Well, here come the media’s predictions for the year ahead, and to nobody’s great surprise they don’t look great. We’re 80-1 to get promoted, and the common consensus is that we’ll end the season tenth in the table.
Well, that’s not too bad, it’s just outside the playoffs after all. How many teams are in this division again?
Oh. Oh well.
We start the season with a couple of injuries, as you do – supersub
Time Tuba has a thigh strain and will miss up to a month, while first-choice GK
Dover Sole gashes his head and might miss three weeks. Fellow Preston loanee Brave Decision will take the gloves in his absence.
SL1, A vs. Partick ThistlePartick are a professional team, and the meeja predict them to finish fifth. So this’ll be a decent yardstick as to where we’re at in relation to the rest of the league.
At halftime we’re 3-0 down. And where we are in relation to the rest of the league is fucked.
Just before the hour, we pinch a consolation back – a Dance Settee cross pings off Electric Boogaloo and a defender before bouncing free to debutant
When The Chevy Breaks who finishes with a nice volley, but it’s really too little too late.
Two minutes later, a goal kick bounces through to the
Puffin on the left wing. He darts around his marker, cuts into the area and hits it low and hard from a tight angle to pick out the far corner. OK, but still you can’t really see us getting back into this.
Partick Thistle kick off, lay the ball back then attempt a through-ball up the middle of the park. Loanee Wanna Go Fast steps smartly in front, clips the ball forward to the Puffin whose first touch is to flick it behind the defence into the path of his strike partner.
Electric Boogaloo steadies himself and drills a shot that looks like it’s going wide right up to the point that it clips the post and bounces in.
Did that really just happen? Or did I dream it? Did we really score three in five minutes to claw back from a 3-0 deficit away to a side predicted to make the playoffs?
Jiminy Cricket.
Both teams have their chances to win it, including one gilt-edged opportunity for each team in stoppage time, but a draw’s really the only fair result. I feel an eventful season coming on.
Partick 3-3 Raith (Young 23, 38, 45;
When The Chevy Breaks 59; Peckham Puffin 63; Electric Boogaloo 64)
League Cup 1st Round, H vs. Albion Rovers (SL3)Albion are plucky, but totally outclassed. We run over them with about the same amount of difficulty as a bulldozer running over a wedding cake.
Raith 5-0 Albion (
Peckham Puffin 25; Smell The Glove 33; Meat On The Ledge 38; Pocket Billiards 50; Electric Boogaloo 55) MoM –
Smell The Glove On a free from Airdrie comes another of last season’s loanees, 20-year old DC
Scooby Chipshop. Decent, but not spectactular.
We smash our transfer record, shelling out £3000 for Lewes’ 22-year old utility wideman
Turbo Cigarette. He’s quick, strong in the tackle, decently good in the air and can cover either flank. His ability on the ball could use a little work, but hopefully that’ll come with a little time. Until then, he’ll be stashed in the reserves.
SL1, H vs. St. JohnstoneAnother professional team. Let’s see, how did the papers predict they’d do this year?
Oh.
We appear to be entertaining the champions-in-waiting.
Five minutes in and we’re already one behind, a spawny deflection falling to their centre-forward whose shot is well-blocked by Brave Decision only to see the rebound avoid 5 Raith defenders and instead bounce straight to the feet of the only other St. Johnstone player within 40 yards. We’re square within 10 minutes, a fairly scrappy bit of play on the left wing ending with Meat On The Ledge pinging a diagonal cross into the box and finding the head of
Pocket Billiards.
Parity’s maintained for all of a hundred seconds or so before their left winger loses Smell The Glove and gets on the end of a long ball, then waits for Brave Decision to come before sliding a pass along the edge of the box for Craig Gunn to supply the easy finish. Cockbudgets.
Cometh the hour – alright, cometh the 24th minute – cometh the man – alright, cometh the
Puffin. A trademark free kick and we’re back on level terms again.
Five pretty boring minutes pass before we see the Puffin’s other speciality – an attacking free-kick by St. Johnstone is intercepted by Cool And Froody who belts it up the park with all his might.
Peckham Puffin easily outpaces his marker to the ball, brings it under control with a beautiful first touch and knocks it effortlessly past the goalie for our first lead of the game.
Nurse, my heart medicine please?
Somehow we get to half-time without another goal, and some “don’t let the performance drop!” later we come out and largely boss the second 45, albeit with St. Johnstone still looking very dangerous in fits and starts. Half an hour and several cardiac-inducing moments later we finally wrap up the points – a lovely through-ball from Wanna Go Fast putting in Electric Boogaloo who draws the keeper before unselfishly pushing the past left for the
Puffin to complete his hat-trick.
For God’s sake, Puffin, try not to look QUITE so obviously bloody brilliant, alright?
Raith 4-2 St. Johnstone (Hart 6;
Pocket Billiards 14; Gunn 16;
Peckham Puffin 24, 30, 79) MoM –
Peckham PuffinAfter the performance, AssMan Brannigan’s Law comprises a report urging me
“to keep hold of explosive striker Peckham Puffin as he is certainly a player who has a good future at the club.”Oh, you think so, doctor?
