Just to get us up and running on our new football discussion forums, State of the Game will be holding a great contest for our forum members. The first three members to refer another 30 members each will get a free TOFFS football shirt of their choice, delivered straight to their door.

The quality of TOFFS? products is second to none, only the best cotton is dyed, knitted and striped to our specifications ? we don?t make t-shirts which are supposed to be retro football shirts ? TOFFS? shirts are genuine reproductions of the real thing constructed with genuine passion by people who love football.

These shirts really are top class and TOFFS have a massive range for pretty much every club and country you can think of going back through their footballing history so it shouldn’t be hard to find something you’d like.

Full rules for the contest can be read here.

Registration for the forums is FREE so getting in is easy, getting away once the chat starts flowing might be a little bit more difficult

How I’ve longed to see the day when the football authorities take it upon themselves to tackle the increasingly cynical misuse of sportsmanlike conduct where players are obliged to kick the ball out of play if an opponent goes down injured. In the past this custom was observed properly and only use when absolutely necessary but in the past season or two we’ve seen more and more players try to use it as a means of regrouping after being dispossessed and tackled rather than getting up and running on.

The World Cup in Germany was full of it to such an extent that there were games were I personally had to turn the TV off and stop watching. It was cheating of the most despicable kind with players feigning injury one minute, only to jump up and run back into position the next when the ball was kicked out and danger averted.

In the Premiership, Arsenal have been the most high profile exponents of the shaemful practice with even top players like Thierry Henry giving incredulous looks at the officials if the other team dared not to kick the ball into play as he lay down after being fairly and cleanly tackled.

The incident which led to the touchline row between Martin Jol and Arsene Wenger during April’s North London Derby was a major case in point where two teammates collided, the referee checke dthat there were no serious injuries and quite rightly waved play on and Spurs went down the other end and scored. The goal was perfectly legitimate but because Arsenal’s players complained so bitterly (despite it being an indiscretion on their own part) there was widescale condemnation of the Spurs players for following the referee’s direction. Ludicrous isn’t the word!

Thankfully the Premier League have instructed the LMA and PFA to tell their members that from now on the practice is not to be followed due to severe misapplication and from now on the decision to stop play will come solely from the match officials. This should lead to the end of any further misunderstanding and hopefully eradicate this vile unsportsmanlike behaviour from the game.

The authorities are fighting back and while I say it’s about time, I’m glad they are doing something. Next target: players diving.

Hopefully we’ve experienced all of the difficulties with the server changeover that we are going to here at State of the Game and normal service has already resumed for all of your readers.

If you do encounter any problems with any aspect of the website please don’t hesitate to get in touch and let us know what’s going wrong.

Now we’ve got a new bigger, faster server for State of the Game we can start to put into practice some of the new features we’ve been planning for the past couple of months.

Watch this space for developments very soon.

Alan,
SOTG Admin

Please allow for a little disruption over the next few hours as we migrate State of the Game to new servers.

We’re trying our best to get this done as quickly as possible and with as little disruption as we can manage.

There’ll be a further service message once we’re up and running on the new server just to let you all know that everything is ok again.

Thanks for your patience.

SOTG Admin

More than likely this will all come back to haunt me come the end of the season but what’s a preseason without some vaguely guessed at predictions for how the season will pan out.

All comments to the usual form…

Alan’s Premiership Predictions 2006/2007
(more…)

Regular readers should notice that we’ve started the first stage of our revamp for the new season here at State of the Game with a new layout and site design.

There is plenty more in store that I’m just going to be extra stealthy about at the moment but will announce in due course and hopefully we can continue to grow the site and make State of the Game the number one destination online for football, news, articles, views and discussion amongst the more intelligent fans.

If you find any problems with the new layout in the meantime though please get in touch with us and we’ll get it sorted as soon as possible.

If any of you have any requests or ideas for what you would like to see on the site in terms of features or articles also don’t hesitate to drop us an e-mail through our Contact page.

