Los Coladeros Episode 65: The Wilderness
The Spanish FA uphold their nine-match ban for Maxim Tsigalko after my appeal, going as far as to say that they think the punishment is “just and fair”. I think it would be just and fair for all of them to drown in a boating accident, but I appreciate the chances of that happening are pretty low. I could get some flyers made offering heavily discounted yachts to football association employees and leave them strategically around Madrid… but that would take too much effort.
Besides, I’ve got real, actual business to conduct. Man City have returned with £4m for John Welsh, and with my eyes darting towards the transfer market for a replacement Iceman to last us until the end of the season but no coins left in the bank, I make a big call. He’s unhappy, he’s a rotation option, I want the cash more than I want his moping around. Sorry, John.
Unfortunately, my glances towards the transfer market aren’t very fruitful. There isn’t a lot of value in the market for dynamic AMCs who would sign on until the end of the season and actually make a difference. The only player I see who I’d be interested in getting is Kieron Dyer, although he’s officially a DMRC he has all the numbers to make him one of the better attacking midfield options. Valued at just £3.1m, I offer Newcastle all of my new £4.9m budget and await their rejection fax.
Otherwise, I look back to my own squad for inspiration. With Kerr injured and Tsigalko suspended for half our remaining games, my midfield feels a little light. I will probably start with Ronaldo in behind Skalidis, restore Petrov to the left side of my midfield three where he was so effective just a couple of weeks ago, and introduce someone new to the centre of the pitch — perhaps Mikel Arteta or Mikel Alonso. I also suddenly remember that Bruno exists, having forgotten all about him momentarily — yes, actually, you know what? Bruno is good. Bruno can play in AMC. I’d rather have Ronaldo in actual midfield anyway; he’s far more effective charging at hapless Spanish defenders from deep.
Yes, yes, that feels good. We can try it out over our next four games, all of which should be relatively straightforward: Tenerife (15th) at home, both legs against D2B’s Éibar, then basement club Compostela at their place. Something will have to click by the time those matches are played, because our run of fixtures after that going to be like taking on Satan’s hordes with a basket of snowballs.
Right then, okay. Tenerife at La Cartuja. No Kerr, no Tsigalko, but Kalogeras is back on the left — we’ve missed his dead balls quite a lot. Arteta and Lundén are my midfield options on the bench. Come on, lads. The title is still in our hands. We just need to pull our socks up, grab the league by the throat, hold it down, and strangle it to death. I’m looking at you, Clint.
Let’s do this.
With 15 minutes gone, it’s basically a miracle that we aren’t leading. We could be five-nil up, in fact, were it not for Martín Herrera in the Tenerife goal, who must have had five cans of spinach on toast for breakfast as he leaps around his goal to prevent Skalidis (2), Bruno, Hill and Kibebe scoring from positions where they apparently “couldn’t miss”. I beg to differ.
We continue to pound the Tenerife back door for the entirety of the half, and eventually, even the superhuman Herrera can’t stop us from taking the lead. With five minutes left until the break, Benjamin Kibebe sweeps up a loose ball after Davies is tackled in midfield and launches it into the box, where Bruno, wonderful Bruno, leaps over Labaka and heads home his first goal for the Wet Bandits to give us a fully deserved 1–0 half time lead. We’ve had ten shots on target in that opening 45, and Herrera is on a 9/10. My fears at losing the Iceman until April are being quickly allayed.
The second half is a different story, but with a similar outcome. Skalidis doubles our lead on 55 minutes to give the game a scoreline it probably warrants, but Tenerife tighten up from that point on and give us far more trouble. We’re still in the commentary more but we can’t quite get shots away, and on the counter, the Islanders look dangerous. Voulgaris saves well from Labaka and Robaina, but the latter does drag his team back into it with a 25-yard worldie with 15 minutes to go. It sets up a finish that sees me almost grip the cushioning off my chair, but thankfully, it’s Bruno who completes the scoring for the day, meeting a Jamie Victory free-kick to head home our third goal on 87 minutes, and that’s game over. Consolation goal aside, we’ve blitzed Tenerife today in exactly the manner I hoped for. Like most of my love emails to Andrés D’Alessandro, we have bounced back.
