Do I Not Like That! England's Downfall Under Graham Taylor | Part Three
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome back to It Was What It Was the football history podcast. In today’s episode, co-hosts Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper bring this Graham Taylor series to a close with the Oslo qualifier that defined his reign: a chaotic, tactically muddled 2–0 loss to Norway at the peak of their ‘golden age’, captured in painful detail by The Impossible Job. Unpacking Taylor’s mounting stress, tabloid caricature and “no‑win” selection calls—especially the dilemma of persisting with an undercooked Paul Gascoigne—before explaining how the back-three plan collapsed, England’s structure unravelled, and Norway’s alertness (including a quick free kick) punished them. The episode breaks down England’s chaotic structure, Norway’s tactical calm under Egil “Drillo” Olsen, and Taylor’s famous touchline outbursts, before tracing the fallout: “Norse Manure” headlines, concerns the players had stopped responding, and a demoralising US tour. England briefly revive by beating Poland, but lose in Rotterdam and, despite winning 7–1 in San Marino after conceding almost instantly, miss out as the Netherlands win in Poland. They assess Taylor’s broader legacy, his misfortune with timing and player form, and his later rehabilitation at Watford.
01:51 Norway’s Golden Generation
04:51 Tabloid Mockery Era
06:11 Psychology and Pressure
08:18 The Gaza Fitness Dilemma
18:30 Paranoia and Tactical Switch
22:50 System Collapse in Oslo
25:57 Quick Free Kick Nightmare
29:41 Norway Strike Again
30:32 Tabloid Backlash
32:07 Tactics And Trust
35:18 Bigger Picture Failings
42:56 USA Tour Fallout
43:49 Last Chance Qualifiers
45:36 San Marino Shock
48:28 Reassessing the Taylor Legacy
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The national team had never been at a lower air. |
| 0:10.1 | Humiliated by the United States in 1950 and by Puskas et al in 1953 and |
| 0:16.1 | their subsequent embarrassments in failure to qualify for the 1974 and 1970 World Cup final |
| 0:22.7 | had been tempered by the realisation that Fortune had, by degrees, stood in the national |
| 0:28.2 | team's way, or in the case of Hungary, they'd simply been undone by genius. None of these |
| 0:33.8 | factors came into play in 1993. Whatever the feasibility of English fans' expectations that, as football's founders, |
| 0:41.3 | their countrymen should be the best in the world, none could counter or accept standing |
| 0:45.8 | on the verge of being dumped out of the World Cup by Norway or being humbled by the Americans. |
| 0:51.6 | Clueless in their displays, Taylor's England were not just an embarrassment to the nation's proud football heritage. |
| 0:57.9 | They were quite simply abysmal. |
| 1:01.4 | Well, welcome to It Was What It Was. |
| 1:03.5 | I'm Rob Draper. |
| 1:04.3 | I'm here with Jonathan Wilson, and we're in part three of our series on Graham Taylor's England. |
| 1:11.5 | And Jonathan, that was James Corbett, friend of the show, delivering a withering verdict |
| 1:16.7 | on Graham Taylor's England. |
| 1:18.3 | We've got to the point where they're facing this crunch match in Norway, in Oslo, in |
| 1:23.8 | 1993, which is subsequently going to determine their World Cup fate, really. |
| 1:29.2 | And it's where we started with Jan Orga Fyotov in the opening episode, a brilliant episode. |
| 1:35.0 | Do go back and listen to that talking about England against Norway and how, |
| 1:39.4 | what a wonderful result it was for Norway and it comes at a time of Renaissance of Norwegian football. |
| 1:43.7 | But Jonathan, is that a fair assessment at Graham's... result it was for Norway and it comes at a time of Renaissance of Norwegian football. |
| 1:49.6 | But Jonathan, is that a fair assessment at Graham's time with England and particularly this match with Norway? I think it's certainly a fair assessment of how people felt at the time, |
... |
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