‘SQUEAKY bums’ are not ruining Young Boys of Vauxhall’s chances in their Kenna League title run in, according to the manager.
Goals from Jermaine Defoe, Andros Townsend and Aaron Cresswell saw Walthamstow Reds put another dent in Young Boys’ lead this week. The gap is reduced to 49 points with four weeks left of the season.
In a press conference at the club’s Fiddler’s Harris training facility this morning, the Young Boys manager dismissed reports nerves were derailing his campaign for a second Kenna championship.
“I can tell you with certainty there are no Young Boys with squeaky bums on my watch. I’ve personally had eleven Young Boys in my office, one by one, licked my finger, stuck it up and seen which way the wind blows,” said the Welshman, and few in the Kenna could dispute his expertise talking guff.
Nevertheless, assists from Riyad Mahrez and Jordan Ibe aside it was another flat performance. Romelu Lukaku, so imperious before, hasn’t scored in four competitive weeks. Emmanuel Eminike hasn’t contributed more than appearance points in seven.
In marked contrast, Walthamstow Reds have come to life. Missing the February transfer window, the manager may have considered the signings of Jermaine Defoe and Andros Townsend a cruel prank by his second, but both players have hit form in the last couple of weeks.
Even if the league title evades him, the Reds manager is surely favourite for a maiden piece of silverware in the form of the Narcozep Cup. He goes into this weekend’s semi final second leg with a 12-point advantage.
A Jamie Vardy red card at Bikini Lane all but consigned the bottom three to the tactical ignominy of relegation from the Kenna. For most of the rest of the league it’s that time of year when there’s more dead rubber than a stationery cupboard massacre.
For everyone else, they’ll be winding down and reflecting on what might have been in 2015/16 – although hopefully in not so squalid fashion as Gabby Agbonlahor.
Narcozep Cup fixtures this weekend – semi final second leg
THE Kenna chairman has slammed the treasurer after it emerged the fantasy football league was NOT caught up in the Panama Papers tax avoidance scandal.
In a heated tirade behind closed doors, which has become the talk of Kenna HQ, a furious chairman was overheard upbraiding the treasurer for ‘inappropriate use of league funds’.
Rumour has it the chairman’s outburst came after he found the Kenna was not listed among leaked documents from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca.
“Are you meaning to tell me,” the chairman boomed audibly from his office, “out of 11 million leaked documents from Mossack Fonseca there isn’t a single one relating to Kenna League funds?
“Do you think anyone runs football for the good of the game? Just look around you. That ‘squeaky-clean’ new Fifa president’s implicated. Lionel Messi’s implicated. Andy Cole’s implicated. Even Gabriel Heinze’s mother is implicated. Mrs fucking Heinze is fiddling the game better than me!
“I’ll be the laughing stock of the entire international footballing community.”
A secretary who overheard the rant relayed it word for word in the Kenna HQ break room, as colleagues took coffee from mugs printed with ‘The world’s leading London pub-based fantasy football league’.
“I’m only running this tin-pot operation as a stepping stone to Zurich,” the secretary had the chairman continuing. “We have little-to-no probity and you’ve actually been responsibly managing league funds every season. What sort of football bean counter are you?”
The treasurer’s timid response was heard to be something about being told to invest in Premium Bonds.
“Told! Told!” spluttered an incandescent chairman. “Everyone knows you tell the public you’re investing in grass roots schemes. You tell the public you’re building a fucking orphanage. But meanwhile you actually hide the money with some linen suit in a tropical paradise to pay for the boats and the girls. That’s how football administration works. Boats! Girls! Linen suits!
“More than 10 years running this godforsaken enterprise, pandering to the whims of that shower we call managers and all I have to show for it is respectable bookkeeping. How am I supposed to look the Fifa ethics committee in the eye at the next Zurich lunch?”
The eavesdropping secretary added the Kenna chairman made her phone The Guardian and the BBC several times a day to check if he was included in the Panama Papers. Both media have now blocked the number.
All at Kenna HQ were so preoccupied with the chairman’s outburst, not one person remarked the Young Boys‘ lead had been cut further to 53 points this week by Walthamstow Reds.
Neither did comment pass that the latter still had a slim chance of achieving a league and cup double following a strong semi final first leg in the Narcozep.
ALEXANDER the Great overcame such a problem with ease.
When presented with the Gordian Knot in the Fourth Century BC, the Macedonian king simply sliced through it with his sword. They called it the ‘Alexandrian Solution’.
