Olé

The most dapper man in the Dolman Stand - and always had time to share some fantastical story or weave some incredible joke if you met him in the pub home or away. I remember one off season on a hot summers day drinking down the Nova and he had about ten of us enthralled as he told this tale of he and his mates randomly entering a boat race on the docks for a bet. I can't for the life of me remember the punchline but he told it with such timing and theatre and that cheeky grin on his face that we were all falling about long before we ever found out what happened in the race. What a terrible year for losing legends from among our supporters. RIP Stoney.

Osama Bin Laden was a massive Arsenal fan and would probably still even now be staring into the camera shouting nonsense at questions from Robbie on Arsenal Fan TV, if only he'd known it was going to exist. He didn't know anything about AFTV so his only outlet was butchering thousands of people, fleeing into hiding in the Tora Bora mountains, before being executed by the US Navy Seals and dumped into the sea.

I realise that the costs of many things are going up, including Royal Mail (as someone who ships parcels regularly), but with their letter prices still at most 77-84p for First Class franked (see below), is there any reason why City have increased the charge to supporters this season from £1.00 to £1.50 for posting out tickets? On top of a £1.00 per ticket booking fee, this is excessive. It can't be for handling or the cost of an envelope (!) as both services are provided free for in person collection (arguably at greater people cost), so why are those who receive by post penalised? Because it's an easy way to tack on extra charges with no push back?

I see City have delayed putting Hull tickets on sale this morning due to "technical issues". I suspect the real reason may be uncertainty over refund claims on match tickets if strikes go ahead. Perhaps they need time today to introduce additional disclaimers that supporters purchase at their own risk.

I don't want to turn this into a political debate and get it moved to the non-football forum where I'm sure a lot of the more committed ranters and ravers will feast on this thread. But in additional news, further strikes now planned in August include another day of league football - August 20th - which will technically be the day before City - Cardiff, but as a 12pm kick off for those of us who live away from Bristol and would come down the night before just to ensure being there on time, it will be hugely disruptive also, potentially even to anyone travelling to the game given that services take a while to get back to normal the morning after a strike (on recent form). Incidentally, is the relatively low number of people commenting a reflection of how marginal the use of trains is now by football fans; the fact people are still in summer mode and haven't computed what is going on; or simply (in the case of the opening day of the season) how few people would now go away (at least where a trip to Hull is involved)? Is this the VPN culture the EFL has been quietly encouraging? @Never to the dark side any tips? I figured you of all people would brief us on what this means for the first and fourth weekends of the football season.

Yes - Kings Cross on Hull Trains direct was £20 odd, with LNER via Doncaster a fall back. Both lines are now striking on the 30th.

Lots of rail replacement and cancellations around Sheffield that weekend already due to work on the lines...!!

Striking on the opening day of the football league season is a pretty miserable state of affairs for a day so many look forward to for so long. Had bought a Hull Trains return ticket on the day the fixtures came out, which is now worthless.

He's gone from ITK to ITHPC. Alright for some.

Where has that crowd come from? I thought these were without spectators?

I realise that sharing feedback on shirts matters very little to most people - but a) I've slagged off the club's merchandise a few times down the years so it's only fair to give credit and b) there will be those who like me see all the club's marketing and (at these sorts of prices) are still suspicious on past form of the actual product they receive and want to hear real world feedback. And so here's mine: I got this shirt. Haven't had a City shirt for quite a few seasons as have hated almost all of them (Hummel's training gear much nicer) but living in London surrounded by every club under the sun and a culture of wearing football shirts around East and South London it's quite nice to have a top for my club instead. And this one is absolutely beautifully produced. It's probably about the best City shirt I've ever bought. Production quality is top notch, the fit is great, the colours and the pattern all just work, it looks great with a pair of dark jeans in a way blokes in football tops rarely do. I was wearing it coming back last night through Shoreditch (hipster central) and on the East London Line night tube and multiple people wanted to ask about it. Fair play to whoever designed it or came up with the concept - I love it and non-City randoms seem to too. It catches the eye without being garish, in reality it is quite minimalist and subtle using just overlaid shades of grey with the bare minimum of dark orange, so the pattern "does all the work". I didn't think I'd be providing feedback on a City shirt but here we are. It's that good. ?

