After Blackburn got their very own Olsson twins yesterday, we look at the best of twin team-mates to grace English football. 1. Rafael and Fabio Da Silva Arguably English football's top-achieving twins to date, in tag team terms. Unlike some sets of footballing twins, the talent seems to be fairly equal between the pair.

It's the 60th minute at Wembley. Glorious sunshine stream down on the immaculate playing surface. Kenny Dalglish watches on from the sidelines as the ever-reliable John Aldridge steps up take a penalty...I don't even need to finish the sentence because all Liverpool fans know exactly what game I'm talking about.

"It only took nine years" was the cry from South-West London last summer, when AFC Wimbledon won promotion back to the Football League after a dramatic penalty-shoot-out win as if there is any other sort against Luton Town at The City of Manchester Stadium in the Blue Square Premier play-off final.

25 January 2012: FA Cup winner and Hollywood hardman Vinnie Jones has returned to Wembley for the first time in nearly 25 years, to star in an interactive film in which he presents fans with their personalised Wembley Way stone.

In the film, Vinnie plays tribute to the national stadium and the position that Wembley holds in the hearts of football, sport and music fans and jokes: "it's a lot like Hollywood only closer to the North Circular.

Gary Smith is the new Stevenage manager. It doesn't come as any surprise that Smith has been appointed as he has been the favourite for the position over the last week or so. He was even in the main stand watching his new side beat play-off rivals MK Dons 4-2 earlier tonight. News of his appointment broke soon after and the Harlow born coach is set to be the man given the task of replacing Graham Westley and continuing Boro's promotion push.

"Me, You, and Jason Euell" by Patrick Cullinan

Shot on the way to, from, and at Port Vale vs AFC Wimbledon in England's League 2 this past Saturday, the 14th of January, this film captures the sights and sounds of a typical football awayday.

Beyond the style of the short film in itself, we also love that Patrick Cullinan is an avid reader of AFR (not to mention an excellent contributor to the Off The Post podcast).

To those of you who missed it there was a really good program on BBC 1 last night based on depression in sport. The show was presented by and based mainly upon Freddie Flintoff and his own battle against depression whilst very much in the spotlight playing cricket for England.

Flintoff said how there was a lot of pressure on him to be the leader of the cricket team and to motivate others and lead them to victory but there were times when he felt so low that he wasn't able to do this, yet felt unable to admit to his issues in front of his team-mates.

Ex-Wimbledon hardman Vinnie Jones is putting his reputation to good use with this amusing advert for the British Heart Foundation. If you were wondering what to do if some geezer collapses in front of you, wonder no more. No kissing required.

Un'altra vittoria per lo Swindon Town Di Renato Cignoni SWINDON TOWN 2 (Caddis '58, '76 Connell)AFC Wimbledon 0 Swindon Town:Wes Foderingham;Paul Caddis (Capitano), Aden Flint, Alan McCormack, Callum Kennedy (Cibocchi '79), Matt Ritchie, Simon Ferry, Jonathan Smith, Raffaele De Vita (Gabilondo '70), Alan Connell, Ronan Murray ( Benson '56)Sostituti: Lander Gabilondo, Alessandro Cibocchi, Paul

Beauty v the beast: Stoke v Spurs, LFC v Wimbledon, Arsenal v Bolton the best and worst footballing sides

talkSPORT listeners suggest some of the best footballing sides they've seen and some of the worst!

View the full story here: Talksport

A news article on 2011-12-10 08:45:00 from: Talksport

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

Afternoon. I think this in the business is what they call a round-up. But seeing as I'm not exactly sure what this business is or even if I'm in it, I'll just go ahead and scatter-gun some nonsense at you and see if anything sticks.

Tottenham pull Cheltenham out of the old F.A Cup hat, then.

Liverpool legend Steve Nicol has expressed his disappointment with the result at Fulham last night, and he also revealed his surprise at one of Kenny Dalglish's key personnel decisions.
Speaking on ESPN, Nicol - who won a bucketload of trophies as Liverpool player, including 4 league championship titles - noted:
"Disappointing is not the word; it's frustrating.

When Liverpool signed Andy Carroll for £35m, I'm sure the expectation amongst many fans was that he would be starting most games for the club. It hasn't worked out that way, and the former Newcastle man is spending more and more time on the bench.
Most managers would receive major flack for keeping the most expensive British player of all time on the bench, and many would (probably) be fearful of invoking the ire of the board, which would obviously want to see some return on investment.

