West Bromwich Albion v Huddersfield Town
The Sky Bet Championship
Saturday March 11th - 15:00 ko
at The Hawthorns

As for the Baggies, Carlos has been picking a young goalkeeper ahead of a much more experienced custodian, much like we were doing until the poor young Aussie, Nicholas Bilokapic, shipped in eight goals in two matches. They have 21 year old Josh Griffiths in between the sticks, after Carlos recalled him from a loan spell at Portsmouth. He's keeping David Button on the bench.

They have ex Millwall star, Jedward Wallace, who scored twice in the game at our place earlier in the season. And in midfield, the satirical author and Lilliput international John Swift, who played for Reading against us at Wembley. By 'eck, that seems a long time ago now.

Ah well. You never know. If only we could score a goal.

Old Mr Copynpaste has been out again, so apologies if you've read most of this before. There are some new bits though.

Anyway.....Big Ron got them to their highest League finish for 20 years, finishing 3rd in 78/79, qualifying for the UEFA Cup. They reached the quarter finals, losing to Red Star Belgrade. In that season they won 5-3 at Old Trafford, being the last team to have scored five away at Man Utd, before Liverpool did it last season.

Albion under Atkinson were one of those teams that neutral fans loved for their style of football. However, Cunningham was transferred to Real Madrid for a club record fee and despite 3rd and 4th finishes in the league and a couple of FA Cup semi finals, Ron didn't think he was getting the backing he deserved and so when Man Utd came calling, he fecked off to Old Trafford in 1981.

Ronnie Allen returned and the Board allowed Big Ron to steal star player Bryan Robson, the Baggies struggled and had to win their last match of the season to stay up. Those neutral fans were all cheering the Albion on again and there were celebrations all over the country as they beat Leeds United 2-0, not just to stay up but also to relegate the White Shite instead. 

The struggles continued though and at the end of 1985/86, they were relegated to the 2nd division with the worst record in the club's history, only 24 points. Ex Villa boss Ron Saunders was in charge and the Board kept faith with him, but soon lost patience and re-appointed Ron Atkinson. Love the Rons there, don't they?

However, it didn't work out for Big Ron this time and by 1989, with Bobby Gould in charge, they slumped to the Third Division for the first time in their history. They had a couple of seasons at the 3rd level and with Argentinian ace, Ossie Ardiles at the helm for the second of those, they won promotion back up with a Wembley win in the Play Offs. They beat Port Vale 3-0 with goals from Andy Hunt, Nicky Reid and ex Town player Kevin Donovan.

Head to Head



Town lead the head to head with 31 wins to West Brom's 26, with 19 draws.

Our paths didn't cross for many years in this century, but since we did meet up again when we won promotion to the Premier League, we have had the upper hand. We've won four times and only lost once to the Baggies in that time. The two games we played in the PL were both Town victories, with the legend Rajiv van La Parra being the star player. He scored in a 1-0 home win and then opened the scoring at their place, with Steve Mounie adding a second in a 2-1 win.

Their only win came in our first meeting back in the Championship. They beat us 4-2 at the Hawthorns, after Lewis O'Brien had scored his first Town goal to open the scoring. Matt Phillips equalised, but we went in to the interval with a 2-1 lead after Karlan Grant scored. But they went and scored three times in the second half.

We got our own back towards the end of that season though, goals from Chris Willock and Emile Smith Rowe giving us a 2-1 win that condemned the Baggies to another season of Championship football. Well it would've done if Brentford hadn't gone into the meltdown which allowed them to sneak up as runners up to the bums from Bellend Road.

They came back down again after just one season and it was the Terriers on top again last season. We beat them 1-0 at home with an early goal from Danel Sinani, but then in the away game, we cocked up a 2-0 lead. Dimwit Town head coach Carlos Corberan was outsmarted by the brilliant, experienced Baggies boss, Steve Bruce. We led through two goals by Danny Ward, but then Bruce brung on Andy Carroll and it changed the game. Karlan Grant scored against his old team from the penalty spot and Carroll equalised a minute later. They should've won it but Grant missed a sitter late on.

This season, after getting shut of Corberan, we had Danny Schofield in charge. They still had the genius Bruce. Town stormed into a first half lead through Tino Anjorin, in one of the few games he's turned up to between injury spells. But the Throstles came back again and two goals from Jedward Wallace denied Danny a second win as Town manager.

So what new tricks are going on down Jack Halfords Lane? Managed nowadays by Carlos "Judas" Corberán, the former assistant of Marcelo Bielsa.

