December 21 – Spanish Armada Sink Malta

WHEN you think of Malta, you picture sun-swept Mediterranean beaches, Eurovision or the snack that’s ‘lighter than ordinary chocolate’. Lazy national stereotypes aside, they also have a football team who happened to play in their most famous game today in 1983, when they took on Spain. Coming at the business end of the qualifying for Euro ’84, the Spaniards had backed themselves into a corner where they needed to win by 11 clear goals before they could book their flights to France.

Back in the early ’80s the Spanish game wasn’t in the best of shape. They had disappointed in the 1982 World Cup on home soil and had to resort to bringing back Miguel Munoz as manager who previously held the reigns in the 1960s. A month earlier they had lost 2-1 to the Netherlands, meaning a goal-difference miracle was needed when they took on the Maltese.

The game took place in Seville where, as the saying goes, the rain in Spain fell mainly on the plain and it was absolutely chucking it down. Spain lined up in an understandably attacking 3-3-4 formation but only found themselves 3-1 up at the break. In a second half that saw conspiracy theorists everywhere grumbling, Spain did indeed find the nine goals they needed to make it to the finals with Juan Senor popping up in the 86th minute to lash home the glorious twelfth.

Henry Brincat in the Times wasn’t too impressed, as he wrote “never in the history of Maltese soccer have we ever touched rock bottom” and that the Maltese FA should “consider seriously a withdrawal from future competitions”. The Malta national side are nicknamed the ‘Knights of St John’, and it certainly was ambulance stuff from them that night.

The comedy 12-1 scoreline is still remember fondly by the Spanish. Last year a lager advert appeared on Spanish television featuring the Maltese goalkeeper John Bonello, where he is greeted by thousands of fans, paraded in the streets and honoured by the local dignitaries. Check out the goal-fest below and this is the place to be tomorrow for a look at a very festively named player.

December 20 – Robbo’s Sick Note

OCCASIONALLY on Sky Sports Soccer Saturday old Jeff Stelling will ask for an update from one of his minions stationed at football grounds around the country.

When he isn’t screaming ‘It’s unbelievable Jeff!” down the microphone Chris Kamara sometimes bellows: “It’s all Spurs at the moment Jeff, Bolton haven’t even turned up.”

On this day in 1996 that was literally true when Bryan Robson announced that so many of his Middlesbrough team were ill or injured that the club couldn’t fulfill their Premier League fixture with Blackburn.

This was the mid-point in an extraodinary season for the Teeside club. Having been promoted in 1995 under Robson Boro had done well the following season finishing in 12th place in the Premier League.

In 1996 the club were struggling under Robbo’s management and the failure to play the match against Blackburn would prove to be their undoing. They were docked three points by the Premier League for their crime which saw them relegated on the final day of the season.

Even if they had fielded a team made up entirely of reserve and youth team players and got thumped 12-0 the Teesiders would still have avoided the dreaded drop. Perhaps this just didn’t occur to Robbo who is currently overseeing Sheffield United’s remarkable rise to 12th in the Championship.

Boro’s relegation was only half the story of their season as they also enjoyed storming cup runs which took them to the final of both the FA and League Cup.

It was indeed the season of heroic failure for Robbo and his charges however as not only were they relegated because of that unfortunate bout of flu, but they also lost both cup finals. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory on all three fronts – a unique if unenviable record.

After the crushing disappointment of relegation and losing two cup finals it is fair to say many a chairman’s patience would have snapped there and then but Steve Gibson is a uniquely loyal man, and rather than sack the hapless Robson, he simply threw money at the problem and the club were promoted back up to the top table the following season.

This short film is entitled: ‘Middlesbrough F.C we shall overcome.’ We can only assume the words ‘Bryan Robson’s inept management’ were missed off the end of that.

More fun and games tomorrow pop pickers so tune in then. Not arf mate.

December 19 – Adams Anonymous

WHEN Arsenal won the league and cup double in 1998 club captain Tony Adams was asked if it felt better than all his previous glories in a Gunners shirt. “Of course it is,” he replied, “I can’t really remember those other ones. I was drinking then.”

