retired_manragh

January Summary

A pretty good month for the club again although our great run of not losing in the league finally came to an end at the hands of Sunderland after 18 games, we was hoping for a bounce back win at home but it wasn’t to be

League Results

3-2 win @ Hull –Goals: CP: Green (6) Kuqi (22, 35) Hull: Windass ( 14, 62) inj: Scowcroft (74) Kennedy (90) reds: M Turnier (Hull 83) man of the match: G Borrowdale (CP)

1-0 win @ home v Stoke –Goals CP: Green (7) reds: C Fletcher (CP 21) man of the match: D Ward (CP)

0-1 loss @ Sunderland –Goals Sun: Yorke (64) man of the match: D Ward (CP)

0-0 draw @ Home v Colchester man of the match: G Pilkington (Col)

FA Cup 3rd Round

0-5 loss @ home v Man City –Goals ManC: Vassell (5, 10, 16, 29, 65) man of the match: Guess who?

League Ladder
<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">*after 31 games unless noted*PtsGDWest Brom68+31Derby64+31PALACE 58+21Wolves 58+14Leicester53+12Birmingham52+7 *game in hand*</pre>

Barnsley’s centre back continued his good form from last month and repeated Freddy Eastwoods feat of getting back to back player of the month awards while West Brom’s centre back Paul McShane grabbed young player of the month, Southends Steve Tilson won manager of the month while our very own Shefki Kuqi won goal of the month for his goal against Hull on New Years day.

Transfer news seen West Ham complete two big signings Elano from Shakhtar for a reported £10 mil and Craig Gordon from Hearts for £6.5 and from what I’ve seen of Craig Gordon it’s worth every penny. Wigan splashed out and bought 3 players worth a combined £10 million M Gravfaard from FC København, Gary O’Conner from Lokomotiv Moscow and Joel Huiqui from Cruz Azul. Arsenal’s Mart Poom who we tried to get ending up signing for Nancy in France while the biggest movers of the Championship was Coventry who signed 5 players in a bid to strengthen their side, the most notable being Steve Brooker from Brisol City for £1.4 million he’d played 28 games scored 16 goals had 2 assists, 3 man of the matches and pretty decent average of 7.46 in all comps. 33 year old David Unsworth was also another notable acquisition from Wigan.

retired_manragh

February

A couple international notifications came through the fax on Thursday (1st Feb), Shefki Kuqi once again would be off in the Finland squad, but we had two new additions Paul Ifill was off to represent Barbados and Flo N’Galula had been called up to the Belgian under 19 team.

Our televised game didn’t go the way I would have hoped as we crashed to our second home defeat this season, a bullsh.. dubious penalty in the 86th minute was where the goal came from, it should have never of got to that stage though as we should have buried Barnsley earlier, so we are as much to blame as the ref. When ever we lose a game after big undefeated runs it takes us a bit to get going again with 1 point in the last 3 games I hope we get back into the swing of things soon as the Baggies now have an 11 point lead on us while the Rams who occupy the other auto promotion spot now lead us by 6 points.

Carl Fletcher came on as a sub in Wales 1-0 friendly win over Northern Ireland and played a good solid game in the half hour he was on, while Paul Ifill who played in all of Barbados game against Sint Maarten had a pretty average day despite his teams 2-0 win.

Clinton Morrison and Danny Butterfield colliding in training today pretty badly, Clinton had to be taken to hospital for x-rays on his jaw while Danny hurt his wrist pretty badly when landing, looks like both players will be out for around a fortnight.

Friday the 9th seen Reading release English born Nigerian defender Sam Sodje, I was on the phone in minutes to agent upon learning of it and after a brief chat offered him a 3 year contract, Kit Simons think Sammy would be a good addition to the squad, looks like we had some competition from Scottish clubs like Kilmarnock and Aberdeen, Luton also put in a bid so we heard.

We came in at half time at Ricoh Stadium against Coventry 1-0 up after a good first half, and all I wanted them to do was to keep the level we had been playing at so far, but apparently it was too much to ask as their new recruit Steve Brooker scored his 1st, 2nd and 3rd goals for the club with a second half hattrick, I was not effing happy, with our next game against league leaders the Baggies at the Hawthorns and then home against Derby it’s not looking good with the team in this form.

