2018/19 Prediction League; Game 20 v Wycombe Wanderers (home)

Div3North · 25-11-2018, 22:50

Accrington Stanley

V

Wycombe Wanderers

2018/19 Prediction League; Game 20 v Wycombe (home)

I have some bad news ............... we (the Stanley) are currently top of the Numpty League, with 2 points in our last five games ........ close to us are Southend with 3 points (having lost their last four on the bounce) and the Wombles (whose former manager Neil Ardley was out of work for exactly 11 days before moving into Nottingham to manage the County) - the same Wombles ending an eight game losing League run 2-1 against Sarfend last time out (although they’ve won 3 and lost 13 of their last 16 in the League) - and Donnie, Scunthorpe and Bratfud have four each; the bottom of the League table’s tightened up a tad, with Bratfud and Plymouth now each having four wins - Bratfud doing Oxfud (in the Battle of the Fuds) 2-0 on Saturday; Walsall have five points, the Gills and Brizzle have 6, and bottom of said League des Numpties are Luton, with 13 points from their last 15

It’s a true-ism, I suppose, but every team has a Dodgy Run during a season; the trick is to have it earlier rather than later (we specialise in having ours around November), and having your Bad Hair Days without them terminally damaging your chances ..............well, of anything, really ............... And so it is that, having drawn two and lost three of our last five, we’re currently on P19 W7 D7 L6 (with a -1 GD and 28 points) still in 10th place in the League, and only 3 points off the playoffs – ok, three points and 10 goals (or four points, if you prefer) ............... Wycombe are in 12th, with 6 wins, 7 draws and 6 losses, a zero GD, and 25 points; after eleven games they had 9 points (a singleton win – their only League away win – 2-1 at Bratfud), six draws and four losses ................. of their last 6 they’ve won 4, drawn 1 and lost 1, they’ve won their last five at home, and their away record is W1 D4 L4 GF11 GA16 (at home, they’re W5 D3 L2 GF16 GA11)

Starter for ten; there are three teams in the top four tiers of the Football Pyramid called “Something Wanderers” (Bolton, Wolverhampton and Wycombe); if you add the “City”, “United”, “Rovers” and so on, how many “Team Suffixes” are there? You can’t count former EFL sides like Leyton Orient etc....................

The exact details of the formation of Wycombe Wanderers F.C. have largely, it seems, been lost to history; however, it appears that a group of young furniture trade workers started a team in 1884, called North Town Wanderers. Three years later a meeting held at the Steam Engine pub in Station Road, High Wycombe saw the formation of Wycombe Wanderers F.C. It’s highly likely, apparently, that the club took its name from the Famous Wanderers, winners of the first FA Cup in 1872. The Wanderers, you may like to know, were formed as Forest FC in 1859 and dissolved in 1887; there is a team of the same name which was set up in 2009 and which now competes in the Surrey South-Eastern Combination. Wycombe played friendly matches for years, and first entered the FA Amateur Cup in 1894 and the FA Cup in 1895. They were, from choice, an amateur side, and many times declined offers to climb the Sticky Pyramid of Success and Failure; eventually they appointed Martin O’Neill as manager and moved the a new ground called the Addams Family Park (“Thing” became the club mascot for a short while, I believe). They bit the bullet, moved with the times, and joined the thronging crowds with Aspirations of Greatness

Season 1991/92 ended in disappointment in (the forerunner of) the Bananarama Conference, where they finished runners-up to Colchester on GD and missed out on promotion to the FL, but in 1992/93 they scaled The Scaffolding of Glory into the Third Division (as it was); in 1993/94 they managed to keep Martin O, despite the blandishments of Notts Forest, and they ended their inaugural season in fourth place, saw off Carlisle in the Playoff Semis, and did PNE in the Final at Wembley (4-2); they were awarded the Order of the Golden Rivets (to attach to the Scaffolding of Glory) for Going Straight Up (which is a hard thing to do!) In fact, but for reorganisation of the League structure for the next season, their 6th place finish in the Second Division would have got them a playoff berth again, but it didn’t .............. 6th was followed by 12th the season after, then 18th, but they clung on until 2003/04, when they were relegated to Division Three, which was promptly re-named League Two, making them the first – and only, I think - side to be relegated from Division Two to League Two! They then went up and down like a Whore's Drawers, winning promotion in 2008/09 (in 3rd place), going down in 2009/10, up in 2010/11 (in 3rd place) and down in 2011/12; they avoided the Greasy Pole of Oblivion in 2013/14 on GD, and won promotion in 2017/18 (in 3rd place!), beating TwistySpires Utd in the penultimate game (TwistySpires are currently 21st in the Bananarama, by the way, and in the drop zone, with 19 points from 21 games; Hartlepool have lost their last five in a row, and Leyton Hewitt-Orient are currently top of the NearlyMadeItLeague, with Salford next in line .................)

