THE MATCH

SATURDAY 26TH AUGUST KO 3:00PM

v

LAST MATCH



We made it 3 defeats in a row as we lost to a very average Preston team. There wasn't much between the teams but if you were a fan of attacking football this wasn't the game to watch. Vasquez made one save and we had a couple of chances, Gregory forcing a save from Woodman. Onto the 2nd half and Preston got the winner, Lindsay evaded his markers and headed powerfully into the bottom corner from Best's whipped free-kick. We searched for an equalizer Gregory firing over and Delgado headed at the keeper but it is now 3 straight league defeats.

THE MATCH



Next up and we make the trip to Cardiff. The Bluebirds have made a similarly poor start to the season, the only difference Cardiff have a point on the board. Couple of notable names in the Cardiff team, Mark McGuiness who was on loan with us last season, and Aaron Ramsey who has played for Arsenal & Juventus. They are managed by Erol Bulut, a German, who was a player and now has been in management for about 6 years, managing in Turkey, Fenerbahce the most notable club, becoming Cardiff manager in June 2023. They will just be looking to stay up this season, just like us.

ALL TIME H2H

OWLS 28
CARD 27
DRAWS 18

CURRENT FORM

OWLS              -                                                                                       

CARDIFF          -                                                                       

EFL STOOGES

DOES IT MATTER THERE ALL CORRUPT  

DARREN BOND
Richard West and Edward Smart
Fourth official: Sunny Singh Gill

THE TEAM

Vasquez
Palmer Diaby Iorfa James
Vaulks
Musaba Bannan Byers Gessama
Smith

SCORE & SCORER (HOME TEAM SCORE FIRST)

2-1 Gregory

WEDNESDAYS FIRT GOAL TIME

34

BML LEAGUE

Owlkev 1
Washington 1
Imre
Maddix
SCO

BMPL

Stateside 1
Wereham 1
Pei -12

OTHER GAMES OF MILD INTEREST

Brentford v Palace
Ipswich v Leeds
Wigan v Barnsley
Mansfield v Stockport
Gateshead v Woking

HHHHH

THE MUPPETT LEAGUE




KATE BECKINSALE TRIBUTE PIC

Huddersfield Town v Norwich City
The Sky Bet Championship
Saturday August 26th - 15:00 ko
at the Town Ground

Neil Warnock welcomes David Wagner to the John McAlpharm Stadium on Saturday afternoon for the latest episode of Friends Reunited. This one hopefully will be titled "The One Where Town Win Easliy".

However, this will not be a walk in the park. Wagz has improved his Norwich team in the summer, after a poor finish to last season saw them drop out of the Play Off positions. He's brought in plenty of experience in the shape of Shane Duffy, the ex Brighton defender and Ashley Barnes from Burnley, who always scores against us. He also went back to his old club in Switzerland, the Young Boys of Berne and paid them three million for right winger Christian Fassnacht. Add to that the emergence of 20 year old Jonathan Rowe on the other wing, who has scored four goals already this season, they have a squad that should be pushing for the automatic promotion places.

Teemu Pukki though, has said goodbye to Carrow Road and gone to Denmark to play for Brondby.

Another new Canary came from us in the summer. The ever popular, smiling face of Narcís Pèlach went down there to assist with coaching, alongside another former Town coach, Andrew Hughes, who was at Town with Wagner in those good old days from not so long ago. They've also taken on our former goalkeeping coach, Paul Clements and of course Wagner's best buddy, no not Klopp, Christoph Bühler is there as well. Who's been appointing all these coaches? Not that Delia. Let's be 'avin' yer. It's ex Town sporting director Stuart Webber, the man who brought Wagz to the Town in the first place.

Unlike Town, who gained their first point of the season at Middlesbrough on Saturday, Norwich have an almost perfect start. They would've won all four of their games so far had it not been for a very dodgy, injury time penalty for Southampton. They drew down at St Mary's 4-4, after leading three times during the match. That came after a 2-1 win at home to Hull on the opening day and before winning at home to Millwall on Sunday, they also had a Carabooboo win with a late 1-0 winner at QPR.

This though, will be their hardest game of the season so far. As you'll see from the next section, Warnock has had the wool over Wagner's eyes on many occasions and he's gonna do it again. 

Quote:
Cardiff manager Neil Warnock:

"When we saw their teamsheet, we knew what they were going to do as they were playing three centre halves.

"We wanted to change straight away to give ourselves more of an advantage. I thought that worked a treat - we warned them what we were going to do and we implemented it.

"I thought we really took the game to them to start with and we knew they would have spells because they are such a good side you can't get the ball off them at times."

Quote:
Cardiff manager Neil Warnock:

"I have steadied the ship and I have not spent a penny yet. I have agreed a couple of fringe players but we are looking to sign three or four who can really help us.

