When Cheltenham Town hosted Manchester City in the FA Cup Fourth Round in January 2021, victory was all but assured for the Premier League club.
The Robins — who would go on to win League Two that year — were no match for a Man City side that sat atop the English football pyramid. Yet early in the second half, the match at the Jonny-Rocks Stadium was still scoreless.
Relegation-threatened Reading got absolutely hammered by promotion hopefuls Fulham in the Championship on Tuesday — losing 7-0 at the Madejski to braces from Harry Wilson and Aleksandar Mitrović and further goals from Kenny Tete, Neeskens Kebano and Tosin Adarabioyo.
In a poetically fitting way, Reading's 33-year-old striker Andy Carroll also had two outrageous efforts ruled out for being clearly offside.
Since the advent of the sport in the 1800s, England and football have been intrinsically linked. This bond started with schoolboys on muddy fields, with the objective to get the ball from one end of the field to the other by any means necessary — no rules, no limit on numbers, only brute force.
Football has now evolved into an organized game; manicured, well-lined pitches, tidy uniforms, and 11 players on each side. Kicking the opponent was outlawed and shinguards were installed should a stray boot make contact with the tibia.
On Saturday, West Bromwich Albion and Orlando City confirmed that 21-year-old striker Daryl Dike was headed to the Championship side on a four-and-a-half-year deal for a transfer fee of $9.5 million.
Dike again joins forces with French manager Valérien Ismaël, who was Barnsley's boss last campaign when Dike scored nine goals in 19 second division appearances while on loan. Orlando is also in line to receive performance-based bonuses and 20% of any future sale.
If the EFL Championship last year was a volcanic explosion, then this year is the spreading and settling of the lava flows.
No team this year will approach the 97 points earned by Norwich or the 91-point total of Watford last year. In fact, Brentford's 87-point, third-place finish from a year ago could be enough to win the league this year.
One year ago, Daryl Dike was just another young American striker showing promise in MLS. Then a surprise last-minute loan ended Dike's off-season and sent him across the pond to EFL Championship side Barnsley.
Dike took to the English second tier as a Minnesota ice-fisherman takes to a frozen lake.
As glorious as Andy Carroll's return to Newcastle United in 2019 originally felt, it eventually only served as a reminder of the toll that time effects on us all. There was something poetically symmetrical about his final 19 Premier League games for the Toon back in 2010 producing 11 goals of the rough-riding and swashbuckling variety, while his return season yielded the same amount of appearances but zero goals.
It turns out the passing of a decade leaves us all, either literally or metaphorically, mutton-chopped, grumpier (throwin' elbows) and with a lot shittier ankles.
For more than three decades, Coventry City was one of the cornerstones of the English top-flight. The Sky Blues were consistently a lower mid-table team (think Crystal Palace), but they were FA Cup winners in 1987 and an inaugural member of the Premier League in 1992.
Aleksandar Mitrović's phenomenal start to the 2021-22 Championship season continued on Wednesday as he buried Swansea with a first-half hat trick. The hulking Serbian now has 10 goals in as many games this campaign, along with three assists, for third-placed Fulham.
The 27-year-old has endured tough times recently, often finding himself on the bench last season as Fulham was relegated from the Premier League — this despite the fact that his 26 goals in 2019-20 propelled the West London side to the top flight in the first place.
Last year it was Adam Armstrong who provided the main thrust in the Blackburn attack. This season, following Armstrong's departure to the Premier League with Southampton, Ben Brereton Díaz has picked up the mantle for Rovers.
Brereton Díaz is the key reason why Armstrong has not been missed as yet. With nine goals in the season's first 10 games, the 22-year-old has fired Rovers into sixth place. He announced in July he would use his mother's surname in club games as well as international games for Chile, for whom the Stoke-born forward made his international bow on June 14.