Wednesday the 14th great day for us in securing the signature of Sammy Sodje for 3 years, the agile, quick and strong Nigerian is great in the air and has a good eye for the tackle, he just might be the catalyst that gets us back on track.


No use waiting, Sammy Sodje was thrown in at the deep end, with us taking on top of the table West Brom, 20 minutes in and we were looking, Sammy was doing well but James Scowcroft suffered an injury and had to come off, Charlie Sheringham was his replacement.

Bah you give em a bit of praise at half time and they came out and make a mockery of you, 2 minutes in N’Galula’s poor clearance from a corner is smashed home by Phillips. 68 minutes seen another although this goal was sheer class a magnificent right foot volley by Barnes was never going to be stopped. 2-0 the final score and our 3 loss in a row and 4th in 5 games, our season was quickly turning to ****.

Do or Die really for us at home against Derby, if we want a chance at automatic promotion then we have to win this. At half time I gave almost every player a venomous spray, being nice to them wasn’t helping results anyway so it was time to give them a rocket, the only player who didn’t get a spray was our keeper Gábor he had single handily kept us in the game up until half time, thanks to two absolute fantastic saves we were still on level terms

My team talk was two folded at the end of the game although the effort was better it still wasn’t good enough

“Great game today in goals Gábor” I said “you really deserve to wear the jumper with pride that’s why I’m sorry you have to hear the rest of this talk….The rest of you were farking disgraceful and truth be told none of you deserve to wear our kit after today’s performance, you were an embarrassment to fans, the club, Gábor and most of all to yourselves, if you want to play that sort of ****e then you can do it in the reserves, everyone of you have training at 5 am tomorrow morning, if anyone is late you wont play again this season”

I changed a few things around for our away clash against 21st placed Luton, put in a defensive midfielder and tightened up the midfield a little, and my pre match talk was pretty threatening as well. It seemed to do the trick as we came out of the blocks well.

Fangzhuo scored our first on 10 minutes and you could sense maybe something was going to go right for a change and there was a collective sigh from the bench as though a weight had been lifted, for me though we had led early before and coughed it up recently, so I was glad when the players continued to press and 5 minutes before the break Kuqi added a second and his first in 13 hours of football.

Half time my speech was a little more low key, I told the players I was happy so far but we hadn’t won anything yet, if they truly wanted to win this game then we would push real hard for the first 15, don’t let Luton back in with a sniff.

The players followed instruction and after 25 minutes of good pressure Fletcher finally buried the match when his strike beat the diving keeper and we took a 3 goal lead, finally it looked like the streak had come to an end. When Lee Probert blew time it was all smiles from the players, finally we were back on the winners list, too little too late to get an automatic promotion spot I think but with 10 games to go we were in 4th spot so a play off spot was up for grabs if we were good enough, but recent results had really let the pack catch us.

retired_manragh

February Summary

Well finally we ended a shocking losing streak with a win against Luton at Kennilworth road but it might too little too late for us, but if we can get back into some winning form there’s no reason we can’t make the play off.

<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">*after 36 games unless noted*PtsGDWest Brom77+34Derby74+34Wolves66+17*game in hand*PALACE61+18Birmingham60+5Southend59+15--------------------------------Leicester59+12Sunderland55+11Southampton51+4Plymou th50+1</pre>

League Results

0-1 loss @ home v Barnsley –Goals:Bar: Hayes (pen 88) man of the match: P Reid (Bar)

1-3 loss @ Coventry –Goals: CP: N’Galula (27) Cov: Brooker (52, 85, 90) man of the match: S Brooker (Cov)

0-2 loss @ West Brom –Goals: WB: Phillips (48) Barnes (68) inj: Scowcroft (19) man of the match: G Barnes (WB)

0-1 loss @ home v Derby –Goals: Der: Lupoli (84) man of the match: D Laycock (Der)

3-0 win @ Luton –Goals: CP: Fangzhuo (10) Kuqi (41) Fletcher (69) man of the match: C Fletcher (CP)

As you can probably guess none of our players received any accolades for the month instead 21 year old Dave Nugent won player of the month of February while Barnsley’s Ian Black took out the young player award, manager of the month went Ian Dowie who managed to win 4 out of his 5 games and draw the other, the good results most likely saved his job as there is increasing speculation about his end in the papers almost every week.