Having moved to the former kingdom of the Argead dynasty earlier this year, the Hairy Fadjeetas manager will hope to take that inspiration from their most famous monarch.
No stranger to life in the bottom half of the Kenna – the side have finished between 9th and 15th for the last four seasons – the Fadges boss not only finds himself in the unfamiliar territory of the Balkans, but also the relegation zone.
Fadjeetas dropped into the bottom three shortly after the manager’s move to Skopje in February to ‘influence key decision makers’.
Other than handful of ex-pat regulars at St Patrick’s Irish Pub on the banks of the Vardar and the nightshift in Key Dimitar Vlahov street where it’s advised one checks for teeth prior to striking a deal, it’s uncertain who exactly the manager has been influencing.
He certainly hasn’t been having a positive effect on his first eleven.
October transfer window buy Jamie Vardy and the odd spark from Nacer Chadli have failed to turn the fortunes of a side crippled with injury and dissatisfaction.
Kurt Zouma, Fabrico Coloccini and Raheem Sterling are three players who could significantly reduce the 37-point gap to safety, but all are out through injury.
Early in the campaign the manager’s choice of Saido Berahino was pinpointed as folly, and his decision to stick with the striker has only returned seven goals and three assists.
Dejan Lovern and Angel Rangel are both inconsistent compared to their form of previous seasons. When he does play, Kevin Mirallas spends most of the time sulking on the wing.
Brad Guzan has conceded the most goals (55) of any ‘keeper this term, and 13 more than the second leakiest gloveman Lukasz Fabianski of Team Panda.
All of which leave the Fadges boss in front of a tangled bit of Phrygian rope hopelessly looking for a sharp sword…and finding Wes Hoolahan.
For the Kenna, the night before in the Black Horse, Fitzrovia, marked the introduction of another phenomenon which similarly came to dominate headlines for years to come – the Titus Bramble ruling.
An awry auction decision by the Titans manager (now in charge of Young Boys) led to defender Daniel Agger being removed by league regulations and replaced with Bramble.
The chairman suffered a double Bramble blow. Discovering the inclusion of two illegal players after the auction led to much wrangling between managers over email in the following days. Eventually managers decided Robbie Savage and Lee ‘The Lazy Genius’ Dong-Gook should find their way into the Vasco De Beauvoir starting line up.
With just a few hours left to slosh around before the crunch, most money at the auction found its way to Wayne Rooney.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Dider Drogba, the driving force behind FC Gun Show’s title the previous season, also attracted high fees.
Most expensive summer signings
1
W Rooney
£37.5m
Onward Christian Soldiers
2
C Ronaldo
£34m
Fat Ladies
3=
D Berbatov
£33m
FC Gun Show
3=
S Gerrard
£33m
Dynamo Temple
5
D Drogba
£30
Fat Ladies
Story of the season
Despite being shackled by the Titus Bramble ruling, Titans made the early running. Joint top after the first week, by the second week Bramble accounted for a fifth of the team’s score. They collected the August Manager of the Month award.
Spearheaded by Dimitar Berbatov, FC Gun Show initially defended their title well.
The first transfer window in November, also held in the Black Horse, was to prove pivotal to Fat Ladies.
Second to last and struggling for the first few weeks of the season, the Fat Ladies manager rung the changes. Yakubu and Emmanuel Eboue were among the new recruits, and in less than a month their handsome form saw Fat Ladies top of the table.
By the New Year, Berbatov had helped FC Gun Show top. By February Barking Hackney’s summer signing of Elano and November signing of free agent Emmanuel Adebayor saw him collect January’s Manager of the Month award. Barking posted a record score of 237, which would stand for another four seasons.
With David Bentley leading the charge at Recreativo Brockley, the chairman was moved to write in the wake of the February transfer window:
“Like a game of Hungry Hippos, the dispute for the title looks likely to be set from four corners, each manager furiously bashing away, balls flying everywhere.”
The spring saw the four sides battling it out, taking it in turns at the top. Occasionally the Kenna’s first female manager, in her second season this time in charge of Volzmanian Devils, dipped into the fray.
In mid table, the biggest splash was being made by Onward Christian Soldiers (the manager is now in charge of Pikey Scum).
The God Squad, as they came to be known for the religious overtones of signing Linvoy Primus in defence, picked up February’s Manager of the Month award. Outstanding performances from most-expensive signing Rooney, Benni McCarthy and Cesc Fabregas earned them a place in the Canesten Combi Cup final.
