Spidey senses

A very warm welcome back to the Spizzenergi Friday Night Football blog, after a Summer long hiatus in which the England football team reached a new low, contriving to lose to a country with a population smaller than that of Cornwall, forlornly chasing the shadows of a team of Nordic ubermensch. And if you thought things couldn’t get worse, they then appointed Sam Allardyce as the new manager.

What else has been happening? Jose Mourinho showed why he’s the best man at spending other people’s money manager in football by spunking £80m on a half decent midfielder who his new club had previously let go for next to nothing and then slating his own players after a couple of early season reverses. Oh, and we have a new Prime Minister who is going to reintroduce Grammar Schools, mainly because she went to a jolly good one.

Some things remain reassuringly stable, however, and as we lurched into the second week of September the phone chirruped with a text from Simon Gas to announce the return of football. Hurragh!

There’s been three games played so far in 2016-2017, of which I’ve played in two, so a massive apology for the dearth in match reports. What can I say, I’m a very busy man. Hopefully, normal service will be resumed forthwith.

Of the two games played up to Friday, I can reveal that the first game was a little lopsided thanks to a combination of people arriving late and my inability to count; my chief memory from the season opener was Ian Gooner’s tour de force of an appearance, scoring at least twice and generally giving the impression of having spent August at a pre-season Alpine training camp. There was also a return to action from Ross, whose better half apparently shares my wife’s predisposition for looking for online parenting tips at 3.00 am.

I missed the second game, but apparently Steve scored with his nose. You heard it here first.  

Last Friday’s game was billed as nine aside, but there was a phantom Morgan Stanley employer slated to take part and as such, it ended up eight v nine. But the Ninth Player was none other than the lesser spotted Spizz, mercurial post-punk idle idol. (Hurragh again!). Actually, he’s not been so idle, as evidenced here.

And here are what your two teams looked like:

Blues: Peter, Liam, Steve, Tony, Michele, Joe, Bristol Paul, Mick

Yellows: Mark, Simon Gas, Danny, Andrea, Mario, me, Tom, Spizz, Ed

Tom arrived slightly late to the fray and by this stage the Blues had already taken the lead through an own goal – something which became rather a theme of the match – via Ed, who attacked the space in which the Blues would have had a striker and promptly attacked the ball into the vacant net. Steve nodded home from a corner shortly after as everyone tried to mark Peter, rather like Lilliputians trying to tether Gulliver, and the score became three nil to the Blues when Michele fizzed home a shot into the roof of the net as I groped in vain at thin air.

My usually ignominious spell in nets was brightened by one notable save, however. Using my newly acquired spidey-senses, (these have come along with a vicious spider bite and a swollen leg picked up in the tropical glades of SE20 that has necessitated a ten day course of antibiotics) I managed to get something in the way of Liam’s point-blank header and push the ball over the bar.

Thereafter there ensued something of a mini-comeback from the Yellows, as Mark hit home a real daisy-cutter which took a deflection off of me and trickled into the net past a surprised Liam in goal. Soon after Mario scored what was arguably the goal of the game as he picked his shot and blasted in off the upright to make it 3-2. However, calamity once again befell the Yellows’ defence as Danny and Simon Gas got their wires crossed and managed to concede another own-goal with Peter lurking menacingly just behind them.

Spizz did make his presence felt by loitering close enough to the goal keeper to force yet another own goal from one of the Blues’ defensive titans (Steve, I think) which made it 4-3, but with time running out and the Yellows trying to press forward Liam managed to intercept Simon Gas’s forward pass and calmly lob the ball from all of about twenty-five yards to complete the scoring.

Final score: Blues 5 – Yellows 3

Honourable mentions to both Danny and Tom, whose sterling defensive work didn’t deserve to end in vain, while Michele, Peter and Tony’s movement proved too much for a Yellows midfield that saw plenty of the ball but couldn’t hang onto it.

Just the one pint of ‘Doosra’ for me this week, which sadly seems to be to the norm these days (one pint that is, not Urdu word for ‘the wrong one’). As such, other than a quick discussion of 1970’s cigarette advertising and Simon’s new job, I can’t report on the full goings on in the Skinners.

Until Friday! 

Je m'appelle Ian

And so for the final time in 2015-2016 we have our Friday night match report. Rather a lot to get through; Simon greenlit no fewer than twenty one of us for the climax of the season. Here are what the two teams looked like:

Blues: Andy, Bristol Paul, Steve, Mick, Mark, Joe, Michele, Simon Gas, Peter, Paul El Tannero and Yev

Yellows: me, Ian, David, Danny, Nick, Charlie, Andrew, Callum, John (Peter’s brother) and Liam

For the second time in as many weeks the game ended up being fairly one-sided, which is never ideal. The Blues ran away with this one, although this was probably due to some extent by good performances and not so good performances as much as some duff team selection. Mick got things underway with a smartly taken finish after Danny in goal had parried the original shot – Mick calmly killed the ball and slotted home from close range. Mick was adamant (not Adam Ant) that he got a brace on the night, but you’ll need to ask him about goal number two when we reconvene in September as I can’t remember it.

