Explore every episode of the podcast Football Ruined My Life

This week Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes talk to theauthor, Matt Eastley, about his book Brian Moore Saved Our Sundays – a slightly exaggerated title you might think but certainly no more than Manchester United Ruined My Life.  In 1968 ITV reorganised its football transmissions to compete directly with the BBC and Match of the Day.  In the 1970s ITV was particularly good at using its regional franchises in the Midlands, the North West, the North East and East Anglia to give viewers a second helping of recorded highlights on Sunday afternoons.  And so the voices of Brian Moore and Gerald Sinstadt and Hugh Johns and Gerry Harrison became as familiar and highly welcome visitors in our living rooms as John Motson and Barry Davies.  Matt Eastley thinks that ITV Football in the 1970s and 1980s was the Golden Age of televised football.  Listen to the podcast to find out why.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since we received positive feedback after our first re-run episode with one of the three founder members of this podcast, Paddy Barclay, we thought you might like to hear again Paddy talking about derby matches.  One of the pleasures of making a podcast that does not depend on its topicality is that we can reintroduce subjects which remain perennial debating points.  Paddy was well placed to comment on the bitter sectarian rivalry of Glasgow as Colin Shindler was on Manchester’s equally intense but not as violent internal conflicts.  Jon Holmes of course has to travel to Nottingham to find a local derby which strains credibility though not as much as Crystal Palace’s derby with Brighton at the far end of the A23. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Colin Shindler and Jim White open the postbag which is predictably full of scorn for the owners and operating officers of Manchester City… but also includes some well written observations on the state of football and football supporting in this country.  We have an intelligent audience, and the postbag reflects that intelligence with very little of the emotion and bile that accompanies the game online and on radio phone ins.  There are complaints too about the way we ignore the lower leagues and don’t give enough credit to the young players of today.  And there’s a surprise guest appearance of FRML’s most consistent critic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes talk to the author Dave Tomlinson about his book Doing A Leeds.  Even by the standards of traditional football chaos, what happened to Leeds United between 1996 and 2005 constituted a financial, football and psychological roller coaster.  The Elland Road club ascended at breathtaking pace to the Champions League semi-finals and plunged almost immediately into a nightmare of bankruptcy, relegation and a fire sale of the outstanding players who had got them onto the top table of Premier League and European football. David O’Leary seemed to be the manager of the future, he and chairman Peter Ridsdale forming a winning team before the latter abruptly sacked the former and was then ejected from the board he had been running.  Plenty for both panel and listeners to get stuck into – like a Norman Hunter tackle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since we’ve had two weeks off from the Premier League (and the Championship) in order to wallow in beating up Croatia and the Czech Republic as well as losing (as is our tradition) to Spain, we thought you might like to hear again the familiar, engaging voice of Patrick Barclay who took strong exception to Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler as they dismissed the Nations League as a sop to the demands of television and the financial greed of UEFA.  Listen to Paddy as he berates the other two who are nostalgic for the old Home Internationals when England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland played with themselves.  One side sees a desperation of the television companies and UEFA to ensure that no summer passes without an international tournament, leading to player burnout and spectator indifference.  The other side sees a sensible arrangement that abolishes pointless friendlies, gives every match a purpose and ensures that the weaker sides play each other and are not just cannon fodder for the big boys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this edition, Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jimmy Mulville are talking about one particular phrase and its meaning within football.  Never Go Back is a particularly poignant phrase for two of the panel when it’s used to refer to two of their heroes - Malcolm Allison and Howard Kendall.  The other name which crops up immediately in the conversation is Kevin Keegan who went back to Newcastle when it was owned by Mike Ashley and left quickly when he realised that it wasn’t the same club he had managed a decade earlier under the more benevolent patronage of Sir John Hall.  It applies to players too – players who had achieved great things at one club return to the same place at the end of their careers to find they simply cannot reproduce the magic of those early years.  For Colin the phrase also evokes the sad memory of his old City hero Francis Lee returning to Maine Road with the club in the doldrums in the 1990s only to be driven from the chairman’s office by the fury and yes, the hatred of those supporters who had once been his greatest fans.  All supporters will have their own nominations for this topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a change to our usual podcast, we bring you a special edition of Football Ruins My Life in which we consider the leak at the end of last week that Manchester City have apparently been found guilty on 114 of the 115 alleged breaches of Premier League rules. Not so much a discussion as a series of opinion pieces offered by Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White. Very much from the heart, as well as the head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There is an initial resistance by the panel to the question:  can you build a team around one player?  