Rangers manager Ally McCoist, normally the most gregarious of characters, is suddenly looking his age. Gone is the twinkle in his eye, and the cheeky-chappie persona that even his fiercest critics have grudgingly admired in the past. Instead, a haunted, weary expression seems to have attached itself to the Ibrox boss’s features of late.
The fact that Sir Alex Ferguson is no longer manager of Manchester United and that Frank Lampard no longer plays his football in Chelsea blue are reminders of one inevitable truth that even applies to football, nothing lasts forever. At the age of 34, Steven Gerrard is out of contract this summer. With the Liverpool captain and his club still a long way apart in contract negotiations could this be the end of Gerrard’s tenure at Anfield? And should it be?
Here’s a stat for you (and after all, who doesn’t like a good football stat!?), have a look at the current Premier League table and take everyone from 4th place and below. They are ALL closer to bottom of the league QPR than they are to top of the league Chelsea. There, let that digest for a moment.
We all know that the Championship is a hugely competitive league and this translates to the attendance figures that it gets. Last season it maintained its position as the 4th best attended division in Europe, with an average of 16,647 fans turning up per game. And the team with the highest occupancy rate across the football league was AFC Bournemouth at 91%.
It seems that the England football team are going through a bit of a popularity crisis. Well, the England men’s team are anyway, but we’ll get onto that later. Can it be true? Is interest in our national team at an all-time low?