Mark was also in amongst the goals with two fine finishes, the first the culmination of a good move from a Blue attack that saw Mark fire home with what has become trademark aplomb. The second of his goals saw him control a half-clearance from a corner and deftly lob the ball just inside of the left hand post.

The other goal – or the other goal I can recall, which for the purposes of this blog is all that matters – was another impressive piece of football with Peter applying the coup de grace to a sweeping move down the Blue left (props to Yev there), which left Andrew in goal with no chance.

All in all, I should put my hands up to loading the Blues with too many defensive titans, as the Yellows struggled to break down a back line containing Steve, Bristol Paul, Simon Gas and Joe, despite the assorted talents of Charlie, Callum and Yev. A word also for Andy, who appeared to be channelling some hybrid of France Baresi and Bobby Moore by thwarting wave after wave of Yellow attacks – Liam particularly seemed to come unstuck against the Sheffield colossus, although the quality of balls into him only deteriorated as the game continued. Nick was honest enough to admit he had a poor game, but accurately pointed out that he wasn’t the only one to have a bit of a shocker as the Yellow team struggled to clear their lines, struggled to get out from the goalkeeper and struggled to fashion anything more than the odd half chance.

Final score: Blues 5 – Yellows 0

And onto the pub for an end of season finale. As befits the middle of July, it was a warm and enjoyable evening, made more enjoyable by Simon Gas’s largesse as he bought not one but two bottles of sparkling Italian refreshment to toast Bristol Rovers’ promotion and, very generously, the arrival of my daughter Betty. He truly is a prince amongst men. Other recipients of a toast were Andy, as most improved player following his defensive tour de force and Simon himself for another year of selfless and patient co-ordination.

As the evening wore on, conversation turned to what Private Eye used to term ‘Ugandan affairs’ and some truly eye-watering accounts of various members of the team’s relations with the fairer sex over the years. No names will be mentioned, but the story about the haemorrhoids will stay with me for some time. When there’s talk of the ladies Yev is never far away, and he was on classic form, luring two French tourists into a conversation about who-knows-what, with Steve and Mick providing the wing support.

Never one to be left out of a late night pubchat, even when there’s a language barrier, the self-styled “cunt’s Cunt”, Ian of Arsenal fame, decided to get in on the action. With the assistance of myself, Liam and Mark (as well as Google translate), Ian bowled over to the aforementioned coterie of French madames, Yev and Mick and announced “Je m’appelle Ian. Malhereusement, je viens de me chie”. Which, for you Anglo-Saxon monoglots, means ‘My name is Ian. Unfortunately, I’ve just shit myself”.

See you in September. 

Blue Friday

Good day, footballers, Spizzenergi fans and the idly curious. It’s time for your weekly match report from Coram Fields.

Last Friday saw the very welcome sight of Simon Gas, and with it a return to order and stability in the galaxy. Tour of Duty in Vietnam over, these were the two teams that I’d prepared:

Blues: Andy, Tony, Alan, Simon Gas, Vitaliy, Peter, Bristol Paul, Mario and Tom

Yellows: me, Danny, Simon Ink, Mark, Yev, Callum, Michele, Mick and Gary

A few qualifiers here – firstly, as expected, the two Ukrainians were late. No matter, they balanced themselves. The Morgan Stanley contingent also arrived in dribs and drabs and in the chaos I’ve just realised that Mick ended up on the Yellow team when he was supposed to be a Blue. The final piece of the jigsaw, which meant a nine aside game, was the Aussie Tom, who was assigned to the Blue side, erroneously as it turned out.

By this stage – i.e. Tom’s arrival - the Yellows had taken a two goal lead and Tony was already clamouring for a change. The one switch that did take place was Alan swapping with Danny, which made no difference to proceedings whatsoever.

Unusually, the game collapsed into a very one-sided affair, with the Yellows prevailing by a landslide 8-1. Had Mick played for the team he was picked to represent it may have made some difference, as he was his usual self, cajoling and urging on his team-mates and organising the disorganised. That said, a team featuring the combined talents of Mario, Peter, Alan / Danny and Vitality, to say nothing of Tony himself, should have done much, much better. Callum and Michele were both excellent for the Yellows, closing down space, pressing high up the pitch and forcing mistakes and taking advantage to score a dollop of goals. Alan also got on the scoresheet, charging down a goalkick and scoring from all of about nine inches.