Despite his excessive drinking Adams still managed to perform on the pitch and was a formidable centre half for Arsenal and England for many years but occasionally his liquid habits did have an impact on his life.

It was on this day in 1990 at a hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court that Adams was sentenced to three months in prison after crashing his car while four times over the limit earlier in the year.

In this case the system did not work and his jail term did little to curb his drinking habits, but in 1996 Adams finally admitted he was an alcoholic and sought help from alcoholics anonymous.

Adams recounted his battle with the bottle in his 1998 book Addicted which was critically acclaimed and he then went on to set up the Sporting Chance Clinic to help professional sports men and women suffering from drink, drug or gambling addictions.

We are told that Adams is now quite the culture vulture and instead of attempting to drink his own body weight in booze he spends his time playing the piano, visiting the theatre, and reading poetry and philosophy. Heavy.

After hanging up his favourite drinking flagon Adams then hung up his illustrious boots in 2002 after he had just led the Gunners to another league and cup double. He had played 668 games for the Arsenal, second only to David O’Dreary and he is the only player in English football history to have captained a League-winning team in three different decades. Not too shabby.

After he finished playing Adams pitched up at the park bearing his name to take charge of Wycombe Wanderers. After a fairly indifferent spell with the Chairboys Adams left the club after only four months and he is now assistant manager to Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth.

Here’s a little tribute to Adams’ time at Highbury and make sure you come back tomorrow to read about the biggest sick note since Darren Anderton.

December 18 – Bassett’s Allsorts

FOOTBALL management has about as much long-term job security as winning X-Factor these days and so it proved on this day in 2000 when Dave Bassett was relieved of his duties at Barnsley.

Bassett’s sacking seemed harsh after he had come within a whisker of getting the Tykes into the Premier League the previous season when they lost 4-2 to Ipswich in the play-off final – the club’s first ever appearance at Wembley.

After the disappointment of defeat at Wembley the club sold midfielder Craig Hignett to Blackburn for £2.25m in the summer but in that habit that so infuriates managers and fans the tightfisted chairman preferred the spend the money on boring things like staving off administration than exciting new foreign players.

Although not riding high at the top of the league the Tykes were hardly in trouble and were 14th when Basset left, much to the surprise of the players at the club.

Striker Bruce Dyer said: “There had been absolutely no hint that this was going to happen.

“The feeling has been that we just need a bit of luck to turn things around and once everything clicked we were still capable of climbing the table and challenging for a play-off spot. This is a big blow.”

Meanwhile Basset put the kind of spin Alastair Campbell would have been proud of on his sacking: “I had a chat with John Dennis, the Barnsley chairman, at the weekend and we came to the conclusion that this was the best course of action,” he said.

That’s it old boy, stiff upper lip and all that.

Dave said at the time he had no intention of retiring from the game and he was back in a job within a year at Leicester City where he failed to save the Foxes from relegation before moving ‘upstairs’ to be director of football. Funny how the DoF’s office is always on the floor above that of the manager.

These days Bassett is playing Robin to Denis Wise’s Batman at Leeds United which is going pretty corking you have to say.

Meanwhile only two years later Barnsley would have been perfectly happy with division one mid-table obscurity when they slid into division two (now League 1) in 2002.

They were promoted back up in 2006 and are making a pretty good fist of things in the Championship.

Here are some highlights of the Tykes winning the play-off final in 2006 and come back tomorrow when we will be setting our time circuits for 1990 and kicking our flux capacitor into life to find out about a former player who liked a drink. No clues about who it is but if any of your mates are Arsenal fans you might want to send them this way…

December 17 – Goals, Goals, Goals

FOR those of us too young to have seen Bobby Moore play, the ’66 skipper is seen as an almost mythological figure and one of the greatest defenders ever to play the game. It’s therefore pretty hard to believe that one of his defence’s was ever taken to the sword, but that’s exactly what happened today in 1966, as his West Ham side conceded five goals on the way to a five-all draw, setting a record for the highest scoring draw in English football.