The Board meeting went surprisingly well, everyone was disappointed of course but were hoping we had turned a corner with that last win, we were still in 4th place after all and that’s better than the 6th we were predicted to get at the start of the year.

We dropped £200k that month as well.

retired_manragh

March

A really crap game gave up a fair result, 1-1 the final score in a game that produced only 6 shots all game with 3 on target, Dong Fangzhou got the scoring underway for us and even though Kuqi will be credited with the assist it was Tom Soares goal, his interception and quick feet released Kuqi into space and with only the keeper to beat he slid it across to take away the chance and Dong tapped it in. The lead only lasted 9 minutes though as Richie Foran levelled the scores. A boring boring game!

Another crap game for our away trip to Norwich, 0-0 at half time and we were playing well but the good old 5 minute lapse at the restart cost us and we went down a goal, never looked like scoring, a real disappointing effort by the team and honestly the ways things are going we will be lucky to make the playoffs

Other news around the Championship is that Steve Bruce has been removed as Birmingham manager, currently sitting in 7th position is clearly not enough of a team who was expected to challenge strongly for the title and an automatic promotion spot.

Huddersfield manager Peter Jackson has also been sacked this week, 16th spot at the moment was never going to be acceptable for a team supposed to challenge for the play off spots.

Reading Monday’s London Evening Standard I came across the interview with our Jamaican winger Jobi McAnuff and there was the news that I fully expected to see, McAnuff wants to leave Selhurst was the headlines but reading on in the article it wasn’t to bad, sure he wanted to leave, but I think if we can get into the premiership it might appease him for a time being. I pulled him into the office the next day after training but it was worse than I thought, he handed in a written transfer request. I talked it over with Kit and general manager Peter Morley as well as Simon Jordan and the general consensus was let him go, there’s no point keeping him if he didn’t want to be here but lets try and cash in on him we put £5 million on his head and see how that played out.

Birmingham appointed Eric Black as their new manager he was promoted officially up from his assistant’s job.

A close seen us grab a hard fought win at home against Leeds, we lacked the spark that we had earlier in the season which is disappointing, the players look ok and pretty fresh so I’m not sure what the problem exactly is although it maybe a core fitness problem, the season is long and hard and maybe its just them playing too much football, it’s always a concern with small squads although the McAnuff situation hasn’t really helped.

The 14th of March seen Huddersfield appoint new manager Peter Reid to the position, I'm sure he will do a decent job and he has plenty of experience at higher levels.

A good first half performance against Preston at home at which we lead 1-0 was overshadowed by a capitulation in the second as Preston ran riot, with us only getting 1 shot in the second half and Preston have 11, 7 of which was on target it was only Gábor Király’s brilliance in goal that stopped us from losing the match, a perfect 10 he received for his man of the match performance, the 1-1 draw not good enough in my eyes.

Gábor’s form over the recent months has been the only pleasing thing really at the club in which we are having a mini crisis of sorts, in an effort to lift the spirits of the team I gave an interview in the local paper praising his efforts recently saying they have been nothing short of magical. It seemed the League agreed as he was voted to the team of the week, and other great news he was called back to the Hungary side for their friendlies on the 24th and 28th.

After watching Sheringham’s excellent perform against the Swindon reserves yesterday in which he grabbed a hattrick I have decided to move him back into the senior squad for the remainder of the season, I’ve also paired him up with Kuqi who I feel can be an excellent role model for the kid and so far both men are extremely happy with the situation hopefully it might translate into some good performances on the pitch.

Something I'm not proud off is that I learned the the Under 18’s won the group 6 league today, it’s a great result for them and the club, the thing I'm not particularly proud off is that I had no real clue they were doing that well, sure I went over the match reports and had been keeping tabs on the players but I’ve never actually been down and watched a game or really taken part in helping to develop them. When you consider the competition they were up against its even more pleasing Arsenal, West Ham, Chelsea, Fulham and Reading all have their youth squads in that league.

Saturday the 24th seen England hammer Israel 4-1 in the Euro qualifier to give them a 3 point break and a game in hand over their second place challengers, while Fletcher represented Wales in their 3-1 loss to the Republic of Ireland and did well in the 10 minutes or so he played.