The instinctive response is one of scorn and derision – I mean how do you build a team around Peter Shilton?  But then the World Cup arrived and along came Messi to suggest that this was a perfectly viable topic, particularly as his performances aroused our memories of Maradona in Mexico in 1986.  Frequently we read of managers attempting to lure a very good player to a new club with the promise of building a team around him.  That must sound very enticing to an easily influenced if talented young player, but does it mean that the said manager is going to sign inferior players so that the sun at the centre of his future universe will shine more brightly?  So how do you successfully build a team around one player?  Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Jon Holmes, Colin Shindler and Jim White are talking about one particular player – and one manager and one club director and one club chairman and one trade union official and one television executive and one presenter and one analyst and famously on one occasion, one linesman... none other than the Bearded Wonder that was Jimmy Hill.  That simple list of his achievements and the different roles he played within football indicate what a unique individual he was.  It’s regrettable that in later life he became something of a caricature and a figure who could be easily mocked with his pointed chin and his cross of St. George earrings.  Yet no single figure made a bigger impact on English football in the second half of the twentieth century than Jimmy Hill.  It was Hill who suggested three points for a win which stopped both teams playing for a draw twenty minutes from time.  He never received the honours that his innovations merited and his final years suffering from dementia made for a sad end which Football Ruined My Life is determined to correct. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are times when the panel like to turn the spotlight on those men who do incalculable good work behind the scenes of a football club but remain largely anonymous. Such a hero is Steve Walsh who for many years has performed the job of Head of Recruitment, most famously at Leicester City where he spotted and brought to the club Jamie Vardy, N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez who between them were the spine of the team that won the Premier League in 2016 and cost the equivalent of what it would cost to take a finger nail from Erling Haaland on loan. In a fascinating behind the scenes look at how clubs sign players these days, Steve compares what happens now with what happened when he started out as a scout. The difference in the money is of course breathtaking but also the extraordinary scouting network over which a Head of Recruitment presides. No longer does manager have to travel midweek to watch a player in the Scottish Second Division but a combination of a world wide scouting network and endless footage captured by cameras in every league in every country provides the information on which millions of pounds can be spent without the manager ever seeing the player in action until he arrives at the club. No arguments this week but a series of fascinating revelations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Andy Hamilton set out to annoy everyone with a discussion of which players from the pre-1992 era – the year when the world of English football changed with the arrival of Sky Sports and the Premier League – would have been stars in today’s football.  It is arguable that great players will always be great players whatever era they play in and this discussion is therefore entirely pointless, but it is impossible to set a topic for three football enthusiasts without an inevitable disagreement.  We can only hope that these points of disagreement don’t lead to tempers being raised to be followed by verbal fisticuffs if such an interesting oxymoron can be said to exist.  To see if Colin, Jon and Andy turn into the Argentina players at the end of the recent World Cup Final tune in to this podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Jimmy Mulville, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler examine ex-players who become owners.  It used to be that players saw how managers behaved and thought they could do better when they retired.  Now with the increase in players’ affluence, they have seen how the clubs they played for were run and have decided that they could do it as well, if not better.  This philosophy underlay the actions of Derek Dougan at Wolves, Francis Lee at Manchester City and a man who remains perhaps the biggest enigma.  Terry Venables, after a distinguished playing and managerial career, was desperate to take the last big step into ownership and decided to partner Alan Sugar when they took over Tottenham Hotspur from Irving Scholar in the 1990s.  Well, we all know what happened then but is it ever possible for an ex-player to buy, own and then successfully run a football club?  And do fans want such an owner or would they prefer to stick to Middle Eastern nation states and American hedge fund managers?  Tune in and find out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1974, Leeds United won the First Division by five points, transforming themselves from the ugly side known as Dirty Leeds.  It was Don Revie’s greatest triumph as a club manager.  At the end of that 1973-4 season Alf Ramsey was sacked. Don Revie was his obvious successor as the FA had no intention of ever appointing Brian Clough.  In March 1975 England beat Germany at Wembley with a standout performance from Alan Hudson.  