They’re not a club of great changes, to be fair, aren’t the Chairboys; seven managers in 19 years (Lawrie Sanchez, Tony Adams, John Gorman, Paul Lambert, Peter Taylor, Gary Waddock and Gareth Ainsworth), and just five departures from the squad in the summer, including comedian Max Miller (“The Cheeky Chappie”) .................. oh no, sorry, Max MULLER .......... who went to play footie at FC Astoria Waldorf (which I always thought was a Very Swanky Hotel), GK Scott Brown (no, another Scott Brown), who joined Portly Vale, another GK Henry Newcombe (who went on a JollyBoys in Margate), Will de Havilland (whose Dad made planes, if I recall, and whose brother Olivia – or was she his sister Oliver? - was in the pictures) who went to Maidstone, and perpetual favourite Luke O’Nien (aka Onion), who joined the BlackMoggies ..............

Six signed on, including two GKs to replace the two who went (Ryan Allsop from the Cherries, who came on a free – and I’ve always been told there’s no such thing as a free cherry – and Cameron Yates from Leicester); the Wombles’ Darius Charles (who once played for Ebbsfleet, who we nearly got in the FA Cup, and of whom I was one of quite a lot on one-season owners (“Own the Club – Pick the Team!”); MF Curtis Thompson from Notts County; CB Jason McCarthy from Barnsley “OwwwMuch?” FC; and striker Alex Samuel from Stevenage ........ they’ve also loaned two more GKs (why do they want four GKs?) called Matt Ingram (QPR) – who appears to have left again since, and who actually was a Wanderer from 2013 to 2016 - and veteran (= very old) David Stockdale from Brum, plus MF Fred Onyidinma from Millwall, plus a LB, another MF and a LW I’ve never heard of ...............

Their pool of strikers are AKA The ZimmerFrame Kids; Nathan Tyson’s 36; Craig Mackail-Smith’s 34, Paris Cowan-Hall is 28, they’ve got three kids of 23, 22 and 21, and – of course – they’ve still got You Fat Bastard, also 36; YFB has played 16 games this season in the League, scoring a mere four times (bet he gets a hat-trick against us, just for old-time’s sake); in the League, CM-S has 3 goals, PC-H has one, Fred O (see above) has three two – sorry, three TOO; MF Bryn Morris has 3, and Joe Jacobsen, who’s fast approaching 200 games for the Chairboys to add to the 100+ he played for the Shrews, has four (which may well all be pens!)

They failed to progress from the EFLTroffy Group, where Oxford, Northampton and Wycombe all got 6 points and Fulham u12s got regularly stuffed; in the EFL Cup they beat Northampton at home 7-6 on pens after a half-Desmond, Vegan Greenpeace Utd – also at home, and also on pens (4-3) after a half-Desmond, and then lost (at home) to Norwich by the odd goal in seven; their FA Cup run hit the buffers (I nearly typed that as buffets!) in Round One, Luton seeing them off 2-0. Famous ex players include Tony Horseman (749 appearances and 419 goals back in the day); they were, in 1961, managed for a short time by Colin McDonald, the ex Burnley GK who was in the England 1958 World Cup team; their shirts are oft-described as being Oxford and Cambridge blue quarters; the club is still owned by the Wycombe Wanderers Trust; their biggest League win was 5-0 against Burnley in April 1997; their record defeat was 7-0 at Shrewsbury in the JPT in 2008; their biggest fee received was £600k for Nathan Tyson in January 2006, paid by Notts Forest; and last season we beat them 1-0 at Ours (Mark Hughes on 70 mins) and 4-0 at Theirs (Kayden Jackson, Scott Brown, Sean McCaptain and Offrande Zanzala)

Deadline for entries is, as always, scheduled kick-off time, which is 7.45pm on Tuesday 27th November; time for a win, me’thinks, and time to shackle YFB; the top seven teams in the League are now the top seven scorers, from the 35 goals scored by the BlackMoggies, the PoshBrickies and the Hatters, down to Charlton’s 29; Donnie have 28, and we have 21, but so, you’ll have seen, do Coventry and Walsall, while Blackpool have 23 (and have still only lost 3 times, but – like us – have drawn seven) ................ we need - don’t we? – to hit the net more often than we have been doing, and what better game to start doing it and, if I may so describe it, to stop not doing it overall ....

And there are 21 different team suffixes; United, Villa, Wanderers, Rovers, City, Athletic, Hotspur, North End, Palace, Town, Albion, County, Rangers, Wednesday, Forest, Vale, Alexandra, Stanley, Borough, Argyle and Dons!

Good luck to everyone! .............. Keep the Faith! .............. Don’t be a Lidl, be a Waitrose! .............. And thanks for playing!