England smashed Andorra 6-0 in their second game in 4 days while we had a pretty good representation in the international games with with Carl Fletcher again doing his part as a sub in Wales 5-0 over San Marino. Paul Ifill did well in Barbados’s 2-1 loss to Trinidad and Tobago, he set up Barbados’s goal and Shefki Kuqi finally got a start for Finland and didn’t disappoint as he scored their only goal in the 1-1 draw with Azerbaijan.

Paying a little more attention to home I went down and watched the reserves play Aldershot in which they had a good 4-1 win Clinton Morrison scored a goal in the game and played well but it was young David Martin on the left wing that grabbed the well earned man of the match award, the win kept them one point above Millwall on top of the Group 5 tables, it seemed all the clubs except the senior team were winning their respective leagues at the moment.

The end of the month seen a few contracts get offered our youth coaching team had a few members coming out of contract so they were all offered new contracts, they had been doing an excellent job so far this year also Fitness coach Simon Davidson was offered a year extension to his contract and goal keeping coach Tony Burns was offered a 3 year extension.

retired_manragh

March Summary

My Contract was up for renegotiation at the board meeting they wasn’t any extra coin in my pocket but they were offering me an extra three years to get things done, even though we had tailed off with the performances of late it seemed they had the confidence for me to lead the team into the premiership. The only sticking point with the contract was that they wanted me to reduce the wages a bit more to increase the bottom line profits, with a few highly paid players leaving at the end of the year I knew that wouldn’t be too hard but after a bit of negotiating they agreed to give me a bit more in the wages and lesson the transfer budget, of course if I got the team promoted all that would be looked again!

Derby’s Argentine 21 year old centre back Gabriel Paletta won the player of the month award, while Birmingham’s Nicklas Bendtner won the young player award he was on loan from Arsenal. Manager of the month went to Billy Davies of Derby.

<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">*40 games down*PtsGDDerby84+39West Brom84+36--------------------------------Wolves72+19PALACE66+18Birmingham66+4Southend63+15--------------------------------Leicester63+10Sunderland59+9</pre>

League Results

1-1 draw @ home v Southend –Goals CP: Fangzhuo (55) Sou: Foran (64) man of the match: Fangzhuo (CP)

0-1 loss @ Norwich –Goals: Nor: Collins (48) man of the match: J Collins (Nor)

1-0 win @ home v Leeds –Goals: CP: Scowcroft (41) man of the match: Király (CP)

1-1 draw @ home v Preston –Goals: CP: Fletcher (38) Pre: Chilvers (74) man of the match: Király (CP) perfect 10!

retired_manragh

[b] April {/b]

We had the big press conference to announce that I had resigned for another 3 years Simon Jordan was really happy that I had resigned and he made it know in the press conference, in other news and conferences Wigan announced that former Boro boss Gareth Southgate had taken over from Paul Jewell.

Contract negotiations had fallen through with fitness coach Simon Davidson it seemed he would only settle for a 3 year contract we had offered a one and two year contract with increased pay but he said no dice on both occasions. He left me no choice we started to look for a new fitness coach.

Away at Ipswich and we really need to start winning and build some momentum if we wanted to have a good run in the playoffs but some good early work seen the wood work deny us on two occasion, I was hoping we didn’t get the second half blues we had been suffering from of late. For once we played a decent second half but it didn’t help the cause as Ipswich scored in the 68th to grab a 1-0 win, the loss moved us to 5th.

Gary Borrowdale’s poor pass cost us the first goal in our away game against Burnley, his ball was easily intercepted and put back over his head for their striker to run on too and he made no mistake in the one on one with our keeper. Despite dominating from there on in we conceded another goal to go 2-0 down in the 81st minute, Scowcroft pulled one back but it we couldn’t get the equaliser, another decent effort but losing was becoming a habit.

Southampton had won four in a row when the came to Selhurt and in the pre match conference despite us losing the last 2 I said I can see us beating them today..I lied I can’t even see us getting close.

I wasn’t a believer still when we took a 1-0 lead when Soares scored with 40 seconds on the clock, but when Scowcroft put us two ahead after 3 minutes, I was starting to hope.