"Now it's time for a rest because the players have worked their socks off. I want the players to enjoy it with me. We don't train every minute of the day but I want them to die for me when they get out on the pitch."

Quote:
Huddersfield boss David Wagner: "I think, the first hour, we controlled the game. There was one team who wanted to do something in the offence and create opportunities and this was my team. We have known that in the last 10-15 minutes if we keep the tempo high, we will get the space, but unfortunately this was not the case because we went one man down.

"In the end this was a good point for us, the lads fought."

Cardiff boss Neil Warnock: "We have got to take chances. Even before they went down to 10 men I thought we started the second half better, we should have scored and should have won the game.

"If you'd have said a point away from home before the game you'd take it but I'm disappointed not to get all three.

"Overall I thought the lads did all right. The longer the game went on, the better we became."

Game 5 - Jan 12, 2019 Cardiff 0-0 Town:

The fifth match in the Wagner/Warnock Head to Head was the final game of the Wagner Revolution at Huddersfield Town. He resigned the day after following a month of disgraceful refereeing decisions that had robbed us of points throughout December and the first half of the season. This game at Cardiff just threw the tin hat on it all.

With 14 minutes to go in another goal less encounter, Joe Bennett brought down Florent Hadergjonaj and referee Lee Mason pointed to the spot. However, the linesman had other ideas and for the once in a lifetime occasion, he actually spoke up and told the ref he'd got it wrong.

To be fair, Warnock's lot had two stonewallers turned down, one for hand ball by Erik Durm and another when Flo brought down Junior Hoilett. Old Colin would've gone ballistic if we'd won it with that controversial penalty. It definitely was one though. Don't care what he says.

Penaly decisions apart, Wagner's boys bossed the game with 14 shots to their three, but it was one point apiece and Wagz still hadn't got a win over the old lad.

Wagner's last selection as manager in front of a crowd of 30,725 was as follows; Lössl, Hadergjonaj, M Jorgensen, Schindler, Durm, Puncheon, Hogg, Billing, Kachunga, Pritchard (Mbenza), Mounie (Depoitre). Unused subs: Smith, Kongolo, Hamer, Löwe, Stankovic.

Game 6 - Mar 15, 2023 Town 1-1 Norwich:

And so Wagner was gone. Warnock went down to the Championship with the Bluebirds, but left in November 2019. Wagz went to Schalke and then Young Boys in Switzerland. Warnock had a spell up at Middlesbrough.

Town struggled after Wagner left, a club in turmoil, despite the Wembley appearance under the leadership of Carlos Corberan. After he left, things got really bad.

In the early stages of last season, whilst Danny Schofield was the Head Coach, both Wagner and Warnock came to consecutive home games as guests of the club, both of them doing the half time draw and the reception both were given was amazing. When Schoey was moved on, we were sure that Wagz could be talked into coming back. He was out of work and this was the most natural thing for him to return. He had hinted as such when he made that leaving video.

But no. We took on some dummy from Dundee instead.

The club was in a terrible condition by February when Mark Fotheringham was finally dismissed. Neil Warnock, as we all know came out of retirement to save us from relegation.

Wagner meanwhile had taken the job at Norwich, starting off with a 4-0 win at Preston. By the time this game came around, they had dropped out of the top 6 though.

Huddersfield Town were doomed. Well adrift of safety. The Warnock magic was missing. We'd been stuffed by Coventry and Burnley and had lost at West Brom at the weekend when Wagner and his Canaries polled up at the JSS for a Wednesday night game.

Things were looking so bleak that me and Amelia couldn't be arsed turning up for this one. Even the return of King Wagner couldn't change our minds. And it was his team that went in 1-0 up at half time as Brazilian midfielder Gabriel Sara scored following a slick attacking move involving Kenny MacLean and Adam Idah.

But the half time team talk from Warnock proved to be the turning point of the season. Whether it was a paint stripping, tea cup throwing, bleep bleep bleeping rant of the old days or a calm, soothing encouragement talk, we may never know, but whatever happened, the lads came out a different looking team, playing with more determination. Town, playing in the Yorkshire Air Ambulance kit, never had a shot on target, but we did get an equaliser.

It was Josh Koroma, a revelation once again, winning the ball in midfield and laying it off to Martyn Waghorn, who chipped the ball over the out of position keeper, Angus Gunn. The ball looked to be going in, but hit the post before going in off the scrambling Norwich captain, Grant Hanley.

Who needs shots on target?!

They missed the Play Offs and we avoided the drop, so here we go again for Warnock v Wagner Game 7.

Warnock's line up for this match won't be too far off the team that will start this game either: Vaclík, Edmonds-Green, Lees, Helik, Ruffels, Koroma (Kasumu), Hogg, Rudoni, Jackson, Waghorn (Simpson), Ward (Diarra). Unused subs; Pearson, Rhodes, Hungbo, Bilokapic.