"Resources." "Tools at his disposal." Cotterill first full season in charge (2014/15). Biggest signing: Kieran Agard £750,000. Second biggest signing: Luke Freeman: £150,000. Wilson first full season in charge (2000/01). Biggest signing: Lee Peacock £600,000. Second biggest signing: Lee Matthews: £150,000. Cotterill finished in 1st as champions with 99 points and 5 defeats. Wilson finished in 9th with 14 defeats. "Plenty of other managers"? Adjusting for 14 years of inflation Wilson easily spent more in League 1 too.

I think it's to contain the spread of away fans - with pubs opening at 11 or 12 it's pretty easy to contain fans around one or two pubs if they've only got an hour for a drink. 3 hours and groups can be spread out all over a town in different areas and far harder to manage and "transit to the game" as they like to call it. Look how we get treated in Cardiff and Swansea. You can go a step further and be complete ****s like South Wales Police and combine the early kick off with banning City fans from every pub in Cardiff as per last season. An extreme and calculated restriction on all aspects of matchday.

But Dave, RR needs to pretend he was absolutely certain we would get promoted with anyone in charge that season as it's the only way he can make himself the central character in the story. ?

Yep - people are forgetting the context. It was the first time we'd played Palace for 10 years (checking back we were only in the same division as them twice in the prior 20 years). We'd been on a blistering run of form over Xmas which bar being hammered at West Brom on Boxing Day saw us sitting in 2nd in the Championship in January - really surreal times. But then Palace had been in even more ridiculous form having appointed Warnock in late October while sitting bottom of the table and gone on a hell of a winning run and were already into the top six when we went there. So it was a match that was on everyones radar for weeks and at a time winning was a habit for us (including promotion the season before). Because we didn't have much recent history with Palace, everyone was drinking on their doorstep, I remember being in Palace pubs near the ground (in our case I think Norwood Junction) and it was all quite good humoured but you could tell everyone was quietly gagging for a result to take the other lot down a peg or two, there was this weird edge to the day. They saw us as un-threatening League One upstarts on our big day out in their pubs and on their form you could tell they expected to beat us - and with the ones we talked to pre-match, hated even acknowledging we were above them. On the other hand we'd become deadly serious that we could be contenders and weren't coming down there to be patronised. It carried into the game and when they got ahead (I don't remember the game at all but I swear there was some reason to be aggrieved by one of their goals) it started to ratchet up, as you mentioned earlier all that "Glad all over" crap was new to us and at the time felt like an extension of their dismissive attitude to us - which translated into the trouble at the end. Yes the videos are an absolute non event, but well before full time from memory the stewards became split in all sorts of directions between those who saw an opportunity to throw their weight around and round up sets of City fans and turf us out the wrong exit, versus those that didn't want to get involved so the segregation fell to pieces. It was definitely chaotic.

Bit far to cycle but perhaps Scotty could fire up the van or a few of them could hire a car and head up from the training camp on Friday. Imagine the show of solidarity if your teammates came to support you in a major final.

Was that the January game we lost 2-0 in the same season we later did them in the play offs? In that second video you can see the stewards segregating City and Palace either side of one of the exits. At the end the stewards were all over the place because of the aggro and we actually got sent down that exit only to find it's the wrong side of a caged divide under the stand from away fans - and in the concourse City fans assumed a load of us were Palace and were right up to the wire shouting abuse at us and offering us out. One of my weirder experiences at away games. ?