Wimbledon legend and former 'Crazy Gang' member Robbie Earle believes that Liverpool should've beaten Manchester City on Sunday, but he has questioned whether Kenny Dalglish's team have the right mentality and focus to finish in the Premier League's top 4 this season.
Earle, who was appointed an MBE in 1999 for services to football, observed:
"I think Liverpool will look back at the game and think maybe they should've taken all three [points].

FA Cup tickets up for grabs

We've teamed up with Budweiser, lead partner for The FA Cup, to give football fans the chance to win second round FA Cup tickets. We have a pair of tickets available for each of the below ties, all taking place on Saturday 3 December: - Charlton Athletic v Carlisle United - Bradford City v AFC Wimbledon - Barnet v MK Dons To be in with a chance of winning, simply fill in the competition form below along with your name, age, postal address, contact details and match choice:

View the full story here: The Mirror

A news article on 2011-11-28 15:22:43 from: The Mirror

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

In his regular column for The Seventy Two, AFC Wimbledon striker Jack Midson tells us that the latest prank to achieve popularity among the players is to place items of fruit in each other's kit bags. Given that in their heyday, the original club's 'Crazy Gang' were prone to setting fire to Armani suits, smothering jock straps with Deep Heat and christening taxi doors with steel toe caps, this

He used to push refs.. now Di Canio just attacks dugouts

I enjoyed the game between Wimbledon and Swindon at Kingsmeadow on Saturday but I missed a lot of the match. It wasn't that it was a poor game. Far from it. It was just that there was a human firecracker called Paolo Di Canio standing in front of the Swindon bench and he was going off every couple of minutes.

Swindon Town: "Chi ha bisogno di Mourinho quando abbiamo Paolo Di Canio?" Di Renato Cignoni AFC Wimbledon 1 (Hatton '6)SWINDON TOWN 1 (Connell '73) AFC Wimbledon:Seb Brown, Sammy Hatton, Brett Johnson, Callum McNaughton, Chris Bush; Ryan Jackson (Minshull '71), Sammy Moore, Rashid Yussuff; Midson Jack, Christian Jolley (Mulley '43), Ricky WellardSostituti non utilizzati: Luke Moore, Jack Turner,

Paolo Di Canio Re di coppa Di Renato Cignoni AFC Wimbledon 1 (Yussuff '81) 1SWINDON TOWN 1 (Risser '69) 3 dopo calci di rigore AFC Wimbledon:Seb Brown, Jamie Stuart (capt), Fraser Franchi, Callum McNaughton, Christian Jolley; Kirean Djilali (Minshull '61), James Mulley, Chris Bush, Rashid Yussef, Ricky Wellard, Jack Midson (Porter '61)Sostituti non utilizzati: Jack Turner (GK), Charles Ademeno,

Wimbledon legend and former 'Crazy Gang' member Robbie Earle Liverpool are forced to abandon their natural game when Andy Carroll is in the team, and he has urged the striker to start believing in himself more.
Earle, Earle was appointed an MBE in 1999 for his services to football, argued:
"The jury in many ways is still out on Andy Carroll.

It took Sir Alex Ferguson over three years to win his first trophy with Manchester United, after taking over the club during the 86-87 when the club had sunk to the relegation zone.

Steve Bruce, who captained United to their first title win in 92-93, has reflecting on the turning point in Ferguson's reign.

October was a tough month for Boro. It started with 3 straight defeats to the likes of Scunthorpe, AFC Wimbledon and Huddersfield. It soon picked up though and the win against Charlton kicked off another unbeaten run.

Stevenage 1-0 Charlton

A Stacy Long goal was enough for Boro to beat unbeaten, table-toppers Charlton Athletic.

Steven Taylor has today opened the door on what it's like to play for Alan Pardew. Alan Pardew and Steven Taylor - in manager's first day at Newcastle And Steven says the 50 year-old Wimbledon born manager is the toughest taskmaster he's ever worked with in football. It seems that Alan is very hard to please, and he's a perfectionist and [.

Top Gun, voodoo dolls and and avoiding the JPT and X-Factor

Matt Lawrence has played for seven league clubs including Fulham, Crystal Palace and Millwall, for whom he appeared in the 2004 FA Cup final during his 16-year career. Now with League Two Gillingham, his diary will appear on MirrorFootball every Monday.

Having insisted in July that Gillingham's budget should provide enough wherewithal to challenge for promotion this year, the early signs have been encouraging for chairman Paul Scally. Saturday's 3-1 victory over Burton Albion was comfortably earned and Danny Kedwell, uprooted from AFC Wimbledon with the promise of a return to his native Kent, scored twice to take his tally for the season to

A funny day then. Hade, Stan and I went for a walk. Out of Tooting, up through the optimistically named 'Summerstown' and over to Wimbledon, where we tried the new Waitrose. Exciting, eh? Rock n roll.