1. Undefiled Fetish 
   
2. Churlish Pot Herb 
   
3. Shackle 
   
4. Bono Tribunal 
   
5. Repay Catcalls 
   
6. Tehran Traffic Trunk 
   
7. Jenni Spooner 
   
8. Pork Plug Jen 
   
9. Honey Deal 
   
10. Dundee Filth Words 
    

Well it's taken me a while to calm down fully. Now my brain is functioning normally I think it's time to comment on Saturday.
First of all I don't like to criticise young upcoming players but our keeper really should have cought the ball rather than punch it, but what followed was insane.
Oldham scored in the 95 minute with a player in an offside position interfering with play. The scorer runs to celebrate in front of our fans and prompts a pitch invasion. In the melle our keeper gets pushed over and chaos followed. Players and management ran to protect him with others surrounding the ref. Oldaker went to the lino with the ball and my lip reading is getting much better because I clearly saw him say "that was offside Sir" or something very similar. The lino shrugged his shoulders and said something that calmed Oldaker down and made him walk over to the ref.
The invaders made their way back to the stand, meanwhile the ref stands waiting in the center circle , then some knob threw a flare onto the pitch. The ref waits for the flare to be cleared and the teams to get into position then blows his whistle and that's it, game over. Get off the pitch quick to boos from all around the ground.
So the reasons why we dropped 2 points;

The manager tried to hold onto a 1 goal lead which we didn't - again.
The keeper made a big mistake,
The ref should have given offside and not been intimidated by Oldham fans.
Norwood should have been red carded along with Dan Gardner for dangerous play earlier.
The game was not restarted after the goal even though the full amount of additional time had not been played.
Take your pick.

Gamball:
Huddersfield - Norwich

Others:
Everton - Wolves
Birmingham - Plymouth
Cardiff - Sheff Wed
Coventry - Sunderland
Ipswich - Leeds
WBA - Middlesbrough
Burnley - Aston Villa
Newcastle - Liverpool
Watford - Blackburn

SCO's Predictions:
Gamball:
Huddersfield 1 - 2 Norwich Doh
Others:
Everton 2 - 1 Wolves
Birmingham 1 - 1 Plymouth
Cardiff 1 - 2 Sheff W Tongue
Coventry 2 - 1 Sunderland
Ipswich 1 - 1 Leeds
WBA 0 - 2 Middlesbrough
Burnley 1 - 3 Villa Smartass
Newcastle 2 - 1 Liverpool
Watford 2 - 1 Blackburn

Well this will be one of the glamour Euro matches that has a guaranteed full house on Wed night. How do Hibs take this on? With great difficulty in my humble opinion. However, we must never give up on such a challenge - not the Hibs way of doing things. Lets try to win it v very good opponents with a top manager, Unai Emery, who has been a "good fit" for the Birmingham footie club - a Euro trophy-winning legend who certainly lifted John McGinn's career, John now skippering the team. Villa's last away game was a thrashing v Newcastle United. I hope Johnson studies Newcastle's midfield tactics in this game and at least tries to make it a competitive one. They've never played us before in a Euro match on the big ER pitch, but there's no doubt they'll "show up" with what I reckon will be a strong B team chosen specifically to do the biz in Leith. I think John McGinn will play because he'll want to play and associate with the Hibs crowd again - a revered Hibs Scottish Cup legend who played a big part in smashing that historic Scot Cup bogey and also removed all the angsty flak from enemies/critics of our club in that historic 2016 final. A John McGinn "hat trick" coming up? I hope not. Anyway, like many other Hibs fans I'm looking forward to visiting ER Stadium and watching this glamour match. C'mon Hibs - try to make a game of it!!

GGTTH

2 points for correct result
4 points for correct score
2 points for each correct scorer
Correct joker doubles your score   (correct score on a joker would give you 8 points)
Wrong joker result gives you minus 2
Correct Random Badger gives you 2 points

The random badger is used for any random prediction used once in each matchday sequence. For instance, a scorer at a particular match, the number of red cards in the matches or yellow cards or own goals or owt you want really within reason, I do need to be able to check whether it's correct or not. Please don't put stuff like....."Commentator says...."  
The joker   is played for one match in each sequence and if correct you get double points. So if you've predicted 1-0 and it finishes 2-0, you get 4 pts, but if you've predicted 2-0, that's 8 pts. But if you get it wrong, it's minus 2.
Jokers and badgers are optional. You don't have to play one if you don't want.

The prize for winning the league is one rep point.

Cup games: In the event of a draw, it's half the points if you've predicted a draw when it gets to 90 mins and the full points if it's still a draw after extra time. Half the points will be awarded for correctly predicting the winner of the match if it goes to penalties. Similarly with the badger, if your random prediction is affected by this, it'll be half the points.