The press was ecstatic as England ended the season three points clear at the top of their qualifying group for the following year’s Euros.  Just two years later Revie resigned before he was sacked and went to manage the UAE team for a lot of money for which he was widely reviled.  His time as England’s manager is pointed to as England’s nadir. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White discuss how things went so wrong so fast for Revie’s England? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After a long hot summer, Colin Shindler welcomes back our favourite football podcast with the start of what will be our 5th series. And it begins on the same day as the Premier League season kicks off - Friday 21st August, with a special (they're all special) look at England under the stewardship of Don Revie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In our last edition before the World Cup break, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes are joined by the distinguished author and journalist Duncan Hamilton.  Duncan has written almost twenty books on various aspects of football and cricket including three William Sports Book of the Year winners.  Among those twenty are biographies of George Best, Harold Larwood and Neville Cardus, a fascinating portrait of Brian Clough called Provided You Don’t Kiss Me and his latest Answered Prayers about Alf Ramsey and the winning of the World Cup.  You would think that there was nothing left to say about 1966 but by concentrating on the rather tortured character of Alf Ramsey, Duncan makes us relive that whole experience with fresh insight.  In particular Duncan promotes the importance in Alf’s life of the Spurs manager Arthur Rowe, the now almost forgotten manager of the Tottenham Hotspur side that won the League Championship in the 1950-51 season.  His tactics came to be called “push and run” and in Alf Ramsey, Rowe found a willing student.  To discover all sorts of fascinating details about Alf and the 1966 World Cup triumph download the latest podcast. And just to re-iterate: Colin, Jon and their indefatigable producer, Paul, are arriving at the World Cup like all the players – utterly knackered.  In order to recharge the batteries, they will have a close season where they will not be found drunk and disorderly in a nightclub in Ibiza. Instead, they will be back bright eyed and bushy-tailed for the new season towards the end of August.  If you really can’t wait till then and you want to see them all in operation you will be able to find them at the Nevill Holt Festival in the glorious Leicestershire countryside near Market Harborough at 4.45pm on Saturday 13 June.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we’ll be following on our discussion of football in the 1980s with an entirely self-indulgent session of selecting the team of that decade.  To help Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler to do so they are delighted to be able to call on the services of Steve Coppell, a man who was playing for Manchester United and England at the start of the decade and at the end of it was the manager of Crystal Palace.  It’s hard to think of anyone better suited to evaluating the talents and characters of the players of that decade.  There have been two previous podcasts on teams of the 1960s and 1970s so we can usually rely on Jon to supply the goalkeeper, the position awarded in the 1960s to Gordon Banks and in the 1970s to Peter Shilton - except that now a new rule is in operation.  Like Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year, no player can be selected more than once so what is Jon going to do now that he can’t start off his team with his client Peter Shilton again?  Listen and you’ll find out… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this podcast episode Jim White, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes turn their attention to one of the darkest decades in recent football history - the 1980s.  It wasn’t all bad.  We got to the quarter finals of the World Cup in 1986 and were unlucky to lose to a goal punched past Shilton by the Hand of God.  We had a fascinating rivalry at the top of the game between the two sides based in Liverpool one of whom was not Tranmere Rovers.  Three different English sides won the European Cup between 1980 and when we were banned from Europe after Heysel.  However, if you look at the crowds during the decade there was a steep decline.  The hooliganism was bad and getting worse, the government hated the game and everything to do with it and television was accordingly losing interest.  The decade was the last chapter of the game as it had traditionally been played in this country and it culminated in one of the great finishes to the League Championship as Arsenal won at Anfield.  Tragically too, it was the decade of Bradford fire and the Hillsborough disaster when 96 innocent people died needlessly.  What are your feelings about football in the Eighties?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week the Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the year 1970, which, to their collective astonishment, is 56 years ago. It’s Colin’s favourite year and much treasured by the 20-year-old Jon. Meanwhile the teenage Andy Hamilton skipped school to watch Chelsea beat Leeds in an infamous FA Cup Final replay (and was found out) and ignored his O level revision to watch Brazil v Uruguay in the World Cup semi final (he failed his Latin and had to resit). Everton won the League, City the League Cup and the European Cup Winners Cup and England got knocked out of the World Cup at the quarter final stage when the whole world (never mind the whole of England) was eagerly anticipating an England v Brazil World Cup Final. It was the end of the decade and somehow the excitement that had been generated in the 1960s disappointingly began to diminish thereafter. If you ask us to nominate a year when football ruled our lives and hadn’t yet ruined them, it was 1970. Much to discuss, much nostalgia to wallow in. Please join us in our indulgence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes look once more at the emails you’ve sent us since we did our last postbag at the end of last year.  