Shows / Football Ruined My Life
Football Ruined My Life
When Football Ruined My Life started back at the beginning of 2023 it was the new podcast about old football. In it, distinguished football journalist Patrick Barclay joined with Colin Shindler, author of the best selling Manchester United Ruined My Life, and the Super Agent Jon Holmes (think Gary Lineker, Peter Shilton, Tony Woodcock etc.) to talk about football as it used to be in the days before the invention of the Premier League. For over 80 weekly episodes, the podcast viewed those days…
Episodes
- Football Ruined My Life
156. Paddy Barclay and Derby matches
Since we received positive feedback after our first re-run episode with one of the three founder members of this podcast, Paddy Barclay, we thought you might…
- Football Ruined My Life
155. Postbag
This week Colin Shindler and Jim White open the postbag which is predictably full of scorn for the owners and operating officers of Manchester City… but also…
- Football Ruined My Life
154. Leeds United’s Implosion
In this episode Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes talk to the author Dave Tomlinson about his book Doing A Leeds. Even by the standards of traditional football…
- Football Ruined My Life
153. The One With Paddy Barclay – The Nations League
Since we’ve had two weeks off from the Premier League (and the Championship) in order to wallow in beating up Croatia and the Czech Republic as well as losing…
- Football Ruined My Life
152. Never Go Back
In this edition, Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jimmy Mulville are talking about one particular phrase and its meaning within football. Never Go Back is a…
- Football Ruined My Life
151. SPECIAL EDITION - Manchester City
In a change to our usual podcast, we bring you a special edition of Football Ruins My Life in which we consider the leak at the end of last week that…
- Football Ruined My Life
150. Can You Build a Team Around One Player?
There is an initial resistance by the panel to the question: can you build a team around one player? The instinctive response is one of scorn and derision – I…
- Football Ruined My Life
149. The One About Jimmy Hill
This week Jon Holmes, Colin Shindler and Jim White are talking about one particular player – and one manager and one club director and one club chairman and…
- Football Ruined My Life
148. The One with Steve Walsh
There are times when the panel like to turn the spotlight on those men who do incalculable good work behind the scenes of a football club but remain largely…
- Football Ruined My Life
147. Which Players From The Pre-1992 Era Would Be Stars In Today’s Football?
In this episode Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Andy Hamilton set out to annoy everyone with a discussion of which players from the pre-1992 era – the year when…
- Football Ruined My Life
146. Can An Ex-Player Ever Make A Successful Owner?
This week Jimmy Mulville, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler examine ex-players who become owners. It used to be that players saw how managers behaved and thought…
- Football Ruined My Life
145. Don Revie’s England
In 1974, Leeds United won the First Division by five points, transforming themselves from the ugly side known as Dirty Leeds. It was Don Revie’s greatest…
- Football Ruined My Life
144. The Return of Football Ruined My Life
After a long hot summer, Colin Shindler welcomes back our favourite football podcast with the start of what will be our 5th series. And it begins on the same…
- Football Ruined My Life
143. The One With Duncan Hamilton - 1966 And All That
In our last edition before the World Cup break, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes are joined by the distinguished author and journalist Duncan Hamilton. Duncan has…
- Football Ruined My Life
142. Team of the 1980s (with Steve Coppell)
Today we’ll be following on our discussion of football in the 1980s with an entirely self-indulgent session of selecting the team of that decade. To help Jon…
- Football Ruined My Life
141. Football in the 1980s
In this podcast episode Jim White, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes turn their attention to one of the darkest decades in recent football history - the 1980s. It…
- Football Ruined My Life
140. 1970
This week the Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the year 1970, which, to their collective astonishment, is 56 years ago. It’s Colin’s…
- Football Ruined My Life
139. Postbag
Today Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes look once more at the emails you’ve sent us since we did our last postbag at the end of last year. We encourage you to…
- Football Ruined My Life
138. The One With Tony Woodcock
Tony Woodcock was one of Jon Holmes’ earliest clients, a superb player who scored 139 goals in 437 appearances for Nottingham Forest, FC Koln and Arsenal…