He was born in Cheste, in the comarca of Hoya de Buñol in the Valencian Community in Spain, in 1983. He will be celebrating his 40th birthday next month. No doubt Marcelo Bielsa, such a big influence on his career will be wishing him well that day.

Having played for Valencia reserves as a goalkeeper, he decided to quit his playing career at the age of 23 to take up coaching. Quitting early will become a mark of his footballing life.

He hadn't met Marcelo Bielsa yet, but after a few months as fitness coach at Valencia, he quit that job to take on a similar role with a Saudi Arabian club in 2012. He quit that job after a year to go back to Spain with AD Alcorcón, but soon quit that job to go to Saudi Arabia for another year.

In November 2016, he quit that job to move to Cyprus where he had his first Head Coach role at another club I've never heard of. But still Marcelo Bielsa, the man who would have such a massive influence on his coaching style, hadn't come into his life.

Less than two months into this job, he was on the move again. He didn't quit this one though, he was sacked. Not out of work for long though, he was taken on by another Cypriot club I've never heard of. And he quit that job after five months.

He quit to come to England and a chance to coach the under 23s team of the Champions of Europe. Marcelo Bielsa, the man who had such an influence on his coaching style wasn't the man to appoint him. That particular Jack Duckworth lookalike hadn't yet arrived at Bellend Road and Carlos was doing alright with his own coaching style as he and Danny Schofield coached the u23s to the Professional Development League title.

And so that was when new BellEnders boss Marcelo Bielsa decided to promote him to the first team bench. Initially Carlos was in charge of looking after the bucket which Marcelo Bielsa liked to sit on, but as time went on and Leeds ended up winning promotion, dopey Huddersfield Town director of football, Leigh Bromby somehow got the idea that this graduate of the Marcelo Bielsa school of pigeon english would make a good Head Coach at the Millers Oils High Perfomance Complex.

What a dumb idea that turned out to be. Replacing the popular Cowley brothers, his first season at Huddersfield was disastrous, culminating with a 7-0 defeat at Norwich, which should've ended up with him getting the sack, but somehow ended up with him getting a contract extension for the next season.

The football being played was utter tosh, but for one reason or another, positive results started coming along. The main reason being the fact that Carlos had spent half a season sat quite near Marcelo Bielsa. Or so the commentators at Sky Sports would tell us every time the Terriers were featured on there.

Then, after taking the Town to Wembley for the Play Offs, he quit again to go manage another unknown club in Greece. That didn't last long and he was sacked after six games. Obviously the Greeks didn't know how much Carlos had been influenced by the genius Marcelo Bielsa.

But luckily for him, somebody who knew all about Marcelo Bielsa and what a great coach he was, was the head of recruitment at West Bromwich Albion, who were looking for somebody to replace the legendary Steve Bruce as Head Coach at the Boilerman Stadium. Bruce had taken the Baggies to within 18 places of a Play Off spot before he was harshly dismissed, but Carlos endeared himself to the Throstles faithful by inspiring his team to beat National League side Chesterfield in an FA Cup 3rd round replay.

The West Brom board were so grateful for the extra cash earned by making it to the 4th round that they offered Carlos a contract extension, which he eagerly signed.

Here's hoping he hasn't quit before I get around to posting this.

Club connections: How many of these do you remember?

1. Barron Coracles
   
2. Rik Deadly
   
3. Decoy Farley
   
4. Clear Skinned
   
5. Horny Goods
   
6. Arises Soiled
   
7. Leonard Flash
   
8. Barny Osborn
   
9. Therese The Edger
   
10. Scilly Gerrie
    

Premier League

Minizin        13pts 2CS 4CR 5GB -3BB 1SB
Blue Baggie 13pts 1CS 3CR 5GB 6BB 0SB
SCO            11pts 0CS 5CR 5GB -3BB 1SB
Derby          10pts 1CS 5CR -3GB 3BB 0SB
Snooty          8pts 1CS 3CR 5GB -3BB 0SB
Sanjay          7pts 2CS 4CR -3GB -3BB 1SB
Zinman        7pts 1CS 4CR 0GB -3BB 0SB
Stairs            5pts 1CS 3CR 0GB -3BB 0SB

A return to normal this week with a relatively close set of scores. Surprisingly nobody scored a maximum on the Gamball and, somewhat less surprisingly, the bonus ball once again proved to be difficult. Ironically the 2 players who chickened out on the gamball, both sit at he foot of the table - though they would have both been worse off if they'd played it.