We encourage you to write to us every week and you do so in comforting numbers.  Once again the tone is almost entirely positive with people wanting to contribute their own memories to the topic they’ve just listened to… or correcting our very fallible memories.  We’re happy to acknowledge our mistakes even if on some occasions we have been grossly libelled.  We look forward to these occasional episodes because it enables us to connect with our audience and we’re very grateful that you take the time and trouble to write if only because it reassures us that we’re talking about the topics which you think and talk about and also it’s a comfort to know that at least we’re not just talking to ourselves.  The subjects range widely, reflecting the breadth of the listeners’ interests but there is genuine anger at the travesty of the World Cup draw and the sycophancy of the FIFA Peace Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tony Woodcock was one of Jon Holmes’ earliest clients, a superb player who scored 139 goals in 437 appearances for Nottingham Forest, FC Koln and Arsenal besides the 16 goals scored in 42 appearances for England. This record compares favourably with Jon and Colin Shindler’s combined contribution of no goals at all at professional level.  It is therefore entirely appropriate that we leave the discussion on the art of goalscoring and how it has changed in the past forty years entirely to Tony.  Along the way we get his insight into the weird and wonderful art of management as practised by Brian Clough and a detailed description of what happened when Tony was transferred to FC Koln much to the displeasure of Mr Clough.  We also learn what happened when Tony took a DNA test to discover where his skill as a professional footballer might have come from. The results were surprising, even to Tony. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Jim White, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes wonder if the gap will ever narrow between the Championship and the Premier League.  In 1964 Leeds United were promoted from the Second Division and in their first season in Division 1 they lost the League Championship to Manchester United only on goal average (as it then was).  In the 1976-77 season Nottingham Forest finished third in the Second Division – well behind Chelsea and champions Wolverhampton Wanderers.  The next season they won the First Division, the year after that they won the European Cup and then retained it the following year.  Clearly that is never going to happen these days. More relevant is that last season all three clubs who had been promoted the previous year went straight back down again. This year at least one will go down and possibly two of the relegated sides in 2025 will come back up again.  Will any club in the future be able to replicate what Forest did? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Andy Hamilton, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes discuss turning points in football history.  The historian A.J.P. Taylor, a name that has never graced a football podcast previously famously described the 1848 revolutions, particularly in Germany, as a "turning point in history that failed to turn".  Well the panel now discuss those moments in football history which were significant turning points in the evolution of the game we see today.  Our first turning point deals with the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary but some time after its collapse.  On a murky afternoon in November 1953 the Hungarian football team came to Wembley and shocked the world by defeating England in its fortress – and not just defeating them, they wiped the floor with us.  But was this really a turning point in British football?  After all, the old WM formation carried on for many years after Hidegkuti had demonstrated the value of a new fashioned number 9 and you could argue that it took a further 13 years until 1966 when England finally emerged from the 1953 induced nightmare. Are the panel’s turning points the same as yours? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week’s special guest on the podcast is the distinguished historian Dominic Sandbrook, author of magisterial histories of Britain from 1956 to 1982 and of course a co-host of the podcast The Rest is History.  More to the point, however, he is a passionate supporter of Wolverhampton Wanderers whom we have shamefully neglected in our previous 134 plus podcasts, mainly because we have been waiting to get hold of Dominic.  In Who Dares Wins, his history of Britain from 1979 to 1982, he not only references the 1980 Wembley final in which Wolves beat Clough’s Nottingham Forest but he utilises the names of Wolves players on a far larger scale.  If you listen to this edition of the podcast you will discover how and why he does it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the sort of player who should have played for their country but never did, players who lacked the ebullience to stand out from their more aggressive and extrovert team mates and players -  wherever they operated in the football pyramid.  Players who were the unshowy but reliable… who got the ball, made ground and passed accurately to a colleague in space.  On a fictional level the list would start with Blackie Gray who did all the donkey work for Melchester Rovers and provided what we now call the assist for Roy Race, who scored all the goals and was credited with the fancy title of Roy of the Rovers.  Today’s edition is all about the Blackie Grays of this world.  