Random score generator: I will be using the random score generator again for those who miss predicting, so we shouldn't get some people too far behind that after missing a couple of weeks they lose all interest, because I know it's not easy getting on here every week.
To be fair to everybody, this is going to be like, say if three people in one week miss their predictions, the first one in the table will be given all 0-0, the second one down the line will get 1-0 and the third will get 0-1 and so on, like if there's four missing the 4th will get 1-1, then 5th 2-1, 6th 1-2. and if there are so many missing, might as well pack in.
And if you miss two weeks on the trot, I'll stop until you come back on again. Not doing it for half a season like I did t'other year.  

End of season Play Offs: The one who finishes top of the league will still be champion, but after the season finishes there will be Play Offs between the top 4, with 1st v 4th and 2nd v 3rd. This will take in stuff like the EFL Play Offs, FA Cup Final, final day of Prima Donna League, European Finals etc. It will be one matchday for the semis and one for the Final. It will be the individual scores for each matchday against the allotted opponent, with some kind of tie breaker for a drawn match.

The prize for winning will be enormous. Another rep point.

1. neonfoxinthebox = 47 pts
   
2. St Charles Owl = 46 pts
   
3. theo_luddite = 39 pts
   
4. Baggiebob(BBB) = 38 pts
   
5. themaclad = 33 pts
   
6. jjamez = 29 pts
   

Friday August 25th:
Hull City v Bristol City

Saturday August 26th:
Town v Norwich
Town scorers:
Norwich scorers:

Cardiff City v Sheffield Wednesday
Coventry City v Sunderland
Preston North End v Swansea City
West Bromwich Albion v Middlesbrough

Sunday August 27th:
Watford v Blackburn Rovers (12:00)

EFL Cup 2nd round:
Tuesday 29th August:
Stoke City v Rotherham United
Plymouth Argyle v Crystal Palace

Wednesday August 30th:
Sheffield United v Lincoln City

*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***

1. Lord Snooty = 59 pts
   
2. ritchiebaby = 47 pts
   
3. SHEP_HTAFC = 39 pts
   
4. WakeyTerrier = 36 pts
   
5. Devongone = 34 pts
   
6. Amelia Chaffinch = 29 pts
   

Saturday August 26th:
Town v Norwich
Town scorers:
Norwich scorers:

Birmingham City v Plymouth Argyle
Ipswich Town v Leeds United
Millwall v Stoke City
Rotherham United v Leicester City
Southampton v Queens Park Rangers

EFL Cup 2nd round:
Tuesday 29th August:
Bolton Wanderers v Middlesbrough
Sheffield Wednesday v Mansfield Town
Fulham v Tottenham Hotspur
Wycombe Wanderers v Sutton United

*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***

https://www.hibernianfc.co.uk/article/pr...h-rovers-h

Well here we go again - another match, 2 days after another successful Thursday UEFA CL thriller, and at the moment Hibs have a 100% failure rate so far. Will that poor record change v this level of opposition from the Championship? I honestly have no idea TBF!! This Rovers team, riddled with a good few rejected young Hibs players, will certainly be up for a one-off cup tie like this one. There won't be a prob if Hibs "show up", but that has not been the case in other post Euro matches like this one. Therefore, the solution is for the manager to properly freshen up the team with appropriate changes rather than field many of the same leggy and uncommitted, disinterested players who have failed in previous games like this one. Dylan Levitt will miss out on this game due to a nasty ankle injury picked up in Lucerne. He won't be missed in my humble opinion, based on previous observations. I'd like to see Hibs play a strategy to effectively "blitz" this match early and finish it in the 1st half, see out the rest of the game and then quickly focus/prepare for the Villa Euro tie. Whether that realistically happens is anybody's guess!!!

GGTTH

This is Hibs FC officials "in their element" again suddenly "springing" a ticket sale this morning and creating a mad scramble for these briefs, some ST holders returning from Switzerland finding out their seats are gone/sold!! It looks like Villa fans have been allocated two thirds of the South Stand and Hibs fans taking up the remaining third. We're suddenly moving from a 13k attendance v Luzern to what looks like a full house next Wed night - a UEFA forced early date and early KO of 5.45pm. My own personal description of this is "conveyor belt footie", UEFA just wanting to clear out the quali games as quickly as poss before the real biz begins and the bigger footie clubs dominate as usual.

https://www.hibernianfc.co.uk/article/de...echin-city

A hammering of Brechin City in the SPFL Trust Cup. Drawn in the 3rd round v the New Saints from Wales, a tough draw, but very good experience for these lads and hopefully a good number of them will strengthen up and eventually progress to 1st team participation.