluffed his lines but not Baggio, I said we would touch on him and so we shall now. He was the difference between Italy going out in each game of the knockout rounds of this tournament, we do not talk about him as we should because of the final but my goodness what a player he was.

But there was one last moment in this game, in the 93^rd minute with Spain pushing for an equaliser with Goikoetxea over hits a cross and at first glance there is no issue, but Luis Enrique goes down off the ball.

The Referee Sandor Puhl of Hungary saw now issue so waved for play to continue, Luis Enrique now covered in blood from the incident meant that something was very clearly missed.

The TV replays showed that Mauro Tassotti had elbowed Enrique in the face, now in the VAR era this would have been a penalty and red card for Tassotti. But there was no card as Enrique who had blood pouring from his nose was incensed by what had happened, Tassotti did get punished after the game but for Spanish fans that meant nothing.

A penalty and a red card giving the Spanish a chance to go into extra time with a man advantage could have been decisive, the game carried on until the whistle blew and they were out but a very bitter and bloody taste in the mouth for the Spanish at the end.

Spain lose to Italy again; they just couldn’t get past them no matter what and would not defeat them until Euro 2008 and a nervy penalty shootout. Then they fully overcame their fear of the Italians in the Euro 2012 final where Spain demolished the Azzurri, their fear of the Italians gone and the image of Enrique bloodied was avenged.

This did not help them in 1994 though, as they were out in controversial circumstances. Italy through that man Baggio beat Bulgaria to get to the final against Brazil, and we all remember how that ended.

Would Spain have beat Bulgaria? Very hard to say as it ranks with so many what if moments in World Cup football.

Clemente’s brand of Basque Hardmen and Flair from Barcelona and Real Madrid for a time meant that they looked like a Dark Horse for the tournament.

They would go out on penalties unluckily to hosts England at Euro 1996, then go out in the Group Stages at France 98 which ended Clemente’s spell with the National side.

He led Spain to long unbeaten runs, but you are judged on how you do in tournaments and he could never put the right mix together and get them over the mental hurdle they needed to get over.

Spain would eventually break their curse as the Bridesmaids of International football with Euro 2008 then winning the World Cup in 2010 then retaining the Euros in 2012.

Now Spain go back to North America as the reigning European Champions hoping to repeat the success of the Tiki- Taka generation, hopefully they do not have a repeat of 1994 as Roberto Baggio, Mauro Tassotti and Italy are not there this time.

Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaká, Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Romario are mega stars of the game, so why does Rivaldo get forgotten?

For a time, Rivaldo was arguably the most devastating player in the world at his peak. He was a player who put up some ludicrous numbers but also goals that make your jaw drop.

I mean i am going to put a link below to some of these goals, you would be forgiven that he is not put up with the greats of all time with some of these stunning goals.

The move to Europe is a move that South American talents take, like a pilgrimage for footballers. Rivaldo is no different as he goes to Deportivo La Coruna, although Parma claimed they bought him and fellow countryman Amaral from Palmeiras prior to the 1996 Olympics.

However a failure to agree contract details allowed the Spanish side to swoop for him, it proved to be a brilliant albeit brief signing. Helping Deportivo to go from mid table to third in the 1996/97 by scoring 22 goals in 46 games, this attracted Barcelona’s attention as they needed to replace another Brazilian genius in Ronaldo.

A huge transfer to Barcelona followed on the urging of Sir Bobby Robson as he would guarantee goals, Robson having had both Romario and Ronaldo at PSV and Barcelona knew a superstar when he saw one.

His first season he helps Barcelona win the League and Copa del Rey, scoring 19 goals in 34 games. In the 1998/99 season he truly shines as Barcelona although Robson is out as manager and Louis Van Gaal joins as manager and brings several Dutch players including Patrick Kluivert to score goals, but Rivaldo makes that signing look redundant at times that season.

Barcelona win the League but go out in the group stages of the Champions League to eventual winner Manchester United and finalists Bayern Munich.

But the game between United and Barcelona in the Nou Camp Rivaldo scores a free kick as well as a superb overhead kick in a pulsating 3-3 draw.

He won the Ballon d’Or that year and considering the company that year is remarkable, also being the first Brazilian player to win the award after the award allowed non-Europeans to be eligible for it in 1995.

Rivaldo was so good at his point that even an argument with Van Gaal about where he should be playing led to Van Gaal backing down and just letting him play his game.

In the 2000/01 season Barcelona needed to beat Valencia to qualify for the next season’s Champions Legue, the stage set for one of the greatest hattricks you will ever see.

I am going to put the video showing the goals here so we can just sit and look on in awe at the greatness, also i am not going to write about this as Rob Smyth already did in the Guardian for the Joy of Six and it’s a lot better than anything i could write on it.

So, i bet you are probably thinking that if he is this good for Barcelona why did we not hear more of him? Well, that answer is a tricky one, but there are a few reasons behind it.

One of those being that Spanish football was on Sky at that time, whereas the league of choice for English fans who wanted foreign football abroad was Serie A as we had Gazzetta Football Italia on Channel 4, so the access was easier.

The Spanish League was not watched as much during this time as Revista de la Liga which would do for Spanish Football what Gazzetta did for Italian football.

The coverage of the Champions League in the UK was on ITV so there was only one game per matchday and that would involve the English team and their opponents that night.

The Copa America was also very hard to pin down as again it was not on Terrestrial TV so between 1998 and 2002 World Cups, it was very difficult to see this genius regularly whereas now he would be someone on everyone’s lips.

He leaves Barcelona after 5 years to go to AC Milan on a free transfer after scoring 130 goals in 235 games. If it was not for Lionel Messi, then those figures would blow your mind.

A weird quirk is that as he leaves Barcelona the viewing gaze from British fans drifts from Italy to Spain as Serie A begins it’s decline culminating in the Calciopoli scandal in a few years’ time.

Rivaldo joins a league that is second to Serie A at that time so when the league is on the ascendency he leaves for one on it’s decline, one of life’s little ironies but another reason in which he did not get more time in the sun.

Now we come to probably the biggest reason in my opinion, the 2002 World Cup in Japan & South Korea as this is the most common Rivaldo memory for everyone.

The play acting against Turkey is the reason for me why he doesn’t get much of the praise and flowers he should, a laughable attempt at playing injured when a ball was struck at him while waiting to take a corner kick.

Holding his face whilst the ball hit his knee then giving a performance that would have got him an Oscar Nomination, it left a bad taste in the mouth for me and everyone else watching.

That stain tainted everything else he did in that tournament as he scored in five straight games for Brazil including a goal against England in the Quarter Finals, also having a massive hand in both goals in the final with his shot being spilt that lead to the opener and his dummy giving Ronaldo room to place his second.

His goal against Belgium is a work of genius, pulling the ball out of the air then into his path with his chest, turn and control it with his second and his third to smash the ball in from outside the box.

Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Ronaldo were as good as you will get in that tournament, avenging the heartache of France 98 and losing the final, doing it in a way that showed the magic of Brazil and why they are everybody’s second team.

In my lifetime one thing i was always certain of is that in football terms the great players are like Shooting Stars, they burn brightest but not for long so enjoy them while you can.

Rivaldo never reached those highs again after that World Cup and his move to AC Milan brought him a Champions League trophy but was the start of his descent even though there was a brief Indian Summer at Olympiacos.

He is one of a small number of players to win a Ballon d’Or, European Cup/Champions League & World Cup alongside

• Lionel Messi

• Ousmane Dembele

• Zinedine Zidane

• Paolo Rossi

• Franz Beckenbauer

• Gerd Muller

• Sir Bobby Charlton

• Kaka

• Ronaldinho

Rivaldo is one of those players that you know the name, but you just don’t get as excited about as you should do.

You know the kind of player if he was mentioned on TNT commentary during a game Ally McCoist would say “what a player he was by the way”

Maybe the Turkey incident soured everyone towards him, maybe he was too quiet for his own good and not giving us more of himself to love or maybe there is not enough space in our minds for talented Brazilian’s (I mean it is a very long list)

His goal catalogue is quite frankly ridiculous, all different variants of free kicks both over and under the wall, overhead kicks, tap ins and thunderbastards.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi’s continued dominance and greatness over a prolonged spell really skewered the way we should look at magic in the game.

Before them being the best player in the world was only a fleeting label for players, you would have it however briefly then it would move on to the next great.

Now if you do not put a sustained run together you are rubbish, unworthy of having as the profile picture of some of the most obnoxious people on social media.

Sorry if this is my Old Man yells at cloud moment, the great players do not own the stage they perform on as they are only passing through.

That is why the game is magic in that air of unpredictability, seeing someone rise then have that moment in the sun as you know it won’t be long enough.

I am guilty of not putting Rivaldo as high as I should do, I don’t think many in my lifetime in terms of Brazilians can sit at the same table as him. One dumb moment should not reflect on all the wonderous moments he gave the game; I mean go look at his highlights and tell me he was not magic.

Hopefully history will be kinder and airbrush out that bad moment then highlight the good things, at his pomp he was the best player on the planet and more people should talk about him like that.

1^St of July 2006 Nelly Furtado’s Maneater was Number 1 for the 4^th straight week, but it was Numb by the Pet Shop Boys which was the sound of the failure in Gelsenkirchen as England were knocked out of the World Cup in Germany.

Over the years an England defeat is normally summed up memorably by a song, like Cast’s Walk Away in Euro 96 or Stop Crying your Heart Out by Oasis in 2002. But it was actually an astute choice as that’s how most England fans felt after losing to Portugal in the Quarter Finals for the second straight tournament.

This was the end of the Golden Generation and the end for Sven-Goran Eriksson, a penalty shootout exit was typical of England of the late 90’s/early 00’s. So how did a team that including Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, David Beckham, and Wayne Rooney fall so far short of expectations?

Well, if you want to get that answer then we have to go back to the night the Golden Generation was anointed, 1^st September 2001 in Munich, for a World Cup Qualifier.

Now England had started the campaign under Kevin Keegan but the win for Germany in the reverse fixture caused Keegan to resign in the toilets after the game.

Sven had work to do to rescue the qualifying campaign plus he had to win over the fans and media being England’s first ever foreign coach.

That night in Germany was a turning point in so many lives, England players played well and won 5-1 to secure the Golden Generation tag while the Germans hit the reset button (Das Reboot by Raphael Honigstein is a terrific book on the subject)

England, however, were being praised in newspapers and radio phone ins suggesting we could go all the way, Sven had a problem, and it was would this result be a springboard to greatness or an albatross for this team?

Hindsight being 20:20 we all know how it turned out, but the team looked so good on paper plus England had a secret weapon who would be unleashed in Portugal in 2004 to look forward to. His first tournament was the 2002 World Cup, the Germany result turned the tide of that group and allowed England to win it with a last-minute David Beckham Free Kick.

Sadly, for Sven he lost Gary Neville to a broken Metatarsal a few weeks after Beckham broke his, Beckham would recover but Neville would not. Also, Steven Gerrard missed the tournament, then his replacement Danny Murphy got injured, so he called up Trevor Sinclair.

If he did realise the challenge, then he would then, England had a good showing in his first tournament, losing to eventual champions Brazil, but the failings in that game as well as the Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari would come back to haunt him.

Cut to Portugal and Euro 2004 as Sven and England eased through qualification but they did have an ace up their sleeve for this tournament, not only did they have virtually fully fit squad, but they also had a new boy wonder in Wayne Rooney.

England lost to France in the opening match to France to two late Zinedine Zidane goals, but it was young Rooney who stole the show and gave fans hope that this could be their time at last.

Wins over Switzerland and Croatia followed but a Quarter Final against hosts Portugal and new coach Luiz Felipe Scolari beckoned.

3 minutes in and Michael Owen scores first just like against Brazil two years previous, England look like they might be coming together in the tournament. However, when it comes to England where triumph and destiny looked ominous, fate always seems to lurk and send England back down to earth with a mighty thump.

Wayne Rooney was England’s new Golden Boy who emerged from the opening game against France proving he belonged on the World Stage with a performance beyond his years, he emerged as the new Talisman but with England Talisman there is always a low right after the high.

Rooney got injured just before the half hour mark and England instead of kicking on and winning the game, failed to punish the hosts.

They went in 1-0 up but Portugal came back out with renewed vigor and took the game to England, they had to survive a few scares but in the 83-minute Helder Postiga broke their resistance.

Into Extra time it went with the game becoming tense as players were wary of the glory of being a hero but also the cost of being the villain. Penalties seemed inevitable; Rui Costa scored to make it look like all hope was lost. But Frank Lampard equalised, and it was to be decided by penalties.

This was a huge moment for Sven and England who had been plagued with heartache from penalty kicks since Italia 90. He was brought in to change the team’s psyche and push them on like he did with his previous clubs like Lazio on to glory.

But this is England, and we don’t win penalty shootouts, needless to say the hosts held their nerve and England lost theirs. Now the tournament was over but not a total loss.

Wayne Rooney emerged as the next talisman for the national team, and he would lead England on to glory in the homeland of our biggest rivals Germany for the 2006 World Cup, right?

The hype before the tournament was big, England qualified easily and the thought was that the Golden Generation was maturing ready for the tournament, Eriksson had been in the job for 5 years now but after the Fake Sheikh scandal was going to leave after the tournament.

So, the scene was set for a perfect send-off, right? Well again this is England so the one thing we didn’t want to happen happened, Wayne Rooney got injured right before the tournament like David Beckham in 2002 ironically with the same Metatarsal injury.

Thus, Sven decided that he was worth the gamble of taking him knowing he wasn’t going to play in the opening games, Rooney is the only player you take that gamble within that squad.

However, Sven took an even bigger risk by selecting Theo Walcott, who had not played a senior minute for Arsenal after his big move from Southampton.

