Went to round to my moms house to check up on the yard (as she passed a few years back so go round there every so often to see if everything was all good at the drum), never had the heart to touch anything but decided I would go into the loft to continue my journey down nostalgia lane and found some of my old stuff. Came across my merlin premier league 97/98 sticker album.
It was the only album I ever finished and that was because someone jacked the whole box from the corner shop, dipshit thought he was stealing scratch cards but stole the stickers instead and had no use for them so he gave them to me. Couldnât believe my luck at the time, so went through the whole box with my little brother and cousin filling up the sticker album and keeping the rest to sell at school, ended up getting into a lot of trouble as some do gooder teacher found it strange that I had so many stickers, anyway local corner shop guy must of complained that kids from the school were theiving or something, because I got called in to the headmasters room, luckily because I was always causing trouble I was pretty well acquainted with him, and my teacher stood up for me and said âhe maybe a little turd but he ainât thiefâ, and that was later verified when the shop keeper came in and said I wasnât the kid who stole it. Obviously didnât snitch on my friend so I lied and said I found the box near the bins on the estate , long story short I went through a lot of shit for this album so it already held significance to me.
Didnât know it at the time but obviously we would go on to win the double and so this book has become the stuff of legends and ecstatic to have re found it. Anyway here is the double winning 97/98 team in all their Merlin sticker book glory, plus a shiny crest with the proper fuck off canon.
Tell you what mate a proper blast from the past this album, if anyone wants pictures of the other teams Iâll put them up as well. All kinds of players and teams. Crazy how much the league has changed since then.
Wouldnât even be able to complete them sets now the way they fiddle the distribution of certain stickers/cards now.
Better days all round them. Good the way Merlin got set up.
All the people worked for Panini and set up Merlin after Maxwell bought Panini out and didnât want work for the prick.
One of the best posts in this thread. Great stuff. I love the way theyâve done that album too. Modern ones are so fucking stylised and bleh. They arenât for kids anymore at all really.
This was Sanchez debut wasnât it? Real shame the way we didnât build on this team. I always felt like if we replaced Giroud and signed a better partner for Santi in midfield then weâd have been a proper contender for the title.
I canât ever forget the feeling I had when we signed Ozil then Sanchez the next summer. We finally felt like a team that were signing top quality players after the dark years of selling without adequately replacing
Getting Aubameyang two seasons earlier would have meant we could have kept Giroud as cover and not wasted 60m on Lacazette,
We would also have seen Ozil, Sanchez, Cazorla, Ramsey and Aubameyang playing together for a couple of seasons, challenging for the title rather than the fourth place trophy.
Never gets much of a mention the way Theo Foley did as assistant to Graham on the 90/91 season and up until Graham left.
Served us well and ended up doing some scouting here too.
, long story short I went through a lot of shit for this album so it already held significance to me.