Wimbledon's Crazy Gang made Jason Euell slap a team-mate in a stream - but 'there's better balance to coaching now' At Charlton Athletic, Euell is moving up through the coaching ranks in an effort to become one of the few black managers in football 12 November 2021 • 10:13am At Charlton Athletic they are experiencing the most positive of new manager bounces. Since the club dismissed Nigel Adkins on October 21, they have won three and drawn one of their four games. But the intriguing thing is that it is not a new broom that has delivered such dramatic change in fortunes. The staff have remained the same: John Jackson, Adkins' assistant, has been promoted to caretaker manager while Jason Euell has moved up from first team coach to be Jackson's number two. For Euell it is the next stage of an ambition to become a league manager. “One of the reasons I want to get into management is that I want to be flying the flag for black ex-players to make that step,” he tells Telegraph Sport when we speak just before his latest promotion. “There is a perception among black players that there is no point getting all the qualifications because you won’t get a job. That’s what the likes of Chris Houghton, Chris Ramsey, Chris Powell are doing: trying to change that, show there is a genuine pathway. And I can see it can be disheartening, you’ll get knocked back. But if we all start going 'What’s the point?' then we’re not giving ourselves the opportunity to change the system.” Euell is prepared to do whatever it takes to make it. As you might expect from a graduate of the toughest of all finishing schools: from the age of 12, he was received his football education at Wimbledon FC. “It really was the school of hard knocks,” he explained of the bruising lessons delivered by Crazy Gang stalwarts like Vinnie Jones, John Fashanu and Robbie Earle. “And I've always said that environment made me the player I was and has helped me become the person I am now.” It was some environment. He recalls the time he was upbraided by the senior players after he and another youngster had made a mistake in training that led to a goal being conceded. The pair were told they had to acknowledge which one of them was at fault. When they kept schtum in solidarity, they were ordered to go out on to Wimbledon Common, where there was a stream with a branch across it. This they were obliged to straddle and, egged on by the entire first team, take turns slapping each other until one of them fell into the water. “From 12 years old you were learning how to survive. This was a club where you knew you were always going to be an underdog, and you had to learn how to deal with that. There football was a fight, it was war. And if you’re thinking, no I can’t do yet another lap of Wimbledon Common, then you’re not ready for that battle.” It was not, however, an approach he adopted when he started out in his coaching career. Since he retired as a prolific centre forward nine years ago, he has been busy coaching young players at Charlton. Here those he brought through, like Joe Gomez and Ademola Lookman, were not required to sit astride branches and slap each other. “It suited me, but not everyone is me,” he reckons of the Wimbledon approach. “There’s a much better balance to things here. Not everybody is motivated in the same way. Everybody's different. And the old cliche that one glove doesn't fit all is right. A bark doesn't work for everybody, an arm around the shoulder doesn't work for everybody. So you have to find a way of getting to know who that person is in order to get the best out of them.” But that said, after studying the game obsessively and gaining the highest level of coaching qualification, Euell believes there are certain new orthodoxies which can, if followed to the letter, be counterproductive. “I’ve noticed with academy football a lot of it is based around skills development, which I get. But for me, the biggest thing is learning how to win. Say you are taking the under-23s, they are next in line for first-team football. There's no point developing a player who's in a losing side week-in week-out, where they are told winning is not the most important thing, because they will never survive in an environment where winning is everything. Proper development has to be preparing them as people to know how to deal with tough situations.” Part of the issue, he believes, is the growing dominance of data in coaching. While using it to help inform their decisions, coaches, he reckons, should never allow themselves to be dictated to by analysts. “We call them the FPOs, football prevention officers,” he says of sports scientists. “We get told constantly a player is nearing the red, you can’t push them too much, you’ll damage them. Sometimes you think: are we at a football club or not? Sometimes you have to push them beyond their limit to know what they can achieve. So you have to be brave enough sometimes to go against the advice you’re given.” This is the thing about modern sports coaching: it has expanded way beyond the confines of the school of hard knocks of his youth. These days it requires a knowledge of everything from psychology and physiology to dietary advice. Even financial planning. Euell, who while still a player was obliged to declare bankruptcy after he was defrauded on a property deal, believes it is part of the coach’s responsibility to help the players understand the pitfalls of their trade. “OK, Charlton money is different to Man City money,” he says. “But even here the sharks are circling these boys. I say to them be careful, I want to make sure these young players don’t get sucked in by the promises of the sharks.” A coach, he says, has to be a mix of mentor, big brother, friend and critic. It is something he has learned from every manager he played under. “Even the ones who weren’t so good, I am channelling them all,” he says. Including Egil Olsen, the eccentric Wellington-boot-wearing Norwegian manager who oversaw Wimbledon’s demotion from the Premier League. “Yeah, from him I learned not to wear wellies on the touchline.” Now he is getting the opportunity to put his ideas into practice. Saturday’s League One fixture against Burton will offer further evidence of whether it is working.