Oh dear. Unwashed boss Gordon Strachan says the Puffin has “shown a lot of potential”. Oh dear oh dear. The Puffin’s pleased – the little tart - and is concentrating on trying to get better. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
Chelsea win the Charridee Shield 2-1 over Sir’s mob.
League Challenge Cup 1st Round – H vs. Greenock Morton (SL1)Ah, my old nemesis. We meet again again again again.
Or, to put it another way – is there no fucking escape from this lot?
Given that I know how much is at stake for winning this poxy competition, we give a fair few of the backups and new faces their first run-out of the year – Scooby Chipshop and I’m A Locksmith come in for DJ Homunculus and Smell The Glove at the back, Filthy Cracker, USS Tiny Penis and human hamstring pull Ask Doctor Stupid get their first starts of the year in midfield.
Morton proceed to murder us.
As luck would have it, though, loanee goalie Dover Soul has recovered from the gashed head he picked up just before the start of the season just in time to play a blinder in his first game of the season. So when in the last minute of play Ask Doctor Stupid punts it up the right wing, pacy-as-hell winger
When The Chevy Breaks tears after it, drives into the area and beats the keeper at his near post, it’s in fact the only goal of the game and we get to sneak away with our defence of the Challenge Cup still intact.
Raith 1-0 Morton (
When The Chevy Breaks 90) MoM –
Dover SoulWe draw old friends Stirling Albion and their boss, big-bearded Northampton obsessive Allan Moore in the second round.
SL1, A vs. DundeeGood Christ, it’s a team we’re favoured to beat. Let me just have a quick dekko outside for airborne swine.
Nope. Weird.
Naturally, we ship the first goal, a big punt upfield leading to a 35-yard first-time wonder-strike by Moroccan Khalid Hamdaoui (and his Long Shots rating of 7) that catches Dover Soul out of position.
We equalise before the half, Deej putting The Dance Settee into space down the left, giving him time to pick out a lovely near-post cross that When The Chevy Breaks would have buried if the
Puffin hadn’t arrived a split-second earlier.
We have way the better of the second half but just can’t seem to find away though Dundee’s compact, defensive 5-3-2. I’ve just about settled for the point when a Dundee work the ball to their centre forward on the edge of our penalty area, we fail to pick up a run from midfield and Michael Pook buries their second speculative long-range effort of the day.
Well, crap.
Dundee 2-1 Raith (Hamdaoui 6;
Peckham Puffin 36; Pook 90)
League Cup 2nd Round, A vs. St. JohnstoneIt’s official. St. Johnstone are the new “So Graham” Morton.
We’re up early,
When The Chevy Breaks receiving a pass from Wanna Go Fast with his back to goal, then flicking the ball around his marker, spinning onto it and rifling a shot low past the keeper.
Then, disaster. 20 minutes gone, a clearance sees Chevy knocking a through-ball on for Peckham Puffin to chase, except fullback Ronnie Henry (never trust a man with two first names) has other ideas and crashes two-footed into the little genius. Cue stretcher, cue red card.
Well, at least playing against ten men we’ll get an easy gam… oh, for the love of GOD. GLitFOStastic. Five minutes to halftime, Me Buckin’ At gets robbed on the right, a cross sails in that eludes all four defenders before reaching St. Johnstone’s only remaining striker, Craig Gunn, at the far post.
Try as we might, we just don’t seem to be able to impose ourselves on this game even with the oppo a player short. The loss of Puffin seems to have largely knocked the stuffing out of us. We have marginally the better of the second half, but St. Johnstone look at least as likely to score as we do and come the end of normal time it’s still anyone’s game.
The first half of extra time is largely uneventful, but straight from the kickoff of the second period the ball’s knocked down the left wing and The Dance Settee is flattened before he can get a cross in.
Me Buckin’ At pulls off his marker at the near post and meets Settee’s free kick with a glancing header that crashes into the roof of the net to restore the lead, and just as well because we have but one decent penalty-taker in the si… oh, this is just getting RIDICULOUS. In stoppage time, Settee dwells on the ball too long in midfield, gets robbed, it’s moved quickly forward to where fucking Gunn is somehow not being marked by either of my two otherwise-unoccupied and possibly soon to be fucking unemployed fucking centrebacks who give stand politely back to give him all the fucking time he needs to pick his fucking spot past fucking Dover fucking Soul. Fucking.
Penalty shootout, then. And given that in the absence of the working-his-way-back-to-fitness Time Tuba my best five takers have skills of 11, 6, 6, 5 and 5 before we hit a REALLY sharp decline, my hopes aren’t high. Which is why even when their second pen is hit wide and the third is saved by Soul, I don’t get too excited. Sure enough, Settee and Ask Doctor Stupid are both off the mark, but Wanna Go Fast converts our fifth to make it 3-3 and send the shootout to sudden death. Deej hits his, but St. Johnstone equalise. And then we’re really hitting the dregs. Me Buckin’ At screws his shot wide, but luckily so does Owen Coyle for St. Johnstone. My One Dad hits the bar, but Dover Soul makes a save to just about keep us in it.
