Southampton Football Club's meteoric rise, it seemed, was over. This summer the wheels had well and truly come off at St Mary’s, and a team that had just enjoyed an impressive campaign and should have been building on an 8th place finish were now being touted as firm relegation favourites. Oh how wrong we all were.
Surely few would disagree that Gordon Strachan’s appointment as Scotland manager nearly two years ago, quickly resulted in a welcome (and long overdue) return of the feel good factor as far as the national side’s prospects were concerned.
A can of worms has been opened in Sheffield, all surrounding one Chedwyn Michael Evans. Ched Evans was a big player for Sheffield United. 42 goals in 103 games for the Blades as well 13 caps for Wales. But his football career was left dead in the water in April 2012 when he was convicted of rape. Now, after serving 2 and ½ years of his 5 year sentence, Evans is out and ready to resume his career as a professional football player. But will he and should he? A proverbial shit-storm of discussion has been opened by these questions.
Roy Hodgson must be wondering what has hit him. In his press conference after England’s paint-drying-like victory over Estonia this week he gave a brief and honest answer to a fairly straight forward question. Why hadn’t Raheem Sterling started against Estonia? Because he'd come to Roy beforehand and said that he was too tired. Then it all kicked off.
There are some things in football that have a sense of inevitability around them. Man United fans will disappear from all social networks when their team are struggling, Joey Barton will use those same social networks to criticise players who are better than him and Harry Redknapp will sign Niko Kranjčar. But one thing that seems to have become equally inevitable is that, every few years, talk of playing a Premier League game in strange foreign lands will resurface.