FOOTBALL | JASON EUELL INTERVIEW Jason Euell: Coach raising England’s finest in school of the Crazy Gang When Jason Euell sat down with the FA’s Paul Elliott for his interview for the job of coaching England’s elite youngsters, the lead coach of Charlton Athletic Under-23 was asked for “six things that have challenged you in your life”. Where to start? Euell drew a deep breath. Euell was moulded by the Crazy Gang, scored at the highest level with Wimbledon, Charlton Athletic, Middlesbrough and Blackpool but endured bankruptcy, racism and the loss of a child. His response to Elliott was so powerful that the FA gave him the role of assisting England Under-18s and now the Under-20s, helping shape the development of such talents as Manchester City’s Tommy Doyle and Flo Balogun of Arsenal, just as he helped nurture Joe Gomez and Ademola Lookman at Charlton. Now Euell prepares for more interviews. He wants to move into management, trying to join Nuno Espírito Santo, Keith Curle, Darren Moore, Chris Hughton and Valérien Ismaël as the only non-white managers in English professional football. Euell has been further emboldened by calls from Raheem Sterling and the FA for the appointment of managers who better reflect the modern dressing-room. All the experiences Euell told Elliott have helped prepare him for management. “Not everybody’s going to have a fairytale journey or life,” the 43-year-old south Londoner says. “I started with my upbringing, single mum but having my uncle there as that male role model.” He also had a grandfather who pushed such an intelligent schoolboy. “He wanted me to go to Dulwich College. I flunked the exam because I didn’t want to go to a school heavily based around rugby. That was never happening.” A different examination, of character, beckoned with the Wimbledon of Vinnie Jones and Mick Harford. “I was going into the Crazy Gang environment as a 12-year-old, officially going into it as a 16-year-old and that got me from young boy to young man very quickly,” Euell says. “I put it as the School of Hard Knocks but that environment made me the player I was and the person I am.” Juggling the Crazy Gang ethos with Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) is no easy task for a development coach in 2020. “I’ve had to tone it down quite a lot,” Euell says. “A clip round the ear doesn’t go down too well nowadays. “But I do bring a lot of what I went through at Wimbledon. We didn’t have the multi-million-pound training ground facilities. We had a park down on the A3 where every man and his dog walked past and dogs pooping on the pitch. Boys now coming in the system from nine and ten are in this bubble of million-pound complexes..” So he challenges them, making sure there is no slacking, and drawing on his Crazy Gang days. Euell and another apprentice, Shaun Fleming, once failed to clean the dressing room properly, blamed the other, so the first team decided to establish the guilty party with a duel. “On Wimbledon Common there’s a little river and there’s a branch across the stream, and we are both sitting on this and we have to try and slap each other off. It’s like Gladiators. Whoever falls in loses.” There was a message behind the madness. “It’s about not cutting corners and that’s a life skill I’ve implemented with the players,” Euell says. “Don’t expect people to clear your mess up after you. They didn’t perform the way we should have done the other day, so it was like, ‘Right, bang, go on then, on the line’ and do the football pitch suicide run from Coach Carter [the 2005 film]. Goalline to six yards and back, 18 yards and back, halfway and back, back and forth. “It’s not that bad. The one I’ve thrown in a few times is Ian Holloway’s ‘pyramid’. It’s 20 yards and back, 40 yards back, 60, 80, 100, and then back down again. That’s a killer. It’s a test of character: are they going to do it properly or half-heartedly?” Back in the FA interview, Euell continued to chronicle the joy and sorrow of his life, reflecting on events in November 2001. “One night I’m scoring two goals at The Valley against West Ham on TV. The next afternoon my girlfriend [Andrea] who is now my wife is going through labour and has a stillbirth.” He has a tattoo of his daughter’s name, Jada India, on his left arm. Speaking to the FA, Euell also recalled being racially abused by a Stoke City fan when Blackpool visited the Britannia in 2009. Euell was on the bench when he heard something being said to him. “I wasn’t sure until I looked at the person who said it. He said it again and it was ‘Whoa’. With me pulling him up on it, the steward heard it and he went and got his superior.” Holloway, the Blackpool manager, became aware of the commotion. “Hollie saw what was happening, come over and lost the plot, going absolutely wild about it,” Euell says. “Fair play to Stoke, they dealt with it [throwing out the fan who got a three-year banning order]. I was more frustrated in the people around him than I was with the person who actually said it. It was all of a sudden look forward, blinkers, ear plugs in, ‘Didn’t hear anything. . . he’s not even a regular fan, he doesn’t always come’. That’s irrelevant. You’ve allowed it to happen, you haven’t spoken up.” Euell wants to increase black representation in technical areas, breaking through what the late Cyrille Regis always called “the glass ceiling” for black managers. He’s experienced so much. In that FA interview, Euell talked of financial difficulties in January 2011. “I went into property with a ‘friend’, who I thought was a friend, which went belly-up due to some fraudulent activity that he had done which all fell on me, which made me have to file for bankruptcy.” All these setbacks did serve to expand his people skills. “Totally,” Euell says. “That’s why I always say to my players that I’m not going to sugar-coat things or bulls*** them. I’m going to tell them what life’s about and what football’s about. The dream is not going to happen for all of them. I’m coach, manager, role model, mentor, big brother, uncle, friend, dad to them.” Euell helped nurture the talents of Gomez, now at Liverpool, and Lookman, on loan at Fulham from RB Leipzig. “Joe’s talent as a 15-year-old centre back was of someone of 25 or 26 who’s played over 500 games at the top level,” Euell says. “Nothing fazed him and you see that when he plays now. He doesn’t panic. “Ademola has the ability to beat people, get shots off with both feet. His work ethic is unreal. He’s quiet, humble and shy, but someone that beats himself up if he makes a mistake. I had to work with him [on] not being too hard on himself. “Even after the West Ham penalty [Lookman fluffed a Panenka in a 1-0 defeat last month], he got loads of s*** for that. I just said to him, ‘It was a mistake, put your hand up and move on. You just know you’ll have to come back better’. Since then he has.” On passing his FA interview and getting into the England age-groups set-up, Euell says: “I got in there at a good time. You’re starting to see everything coming through from all the hard work, not just from England but from the clubs who’ve bought into EPPP. You’re seeing Tommy Doyle’s development and Harvey White at Tottenham. You’re seeing Flo [Balogun] come on in Europa League games and score, Tyreece John-Jules on loan [from Arsenal]. I believe they will get opportunities.” Now, Euell searches for a pathway of his own. He has applied for two managerial positions so far, but is wary. “If I just throw my name in for every job out there, I don’t want it to look like just a statistic. ‘Well, Jason Euell’s put his name in the hat, but he didn’t get it, but that’s fine, we had a black coach apply’. I don’t want it to be like that. “I never felt pressure playing as it was something I wanted to do. “In this journey that’s where I’m setting my goal: to manage at the highest level.” He certainly has the life experiences.