2-0 at half time, 2-1 with less than 2 played on the restart, second half blues here we come! Luckily an instant reply from Scowcroft for his second of the game seemed to dispirit the Southampton team and we went on to win the game 3-1, it was a huge relief

The win still left us in 5th place with 3 games to play but atleast 2 of them were home games, home v Leicester(6th), away at Sheffield Wednesday(11th) and then home again against Wolves(3rd) it wasn’t an easy run home but fate was in our hands.

Derby became the first team to be promoted to the premiership with 3 games to play they couldn’t lose 1st or 2nd spot, West Brom were only a draw away from securing the same deal, they were 4 points behind Derby however.

The coming days seen us interview a few applicants for the fitness coaching position at the club and in preliminary interviews Ed Baranowski impressed us a lot, we decided to leave the advert running for a little bit longer to see if anyone else popped up with as much talent as Ed

When asked about the Leicester game at home I again give the very confident of winning routine, hopefully the players could feed of that a win here would probably see us qualify for the play offs so it was a very important game, I was only a little more confident than the last time I had made the comment!

4 minutes in we were 1 down and under seige by 10 minutes, by 25 minutes we were becoming unruly on the field and had 3 yellows and N’Galula had just received a another warning on top of his yellow. 2 changes at the break Kuqi on for Freedman and Fletcher on for N’Galula, the only consolation is that we couldn’t play worse. Well we didn’t play worse, we played marginally better but it still wasn’t enough for us to get an equaliser and we slipped to 6th play on the cuff of the play off spot.

With Southend behind us we only had one consolation and that was their form over the past five games was worse than ours we had 4 points in the last 5 while they had 3, in other matches West Brom won to confirm that they will be in the Premiership next year while Colchester was the first team to be officially relegated

1 down after half an hour of play against Wednesday only had one good sign and that was that Southend were two down against QPR, Kuqi equalised with 37 on the clock, so maybe if we could pinch a draw we would clinch the last play off spot, oh no there we go Jenas makes it 2-1 in the 44th, thankfully its ruled out after an unfair challenge on Király but it he’s down and looks like he might have to join McAnuff who has already come off with an injury. Thankfully he’s ok and play gets back underway but Freedman replaces Scowcroft at half time who has also picked up a niggling injury and can’t return.

2-1 at the QPR – Southend game means that they were in range, but it didn’t matter we actually put together a decent second half for a change and score two goals to give us a 3-1 win, Sam Sodje was given man of the match for his tireless work in defence but it could of easily gone to Tom Soares who had a great game setting up our second goal and scoring the third. The win secures a play off berth for us but with 4th 5th and 6th separated by a point it’s going to be interesting to see the final standings.

retired_manragh

April Summary

Well not a convincing by anyone’s standards but we assured our selves a chance at promotion with the away against Wednesday which was a beacon of sunshine in a pretty dark and gloomy sky.

<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">*1 game to play*Pts GD1. Derby94+45 Champions2. West Brom90+353. Wolves85+244. Leicester73+125. B’ham7306. PALACE72+19--------------------------------..21 Norwich45-13-------------------------------22 Stoke44-1823 Luton43-2924 Colchester37-28</pre>

The relegation battle is still on as well both Luton and Stoke have a chance to overtake Norwich to remain in the Championship, Luton have a home game against Plymouth, Stoke are away to Barnsley while Norwich are hosting QPR while the battle for fourth spot sees Leicester got to Burnley, Birmingham away to Southend and us at home against Wolves.

League Results

0-1 loss @ Ipswich –Goals: Ips: Naylor (69) man of the match: De Vos (Ips)

1-2 loss @ Burnley –Goals: CP: Scowcroft (84) Bur: Gray (16, 81) man of the match: A Gray (Bur)

3-1 win @ home v Southampton –Goals CP: Soares (1) Scowcroft (4, 48) SH: Saganowski (47) man of the match J Scowcroft (CP)

0-1 loss @ home v Leicester –Goals: Lei: Fryatt (5) man of the match S Hughes (Lei)

3-1 win @ Sheff. Wed –Goals CP: Kuqi(37) Folly (og 78) Soars (83) SW: Johnson (32) inj: McAnuff (26) man of the match: S Sodje (CP)

A Derby player once again took out the player of the month this time is was Erik Hagen, while Ipswich’s Owen Garven won young player of the month Wolves manager Mick McCarthy was awarded manager of the month.