Local derbies can often be dull foul-fests but when these two London sides met at Stamford Bridge it proved to be a textbook see-saw affair. When the half-time whistle went one of West Ham’s other England heroes had helped the Hammers to a 2-1 lead, but in the second half the fireworks really began go off. Chelsea soon found themselves 3-2 ahead, but bottled their lead and were 5-3 down with ten minutes to go.

Chelsea’s Bobby Tambling took it upon himself to be a hero and bagged two goals in the last ten minutes and the history books were re-written. Their record was untouched for 18 years, when Newcastle went to Loftus Road to play QPR and found themselves 4-0 up at the break. God knows what QPR manager Alan Mullery said at half time, because the Rs came right back at them, pulling it back to 4-3. As West Ham were all those years ago, Newcastle were 5-3 up within sight of the finishing line, but in time-honoured Geordie tradition, their defence capitulated and QPR bagged another 5-5 draw. And this was even before the days of Titus Bramble or Claudio Cacapa.

With the Chelsea West Ham game being from that bygone era when the talk of player-cam and interactive red buttons was the stuff of madmen, there’s not a lot of footage, so we’ll leave you with the end of QPR’s comeback, 1980s haircuts and all. There’s more action tomorrow as we head up North for a good old fashioned sacking.

December 16 – Wise Words

MANY consider him to be the nastiest five-footer since the one Bernhard Langer missed in the 1991 Ryder Cup, but if you ask a Chelsea, Wimbledon or even Leeds fan, they’d tell you good things come in small packages. Either way, it was today in 1966 that the crafty cockney Dennis Wise was born so we’d like to wish him a happy birthday.

As a player it’s safe to say that Wisey’s career was explosive to say the least. As an 18 year old he fell out with Lawrie McMenemy at Southampton, but soon found his calling as part of Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang, picking up their player of the season award in 1988 after the Dons upset Liverpool in the FA Cup Final.

An eleven-year stint at Chelsea followed where he made 445 appearances for the club, but this figure could’ve been a whole lot higher if he didn’t spend quite so long on the sidelines through various suspensions.

Sir Alex Ferguson once remarked that he could start a fight in an empty house and when the tough tackling midfielder wasn’t getting carded on the field he was causing trouble off it. In 1995 Wise was convicted of assaulting a London taxi driver and whilst at Leicester he broke team-mate Callum Davidson’s jaw, ensuring that the boo-boys were always out in force when he came to town.

When he hung up his boots in 2006 Wise could boost an impressive haul of medals and had already started on a so-far impressive managerial career. As player-manager of Millwall he took them to their first FA Cup Final and is although he failed to beat the drop with Leeds United last season he has galvanised the side from an admin-hit car crash of a club with a 15-point deduction into red-hot favourites for the title, bringing in attendances unseen in the English third flight for almost thirty years.

So by our rationale, he’s earned himself a happy birthday. Sit back and watch one of the little guy’s best moments on the pitch here and come back tomorrow for more goals than you can shake a stick at.

December 15 – Happy Birthday JJ

BACK in the day when men were men and football was football, the apprentices at a club would be assigned a senior player whose boots they would have to clean, often for an extra ha’penny or shilling (or something) when done well, or a kick up the backside if not.

When a very much younger (and thinner) Matt le Tissier joined Southampton in 1986 he was given the task of ensuring Joe Jordan’s boots were shiny and clean every day.

Jordan cut an imposing figure on the pitch as his front teeth had been knocked out playing for Leeds. Although he had a set of dentures made he would remove these before games partly to stop them getting broken, but you suspect Jordan enjoyed the effect his toothless grin had on opposition defenders.

You can hardly imagine a scarier prospect as a still-wet-behind-the-ears-apprentice than the well ‘ard Scots target man finding fault with your scrubbing, but it was on this day back in 1951 that Jordan himself was just a helpless little new-born baby.

When he began playing the beautiful game Jordan’s skills weren’t quite enough to pay the bills and he had to juggle playing for Blantyre Victoria and Greenock Morton with working as a draughtsman.