Just as it’s looking like this could go on for the rest of the night, Electric Boogaloo ends a run of four misses by tucking his penalty into the bottom corner. Alan Kearney steps up to keep St. Johnstone alive, but Dover Soul pulls off another stop and we’ve squeaked through by the narrowest of margins.
St Johnstone 2-2 Raith (aet, 4-5 on penalties) (
When The Chevy Breaks 11; Gunn 40, 120;
Me Buckin’ At 106) MoM –
DJ HomunculusThe draw for the next round’s made, and it’s Hearts. At their gaff. That’s us fucked, then.
The physio report on the Puffin – a sprained ankle, he’ll be out for two weeks to TWO MONTHS. That’s us double-fucked, then.
This is not a time for calm reflection, this is a time for blind panic. With the close of the transfer window looming and still having failed to get the young DLC from Gretna that I’ve been wooing for about two months, I rush out and grab a few more bodies to join my cast of thousands.
Pudding On The Ritz is a 34-year old Spaiish left-sided D/WB/M who was released by Carlisle at the end of last season, and who has absolutely everything you’d want from a player in that position with the exception of any pace at all. Given how poor the service has been from wide this year, I think he’s worth a punt. He won’t contribute for a few weeks until some reserve games have gotten his sharpness back.
AMC
Feck Off Brick is 18 and a product of Alloa’s youth academy. Another one of my Reserve Team Rangers.
And finally, we shatter our transfer record for the second time in three weeks with a £7,000 swoop for Southport’s mardy Welsh right-back
Jocky Wilson Says. I almost instantly regret it. It’s not a particular position of need for us and he’s not that much better than current incumbents Smell The Glove and Ask Doctor Stupid, but I’m so astonished that someone’s willing to sign, so traumatised by the loss of the Puffin and so pressurised by the transfer deadline that I stupidly make him the highest-paid player at the club (£525 a week. By comparison, DJ Homunculus is on £500, nobody else is more than £250) and promise him Key Player status.
It’s not quite Chelsea paying 21 million sovs for a right-back (21 MILLION? For a FULLBACK? If I were going to pay that much for a fullback, as an absolute MINIMUM I’d expect him to be able to magically stop time. I might even insist on the ability to fly) but it’s close. I am an idiot.
League Challenge Cup, A vs. Stirling AlbionIt’s pretty much a reserve team I’m sending out, plus the almost-fit-again Time Tuba partnering Pocket Billiards up front.
Yes, I know. I’m making a mockery of the proud tradition of the League Challenge Cup. I am Arsene Wenger.
Stirling climb all over us, go ahead on 4 minutes and add a second on 26 from the penalty spot following an obstruction by Scooby Chipshop. We nick one back almost immediately, Meat On The Ledge hitting a crossfield pass for Me Buckin’ At to run onto and the
Tuba crashing home the cross from close range, but a spawny deflected shot on 54 minutes and a jaw-droppingly inept series of defensive cockups three minutes later put us three down.
Butt Out Of Hull pulls one back from a corner just after the hour mark, and with 20 minutes to go
Time Tuba pounces on a terrible defensive header to get his second from point-blank range and leave us just a goal adrift. Surely we can’t come back from three down twice in a month?
No. We can’t.
Stirling 4-3 Raith (Ferguson 4, Oyedele 26(pen), 54, 58;
Time Tuba 32, 72; Butt Out Of Hull 65)
We won’t be defending the League Challenge Cup this year. We’re awarded £3200 for making the second round.
I take some small comfort in that my transfer window escapades are positively conservative in comparison to Queen Of The South, who brought in 13 players. Just to really ram home the point of how bloody vital he is, the
Puffin wins the Division 1 Player Of The Month award. Pukebreath McShiteforbrains of “Bloody” Morton gets the manager’s gong.
AssMan Brannigan’s Law shows off his fancy diploma from No Shit University by filing a report urging me to keep hold of the Puffin as he’s
“certainly a player who has a great future at this club.” Honestly, what in the name of Moses’ holy foreskin am I paying you for?
The board are delighted with me, although we’ve recorded the first monthly loss of my time in charge – albeit only one of £1130. Since I’m still a fair amount under the wage budget, spent £10000 on players and we had only one home league game in August I’m not too worried. About the money, in any case.
I’m still no closer to knowing how we’re going to go this year – we’ve played great, we’ve played terribly and almost every flavour in between. Perhaps more worryingly I’m no longer totally sure what my best 11 are. Pocket Billiards has started very slowly up front, I’m not certain if The Dance Settee is up to it on the left side and there’re at least five players who can legitimately fill two places on the right.
With all that said we’ve at least looked like we can compete at this level, and despite the predictions of everyone up to and including my own assistant manager, it looks as if we honestly do have the horses to avoid relegation this year.
Maybe.