He didn’t take the highest scoring English player in Darren Bent or a proven goal scorer like Jermain Defoe so when Michael Owen got hurt in the group stages everything was coming to its inevitable conclusion.

England became a circus as the celebrity culture of the team, WAG’s (Wife’s and Girlfriends’) suddenly took on a new level of scrutiny for everyone. They were on the front page of the tabloids and not the back so now the pressure was cranked up to unbearable levels, following the England team began to feel like a chore with overexposure suffocating any chance they had.

Minus the Owen injury England navigated the group stages well getting out of a group of Paraguay, Sweden and Trinidad & Tobago then beating Ecuador in the second round to set up another encounter with Portugal.

Performances were passible at best, but there was hope that things would get better and that coincided with Rooney getting more minutes. However, Sven didn’t trust Peter Crouch to play up top on his own, so he picked Rooney as the lone striker for this game, and this was a decision that would cost him.

The game itself was very cagey until a tangle involving Rooney and Ricardo Carvalho ended with Rooney placing his foot on an intimate area of Carvalho’s anatomy. Then the Portugues players gathered round the referee and Cristiano Ronaldo was pushed by Wayne Rooney and Rooney was then sent off; Sven’s finale was starting to slowly unravel against Scolari for a third time.

England managed to grind out the rest of the game and then extra time, but it went to penalties, England’s kryptonite as in Italia 90, Euro 96, France 98, and Euro 2004. Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, and Jamie Carragher all missed, ironic that the player based in Germany Owen Hargreaves who scored his penalty.

The Golden Generation was over and a tournament that should have been the culmination of Sven’s reign but felt more like an anti-climax, the celebrity culture had taken over the England camp with the WAGs becoming more famous than the exploits of the players.

Sven himself had been caught up in the celebrity that being manager of the Golden Generation brought but once you start making headlines for your extra-curricular activities then it is only right that more scrutiny will follow.

The FA decided to go with a foreign coach but picked Eriksson as he had helped Lazio overcome their biggest hurdle in their own mental fragility to win the League in 99/00.

But a big reason is that Swedish football had been shaped in part by two Englishmen in Bob Houghton and future England Manager Roy Hodgson, they came to Sweden and changed tactically the way the game was thought of.

Both were key in implementing a more English style which heavily influenced Eriksson with a flat back four and more emphasis on pressing higher up the field.

Instead of getting someone capable of harnessing the Golden Generation, England got a manager who just couldn’t quite overcome club rivalries/tactical and selection problems as well as the unbearable weight the England shirt holds in any tournament.

His achievements are on par with many other England managers since Sir Alf Ramsey barring Sir Bobby Robson and the late Terry Venables in that they just could not figure it out when it really mattered.

But the night in Munich that signaled the arrival of the Golden Generation also lumbered them with a burden of expectation that would hamper them at crucial points.

England expects but it rarely lives up to it when the summer approaches and the tournaments start, by the end of Sven’s time he had been chewed up and spat out by the England job like many others were.

A caricature of himself that diminishes his achievements pre-England in the game as the man who couldn’t achieve with the best players this country had produced at that time.

I started to write this a few months before the sad passing of Sven Goran Eriksson and it is hard to quite sum up his time as manager of England, sadly the English press can destroy even the best England managers.

He was no different. He was very consistent in getting the team to major tournaments and through to the Quarter Finals in each which is better than a lot of others but still came undone trying to overcome a fragile mentality at taking the decisive step which seems no sign of ending.

2006 looking back was a tournament there for the taking, Spain was just getting in position for their run of dominance starting 2 years later and France as well as Brazil were fading with their stars coming to the end.

An ageing Italy team with the Calciopoli scandal dominating Serie A and thus the definitive end of the Serie A golden years, they were great defensively.

I do feel they deserved it in the same way an actor sometimes gets an Oscar not for the role they played but more like a lifetime achievement award.

But as usual England always promises so much then delivers so little. In the end, when the black and white montage plays at the end of England’s tournament on the BBC, you think about what could have been but in the end all you feel is numb.

There is a theory that the World Cup closest to your Tenth Birthday is often your favourite as you are at an age when you not only love football.

But you are aware enough to understand just how special a World Cup truly is, the best players in the world all playing in one tournament.

Euro 96 was my first tournament to watch, but this made me even more excited. By the time the Summer of 98 rolled around, the Premier League had started to grow into the Giant that it is today.

Foreign players were now commonplace in England and with Gazzetta Football Italia on Channel 4 we knew who some of the best players in the world were as they were in either England or Italy.

In England at that time, we were just coming to the end of “Cool Britania” where football was feeding the culture around it and vice versa.

So, there was a lot of hype around the tournament and of course England had gone through after that infamous night in Rome where England drew with Italy to qualify for France.

There was even more hype for me when the Official game for France 98 came out on PlayStation One, with the intro to it being the Official Mascot Footix running through the streets of France soundtracked by Chumbawamba’s hit song Tubthumping.

This as well as Panini Sticker book albums really enhanced the buildup to the tournament for me as I was too young for USA 94. Euro 96 was my first tournament and that certainly did make you feel like football was the best thing in the world.

So, when you knew there was something even bigger coming over the horizon, well you just knew it was going to be worth waiting for.

From the first game seeing the reigning Champions Brazil beat Scotland and seeing the best player in the world Ronaldo in the iconic yellow jersey for the Seleção was magic.

The two other sides I really wanted to watch were the hosts France and the Netherlands as I knew most of the players from Euro 96 and the Premier League.

They were both superb in the group stages and qualified with minimum fuss but just like my dad I still to this day have a soft spot for the Azzuri, Football in Italy was like football from another planet.

The same feeling musicians got seeing David Bowie perform on Top of the Pops; it was still music but nothing like you had ever seen before almost like from another Galaxy.

Argentina was a bit of a novelty for me as Brazil were the team on every advert for Nike and you knew all their superstars, but this was my first introduction to them, and they did not disappoint.

I mean come on, Juan Sebastian Veron, Ariel Ortega, Gabriel Batistuta and many other greats you knew they were serious

As for England they started well winning against Tunisia, I remember Paul Scholes scoring a great goal as we all watched it in the school hall on a TV, they wheeled in.

Also how can anyone forget that the game was on at 13:30 on a Monday, we were greeted to the one and only Des Lynam opening the BBC Coverage with the immortal line “Shouldn’t you be at work”.

Another amazing thing was being able to watch football instead of doing schoolwork and if you get told this is more important than school then you know it’s big.

England were supposed to win that group, but nobody told Romania that who won the group and sent England into second place and a date with Argentina in the knockout rounds.

This also inadvertently began the infamous ITV curse for England in Tournaments, England who have a better record when games are broadcast on BBC than ITV ever since.

The BBC got first pick of the games as they rotate with ITV for each tournament, then they thought England would win the group and set up a clash in Bordeaux with Croatia.

ITV would get a clash between Argentina and Colombia (The other favorite in England’s group to go through) but again nobody told Romania.

So instead, the BBC got the early game of the day Romania vs Croatia and ITV got the big one in England vs Argentina.

As a 9-year-old you do not understand the historical significance of the Falklands War or the Hand of God, but you still knew it was going to be a huge game.

I mean it was 2-1 England after 16 minutes, Michael Owen scoring one of England’s great goals of the World Cup, but a quick free kick routine catches them out before half time.

Now stop me if you have heard this one before, but England go out on penalties, first Euro 96 then this I thought they were unlucky, this kind of thing would not happen again, but boy was I wrong on that.

There were no real surprises in the Round of 16 so onto the quarter finals, France knocked out a good Italy team on penalties to go through.

This was the only game that I thought was a little dull, not much incident but lots of tension the closer it got to the end of extra time and penalties.

Brazil beat Denmark in a 3-2 thriller that as a young fan you think all World Cups are like this, a lesson I learned was sadly not the case the older I got.

The Next game was the best Quarterfinal as the Holland beat Argentina, the players on display in this game were unreal and I remember watching Dennis Bergkamp pull down a long ball from Frank de Boer kill it with one touch then beat the defender with second and score with the third in the 90th minute.

Barry Davies’ commentary for that goal will stay with me for a long time; he captured that goal beautifully, I remember not having any rooting interest for either side but still celebrating that goal like it was for my own side.

Then the shock of the round in Croatia beating Germany 3-0, now even when you are young you still get that Germany are this huge juggernaut that always goes through competitions and gets the job done.

In hindsight this was a team on its way down and Croatia had been good at Euro 96 as well as in this tournament so it should have been no surprise.

I loved watching that side as they seemed the underdog to the established big nations at the tournament, so to see them really stick it to Germany was a beautiful thing and in that beautiful Croatian kit is the Cherry on the cake.

The final four was Brazil, Holland, France, and Croatia, on reflection that was probably right.

As you had the three best sides in the world at the time and Croatia who had been exceptionally good throughout the tournament.

In the first Semi-Final Brazil and Holland played out a 1-1 draw with Patrick Kluivert scoring near the end to take it to extra time, then the dreaded penalty shootout. Philip Cocu and Ronald de Boer missed theirs and Brazil scored all theirs to send them through to their second consecutive final.

That Dutch side from around 96-02 really should have gone on to do a lot more in tournaments as they arguably had the best team and depth in the world but infighting and penalty shootouts just seemed to be their downfall each time.

Then the Hosts France took on the underdog in Croatia, Davor Suker struck first but two goals from an unlikely source in Lillian Thuram put the hosts into the final. He only ever scored two goals for France and what a game to do it in.

A sad end for Croatia but they did finish third beat Holland in the 3rd/4th place game and Suker won the Golden Boot so a nation that a few years back emerged from a state of War had its Sporting moment in the sun.

So on to the main event, the Hosts taking on Brazil but there was controversy just before the game as the best player in the world Ronaldo was left off the team sheet. This caused chaos as nobody knew why, then just before the game he was back in the starting line-up.

So, what happened? Many theories were ranging from he was dropped to him having a seizure and Nike pressuring the Brazilian National team for him to play such was their sponsorship deal at the time. In recent years it is true he had a seizure on the day of the game and in hindsight he should not have played but this match was so big he had to.

Zinedine Zidane had been a player on the cusp of greatness, and he took his chance on the biggest stage by scoring two headers in the first half to help France win 3-0.

Brazil seemed nowhere near what they should be but with their Talisman not fully fit they could do nothing but watch as France cruised to a win.

Looking back on this tournament and remembering just how good it really was, this was in a short golden era from 98-02 where some of the best players and teams were so good making for some amazing matchups.

My memories of mostly playing football in-between games and pretending I was Ronaldo or Zidane or Batistuta in a glorious albeit brief English Summer are special to me.

The First World Cup is something that says with you; nostalgia can be something that can taint your memory of how it really was.

But for me at least the memories are of an innocent time in my life when I fell in love with the game, the older me is more cynical and as i look back to that summer and see moments from it then i feel something as warm as that French Summer sun.

So that is why I prefer to look back and for this tournament there are some joyous moments from Iran beating the USA, the context of this is quite ironic given current events.

Jamaica added a great energy to an already colourful and vibrant tournament. Most memorable moments come from teams who are not going to win the whole thing but more just getting there. Having a chance to show what they can do on the biggest stage is the whole point, it’s a carnival of football and joy for everyone.

On the whole France 98 was a superb tournament, played out in a glorious French summer with some of the best stars on the planet, a few shocks sprinkled in with some outrageous skills and goals.

As a young football fan this was heaven, I hope future generations can experience moments like this and have their own memories to look back on as fondly as I do, but I fear that time may be over.

A win in the now defunct Cup Winners Cup in 1994 is their last European Silverware with defeats in the UEFA Cup final to Galatasaray in 1999/00, the 2005/06 Champions League to Barcelona. Also losing the all English 2018/19 Europa League Final to Chelsea so they have had their fair share of heartbreak on the continent.

Arsenal are the great underachievers in the Champions League having played 226 games in the tournament without winning, even ahead of clubs like Atletico Madrid and Roma for the size of the club and how close they have been with players they have.

One thing I kept hearing about Arsenal after the game was various iterations of Arsenal will be back in the final, this led me to think to myself, will they?

This is often the kind of cliche said after Superbowl’s when a team has a young Quarterback, it’s this is the start of the dynasty, they will have multiple visits, but the gods of sport don’t always see it that way.

I remember as many of you do if you are reading this as football fans, the amazing Valencia team of the early 00’s. Two losing finals to Real Madrid and Bayern Munich back-to-back then faded away so it happens so Arsenal need to beware.

Mikel Arteta has worked wonders since becoming Arsenal manager in December 2019, pulling them together and winning the league this season.

However European glory is a different animal to the domestic game, it never stands still and as we speak Europe’s elite are in an arms race to get back to the top.

Barcelona have gone out spending €80m on Anthony Gordon a man who scored 10 goals in the competition for Newcastle this season, they are also lining up a bid for Julian Alvarez from Atletico Madrid for over €100m.

Bayern Munich will look to do two things this summer; one is to reinforce the defence after that unbelievable tie against PSG in this year’s semifinals. Number two is getting Jamal Musiala fully fit, if he can recapture his form then him playing behind Luis Diaz, Harry Kane and Micheal Olise is mouthwatering.

Real Madrid will always be a player in this competition regardless of whatever chaos is going on at the club, Jose Mourinho looks like he will be back so he could galvanise a talented group to become European Champions again or be chased out of Madrid by the fans it is unclear which will happen.

Atletico Madrid will always be competitive under Simeone but losing Antoine Griezmann and potentially Julian Alvarez will hurt their chances of winning the trophy, that being said they will be hard to beat and could provide an upset or two if taken too lightly.

Inter Milan will be the only Italian team i can see that might go the distance, a very well run and talented side who under new manager Cristian Chivu will look to improve after their embarrassment in losing to Bodo/Glimt this season.

