A Fistful of Tax Free Dollars: E7

We got a point in the Euro cup!

A point!

At this stage we’ve done more than fucking anybody else from this country ever. I’m not even sure if a Liechtenstein international player would have garnered a group stage point in a European competition, therefore I dub myself the Rheingod and set about on a nicotine and caffeine binge until our next game, which sees me twitching in the dugout like an electrocuted squirrel. Its the derby against St Gallen and a little bit of rotation later we are ready to go.

Its a very pleasing performance. After his Huga Bargas-esque declaration in the press to end his goal drought, Mariano Diaz does just that with a first half brace — finishing off a Fran Sol cutback before delightfully taking a through ball from Francisco Ramos, holding off the last man and firing a shot in at the near post. Our usual late concession comes annoyingly early as they get a goal back on 80 minutes, but we easily see the game out much to the delight of the 7500 fans packed into the ground.

We get 11 days off before our next game because Switzerland — Am I right? — and its nice to settle into the comforts of home surroundings as Spurs make the trip to play us in the Euro Cup return leg. This time they go full guns with Kane starting along with Eriksen and Alli as they seek to avoid the embarrassment of drawing with a side with a total wage bill that equates to 57% of Eriksen’s weekly wage.

We definitely give a better account of ourselves in the first half, keeping possession and restricting them to chances on the counter, which Renan deals with well. It’s 0–0 at the break and I tell the boys to keep it going til the hour at which point we’ll try and nick one.

This plan works brilliantly, with 58 minutes passing and me lining up the subs to come on and take them on as Spurs break and a cross in from Danny Rose to the back post sees a flying Nacer Chadli hammer in the opener. I swiftly scrawl the word “Plan” on a sheet of paper, turn it into an aeroplane and show it to the cameras before throwing it into the stands in a fit of pique. Despite chances for Dejan and a late shot from Urena that Lloris tips wide, Spurs add the only other goal of the game through Eriksen and its a 2–0 defeat. Koln away and Moscow at home to go.

At least our next game is a step down in standard as we face 10th placed Biel/Bienne in the league. A solitary win from their opening 13 games sees them already beginning to languish a little at the bottom of the table and their paper-thin squad looks low on quality in contract to our cosmopolitan warriors. We have to rotate after the exertions of the week against Spurs but we should still have too much quality for them.

Should.

And that we do. Fran Sol opens the scoring in the first half with his 9th of the season and we dominate the basement dwellers, passing the ball around with the panache of a 60’s Real Madrid (If you squint a lot). Sinan Bytiqi comes on to grab his first for the club in the 79th minute and after our late concession (89th minute for fans of ‘Vaduz conceding stupid late goals that give their manager palpitations’ bingo) Joe Rothwell gets his first for the club in added time. Three points and we stay level with Basel with a 5pt gap back to Young Boys in 3rd.

Its the international break, but I decide to play our Cup quarter-final against Balzers despite only having 14 players left at the club.

Its a predictable massacre as despite only being 1–0 up at half-time, we open them up at will in the second half with Urena grabbing 4. Even Nic Hasler, who I tried to get rid of, shows up well and I decide to remove him from the transfer list to boost our domestic contingent. Not that he’ll ever fucking play of course but I am the Rheingod.

It’s a long 10 day wait til our next game against ‘The Thun’ — with our u21s beating San Marino U21s and losing to Bulgaria and a sensational 1–0 win for our senior team against Macedonia, with Roman and Nicolas both playing a part. They lose a friendly against UAE 1–0 on the Tuesday but the place is buoyant with the fans revelling in the success of their heroes both domestically and internationally as Thun come to town, sitting in 9th place and looking about as alive as Shergar.

Rheingod.

We are utterly dominant in the first half and goals from Urena and Lucas Paqueta put us in a commanding position at half-time. We play some glorious stuff with both scorers nearly adding to their tallies before we concede in the 59th minute from a corner after their first foray into our half. We hit back straight away and a glorious build up from Dejan and Lucas pings the ball out to Facchinetti who crosses for Marcos to bullet a header…straight at the keeper. Marcos then picks up a knock which infuriates me to join Simone Grippo in the medical room. It’s 3 points, but at a cost.