The board were very happy to see that we had achieved the goals they had set at the start of the season and that was the play offs, we lost £150k for the month but that was inconsequential really.

Simon Jordan thanked me privately for getting Dougie to his 300th league game for the club he realised how much it had compromised my side in doing so, he hadn’t scored in 809 minutes of play, he wasn’t playing to badly he just wasn’t scoring, still I don’t think I would of continued to play him if Simon hadn’t of asked.

retired_manragh

Last League Game

With Manchester United being held to a draw at Charlton it means Chelsea have secured their third successive title, United are obviously second while the rest of the top 5 sees Arsenal, Liverpool and then Aston Villa.

Newcastle have struggled to 13th place although they can still get 10th, while Wigan and Boro have both been relegated to the Championship next season, while Watford need to win both their remaining games and Fulham to lose their last one to stay in the premiership.

Our last home game in the league starts poorly with Fray getting a red card and giving away a penalty in the second minute of play, in which Davies puts them one ahead, we fight out the first half though and its only 2 great saves from the Wolves keeper that stop us from going in on level terms. Leicester are one down against Burnley at half time and Birmingham are currently level with Southend in their game while Norwich seems to made sure of their stay in the Championship by being 5-1 up at half time against QPR

53 minutes sees Wolves take a two goal lead while Kuqi is denied by their keeper and then he denies a great shot from Scowcroft to keep the two goal buffer. Sam Sodje gives us some hope when he heads in a corner with 10 to play but we can’t find another so its 6th place for us

Well the play off’s now and as we finished 6th we will be playing Wolves again who will take confidence out of beating us in the last game and our average form in the later half of the year, morale is pretty good surprisingly maybe because the players feel the slate is wiped clean now and we have 3 games to prove we belong in the premier league.

Birmingham beat Leicester in the home game first leg, 2-0 the final score gives them a really good chance of progressing to the final.

retired_manragh

May – Playoffs

The report on Wolves is promising as we sit down to discuss tactics in the coaches meeting the have quite a few players out injured at the moment including Jay Bothroyd, Rohan Ricketts, Gary Breen and Karl Henry, still we cant take them lightly.

Our home game and we need to put in a decent effort keeping Wolves scoreless will go along way in seeing us progress so with that in mind, we set up to go a little defensive

The side as selected sees :Király (GK), Lawrence (DR), Borrowdale (DL), Ward and Sodje (DC), N’Galula (DM) McAnuff (RCM) Soares (CM) Kennedy (LCM) Kuqi (CF) Morrison (CF) with Flinders, Fletcher, Scowcroft, Butterfield and Fangzhuo on the bench.

Some would say Morrison is a surprise inclusion but 14 goals in 12 games in the reserves and an average of 7.96 in those games have seen him earn his way back in.

A tight first half with there not being too many chances , we had the best one when Mark Kennedy’s cross found Lawrence unmarked but he couldn’t keep his header down, we did get a stroke of luck their dangerman Andrew Keogh caught Ward with a swinging elbow in the 45th and the ref had no option but to give him a red it meant our chances of keeping a clean sheet were good, but if we could get a goal as well it would be sublime, I gave the players to be attacking, but don’t leave ourselves open.

A couple forced changes with 20 to go, well 1 forced Sodje was struggling a bit with a slight knock so Butterfield came on at right back and Lawrence moved into the centre, we also brought on Fangzhuo for Kuqi to see if his pace up front could cause them some problems.

91 minutes on the clock and Dong chases down a long ball from Flo N’Galula his pace gets him there but his left foot first time strike is good and the Wolves keeper cant do enough and we get an injury time winner, a sensational effort by the lads.

1-0 win Goalscorers: Dong Fangzhuo (90) N’Galula (assist)
man of the match: Gary Borrowdale (DL – Crystal Palace)
injuries: Seyi Olofinjana (26 Wol)

<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">C.PalaceWolvesShots96On Tar22Poss54%46%Fouls1315Pass %7368Yellows 10Reds01</pre>

retired_manragh

Playoff Leg #2

Birmingham became the first team through to the play off Final with a 1-1 draw at Leicester giving them a 3-1 aggregate win, it seemed the decision to sack Steve Bruce was a good one by the Birmingham board.

