"This is their worst league start for 65 million years..."

We have a winner!  The Most Tedious Period in the Football Calendar award can finally, unquestionably be given to this September-October quagmire.

We've got mass media outlets composing league tables - accompanied by headlines such as 'Cardiff go top with win' - after only two games.  You have the meaningless and sparsely-attended early group-stage matches in both (now-indistinguishable) European cups.  There's also not just one but two international weekends to grind through, stymying any attempts by clubs to build early-season momentum.

But the straw that has broken this old goat's back, that makes him want to trample broadcasters far and wide, is that oh-so-familiar line: "This is X's best/worst start for Y years!"

This phrase plagues September and October.  It must be stopped.  We must rally, get a petition going, bombard the BBC with complaints - make them apologise.  Whatever it takes to get the media to actually do some work and fish up some real statistics.

Who defines the word 'start'?  It's a lovely, fluid concept that stretches from about game number 3 out to what feels like Christmas and the halfway mark, and allows the media to frame any particular three-game run as reflective of that team's entire season.

 For example, in the 2010/11 season, Stoke City had 12 points from 9 games.   It was very ominous; "Stoke's worst-ever start [out of three attempts] to a Premier League season."

Stoke City then won three on the bounce and, after 12 games, had 21 points.  Without a hint of irony or a shred of shame the BBC's preview of the next fixture read: "Stoke have enjoyed their best-ever start to a Premier League season."   Some bloody nerve eh!

We need a government-imposed rule on the precise length of a 'start' to a season - say, 8 games.  Then you've got a real statistic on your hands and, what's more, we can all stop talking about it nice and early in the season.

I know, I know, it may seem like a triviality; I should go back to pontificating about the dying art of tackling or the worldwide refereeing conspiracy to favour Man United.  Well, I will - but this really needed highlighting.

If these media companies would have you and I believe that statistics dictate all within football, they could at least have the decency to use proper statistics.  We shouldn't just be swallowing whatever groundless garbage they conjure up to suit the occasion.

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Photo credit: stringberd

Life after the Prem: Danny Higginbotham

It must be hard for footballers to believe sometimes.  But yes, there can be more to post-30s life than sinking, defeated, into a plush Sky sofa, muttering agreement with whatever Jamie Redknapp just said - or trying to get a word in edgeways on BBC's 606 programme, placating a deluded Toon fan while being shouted over by Robbie Savage.

The increasing influx of experienced foreign coaches in the Premier League has only further diminished the job prospects of any aspirational managers, while anybody who isn't a cockney or hasn't played for West Ham ('footballing academy', my arse) is up against the odds if they fancy trying to squeeze into the crowded Sky Sports studios.  Whether they might be better trying next door at BT Sport - whose cavernous new facility houses a four-man punditry-panel colossus - is by the by.

Because Danny Higginbotham is illuminating a slightly different route.  Since incurring a serious knee injury while at Stoke in 2011, the 34-year-old former Man United trainee has found fitness - and first-team football - hard to come by.  Not deterred, Higginbotham began dabbling in punditry with several broadcasters, distinguishing himself increasingly well to the point where he was a big feature in the BBC's coverage of this month's transfer deadline day.  He's even started writing a column for Stoke-on-Trent's Sentinel newspaper (oo-er).

All fairly standard so far, you might think.  But Higginbotham isn't embracing the comfortable life just yet, and unlike many of his peers has demonstrated that he is not too proud to drop down the divisions to wherever he can find first-team football and continue his playing career.  Through a battle for fitness he has meandered his way down to the Blue Square Premier (the Conference, if you're one of us old gits), where he now plays with Chester FC.

He is one of several players cutting this admirable path.  Rory Delap, 37, moved to Burton Albion this summer; James Beattie, 35, first played for and - as of the end of last season - now manages Accrington Stantley; Dele Adebola, 38, now plies his trade for Rushall Olympic in the Northern Premier League Premier Division; Barry Hayles, 41, is turning out for Southern Premier Division side Arlesey Town this season. City the season before last; Frank Sinclair, 41, is the player-manager at Conference North outfit Colwyn Bay.

But Higginbotham isn't just content with "getting my love of football back" at Chester - in the past few days he has declared himself available for selection for the national team of Gibraltar, who are the newest full-members of UEFA following a successful application in May of this year.

As Higginbotham explained to BBC Radio 5 Live: "The opportunity might be there to play against some very big European countries - what an experience that would be.  It was something I couldn't turn down."

However, there are serious issues beneath this feel-good factor that persist unresolved.  The restricted educational opportunities of people who had to prioritise their sport from such an early age represent an obstacle which the game has only begun to get a handle on in the past decade.  Not every player will enter their 30s able to reel off a newspaper column or articulate on live television the finer points of Chelsea's new formation.

This leads into the broader and undeniable problem of racial stratification - both within the game and in the society that feeds the game each new generation of players.  The number of black managers currently among England's 92 league clubs (three - can you name them?) is greatly disproportionate to the number of black players at the same level.  Thus the positive is tarnished somewhat - that such luminaries as Frank Sinclair are giving back to the grassroots game not because they want to but because it is the best they can achieve in the current environment.

Higginbotham's is a satisfying story, but its exceptional nature serves only to highlight the fundamental problems that football continues to ignore.


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Photo credit: Ronnie Macdonald; Ingy the Wingy

John Motson is losing it: Exhibit A

For the sake of poor old Motty, let's hope this post isn't the start of a series.  And let's not have any of you heartless cynics suggesting that the living legend already lost it, a long time ago.

Personal affections aside, It is increasingly worrisome how slack the media coverage can be even at the sharp end of the game.  In Motson's BBC match preview for Sunday's match between Arsenal and Stoke, the commentator writes:

'There's been some bad blood between the two clubs in recent years, but with Hughes replacing Pulis [as manager of Stoke] it could be a bit different now - the issue of whether Stoke play 'dirty' should be diluted.'

Erm... I might have to beg to differ with you there, Motty.  Surely anyone who's been paying even remote attention to football in the five or six years remembers several instances where Messers Hughes and Wenger didn't see eye to eye?

On a personal level, the two managers enjoyed a ridiculously petty handshake-snub 'saga' in 2009, following the 3-0 defeat of Wenger's Arsenal by Hughes' Manchester City side.

But prior to that, when Hughes was the manager of Blackburn Rovers in the mid-noughties, Wenger accused him of sending his players out with "a desire for violence," to deliberately injure the opposition.

That's quite severe isn't it.

Stoke's propensity to roll over away to the big clubs, as well as the cavernous, theatre-like Emirates Stadium, should be factors that defuse much of the tension for this match.  But odds on the 'bad blood' having disappeared by the return fixture at the Britannia Stadium will be pretty long.

Sorry Motson, these managers hate each other and these clubs hate each other.  Shield your innocent eyes on Sunday, it isn't going to be pretty.

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Photo credit: Ben Sutherland