Honestly I just wanted a clean Man United vs Villa timeline today, like a proper minute-by-minute thing. Started simple enough – opened Google Docs thinking ‘how hard could it be?’ Boy was I wrong.
The Messy Start
First I tried ESPN. Big mistake. Their match timeline was buried under 15 ads blinking like Christmas lights. Scrolled past three auto-playing videos just trying to find the damn kickoff time. My cat probably understood football better than their layout.
Switched to BBC Sport. Better but still frustrating. Had to click ‘key events’ then ‘show all’ then watch a loading spinner for ages. Got the main stuff like goals but what about those yellow cards? Or that disallowed goal? Half the details were missing.
- Gave up after 20 minutes of tab-hopping
- Screenshots looked terrible when pasted
- Match time kept resetting to US Eastern Time
Manual Grind Time
Opened three browser windows side by side – OneFootball for lineups, FotMob for stats, and the official Premier League text commentary. Had my coffee and just started typing everything manually:
- 3′ – Rashford shot saved Martinez
- 28′ – Yellow card McGinn
- 41′ – Højlund goal! Header off Dalot cross
Spent ages double-checking timings. That Watkins chance was definitely 63rd minute not 65th – saw five sources arguing about it. My own fault for thinking this would take thirty minutes tops.
Formatting Nightmare
Pasted everything into WordPress thinking I was done. The editor completely destroyed my spacing. Bullet points turned into weird symbols. Timestamps got jumbled with player names. Had to:
- Switch to text editor mode
- Manually type HTML tags for 30+ entries
- Fight with responsive tables for mobile
Burnt my second coffee just fixing McTominay’s name auto-correcting to ‘McCombined’ three times. Why does spellcheck hate Scottish surnames?
Finally Live
Four hours later it’s up. Looks clean on desktop and mobile. Got all 11 key moments plus those controversial referee calls people argued about in the pubs.
Lesson learned? Next derby match I’m just gonna live tweet it. This timeline stuff nearly gave me grey hairs. At least it’s done before midnight – small victories right?
