A Fistful of Tax-Free Dollars: E6

Well its fair to say that whilst I wanted to progress in Europe, I also didnt want to spend the group stage with 3 sides that have catering budgets that dwarf my entire wage budget.

Alas, Tottenham, Lokomotiv Moscow and Koln are our lot, and we’ll give it the best go we can with an optimistic target of one win from the group for me. We’ve got a few days to think it over before our trip to Moscow, and we get a chance to play Young Boys and Luzern before our trip along with the transfer window slamming shut like a window slams because that’s what windows do!

The Young Boys game is a little chastening as we are well below par and struggle to assert ourselves after opening the scoring through Fran Sol. We manage to at least get a point, leaving us 3rd in the rather embryonic table. We follow it up with a much better performance against Luzern with Kuku running the show and David Ivan taking over from the injured Francisco Ramos and putting on an absolute clinic in midfield.

We close out the window with 3 additions and 5 departures with 4 defenders departing on loan deals and another leaving permanently. Incoming we have Jordan Williams on loan from Liverpool and Lucas Paqueta to add to recent free agent signing Sinan Bytiqi, giving us a very youthful looking squad as we head into September and our first Euro Cup game.

We stop over in Minsk on the way to Moscow which is very breezy, and Renan in particular still looks frozen solid ahead of the game 36 hours later as we warm up. It is still windy but at least its not freezing, and as boldness takes hold of me like an aggressive mistress we throw caution to the wind and go for it with our SexiFutbol formation — we’ve been flying and it dispatched Liverpool so why the hell not.

Imagine everything that could go wrong, times it by ten and chuck it in a Vat of boiling hot lava with your favourite school teacher from when you were 7 and 3 of your top 10 relatives. I would rather deal watching that than this game again as literally everything goes up in flames.

We actually started out okay until Bilal Basacikoglu remembered how I sold him in the much missed ‘Back to the Foot-ture’ series having banished him for being a dick and sets about giving Facchinetti absolute conniptions as he burns him like a faulty iron over and over again. He opens the scoring and the second comes minutes after Dejan gets his 3rd red card of the season for a second booking.

We still search for a way back into the game and come close through Urena before Maicon scores and we close the game out by conceding a fourth and Goreux being sent off having been on the pitch long enough to get two bookings, which in our team is fucking 12 minutes. By the time we finish, I have a mild head cold and 9 fucking knackered players.

I wish we’d stayed in fucking Minsk.

We at least get an easier game next as we play Lugano, who after their near heroics last year have dropped to 9th in the table. Basel just dropped points for the second game running having started with 7 wins from 7, so we take this as an opportunity to give them a little pressure. We rotate a little to counter some tiredness and I brace myself as Lugano were frisky little bastards last year, like some chipmunks found a load of Johan Cruyff branded Crystal meth.

Its a very pleasing performance led by the excellent Marcos Urena and Kuku. Jordan Williams gets his first goal for the club and its a lovely 3 points to go with a dominant performance, which slightly calms we down after the Moscow fiasco.

We welcome Koln to town next and again I resolve to attack in a classic case of not learning my fucking lesson but being too ignorant to change things and having a squad with no flexibility.

It’s a difficult performance to quantify as we dominate possession only for Koln to be bloody effective on the counter attack. They score a goal when our defence forgets to mark and Seba has loads of space to run onto a crossfield ball and slot home and thereafter its a slog. We do a decent job of closing them down but despite a roaring crowd, we don't create much of note other an a late header from Marcos over the bar. 2 down, 4 to go.

Next up its Grasshoppers and with Basel dropping points we are in the scarcely believable position of being able to move to the top of the Swiss Super League. That’s right, we’d be top of a league of a country we aren't even in! Take that Berwick Rangers, Swansea and FC Andorra you fucking mugs. We go as full bhuna as my fitness allows, complete with a new free agent we’ve courted since the summer and has become our top earner.

It’s another sparkling performance as we blow Grasshoppers away like actual grasshoppers on a lawn of land sold to be developed into a giant fucking monument to my genius. Fran Sol gets a double and Akanji gets another and despite a goal back on the stroke of half-time, we should extend the lead as Facchinetti seems to be on a one man mission to trademark the dangerous cross.

HOLY FUCKING TOP OF THE LEAGUE BATMAN!

I strut around Vaduz like Tobey Maguire in Spiderman 3 as the villagers sing my praises and give me free coffee all week at this monumental development. We definitely seem to be building something good, granted top of the league seems more down to Basel being daft than us being irresistible. We have a long break for the internationals allowing me to hunker down in the training ground and prepare for upcoming challenges.

The first one of these is against Sion. Their squad is a shadow of what they had last year and they are sitting mid-table in an inoffensive, non-threatening way. I couldn’t really have picked a better game to start our reign atop the league as I go full strength, ready to put on a show for the 100 away fans making the the 8 hour round trip.

Well that was fucking abysmal. We produce very little of note other than a late chance when Marcos hooks a cross against the bar in the 89th minute, some 88 minutes after we went 1–0 down when the speedy Martin Zeman burned our right hand side and scored a goal akin to a poundshop Ryan Giggs — albeit without the violence and infidelity.

This takes us into our next Euro Cup game against Spurs in London on a very down note. I’m disappointed that we’ve already dropped to 2nd after a solitary game on top, though my anger is calmed slightly by Basel drawing, meaning we are only behind on goal difference.

As we travel to White Hart Lane, we stay in London and train the day before, taking in the sights and smells of London as Romain Spirig eyes up a KFC and asks questions like “What’s a Shoreditch?” He’s an absolute club treasure.

Well lick my balls and call me General Custer because this was the fucking Alamo. Despite this, in our “We like playing nice football but we also like not conceding 7 million goals to side who could buy us and sell us 14 times a window” formation, we stand tall, repelling attack after attack.

Young Dayot in particular is in brutish form, with 11 headers, 4 tackles, 26 interceptions and the legal deeds to Saido Berahino’s soul in his pocket. Renan and Akanji also have fucking massive games in defence, and despite a late scare when Lamela rattles a speculative shot off the bar in stoppage time, we hold out for a point and 85.7k in prize money, or as I like to term it — 13 weeks of Tom Carroll.