A stellar performance from Stewart Downing crowned the God Squad cup winners in May, the manager’s first and only piece of domestic silverware to date.
Making his Kenna debut, the manager of The Trinny Men would later become league treasurer. Nevertheless, it was not a performance to treasure for the future bean Kenna HQ bean counter, who went into hibernation for three seasons after finishing last.
In the title race, despite posting a worst-ever weekly score of minus six on 20 February, Fat Ladies bounced back to reclaim the top spot by the end of March with seven goals in one week (a hat-trick apiece from Ronaldo and Drogba, and one from The Yak).
FC Gun Show made a decent show of defending their title to the hilt, but with a May Manager of the Month performance Fat Ladies prevailed.
When it came to the crunch, for the second title race in a row Ronaldo and Drogba had proved decisive.
EVERY summer a select group of senior Kenna HQ blazers get together to pray for an interesting title race in the upcoming season.
The exact identity of the footballing deity whom they try to summon is unclear – and the Kenna HQ ethics committee has questioned whether the pointy masks, velvet drapes and naked girls are absolutely necessary – but whoever it or He is every season leaves those prayers unanswered.
For yet again the neutral spectator of the Kenna League is left with the dull plod of yet another title going to a club to dominate the table since autumn.
Should the inexorable march of Young Boys towards their second Kenna championship come to pass, they would join FC Testiculadew and Sporting Lesbian to become the third club to win two leagues in the last six seasons.
With credible challengers as sparse as pubic shrubbery on an Adam Johnson date, the phenomenon reached its nadir in April 2012 with the Kenna-in-the-bag inquiry.
There have been flickers of hope since. The Piedmonte manager came closest to breaking the cycle in 2013-14, but for a calamitous moment of transfer window business: swapping out a resurgent Samir Nasri for the lumbering Andros Townsend.
This season it’s another Kenna co-founding manager making a fist of it while the rest of the league gets fisted.
Philippe Coutinho, Jonathan Walters, Jermaine Defoe and Robbie Brady all scored this weekend to put Walthamstow Reds within 84 points of Young Boys.
But the chalkstripes in the Kenna HQ speculations department remain unconvinced of anything but a Young Boys triumph.
The Welshman’s side is enjoying sprightly form. Over the last seven weeks they’ve been popping along at more than 39 points a week, compared to Walthamstow Reds’ 29.
With just seven competitive weeks left of the season, it would take a Herculean effort from the Reds manager never before seen in the Kenna to overcome the deficit.
And he’s got Andros Townsend in midfield. No amount of virgins’ blood spilt at Kenna HQ can rectify that.
THE first man to visit a pub for every tube station in London has recognised the Kenna League chairman for ‘providing wisdom and élan at crucial moments of the crawl’, according to the Kenna League chairman.
Sam Cullen completed the three-year odyssey of 270 London Underground stations last week, in the order they opened.
“I’m not one to brag,” said the chairman, micromanaging a Kenna HQ lackey hang a framed print off of the blog post on the wall of his executive office. “But I can say I’ve been instrumental in Sam’s journey, providing wisdom and élan at crucial moments of the crawl.”
Critics of the chairman, and there are many, claim he is trying to bask in the reflected glory of Cullen’s feat. They say the only advice he gave was to spam tweet links to his own meagre London pub crawl posts in an attempt to drive traffic to the site.
The chairman denied he was overplaying his role: “This is about pubs, not search engine optimisation, pubs, pub crawl, beer, bar, boozer, tavern, ale, saloon, inn, kenna, jeff kenna, fantasy football, premier league.
“And that’s all I have to say on the matter, underground, tube, transport, train, london, capital, big smoke, west end, east end, Mary Poppins.”
Cullen’s achievement drew a slew of media coverage, which included his own recommendations of London pubs based on his experience.
The doors may not have been unlocked until 10 minutes after the advertised opening time, but Kenna managers were undeterred in their drinking session to watch the north London derby.
The manager of league leaders Young Boys arrived first in Stoke Newington.
The Welshman bought a Guinness, got a good table and by the time the Kenna chairman arrived was set up perfectly to gloat about his side’s dominance this season.
Sitting down with a pint of Staropramen, the chairman was then subjected to a lengthy complaint about the Young Boys’exit from the Narcozep Cup that week at the hands of league runners up Walthamstow Reds.