To be fair to Gary Lineker he always credited Peter Beardsley as the creator of many of his goals for England.  Listen to discover who else is regarded as underrated in this way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Colin Shindler, Andy Hamilton and Jon Holmes gather to discuss whether there are more 17 and 18 year old players coming into the game than there used to be in the postwar years.  Has the abandonment of the A and B sides and more significantly the reserve leagues – like the Central League and the Football Combination – changed things for the better?  Can young players learn much by sitting on the bench watching the first eleven play or would they learn more by playing games in a reserve team?  How effective are the academies in speeding talented youngsters into the first team? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s the view of Football Ruined My Life that many football supporters used to buy broadsheet newspapers specifically to read Geoffrey Green or Brian Glanville or David Lacey or Hugh McIlvanney – four hugely respected titans of the art of writing about football matches for the next day’s paper.  In this edition, Jim White of the Daily Telegraph joins Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler to explain why his own career has coincided with the long slow decline of the influence of the football journalists.  There was a time in the glory days when television knocked on the door politely and managers were much more afraid of Glanville and McIlvanney or even the local paper’s reporter than of the stilted television interview on those rare occasions when the match was actually covered by television.  With the change in reading habits has it actually changed the nature of the job of a football reporter? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by the investigative journalist Michael Crick whose appearances down the years on Newsnight and Channel 4 News have made him a familiar face on our television screens.  Despite being a friend of Colin, he is a longtime supporter of Manchester United, having had the decency to grow up in Manchester.  In this episode he talks about the power of nationalism and how it has affected the game at both club and international levels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There was a time before 1966 when crowds were a lot friendlier and less angry than they are today.  Supporters of opposing clubs stood together on the terraces and policing was relegated to one copper on a horse outside the ground as you came in.  Crowds in the immediate postwar years were large and though the grounds were already starting to crumble, club directors saw no need to spend money updating them.  The food and drink were mostly disgusting and toilet provision was virtually non-existent.  But there was no hooliganism and nobody got stabbed or was hustled to hospital with a dart sticking out of his eye. Omid Djalili, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes ask what does that tell you about society in the early postwar years?  And why did it change?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler ask the question “Has the match day experience improved over the years they have been going to watch football?”   You would think the answer would be that of course it has.  We all have a seat, the food, whatever the price, couldn’t be worse than it was in the 1960s and ‘70s, we are never caught in those frightening swayings on the terraces and the clubs appear to want to turn football into some weird version of show business.  But… why don’t we see those marching bands on the pitch any more and what happened to Arthur Cager, the man in a white coat on a stand conducting the crowd in Abide With Me and She’s A Lassie From Lancashire before the start of the Cup Final.  Is this new awkward marriage between show biz and football something the crowds really welcome? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The television interview with a British manager after a match has become quite a rare bird, although recent events at Manchester United and Chelsea have slightly altered that perception.  Prior to those appointments, Eddie Howe, Sean Dyche and David Moyes flew the Union Jack and we currently also have Rob Edwards and Scott Parker – though their stay in the Premier League looks destined to be over in May.  For some time though, Match of the Day has felt like a procession of foreign managers brought in by foreign owners.  It seems that the only way to become a British manager in the Premier League is to be promoted from the Championship. Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes ponder how this situation has come about. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Recently we had the Africa Cup of Nations with that absurd ending rescued by the grown up behaviour of Sadio Mane.  During the course of the competition we were constantly reminded of how much Mo Salah means to the people of Egypt.  However, Omid Djalili, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes also look at the downside.  When Luis Suarez was sent off for biting for the third time in the 2014 World Cup after taking a mouthful from the shoulder of the Italy defender Georgio Chiellini – they wonder whether the people of Uruguay were sympathetic to the way Suarez’ assuaged his hunger pains or whether they were properly embarrassed.  Football throws up heroes and villains on a regular basis.  How much impact do their actions have on the perception of their country? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When the Football League started in 1888 there were six clubs from the Midlands and six from Lancashire.  Now look at the Premier League.  Of the current 20 clubs, nine come from the effete South of England, in other words almost half.  