But what of Arsenal’s domestic rivals, Manchester City will be hoping Enzo Maresca is not their David Moyes replacing Sir Alex Ferguson after a decade under Pep Guardiola. The team is talented, but one or two big holes will need replacing so they can challenge next season but will be tough.

Liverpool have binned Arne Slot and are looking to appoint Andoni Iraola to bring back the high pressing attacking team the fans yearn since Jurgen Klopp left. They have a lot of work to do but some good pieces to build around; they have the experience of getting over the line in Europe.

Aston Villa boasts one of the best managers in European Competitions in recent history in Unai Emery, with a very solid talented squad they could certainly cause a lot of side big headaches next season.

Then Manchester United are back into the Champions League after a few low moments under Ruben Amorim, under Michael Carrick though there will be some optimism that the new look United can go deep in Europe and give the Old Trafford faithful some memories under the lights next season.

These are the contenders most likely to rival Arsenal in getting to a European Final, so the competition will be fierce. This is of course not to mention PSG going for a threepeat, so there is no guarantee of a rematch in Madrid next year.

Arsenal has a very solid team but improving it without ruining the balance is the hardest part, almost like a game of Jenga in removing the wrong piece could bring everything crashing down.

They will almost certainly be after a new left winger as Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli have not really thrilled in that position, you need some special creative players to win this competition so look for Arteta to upgrade their if he is able to.

Will they be able to rise to the challenge next season though? The hardest part of a title win is what comes next; repeating is the mark of a great side. They will want to win back-to-back league titles, but will that then affect them going for the Champions League?

Injuries, suspensions, loss of form are all things that affect every side but if you juggle this on four fronts next season then which do you prioritize?

Also one big factor in the defeat was how the rules were very strictly applied in the Champions League final, Daniel Siebert blew for half time as Arsenal were taking too long over a corner so the tactics that they have gotten away with domestically were not going to be replicated in Europe.

New rules are coming in to stop all the shenanigans around set pieces and the fouling and time wasting that goes on from them, Arsenal’s biggest strengths this season could take a big hit next season if these new rules are implemented domestically and in Europe.

Funny how over a decade ago Arsenal were usually the victims of physicality and set piece routines under Arsene Wenger, now they seemingly have decided if you cannot beat them then join them.

The old 1-0 to the Arsenal under George Graham is the comparison with Arteta but he should also beware with new rules coming into to prevent the Royal Rumble’s we see at Set Pieces starting at this summer’s World Cup could affect them like the backpass rule did to Graham’s side.

There are so many factors in getting to one European Final, but there are even more to get back there. It’s a delicate recipe if you add too much you ruin it but if you add nothing it is not going to be good enough.

After the 2006 final I thought that team would go onto to do better things and get back to another final, sadly the next season they went out in the Knockout Round to PSV Eindhoven.

The Premier League title win will ease the pain of the defeat for now, but when the Champions League music plays in September then it will reignite the fire for Arsenal to go again.

Two years ago, they were Quarter Finalists, last season they were Semi Finalists and this season runners up. Can they do it next season and go one better?

Maybe but then again this is football and the reason we keep coming back to it is that it is unpredictability at its core. The numbers and information tell you they should be back, but there are no guarantees in this life and especially in football.

We as a society praise people when they achieve so it is only right that we let them know when they let us down, for everyone in this year’s team I just want you to know I am not angry just disappointed.

Goalkeeper: Robert Sanchez

Chelsea had a horrible season considering how much they have spent in the last few seasons, on ex Brighton players and Staff when it might have been cheaper to just buy the club itself.

Sanchez has not been a solid or reliable keeper for Chelsea, Mike Penders, who was on loan at their sister club Strasbourg might be the preferred choice of new coach Xabi Alonso next season.

Sanchez has been more error prone under Enzo Maresca then Leroy Rosenior so it feels that his time might be up as a starter, he wore a skull cap towards the end of the season hopefully fans thinking Petr Cech was back but Cech now would still be more reliable.

Right back: Jeremie Frimpong

Technically a wing back from his days at Bayer Leverkusen, but he is going in here for where he has played most of the season.

Following Trent-Alexander Arnold will always be difficult as not only was he a local boy but a very unique profile of player. Frimpong is more a winger, but Salah is the winger on that side. He looks like a signing for next season after a change in style/formation, so he has a lot to do next year.

Frimpong is a good player but the system is not what suits him and also he never developed any kind of relationship with Mo Salah, next season they have to figure out what to do with their right hand side with Salah gone to get the best of Frimpong.

Centre Back: Cristian Romero

23 games for Romero this season with 9 yellow cards and two red cards, at this point you wonder if he is a hot head or just trying to get out of the team. The fact he is Captain makes his season even more shocking, especially when they started to drift to the trap door and the Championship.

A great player on his day but he has put his team in bad places with his performances and shot himself in the foot to help Argentina defend their World Cup in the Summer.

Odds will be on a quick transfer out in the summer regardless of what happens at Spurs. This season he has not been someone to rely on, unless you are backing cards in a Spurs game.

Centre Back: Jean-Clair Todibo

This is a curious case as Todibo was a very highly rated defender after his time at Nice, £32.8m, according to The Athletic. This is what they paid to turn his loan from the previous season into a permanent one.

Unfortunately for the Frenchman it all went downhill from there with injuries, suspensions and changing managers so soon after the season started.

He had his moments in his time at West Ham where he kind of symbolised the club in a way, a big name signing with promise for big money but woefully underwhelmed.

A return to Ligue 1 would be best for him if he could find any takers as this might be something he can shake off his career, but I had hoped for better from him and West Ham and was let down.

Left Back: Antonee Robinson

This time last season Antonee Robinson was the best left back in the league and seemed a certainty to be the big signing for Liverpool to be Andy Robertson’s long-term successor. Alas that did not happen, and they went for Milos Kerkez who was a close second for this position, so what happened to Robinson?

He only played 21 league games this season, so a little bit of injury has hampered him, his form never got close to being what has been his standard for the last few years at Fulham.

Hopefully for him a World Cup in his home Country could help him rediscover his form, or did he make a mistake not cashing in his chips and going for the big move last summer?

Centre Midfield: Carlos Baleba

A recurring theme in this list is players who had a great season last season but had trouble backing it up this season.

Manchester United were in for him last season and it would appear the constant speculation threw him off his game, Brighton wanted mega money for the player which is their right as the selling club and United refused.

His own Manager Fabian Hurzeler even admitted his head was not right; throughout the season either replaced him at half time or earlier. He was better for Cameroun at the African Cup of Nations and slowly came back towards the end of the season, however i had high hopes he would kick on to show he was one of the best midfielders in the league.

Sadly, he has not even been the best Brighton midfielder this season, Brighton will never get the money they demanded last year but i do hope Baleba can find those levels again either on the South coast or somewhere else in the future.

Centre Midfield: Ryan Gravenberch

How can you go from being the best player in a title winning team to being on this list? Well, it is a bit like asking how Al Pacino can win an Oscar for Scent of a Woman to a Razzie in Jack & Jill.

The answer is i don’t know, he was brilliant last season so maybe the change of position for him under Arne Slot was just something that was only going to work short term. Liverpool as a team have fallen off massively, but Gravenberch has been truly bad given his standards last season.

There is a big storm brewing at Anfield in the Summer and if Slot goes then he could be on the chopping block for a new potential manager. A good World Cup could help him as he needs to get back to his best fast.

Attacking Midfield: Florian Wirtz

Am I picking on Liverpool a little bit here? Subconsciously maybe but given they were the Champions and Writz was the new jewel in the crown then you have to say what you see.

Wirtz is a talented player, but he does not control the transfer fee, also this Liverpool side is in transition, the style needs to change. He has been good in bits but for his fee and pundits waxing lyrical about him, I did expect more so a quick start will be needed next season if we are all to eat humble pie.

Left Wing: Justin Kluivert

The difficult second album is a way you could sum up his season; a brilliant campaign for Bournemouth had him as one of the best players outside the Big Six.

This season however he has regressed and even though he has had injuries he just couldn’t replicate what he did last season.

Bournemouth went through a lot of change and i thought Kluivert might be someone who could carry on and help take them to the next level. Well they have but they have done it with Kluivert on the bench mostly and when he has got on it has showed he has lost it, let’s hope it doesn’t cost him his World Cup place with the Dutch as he was starting to come into his own and needs to find it pretty quick.

Right Wing: Anthony Elanga

When Anthony Elanga moved to Newcastle for £55m i immediately thought a great deal for Nottingham Forest. He is a good player but don’t get me wrong but that was way too much money and the fit was horrible.

Newcastle have had a lot of problems and spending poorly is a big part of it, Elanga has great pace, but his technical skill was covered by Forest’s tactical system.

The fact he has made more substitute appearances in the league than starts is a big red flag for me, he has not made the leap as hoped and his place is already under threat in the squad never mind the team.

Elanga needs a solid start next season because if Jacob Murphy is getting more minutes than him on that right hand side then he will be entering into worst signings of the last few years easily.

Striker: Tolu Arokadare

A top goal scorer from a European League is normally a good indicator of quality, but this signing is less Erling Haaland and more Alfonso Alves. Arokadare has all the attributes you would think a good Premier League striker would need in physicality and aerial ability, so what went wrong?

Well, the step up in quality can affect any player coming to the league. If you dominate a different kind of league, then as a buying side you best make sure the qualities translate. In recent years you can look at Wolves as a springboard for players to get bigger moves, but this move is more of an ironing board if you ask the Wolves faithful

Wolves lost all its attacking creativity in the summer so goals for them were always going to be an issue, but you would have expected a little bit more.

If he stays at Wolves then there is a chance he could be someone to build around and he could get his confidence back, however we all know how this plays out and the only question is which Turkish team buys him for a discount this summer?

With that in mind I am going to look at the players who had great seasons but were overlooked in the Traditional Team of the Year.

So, without any further ado, here is your team.

Goalkeeper: Robin Roefs

Moving to a newly promoted club as a Goalkeeper is always a gamble as you will almost certainly be very busy, Roefs came in as one of many signings in the summer of 2025, but he established himself early on as undisputed number one for Sunderland.

The fact he looks like a veteran in the league despite it being his debut season says everything, a reliable and commanding presence for Sunderland which has helped them into a comfortable mid table finish.

Despite only having one full season in Dutch Football with NEC Nijmegan and a good Euro Under 21 tournament with Holland, he is already on his way to the top and will be interesting to see how long Sunderland can hold on to him.

Right Back: James Justin

Technically this is a pick that is based on the last few months, and he has played predominantly as Left Wing back/Right Wing Back as well as Right Centre Back. But this is my team of the year so my rules.

Justin has had an up and down career with Leicester and his bad injuries so it is great to see him back in the Premier League and thriving in this new position.

A very shrewd purchase from Leeds and to see him play in multiple positions in different formations just goes to show his versatility and trust Daniel Farke has in him to play wherever needed.

Centre Back: Omar Alderete

Not the first player from Sunderland on this last and won’t be the last; Alderete joined for just over £10m so an absolute bargain.

A tough no nonsense defender who has shown he has a bit of class in his game too; his style is perfect for the league as he relishes the physical challenge.

His previous club in Getafe definitely prepared him for Sunderland with his qualities in both boxes and his leadership qualities shining through very early on in the season.

Centre Back: Marco Senesi

Losing 3 out of your starting back four is horrible for any club to deal with but Bournemouth just took the money and replaced them effortlessly. Dean Huijsen went to Real Madrid, Illia Zabarnyi went to PSG and Milos Kerkez went to Liverpool.

Marco Senesi was the old head at the back. This season he stepped into the void and never looked back, becoming the leader for their team in their brilliant season. He is going to leave on a free transfer but no indications whereas of yet.

The Argentine International was brilliant with the most interceptions amongst defenders in the Premier League, great on the ball too so he will most certainly be hot property for any of the top clubs in the summer.

Left Back: Neco Williams

Nottingham Forest have had a poor season and that is putting it mildly, the only club to have four different managers in the same season in the Premier League.

Still a Europa League Semi-Final and survival will be a relief for fans; the shining lights for them will obviously be Morgan Gibbs-White and Elliot Anderson.

But if you look deeper then Neco Williams has been Mr. Consistency, given all that has gone on this season it is remarkable anyone was to be fair.

A solid defender who has attracted interest from other Premier League clubs with his performances and adaptability on both flanks, if Forest do not tie him down then the loss might feel as big as an Anderson or Gibbs White given the unsung work he does for the team.

Centre Midfield: Noah Sadiki

Now this is the last Sunderland player on my list. Honestly, the recruitment team hopefully got a big bonus for the summer window as they knocked it out of the park.

£17.5m from Union SG is an absolute bargain considering how good he has been this season, not many fans would have have heard of him before but have grown to love him for his displays this season.

32 appearances this season for the DR Congo international, his performances have been outstanding. His energy and dynamism have been a key cog in Sunderland’s success this season with his partnership with Granit Xhaka, one of the best in the league.

Several of the big clubs in the Premier League, most notably Chelsea and Manchester United, are big admirers of the midfielder, Sunderland won’t want to let him go but could make three or four times the fee they paid back, it would be totally worth it.

Centre Midfield: Ethan Ampadu

One of the many youngsters who show promise only to get bought by Chelsea, then swallowed up in their loan system without troubling the first team Ampadu has been around a bit for a young player.

Loans at RB Leipzig, Sheffield United, Spezia and Venezia is an interesting career path, but his permanent move to Leeds has been the making of the Welsh International.

His step up to the Premier League has been seamless; Ampadu has very quietly matured into a very good defensive midfielder and a key cog for Leeds.

Ampadu has already played over 60 times for Wales. That experience shows his use of the ball is brilliant as well as his engine and physicality have been key for Leeds staying in the Premier League.

Without doubt one of the underrated midfielders in the league, Leeds needs to sign him to a new deal as it will not be long before one of the big clubs tries to tempt him out of Yorkshire.