Reservations about holding the tie during a Rumbelows Cup final week were swept aside. Young Boys’ form has been so pitiful of late, the chairman asserted, it’s only their massive lead which has spared them losing the top league spot to Reds as well as a place in the Narcozep Cup semis.
Events in Bruce Grove were already well underway when the ISIL manager entered the pub.
Lately the Pirate has taken to turning up for beers in jogging tights and ordering OJ. This worrying trend continued on Saturday.
It was then the turn of the Judean Peoples’ Front manager to enter the arena. He looked wearier than his side’s chances of finishing outside the bottom half of the Kenna this season.
The JPF boss had still been up for dawn patrol earlier in the day, but within minutes of arriving he had smoked two cigarettes and had a handled glass of bitter in his hand. That’s the sort of form to see managers invited back to the Kenna again and again regardless of events on the pitch.
Punters red, white and neutral had filled the Coach and Horses by now, and the north London derby produced its usual fireworks.
By the time the match had finished, Kenna managers were a few pints in and the casual drinking rumbled on through Soccer Saturday and onto the final whistle of the evening fixture between Watford and Leicester City.
Whoever devised Saturday league football scheduling either must or should have shares in Staropramen.
People inside and outside the Kenna League may find that hard to believe.
I run a fantasy football league to all appearances with the sole purpose of organising as many all-day drinking sessions in as many different London pubs as possible.
Outside the Kenna I regularly kneel at the altar of licenced premises. Some would say too regularly.
But for some reason I’ve never happened upon the promised land of a big room full of lots of different beers and likeminded souls. Like an itinerant Fifteenth Century monk visiting churches, monasteries and other holy places throughout Christendom without once thinking to go to the Vatican.
So it was with a little trepidation I went to Craft Beer Rising in the old Truman Brewery last Friday night. Having lived in Brick Lane for almost half the noughties, the venue and area were well known. But what goes on at a beer festival was based on barely-remembered, badly-told, second-hand accounts from friends.
Before I go on I should admit bitter disagrees with me. That’s a pretty big obstacle to going to beer festivals, I suppose. Lager, cider and IPA? Can’t get enough of them, but traditional English ale is a nonstarter.
So as a committed lager drinker, I must assert – ahead of a description of Craft Beer Rising – that for too long the British tippler has been enslaved by the evil of big breweries limiting options to Kronenbourg, Stella Artois, Carlesberg, Fosters and other poor excuses for enduring session pints. To the part-time palette and Paul Calf they may be acceptable, but to me they’re all on a par with Skol.
A few years ago Peroni came along and brightened bars for a while, or at least until a visit to Craven Cottage. After the match I tasted a watered-down version at The Temperance on Fulham Palace Road.
Peroni ruined, Veltins stepped up. This is a pilsner one can drink and drink and drink, but sadly it’s only available in a finite number of boozers I know, none of them convenient to home or work.
Then three years ago I started working in Holborn, and there, beneath the faux Romanesque pillars of Sicilian Avenue, I found The Whippet. And Lagunitas.
In truth, Lagunitas IPA is a little too strong to knock back in large amounts, but Lagunitas Daytime is, and by thunder it’s good. They both are.
For £15 then, a room with Lagunitas IPA, Daytime and 598 other beers made with the same care and consideration for the consumer could only be a good thing.
After work on Friday, and the customary weekly après in The Skinny Dog, two colleagues, the ISIL manager and I went to E1.
Entering the sell-out event we were issued with a glass and ascended some stairs. We entered a huge room full of cheerful people and an overwhelming amount of beer.
Like the barefoot, medieval pilgrim entering St Peter’s Basilica for the first time, I was filled with wondrous awe and reverence, but also the sneaking suspicion such excess should inevitably lead the to the utter corruption of the weaker man’s soul.
Struggling to maintain composure in front of my drinking companions, we approached the first stand. It was only after I had tried and bought a third of a pint of Williams Double Joker IPA I realised it was 8.3 per cent. Well-laid plans had already come unstuck, but it tasted good enough to make the Pope blaspheme.
Next we tried Bru. An Irishman with the most marvellous whiskers explained their mission to replace Guinness as the stout of choice. This was the cleanest tasting beer I’ve tried since visiting the hometown of the Żywiec brewery in the Polish mountains a couple of years ago. I hope Bru can repeat their Nottingham feat in London and break the St James’s Gate monopoly.
The evening passed in a jovial blur, and in between all the beer and the chat there was an observation among the demographic of the event that requires deeper inquiry.