Thanks for reading State of the Game

SOTG Admin

Well maybe you are but the rest of the blokes in the pub or your family are sick of listening to you spouting off about what’s going on with your club in the transfer market or how the players hate the chairman and how tightfisted he is. Maybe you read football websites or newspapers and wonder if the columnists have ever been to a football match in their lives before and deep down you know you can do better.

If that’s you then you are just the kind of football fan we need at State of the Game. We’re looking for enthusiastic football fans to become weekly columnists and keep us up to date with everything that’s happening at their club over the course of pre-season and the 2006/2007 season. Maybe you follow the club home and away every game, maybe you live on the other side of the world and make a pilgrimage every ten years, we don’t care, the only criteria is that you love your club and can handle writing at least one column a week.

It’s not difficult but when you get your thoughts on your club in front of thousands of football fans every day it becomes very worthwhile. You’ll get the adulation of your fellow fans, you’ll also get some stick and abuse because we’re all passionate about football and especially when it comes to our own teams and we’ll all fight tooth and nail for our point of view.

If you would like to contribute to making this website the best place on the internet for football news and discussion then get in touch and we’ll get you up and running with a column. Just imagine your name on the internet as a football writer, whether you are building your portfolio or just ranting about the idiots in control at your club, get in touch and get writing.

Following the lead of our friends at b5media, State of the Game has added the Akismet spam comment blocker plug-in to allow us to re-open the lines of communication with our loyal readers.

Comment spam is an unnecessary evil on blogs and sites such as this but with Akismet looking after us we should be ok.

For those who understand none of this, please don’t worry, all it means is that you can comment on the posts again so please do.

I’ve missed being called an idiot over these past few weeks and with the World Cup coming up we’ve got ourselves sorted just in time for the greatest show on Earth.

Keep reading

SotG Admin

Anyone wishing to comment in future will notice that they’ll need to register for an account on State of the Game before being able to do so.

I really don’t want to have to do this but I’m having to manage around 200 spam comments a day mainly from online drugs companies and it’s getting to be a waste of time that could be better spent writing for the site.

Registering is a quick and painless exercise and don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that State of the Game is going to start spamming you with e-mails. We won’t. It’s purely a defensive measure against the spamming scum who feel the need to annoy the rest of our online community and keep them from their business of discussing football.

Any problems please get in touch and I’ll try my best to help out.

Thanks in advance for understanding about this minor change to State of the Game

Alan
SotG Admin

Massive well done to former Southampton and Manchester United winger Danny Wallace who completed the 26 mile London Marathon course yesterday after five and a half days.

Ordinarily most punters wouldn’t think this much of a feat for a former professional footballer in his early 40s but Danny Wallace was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1996 and battles with the symptoms of the debilitating disease every day including fatigue, pins and needles in both hands and feet and severe back pain down his right hand side.

Danny was inspired to take part in the London Marathon by former boxer Michael Watson who took six days to complete the Marathon three years ago after battling back from a life threatening coma he fell into following a world title bout with Chris Eubank in 1991.

While Danny will be nursing sore limbs and muscles for a few days he can take great pride in what he has done and the publicity he is bringing to the fight to find a cure for Multiple Sclerosis through the Danny Wallace Foundation he set up in 2005.

All too often we hear stories of professional footballers involved in affairs, loutish behaviour and over indulgence in the “bling” culture their money and fame brings them but for me the real heroes are men like Danny Wallace who have been dealt a difficult hand but get themselves up and won’t let anything stop them from living their lives and trying to help others.

Danny Wallace gets my respect because I know from personal experience the difficulties he faces living with Multiple Sclerosis. When a disease affects your own family then it brings it home to you how lucky the rest of us are.

If you would like to make a donation to the Danny Wallace Foundation or get involved in fundraising please click on this link:

Danny Wallace Foundation Donations and Sponsorship