- Football Ruined My Life
137. The Gap Between the Premier League and the Championship.
This week Jim White, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes wonder if the gap will ever narrow between the Championship and the Premier League. In 1964 Leeds United…
- Football Ruined My Life
136. Turning Points
This week Andy Hamilton, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes discuss turning points in football history. The historian A.J.P. Taylor, a name that has never graced a…
- Football Ruined My Life
135. The One With Dominic Sandbrook
This week’s special guest on the podcast is the distinguished historian Dominic Sandbrook, author of magisterial histories of Britain from 1956 to 1982 and of…
- Football Ruined My Life
134. Underrated Players
This week Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the sort of player who should have played for their country but never did, players who lacked the…
- Football Ruined My Life
133. Did Young British Players Come Into The First Team Faster Than They Do Now?
This week Colin Shindler, Andy Hamilton and Jon Holmes gather to discuss whether there are more 17 and 18 year old players coming into the game than there used…
- Football Ruined My Life
132. Have Newspaper Football Journalists Lost Their Influence?
It’s the view of Football Ruined My Life that many football supporters used to buy broadsheet newspapers specifically to read Geoffrey Green or Brian Glanville…
- Football Ruined My Life
The One With Michael Crick – Football And Nationalism
This week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by the investigative journalist Michael Crick whose appearances down the years on Newsnight and Channel 4…
- Football Ruined My Life
130. Do Football Crowds Reflect The Society We Live In?
There was a time before 1966 when crowds were a lot friendlier and less angry than they are today. Supporters of opposing clubs stood together on the terraces…
- Football Ruined My Life
129. The Matchday Experience
Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler ask the question “Has the match day experience improved over the years they have been going to watch football?”…
- Football Ruined My Life
128. What Happened To All The British Managers?
The television interview with a British manager after a match has become quite a rare bird, although recent events at Manchester United and Chelsea have…
- Football Ruined My Life
127. Which footballers have been influential, either consciously or unconsciously, in affecting or impacting their nations positively (or negatively)?
Recently we had the Africa Cup of Nations with that absurd ending rescued by the grown up behaviour of Sadio Mane. During the course of the competition we were…
- Football Ruined My Life
126. The North-South Divide
When the Football League started in 1888 there were six clubs from the Midlands and six from Lancashire. Now look at the Premier League. Of the current 20…
- Football Ruined My Life
125. Our Most Depressing Defeats
Colin Shindler asks Jon Holmes and Andy Hamilton to relive their football related nightmares. They are forced under forensic questioning to remember what they…
- Football Ruined My Life
124. Those We Have Lost In 2025
This week Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White pay tribute to some of the players who died in 2025 plus two journalists and one referee. As most of our…
- Football Ruined My Life
123. Are Modern Refs Too Fussy?
Anyone who watches The Big Match Revisited every Saturday morning on ITV4 will notice that referees in the 1970s and 1980s used to wave play on so much more…
- Football Ruined My Life
122. Club Legends
This week the Colin, Jon and Omid are talking about those players beloved by the fans but usually underrated by fans of other clubs. In other words, club…
- Football Ruined My Life
121. Postbag
Every year at this time we ensure that we have a postbag of your emails to spread joy and happiness among the growing Football Ruined My Life community. We…
- Football Ruined My Life
120. Is the Game More Exciting Than it Was?
Following on from the last episode (the special on FIFA and their Peace Prize that was awarded to Donald Trump), this week Jon Holmes, Andy Hamilton and Colin…