Jon Holmes, Colin Shindler and Jim White discuss whether this is a North-South divide or a London-versus-the-rest-of-the-country divide.  We know to what extent football is ruled by money and we know that the North-South divide is a slightly euphemistic way of describing the disadvantaged North versus the over privileged South.  So much is self-evident.  But is this increasing concentration of wealth in the southern half of the country a good thing or a bad thing for football?”  Listen to the podcast and let us know what you think (and where you live!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Colin Shindler asks Jon Holmes and Andy Hamilton to relive their football related nightmares.  They are forced under forensic questioning to remember what they had hoped they had buried forever in the deepest recesses of their memories.  In other words, those defeats which evoke the very darkest of thoughts.  They don’t have to be 9-0 thrashings to do that.  They can be games when you’re 1-0 up and coasting and then two stupid, stupid, stupid goals in stoppage time turn victory into defeat.  There can be narrow defeats in important games or games decided by the insanity and incipient blindness of the match officials.  Either way you leave the ground wondering why you bothered getting out of bed and coming in the first place. The Football Ruined My Life audience knows exactly what that feels like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White pay tribute to some of the players who died in 2025 plus two journalists and one referee.  As most of our listeners are probably in their 60s and 70s, the deaths of players like Billy Bonds, John Robertson and perhaps above all Denis Law bring to the surface fears about our own mortality.  If you loved the football and the footballers of the 1960s and 1970s, when our love for the game was sealed, you probably find, as we do, these deaths to be particularly poignant.  Those we are talking about in this edition are many and varied, famous and unknown.  They include a player who kickstarted my second career, a goalkeeper who made 5 appearances and spent nearly all of his 10 years at my club in the reserves and a centre half who scored an own goal in three consecutive games. Isn’t that worth commemorating? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anyone who watches The Big Match Revisited every Saturday morning on ITV4 will notice that referees in the 1970s and 1980s used to wave play on so much more often - which meant that the game flowed and wasn’t constantly hauled back for yet another free kick.  You also pretty much had to amputate an opponent’s leg below the knee before you could be sent off.  A sending off in the 1960s and 1970s was a big deal and the player was usually embarrassed and upset.  Squads were of course much smaller so losing a key player for 28 days (which was how punishments were given then) was a serious blow to the team’s prospects for the next month.  Now of course getting a red card is regarded as part of the day job and if you can get yourself sent off a week before Christmas and receive an automatic three match suspension you get a nice family Christmas at home.  To an extent of course this isn’t really down to the individual referee.  Referees are under examination from an official observer sitting in the stand and they can be overruled by VAR.  They used to be the sole arbiters of what happens on the pitch.  Now they aren’t.  Jimmy Mulville, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes discuss whether or not this trend is good for the game and particularly for the spectators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week the Colin, Jon and Omid are talking about those players beloved by the fans but usually underrated by fans of other clubs. In other words, club legends -  usually players who play for one club for the whole of their career who do not appear to be tempted by a transfer to a club more likely to win trophies… and who certainly wouldn’t leave the club just for the sake of increasing even by a significant amount their weekly wage packet.  Have such players entirely disappeared from our game? That loyalty was quite prevalent at one time in the game.  Every single listener to this podcast with a strong affiliation to one particular club could probably name a club legend who stuck around for years, never in contention for international honours, never sought by European clubs, rarely injured - a person who gave their all for the club even if they were less gifted than some team mates.  They were what gave their club their unique image.  They were players like Billy Bonds at West Ham, Harry Cripps at Millwall, Tony Dunne at Manchester United, Alan Oakes at City… the list goes on.  Who is on your list? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every year at this time we ensure that we have a postbag of your emails to spread joy and happiness among the growing Football Ruined My Life community.  We encourage you to write to us every week and you do so in comforting numbers.  Once again the tone is almost entirely positive with people wanting to contribute their own memories to the topic they’ve just listened to or correcting our very fallible memories.  We look forward to these occasional episodes because it enables us to connect with our audience.  And we’re very grateful that you take the time and trouble to write even if only because it reassures us that we’re talking about the topics which you think and talk about.  But also it’s a comfort to know that at least we’re not just talking to ourselves.  So a merry festive season and a happy new year to one and all and do keep those emails pouring in.  