Gary, who apparently featured the other week, also had a great game and ensured that the Yellow team never lost shape, despite the threats from Mario and Tony.

By the closing stages of the game we’d reached the stage that anything that could go wrong for the Blues did go wrong, as chances that would normally be tucked away went bagging and Danny scored a bizarre own goal that shanked in off his instep and flew high in the roof of the net from a tight angle.

All in all, not the best game, although if the Blue team had spent less time whinging and moaning about the sides the final score would have been a bit closer.

No pub report this week as nappy changing duties continue to call, but I’ve been provisionally greenlit for Friday for 2015/2016’s final game and hopefully a comprehensive end of season review, complete with awards and top five lists.

In the meantime, I’d encourage everyone to turn up on time on Friday, as it does help, and to refrain from accusing me of gerrymandering the teams to ensure I’m on the winning side, as this wouldn’t stand up to even the most cursory of analysis. 

Apocalypse? Now!

Good day all – I write after a four week hiatus chiefly caused by the advent of fatherhood. I’ve got two match reports to try and catch up on, both of them composed as our leader and spiritual guide lays in a malarial funk in tropical Indo-China. As ever when Senor Gas leaves us, even for a few days, chaos and disorder soon descend and we are left in a figurative Dark Age like those Britons left exposed to waves of invaders from the continent in the wake of the decline of the Roman Empire.

But I think we’ve heard plenty about English nationhood over the past two weeks.

The first game to try and relay started off with five versus six, as the immediate fallout from the immigration plebiscite seemed to spawn disarray in the phalanx of players from Morgan Stanley. In all five players from Morgan Stanley showed up, but to misquote Eric Morecambe, not necessarily in the right order. Joseph tipped up first, alongside his mate Nick, followed about five minutes later by Norn Iron’s Andrew, in tandem with a ringer named Graham who was not even on Simon’s roster of players sent via SMS from Vietnam. Finally, Peter rocked up at around 7.25. At this stage I offered the Blue team, via the auspices of their captain Mick, their pick of the Yellow players in an attempt to balance the teams and they very sensibly selected Danny. Ergo, what had hitherto been a reasonably competitive game Petered out (pun intended) into a rather one-sided affair, with the Blue team running out eventual 5-2 winners. For the sake of posterity, here are what I think the teams were:

Yellows: me, Simon Ink, Graham (MS), Nick (MS), Liam, Andy and Peter (MS)

Blues: Tony, Paul, Mark, Andrew (MS), Joseph, Mick and, after a short spell for the Yellows, Danny

Lord knows who scored – I can recall playing a deliciously weighted through ball for Liam to dispatch without breaking stride and I think that was one of a brace for the Caledonian maestro; for the Blue team I can remember one goal arriving in slightly bizarre fashion as a high, swirling ball landed on the crossbar and evaded Andy’s despairing lunge in goal to bounce invitingly for either Mark or Joseph to push home. All in all, a bit of a mess, although at least Tony was happy having initially thrown up his arms in horror at the prospect of his team not winning.

Onto this week, as once more Simon pinged on details of the players scheduled to take part in the action. As alluded to in the opening paragraph of this report, chaos descended as a) some players did not turn up (hello to Bristol Paul and Morgan Stanley’s Callum) and b) Mick forgot the bibs. As such, my much vaunted Player Attributes Scoring System went out of the window and everything became a bit random, quite literally.

The newly installed Chaos Player Selection System saw one team self-select on the basis of wearing white, yellow or orange tops, with their opponents donning anything darker. From a personal perspective the fact that I am very colour blind made this even more of a challenge. From memory, this is what we ended up with:

White / Orange / Yellow: Steve, Nick, Mark, Yev, Ian Gooner, Tony, David, Danny and (eventually) Tom from MS

Darks: me, Mario, Will, Andy, Liam, Joseph, Mick, Simon Ink

Despite the somewhat haphazard nature of team selection, we ended up with a fairly even game that was decided by the odd goal in five. The Dark team were probably a mite stronger until the tardy arrival of chirpy antipodean Tom (what is it with Morgan Stanley employees and timekeeping?), when a pseudo-philosophical discussion about whether his light green top best presented itself as a dark or light top ensued, which was settled by more epic moaning from Tony who accused me of trying to engineer the teams so that I’d win. The very idea.

Liam and Mario were on target for the Dark team, but despite playing some great football through the two afore-mentioned strikers, aided by the superb Will and corralled by the ceaseless chiding of Mick, they couldn’t quite keep the Light team, buoyed by their man advantage, at bay.