Predominance among the people was not the tubby, ageing, male pedants associated with real ale campaigns, Morris dancing and celebratory pub scenes at the end of Time Team episodes. There were certainly plenty of blokes, but there was also a sizeable minority of women. And they were really enjoying themselves.
In fact, they were enjoying themselves so much that as the night wore on – more drinks, going for cigarettes, throwing a few woefully-executed shapes in the cider hall – it dawned on me this event was an absolute meat market.
As a taken man I was keen to repel any slurred advances, but unfortunately the ISIL manager had his own predictable agenda and I was forced into the role of reluctant wingman. I’m proud to say my marriage vows remain intact.
What also remains secure is my conversion to the way of the beer festival. Even without the Ballet of Chestnuts unfolding before me, this was a superb event and a must for anyone revelling in the Renaissance of lager.
And anyway I have to go back. In five hours we didn’t even get halfway round.
ISLINGTON Sports Islam & Leisure may have saved their season from certain relegation after it was revealed they had been playing most of the season with the wrong goalkeeper.
Negative publicity ISIL attracted last week after the manager appeared to be having yet another car crash campaign shone a light on an error in side’s starting eleven.
The club’s Somali manager spotted Michel Vorm was still in goal despite being released at the October transfer window in favour of Heurelho Gomes.
Reunited with ‘The Octopus’, ISIL’s points tally was backfilled by the boffins in charts and graphs, which raised the team from bottom of the Kenna League to lower mid table.
“Yarrrrrr! From the second I see ye Vorm in me crew I thinks to meself it be a landlubbin’ name, and being a seafarin’ vessel we sure to have ye Octopus! Yarrrrrrrr!” said the Somali, having somehow overlooked – at every single practice session at the club’s Spyglass Hill training facility for the last 18 weeks – there was a Dutchman in goal rather than a Brazilian.
ISIL were not the only side score badly this week. It was a low-scoring affair in the title race too, but Young Boys managed to extend their lead at the top of the table with a brace from new signing Emmanuel Emenike.
In response, chasers Walthamstow Reds scraped together just two points with an Aaron Cresswell start.
Heading into this weekend’s Narcozep Cup quarter final tie, the Young Boys manager will need to be just as convincing to overturn a considerable first leg deficit.
Narcozep Cup – quarter final first leg results (from last week)
Pikey Scum 29 – 10 Uncertain
Young Boys 26 – 54 Walthamstow Reds
Dynamo Charlton 43 – 33 Northern Monkeys
Lokomotiv Leeds 26 – 33 Thieving Magpies
FOOTBALLER Adam Johnson pleaded guilty to charges of grooming and sexual activity with a child last week.
Since then the prosecution’s case has centred around an encounter between Johnson and a 15-year-old girl behind a Chinese takeaway in County Durham.
With all the allegations of where hands were placed, what act was performed and other inappropriate liaisons, wouldn’t it be unfortunate if the Chinese takeaway in question shared a name with one of these fast food establishments?
Adam Johnson gamble unbuttons Kenna League survival hopes
THE Islington Sports Islam & Leisure manager has admitted his gamble on Adam Johnson in the transfer window could derail the club’s chances of Kenna League survival this season.
ISIL are rooted to the foot of the Kenna League and the transfer window was seen as the manager’s last chance to tilt for safety.
“Yarrrrrr! Ye Johnson lad be gettin’ plenty o’ assists afore spillin’ ‘is guts to the law ‘ee be friggin’ in unweathered riggin'” yo-ho-hoed the Kenna’s only Somali manager.
“‘Tis skullduggery an’ no mistake, getting yer cutlass between yer teeth wi’ a lass wi’ less years than me cabin boy, but truth be told ‘is signed shirts be sellin’ very smartly. Yarrrrrrrr!” added the manager, scanning the gates of the club’s Spyglass Hill training facility for eager, young autograph hunters.
Under Kenna League regulations, Johnson will stay with ISIL until the end of the season. The club is rumoured to have changed the passwords to its social media accounts.
The campaign has been yet another unmitigated disaster for the Somali manager, who looks set to lead a side to relegation for the third successive season.
He went on to manage Hoxton Pirates the following season, only to guide them to a bottom-of-the-league finish 10 months later.
Going into the stats a little deeper, since winning the Canesten Combi Cup in May 2013, the Somali has spent 85 of 109 weeks of league play in the relegation zone, or as the manager ruefully admitted at this morning’s press conference “78 per cent o’ me hours in Davy Jones’ locker”.
