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Articles by Rex Mitchell

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About Rex Mitchell

Rex Mitchell is a Brentford supporter from childhood. This has not prevented him having a distinguished Fleet Street career as a sports reporter and later deputy football editor. A widower, Rex is a bit of a bandit golfer off his official handicap of 20 and is currently chairman of his local bowls club. More Posts

Bayern 1 PSG 0

You can pretty much know in advance that when the pundits talk in advance of a goal fest in a Champions League final it will be a cagey affaire. And so it proved. Only one goal divided the teams. In a game of few opportunities Bayern’s keeper Manuel Neuer – mainly with his right leg – [...]

August 24, 2020 // 0 Comments

Sevilla 3 Inter Milan 2

It was just as well for BT Sport that this match was a thriller as their pre-match coverage of it was dire. I had hoped, switching on at 7pm, that the issues of the game might be covered. There was an interesting Premiership element as Antonio Conte had managed Chelsea and now Inter with Lukaku, [...]

August 22, 2020 // 0 Comments

Is Guardiola finished?

Pep Guardiola epitomises modern managerial cool: elegant, charming , fluent. Unlike some of his peers, he has also introduced tactics that have changed the game – like the goalkeeper who is so comfortable with the ball as to become an auxiliary defender. The stats say otherwise to the image. [...]

August 18, 2020 // 0 Comments

Barcelona- the last rites?

Bayern Munich’s 8- 2 destruction of Barcelona was not so much the end of an era as the last rites of great club that is no longer performing at the highest European level. It set me wondering about the decline and revival of the great European clubs. It all started in the old European Cup – [...]

August 15, 2020 // 0 Comments

The play-off final/A Brentford view

One aspect of modern football coverage I don’t care for is the use of we by analysts in reference to the team they support. Reporting and analysis should always be objective. I try to be impartial but I make no secret that I’m a Brentford fan and in the build-up to the final there was much [...]

August 6, 2020 // 0 Comments

Roy Keane and punditry

I share Tom Hollingworth’s admiration for Jonathan Liew as one of more original and wittier sportswriters but unlike Llew I certainly had a view about Roy Keane’s rant at half-time in the Spurs v Manchester United game. As with many of the games since resumption behind closed doors the first [...]

June 24, 2020 // 0 Comments

England 3 The Cameroons 2 (World Cup 1990)

In their Football Classic series ITV yesterday showed the 1990 World Cup Quarter Final between England and the Cameroons. After winning the World Cup in 1966 on home soil playing every game but one at Wembley, English national football did not fare so well. Indeed they did not even qualify for the [...]

May 17, 2020 // 0 Comments

Commentators considered

Eager for some football – any football – I watched two “re-wind” programmes yesterday. The first was on the BBC and featured previous World Cups and the second in the ITV classic series the 1979 Cup Final between Arsenal and Manchester United. I recently participated in a poll [...]

May 10, 2020 // 0 Comments

Coventry 3 Spurs 2 1987 Cup Final

Yesterday afternoon ITV showed extended highlights of the 1987 Cup Final, generally acclaimed as one of the great Cup Finals. Can it be 33 years ago that I attended that Final with my now departed mother? My late father was medical advisor on inoculation and foreign travel to the England team. What [...]

May 3, 2020 // 0 Comments

Norman Hunter

I am afraid that the passing of Norman Hunter did not generate the type of feeling that John Pargiter expresssed over Doug Sanders. Norman Hunter belonged to a school of defenders and defending that was prevalent in the late 60s and early 70s. They  were brutal and intimidatory. All the big clubs [...]

April 19, 2020 // 0 Comments

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