He was soon spotted by a Leeds United scout who recommended him to manager Don Revie, and the Yorkshire club snapped him up for £15,000.

This proved to be a bargain for the Whites and in eight successful years at Elland Road Jordan scored 39 goals in 135 games. The Leeds fans were in for a shock in 1978 however when Jordan was sold to hated rivals Manchester United for £350,000.

After three years at Old Trafford with an FA Cup runners up medal the highlight Jordan swapped pies for pasta when he signed for Italian giants AC Milan, later moving on to Verona.

In 1984 Jordan returned to England to sign for a Southampton side that were flying high in Division One. After three years with the Saints Jordan finished his playing career with Bristol City which was also where he took his first steps into coaching.

Jordan also played more than 50 times for his country and is still the only Scotsman to have scored in three different world cups, hitting the bak of the net at the 1974, 1978 and 1982 tournaments.

These days Jordan spends his days trying to translate “On me ‘ead son!” into the many different and diverse languages spoken on the Portsmouth training ground as one of Harry Redknapp’s lieutenants.

More historical football jigary pokery tomorrow from OTFD so come back then and don’t forget your toothbrush.

December 14 – Bosman Rules OK

EVER been stumped by the ‘name five famous Belgians’ question? Let’s see, you’ve got Jean-Claude Van Damme, Poirot, Tin Tin… erm…. Yeah, we’re stuck. But lo and behold, what was that happening today in 1995? It’s another famous Belgian for our list! Slightly rubbish Belgian footballer Jean-Marc Bosman won his landmark case in the European Court of Justice, creating a legal precedent that forever changed the murky world of football transfers.

When Bosman’s contract was up at RFC Liege in 1990 he was fed up of being a fringe player and decided he wanted to up sticks to Dunkerque, but like it was forty-five years earlier, the path to this coastal French town was far from easy. When a transfer fee could not be agreed Liege refused to let him go, as was the norm in those days. Bosman then received a pay cut and a place on the bench but he didn’t take it lying down, as he (probably) slammed his fist on the chairman’s desk and shouted ‘see you in court!’

The court in question was the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, where Bosman sued for restraint of trade. After five years of courtroom action that saw phrases like “restriction on the free movement of workers prohibited by Article 39(1) of the EC Treaty” and other technical mumbo-jumbo that we don’t understand here at OTFD banded around, Bosman paved the way for out-of-contract footballers to move clubs without any transfer fees being paid.

The first team to be hit hard by the ruling was the reigning Champions League holders Ajax, who saw their young team picked apart with the loss of Clarence Seedorf, Kanu, Patrick Kluivert and Edgar Davids. The most high-profile Bosman transfer in England is undoubtedly Sol Campbell who did the unthinkable, leaving Spurs for their North London rivals Arsenal in 2001, ensuring he gets the full-on Judas treatment everytime he dares show his face at the Lane.

As Bosman himself was no good, we don’t have any footage of him blasting thirty yard overhead kicks in the top corner, so we’ll leave you with our ‘Bosman XI’. If you think we’ve got it wrong tell us below and come back tomorrow for more of the same.

GK – Brad Friedel (Liverpool to Blackburn, 2000)

LB – Bixente Lizarazu (Bayern Munich to Marseille, 2004)
RB – Markus Babbel (Bayern Munich to Liverpool, 2000)
CB – Sol Campbell (C) (Spurs to Arsenal, 2001)
CB – Sylvain Distin (Man City to Pompey, 2007)

CM – Gary McAllister (Coventry to Liverpool, 2000)
CM – Jamie Redknapp (Liverpool to Spurs, 2002)
RM – Andrei Kanchelskis (Rangers to Southampton, 2003)
LM – Paul Merson (Villa to Pompey, 2002)

S – Henrik Larsson (Celtic to Barcelona, 2004)
S – Teddy Sheringham (Man Utd to Spurs to Pompey to West Ham to Colchester, 2001-2007 – king of the Bosman?)