Our games seen McIndoe return from injury, but they lost Keogh for the game, Fray had also served his suspension so he came to the bench at Butterfield’s expense while Sammy Sodje proved his fitness and would remain a starter, Carl Fletcher also started at McAnuff’s expense who since his transfer request had done nothing special or anything that really warranted his selection in the team.

35 minutes of domination by us sees their keeper make 4 fantastic saves and keep them in the match then on their first foray forward the score, McIndoe the man of the moment for them and in the remaining 10 minutes they show the same level of domination that we did, thankfully Király was able to keep him out.

The second half seen the usual crap we have dished out in the later part of the year and we succumbed to another goal and went on to lose the game 2-0 without a fight, it was a pretty disappointing thing to see, I should probably be happy with our performance this season but the horrid form at the end of the season just brings everything down.

Off season and all that other stuff!

I went to see the FA Cup final good old Bob got us tickets for the game seeing Newcastle were taking on Liverpool., it was a tight game with a few good chances from both sides but in the end a Dirk Kuyt’s goal in extra sealed the win for the reds and the won back to back FA cups.

A few day later while back in London Freddy Shepard sacked Glenn Roeder and the search for a new manager had begun, I felt like tossing my name into the ring but I knew I wouldn’t be considered a serious applicant and all it would do would put my job on the line here. I did ring uncle Bob up though and asked him if he was going to have another crack! to which he just laughed and said na, his time was over, he would be adding no more silverware to his resume.

Birmingham beat Wolves 2-1 in the playoff final to claim the last promotion spot, if the decision to sack Bruce wasn’t justified before it certainly was now as Bruce’s assistant Eric Black had steered them to the Premiership from 7th spot when he took over.

Looking at players for next year seen us keeping tabs on Peter Enckelman, the out of favour Blackburn keeper was coming out of contract at the end of the season and so Gábor had refused to talk about his contract which was due to expire very soon.

On recommendations and after watching a few tapes we put bids for two dutch players Raymond Fafiani was a likely looking left winger and Max Houttuin was a defensive midfielder who could play central or attacking midfield both players were class acts and were keen with the contracts we had offered, we just had to wait and see if anyone else came into sign them.

We also reduced Jobi’s fee to 2.7 million, there’s no point keeping him here and no ones going to pay 5 mil for him so we might as well get something.

The End of year awards were good fun and well done event we even had some representation in them with Gábor being selected in the team of the year, I wouldn’t be surprised if we lost him now, as expected Derby’s Billy Davies won manager of the Championship with Tony Mowbray (West Brom) and Eric Black (Birmingham) getting third.

Derby’s Arsenal loanee Arturo Lupoli won the golden boot award with 28 goals while Eastwood of Southend came second and David Connolly of Sunderland came third.

Shefki Kuqi goal against Hull was voted as the second best goal of the year behind Stokes Vincent Pericard.


The players went on Holidays after our own very awards which seen Captain Darren Ward given the most valuable player award narrowly over Jobi McAnuff and keeper Gábor Király. Best young player went to Tom Soares just edging out Gary Borrowdale (who got my managers award), while most improved was a tie and that went to Arron Fray and Borrowdale. The goal scoring award went to Shefki Kuqi who scored 16 goals in all competitions while Dougie Freedman was inducted as a life member after his 300 league games for the club, he had a decent season but tailed off badly to the end. Kuqi also got the coveted Fans player of the Year award.

A few days after the players went on Holidays seen both Dutch boys sign for the club which meant we would be seeing them both here next season, although Max was actually without a club at the moment so he was keen to get here as quick as possible.

Portsmouth came in with a bid for McAnuff but there was no way in hell we were selling him for less that his value of £2.3 million, Portsmouth had only offered £1.4 + 20% sell on, PSV came in with a similar offer which was also rejected.

Gábor Király rejected a very fair and good offer from us, so we couldn’t afford to wait any longer we went ahead and approached Blackburn for the services of Peter Enckelman.

Blackburn accepted the offer for Enckelman and within a day we had his signature.