During the season, fans tend to observe, in as many complicated ways and with as much detail as we can come up with, only that a winning team is very good, and a losing team is hopeless. My mother or Prince Charles or probably a Martian could make the same observation, but their views would be discounted on the grounds of ignorance.
Nick HornbyThirty years on, things have changes to the extent that Wayne Rooney could comfortably afford to employ the best-paid banker in Britain full-time, if he could see any purpose or momentary amusement in doing so.
Nick HornbyFor us it is not comparable, the FA Cup and Champions League,’ Arsène Wenger said before Arsenal played Leeds in the FA Cup. ‘The Champions League is compulsory. The FA Cup is something that is for enjoyment … The basis of our life at the top level is dictated by the championship. If we can add on top of that the FA Cup it is fantastic.
Nick HornbyDeaner ran down to the barrier separating the crowd from the pitch, and eventually persuaded the stewards that he had a part to play in the unfolding drama. (Anyone who has ever attempted to talk to a steward at a Premiership football ground will recognize that, whatever else during the afternoon required divine intervention, Deaner’s success in getting on to the White Hart Lane turf really was a miracle.)
Nick HornbyManchester United would have retained the Premiership if they’d won this game – or, of course, if they’d won any of the other games they drew during the course of the season. Or, seeing as one extra point would have done the trick, if they’d drawn any of the games they lost, especially the two against Manchester City. Or, seeing as they lost the trophy on goal difference, if their victories had been achieved with a bigger winning margin.
Nick HornbyI have no idea what the record for being effectively dead is, but Fabrice Muamba didn’t seem to have broken it.
Nick HornbyWe are, a lot of the time, baffled by the news we see on the front pages of our newspapers, often because the stories are complex, and we missed the beginning of them anyway. (How far back do we have to go to find the roots of the Euro crisis? To 2008? 1999, when the currency came into being? 1992? 1945?) That is one of the reasons why natural disasters and murders and cases involving missing children become so involving: we understand them.
Nick HornbyI watched a lot of drunk players, too, I learned from the autobiographies published after they had retired.
Nick HornbyIn retrospect, their best chance of doing it this way was against Arsenal, in the game they won 8–2. They only needed another nine that afternoon – and they missed at least fifteen good chances.
Nick HornbyIs there a reason for the sudden fashion for the eight-goal tie? Maybe it’s because defending is hard, and boring, and thankless, and most people who are paid a six-figure sum weekly do very little that is hard or boring or thankless.
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