Simone is out for 4 weeks but Marcos shows no ill effects, which on balance is okay as I have plenty of centre-back cover. Marcos remaining fit is massive as he’s got 15 goals in all competitions so far and he’s rapidly becoming a club legend. I put him in an ice bath for 48 hours and despite the hypothermia he’s in good spirits as our enemy arrives from Moscow. They have to win to have a chance of progressing and despite the fact we’ve been knocked out I want a win. We seem to play far better at home to we make a couple of minor tactical tweaks and go with a strong looking lineup despite Kuku being banned. Ivan comes back in behind the front two and we field an all loanee back-three.

We are patient from the off, pressing hard against the Moscow front 4 and keeping Basacikoglu quiet. We probe patiently until the 25th minute when Spirig gets a yard of space 35 yards out and fires in a deep cross which Urena finishes with the aplomb of a 30’s cabaret veteran. From there we sit back a little, ceding the advantage of possession but not giving them any clear cut chances. 1–0 at the break.

Into the second half and we sit back patiently and continue to frustrate the Russians as we form an unbreakable wall at the back. With 61 minutes on the clock, a carbon copy of the first half where Spirig gets some space on the left happens, but this time he drives to the box and places another cross in where Urena runs across his man at the front post and bundles it in, sending the Rheinpark ballistic!

With 20 minutes left, for the first time Basicokoglu beats Spirig for the first time and puts a cross in which looks like it’ll be turned in, only for Dayot to put in a brilliant tackle to deny the striker. The ball comes back with interest though and Maicon is tackled but the ball breaks to Miranchuk to smash home and make it 2–1. We don’t panic though and they struggle to create anything else, with a breakaway in the 90th minute from Fran Sol leading to a cross into Urena who fires his first-time shot against the crossbar! I’m on my knees in agony as they break out and a long ball comes forwards through our defence — who have stood still trying to play offside. The flag stays down though and Shabanov runs through 1-on-1 with Renan…..

Fuck. Off. Basicokoglu man of the match. Actually fuck all the way off out of Fucksville to Off County.

Annoyingly, our next opponents are Lugano, who we have a lovely track record of monumentally shitting the bed against. Perfect for my squad after that last game. We have a hellish run of 5 games in 14 days and this is the easiest one theoretically with Basel, Young Boys and Koln to come. I look at my assistant manager and consider a holiday, maybe to Luxembourg as I’m now scared of open water.

Well considering how exhausted the players were and the amount of rotation, I think we can say this was a job very fucking well done. Albig comes in as the Tierney to Spirig’s Robertson as we continue to develop our Liechtenstein left-back contingent, with Albig being pushed towards being a ball playing CB. We hold solid with a good defensive performance and should win by more than one — with a shot from Urena deflecting of Djuric and wrong footing the keeper.

And Basel lose…we are 3 points clear at the top!

This buoys us ahead of a touch looking trip to Cologne to face Koln, who are already qualified and beat us 1–0 with relative ease at home. The tactical tweaks we’ve made seem to have made a difference of late in terms of creating chances, with a move to playing wide and taking a ‘very fluid’ shape making us more mobile unit. I think. I don’t fucking know really. I just want them to run around and kick the ball in between the metally shopping basket thing.

Given we are out, we take in the sights and sounds of the local amenities the night before the game — where I learn that most of our squad are terrible at drinking but Manuel Akanji actually did grade 5 tuba, leading to a lovely oompa band version of ‘Come on Eileen’ with the name being changed to Vaduz with our band of 350 travelling fans in a town square. It’s better than practicing defensive shape.

We make a strong start despite our opponents going at full strength and its no more than we deserve when Facchinetti drives down the left and puts in a cross that Mariano buries after his initial volley is saved. And then this happens…

MARIANO NAILS AN OVERHEAD KICK! ITS 2–0!

At this point I seem to disappear into the some kind of fugue state, due to the groundhog nature of the game. And not because we concede a 70th minute goal leading to me needing spare trousers. Because this happens…

5–0! Mariano scores 4 in the first half with 3 of them assisted by Goreux, who also lays on another goal for Urena. We’ve just beaten a German side 5–0 in their own backyard. Imagine if we’d looked anything other than inept up until this stage of the group!