December 13 – Curbs Your Enthusiasm

OUR favourite fact about Alan Curbishley is that his big brother Bill is the music agent for The Who.

Curbs junior has got to be pretty gutted that he’s a Premiership manager and his brother has still got a more exciting job than him.

It was on this day in 2006 that Alan swept through the doors at Upton Park to take charge of West Ham as part of the new Icelandic regime at the club headed (geddit? headed?!) by professional peculiar-looking person Eggert Magnusson.

Curbs had been kicking his heals for a few months after leaving Charlton Athletic at the end of the previous season where he had been manager for 743 years.

Curbs had, like the rest of us, got a bit bored with Charlton’s mid-table mediocrity season after season and had hoped to be given a bash at managing England. When the FA overlooked him in favour of an actual clown, Alan decided it was probably time to jump ship from The Valley anyway and see what positions would come up at his local Job Centre.

He didn’t have to wait long.

West Ham had enjoyed a great season in 2005/06 finishing in the top ten and oh-so-nearly winning the FA Cup. The arrival of Argentine superstars Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano over the summer of 2006 was supposed to take the team on to the next level but things didn’t go to plan.

After the club was taken over by the Icelandic consortium poor league form meant Alan Pardew paid the price with his job, despite the usual votes of confidence from the new owners.

The board turned to Curbs with a brief to avoid relegation, and gave him plenty of wonga to try to save the club from the drop with new signings that were seemingly cursed with injuries.

After an initial torrid run of results Curbs did turn the Hammers’ form around and they won seven out of their last nine games of the season, including a 1-0 win at Old Trafford on the last day to ensure survival.

The relegaton dogfight was set against a whole load of legal wranglings over the signings of the Argentine duo Tevez and Mascherano. Eventually the club was found guilty, but fined rather than given a points deduction which would have ensured relegation.

Pardew meanwhile swapped jobs with Curbs but came in too late to save Charlton who were relegated.

Here is a shell-shocked Curbs after Carlos Tevez scores the winner at Manchester United on the final day to keep the Hammers in the top flight, and come back tomorrow for one of the most significant events in the modern game, and it all started in Belgium.

December 12 – Nobby Blows His Own Trumpet

BACK in his native Peru Nolberto Albino Solano Todcois so revered he even appears on a postage stamp, and not even Beckham can say that.

Today is Nobby’s birthday (he was born in 1974) so you can only imagine the celebrations that will be going on down in Peru to commemorate the event. If you had to guess (and we do) you would imagine trumpets would play a central theme to the affair given that it is Nobby’s instrument of choice.

Born in Callao Nobby first signed for Peruvian first division side Sporting Cristal in 1992 at the age of 17, before moving on to Boca Juniors in 1997 where he played alongside Diego Maradona.

Nobby’s move to England came in 1998 when he signed for Newcastle United and his love affair with the Geordie club began. He became an immediate fans favourite at St James’ Park and soon established himself as one of the Premier League’s top wide-men and expert crosser of the ball.

If he hadn’t been a footballer Nobby would undoubtedly be a musician and he is a keen trumpet player. Not only has he been known to bring his instrument into the dressing room at Newcastle, he has also played his trumpet to former managers Sir Bobby Robson and David O’Leary over the phone. We’re sure they were delighted.

Perhaps Sir Bobby got a little tired of Nobby’s noisy hobby as he sold him in 2004 to Aston Villa. The move followed a falling out between the pair over Solano’s high travel demands to represent his country.

The Toon Army were incensed by Nobby leaving and in one of the few good moves he made during his tenure as manager Graeme Souness brough him back to St James’ in 2005.

Earlier this year Nobby left the north east for a second time to move to West Ham, this time to be nearer his family who had moved down to London. He will be missed by the Geordie faithful but he is already endearing himself to his new supporters by netting his first goal against Derby County in November.

Here is a vid of some of Nobby’s exploits for Newcastle (watch out for his ‘tackle’ on Ronaldo) and come back tomorrow for more journeys back through football time and space….