After Ian Gooner had netted an equaliser for the lighter team through some serious goalhanging and acting as a ricochet device, the winning goal came after I came after a cross that I was always struggling to reach and Nick, who probably has a six inch height advantage on me, nodded home into an empty net.

Final score: Whites / Yellows / Oranges and Green 3 – Darker Tops 2

And so to the Skinners, for my first visit in a month. I watched Wales’ supremely impressive 3-1 over Belgium in the company of Simon Ink and David, unaware that most of the Friday contingent were watching from the other side of the bar.

All hail our near neighbours and their invincible team spirit. I keep reading that the ongoing embarrassment that is the English national team is down to the failure of the English football set-up, but given virtually all of Wales’ team play or have come through the domestic system I think that’s bullshit. If the FA could ever do just one thing right and pick a young English manager with his best years ahead of him, rather than a European aesthete looking for one final big payday or a superannuated coneman without the confidence to make decisions we might just, just, be able to create a team that is more than the sum of its parts who we could be proud of. I won’t hold my breath.

The wandering Gasman returns on Friday for the penultimate game of the 2015/16 season. See you then. 

The Italian Job

Greetings one and all, or should that be Ciao! Friday saw Coram Fields go very Italianate as we had quattro calciatori Italiani,which might mean ‘four Italian footballers’. In what was a reduced field, certainly in comparison to recent weeks, your two teams lined up thusly:

Yellows (Gialli): Aussie Tom, Paul of the Antarctic, Mario, Michele, Tony, Mick, Charlie and Liam

Blues (Azzuri?): Simon Gas, Ian Gooner, Andrea, Roberto, me, Danny, Patrick and Yev

With Yev arriving at just before ten past seven, the Yellow team were a man short for the first passage of play and deployed a ringer in goal, a chap called Immanuel, who may well have southern European, too. Despite the scores being level when Yev arrived there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as if I hadn’t properly balanced the two teams, but we stayed at eight aside until Yev opened the scoring from an acute angle. To be fair, the Yellows could have been about four or five up by this stage, but Patrick and Yev were being curiously profligate, with headers going wide and close range efforts going begging. 

With the score at 1-0 to the Yellows the Blue team insisted on a change and with the Yellows seeing an awful lot of the ball this was probably the right thing. Cue the return of Immanuel, which sounds like a racy film title from the 1970’s, who played sweeper-keeper for the Blues for the remainder of the game. Not that the extra man made much immediate difference, as the Yellows’ lead stretched with three goals from Patrick; one taking a straightforward ball over the top and calmly tucking home past the ‘keeper and another taking advantage of a nicely weighted pass from myself to ram home into the bottom corner. 

Andrea was arguably the man of the match, as his selfless positioning at the rear of the Yellows’ defence helped his compatriot Roberto link up with Patrick and Yev in midfield and Danny at left half. Only when he decided to swap positions with Roberto toward the end of the game did things start to go awry for the Yellows, as Liam sought to hold up the ball to bring in Mario, Tony and Charlie. 

With around five minutes to go Simon Gas conceded the Yellows’ first reverse, possibly from Liam. I replaced him in nets and promptly let in two more – both were chiefly down to the Yellows not having enough players in defence deep enough and Michele, I believe, pounced to make it 4-2 to the Yellows. Shortly afterwards Mick found himself free on the right hand side of the box and fired the ball toward goal; I managed to stop it with my feet but I was helpless as it squirted to Mario who diligently prodded the ball over the line from all of about two yards.

With the Yellows teetering they just about managed to hand on for the win, although I had to punch the ball out for a corner as Mario wound up for a bicycle kick and the resulting corner came to nought.

Final score: Yellows 4 – Blues 3

No pub for me again, as impending paternity looms large. Simon Gas explained he’ll be off on his travels again later this month, as he heads to Vietnam in a few weeks for a Heart of Darkness piece of reportage, or at least an article about the south east Asian economy. 

I’ll be away for the next fortnight, so in that time please enjoy the game and be patient with whoever picks the teams.

Arrivederci.

++++BREAKING SPIZZ NEWS+++++BREAKING SPIZZ NEWS++++++BREAKING SPIZZ NEWS++++++BREAKING SPIZZ NEWS++++++BREAKING SPIZZ NEWS++++++BREAKING SPIZZ NEWS++++++BREAKING SPIZZ NEWS++++++BREAKING SPIZZ NEWS++++++

Some breaking news for you this morning, as news reaches us that enigmatic post-punk pocket rocket Spizz has decided to diversify his brand and branch out into Italian cuisine. Here's how Spizzforever News first heard the story

As you can see (sort of), at least the Where's Captain Kirk? star promises to service his pizza pies warmly.

I know it's the close season and tall tales of unlikely football news abound, but this one seems particularly Jimmy Hill to me.