There’ll be another postbag in a couple of months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following on from the last episode (the special on FIFA and their Peace Prize that was awarded to Donald Trump), this week Jon Holmes, Andy Hamilton and Colin Shindler ask themselves the question: “Is the game more or less exciting than it was when we first started watching football in the late 1950s/early 1960s?” It certainly seems to be more exciting to judge by the hysterical radio and television commentators and the ludicrous goal celebrations we have to suffer. Back in the day a goalscorer might have his hand shaken, his hair ruffled and on occasion his bottom fondled, albeit very briefly. Of course, what appears hysterical to fans of mature years might not appear so to someone fifty years younger. The game has grown, Premier League grounds are full, players are faster and more skilful. Surely that means that the game is more exciting. Listen and find out… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is a shorter but very special edition of Football Ruined My Life. It was recorded three days after the sickening and humiliating farrago of nonsense which was the draw for the 2026 World Cup. It contained, of course, the sickening sight of a convicted felon being awarded a Peace Prize. The sheer inanity of the exercise made it entirely nonsensical. Within minutes of the draw starting, our producer Paul Kobrak, messaged Jon and Colin saying he was sickened by the spectacle that was unfolding on television. Jon was feeling exactly the same and we jointly wondered how the game we have all loved for almost the entire duration of our lives could possibly have sunk so low. The reason we all fell in love with with game of football was because it appealed to our better instincts of joy and romance. Football can give you those feelings.  But that football has gone and if we needed confirmation then FIFA’s lunacy was the proof.   As football fans we have the right to howl in protest. Let us know if you were also howling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode Colin Shindler and Jim White are delighted to welcome one of the few Economics graduates to play for England and manage successfully in the Premier League.  Steve Coppell’s potential career as an economist was somewhat overshadowed by 360 games as a right winger for Tranmere Rovers and Manchester United, despite being forced to retire at the age of 28 because of a bad knee injury. Incidentally he also had a subsequent career of over a thousand games as a highly successful manager of a number of clubs but principally Crystal Palace and Reading. Now at the age of 70 he has the perspective to compare football when he played and managed with the game as it is played and managed today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The panel discuss the players they most feared because they were really good players and always played well against their own team... or players who were basically hatchet men who set out cold-bloodedly to injure their best player.  When we talked about goalkeepers Pat Jennings came into the former category and you have to say nobody could dislike Pat who always seemed such a pleasant self-effacing bloke – unless you were trying to score past him. Don Revie’s Leeds United on the other hand were both feared and disliked. Various teams of course have made us wonder whether there is any point in turning up to watch the inevitable defeat – Liverpool in the 80s, Manchester United from 1994 for the next two decades, perhaps Guardiola’s Manchester City from a few years ago. Do memories of Ron Harris, Peter Storey, Norman Hunter etc. evoke the warm glow of nostalgia? Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler fight it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ronnie Radford was a workaday midfielder playing for such legendary clubs as Worcester City, Bath City and Forest Green Rovers but in January 1972 he was playing for Hereford United in an FA Cup third round replay at Edgar Street on a quagmire of a pitch in front of a capacity crowd. With less than ten minutes to go and Newcastle comfortably 1-0 ahead Radford won a tackle in the Newcastle half and played a one-two. The return pass bobbled on the muddy surface but sat up nicely for Radford, and he unleashed a 30-yard strike into the top corner that left Willie McFaul the Newcastle goalkeeper helpless. It sparked a pitch invasion, and the images of that muddy pitch, Radford celebrating with arms aloft and the crowd invading the pitch, have since become immortalised in FA Cup history. If ever there was a single goal which defined the glory of the giantkiller this was it. Jim White, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler wallow nostalgically, as ever, in their memories of similar giant killing acts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now that England have already qualified for next year’s World Cup finals, this makes all the remaining matches in the group completely pointless from an England perspective.  The November international break seems to have arrived 25 minutes after the October one.  These tedious autumn and spring international breaks also extend the football season which now starts in the middle of the Test match series and ends as the following season’s Test match series begins. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White discuss, sometimes with a sense of rage and frustration, their feelings that the traditional rhythm of a football season is being disrupted by these irritating international breaks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Andy Hamilton, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes resume their role as selectors as they choose the best team of the 1960s from the English Football League as it then was.  That’s not one individual club or national side but a team composed of the outstanding players of that decade in some sort of logical formation that would bring out the best of them both as individuals and as team players. Players like Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews are ineligible as their greatest days were in the 1940s and 1950s even if their careers continued into the 1960s.  