- Football Ruined My Life
119. Has FIFA Ruined My Football?
This is a shorter but very special edition of Football Ruined My Life. It was recorded three days after the sickening and humiliating farrago of nonsense which…
- Football Ruined My Life
118. The One with Steve Coppell
In this episode Colin Shindler and Jim White are delighted to welcome one of the few Economics graduates to play for England and manage successfully in the…
- Football Ruined My Life
117. The Players We Most Feared
The panel discuss the players they most feared because they were really good players and always played well against their own team... or players who were…
- Football Ruined My Life
116. Giant Killers
Ronnie Radford was a workaday midfielder playing for such legendary clubs as Worcester City, Bath City and Forest Green Rovers but in January 1972 he was…
- Football Ruined My Life
115. International Breaks
Now that England have already qualified for next year’s World Cup finals, this makes all the remaining matches in the group completely pointless from an…
- Football Ruined My Life
114. The Team of the 1960s
In this episode, Andy Hamilton, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes resume their role as selectors as they choose the best team of the 1960s from the English…
- Football Ruined My Life
113. Football in the 1960s
Colin Shindler tries to convince Jon Holmes and Jimmy Mulville that the 1960s was English football’s most glorious decade. Not just the world cup triumph of…
- Football Ruined My Life
112. Short Lived Managers
We all remember Brian Clough’s infamous 44 days as manager of Leeds United, a fractious period of time which compared favourably with Liz Truss’s time as Prime…
- Football Ruined My Life
111. No Hopers
On the first day of every season nearly all football supporters experience the same surge of pride and expectation. When they get to the ground it looks…
- Football Ruined My Life
110. Who Runs The Club?
It’s an increasingly pertinent question in football. In the days of Shankly, Clough and Ferguson it was blindingly obvious who ran their clubs. But as the…
- Football Ruined My Life
109. Team of the 70s
Following on from the previous edition, Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes set themselves the task of choosing from the English Football League as it…
- Football Ruined My Life
108. The One From The 70s… with Jon Spurling
Not unusually for this podcast, we look back – with quite some affection – to the 1970s. Many of our listeners will also no doubt remember the decade through a…
- Football Ruined My Life
107. Falls From Grace
Jim White was astonished to find that Andy Carroll is now turning out on Saturday afternoons to play in the sixth tier of English for Dagenham & Redbridge. So…
- Football Ruined My Life
106. The One With Daniel Gray
This week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by the author Daniel Gray to discuss his 2013 book “Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters” – a fascinating travel…
- Football Ruined My Life
105. Football in 2050
Jon Holmes, Jim White and Colin Shindler speculate (if present trends continue) about what football will look like in the year 2050 when it is very likely that…
- Football Ruined My Life
104. You Don’t Win Anything With Kids
In this episode Colin Shindler, Andy Hamilton and Jon Holmes examine Alan Hansen’s notorious observation that you don’t win anything with kids. It’s rather a…
- Football Ruined My Life
103. Creative Midfielders
This week the panel discuss that most prized of assets on a football field – what we all used to call the creative or scheming inside forward, now called I…
- Football Ruined My Life
102. Why Don’t the Top Six Just Bugger Off?
We all know that that’s what the foreign owners want. Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the reasons why we shouldn’t just wave bye bye to the…
- Football Ruined My Life
101. Do We Give Too Much Credit to the Game of our Youth?
This is a particularly emotive topic. Do we on this podcast give too much credit to the football of our youth and not enough to the Modern Game? We probably do…
- Football Ruined My Life
100. Postbag
We can imagine no better way of celebrating our century of podcasts than by dipping into the postbag containing your emails. Every week we encourage you to…
- Football Ruined My Life
99. Leaving Grounds
Prompted by reports of the last men’s game to be played by Everton at Goodison Park, the panel discuss the emotions that fans feel when they leave their…
- Football Ruined My Life
98. 1985
Was 1985 English football’s darkest year? There could be a number of nominations for this much coveted title but 1985 contained the tragedies of Heysel Stadium…
- Football Ruined My Life
97. The One With David Pleat
David Pleat has been in football so long that most supporters have forgotten that he started out as a player for Nottingham Forest, Luton and Shrewsbury Towns…