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1. Gift-Horses Decency probably dictates that we rattle off an acknowledgement or two before getting down to the serious business of backslaps and charged glasses, for to suggest that Villa were a tad undercooked rather understates affairs. AANP has never really gone if for animals, some pet gerbils (Gazza and Ledley, since you ask) being […]
1. Better AANP opted to mute the commentary on this one. Charming, well-informed and objective though Jamie Carragher undoubtedly always is, I have long held a preference to gargle with broken glass than listen to his input for an uninterrupted 90. He’ll understand in time. Thusly did it transpire that I watched this afternoon’s number […]
1. The Kinsky Episode ‘All action, no plot’ barely covers it, which is saying something. After the succession of fresh disasters that were Newcastle, and then Woolwich, and then Fulham, and then Palace, each somehow a lower ebb than the previous one, even the finest creative minds in the land would have struggled to magic […]
1. Actually Less Bad Than Most Other Weeks AANP took a deepish breath and drained a snooterful before settling down to pen this one, because last night struck me as a bit of a muddle. The headline, of course, is the ongoing circling of the drain that leads down to the Championship, with barely anyone […]
1. The New Manager Slump Just to prove that it’s not all whiskey-odoured spillages and cantankerous grumblings from the armchair, AANP had the jolly dubious ‘pleasure’ – a term not so much being misused in this sentence as straightforwardly butchered – of commentating on the latest debacle of the Good Ship Hotspur this afternoon, live […]
1. The Tudor Reign It would be a stretch to say that AANP went into this one feeling positively optimistic, that term being officially defined by the dictionary as “Feeling bobbish, to the extent that when asked for a score prediction one tips the cap at a jaunty angle and smiles a particularly devilish smile”. […]
1. The Stats So it’s “Toodle-oo” to the latest poor sap, and a pretty unemotional one at that. AANP is of a breed popularised in early twentieth century fiction, when male protagonists kept a stiff upper lip no matter how cherished the fallen ally; so when a bean as deeply unpopular as T. Frank Esq. […]
1. Romero This Romero business, what? In fact, I’ll actually gloss over the headline stuff here. The great and good have been tripping over themselves in the last 24 hours to rant and rave about his red cards – and understandably enough. Six of them in his lilywhite career takes some doing, and while one […]
1. Solanke My Spurs-supporting chum Ian can be an emotional sort of egg when it comes to all matters lilywhite, but even so, I’ve always found it a tad odd that he harbours a deep dislike of Dominic Solanke. In fact, so intense is this aversion to the chap that he typically refers to him […]
1. European Joys vs Domestic Woes As distracting sub-plots go, this business of Sauntering-Through-The-CL-While-Falling-Off-A-Cliff-In-The-PL is rapidly gaining in intrigue. First things first, and it should be meaningful handshakes and measured eye contact all round – both for the players who went out and ticked all the required boxes, and, I suppose, for Our Glorious Leader, […]