The Blizzard branched out and headed to Wales, to the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea to be precise, to take part in the Swansea Bay Festival. On Saturday 16th March a panel featuring Blizzard writers Jonathan Wilson, Philippe Auclair and Gabriele Marcotti, compered by The Football Ramble's incomparable Marcus Speller, marked the launch of Issue Eight by holding another one of our now famous Q&A sessions.
The panel gave their views, ranging from their favourite Welsh players of all time, their footballing guilty pleasures and pondering 'Just what is the point of Stoke?' among other topics.
If you have any problems viewing the embedded video in your browser, you can watch it on Youtube here.
The latest in our string of Q&A events took place on 15th January at Bloomberg Sport's offices on Finsbury Square in London, in front of a sell-out crowd of 250. The evening was chaired by Dave Farrar, with a fine panel of Blizzard writers: Jonathan Wilson, Iain Macintosh, Ben Lyttleton and Philippe Auclair. From questions on football in the snow to the demise of the 4-2-3-1, the panel discussed a range of topics including questions from Twitter and the audience.
It was a panel discussion of two halves, and as such we're displaying it in two separate videos.
The first half, including a 10 minute introduction from Simon Miller, head of International Business Development for Bloomberg Sports, can be seen below.
Part One
If you have any problems viewing the embedded video in your browser, you can watch it on Youtube here.
Part Two
If you have any problems viewing the embedded video in your browser, you can watch it on Youtube here.
Our Issue Six Q&A event took place on the evening of 28th November at Waterstones' Albion Street branch in Leeds. The evening was chaired by Marcus Speller of the Football Ramble, and the panel included editor of The Blizzard, Jonathan Wilson, as well as Blizzard contributors Philippe Auclair and Anthony Clavane.
The panel held court on some of the more serious events in the football world, from anti-semitism and racism to crises of national identity and the expansion of Emirati influence in world football, but also found time to pick their favourite Leeds players and nominate who they'd like to drop into the Chelsea dugout. You can see the full Q&A below.
If you have any problems viewing the embedded video in your browser, you can watch it on Youtube here.
You may have seen mentioned in the Editor's Note that we were planning an event in Dublin for the release of Issue Six. At the time of going to print we were happy to say that Jonathan and a couple of our writers would be making the journey across the Irish Sea, but unfortunately due to circumstances beyond our control in the intervening period we had to postpone this event.
We are still keen to hold events around the UK, and hope to be able to hold one in Dublin in the near future.
People had been asking, nay begging us for it, and we were delighted to finally be able to bring the Blizzard back home to Sunderland, for a Q&A session on the 8th August.
The event was held at the National Glass Centre, and was chaired by Marcus Speller from the Football Ramble. He was trying to keep control of panel comprising Blizzard editor Jonathan Wilson, French football expert Philippe Auclair and Bobby Manager creator Iain Macintosh. Touching on the experience of Team GB at the Olympics, the Euros, which players they would bring back to their clubs, Platini, Blatter and Fifa accountability among a load of other topics, you can see the full Q&A below.
If you have any problems viewing the embedded video in your browser, you can watch it on Youtube here.
We appreciate that our events to date had all been in London, and reassure customers in the big chunk of the UK that's between Sunderland and London (and the bits that aren't between Sunderland and London) who were unable to attend that we're hopeful of future events elsewhere around the country from Issue Six onwards.
If you have any questions about any of our events, email events@theblizzard.co.uk or catch us on Twitter or Facebook.
To celebrate the launch of Issue Four on Thursday 22nd March we held a Q&A session at Wembley Stadium with a panel of Blizzard writers, hosted by Dave Farrar. He, along with Blizzard editor Jonathan Wilson, Gabriele Marcotti and Philippe Auclair talked for around an hour on topics ranging from financial fair play to their favourite Wembley moments, the current Belgian golden generation to which game the panel would 'Quantum Leap' into if given the chance.
If you have any problems viewing the embedded video in your browser, you can watch it on Youtube here.
We very much value the commitment of our subscribers, and have a policy to make available new issues, special offers and other limited access events, such as this Wembley Q&A, available to subscribers first. Take out a subscription to the Blizzard today, from as little as £6 (+ P&P) for hard copies or £3 per quarter for a digital subscription. For more details follow the links to the left.
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