On the way the weather was okay. We passed a girl, twenties probably, who had a double buggy, a two year old and a young baby.

June 22nd. Like most days since records began it has its fair share of anecdotal importance. Scanning over some of the better known; 1911 King George V was coronated at Westminster Abbey; 1938 Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in Yankee Stadium; 1981 John McEnroe called Wimbledon chair umpire Ted James "the pits of the world".

Injuries are an occupational hazard of football. A slight muscle pull, an awkward landing on the pitch, or a crunching can all be sources of a spell in the sidelines. However, there are surprisingly are a wide variety of different ways a football player can end up on the treatment table, as Swansea City defender [.

Chelsea 3-1 Norwich City (27:08:11) August 1992. Aged ten, there were many things I didn't understand about football, having been converted to it, like so many others, by England's run to the World Cup semi-final in Italy 1990, writes Juliet Jacques. Inexplicably, being from Surrey, I'd opted to support Norwich City, rather than our nearest top flight clubs, Crystal Palace and Wimbledon, or my

We, at Cheer Up Alan Shearer, hate Barry Davies.
Now, you may wonder how we can say such a thing. He's 73 years old, for heaven's sake. It's like saying you hate someone's grandad. (Well, he probably is someone's grandad so it's, er, exactly the same as saying that.

By Chris Wright

What you're looking at here is a table showing the performances of all fan-owned football clubs playing in the English football league system in 2010/11...

The 'level' column indicates the tier that each club is playing in as of 2011/12, i.

Here's a bizarre one: before 'investigative reporter' Glenn Mulcaire decided to find out what was going on in the celebrity world by listening to their voicemail messages, he was a tidy non-league footballer.
The man they call 'Trigger' retains a special place in the hearts of all AFC Wimbledon fans as, astonishingly, he scored the club's first ever goal, against Bromley, back in 2002.

A lot of people worked very hard for this moment. In modern football, a considerable amount of time, paper and bandwidth is spent on celebrating a relative few, but at Wimbledon it was the likes of Erik Samuelson, Kris Stewart, Marc Jones and Ivor Heller, who refused to let their club die with a that was brought about by little more than carpet-baggers.

A lot of people worked very hard for this moment. In modern football, a considerable amount of time, paper and bandwidth is spent on celebrating a relative few, but at Wimbledon it was the likes of Erik Samuelson, Kris Stewart, Marc Jones and Ivor Heller, who refused to let their club die with a that was brought about by little more than carpet-baggers.

The Weekend Six Pack is back! And raring to go with Blackpool, Southampton and Leverkusen is a post from: Just Football

Hull Vs Blackpool – Friday 1945 Sky Sports 1

Hollo's back

Two sides that lit up the early months of the last two Premier league campaigns but both now licking their wounds.

With the division in general overviewed by Ian yesterday, it's time for the annual jinx that is the official twohundredpercent pre-season previews. We've gone about them slightly differently this season. With the transfer window affecting some managers psychologically to the point that they build their team by the end of the transfer window, rather than the start of the season, predicting how it all ends up before teams have finalised their squads is tricky, especially when you consider that Bury started last season with fifteen players with league experience, only to add five players to their promotion winning squad before the end of August.

After his nine years with Robbie Jackson and subsequent five years with Sonia, Bianca, Mickey, Vinnie and Gus, I'm sure that many of you, like me, were wondering what became of Eastenders' most famous dog (other than Ethel's little Willie, obviously).
Rumours abound that Bianca killed Wellard by feeding him chocolate, before scattering his ashes on the allotment.

After his nine years with Robbie Jackson and subsequent five years with Sonia, Bianca, Mickey, Vinnie and Gus, I'm sure that many of you, like me, were wondering what became of Eastenders' most famous dog (other than Ethel's little Willie, obviously).
Rumours abound that Bianca killed Wellard by feeding him chocolate, before scattering his ashes on the allotment.

We're taking a brief break from our lengthy (and, let's face it, exhausting) series of Premier League previews for a couple of days in order to bring you some round-ups on the state of the Football League, prior to its kick-off this weekend. Rob Freeman will be bringing you our (or, if they're hopelessly inaccurate, "his") predictions for the coming season over the next three days, but first of all here's a brief synopsis of the state of play as League Two prepares to gird its loins for the new season.

At the end of last season, it rather felt as if one of the more significant success stories of the previous ten months had been overlooked. As the nation salivated over Barcelona in the Champions League and cheered Wimbledon back into the Football League, Norwich City supporters could have been forgiven for feeling a little bit forgotten for having achieved something a little bit special back to back promotions which ended with the club back in the Premier League.