The evolution of Lewis Dunk: Get yourself a defender who can do it all, Gareth…
Lewis Dunk is back in the England squad, better than ever, and better than almost every other centre-back in Europe, according to his boss. Johnny Nic concurs…
Johnny Nic
Man Utd and Erik ten Hag are stuck in the cul de sac of dysfunction
Man Utd can’t really get smaller, make less money and be less scrutinised, so there is no way out of this predicament.
Harry Maguire is a better footballer than all of us and a better human than most…
The Harry Maguire pile-on says much more about modern society and those steaming in than it does about the Man Utd and England defender, says Johnny Nic. Why are we ...
Gareth Southgate out, Graham Potter in? We are surely in the endgame now
We are entering the final chapter in the Gareth Southgate England story; Graham Potter is surely best placed to take over.
VAR is breaking its own rules and bending football’s to make everything so much worse
VAR was sold to us on a false prospectus but it is only getting worse. Some of these decisions simply make no sense and no amount of Howard Webb will ...
Can Pep Guardiola strip the b***ocks from Jeremy Doku and give him end product?
Jeremy Doku is fast and he is tricky but that won’t be enough for Manchester City; you would back Pep to eke out more from the Belgian…
£100m for Caicedo or £40m on Maddison? Chelsea and Man Utd transfer waste shows money is no fix
In the past, Chelsea spending £1bn in a year would automatically deliver success. But time and money has changed and a wealth of knowledge and data is key.
Wor Sandro: The new Geordie icon pulling Toon strings and scoffing in ‘Spoons
Who doesn’t love a lavish-locked Italian regista? Johnny Nic does, and he reckons Newcastle have found a gem in Sandro Tonali…
Mary Earps yelled ‘f*** off’ and women’s football does the same to toxic men
This is what football is like when a certain sort of male is removed. There’s joy and there’s passion and it’s now slap bang in the mainstream.
Win or lose the World Cup final, Alessia Russo is a powerful force who won’t be stopped
Alessia Russo, like her England team-mates, had to scrap and sacrifice to reach the biggest stage of all. Johnny Nic pays tribute to the Arsenal new girl…
Man City man Josko Gvardiol is the hunter-gatherer with a defender’s beard
Astonishing he is just 21 but already Josko Gvardiol has a) a beard and b) all of traits of a modern defender. So very good…
Is the transfer window a restraint of trade? Should it be abolished or transformed?
Is the transfer window system working? Should it be standardised or abolished altogether? John Nicholson has some questions.
Jefferson Louis, Jason Steele, David McGoldrick and Stoke are the real stars of football
John Nicholson wants to pay tribute to football’s greatest exponent: the journeyman. But he doesn’t know why they all end up at Stoke City eventually.
Lauren James: Relaxed, unhurried and somehow only going to get better than she already is
England and Chelsea have a superstar in Lauren James and the Women’s World Cup has finally let out a secret that everyone already knew.
‘We’d all take the Saudi money’ like Henderson, right? Well here’s exactly why I wouldn’t
Those who keep defending players moving to Saudi Arabia by saying ‘we’d all take the money’ really ought to consider the thoughts of John Nicholson.
Andre Onana could change Man Utd more than any outfield transfer post-Fergie
Andre Onana could entirely change the way Manchester United play. And more importantly for us, he could be bloody good fun to watch.
Kylian Mbappe auction is a neon acid trip where logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
Kylian Mbappe is up for sale. Will somebody pay £150m and well over half a million quid a week to him? Is this what football was supposed to be?
Higher performance: Toon’s own Lynsey Hipgrave an early upgrade for TNT Sports
From the ridiculous to the sublime: giving top pro and all-round good egg Lynsey Hipgrave the lead presenter’s gig was a no-brainer for TNT Sports. Johnny explains why…
Love football but not watching the women’s World Cup? What’s wrong with you?
It’s a serious question – helped by research and a brilliant new Women’s World Cup ad from Orange that challenges our innate bias.
Mason Mount and Man Utd will get the best out of each other. Another POTY incoming?
Johnny Nic’s early shout for 2023-24’s Player of the Year is Mason Mount. Why is the Man Utd new boy not more universally appreciated?
Why we should never stop putting our shoulders to the wheel of football change
John Nicholson gets asked all the time if he even likes football. The truth is that he loves it so will never stop ‘moaning’.
Jack-of-all-trades Szoboszlai will make Klopp’s Liverpool tick once more
Johnny Nic is counting down the days until the season starts so he can see what Jurgen Klopp has planned for Liverpool’s latest lavish purchase Dominik Szoboszlai…
Transfer obsession is sickening part of late-stage capitalism and it leaves us craven
Transfer culture is unique to football. In what other business do its customers focus on what assets a small or medium-sized company is buying and selling?
Bournemouth can be the home that drifter Justin Kluivert has been looking for…
Justin Kluivert has played in Holland, Italy, Germany, France and Spain. Now he finds himself in England with Bournemouth where Johnny Nic reckons he might finally settle into his groove…
Football is f***ed but most of us choose not to look in the boot for the rotting bodies
All we’ve done is separate our love of football from everything else, choosing not to look in the shadows for fear of what we might see.
Arsenal, the £110 new shirt and the nonsense of a price that takes the absolute p***
Is a football shirt ever worth £110? Arsenal are about to find out. The ludicrous thing is that Arsenal don’t even get much of the money.
Christopher Nkunku has all the tricks to stand out in the Chelsea circus…
Not only has Christopher Nkunku swapped the serenity of the Bundesliga for the unfathomable madness of the Prem, he’s joined the Chelsea freak show. Johnny Nic reckons he’ll be just ...
Farewell from Sky Sports Martin Tyler; you couldn’t please everybody and neither will Peter Drury
There is no commentator that does not grind somebody’s gears and Martin Tyler certainly did that. As will his replacement at Sky Sports.
Farewell to Gordon McQueen – a Scotland, Leeds and Man Utd icon who was tough as they come
Gordon McQueen was the dominant British defender of his era, tough enough to lead a brilliant Scotland side and swap Leeds for Man Utd and get away with it.
Farewell BT Sport; you were never truly loved and TNT Sports must be different to survive
BT Sport came, they saw, they absolutely did not conquer but got a lot wrong. Hello TNT Sports, who know it’s hard to make money from this gig.
Will wily old fox Edin Džeko haunt Manchester City to add the ultimate trophy?
Edin Džeko is massive but he’s more than that – he’s brilliant, always puts in massive effort, and could be a problem for Man City.
Jose Luis Mendilibar: the Spanish journeyman who emerged from the shadows to p*ss on Mourinho’s chips
Jose Luis Mendilibar ‘felt like an arsehole’ having flown under the radar for two decades, but Jose Mourinho certainly knows who the Sevilla coach is now…
Football is not broken; look beyond the Premier League and 22/23 was full of joy
Some absolutely fantastic, exciting, shocking football moments happened at every level in 2022/23 and they happened because football is a fantastic mercurial sport.