I had no idea the location (Hotel im Park Bad Radkersburg with cycling to FC Bad Radkersburg ground) is where Leicester did pre-season prior to winning the Premier League. Pearson had been taking them there for several seasons prior, and on that occasion it was even where Claudio Ranieri was actually appointed and introduced to the first team.

And made all the more ridiculous by the fact that we tend to sell out of gear quickly in popular sizes so you have the farce of a loyalty scheme that'll only really reward people only for buying leftovers with credit to buy even more leftovers. Part of me thinks this is by design - not to sound too business like but from a yield perspective you're guaranteed sales at launch, you only need to reward when sales dip, and ideally you only reward with access to products that don't sell.

If you've come all the way from Canada I'm sure the club (or a kind hearted season ticket holder) will be happy to ensure you get a ticket to Cardiff away no problem at all. You should take into account that based on all recent trips to Cardiff they will probably require us all to travel via Canada (and by bus) so we could pick you up on the way.

Only just realised you all work on the trains.

Alex Scott will be in his thirties before any of the U19 strikers return a pass to him. Looks like a talented age group but they have a lot to learn about teamwork. Am almost certainly biased but so frustrating watching these Premier League nobodies do anything but play the easy ball to their playmaker.

I have watched Romeo a few times down here going back as far as 2016 when he was linked with Arsenal and have always been impressed, though the time to sign him was back then as he's not kicked on in the Millwall team. For one thing, in the games I have been at however well he plays he never seems to fully inspire confidence of the home fans in a way other defenders are more immune to. Can't quite put my finger on what made him different.... Speaking of which, what did for him was the taking the knee stuff. Because Millwall don't do it he raised a fist instead in a Black Power gesture and the vast majority of Millwall fans have been hounding him out of the club ever since. On that basis he probably represents value for money as Millwall managed to devalue him for non footballing reasons. But he hasn't consistently held down a right back role by making it his own, and at his age he needs to prove he can.