It’s an astonishing victory and one that will live long with the supporters and board, who congratulate me on an astonishing victory by commissioning a photo of the team to be hung in the entrance to the ground. Rheingod.

With Ramos, Carroll and Dejan all playing well, I push Tom ahead to support the strikers and bring Albig back in for our next game against Young Boys. They are missing Sulejmani and Zakaria, but our old nemesis Hoarau looms large. Despite being gassed, I resolve to burgle 50 minutes out of Mariano and then chuck some other fucker up there. Hopefully after we’re 3–0 up and before we concede our customary late ‘Clean Sheet Bonus Avoidance’ goal.

Despite Hoarau being left on the bench, we take all of 3 minutes to concede when a cross is defended terribly and they tuck it home at the back post. However we don’t panic and some useful interplay between Facchinetti and Albig gives Mariano the ball on the corner of the area. full of confidence he slaloms along the edge of the box to the centre past 2–3 challenges and fires home the equaliser. However disaster strikes in the second half when just as he was about to be subbed, our Dominican maestro limps off injured, leaving us with only Urena fit. We should win but Ivan blows a simple 1-on-1 vs the keeper and the game peters out, giving us a hard earned point — which actually increases out lead at the top as Basel lose 3–1 to Lugano.

Mariano is out for 3 weeks, leaving me chain smoking in the office. Urena’s agent chooses this point to ask for an improved deal for his client, starting negotiations at an eye-watering 11.5k per week, a 350% increase on his current 3.3k p/w deal. However, I ask Marcos to sack him…and he does. Fucking right. I’m already £800p/w over budget I can’t afford anything more — I ask the board to increase the wage budget but they refuse…so I agree to sell Borgmann to Willem II in January for 110k. Its a lovely piece of business done as we arrive at Basel. Kevin Hadzipasic is back in the squad having been recalled from his loan, but he’s still injured, so its a skeleton crew with Traschel making his debut up front after joining on a free last summer.

There’s 15 seconds on the clock when they take the lead through Hervias as our defence parts like a very fucking tired Red Sea. Its gets better on 14 minutes as Dayot inexplicably picks up a second yellow, leaving us down to ten men. Albig comes on for a distraught Traschel and we move to ‘kill anything that moves and hope Marcos dos something cool’ mode. This works up until a corner just before half time is headed in by Abraham as our defenders completely forget to mark anyone and we’re 2–0 down and sinking like a swiss-cheese branded yacht.

I use my remaining 2 subs at half-time, already resigned to being a solitary point ahead of Basel at the end of this game and eyeing the Luzern fixture on Wednesday. However we mount something of a resistance, and clever play by Bytiqi down the right ends with Marcos arrowing a shot into the far corner from his cutback. Game Fucking on…or it would be if we created another chance. Basel hit the bar twice and Renan makes two good saves as the game ends 2–1. Far from disgraceful and the 223 away fans applaud us from the gods.

That sets us up for the final game before the winter break as we have another away game, this time at 6th placed Luzern. Their pitch is akin to a ploughed field, but Akanji is back which is helpful. I decide to chuck Kuku up front along with Urena and give Sinan Bytiqi a go at RWB after he comes and asks for more first team football. A win gives us the notional winter title — one that I have just invented for Rheingod purposes.

We take the lead in time honoured fashion as Facchinetti gets down the left and crosses for Marcos to score his 20th goal of the season so far. We should be further ahead but are indebted to an incredible triple save from Renan after our set-piece defending goes to pot. We make a triple change on 65 minutes with Paqueta, Albig and Rothwell coming on, and all three are involved in the move that doubles our lead when Paqueta fires home a rocket from 20 yards. Luzern get a bit frisky and throw the kitchen sink at us, but we are a team of plumbers and see out the game with a clean sheet and 3 more points.

And it’s a 3 point gap at the winter break as Basel astonishingly drop points again. After starting the season with 7 straight wins they’ve only won 4 of 11 since!