This weeks report was filed before the last match had even been played. Which makes my last minute publication as disgraceful as it is predictable. Even more so when you consider it was written by award winning author Andrew Donkin, whose latest opus ILLEGAL gathers plaudits and sales in abundance (seriously, check it out, amazing).
To set the scene for the tale below, myself and ‘Donks’ are engaged in a head to head mini league. And after a tense opening 20 weeks, its all gone massively wrong for me, falling about 8 games behind. Desperation has led to me making some increasingly left field choices as I seek to catch up.
Take it away Andy…
I usually prefer to play my transfer cards much closer to my chest, but at 9:36pm on Saturday evening I fired Theo Walcott.
It was an ugly, brutal confrontation that I allowed to go on much longer than was humane. I should have given the underperforming product of the Southampton Academy his marching orders by text message or perhaps fax. The thought of the speedy paced winger straining to listen as a shrill series of random beeps and whistles propelled themselves from his high tech Iphone X pleased me. It would, I imagined, cause little wrinkles of puzzlement to form on his otherwise unwrinkled mug.
But no, following his atrocious return of a single solitary point for ninety minutes on the pitch (Everton 3-1 Palace) I had ordered him down to London to face the music in person. Fearing what was in store, he resisted saying that Big Sam had promised the lads that as they’d won “big bollocks” they could watch a Harry Potter film on bootleg DVD as a reward.
Walcott mumbled that the last four films in the twee but money making family film franchise had been directed by his “Uncle Dave.” I screamed some wizard-orientated abuse down the phone and ordered him to get moving.
Bizarrely, within half an hour, an incontinent owl had arrived with the news that Walcott was correct. His Uncle David had indeed directed the last four Larry Trotter films. Gobsmacked and confused, I became ever more furious.
My fury was not for myself though. I had benched Walcott in favour of playing Milivojevic. Although Walcott’s form was better going into the game, and he was at home, I had received a fortune cookie after a Chinese meal whose mysterious message seemed to hint that I should take a chance against the odds and play Milivojevic. The enigmatic eatery communication would have been at home in any surreal David Lynch movie saying obliquely “PLAY MILIVOJEVIC. HE’LL GET A PENALTY.” For days I had puzzled the exact meaning.
No, I’d benched Walcott, but my fury was on the behalf of another manager. This manager had not only played Walcott, but had anointed him with the scared armband for a return of (after a booking) TWO points. FFS. This monumental act of self harm and desperation was unparallel in this season. Possibly in the history of fantasy football conflict. What had my pal of pals, Mr Paul “Chappers” Chapman done? (Note to self – remember MUST change name before publishing to avoid readers knowing who this is. Suggest making reference to their “usually great managing skills” to put people off the trail.)
I had seen Paul (Change name) earlier that Saturday when I’d popped round to borrow a tin of refried beans. “Who’s your Captain?” I had innocently asked wondering if he’d gone for Kane or Salah. “Walcott” he said. Paul (change name) looked up at me with puppy dog eyes and smiled, while behind him I saw a fifteen-ton juggernaut lorry bearing down on him driven by a blindfolded Walcott, an owl sitting on his shoulder uncontrollably defecating as he changed gear.
Just like in an overly-complicated Steven Moffatt Doctor Who story, we now cut to several hours in the future. A future where everything spoken about has come to pass. Referees are now assisted by Dalek goaline technology and Big Sam has regenerated into a shapely northern lass.
Theo Walcott, the youngest player to ever score a hat trick for England, sits on a freshly assembled IKEA Billy Kitchen Stool by the edge of the river Thames. I circle Walcott carrying a baseball bat – the end of the bat has been horribly enhanced with small glittering objects that the moonlight reveals to be out-of-date Haribo and those jelly ones with sugar on from Dolly Mixtures.
“There were plenty of high scores this week,” I shout, circling the witless England winger. “Sixties, seventies, eighties, and even a couple of nineties. Anyone who had four goal hero Aguero earned 21 points or a whopping 42 points if you had him as captain. Salah netted managers 13 points or 26 with the armband. Fellow Liverpool lad, Firmino landed 12 points or 24 if your captain choice. Hazard grabbed himself a haul of 16 points on Monday night. Commander Kane, once everyone’s Captain Sensible, scored the only goal of a tight match but received NO bonus points for a return of just six points. You’d think he’d get some bonus for scoring the only goal,” I offered.
“Stop it!” begged Walcott, interrupting my statistically saturated rant. “I’m sorry about what happened with your best mate, Paul, (Change name) but you’re just using me as an exposition device to enable you to perform a brief and superficial summery of the Games Week main scorers!”
I held the baseball bat close to his face, close enough so he could catch the scent of a Haribo cola bottle and a whiff of a lime dolly mixture. The hastily assembled Scandinavian stool shifted slightly under his weight.
“You’re right,” I said. “But that doesn’t excuse you returning two points with the Captain’s armband. And what’ll make it all the more painful for Paul (change name) is that his cousin, The G-Man is now back on top of the league and nearly twenty points clear.”
“When he sobers up midweek and can check his score online in a public library, The G-Man will be really happy,” smiled Walcott.
He was right. The gap between GFC and Los Yobos was now so great that it was only possible to see both teams on screen at the same time if you had a 27 inch Imac.
Walcott laughed and took a playful bite of a Haribo fried egg from the end of my baseball bat. Our eyes met and a moment of intense awkwardness passed between us.
“Who… who will you get in for me?” he said sadly, munching on the cavity causing confection. “Hazard?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said.
He looked hurt.
“Who then?”
“Arnautovic. He scored today, his form’s better than yours, and it gives me an extra .3 of a million in the bank.”
“When?”
“It’s already done. That phonecall I made earlier while you assembled the stool.”
“What about your mate, Paul?” (Change name.)
“He’ll be all right. He’s got friends. He’ll have support. But it’ll be a long road back from what you’ve done to him this week.”
“Do it,” he suddenly said. “Get it over with.”
Waves from a boat lapped against the Thames foreshore. Far away in the distance, an owl hooted in alarm.
“Do it,” begged Walcott. “DO IT!”
“Theo Walcott,” I said, pointing a finger, “You’re fired.”
At the other end of the fantasy wedge, Mark Winter’s Expecting Failure won’t have been surprised to score just 20 points. No Mahrez for Mark, at least his second highest scoring starter was his captain, but sadly his second highest scoring starter was Sterling, who scored 3. On the bench, reserve keeper Lossl scored 10 points, or 50% of the starting 11 put together. Oh dear.
Little other change in the top 10, a bit of nip and tuck, but a tawdry 28 points for Paul Hope’s English XI saw them drop two places to 8th. And my own dismal run of form saw Los Yobos clinging to the top 10 by two points. A small man in my position would point to Captain Kane missing a pen, my Palace defender being stretchered off after 20 minutes, and Marco Alonso being mysteriously dropped by a manager who appears to have seen how much cash he’ll get if he’s fired by Abramovich. And so I point to all those things.
Fray Bentos 