Brendan Rodgers’ decision to take the post as Celtic manager during the summer raised a few eyebrows. The Irishman made the usual right noises as far as being honoured and privileged and humbled etc. to be appointed was concerned. But a creeping suspicion remained that he had taken the job as what amounted to a bit of a breather, before getting back to the serious business of the English Premier League in the next year or two.
In May, when Roy Hodgson was laying out his plans for the summer I can imagine that nowhere on his notepad did it say ‘July 25th – Watch Sam Allardyce be unveiled as my replacement’. But, here we are. Roy’s young England side underperformed at the Euro’s, somehow failing to hit the relatively low expectations we all had. Even the most optimistic England supporter probably only got to about the 50th minute of the Iceland game before he or she knew that Roy would be leaving before the end of the night.
In it's rawest form football is a game that's all about scoring more goals than the opposition. Hitting the back of the net is what counts the most, and where there is a goal there is predominantly a celebration. The only exceptions tend to be when some players score against their former clubs, or (usually) when a team scores a consolation in an otherwise dispiriting performance.
So in honour of goal celebrations, our Ed. takes a look at 5 examples threatening to make an appearance at Euro 2016, that are in need of being taken back to the drawing board...
As the dust settles on the 2015/16 Scottish football season, we can sit back, pour a small libation and reflect on the main talking points of what turned out to be a surprisingly eventful campaign...
Let's start with the elephant in the room, and immediately address the incredible goal-scoring record of Ronaldo at Real Madrid. I scoured various sources for the official statistics and found it difficult to find 2 exact matches, but the eventual consensus was that in 344 appearances, Ronaldo has scored 360 goals! Needless to say this is a phenomenal record, one that puts him above any other player in the history of the club, and you have to imagine that without him in the team, Los Merengues would never have matched that volume of goals over the last 7 years. Yet despite this achievement, I think it's fair to say that, so far, Ronaldo's time at Real Madrid has been a failure.