“As an inveterate text reader, I cannot help absorbing the fragments of black-on-red text in the [background on the] Missing Words round on Have I Got News For You,” writes Tom Whiteley. “Can anyone name the West Brom match that is mentioned?”

We think we know the answer, so please allow us to indulge our inner Poirot and take it clue by clue.

Clue 1: ‘Bob Tay… shot West Brom’ This almost certainly means Bob Taylor scored a goal, and it’s an entirely useless clue: he hit over 130 for West Brom in two spells between 1992 and 2003.

Clue 2: ‘Micky Mell’ Now we’re talking. This refers to Micky Mellon, who joined West Brom halfway through the 1992-93 season and was only with the club for about 18 months.

Clue 3: ‘hopeful of prom’ This isn’t American Pie, so we’re pretty sure it means West Brom were hopeful of promotion. It’s fair to assume that wasn’t the case in 1993-94, when they only avoided relegation on goal difference. The season before, however, they were chasing promotion from the third tier, which means this game took place between January and May 1993. The net is closing!

Clue 4: ‘in front with a se… half penalty’ Taylor’s goal was a second-half penalty that put West Brom in front. After consulting our oldest friend, Rothmans Football Yearbook, we know Taylor scored three penalties in the second half of the 1992-93 season: a 4-0 win at home to Fulham, a 3-1 defeat at Brighton and a 2-2 draw at Bradford.

It can’t be the Fulham game because the text refers to a fightback. It also refers to a ‘coast side’, and at this point we’re feeling smug enough to suggest the preceding word is ‘south’.

We can therefore announce that the killer match in question is none other than Brighton & Hove Albion 3-1 West Bromwich Albion in the old Division Two on Wednesday 10 March 1993.

A look through the archives, specifically the Worthing Herald, confirms as much.

What HIGNFY doesn’t tell us is that it was a costly defeat for West Brom, whose season was in danger of petering out. Their manager Ossie Ardiles said they were “soft touches” and that he’d clear out the experienced players if they weren’t promoted. The threat worked. Albion finished the season superbly and went up after beating Port Vale 3-0 in the playoff final.

When did the game first go?

“Listen to the commentary of any Premier League game and chances are you’ll hear a familiar lament from the co-commentator: ‘The game’s gone.’ Who was the first person to use this phrase?” asks Richard Perkins.

Football is in pretty rude health when you consider that it has been gone for at least 30 years. In October 1994, Leicester and Coventry drew 2-2 on Sky’s Monday Night Football. They were also level on red cards, with one apiece in the first half: Jimmy Willis for Leicester, Gary Gillespie for Coventry. Both were straight reds, hotly disputed; Willis for an elbow, Gillespie for a tackle from behind.

At the time there was a post-World Cup clampdown on various forms of physicality, and Leicester legend Alan Birchenall wasn’t having it. He made an on-pitch presentation at half-time in his role as public relations officer, and then, realising he still had a microphone in his hand, decided to offer a bit of impromptu punditry.

The referee was Keith Cooper, father of the current Leicester manager Steve. Birchenall got wind of a brewing storm and tried to play it down the following day. “I tried to lighten the atmosphere and bring a bit of humour into the situation with a crack or two. I soon had both sets of fans laughing. In any case, my comments were made as an individual and as a supporter, not as an official of the club,” said the Leicester public relations officer.

Eventually Birchenall sent a letter of apology to the FA “against my better judgment” and no further action was taken. Thirty years later he is still involved with Leicester as a club ambassador.

There are plenty of examples before that of the game going mad, bonkers, crazy, soft, to the dogs, but this is the first report we can find of it going full stop.

• Does anyone know an earlier instance of gamegonnery? If so, drop us a line.

Palindromes: an apology

In last week’s Knowledge we looked at Ipswich’s striking sequence of results at the start of the Premier League season: 0-2, 1-4, 2-2, 1-1, 0-0, 1-1, 2-2, 1-4, 0-2. And we only went and called it a palindrome when a true palindromic sequence would have ended 4-1, 2-0 rather than 1-4, 0-2.

At least a dozen of you pointed this out, confirming our suspicion that, while the world may be going to hell in a handcart, there is still a very healthy culture of pedantry.

And if anybody – hello Chris Roe – knows the longest sequence of actual palindromic results, drop us a line.

Let’s talk about six, baby

“Did the Big Six ever live up to their name by taking the first six spots in the Premier League?” wonders Bas van Eldonk.

To coin a vomitous phrase, the golden age of the Big Six was between 2014 and 2019, when they cordoned off the top six places in four out of five seasons. The exception was 2015-16, when Leicester charged through the velvet ropes and won the Premier League. Southampton also finished sixth that season, with Liverpool and Chelsea going AWOL.

Overall the Big Six have taken the top six places on, yep, six occasions: 2010-11, 2014-15, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2021-22.

Knowledge archive

“In the recent match between FC Twente and Vitesse in the Dutch league, Vitesse took off their left-back Haim Megrelishvili after only six minutes due to his poor defending, as the manager later explained,” Rutger Ijzermans told us in 2008. “Is this the quickest ever substitution that was not due to injury?”

It’s a decent effort Rutger, but we’ve got two quick-fire substitutions that can beat six minutes. For the first we head to the Wolds and Sincil Bank, where both Scott Walden and Harry Winckworth have highlighted the case of Lincoln City’s Grant Brown.

Harry picks up the tale on a drab Tuesday night in March 1998 when Swansea City were the visitors. “It proved to be John Beck’s last game in charge of Lincoln,” he writes. “To illustrate how Beck was losing the plot, his original line-up that night contained four centre-backs, two full-backs, two midfielders and two strikers. After just two minutes of play, Beck replaced the club captain and Imps record-appearance holder Grant Brown – a central defender – with the enigmatic and speedy midfielder Steve Brown, to the cat-calls of a bemused home support.

“I remember Beck claiming afterwards that he’d been expecting Swansea to play three up front. However, the Swans lined up with a five-man midfield, much to Beck’s surprise, so rather than push one of our six defenders higher up the pitch, he instead made the earliest tactical substitution I ever recall seeing.” Scott has a more conspiracist explanation, suggesting rather tentatively that the early substitution may have been to embarrass the defender after a previous poor performance.

Andreas Marienborg, though, can just about trump that. “In 2006 Bryne played Tromsdalen in the Norwegian First Division,” he writes. “Bryne were going through a horrible period injury-wise and had almost no defenders available in their senior squad. But because of Norwegian regulations they weren’t allowed to play their unlicensed under-18 players from start, though they were allowed to put them on the bench. So the injured striker Håvard Sakariassen started as a central defender, only to be substituted after one minute so that young Oddgeir Salte could get his debut.”

Can you help?

“Aberdeen were thrashed 6-0 by Celtic in the League Cup, ending a 16-match unbeaten run under Jimmy Thelin. What’s the heaviest defeat to end an unbeaten run?” asks Matthew Shore. [Let’s say an unbeaten run of 15 games or more – Ed]

“Spain wear currently one of the most hideous away kits ever seen, although after watching them wearing it and winning trophies at the Euros and the Olympics, I sort of like it. Any other case of utterly ugly kits made beautiful after a run of good performances?” wonders Pedro Calatayud.

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