It is hard to recover from the disappointment of playing 49 matches over nine months to end up back where you started, only with added dejection. It is painstaking work to get to a playoff final and when you lose it, a strict plan is needed to avoid slipping off the pace the following season.
Only six teams have lost the Championship playoff final and gone up the next year since the turn of the century. At the other end of the spectrum, Leeds went from being 90 minutes from the Premier League in 2006 to relegation the next season. A loss can have huge knock-on effects.
Championship 2022-23 preview: the contenders, hopefuls and strugglers | Ben FisherRead more
Huddersfield start on Friday against Burnley as they begin…
DROPPED RIGHT IN IT
A game with late drama including an injury-time goal and a red card brandished in the direction of Steven Reid, you say? There can’t have been a football fan paying attention to goings-on at the City Ground on Saturday who wasn’t immediately transported back to Bolton in August 2003. In a Premier League game featuring such blasts-from-the-past as Jay-Jay Okocha, Matt Jansen, Corrado Grabbi and Tugay ended with Dwight Yorke heading past Jussi Jaaskelainan to snatch a point for 10-man Blackburn, shortly after Reid had been dismissed for a late lunge on Stelios Giannakopoulos. Referee Andy D’Urso showed Reid the red card on his Blackburn debut and little could the midfielder have known that it…
Robbie Ray hopes his second start of the season is as good as his first when he faces a familiar opponent Tuesday night as the San Francisco Giants open a two-game home series against their Bay Area neighbors, the Oakland Athletics. In a rivalry that dates back to the 1905 World Series, when the A's represented Philadelphia and the Giants played in New York, the clubs will be meeting for a 145th time since the major leagues adopted interleague play in 1997. The A's have gone 74-70 in the regular-season series. Before that, the clubs had gone head-to-head exclusively as World Series rivals, with the Giants prevailing in 1905 before the A's came out on top in 1911, 1913 and the "Earthquake Series" of 1989. The home team prevailed in all four meetings last season,…
The Metro Division is jam-packed with teams who could disappoint. Sid and Geno are back for their 16th season in Pittsburgh, and the bottom has to fall out eventually. Similarly, Alex Ovechkin is 36 and coming off a career-worst 24-goal season. Carolina was one of the darlings of hockey last year, but the ’Canes replaced all-world Dougie Hamilton with awful person and player Tony DeAngelo. Yeesh. There’s always the chance that the New York Islanders will collapse under the weight of their wretched boringness, but the hockey gods surely hate us all and that probably won’t happen. If there’s one franchise that has become reliable in its ability to disappoint, it’s the Philadelphia Flyers, who haven’t done anything smart since the marketing team came up with Gritty. Why are exp…
The Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday gave away 10,000 wigs to fans for "Wild Thing Wig Night," a.k.a. Anderson Varejao Wig Night, a.k.a. Sideshow Bob Appreciation Night, a.k.a. Bill Walton Merkin Night, a.k.a. Beyoncé Perm Re-enactment Night, a.k.a. Mad Hatter Cosplay Night, a.k.a. Will Ferrell as Jackie Moon fromSemi-Pro Night, a.k.a. the night Varejao sat on the bench nursing his bruised knee and watching the Cavs lose to the Hawks while 10,000 of his ersatz scalps floated above him in the stands. h/t cosbysweaters.com …
People spend their whole lives looking for something to love like Canadians love hockey. So what happens when you throw in a sudden death win for a gold medal? Above is Canada's Tim and Sid on simulcast. Knock knock, who's there, GOLD MEDAL IN THE FACE, THAT'S WHO'S THERE. Here's Rob Ford, having a blast: And here are the Edmonton Oilers, watching live: The Canadian embassy in Washington D.C.: Here's a video we can't embed of a bar-full of Canadians losing it for a full two minutes, and here are students in George Brown College, in Toronto: Here's a group of very friendly looking folks, and one miserable guy: Is this after school? Is this, uh, what Canadian schools do every day? Yep, this is just what Canadian high schools are up …
The car Derek Fisher was driving before he was arrested on suspicion of DUI last weekend was registered to former teammate Matt Barnes, according to a report from TMZ. Fisher was driving on a Los Angeles freeway with his current girlfriend—and Barnes’s former wife—Gloria Govan at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning when he drifted off the road and flipped the 2015 Cadillac Escalade onto its roof. Though the car was totaled, neither he nor Govan were injured, and he was arrested for driving under the influence. Now, TMZ reports that the Escalade is registered to Barnes. He reportedly gifted it to Govan specifically for the purpose of driving around the pair’s two children. They broke up in 2014—clearing the way for Govan and Fisher to begin dating and for Barnes to drive nearly 100 mil…
The that prosecutors are arguing before a grand jury that Aaron Hernandez should be charged with the shooting deaths of two men outside a Boston nightclub in 2012, a previously unsolved murder in which Hernandez emerged as the prime suspect last month. On July 16, 2012, a fight broke out at Cure nightclub in Boston between a group that included Aaron Hernandez and his friends, and a second group of men. That second group then left the club in their car. Down the block, a silver or gray SUV pulled up alongside and sprayed bullets into the car, killing Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado. The car hadn't been identified or recovered, but that's apparently changed. The Boston Herald has scoured court papers regarding the search of Aaron Hernandez's uncle's house last mont…
Last month, 1992 Olympic all-around gymnastics gold medalist Tatiana Gutsu said that Vitaly Scherbo, the 1992 Olympic all-around champion, had raped her in 1991. Gutsu was just 15 years old at the time. The story has received widespread coverage in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. (Gutsu and Scherbo both competed for the Soviet Union and were from Ukraine and Belarus, respectively.) Most of that media attention has been unfavorable to Gutsu, questioning both the veracity of her claims and why she waited so long to tell her story. That Russian and FSU media would react this way to allegations of rape and sexual violence is not surprising. Foreign Policy reported that the Russian media response to the onslaught of sexual assault and harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein has been …
data-mm-id=”_i81o6pu1q”>Was Lamar Jackson sending a message to the rest of the NFL when he wore some conspicuously-shaped sunglasses on the sideline during the Ravens beatdown of the Bengals? Sure seems like it. Harkening back to the "Deal With It" gif where sunglasses magically fall on the hero's face, Jackson broke out some similar-looking shades while sitting on the bench on the Ravens sideline during the waning moments of their blowout win over the Bengals. DEAL WITH IT ?pic.twitter.com/9X1M789Ww6— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) November 10, 2019The rest of the NFL does have to deal with Jackson, even if they don't want to. And in case you were wondering, this is what the gif looks like. Yeah, I'd say Jackson was delivering a message. I mean, the sunglasses …