Minizin and Blue share this week's top spot, both gaining points on the Gamball and though Blue only got 3 results correct - sharing the lowest number of the week - his correct score was his bonus, a rarity which certainly helps! Minizin's consistency will see him stretch his lead at the top of the table - he was helped by 2 correct scores.

SCO and Derby aren't far behind, both reaching double figures. SCO was the only player not to predict a correct score but he made up for it with a high of 5 correct results including the Gamball. Derby also scored from 5 games but missed out on the Gamball, though he wa the other player to get his bonus correct. Snooty sits 2 points further back, his Gamball saving him from bottom spot and he's a point ahead of Sanjay and Zinman.

Stairs props up the table with just 5 points, scoring on just 3 games and missing out on the balls he did play.

Minizin 260
Derby 241
Zinman 240
Stairs 225
Blue 199
Snooty 190
Sanjay 190
SCO 183

Just the one positional change with Derby edging ahead of Zinman into 2nd place with Minizin now enjoying a healthy lead at the top. Stairs loses a bit of ground on those above him but the battle to avoid relegation is hotting up as Snooty draws level with Sanjay while SCO is creeping closer to them both.

Zin


Championship

BBB 21pts 3CS 2CR 5GB 6BB 0SB
Dingle 14pts 0CS 5CR 5GB 3BB 0SB
AAA 11pts 1CS 5CR NPGB -3BB 0SB
BaggieOne 4pts 0CS 5CR -3GB -3BB 0SB
Themaclad 3pts 2CS 0CR -3GB -3BB 1SB
Twerton 2pts 1CS 2CR -3GB -3BB 0SB
Amelia 2pts 0CS 4CR -3GB -3BB 0SB
Lady Jane 1pts 1CS 1CR -3GB -3BB 1SB

Down to earth with a bit of a bang for most this week after last weeks season best!!  Avoiding that drop is BBB, who recorded his second highest score of the season a week after posting his best last week!!  The week he ended up with 21 points, scoring a max on the Bonus, a CR on the Gamball and scoring on 7 games in total.  A bit of a drop to Dingle in 2nd spot with 14 points, he will be happy with this though after being in a bit of a slump, he along with BBB were the only players to score positive points on the Gamball and Dingle backed that up with 4 other CRs.  If he could have converted a couple of them into CSs then he would have been closer to BBB.  AAA rounds out the top 3 with 11 points, he scored on 6 games, wisely bottled the Gamball but missed on the Bonus to keep his score lower than he would have liked.

The rest of the league had a poor week, scoring only 12 points between the 5 of them!!  For all of them it was a tale of woe when it came to their balls with each one of them scoring -3 on every Gamball and Bonus and only two scoring the solitary Scoreball point!  Just shows the damage that missing on the balls creates, BaggieOne score on half the games, same as Dingle, yet was behind him by 10 points and Themaclad has the second highest number of CSs but was miles off the top 3!!  I will save them some face by not repeating any of their scores on this occasion!!

270 Dingle
252 Lady Jane
245 BaggieOne
231 AAA
227 BBB
173 Themaclad
153 Twerton
146 Amelia

For about the last month we have seen no changes in position but just when it seems to be closing up at the top Dingle chucks in a good week while the chasing pack stumbled!!  His lead is back up to 18 points as he outscored LJ by 13 points and B1 by 10 points!!  BBB and AAA are closer again to the top 3 so as we stand it is a 5 way race for the potential promotion spots as we head into the home straight!!

Cheers
SCO

THE MATCH

SATURDAY 11TH MARCH KO 3:00PM

v

LAST MATCH

 

1-0 to the Wednesday Boys as we made it 21 unbeaten and remained top of the league. It wasn't a pretty first half but we did come  closest to scoring when Windass hit the bar following a corner. Onto the 2nd half and we upped our game. Flint and Windass tested there keeper but it was third time lucky when Bannan fed Brown and his cross come shot found its way past the keeper. Brown then made a good challenge to deny Poku a equalizer. We saw the rest of the game out fairly comfortably.