Real Madrid won yesterday against Compostela to maintain the eight-point gap, but Barcelona drop to fifth after a draw at Real Sociedad. Far from a vintage season at the Camp Nou.
With the transfer window almost over, my bid for Kieron Dyer is turned away, and I decide not to try for someone else. Motherwell have a tasty-looking English regen by the name of Stewart Saunders who has all the numbers to become quite a player for the Three Lions… but I’m not going to take the Scots’ prized asset from them just yet. We’ll keep an eye on him for the summer, assuming I finally manage to move on some of my also-rans.
After the end of the window, I have to update my Champions League squad. Skalidis is sadly ineligible, but Tsigalko, of course, is not — so he’ll be my main striker for the rest of our continental charge. I add Kibebe to my 25, while swapping Pinheiro for Campos and turncoat Sestelo for Bruno. I feel better about this… especially Hugo. What on earth was I thinking.
And so, we travel to Éibar for the first leg of the Copa del Rey quarter finals. Tsigalko is eligible for this, so he starts up front — I need to make sure I keep his eye in following his suspension. Moukoko doesn’t deserve to play but I let him have a go anyway, Nuno Mata’s training performances warrant a start at right back, and there’s a first appearance on the bench in what feels like a decade for William Leandersson, hero of the D2B for about five games. He might even get to run around a bit — we’ll have to see.
It’s a classic encounter. We make a side who are 8th in the D2B2 look like they belong at the top of La Liga with us, and even though we manage to go 2–0 up through Basque beauties Arteta and Alonso, I never have a feeling of warmth or safety. Andrielos and Desailly look like they’ve never played football before, let alone together, and — combined with Jesús Unanua having the game of his life in the Éibar nets — we conspire to concede twice in the second half and, in the end, are quite lucky to escape with a 2–2 draw. I’m not sure why my second team is this terrible; maybe it’s because half of them have been told they can leave the moment anyone makes a bid, I don’t know, I’m not their mother. All I know is, that wasn’t very good at all.
But where there’s darkness, there is light. Wayne Rooney signs a new contract with Everton, which sounds like bad news — but his Minimum Release Fee is reduced to £2.5m. I can hear the sound of eyes squelching open in finance departments up and down the Premier League.
With my bidding finger twitching almost uncontrollably, I’m reminded that we should be on the way to Compostela to play the team propping up La Liga. They’ve only taken nine points from a possible 63 this season and are comfortably the worst side in the division, so they really shouldn’t be the ones to derail our title train — but then again, we did just draw with Éibar, so expect the unexpected. My good players all return for this one, naturally; Kerr will be back in a couple of weeks but Tsigalko is still forced into the stands by the snivelling bureaucrats from Madrid. I’ll never forgive them for this. Elsewhere, Tobros is one yellow from suspension, and with Barcelona in the league next, I’m not taking any chances — he’s replaced by The Rock.
It’s a win, but my god, we’re making everything difficult for ourselves at the moment. Generally good performances all round, it has to be said, and I think Bruno’s 6 is a little unfair since he could have easily scored twice — but Compostela carry a threat that I really didn’t anticipate. It’s only the alertness of Costanzo that prevents our hosts from taking the lead through either Keko or Bouzas, but at the other end, Skalidis — who else? — is rifling efforts at Javier Vallejo’s goal from all over the place, so it’s no surprise when he eventually opens the scoring. It takes until the second half, but after collecting a simple Petrov pass, he goes on a trademark tearing run that sees him round Tabaré Silva twice before drilling a shot in off the post for 1–0. There’s a little too much back and forth over the remainder of the game for my liking, but in the end, it’s another win and another clean sheet, so mustn’t grumble. That’s ten goals in nine outings for Skalidis now too — best £2.5m I’ve ever spent.
I’m straight into the dressing room to check Teletexto. It was the Clasico today, and I could really do with Real Madrid losing… oh-ho-HO!