Centre Midfield: Joao Gomes

Ruben Neves, Vitinha, Joao Moutinho are just a few of the superb midfielders Wolves have had over the last decade, now times have not been good recently, but Joao Gomes has been a rare light in the darkness.

Tenacious and great use of the ball has attracted the attention of Atletico Madrid so he will leave for pastures new, sadly this season has been terrible for Wolves so it is hard to get excited by a relegated team but Gomes was one of the standouts.

A good season will always get lost in one of the worst teams we have seen in the Premier League era, however i do feel someone most probably Atletico will feel they have snagged a potential bargain.

Left Wing: Jaidon Anthony

As with Gomes at Wolves, it can be hard to find the good in a relegated season; Burnley were a little bit better but still went down.

After a good loan spell for Burnley helping them get out of the Championship last season, Anthony joined permanently this season and has been a standout this season.

8 goals this season equals his tally from last season, but his overall game has improved no end, Burnley may go down but i think he may have done enough to secure himself a move away if he wants it and Burnley could make a tidy profit too.

Right Wing: Harry Wilson

This is probably his best season of his career since he was on loan to Fulham in the Championship in the 2021/22 season. He is out of contract this summer and primed for a move to another club, maybe Everton or Aston Villa possibly.

Ten goals have seen him become Fulham’s top goal scorer and hopefully he takes this form on to the next club, with Marco Silva possibly leaving it does seem like a good time for him to leave with fans wanting more.

A scorer of great goals rather than a great goal scorer, but it is nice to see him finally get his flowers after being underrated for Fulham for the last few seasons.

Striker: Dominic Calvert-Lewin

There was a brief time at Everton where Calvert-Lewin looked like a superstar in the making. Under Carlo Ancelotti, he scored 16 league goals in 33 games during the 2020/21 season.

He looked like the player he could be but sadly a tale of what could have been a great career marred by injuries and inconsistencies, so when Leeds snapped him up on a free transfer this summer, it was a gamble but one worth taking.

Calvert-Lewin has always had the attributes to be a very good Premier League Number 9, now he is fit and in a side that utilise his strengths hopefully this can be the start of a career resurgence.

Who doesn’t love a good comeback story?

Zan Vipotnik

The Championship Top Goal Scorer is one player that if he is not playing for a team that gets promoted then more often than not, they move to a Premier League club in the next Transfer Window.

Vipotnik joined Swansea from Bordeaux as a free agent after Bordeaux went into Administration; they would make a lot of money if he was sold in the summer, turning out a huge profit after only two seasons.

Big number 9’s are back in with Viktor Gyokeres, Benjamin Sesko, Erling Haaland in the Premier League and while Vipotnik is not on that level, he is a fun prospect for someone to mould.

Benfica and Sporting Lisbon are already sniffing according to reports in Portugal, Sporting will be hoping to repeat their success with Gyokeres when they bought him from Coventry and sold him to Arsenal last summer for a huge profit.

In the Premier League, however, I would keep an eye on Brighton as after they sold Gyokeres to Coventry they may look at not missing out on a top striker again. Danny Welbeck is a wonderful player but is 35 and Georgino Rutter has not hit the highs since his transfer from Leeds.

I expect Everton and Newcastle to be linked with him purely as both those clubs need a new striker but i doubt that a transfer to either would materialise.

Abdul Fatawu

If there is one thing we all love in life it is a bargain and Football clubs are no different, the shocking relegation to League One for Leicester City is a disaster for them but an opportunity for others.

Fatawu had been one of the bright sparks for Leicester in a disastrous few years for them; he is a winger who has a lot of potential. He came back this season from an ACL Injury in the 24/25 season, so this might have put clubs off beforehand as they would want to see how/if he comes back to how he was before the injury.

A brilliant player who is a good dribbler, can go both ways and is a nightmare for a defender if he is one on one with you, I would not be shocked to see a few teams look at him to see someone who might take their team to the next level.

For me he showed enough at Premier League level that a club that does take a chance on him could reap the rewards in the long run, he will also go to the World Cup with Ghana so depending on how new Ghana coach Carlos Queiroz uses him he could mean his price goes up considerably as most players who have a good World Cup do.

Sunderland has a long-standing interest in the Ghanaian International but i think a move to Aston Villa following Youri Tielemans move to Villa Park would be a very shrewd move.

Villa need someone to fill their right-hand side but need to spend shrewdly and this could see them improve their team and save money, while Fatawu stays in the midlands and goes to play Champions League football should/when Villa qualify.

Dom Ballard:

Last season for Leyton Orient finished 6^th and Charlie Kelman scored 21 in the league and 27 overall for the O’s. This got him a move from QPR where he was on loan from to Charlton.

This season Dom Ballard joined them from Southampton and took his opportunity to shine with both hands, 23 goals in 44 games is very impressive especially for a player in his first season not on loan and starting regularly.

Ballard was the top goal scorer in League One this season and with Orient spending it fighting relegation this is even more important. A lot of players like Ballard can get lost in the loan system at big clubs, getting a permanent move and regular football can be a catalyst to prove to everyone and more importantly yourself you are more than good enough for the Football League.

Look at the clubs who will be in the Championship next season and i think you will get maybe close to a dozen teams, maybe more who might take the gamble on Ballard. Southampton has a sell on clause so look for a fee of £2.5m, so it gives Orient a profit after paying the sell on clause.

Imran Louza:

If Hayden Hackney is the best midfielder in the Championship this season, then Imran Louza is not too far behind, a brilliant midfielder but playing for a club like Watford who always seem to be in dysfunction manager wise means he might not get his flowers.

Watford finished 16^th this season, at one point they seemed like a Playoff contender, but a late end of season drop in form put pay to that notion.

Louza is a fantastic player who can dictate a game from the middle of the pitch. Great vision and a wand of a left foot mean he will not be short of suitors when the Transfer window opens.

He will go to the World Cup with Morocco; he will have a real chance to show his quality on the biggest stage of all. His performances in the Championship will have caught the eye of a few not only Premier League clubs but those in France and maybe in the Middle East.

A lot of teams would love a player who can use the ball like he can and also retain possession when needed. Fulham, Everton, Ipswich and maybe Brighton/Brentford might be clubs that look for a quality player proven in the Championship at a fraction of the cost so keep an eye on his performances in North America next month as they could force a club into action.

Sam Tickle

This list could be filled with strikers and classy midfielders/ wingers, but we will end on a goalkeeper. Scoring goals is the hardest job in football but right behind that is keeping them out, a good goalkeeper is truly hard to find so if one is around then they will always have speculation surrounding them.

Tickle has been the Undisputed number one for the last 3 seasons at Wigan, winning the players of the season at the club last season. He has a good frame being 6ft2 and using that if he makes the move up to the Championship and beyond will be key given how reliant teams are on set pieces nowadays.

His best attribute is his shot stopping and being 24 he is relatively young for a goalkeeper, so he will be hard to keep hold of for Wigan sadly.

Numerous teams have registered an interest in the past with Manchester United and Arsenal, both looking at the young Keeper.

This summer, though Sheffield United might be the forerunners for him, especially if their Goalie Michael Cooper is sold to a Premier League club.

Also, Bristol City need a goalkeeper to replace Radek Vitek, who was sensational in his season-long loan from Manchester United. West Brom and Wrexham both have big question marks around their keepers, so they might look to buy if they can stump up the cash to prise him from the League One club.

Michael Cooper went from Plymouth to Sheffield United in 2024 for around £2m rising to £4m with add ons, so look for his fee to be higher as I said before good Goalkeepers are so hard to find.

So let me set the scene for our story, Real Madrid are Champions of Spain after finishing third the season before behind Deportivo La Coruna and winners Valencia.

They were Champions League semifinalists losing to Juventus and were in the glow of the Galacticos Project where the worlds Superstars shone in Madrid.

Vicente Del Bosque had overseen a very fruitful couple of years in charge of Real, including ending in two La Liga Titles and two European Cups thus giving Madrid their status as Kings of Europe back.

This makes it even more surprising that Florentino Perez the President of Real Madrid does not offer Del Bosque a new contract and sack him at the end of the 2002/03 season.

Perez was a man of vision which helped him get elected to President of Madrid and deliver the stellar signing of Luis Figo from archrivals Barcelona thus igniting the Galactico Project and Madrid’s resurgence.

Zinedine Zidane and Ronaldo followed as this was the kind of transfer policy that a young fan would possess, but even the most ardent critic was surprised to see the team succeeded on the pitch; this was down to Del Bosque.

Del Bosque’s skill seemed to be less tactical but more in man management and cultivating a good environment for their stars to thrive. He was a skilled coach, but he had no real input on players as Perez signed everyone. Then it was up to Del Bosque to come up with a plan for it all to work.

This kind of relationship even though fruitful for Madrid was not going to last too long and Perez got rid of Del Bosque to bring in Carlos Quieroz, who was at the time number two to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.

The knock from Real Madrid is a very hard one to ignore; Quieroz would get to coach Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo and compatriot Luis Figo. This is a once in a lifetime chance for anyone so of course he took it but not realising the poison chalice he was about to drink deeply from.

In this summer to shake up the squad Perez moved on some big players from the squad in Fernando Hierro went on a free transfer to Qatari team Al-Rayyan, Steve McManaman left to Manchester City on a free transfer as well and Claude Makelele went to nouveau riche Chelsea for £16m.

They lost one of their stalwarts in Hierro at the back, then the shield in front of the defence in Makelele and a very underrated player in McManaman. They brought in David Beckham, but this was for name and star power alone rather than him being a final piece of the jigsaw.

Morientes had been a key cog in the Del Bosque era helping them win 3 Champions Leagues in his time but had been pushed down the pecking order behind Ronaldo.

He was a very effective player and a great foil for the ever-underrated Raul but for Perez if you have a chance to get Ronaldo then you do it even if he is not the superstar player he was.

Schalke were the side that seemed in pole position to take him on loan as Madrid did not want to sell him and strengthen a potential rival domestically or in Europe. But that deal fell through but as fate would have Monaco needed a striker as Shobani Nonda had a bad knee injury that ruled him out for most of the season.

So, a deal was struck with Monaco for Morientes to go to the Principality and play for at the time young manager in Didier Deschamps. Monaco had a very solid team and with Morientes up front they were now a real handful.

Morientes had a decent campaign in Ligue 1 scoring 10 league goals as Monaco finished 3^rd behind PSG and Lyon who won the league and were the hipsters’ favourite during the mid 00’s in Europe including myself.

But it was in the Champions League that he showed his class on the biggest stage, while Monaco were drawn in a tough group with PSV Eindhoven, AEK Athens and Deportivo La Coruna.

Morientes scored the first goal against PSV with a header as they won 2-1, in the second game against AEK Athens. He scored two as his class and goal scoring instincts were on show as they won 4-0.

The next two games are quite ridiculous as the two favourites for the group in Deportivo and Monaco played back-to-back with Deportivo winning 1-0 at home. The reverse game was a sign of the unpredictability of this year’s tournament as Monaco won this game 8-3 and that is not a typo.

Dado Prso who was a similar striker to Morientes but where Morientes would be seen as the classier player as he was at Real Madrid, it would be unfair to say Prso was not a good player due to his stature or his use as a target man.

He famously scored four goals as logic went out of the window against Deportivo as himself and Morientes formed a very fruitful partnership up front.

Morientes scored in the 1-1 draw with PSV with a brilliant low header as Monaco drew the final two games to secure top spot over Deportivo by a point. Their reward for this was drawing Lokomotiv Moscow who squeaked through ahead of Inter Milan, so this was going to be no walkover.

A tough trip to Russia was looking like a nightmare as they were 2-0 down before Morientes put his head where it hurts to give Monaco an Away Goal. Dado Prso’s solitary goal was enough for Monaco to go through on away goals, but what would come next would cause ripples throughout Europe for seasons to come.

The Footballing Gods have a twisted sense of humour and it was written that Monaco would play Real Madrid in the Quarter Finals, now in today’s game no player on loan would be able to play against his parent club and what would happen in the tie is the reason why.

So, the stage is set as Monaco get the ultimate glamour tie but going to the Bernabeu is difficult going up against this plethora of stars but this is a good team and Morientes is the ace up your sleeve.

This is a glamour tie between One of the most wealthy and elite parts of the world in Monaco and the Greatest team in European Cup history, watching the first goal from Sebastian Squillaci is anything but glamourous.

More akin to a scrappy game seen at your local pitch on a Sunday morning than a Champions League Quarter-final, but they all count, so they go in 1-0 up against the odds.

Sadly, this woke up the stars of Madrid up with Helguera scoring from a corner then the super trio of Zidane, Raul (Scoring the rebound after missing a penalty) and Ronaldo scored to make it look like the tie was good as over...almost.

With 7 minutes to go a cross is whipped into the Madrid box and there are 3 defenders waiting for it so surely there is no danger here, right? Well out of nowhere Morientes charges in like proverbial bull to thump a header past Iker Casillas, 4-2 on aggregate and some hope for the French side?

The Madrid fans applauded the goal from a player who served them well, but let’s be honest they thought this goal was just a bit of consolation and a nice moment for a player that some might have felt have been shoved out of the club.

So on to the return leg in Monaco and Raul has the freedom of the Principality to slot home the goal that surely kills off this tie, but if you had been following the tournament so far in the knockout rounds then you had seen that there were upsets to be had.

Deportivo La Coruna dumped out the runner up from the previous year in Juventus and Porto dumped Manchester United out and cued your memory of Jose Mourinho running down the sideline announcing himself to the footballing world.

Just before half time a long hopeful ball into the box by Patrice Evra found Morientes who knocked it down for the criminally underrated Ludovic Giuly to smash home a low drive to nurture hope that there was a chance.

A hammer blow right on half time and then if this was a boxing match it was an uppercut from out of nowhere, 3 minutes after the break another cross is whipped into the Madrid box and as the ball is in flight you can see Morientes move into position ready for his moment.