THE MATCH



Next up and a long trip south to play Portsmouth. We drew with these on the opening day of the season, 3-3, when our defence went AWOL in the second half. Pompey had been in good form but lost to Barnsley Tuesday night and are 9 points off the playoffs so look like staying in L1 for another season. Colby Bishop is there main threat, with 19 goals so far this season. John Mousinho was appointed on the 20th Jan and they have won 6 of their 11 games with Mousinho in charge

ALL TIME H2H

OWLS 27
PORTS 27
DRAWS 16

CURRENT FORM

OWLS              -                                                                         

Ports              -                                             

EFL STOOGES

DOES IT MATTER THERE ALL CORRUPT  

BEN TONER
Adrian Tranter and Ollie Williams
Fourth Official : Stuart Butler

THE TEAM

Dawson
Famewo Iorfa Flint
Palmer Bannan Byers Vaulks Brown
Windass Smith

SCORE & SCORER (HOME TEAM SCORE FIRST)

1-2 Smith

ATTENDANCE

N/A

WEDNESDAYS FIRT GOAL TIME

26

BML LEAGUE

Owlskev 25
Stateside 22
Imre 120
Wash 19
SCO 17
Maddix 15
Peiowl 12

OTHER GAMES OF MILD INTEREST

Leeds v Brighton
Birmingham v Rotherham
Barnsley v Plymouth
Barrow v Sutton
Eastleigh v Oldham

ADDAH

THE MUPPETT LEAGUE

WEREHAM




KATE BECKINSALE TRIBUTE PIC

Gamball:
Everton - Brentford

Others:
Leeds - Brighton
Leicester - Chelsea
QPR - Watford
Reading - Millwall
Sheff U - Luton
Swansea - Middlesbrough
Portsmouth - Sheff Wed
Fulham - Arsenal
West Ham - Villa

Manager until end of season

Watford have sacked head coach Slaven Bilic after just over five months in charge of the Championship club.

The 54-year-old replaced Rob Edwards, who himself only lasted 11 games himself at Vicarage Road, in September.

Watford have won just one of their past eight matches and are four points outside the play-offs following Saturday's goalless draw with Preston.

The Hornets are now looking for their ninth full-time manager since Javi Gracia left in September 2019.

"We are all ambitious to succeed this season, so something new is needed quickly while the opportunity of promotion is still real," technical director Ben Manga told the club website.

"With the January transfer window over, to change coach is the only option available to re-energise for the final games ahead."

Since Gracia was sacked just four months after taking the club to the 2019 FA Cup final, Quique Sanchez Flores, Nigel Pearson, Vladimir Ivic, Xisco Munoz, Claudio Ranieri, Roy Hodgson, Edwards and now Bilic have all had spells in charge.

Of those, Munoz led the club to promotion to the Premier League in 2021, but he was sacked six months later to make way for Ranieri.

The Italian, who guided Leicester City to the Premier League title in 2016, himself only lasted three months before Hodgson was brought in.

2 points for each correct scorer
Correct joker doubles your score      
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.

Friday 10th March:
Stoke City v Blackburn Rovers

Saturday 11th March:
West Brom v Town
Town scorers:
Baggies scorers:

Bristol City v Blackpool (12:30)
Birmingham City v Rotherham United
Burnley v Wigan Athletic
Coventry City v Hull City
Preston North End v Cardiff City
Queens Park Rangers v Watford
Reading v Millwall
Sheffield United v Luton Town
Swansea City v Middlesbrough

Sunday 12th March:
Norwich City v Sunderland (12:00)

Tuesday 14th March:
Blackpool v Queens Park Rangers
Millwall v Swansea City
Rotherham United v Preston North End
Watford v Birmingham City
Wigan Athletic v Coventry City
Middlesbrough v Stoke City

Wednesday 15th March:
Town v Norwich
Town scorers:
Norwich scorers:

Blackburn Rovers v Reading
Cardiff City v West Bromwich Albion
Hull City v Burnley
Luton Town v Bristol City
Sunderland v Sheffield United

Table after Matchday 29:

1. jjamez = 712 pts
   
2. themaclad = 662 pts
   
3. theo_luddite = 652 pts
   
4. Baggiebob(BBB) = 647 pts
   
5. neonfoxinthebox = 630 pts
   
6. St Charles Owl = 618 pts
   
7. Lord Snooty = 603 pts
   
8. ritchiebaby = 589 pts
   
9. SHEP_HTAFC = 566 pts
   
10. Amelia Chaffinch = 542 pts
    
11. Devongone = 510 pts
    
12. WakeyTerrier = 171 pts

Bromley 0-2 York
Dag & Red 2-1 Wrexham
Dorking 0-2 Barnet
Gateshead 0-1 Halifax
Maidenhead United 2-1 Boreham Wood
Oldham 0-3 Woking
Scunthorpe 0-4 Altrincham
Solihull Moors 1-1 Torquay
Southend 1-3 Chesterfield
Wealdstone 2-0 Maidstone United
Yeovil 2-3 Eastleigh

League Table After Matchday 46
Devon - 832
St Charles Owl - 776
SaltergateBorn - 742
Lord Snoots - 733
Spireitematt - 710
Dancing - 682
Amelia - 618