Some of the selections will undoubtedly coincide with yours but some of them might surprise you so press play and start luxuriating in a nostalgic wallow through the days of our youths. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Colin Shindler tries to convince Jon Holmes and Jimmy Mulville that the 1960s was English football’s most glorious decade.  Not just the world cup triumph of 1966, though that obviously features significantly at the heart of the decade.  Secondary school was dark, depressing and alienating.  Football by contrast was light, colourful and inclusive.  All it asked of you was to enjoy playing and supporting your team.  As a teenager in that decade, Colin had no wife or children to demand attention as they would in later years and in the 1960s football seemed to offer a cheap and readily available entertainment.  Of course, the decade also provided terrible pitches, small wages to most players even after the abolition of the £20 minimum wage, dilapidated grounds with no toilets and the danger of swaying on the terraces with those rolling crowds.  It can’t just be nostalgia that elevates football in the 1960s, can it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We all remember Brian Clough’s infamous 44 days as manager of Leeds United, a fractious period of time which compared favourably with Liz Truss’s time as Prime Minister of the UK - and of course the lettuce that lasted longer than either of them. Colin Shindler recalls with ghastly clarity Steve Coppell’s 33 days in charge of the disaster that was Manchester City in 1996.  Both these short-lived phenomena have been beaten very recently: not just by what last week with Ange Postecoglou’s departure from Nottingham Forest but also by what happened at the start of this season – the sacking of Erik Ten Hag after just three competitive matches in charge of Bayer Leverkeusen.  Jim White, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes speculate as to what on earth Bayer Leverkusen could possibly have found out about Ten Hag after three matches that they didn’t already know when they made the decision to hire him in the first place? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the first day of every season nearly all football supporters experience the same surge of pride and expectation.  When they get to the ground it looks gleaming.  The grass is green and the white lines stand out in marked contrast inviting the arrival of our heroes and stimulating thoughts of promotion and championships and European football.  This emotion for most supporters doesn’t even last ninety minutes as the wretched disappointment of a 2-0 home defeat brings them back to the grim reality.  They are not going to win the League or the FA Cup (or get promotion or even avoid relegation) this season after all.  Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes wonder what drives the supporters of clubs with no hope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s an increasingly pertinent question in football.  In the days of Shankly, Clough and Ferguson it was blindingly obvious who ran their clubs.  But as the manager’s role has been split between the Head Coach and the Director of Football, that vision of total authority has become increasingly blurred.  The Head Coach might pick the team on Saturday afternoon (or possibly Friday night or Sunday lunchtime) but bizarrely, and to his utter frustration, he might not have bought any of the players he is selecting.  That could well have been the responsibility of the Director of Football and a committee.  Is this a better way to run these clubs which are now billion-pound businesses?  More to the point, does it increase the distance still further between the club and its fans?  Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler ponder these questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following on from the previous edition, Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes set themselves the task of choosing from the English Football League as it then was, a team of the 1970s.  That’s not one individual club or national side, but a team composed of the outstanding players of that decade in some sort of logical formation that would bring out the best of them both as individuals and as team players.  It is with evident relief that all our regular listeners will realise that we can start proceedings knowing that Jamie Vardy wasn’t born until 1987 and therefore he is ruled ineligible for selection – which is going to cause Jon to scrabble around at the bottom of his Leicester City suitcase where he will no doubt find Frank Worthington and Keith Weller.  However, the decade provided so many great players that selection of a final eleven is going to be difficult. The panel has great fun seeing who makes the final cut and they are sure you will be equally enthused to decide on your own team of the 1970s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Not unusually for this podcast, we look back – with quite some affection – to the 1970s.  Many of our listeners will also no doubt remember the decade through a haze of nostalgic introspection… but of course it was also a tumultuous ten years that not only laid many of the foundation stones for the modern game, but also witnessed the English national team twice failing to qualify for the World Cup Finals after their heroics in the competition in 1970.  Bringing a younger, but no less well-informed perspective, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by Jon Spurling – whose book Get It On:  How The 70s Rocked Football focuses on the decade that has been described as the one when football went from black & white to colour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices