When did Four Four Two get so good?

My book reading quest has been held up a little in February - although I'm well into my next tome - but that's largely thanks to having my head turned by a couple of magazines. Still Four Four Two magazine has proved a particularly high quality diversion and well worth a few words of praise.

In the dim and distant past I used to read Four Four Two magazine semi-regularly. It was the natural graduation from Match magazine (and occasionally Shoot) in my childhood.  Fairly or not I felt I'd drifted apart from what it had to offer. I say 'fairly or not' because there was probably a part of me that lost interest in top flight football as a grumpy supporter of a club - Nottingham Forest - that has long since plied its trade away from the Premier League.

In recent months my eye has been drawn back to it, however. I've leafed through a colleague's copy and had a joint go at some of the quiz questions and, this month, actually picked up an issue for a proper read. 

A mere flick through was enough to prompt pleasant surprise. Hitesh Ratna and the team have delivered a cracking read of great variety and quality - a magazine that, to me, seemed to have really stepped it up since my last purchase several years ago.

First things first: that cover. To put Pep Guardiola on the front just before he was announced as joining Manchester City was a stroke of luck, true, but the luck was earned. Why? Well the material is skilfully handled in such a way that it didn't matter if Pep's decision was revealed after the print deadline. Indeed it wouldn't have mattered where he said he was going to. The article could easily have been about the potential destinations for the football's most in-demand manager - which would have disastrously dated the moment it hit the shelves - but instead focuses on his character and managerial style.

Having just read Pep Confidential I probably didn't learn as much as I would have done in the piece itself but this was a smart, well laid out analysis of the Premier League's newest arrival and made for a worthy 'splash'.

There certainly seems a much more international focus to the magazine now, with Pep joined by an article behind the scenes at Thomas Tuchel's impressive Dortmund set up - probably the highlight of the magazine - and the MLS draft. The varied fare also includes the National League, a piece on football hard men and - in a welcome continuation of a tradition - a one on one with Eidur Gudjohnsen.

The beauty is in the balance of insight and entertainment, treading the line between mainstream coverage offered by the tabloids and major websites and the 'hipster' publications such as the Blizzard that cater for more cerebral matters. It's a balance that suits me fine and feels much more in touch with my tastes than ever before.

Hats off too for the excellent use of photos and images, making for a package that looks and reads like a class act.

It's heartening to see print publications like this continuing to thrive. It appears as though niche and special interest products are much better suited to surviving the tough competition offered by digital. If Four Four Two can deliver this level of quality I'd certainly return for more...

The EU debate: Just get on with it

The Prime Minister's renegotiation of the UK's terms of membership in the EU is a waste of time. I say that not as an assessment of the 'deal', such as it is, but more because the reaction to it this week shows that, when it comes to this issue, people on both sides have stopped listening.

No matter what continental rabbit David Cameron pulled from his beret, the anti-mob were licking their lips at the chance to denounce it. Donald Tusk could have emerged from the talks with 'Britain is best' tattooed on his face humming God Save The Queen and agreeing to rename the EU as 'Britain's not-so-good neighbour' and the angriest of the doubters would have written it off.

Not that those at the head of the pro lobby have behaved much better. Many can't allow themselves to be aligned with the Prime Minister, their sworn enemy on other matters. They have to denounce the deal, lambast the PM, revel in his failure and then, ultimately, support his stance. Politics eh?

To be fair, maybe we're all right to be cynical. The PM is a slippery PR man who has achieved very little on this or practically anything else. Some people have stopped listening because they know not to believe a carefully choreographed word that spills from his mouth. He said, on the one hand, that he'd opt in to the EU on the terms he'd secured in the talks, but also stated that the detail was still to be decided, hinted that he wanted to earn more concessions and said he'd still rule nothing out. Lackey David Lidington then tried and failed to make sense of it all on Newsnight. It makes you dizzy trying to keep up with such a vacuous position.

This goes back to the problem above though. We all know that Cameron wants to campaign to stay in. We also know, pretty much, where most senior figures truly wish to sit in the EU debate. Yet, for some bizarre reason we're dancing around the houses pretending to wait for the detail of the deal.

One constant and clichéd point made in almost any edition of BBC's Question Tine is 'we need a proper debate on the EU'. The same is said on immigration. The problem is that this is said almost every week and almost always IN a debate on the two topics.

Yet the reason why it feels like we aren't getting a 'full and proper' debate is because it ends up getting lost amid a load of faffing about on if we should have a referendum, when we should have it and what the terms of the largely immaterial negotiation should be.

We all know the question - in or out. We all know that the supporters on both sides and for both campaigns have decided their positions, let's just get on with the crux of the matter.

PS - what exactly was the Mail on about this week? The splash on Thursday evoked a pre Second World War debate yet its article admitted the two times weren't comparable. It also admitted that by 'England' it meant the UK. Clear as mud. Given the Mail's position as an anti-EU paper surely the whole comment piece was really a job advert for the leader of the out campaign? It said it wanted a debate - that again - but really wants a champion for its cause. Settle back, there's surely plenty more of this overblown coverage coming ahead of the referendum this year. I don't know about you but I can't wait...

Thursday's Daily Mail front page:
Who WILL speak for England?#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #euref pic.twitter.com/BaBim27N85

— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) February 3, 2016