Lose they do, that defeat putting them down to fourth and allowing both Valencia and Sevilla to overtake them — but more importantly, it gives us a little more breathing space at the top. Nine points is the gap now.
By making solid progress in both our available cup competitions, the games are now officially coming thick and fast. There’s so little time between each fixture that I’ve barely got time to get my buzz back before we’re welcoming some other group of misfits to La Cartuja — today, it’s our Copa del Rey quarter final, second leg against Éibar. We return to the second string, but with a twist up front: Tsigalko and Samba, my starting strikers at the beginning of the season, both start. Samba has dropped down the order due to pressure from Skalidis, who I think we can all agree is far superior at this point, while Tsigalko’s enforced league absence from his absurdly long ban means he’ll be our main source of goals in both this cup, and the Champions League. Cometh the hour, cometh the Iceman… we hope.
Yes, that’s a bit more like it. We lose Mikel Arteta to a stubbed toe after just 18 minutes which is a bit of a blow, but his replacement, the long-lost William Leandersson, performs admirably on the left of my midfield three. The story of the first half, though, is that Éibar’s lord and saviour Jesús Unanua is just as impenetrable as he was in the first game, for a while. This time it’s the great Cherno Samba who pierces the rice paper of his last line of defence with two furious strikes before we reach the hour — and just after that, Unanua has a bit of a nightmare. He hauls down Tsigalko as he skips on through to the six yard box, gets himself bunny-hopped to the dressing room, and the Iceman steps up to convert the penalty he won to put this game beyond our plucky visitors. I’ve got a lot of time for Éibar, though. They came to play, they had their chances, but in the end, we smashed them without reply. Exactly how I like it. Why can’t everyone be this accommodating?
We certainly aren’t going to get this sort of service from our next visitors. There’s no need for me to do the build up at this point — you all know the deal. Barcelona are here. They’re the reigning Primera Liga champions. They’re one of the most potent sides in all of football, even though they’re only 5th in the table right now. They’ve got no injuries; we’re missing Kerr, Arteta and Tsigalko. It’s going to be massive, and I’m not ready for it at all. I jumble my best-performing players together into a lineup, and hope we get a few chances up front to the Greek lad. Help me, Anastasios Skalidis. You’re my only hope.
I’m extremely happy to see Jaap Stam withdrawn after 20 minutes with a foot injury, which is glorious news; Robert Kovac is no slouch, but he’s not a skinhead Dutch hooligan either, so it’s all good for us. I’m also delighted to notice that Saviola and Riquelme are on the Barcelona bench, for some reason. Two of the best players in the world aren’t starting against us. What fresh hell is this?
Skalidis does get two chances in the first half that, annoyingly, Bonano saves, and at our end, Costanzo does fantastically to block a Kluivert header and a Mendieta volley — but in truth, it’s not a vintage first 45. Both teams look nervous and cagey, and I know for sure that I’d be happy with a point today. The players come in at the break looking spiritually exhausted. I understand completely. I just want to head down to Yo Soy Tu Padre tonight with a point and a purpose.
Unfortunately van Gaal realises his mistake and introduces both Riquelme and Saviola at half time, and they proceed to run riot over us for almost the whole second period. We’re groaning under the pressure as the two combine over and over again to have chance after chance on Costanzo’s goal, and while he copes phenomenally, he can’t do it all by himself — and all of a sudden, in the space of three minutes, the game is over. Saviola scores, then Riquelme scores, and although Kalogeras does pull back a last-minute penalty, it’s really more than we deserve. We got pulped out there second half. Every time we came forward, their defenders just dealt with us. Every time they came forward, it looked like men against boys. It was a return to the bad old days of last season, and do I not like that. Do I not like that one bit.
There is at least the thinnest shred of good news: Valencia lose, and Sevilla lose. Barcelona and Real Madrid, in the space of a single round of fixtures, are back on my butt — but, we’re still eight points clear. We’re still eight points clear. Keep saying it at the back. We’re eight points clear. Someone pour me a drink.
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