A Fistful of Tax Free Dollars E2
After a quarter of our season, we are sitting in the dizzying heights of 8th with our star player leading the yellow card count. Liechtenstein has never seen the likes.
Wonderfully, our second segment of our campaign sees us playing the mighty Basel, who far from their profligate times in recent life are the big guns in Switzerland in 2015. Despite their ropey start they’ve got Breel Embolo up front, and a cast of players that significantly shadow ours. Brilliant. Dicking incoming.
We take a surprise lead through Bilate from an excellent cross from Urena, and despite a couple of saves from Uilson (say it like Wilson if your Stewie Griffin saying Cool Whip) they equalise from Boetius. They hit us on the counter at the start of the second half as a free-kick into their box breaks to Boetius and he runs 60 yards before crossing for Embolo to bury it. We have chances to equalise but our end product resembles baby food smashed against the wall and its 3–1 when Janjatovic scores a spectacular headed own-goal from 18 yards out. Fucking tremendous. And it sends us second bottom as no one in the Swiss League is actually good.
Annoyingly we seem to concede from a lot of set pieces so I change our training to deal with this — and we have another 2 week break before our next game. They really don’t like to rush things in Switzerland. Absolutely baffled why the league starts in Mid-July if they only play every fucking fortnight. I resolve to rob several of the companies occupying the country with a view to creating a domestic super-league, only to realise that there isn't actually any money the bar 1 billionaire who makes up half of the countries’ GDP…
We play league leaders Lugano next at home, and I make one enforced alteration with Schupf coming in for the injured Ramos and shifting to RWB.
A FUCKING CHAMPING OF THE HIGHEST ORDER! We frustrate Lugano with some disciplined defensive play and goals from Urena and Lendric see us up to the dizzy heights of 7th, 3pts from 10th place and only 4pts from top spot…fucking bonkers league.
Next up its FC Thun, who along with sounding like a Newcastle United Phoenix club are bottom of the league, a long way from their 2005–06 Champions League campaign when they played Arsenal amongst others. The problem is I don’t know if they are shit, or we are shit, or in fact if this is just a shit league and everyone is shit and this is Mr Hankey’s Christmas football extravaganza.
We go unchanged.
Aside from the ref being more card happy than a cocaine addled Tobey Maguire, its a good first half as they have a man sent off in the 20th minute and we lead through a Grippo header. Unfortunately Kuku then gets himself sent off for a second booking but we get a second minutes later from Djuric. Another 2 bookings later they get a goal back from another fucking set-piece. Bilate should finish the game in injury time but misses another sitter and we finish with 10 men, 9 yellow cards and a priceless three points. If Mastercard did ultraviolence…A galvanizing victory surely?
Well not exactly. After reaching the dizzying heights of 4th and a European spot, we proceed to absolutely shit the bed over the next couple of weeks.
We lose to St Gallen again, which winds the fans up something rotten and then to Luzern. Our 8–3 win over our reserve side in the domestic cup is great, but it does concern me that given we seem to concede about 5 set-piece-goals per game, that our reserve defenders are absolutely fucking murder. We go into our game against Sami Hyypia’s Zurich with team talk instructions saying we need to break out of a bad run. WE’VE LOST TWO GAMES?!
Luckily though, its probably our best performance of the season. I’d tried to sell Ali Messaoud at the start of the season with no success and brought him back into the fold for the u21 game. He plays a blinder in midfield and our strikerforce of Marcos ‘Don’t Call me Celso’ Urena and Mauro ‘The View wrote a song about me’ Bilate do the business, even if Marcos manages to update his hitting the woodwork tally to 7 for the season.
It’s not even Christmas and the board are shoving a new contract in front of my face. I mean Vaduz is nice and all but do I want to stay? I’ve visited the castle 4 times already and I’m beginning to get serious ‘The Prisoner’ vibes…I decline for the moment as signing a new deal already reeks of desparation, especially given they aren’t giving me anything new.
Our next game is against Young Boys who sacked Adi Hutter after a poor start, bringing in Swiss legend Ciriaco Sforza. We have a full squad to pick from other than skipper Grippo, and Messaoud keeps his place along with Costanzo, who after having a moan about lack of gametime is in last chance saloon.
We get a great start as our roaming wingbacks storm up the pitch and Passlack crosses for Urena to score. However we are undone by a Horeau double, as he scores from the spot then finishes a 1-on-1. We don’t even get a highlight in the second half and I phone the chairman as the full-time whistle goes asking for that contract to sign…she laughs in my fucking face.
I start to scour the expirings in Scotland as they happen a month earlier, but other than Ziggy Gordon asking for 4 pissing k per week there is nothing to report. I get some scout reports on swiss expirings and shortlist a number, but continue on as we welcome Basel to whatever our ground is called. The Bernie Madoff arena or something.
In the opening half an hour we batter them, taking a 28th minute lead when Friedrich powers home a header from a corner. Francisco Ramos then takes matters into his own hands, scything down Safari with a tackle out of the Chelsea vs Leeds FA Cup final from the 70s. We baton down the hatches and go one up top, sacrificing Bilate, only for Urena to get injured a couple of minutes after half-time. The second half crawls by as the fans in the Rheinpark Stadion reach fever pitch as we repel wave after wave os Basel pressure. Friedrich repels every cross that comes his way and Bjarnason misses two good chances to level as we hold out for a priceless 3 points.
Annoyingly we have to wait another 11 days for a fixture as in Switzerland they take things at their own pace like a mid-naughties cider advert. In Liechtenstein we are disciplined about everything other than the tax status of non-domiciles and the break infuriates me as opposed to reinvigorating the squad.
Our next game against Sion sees a raft of changes to counter injuries and suspension. I review the team stats for the league and I’m pleased to see we top the possession charts along with the yellow and red card charts. I can smell a touchline ban incoming as we have nearly double the yellows of second place. Young Spirig comes back in on the left in the main change, With ex-Darlington legend Franz Burgmeier on the bench despite the fact he fucking hates me. Left wing back is definitely an area to problem solve in January.
We fucking batter them in the first half and a well worked corner routine sees Djuric pull it back to Nathan, who dinks a first time pass to Lendric, who take a touch and batters it home — pure poetry.
Kouassi gets sent off for a second yellow on the stroke of half-time and a header from Stahel gives us a two goal lead from a Burgmeier cross. A carbon copy of the first goal sees Lendric tee up Pflucke to make it 3–0 after 75 minutes, prompting me to bring on Jelic. He lasts 40 seconds before getting his fucking marching orders for a professional foul and then Nathan gets a straight red on 79 minutes for a two-footed lunge to stop a breakaway. Bilate goes to right wing-back and we weather heavy pressure as we see out a stunning 3–0 win.
This takes us to the winter break, not that we’ve had enough of a fucking break already. Other than the top two there are only 8 points between 3rd and 10th, meaning that despite our lofty position we are only a couple of places away from the dreaded play-off spot.
We agree a deal to bring in a young brazilian striking prospect for the reserves and I set about scouring the world for possible free agent additions.
In our team report, despite our left wing-back issues, this is the area where we’ve scored most of our goals from bizarrely. Maybe Spirig and grumpy Franz are the way forward — until I realise that this is also where we concede most goals from. Our position at the top of possession stats is bizarre considering we are the second worst passing side in the league on paper.
Basically what we can take from this all is that we might be good and I might be competent.
