Football and Music

Today’s post looks at two troubbled English managers who were at one point mentioned, or in one case actually had temporary custody of The Big Chair.

In both cases their flight in the top tier was fleeting and afterwards both spent time rebuilding their reputations lower down before taking positions with teams which both had an outside chance of making it back up to the toppermost of the poppermost. But after some recent dismal performances they have now returned to sitting next to Alan Green for a midweek game away at Coventry.

A few hours ago Peter Taylor was sent to see the Headmaster and a few days ago John Gregory was given the vote of confidence.

As mentioned both managers had their moment in the sun.
I’m sure that Gregory’s name was brought up when they were looking at the next England Manager a few years ago. At the time he was doing all right at the Villa and the FA, obviously not remembering how the last Villa boss worked out, were giving him the glad eye. But back then Gregory couldn’t handle the pressure of managing Aston Villa and resigned, so it was never to be.

Another one named Taylor - Peter this time, was given the keys to the Rolls for 1 match. Before this he was running the Under 21’s and had a good record. He was also looked at, but after the disappointing performance of the England team in that one game minds were changed quickly. Because of the distraction of the England Under 21’s and seniors, the club form as the boss of Leicester suffered and eventually he was mutual consented. After this he went to Brighton and then Hull before having a crack and failing with Crystal Palace.

As we know though, these two will bounce back when the management merry-go-round stops again and we’ll see them at some other old 2nd division clubs.

Our musical interlude comes from the Palace. Nearly every team has some music they run out to, which eventually becomes their theme and the song most associated with them. If you find yourself down Selhurt Park (you might, don’t say you won’t, those FA Cup draws might curse you) then you’ll hear the Dave Clarke Five blasting out, plus the fans singing/chanting it.

In fact this so is so popular with Palace that they released it as a single when they appeared in the 1990 FA Cup Final. (Significance of this one - The final score was 3-3 [Ian Wright, Wright, Wright - scored 2] and it went to a replay 5 days later.)

I’m not posting their cover version, we’ve had enough horror on here, but the original recording:

» Dave Clark Five - Glad All Over

The worst dive in history ? Everyone has seen the Celtic fan/Dida slap ? If you haven’t and can’t watch at werk: Celtic scored the winner in the Champions League game midweek, a fan gets on the pitch as he is running past Dida in the goal gives him a playful slap. Dida initially goes after this fan for a couple of secs but then decides to drop to the floor like he’s been shot. Milan were 2-1 down at this point and his thinking was like a previous time when he hit the deck - to get the match called off. But it didn’t work and now UEFA are investigating AC Milan and Dida the prick.

Since there’s nothing much on Saturday, something for you to watch.

I’ve got this one on videotape but can’t see it any more so I’m glad somebody put it online.

Found via Liverpool Pies it is a documentary which five ex-players look at their history and pick their team in - Liverpool FC - The 80’s (Team Of The Decade).

Watch Part 1 below:

» All 6 parts here.

Chubby lovers celebrate ! The original football bullsh itters are back.

Remember back in the day when the chaps at the Beeb, trying to compensate after losing the rights to broadcast live league football matches, put on any old crap in the hope somebody would keep it BBC. Amongst these offerings was the newly started BBC Radio 5 with one Danny Baker who presented Morning Edition and along with his non-sexual life partner Danny Kelly brought us the original footie chat - 606.

Their 606 was more light-hearted back in the day. The 2 Danny’s chuntered on more about some funny footie related stories than actual analysis of a just played match. But they did intersperse their anecdotes with the occasional comment from somebody who was at the West Ham/Villa match (they asked what happened at the game and if the caller had any other amusing items to share) Eventually after they left 6-0-6 became a more serious affair. Do you remember that they actually had David Mellor present the show for 7 years ?!

Now thanks to the interweb it doesn’t matter if you are not on national radio, or doing the Times Football podcast anymore. You can do it yourself and reach a potential worldwide audience.

Via the newly created Baker and Kelly website (nothing much there yet, still being built) you can download for free (at the moment) the once-a week podcast, either via Wippit [reg req], or via ITunes. But as I posted before that Ipod/Itunes thing is a bit of a con - grab their RSS Feed and then go to Netvibes, enter in the feed and listen/download from there.

Addendum - Whilst looking around for Danny Baker stuff I found a few curious things:

» He’s one of the cards in the game Minor Celebrity Mediocre Trumps

» When Googling Baker’s name the Wikipedia page for Cockney Wanker appeared high in the results.

» Danny was part of an urban legend involving Bob Marley - They were playing a friendly footie match and Baker stood on Marley’s toe which eventually led to cancer and his death.

Full credit given to the I’m Not Always So Stupid blog for this next one. They have some excellent posts and memories from my past. Pay them a visit.

» An entry from June 2007 about the half decent footie magazine When Saturday Comes, which I am mirroring the scan of the first issue and reposting the song mentioned on there.

Remember the mid-late 80’s and the boom in the 90’s for all the footie fanzines ? Depending on the size of your club, there was usually at least two of them. A couple of favourites of mine are King Of The Kippax and Blue Moon.
As you can tell by the links they are all online now as well as some of them still surviving in print.

I stand up and applaud all of the fanzine people for your dedication and for standing outside the ground every four weeks or so to sell us the result of all them hours stuck in your bedroom, fiddling away.

Mike, the editor of WSC had big ambitions, not just a fanzine about a certain club, a fanzine about every club and everything else to do with the game. And good for him that it worked. There is FourFourTwo, there is World Soccer, but the original and originator was this:

Click on the images below to read the first issue:

As Nancy posted on her entry about the mag:

“When Saturday Comes was named after the Undertones song of the same name from their 3rd LP, Positive Touch. The editor seemed to have pretty good taste in music (for a football fan!); one of the first articles talked about the relationship between football and music.”

I hope that I am able to continue to post about these dysfunctional relations with footie and musicals. But it can only survive with your help. Contact me if you spot anything that is football and music related. I’ll look at everything and will probably post everything too.

Enough with the chat. To the music:

» The Undertones - When Saturday Comes

BONUS track - From the same album:

» The Undertones - Julie Ocean