Madrid has a lot of attacking riches but no defence, a lot like buying a brand-new sports car but forgetting to lock it. They did not know how to deal with crosses into the box but weirdly enough not know how to deal with someone they trained with every day for years.

Also something that to a modern day fan that might be jarring but he fully celebrates this goal, now if you are on loan you rarely play against your parent club but footballers who score against former clubs have a tendency to mute any celebrations after scoring.

This is a great throwback to seeing a footballer whose only crime at Real Madrid was that he was not a sexy enough player for the Galactico project and Florentino Perez, so it is so lovely to see him not hide his emotion in this moment.

A low cross from the right-hand side sneaks towards goal and Giuly who improvises a flick with his heel to score a goal that would stun the Spanish side. The French side looked hungrier for the win led by Morientes compared to the bloated carcass of the Galacticos, they relied on the star power and when they needed it most, they couldn’t turn it on.

This is the start of a decline for Real Madrid who do not get past the Round of 16 for the next six seasons, in fact it is Jose Mourinho who breaks this taking them to the Semi-Finals in the 2010/11 season.

Perez had made the mistake of selling Claude Makelele the previous summer and his absence was felt massively, £16m for the best defensive midfielder of his generation and he helped kick start Chelsea’s ascent in England under that man Jose Mourinho the next season.

The result and decline in the next season led to Perez resigning as even though Madrid had achieved massive financial success in cultivating a brand, they had forgotten to focus on football.

The next season Real Madrid had to go through the Qualifying Round to participate in the competition, that is a disaster for Madrid as this is seen as their competition, so heads were always going to roll.

Carlos Quieroz was a fantastic coach but maybe not the manager for a super club and this showed as he could not put together a plan to get these superstars into a functional unit.

This also harmed his chances of being a top manager as this tainted him a little and when he goes back to Manchester United as assistant to Sir Alex Ferguson it is no coincidence that in Europe especially United become more composed and disciplined compared to this laidback attitude of mega stars.

As for Monaco they move on to the Semi Finals to face the new kids on the block in Chelsea, they had beaten for me the best team in Europe that season in Arsenal so were the obvious favourites for the tournament.

But this is the early Chelsea under Abramovich so similar to Perez in a way he splashed the cash without an obvious plan in mind, so it was up to Claudio Ranieri to make a three course banquet of what ingredients the owner gave him.

An early goal from a set piece from Dado Prso got Monaco fans dreaming but Chelsea hit back 5 minutes later through Hernan Crespo, a brilliantly underrated player in the early/mid 00’s and believe me there were a lot of them.

Akis Zikos stupidly gets himself sent off for Monaco and there looks to be the dreams of a final crumbling before them, but when you have star quality then there is always a chance and Morientes was a star.

Patrice Evra hits a long diagonal ball to Morientes running through towards the Chelsea goal and he could finish low into the opposite corner, but this is his year so he doesn’t do that.

Instead, he thunders a volley at the near post to emphatically put Monaco back ahead, he celebrates pointing to himself as he knows this is his moment and he is fully living his best life.

Five minutes later a nothing ball goes low into the Chelsea box and Nonda who had recovered from his injury which helped get Morientes to Monaco just gets a toe to the ball and it sneaks in.

The ten men had pushed a two goal advantage to take to London, they would need it at Stamford Bridge as in 44 minutes Chelsea were 2-0 up and it was 3-3 on aggregate so Chelsea through on away goals.

Jesper Gronkjaer’s cross come shot found it’s way in and then a typical dynamic run from midfield from Lampard levelled the tie, Monaco always seemed to score right before half-time and here is no exception.

A header from Morientes hits the post but hits Hugo Ibarra on the line to put them back in front, Morientes had missed a glorious chance to score before Lampard did, but his moment was coming.

Just on the hour mark Morientes runs towards the Chelsea defence and plays a lovely one two to put himself in on goal and finishes brilliantly to score a second away goal for Monaco meaning Chelsea had to score three to progress.

Monaco held on and they would progress to a European Final in Gelsenkirchen in Germany to face Jose Mourinho’s Porto, Deschamps decided to go with Morientes up front on his own and this blunted the Monaco attack and allowed him to be outnumbered by Porto’s defence.

Porto were disciplined, tenacious and more importantly clinical in this final winning 3-0 and fully deserving of it. Didier Deschamps would go on to win lots of trophies both domestically and internationally including the World Cup with France in 2018 but would be outclassed in this game.

A disappointing end for Morientes but he can always hold his head up high for the amazing season he did have, he sadly didn’t take it into Euro 2004 for Spain as they went out in the group phase, but he did score against eventual winners Greece.

Fernando Morientes turned himself being frozen out of the Galacticos project to being one of the biggest stories in Europe that season before being overshadowed by Porto and then Greece as the feel-good story of that football season

He came back to Madrid in the 04/05, but they signed Michael Owen then Morientes fell further down the pecking order. Ironically Morientes left to fill the Owen void at Liverpool. Sadly, he never really hit the heights and was cup tied for Liverpool’s 2005 Champions League win.

Florentino Perez was scared by the 03/04 season as his transfer decisions destroyed the project he had built, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and ironically it was the man he discarded who delivered the telling blow.

Morientes was a very good striker and often gets lost in discussions of greats of that era, it’s a plethora of super strikers and while he wasn’t as glamourous, he was very effective.

His performance is one of Champions League legend and impacted many loan deals from then on, so many clubs do not allow any of their own players to play against them and this is the reason cited.

The decisions of that summer have ripple effects that can still be seen to this day, Perez wanted more glamour and in the end it cost him but don’t feel too sorry for him as he came back as President a few years later and won everything multiple times over.

In the end the whole of the Galacticos project, which was about super, silky football was killed by a striker who did the dirty jobs so effectively. Hell hath no fury like a Striker scorned.

Ipswich are back in the big time after 22 years and it’s been a long road back which even included relegation to League One. Now they are back at the top table it would be wise to look at the club’s last stint where they had an amazing first season but a second season to forget in 2001/02.

George Burley was going into the 01/02 season after having guided Ipswich to 5^th place and 3 points off third place and Champions League football back when only the top 3 got into Europe’s top competition. Also, he won the Manager of the Year award voted for by his peers but as they say it’s the second album that is always the hardest.

The previous season saw them almost take the league by surprise as survival was the aim for fans whereas pundits expected them to struggle to survive. Instead, they thrived as they flirted with a potential Champions League place back when only the Top three places got into the competition.

So how did it all go wrong for the Tractor Boys? Was it overachievement or complacency? Well as with these kinds of seasons the answer is a little bit of everything really.

Firstly, they were never going to have a 5^th place finish again as Chelsea and Newcastle would get stronger plus you do lose the element of surprise. Teams will not underestimate you and will give you a lot more respect the second time around.

Also selling two key players in your rise from the First Division to European football, Richard Wright, and James Scowcroft, without replacing them was the start of the decline. Wright had a tremendous season in goal for Ipswich and was one of the best prospects in the league, so it made sense for Arsenal to look to him to take over from goalkeeping stalwart David Seaman.

Arsenal paid £6 million for Wright, this proved to be a key point for both sides, Wright was a highly thought of player at the time and future England international. His move to Arsenal was not good as he left after a year with bad form and Seaman staying on another forced him to look for first team opportunities elsewhere.

Ipswich never recovered from losing a dependable goalkeeper who had matured into an incredibly good top flight keeper behind a steady defense. Matteo Sereni was signed from Sampdoria but flattered to deceive and that is putting it mildly but blowing £3.5m on him was terrible business.

Scowcroft had been at Ipswich for years and was a key cog in the Burley years in helping them get into the Premier League, Marcus Bent signed from Blackburn to help Ipswich kick on and he was their joint top scorer but only got 10 along with Stewart who missed a few games with a fractured jaw.

The team had not really changed when it came up so losing two key players definitely hurt the Tractor Boys, an opening day defeat to Sunderland was no cause for alarm as they beat Derby in their next game, but this would be their only win until 22^nd of December.

This season was about the UEFA Cup in which they dispatched Torpedo Moscow and Helsingborg to set up a juicy third round tie with Inter Milan. They beat Inter at Portman Road 1-0 to give their fans another memory to savor but Christian Vieri scored a hattrick as Inter won 4-2 on aggregate.

They had enjoyed the fruits of last year’s labor with their European adventures but then they had to get back on track as their form had nosedived dramatically. The previous season they were tough to beat and boasted the top scoring Englishman in the division but this season those things weren’t there to be relied upon.

A big problem was that in the previous season they managed to turn most games into good results but this season they drew too many or were on the wrong side of the result, Lady Luck smiled on them last season, but she had deserted them this season.

A Monday night defeat to Aston Villa on the 17^th of December meant they were bottom with only 9 points from 17 games, compare that with 30 points from 17 games the previous season and it’s easy to see that this season was more in line with the predictions most people had for the previous season.

But then some muscle memory from the previous season must have kicked in as in their next 8 games they won 7 only losing away to Charlton. They beat Everton at Goodison Park at the start of February and a big sigh of relief was let out in East Anglia knowing that there was a big chance of staying up but up next was a home game against Liverpool who would have the biggest impact on their season.

Liverpool won 6-0 and all the hard work slowly evaporated as they looked hopelessly out of their depth, this began a spiral that eventually would send them down. They didn’t win in their next ten games, losing 7 until a midweek win in April over Middlesbrough gave them some hope, two points behind Sunderland with two games to go.

The big problem was that their final two games were at home to Manchester United and away to Liverpool, a 1-0 loss to United was a blow but they knew that a win at Anfield would be enough to keep them up on goal difference if Sunderland didn’t draw or win.

The previous season they were unbeaten against Liverpool drawing 1-1 at Portman Road but recording a stunning win 1-0 at Anfield, could history repeat itself? Was the 6-0 a blip?

By the time the whistle blew at half time at Anfield on that final day they were 2-0 down and they would go on to lose 5-0, which didn’t matter as Sunderland drew 1-1 with Derby to stay up. Ipswich were down and 12 months previous they were the darlings of the league, a promoted team pushing into Europe at the first chance.

Sadly, what goes up must come down, they flew close to the sun and got burned. But this is not a cautionary tale as Ipswich did better than anyone thought they would as most didn’t think they would survive their first season.

Losing key players and their replacements after a stellar season is a tale as old as time, but also Marcus Stewart will never have a season like 00/01 in his life. A lot of that team went on to have great careers despite the relegation like Hermann Hreidarsson, Matt Holland, Darren Ambrose and a very young Darren Bent.

Instead, they stuck it to the pundits and non-believers then got European football back to Ipswich and those moments are worth it as a fan regardless of what comes next. Some clubs just have a plan to exist in the league and not much else but for fans it’s the highs and the lows that make football what it is.

Now they are back in the big time and as the football gods would have it their first game back is at home to Liverpool; life and football certainly has an ironic sense of humor sometimes. But the fans have been looking for a long time at when they will get back into the top flight but they are back under Kieron McKenna and seem determined to embrace it once again.

Maybe their first season was a massive over achievement and the second season was more par for the course, but their fans will be hoping for more of the first season and less of the second.

Kieron McKenna has kept a lot of the squad that has took him up as well as one or two smart additions and will be hoping to be half as successful as Burley’s first season was but will do well to remember the lessons of second season syndrome as those who fail history are doomed to repeat it.

For me I think that Arsene Wenger is the most influential foreign manager in the Premier League era, sorry to the Guardiola fan boys, but he would still be third behind the Special One Jose Mourinho.

But he has a very weird legacy in that you can basically break it down into two eras, the years that Arsenal played at Highbury under his tenure and then the move to the Emirates Stadium.

The Highbury years from his appointment in October 1996 having been confirmed a week or so earlier to them entering the new stadium in August 2006 were really something and it almost got its perfect ending in Paris at the 2006 Champions League final.

“Arsene Who?” Was the big newspaper headline at the time and he was seen as a real left field appointment especially considering Johan Cruyff was in the mix for the job after Bruce Rioch was sacked.

Now by the time we get to the Champions League Final, Wenger has won the Premier League 3 times with one Invincible season and the FA Cup four times, but the Champions League has been a source of frustration for Arsenal over the years.

Now in the Invincible Season of 2003/04 they had a glorious chance to go all the way but they fell to local rivals Chelsea, Now in the 05/06 season they have got to the final to play Barcelona.

After comfortably navigating the Group Stages Arsenal went to Madrid to play the Galaticos of Real, a Superb Thierry Henry solo goal was enough to give Arsenal a 1-0 aggregate win.

Next up was Juventus who were not quite the force they were in the mid to late 90’s but still had enough quality to cause them problems, but they were towards the end of their illustrious careers although a few weeks later some of this team won a World Cup so Swings and Roundabouts I guess.

The game was notorious for Patrick Vieira’s return to Highbury after his departure, but it was his successor in Cesc Fabregas who proved his burgeoning reputation was justified with a performance beyond his years.

Villarreal were all that was standing between Arsenal and a trip to Paris for the final, but this was a team not to be underestimated.

Having topped their group featuring Manchester United and knocked out Rangers and Inter Milan in getting to the semi-finals, boasting Juan Roman Riquelme, Diego Forlan and underrated midfield destroyer Marcos Senna this was going to be a very tough nut to crack.

The last ever European game at Highbury was a great night as Kolo Toure scored the only goal of the game and made it a night to remember for the Arsenal faithful, speaking of nut to crack the biggest talking point of this game was a squirrel invading the pitch for a time such was the tension of this fixture.

So now we go to the second leg and two of the tightest defenses in the tournament meant it was not going to be a goal fest, and it was going to be a mistake or something special to win it for either side.

Villarreal had some chances with Jens Lehmann coming up big and one or two chances falling wide or over; they were nearly there but in any good cup run there must be drama. With only minutes to go the referee gives a penalty for a very soft foul on Jose Mari by Gael Clichy.

Up steps Juan Roman Riquelme and this was a huge moment for the tie, i remember watching this thinking he will slot it home and this will go to extra time. But great moments come from great opportunities, and Lehmann had been immense in the campaign so far. He guessed right and then you knew they were going to the final.

If you look at Manchester United’s triumph in 1999 or Liverpool’s triumph the year before then you know that you need quality and luck to win this competition, but both campaigns have a moment where you think this might be their year and the penalty save was it.

So, it was going to be Arsenal versus Barcelona in Paris, the top scorers in the Spanish giants against the best defense so queue unstoppable force meets immovable object puns.

Now Arsenal underperformed drastically over the years in the Champions League where they had moments of class like the 5-1 thumping of Inter Milan in the San Siro, they could never be consistent when the clocks went forward but this felt different.

Wenger was renowned for playing lovely football to watch but like a lot of football romantics they are left outside looking in on someone else lifting the silverware, this year they could score goals, but they were defensively solid and could control a game which was unusual for this side.

From the outside looking in it did look like seeing Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez win big trophies and come into the Premier League. He maybe tweaked his philosophy rather than completely abandon it; the payoff was a European final and with him nearly ten years in the job and the final season at Highbury surely destined for a Hollywood ending.

Now the game started well enough but when Ronaldinho runs towards the Arsenal back four, they seem to freeze and are bewitched by the Brazilian magician, more than likely remembering his performances against a watertight Chelsea defense and his star was rising.

They all seem to keep both eyes on him but like any good magician it is what is happening in the other hand that is more important, Samuel Eto’o makes a curved run inside the right back and is through on goal then Jens Lehmann ever reliable this season makes a rash decision and comes out to get the ball.

He misses it and Eto’o goes over then Ludovic Giuly scores, but the referee had already blown where if he had played on for a few more seconds then Arsenal concede but probably keep eleven men on the pitch with the goalkeeper getting a yellow.

The Norwegian referee Terje Hauge sent off Lehmann and gave Barcelona a free kick, this would have been quickly turned around today with VAR, and the decision would be changed. Also, Lehmann become the first player to be sent off in a European final, not the kind of history that you want to make in a final.

Arsenal had to play arguably the best attack in Europe with ten men, but then they get a free kick. Thierry Henry swings in a lovely cross and Sol Campbell thumps in a header to give the ten men something to cling to, Arsenal had been the best defense in Europe, but they had hope.

Hope can be a wonderous thing but also a dangerous thing and the rest of that match is torture for any Arsenal fan, praying every second ticks faster but in turn it moves slower as Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity would have it anyway.

But as Tom Hanks says in A League of Their Own (The Baseball film not the god-awful banter quiz on Sky) “It’s the hard that makes it great”.

Now Arsenal rode their luck a little after the goal, but they had a couple of chances of their own from Freddie Ljungberg and Alexander Hleb.

The night will be remembered by Thierry Henry as the one that got away as he had a few glorious chances by his standards, but Victor Valdes in the Barcelona goal had arguably his best night for the Catalans.

A pass from Hleb plays Henry in behind the Barcelona line and with Henry being the player at this time the irresistible force he was you just expected him to caress the ball into the corner as was his trademark.

Maybe it was tiredness with having to run more with a man less or maybe Valdes just anticipated he would go for his signature low caress into the corner and Henry just didn’t get enough on it.

Football is a cruel game as it offers up villain arcs but also redemption arcs and the redemption belonged to Henrik Larsson. He played in the UEFA Cup final in 2003 against Porto and scored twice but still finished on the losing side.

So, his superb deft touch on an Andres Iniesta pass to cushion it for the onrushing Samuel Eto’o who slotted it home and put a dagger through the heart of Arsenal, then a few minutes later he played a gorgeous reverse pass into Juliano Belletti to score the winner.

Larsson didn’t get any of the glory in his last European final but made the decisive impact in his final game for Barcelona; his quality broke Arsenal’s resistance where the mercurial Ronaldinho and Company seemed to get stage fright.

For Barcelona this win launched the modern Barca we all know now as they had only been in three European Cup finals before, losing one on penalties to Steaua Bucharest in 1985/86. To then Beat Sampdoria at Wembley in 1991/92 in the last European Cup final before the competition rebranded to the Champions League.

Then Johan Cruyff and the “Dream Team” went up against AC Milan in 1994, even though Barcelona were the heavy favorites they were dispatched in one of the great European performances of all time losing 4-0.

They go on to become the arguably greatest club side in a few seasons after Pep Guardiola takes over from Frank Rijkaard, but it all comes to this moment where that springs from.

The foundations were set again as they were a force in La Liga again as the Galactico project is ending in Madrid, Lionel Messi was not in the squad for this game, so all the pieces are slowly moving to create the final masterpiece.

As for Arsenal, this felt like a gut punch to end the season but worse was to come, Robert Pires left for Villarreal after this game as he had not been happy, he was sacrificed for Manuel Almunia following Jens Lehmann’s sending off.

In the year after Sol Campbell, Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires, Ashley Cole and Lauren had all left Arsenal, key figures over the last few seasons had gone and something had changed within the club.

The Highbury Years under Wenger were Arsenal at their very best in my opinion with some sumptuous football backed up with a bit of steel when needed, the players above were big parts of it but it felt the end of an era looking back as Wenger ploughed on with his view of how the game should be played but they never hit the highs domestically or in Europe again.

For this campaign it seemed he got the balance perfect with a solid defense, but some superb attacking talent that you felt could still score from anywhere on the pitch.

In Europe they were more disciplined and more mature as they had woefully underachieved in Europe under Wenger, they had been very naive in previous seasons, but you do have to learn how to play in the Champions League before you can do deep in the competition.

The shining light of this campaign was the emergence of Cesc Fabregas to replace Patrick Vieira. He was not an all-action midfielder that Viera was, but his use of the ball was a precursor to where the game was going.

If you want another example of this you can look at Viera’s great rival Roy Keane replaced with Michael Carrick, Carrick and Fabregas represented the new midfielders in terms of using the ball well and keeping it without the need to be physically dominant.

As for Thierry Henry, he had been heavily linked to Barcelona, but he chose to sign a new contract at Arsenal, but he would depart for Barca the next season after injuries started to hamper him the next season.

He would go on to win the Champions League with Barcelona as this was the only big trophy missing from his collection, but for him it was the end of his dominance of the Premier League as the best player in the league.

Then we come to Arsene Wenger as the architect of this team as he moves into his next phase of his Arsenal career where he has to balance the budget to pay for the newly built Emirates Stadium, a necessary move for Arsenal to combat the threats of Manchester United and closer to home in Chelsea.

He would lose one of his stars each summer for big money as they slowly fell away from being genuine contenders for the league to also-rans then a joke amongst the big clubs.

Also he doubles down on his vision to create a footballing utopia with lots of technical players so he abandons the steel you need to win titles, maybe it was this game that scarred him as he could not win it when playing the way Messrs Benitez and Mourinho did so he just went full tippy tappy mode.

But one cannot help but wonder if they had won this game then what might have happened to his legacy and the effect of being European Champions might have not only financially but in terms of their ability to use it as a springboard to challenge again both in the league and Europe.

Instead, the football becomes more aesthetically pleasing but they become more vulnerable to being bullied by opposition teams, we can all picture a game at Stoke or Bolton or Wigan where they lose, a big factor is that they are not physically tough enough to fight back.

The years at Highbury would have been capped off perfectly by a win in the Champions League ending his ten years in charge having won everything possible and changing English Football in the process.

Towards the end of his tenure at Arsenal he became a joke and most people-built careers off criticizing him (Looking at you AFTV), but he was so close to something great.

If he had won the Champions League then he would have joined the pantheon of elite managers who not only achieved success in terms of trophies, but are successful in playing football in a certain way and changing the landscape of football for the better.

Football like life only remembers what you did last, so leaving after years of protests might colour your opinion of him, but he was a great manager who built two superb teams who were tough to beat but also lovely to watch.

The Highbury years for Wenger will always represent a special place in Arsenal fans’ hearts as they had success but amazing memories to go with it. He almost completed it but alas a new force was brewing in Barcelona, and they went on to Immortality a few years later.

Alas, it all could have been all so different but sometimes it’s not about the destination, it is about the journey and what a journey those first ten years were and that should be remembered a little more than they do now.

The 25-year wait is over for Coventry City; they are back in the top division for the first time since 2001.

The Journey had a lot of low points including sharing grounds with Northampton Town and Birmingham City as well as relegation to League Two, but like a lot of Premier League success stories over the last few years it is not the destination that matters but the journey.

Bournemouth, Brighton, Luton, Swansea have all had stories of rising up the divisions to the promised land of the Premier League, for Coventry. This is a culmination of 25 years of hurt and uncertainty about their club.

Since Doug King has come in, the club has reached an FA Cup Semifinal changed managers from club legend Mark Robins to Frank Lampard as well as get their home stadium back after years of disputes.

My footballing education started in the mid 90’s so i always saw Coventry as a perenniall topflight team, they were most definitely 90’s teams of the Premier League with some of the great players that they had.

I wrote a piece last year about Frank Lampard and Coventry, mostly about challenge of replacing a club legend in Robins and repairing his reputation after Everton.

My main concern was how would he do after a full summer and him making changes to Robins’s team, but in fairness to him he absolutely nailed it.

The loan signing of Carl Rushworth from Brighton has been inspired, named in the Championship team of the season for Goalkeeper, is fully deserved for the 23-year-old.

His influence of Jack Rudoni is quite similar to the impact Jose Mourinho had on Lampard himself when he arrived in the summer of 2004 at Chelsea. His belief in him helped him hit heights most didn’t think were possible, Rudoni is starting to perform like a player few thought he could be.

Not many had Coventry winning the Championship, i had them finishing in the Playoffs with Ipswich, Southampton being the top two teams in the division.

They have carried on from where they left off last season losing to Sunderland in the Playoff Semi Final. Sometimes a Playoff defeat makes it harder to pick yourself up again the next season.

No such problem for Coventry who have been the team to catch since going top in October, the top scorers in the division and the joint best defence as of writing with Middlesbrough.

Lampard always seemed to fall on his feet with jobs from his jobs at Derby then to Chelsea then Everton. There were always hints of Nepotism or jobs for the boy’s kind of thing, but to fully give him his dues this is a great achievement.

Taking over from Robins, who was arguably the best pound for pound manager in the football league with the job he did at Coventry, was almost an impossible job.

But he has taken them back to the Premier League and by going up early then Lampard has an early start with preparations for next season. He will need to look at Sunderland as the blueprint for next season if they are to avoid the drop.

1. Buy players who suit how you play

2. Spend on quality not quantity

3. Win your first game early.

4. Be good at home

If he was to keep them up then he would really make all his critics eat humble pie, myself included as he proves he is a good coach with potential for more.

So, like the dad from Dirty Dancing when i am wrong i will say i am wrong, so apologies to Frank Lampard and good luck to you as well as Coventry next season.

Just over a year ago Newcastle United celebrated winning the Carabao trophy, a day forever etched in the memories of the long-suffering Toon Army.

Snap back to the present and it has been a very depressing few weeks for Newcastle, out of the FA Cup, losing the semi final of the Carabao Cup both to Manchester City.

Then a European humiliation in the Champions League to Barcelona to be topped off with a home defeat to rivals Sunderland, allowing them to complete a league double over the Geordies.

Life sure does come at you fast and for Eddie Howe he is on shaky ground. Last year he could walk on the Tyne as far as Newcastle fans thought, but after these results he must feel he is sinking beneath it at the moment.

Has Eddie Howe reached the end of his time at Newcastle or is this a bump in the road?

The club needs a major rebuild in my opinion as i do not think they will qualify for Europe. This will mean a few players will need to be let go; one or two crown jewels may need to be sold off to fund said rebuild.

Reports after the Sunderland loss indicate that there is to be major activity in the summer transfer window, i would not say it is definite that Howe will remain as manager for next season for me at least.

Serious questions have been raised over his tactics and selection decisions in the last few weeks. Playing your second most expensive signing in midfield instead of upfront is certainly a choice, especially when it did not work the first time.

In the Champions League defeat to Barcelona which Newcastle lost 8-3 on aggregate, he went to a very aggressive man to man press in the second half. This was very naive as Barcelona used their better technical skills and pulled them out of position then it ended up being an embarrassment.

Howe was dubbed a bit naive after his spell at Bournemouth came to an end, so he did the only logical thing to do was go and worship at the altar of the most successful bastard in Europe in Diego Simeone.

Newcastle became a bit savvier, street wise and embraced the dark arts of the game and relied on a very solid structure and hurting teams on the break very much like Simeone’s Atletico Madrid.

Except Howe did not learn a lesson that Simeone did after his first title win in 2013/14, he has won the league with low possession and defensive solidity, but he had to change.

When the next season started teams began to allow Atletico to have the ball and defend against them, as they were the champions the onus was on them to break them down. This hurt them as they had to be better with the ball nullifying their counter attacking threat.

Antony Elanga is a good player, but he is better hurting teams on the counter attack like he did with Nottingham Forest last season. He is not a player whose big skill is in using the ball in tight spaces; they needed someone who could link up well with other players and use movement to open stubborn defences.

Jacob Ramsey is a player who has started to come good after difficulty getting into the starting XI, Yoane Wissa has been injured for most of the campaign and needs to find his goal scoring touch and fast otherwise he could be on his way out.

Kieran Trippier has announced he will leave the club at the end of his contract this summer; Fabian Schar might also have run his race in a Newcastle shirt after 8 years at the club, as well as Nick Pope whose contract also expires next summer.

• Nick Pope (Contract expiring Next Summer)

• Aaron Ramsdale (Loan expiring)

• Kieran Trippier (Contract expiring this summer)

• Fabian Schar (Contract expiring this summer)

• Dan Burn (Contract expiring next summer)

• Jacob Murphy (Contract expiring next summer)

These are just the players that need to be looked at, but there are more players who could be on the move that the club does not want to lose.

• Tino Livramento

• Bruno Guimaraes

• Sandro Tonali

• Lewis Hall

• Anthony Gordon

They can lose two of these this summer easily with Livramento heavily linked to Manchester City and Sandro Tonali linked with several clubs including Manchester United.

The player coming in will have to be well scouted and fit in with the direction the club wants to go. Far too much money has been wasted in the last few windows; Anthony Elanga and Yoane Wissa being the two main transfers fans have pointed to this season.

Nick Woltemade has been an interesting signing to put it mildly, a player with a lot of potential and started off well on Tyneside. But now the goals have dried up and with Eddie Howe using him in midfield instead of upfront have now made everyone question what is going on with the German International.

After the last defeat to Crystal Palace, it is now 25 points lost from losing positions. 4 points behind rivals Sunderland and 10 points outside the Champions League places, it seems all the briefings and fan statements are already pointing to the summer.

The emphasis on Data led signings and scouring the emerging markets in Europe and South America will be the best way to fill the holes in the squad on a budget, there may be the odd deal in England but this will not be the same level of funds that last year’s window was as they might not qualify for Europe altogether.

So, the smart approach will be to let players go who do not fit into the new team being built or players you cannot keep. Howe will need to adapt as the new team takes shape, that is if Howe stays for next season as there is an end of season appraisal to have to discuss what went right and more importantly what went wrong.

But in the last 48 hours big news has emerged that The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund has decided to refocus its strategy, pulling back funding for the LIV Golf Tour. The news is that they maintain their commitment to Newcastle, but this does mean the club will have to stand on its own from now on.

The second bit of news is that Anthony Gordon is open to leaving the club this summer; Gordon has had a good campaign where he has shown his quality in the Champions League.

Newcastle needs to raise funds so if a big bid comes in for Gordon from Liverpool or Arsenal who have been long term admirers of the England International then a deal might be made before the World Cup.

The first game of next season could see a completely new team, squad and even manager so the summer will be fascinating to watch. Newcastle have reached a crossroads in their development now in the team built after the Takeover has succeeded in rising up the table and winning a trophy.

But the team has also grown to a point that it needs to change; players will go to bigger clubs; underperforming players need to leave as well. There are still a handful of games left but a season that started so promisingly just needs to end for the fan’s sake; the briefings coming out only add to the frustration and uncertainty of the upcoming transfer window.

One thing for sure is that either the squad will completely change or the manager will do, it for sure will not be boring on Tyneside that is for sure.

The World Cup in North America is fast approaching, I am going to look at a few of the contenders to win the tournament, so today we start with the Dutch.

The Oranje have been one of the biggest underachievers on the international stage, for years they were only helped that Spain had disappointed more compared to their potential.

Now with the dominance of Spain between 2008-2012 including back-to-back European Championship wins sandwiched between a World Cup triumph over the Dutch in the final, it does pass the baton back and while they won the European Championships in 1988, they have struggled since considering their talent.

I see at least five or six teams ahead of them minimum in terms of who I think will win the tournament, but I do see them as potential surprise if they can get things right.

The Manager:

Ronald Koeman was one of the best players of his generation no question about that, his talent and success are very easy to see. His management career is a bit of a mixed bag as he achieved success with Ajax, PSV, Valencia; however his time in England maybe colors his career for me.

His job at Southampton was very impressive, taking them to 6thb place and Europa League qualification but then the move to Everton was a bit of disaster so a little bit of a mixed bag in England anyway but that should not downplay his ability to guide this team deep in the tournament.

But he is back in charge of the Dutch now and in the last tournament they were beaten in the Semi Finals by England, so they have the base of a good side and Koeman has plenty of experience so can he stop the Dutch from being the proverbial Bridesmaids at big tournaments?

The Squad:

This squad is certainly lacking in terms of individual star power that previous squads have had over the years, looking a little deeper though it does look a lot more balanced.

Here is the squad for the final games before the end of the season against Norway and Ecuador.

Now let’s look at some of the players who are not in this squad who could feature in the final squad in the summer.

Robin Roefs-Goalkeeper

Jurrien Timber- Defender

Matthijs De Ligt- Defender

Lutsharel Geertruida-Defender

Sven Botman-Defender

Ian Maatsen-Defender

Frenkie De Jong-Midfielder

Joey Veerman-Midfielder

Crysencio Summerville-Attacker

Joshua Zirkzee-Attacker

Of course, things can massively change in a few months, but this looks like a pretty strong group to pick from. There will be a good team of players that will not make it; that is always a good sign of the depth of talent at their disposal.

The Pathway:

Holland are in a tricky group with Japan, Tunisia plus one of Albania/Poland/Sweden and Ukraine as they play in the Playoff’s for a place in this summer’s tournament.

Japan is always a difficult opponent as now especially their best players are playing in the top leagues in Europe; in the last World Cup they beat both Spain and Germany to top the group so underestimate them at your peril.

Tunisia were unlucky not to qualify from the group stage of the last World Cup, they just missed out despite only losing one game and beating finalists France in the final game. Again, a team not to be underestimated and they will aim to cause an upset or two if they can, with a disappointing exit from the African Cup of Nations in January they will look to react to that disappointment with a good showing this summer.

Out of the four European sides they could also face in the group stage i would say Sweden would be the toughest as they boast some wonderful players like Alexander Isak, Viktor Gyokeres. Also, Robert Lewandowski will be hoping for his own Last Dance for Poland if they can navigate the Playoffs, Ukraine and Albania would also make very tricky opponents for the Dutch.

Germany and France look like possible Quarter-Final opponents if all goes likely but since when does a big tournament follow the obvious path?

Winning the group would put them on the ‘Easier’ side of the draw but let’s face it they could play Spain or Belgium if they make it to the semi-finals. This is a tough draw no matter what, but if you want to win it, then you have to go through the best teams.

Key Players

Virgil Van Dijk

The best defender of his generation at club level, but his critics will point to his performances and leadership at international level that needed improvement. At 34 this probably is his last World Cup and his experience in marshalling the back line will be key to Dutch hopes, also if he can keep his threat at set pieces then maybe he can chip in with a few goals along the way.

Frenkie De Jong

De Jong is a superb technical player; his passing range and use of the ball will be crucial to not only set the tempo for the team but keep possession in very hot and humid conditions. The Dutch do have other different profiles in midfield, but De Jong is unique and if he is fit and firing then he could hold a massive influence on this sides potential run.

Memphis Depay

A reliable goal scorer Depay is for the Dutch side as he is their top scorer of all time but in terms of quality, he would be a lot lower down on most people’s pecking orders. He is still only 32 and without an obvious challenger to his position he will more than likely start as the main striker. A good summer could cement him in the conversation with some of the best the Dutch have had provided he does it on the big stage, he will need to be fit and clinical if the Dutch advance far in the tournament.

Verdict

The Dutch are currently the eighth favourites to win the World Cup at 20/1 with most bookmakers so it will take a lot of things falling into place for them.

However, with an experienced coach in Koeman and with a good mix of senior players as well as up and coming talent like Xavi Simons and Kees Smit then why not?

They will also be tactically flexible with the ability to play many different formations from 3-5-2/3-4-3 to a classic Dutch 4-3-3, this will be useful to adapt to each opponent later in the competition to give them a good chance to progress and also keep their opponents on their toes.

This might be a last hurrah for Van Dijk and Depay, but this is also one of the more well-balanced squads going into the tournament this summer. The last tournament they won was Euro 1988 which Ronald Koeman played a huge part in, they have had arguably better squads then but infighting and just bad luck saw them miss out.

If Koeman can keep harmony in this squad then it might be a good tournament for Dutch and the last time they played in North America for a tournament was USA 94 where they got to the semi finals losing to eventual winners Brazil.

Maybe the lack of star power might help them become a better unit. If they can find a way to harness the talent they have, then they will be a Dark Horse for the competition and banish the ghosts of 1974,1978 & 2010 and win the World Cup for the first time.

There is a documentary on Sky Sports about Sam Allardyce and his time at Bolton, I watched it and it did get me thinking about his career. Sam now is seen as more of a caricature of himself nowadays and as a firefighter for teams facing the drop, he was a lot more than that.

Now if you look at Sean Dyche for example, he is basically an Allardyce tribute act in the way he gives interviews and on podcasts lamenting modern football and longing for a bygone time akin to Mike Bassett and his “4-4-Fucking 2”.

The character of ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce has maybe hurt his reputation in some circles but enhanced it in memes, keeping his reputation amongst others intact. But the truth was after watching the documentary for me is that there is a moment that changed his career, that moment comes post the 2006 World Cup.

Sven-Goran Eriksson had crashed out in the Quarterfinals of the World Cup to Portugal again after Euro 2004 defeat again on Penalties, he was also caught up in the ‘Fake Sheikh’ scandal a few months before and announced he would not continue post World Cup.

So, with him being out, who would replace the Swede to lead England to qualification for Euro 2008?

Well for the FA the best choice was to go and get Luiz Felipe Scolari who was Portugal’s manager at the time, he had also knocked England out of the 2002 World Cup with Brazil so if you can’t beat them then try to get them to join it seems.

He chose to stay and honour his contract with Portugal, so in what i can only imagine as the same as in the film Mike Bassett: England Manager; there was a shortlist of potential managers made from England.

Allardyce being one of the candidates along with Steve Mclaren, Alan Curbishley and Martin O’Neill. The FA always seem to swing from one extreme to the other when it comes to managers, for example going from a great tactician in Glen Hoddle but poor man manager to Kevin Keegan who was a great man manager but not that good tactically.

Now out of those four if we are picking the best candidate, it would have been O’Neill, but he left Celtic the year before to take care of his ill wife so that might have ruled him out of the running.

Alan Curbishley worked wonders with Charlton from their first season in the Premier League in 1998/99 and they got better each season with them peaking in 2003/04 finishing in 7^th place.

Now he was tipped then to replace Gerard Houllier at Liverpool that summer, also seemed to be the preferred candidate for Liverpool midfielders Steven Gerrard and Danny Murphy, but the job went to Rafael Benitez instead and that turned out pretty well for them.

Steve McClaren was the continuity candidate as he had been on the coaching staff under Eriksson; this would be an easier transition for the FA as the players knew him and so did they.

He also had a burgeoning reputation as a great coach and did well with Middlesbrough in winning the League Cup, also taking Middlesbrough to the UEFA Cup final only to lose to Sevilla.

The FA had also had to deal with the constant extracurricular activities of Eriksson; his private life was front page news instead of back page.

If Big Sam was to take the job, then he would have been a character who would not have been easy to control in the eyes of the FA. McClaren was a good company man, a lot better at that than he was a manager for England.

Allardyce had done remarkable work at Bolton, but the big question would have been how would you get the top players onside?

Well, he got Jay-Jay Okocha onside as well as World Cup winner Youri Djorkaeff as well as Ivan Campo and Fernando Hierro from Real Madrid to BOLTON.

Also, Sam being a big early pioneer in Data and Science at Bolton should have counted heavily in his favor, considering how this is completely commonplace now it would have been a big plus to get someone ahead of the curve.

Even if Allardyce did the same as McClaren and not qualify from a tricky group then at least he would have implemented all the same things he did at Bolton, giving the FA and England a big data advantage ahead of their building of St George’s Park to rival Clairefontaine academy in France.

The results McClaren got were never great, but when the challenges did come like Russia and Croatia away, he failed them spectacularly, I doubt Allardyce would have been as tactically naive but sadly we will never know.

Personally, I think out of the pool of managers we had for the next few years after Eriksson was pretty dire, Fabio Capello came in after McClaren, but he was past his best and was not cut out for the pressure cooker that is the England job.

To be a good England boss you need to have a few things in your arsenal and they are

• Good tactically

• Good man management

• Good with media/fans

Apart from Sir Bobby Robson and Terry Venables no English candidate has had all three in my lifetime, they have always been lacking in one while being very good in the others.

But for all his Premier League success with Bolton, he had no real European experience apart from the 2005/06 season. Bolton got to the last 32 in the UEFA Cup losing to Marseille, navigating Sevilla, Zenit St Petersburg and Besiktas to qualify from their group.

The caricature of Allardyce now is of a firefighter and old football man, now sat on podcasts lamenting how he got this long ball reputation whilst not really acknowledging that he shaped it himself.

In his time at Bolton, he was a visionary for an English coach to be open to data and sports science as well as embracing using unique ways of team bonding.

He had a lot of respect from his peers but upsetting the purists’ favourite Arsene Wenger may have damaged his standing in the wider game. Pundits and writers were easy to label them and write them off without looking deeper.

The same things they lauded about Charlton and Alan Curbishley were sticks to beat Big Sam with, overachieving despite the stature and budget of the club.

Perhaps a big personality is a little off putting for some and sometimes things stick to a person even when they aren’t really true; England would seemingly have been better off with Curbishley but a lot better off with Allardyce in his pomp.

A few years later England faced a simple choice either people’s choice Harry Redknapp or Roy Hodgson who would be a good company man for the FA, so it is no surprise that they went with the safe option.

Also, a big factor most people forget is just how the landscape of how football is viewed in the media by journalists/pundits and fans. You couldn’t be seen to be into tactics without being yelled at for being a nerd or something much worse, even worse Sports Science.

Maybe it is easier to do if you were a foreign coach at that time, we as a nation are only finally normalising these things after being in the dark ages for so long.

Sadly, though Sam always had the whiff of a scandal around him and with the Panorama Investigation that came out in September 2006 the FA were probably justified.

The FA had embarrassed itself with the England job from the Glenn Hoddle Reincarnation scandal to Kevin Keegan resigning in the toilets after the Germany defeat, to top it off with members of the FA implicating in the Eriksson scandals it shows how bad they ran the biggest job in the land.

There is an alternative reality of Allardyce getting England to Euro 2008 with the last hurrah for the ‘Golden Generation’. Potentially going up against that Spain team is one of the matches we would never see just how Carlos Puyol and Gerard Pique deal with Kevin Davies.

Allardyce was a visionary in his time at Bolton but missing this job and what happened at Newcastle when he left Bolton pushed him into a different career, most of football as life is just about timing and this kind of sums it up.

One of the best upcoming and progressive managers of his generation missed out on this opportunity to get it a decade later when he is a shadow of his former self. Everyone else had caught up; his scandals dragged him down just like his predecessors before him. We will never look at a pint of wine without thinking about that video.

His loss was ultimately Southgate’s gain who was the best manager England have had since Sir Alf Ramsey as he made the final of Euro 2024, that legacy will leave a bitter taste to Sam who would have loved to manage some of that generation of talent.

The documentary was an eye opener for what he actually achieved at Bolton and the insight on a lot of what went on behind the scenes was great, sadly for Sam he missed his chance and when he did it was just one and done but he can still say he got the top job in the land but just at the wrong time.

Spring has sprung and now we are in the Round of 16 in Champions League, the top 8 from the League Phase are back in to meet the winners off the Playoff ties and there are some cracking ties to enjoy.

I am going to pick one player to watch who might be the key player in the tie or announce themselves on the big European stage, so injuries permitting these are the players i think will be ones to watch.

PSG vs Chelsea: Ousmane Dembele

The Reigning Champions meet the Club World Cup Champions so it will be an interesting tie, now it does seem obvious to pick the current Ballon d’Or holder as a player to watch but there are good reasons for it.

Now if you are the Ballon d’Or winner then you are the best player in the world so why wouldn’t you be the player who could decide the tie?

But PSG and Dembele have both been inconsistent this season, which after last season is understandable after so much success, but they both need to find that magic from last season to avoid an early exit for the Defending Champions.

The goals have been shared around this season amongst the PSG forwards but now they will need Dembele to step up and galvanize this PSG side, his ability to beat a man and also score different kind of goals playing off the wings and as a false 9 will cause Chelsea problems.

Dembele under Luis Enrique has finally unlocked the obvious potential he has shown over the years but if he can replicate the form he showed last season then he could be the difference against an inexperienced Chelsea side.

Galatasaray vs Liverpool: Victor Osimhen

Look I will be honest I have Galatasaray as a potential Dark Horse to cause an upset or two in the knockout rounds. Now they have beaten Juventus just last time out and made it far nervier than it needed to be, but they got through in Extra time.

I think Liverpool’s form has improved recently and they are vulnerable but should still go through in this tie, however if there is to be an upset or potential for the tie to go the distance then Osimhen must show his undoubted class.

The Nigerian Striker is a goal machine but his work rate and pressing really caught my eye this season in the Champions League, if he can replicate that then he will give Virgil Van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate a massive problem.

If he forces a few mistakes early in the first leg then the atmosphere in Turkey will get even more intense that it usually is, this Liverpool team has experience of winning trophies, but it is a team coming to an end and there is a vulnerability there.

Also, if Osimhen plays well then, his supporting cast may grow in confidence and belief will be a big factor in winning this tie for the Turkish side. Liverpool will hope to cut off the supply to Osimhen and hope their stars show their class, but it will be an intriguing tie, nonetheless.

Real Madrid vs Manchester City: Vinicius Jr

This fixture is fast becoming a staple of the recent Champions League, The Masters vs the Contenders to European dominance so it should make for compulsive viewing.

The only thing more entertaining than a Real Madrid team in full flow is a Real Madrid team in crisis, the sacking of Xabi Alonso was inevitable, but their recent wobble might have handed the title to Barcelona so it will be all or nothing for European glory.

Kylian Mbappe and Jude Bellingham might be back from injury for the return leg in Manchester, but that might not be enough to see them through, also Rodyrgo is out for a good few months after his ACL injury so more attacking losses in the side.

Now Manchester City have all their big guns fit so I think they will win this tie, but Vinicius is the only person I can see reigniting the fire in Madrid. After the awful Benfica incident, he still produced big moments; he will need to step up and lead without much of a supporting cast.

He is a player who has the ability to turn a game with moments of magic; Madrid will certainly need every ounce they can get as City are on a great run of form at the moment.

Atalanta vs Bayern Munich: Jamal Musiala

Harry Kane, Luiz Diaz, Michael Olise and Lennart Karl are all possible names i could include for the player to watch in this tie, i am picking Musiala as after an awful injury picked up at the Club World Cup in the summer he is back.

Musiala is one of my favourite players to watch in Europe as he is one of those rare players i would pay money to go and see if i could. His dribbling and ability to beat a man with the ball is so good in tight spaces and Bayern will need this to go deep into the latter stages.

He needs to get himself back up to full fitness as Bayern goes all out for the Champions League plus play himself back into form ahead of the World Cup in North America this summer.

I expect Bayern to go through, while Kane, Diaz and Olise quite rightly get all the plaudits. I do feel Musiala coming back will be key to determining how far they can go this season.

Newcastle vs Barcelona: Pedri

These two sides played each other in the opening game of the League Phase in which Barcelona come out on top 2-1, a lot has changed in the few months since then mostly injuries on both sides.

In the game, however I feel Newcastle will go very quickly from the first whistle as is their way when they play at home, Barcelona’s high line will be tested by Newcastle’s speed on the break.

Newcastle are also very direct and physical all over the pitch so keeping the ball and maintaining control will be key for Barcelona so enter Pedri. Sandro Tonali and Joelinton will aim to make it a midfield scrap rather than a tactical battle, without Frenkie De Jong it will mean Pedri will have to take the role of conductor and be the key man in the Barcelona midfield and follow Xavi and Andres Iniesta into the pantheon of great Spanish Midfielders for Barcelona.

Pedri for me is one of the top midfielders in the world and his use of the ball will be key to keep Newcastle at bay as well as feed their ridiculously talented frontline to hurt the English club.

The first leg will be tough but if they come through it then i can see Barcelona and Pedri in particular frustrating Newcastle by using their natural game to keep the game in their hands.

Atletico Madrid vs Tottenham: Ademola Lookman

One of the biggest and most eyebrow raising transfers of the January Window was Ademola Lookman from Atalanta to Atletico Madrid, Lookman was the star in Atalanta’s Europa League win over Bayer Leverkusen two years ago, so it was surprising to see him go for only £30m.

Atletico have added a type of player they did not really have in Lookman, someone who is direct and goes past a player. Also, Lookman is very good in tight spaces and will add goals and experience in Europe to this side who could go deep in this competition.

Tottenham will save their work cut out to keep up with Atletico given their injury crisis and lack of confidence as well as the looming spectre of a potential relegation to deal with.

I think Atletico will win this pretty comfortably and i think that Lookman will be a player who really uses this tie as a platform to show his place and undoubted quality in this team.

Bodø/Glimt vs Sporting Lisbon: Pedro Goncalves

I will be honest here in that it was very hard to pick a player for this game, not that the level of talent is not there but mostly as these players are all cogs in well-oiled machines.

There is also no obvious favourite in this tie either as both have really overachieved in reaching this far and the chance for one of them to go to the Quarter Finals will be massive.

So, I chose Pedro Goncalves for my player to watch in this tie as over the last few seasons he has been the standout player in the Sporting renaissance over the last few seasons.

Goncalves is one of the most senior players in this side so his presence and leadership will be key to navigating a very difficult trip to Norway for the first leg. They will need to box clever and not allow themselves to fall behind for the second leg as Inter Milan found out to their cost.

Most will look at Luis Suarez (No, not that one) and Francisco Trincao to score the goals as they have this season; it might be Goncalves who steps up with a moment of his own to help the Lisbon side to the next round.

Bayer Leverkusen vs Arsenal: Viktor Gyokeres

Arsenal have become the favourites to win the Champions League given how the draw worked out for them as they avoided the difficult side of the draw.

That being said they will still need to do professional job to get past Bayer Leverkusen who will be no pushovers, they have won their last few games in the competition with clean sheets so it does suggest they will try to make it difficult for the English side.

I have picked Gyokeres as the player to watch not because he is the most important as that would be between Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka but more so because he needs to start performing and contributing on the pitch in big moments.

Personally, I haven’t been overly impressed with him this season, i felt for the price tag and his form for Sporting Lisbon over the last few seasons he would dominate a lot more than he has.

But that will all be forgotten if he starts playing well and scoring goals as the stakes start to rise, they might need a moment or two from him in the next few weeks as this is the time where he will need to score the goals to fire them to glory and ease the burden of set piece goals as that cannot last forever.

A little over a year since the Friedkin Group completed their purchase of Everton, also a year since the return of David Moyes back to the club as their first major hire.

They wasted little time dispensing with the services of Sean Dyche. Bringing in Moyes brought back stability, and he kept them up comfortably.

The Hill Dickinson Stadium is in its first season after Everton left Goodison Park; there are still some growing pains, but that is to be expected.

The club needed to stay in the Premier League as the transition to the new stadium does desperately need Premier League money, so Moyes has at least another season before the Owners start to look for their next hire.

Sounds like a weird thing to say but it will not be too long before the leaks start about the board wanting a new manager, Moyes is a good manager, but he does come with his own way of doing things.

He is never gung-ho or plays slick passing football; he is attritional and depends on keeping a very solid defensive shape. There is nothing wrong with that, but new owners always have ambition; that normally means a better product on the pitch.

As of writing this they sit in the top half of the league in 8^th place, which if they stay there would represent their best finish in the Premier League for eight years, so it does go to show how bad they have been in the last few seasons.

A period of being a top half will sound like heaven to Everton after the relegation battles of the last few seasons, but that will fade probably by this time next year in my opinion.

Everton have scored 32 league goals so far and after their performance against Manchester United on Monday Night Football, they did not really create much and heavily relied on set pieces and putting bodies around the goalkeeper.

Now this is not an encapsulation of their season, but it does highlight a lack of a way of creating chances. Over his time at Everton, they routinely would bully United when they came to Goodison with figures like Marouane Fellaini and Duncan Ferguson being the two obvious ones.

In the summer they need to bolster this squad which does have some potential to push for the European places if all goes well.

Jordan Pickford is a great goalkeeper who still has a few years left as undoubted number one, Jarrad Branthwaite has potential to be a top-class central defender if they can keep hold of him.

James Garner is maturing as a very good Premier League player who has just committed to a new contract, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Iliman Ndiaye have added more threat going forward as well as loanee Jack Grealish who might return permanently in the summer.

Thierno Barry is a good prospect who could mature into a good focal point in the future. Also, Harrison Armstrong and Tim Iroegbunam are good upcoming midfielders, Tyrique George and Tyler Dibling both have great pace and willingness to take on a man so once they get their chance they should get the Everton fans off their seat.

So, what exactly do they need to take them to the next level for next season?

Two New Full Backs

Against Manchester United they played Jarrad Branthwaite at left-back and James Garner at right-back, this is because of injuries, but this is still a bad indictment of their squad that does need fixing.

Jake O’Brien is the current first choice right-back, but he is still a centre back by trade, Seamus Coleman has been a great servant, but you cannot beat Father Time, the needs to be properly replaced.

As far as Left-back goes Vitaliy Mykolenko is a decent left back but doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence, Leighton Baines has not been properly replaced and that was 6 years ago.

Nathan Patterson and Adam Aznou are both full backs who Moyes for whatever reason does not seem to trust so who knows what their fate will be, Aznou having only come in this season will have time to settle but to see other players playing in unnatural positions when you have players who are comfortable is very strange indeed.

Figure out who you want to be

If you were to sum up the identity of Everton, it would be “Dogs of War” originated by Joe Royle in the mid 90’s where he finished 6^th and won the FA Cup in 1995.

Even Everton’s title winning teams in the 1980’s had players who were horrible to play against Peter Reid being one but also lovely technical players like Trevor Steven and Kevin Sheedy.

A mixture of players who can handle the physical aspect of the game but also who can play is the ideal fit for this Everton team going into the new era in their new stadium.

The Everton owners would be wary not to stray from this too much as switching to a potentially more attacking manager without the players would be disastrous.

Recruitment, Recruitment, Recruitment

This is hands down the most important part of any football club. If you don’t get this right, then everything goes wrong. Over the years Everton have got great value by signing players most clubs miss like Tim Cahill, Phil Jagielka, Seamus Coleman etc.

When they have spent large amounts of money it goes wrong (Cenk Tosun or Jean-Philippe Gbamin anyone?) so spending smartly is definitely what they should do.

Also, if they could use the new stadium and facilities to attract players then that would be a big win for the Friedkin Group. A club of stability that will allow them game time and to grow into a serious team might be a good option for some players rather than get lost in clubs like Chelsea’s loan system.

Roma (The Other club in the Friedkin Group) has also become a hot bed for young players, so it would make sense for a similar model to be adopted. They too have appointed an experienced coach who has also won a European trophy in recent seasons in Gian Piero Gasperini who won the Europa League with Atalanta two seasons ago.

Do not be surprised to see a permanent deal for Jack Grealish this summer, the loan has gone very well so if Everton can tempt City to sell and Jack to take a wage cut then it might be done.

Also, John Stones is rumored to be on the way out of Manchester City as well this summer, bringing him back would be a no brainer and add real experience to the team while also allowing them to evolve how they play.

Everton fans will be enjoying the drama less season this year after the last few teetering on the edge of relegation. But they will also look at the squad, stadium and owners then they will start to want a little more, it’s human nature but hopefully they do and progress like Aston Villa for example over the last few years and get into Europe.