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Chelsea welcome Manchester United to Stamford Bridge on Thursday night for a football match that, like last Sunday’s game between Manchester City and Arsenal, is almost entirely impossible to predict – albeit for completely different reasons. With the benefit of hindsight we can probably forecast that it will be more entertaining, a bit like chancing across two drunk, washed-up prizefighters swinging haymakers at each other in a pub car park. At the start of this season the notion that an April league fixture between Chelsea and Manchester United would be between struggling to finish fifth and a team struggling to get into the top half of the table was unlikely but not entirely implausible. It is a measure of how far and quickly these two once-mighty clubs have fallen that less than a decade ago it would have been unthinkable.
I know there is next to nothing written about non-league football teams, but the heartbreaking news of the year so far is that Luke Garrard, sainted manager of Boreham Wood FC, the team that beat Bournemouth in the fourth round of the FA Cup a couple of seasons ago, is leaving the club after eight and a half years in charge (and he’s still only 38). This link is the club statement and is testament to how some manager departures should be announced – with dignity” – Geoff Hall.
Andrew Pechey makes an excellent point (yesterday’s Football Daily letters). He notes that Noble Francis got ignored for prizeless letter o’ the day earlier in the week, only to receive the gong for a somewhat lesser submission yesterday. With that in mind, may I direct you to my work published on 12 and 19 March. If readers are gonna get this meta, so am I” – Mike Wilner.
The moniker Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe (Football Daily passim) just doesn’t feel right to me. Surely he’s been big for quite some time, likely throughout his entire adult life and almost certainly prior to his knighthood? Ergo, Big Jim was knighted rather than Sir Jim became Big, post-gong? Sir Big Jim works better in my view. A pedantic point but surely an important one?” – Martin Fisher.
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