Accrington Web - 2021/22 Prediction League; Game 17 v Sheffield Wednesday FC (home)

Accrington Stanley

Sheffield Wednesday FC

2021/22 Prediction League Game 17; v The Owls and the Monkey FC (home)

So; that's another qualification under the belts for a World Cup that we're not going to win .... mind you, given the group we were drawn into I'd have expected a team captained by Brian Clough's Granny to have got through ..... Poland and Hungary (not the force they once were, either of them), then Albania, Andorra and San Marino ......... a half-Desmond in Hungary and another one at home to Poland gave us P10 W8 D2 GF39 GA3, and we finished with a 5-0 win against Albania and a 10-0 win in San Marino, who are the 210th ranked side out of 210, and only played their first competitive international in 1990 (a 4-0 defeat by the Swiss in the Euros) ....... they've played in the qualifiers of every World Cup and Euro since then and haven't won a game in either: in fact, they've only ever won one International (a friendly in April 2004, winning 1-0) ......... Starter for Ten, then ......... who did they beat?

Harry Cleverclogs Kane scored three in the first half v Albania and four in the first half against San Marino (half of them from the penalty spot); I think he must have switched off after the half time orange slice and cuppa........ Second Starter for Ten on that topic: only three other English players have ever scored hat tricks in consecutive England games ................ name any one of them.

And "well done" to Andorra's Ricard Fernandez, who was sent off after 20 seconds against Poland for elbowing Kamil Glik (who sounds like the Eponymous Villain in a 1920s novel), and to Germany, who beat Liechtenstein 9-0, having had 82% of the play, 42 shots against 4 (23 on target against 0). and 13 corners to nil

Big scores are nothing new, of course (ask Bon Accord and American Samoa), but a welcome to the ranks of The Greedy B*ggers to Peterborough Rangers of the fifth division of the Peterborough and District Football League, who recently beat 8-man Sawley Reserves by 40-0 ..... player manager Dwayne Rankin (as in "Top of the .......") scored 13, and said afterwards, "We just went out there and wanted to get our goal difference up" ............ Laudable in one way, but wouldn't 25 have been enough? No need to rub it in ....

Sheffield - "The Steel City" ("Me mother irons and me father steels") - is a city and metropolitan borough in South Yorkshire: the name derives (apparently) from the River Sheaf which runs through the city (wouldn't that make it Sheaffield?). It's in the eastern foothills of the Pennines, and the valleys of the River Don and its four tributaries, the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin and the Sheaf. Sixty-one per cent of Sheffield's entire area is green space (that's nice!), and a third of the city lies within the Peak District national park. There are more than 250 parks, woodlands and gardens in the city, which is estimated to contain around 4.5 million trees.

The area now occupied by the City of Sheffield is believed to have been inhabited since at least the late Upper Paleolithic Age, about 12,800 years ago (about 12,800 years ago? Says who?) The earliest evidence of human occupation in the area was found to the east of the city: in the Iron Age the area became the southernmost territory of a Pennine tribe called the Brigantes (who played in Scottish Division Two) .... Following the departure of the Romans, the area seems to have been part of the kingdom of Elmet, with the rivers Sheaf and Don forming part of the boundary between Elmet and the kingdom of Mercia. The settlements that grew and merged to form Sheffield date from the second half of the first millennium, and are of Anglo-Saxon and Danish origin. In Anglo-Saxon times, the Sheffield area straddled the border between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. (Flippin' 'eck, this is very learned, n'est-ce pas?)

Sheffield is famous for "The Full Monty", and the fact that I used to work there from time to time in the 2000s ........ probably in that order

Sheffield Wednesday Football Club ("The Owls") was formed in 1867 as an offshoot of The Wednesday Cricket Club (itself formed about 1820), and went by the name of the Wednesday Football Club until changing to their current name in 1929. Wednesday is one of the oldest football clubs in the world of any code, and the second-oldest professional football club in England. In their early years, the club was nicknamed The Blades, a term used for any sporting team from the city of Sheffield, famous the world over for its cutlery and knives (I thought knives were cutlery, but what do I know?). That nickname has been retained by Sheffield United.

It's widely assumed that the club's nickname changed to The Owls in 1899 after the club's move to Owlerton, but it wasn't until 1912, when Wednesday player George Robertson presented the club with an owl mascot, that the name took hold. A monkey mascot introduced some years earlier had not brought much luck. Probably didn't bring the monkey a lot of luck either, if Hartlepool is anything to go by .........

The move to professionalism (middle 1880s) took the club from Bramall Lane where they had played to the new Olive Grove and on then to Hillsborough. In 1889 the club became founder members of the Football Alliance, of which they were the first champions in a season where they also reached the 1890 FA Cup Final, losing 6–1 to Blackburn Rovers. Despite finishing the following season bottom of the Alliance, they were eventually elected to the expanded Football League in 1892. They won the FA Cup for the first time in 1896, beating Wolverhampton Wanderers 2–1 at Crystal Palace.

They were to win the First Division four time (1902/03 and 1903/04, and then 1928/29 and 1929/30); best finish since then was 2nd to Spurs in 1961; they won the FA Cup in 1895, 1907 and 1935 ........ They had dark days (almost being GreasyPoled to the Fourth Tier before Big Jack saved their bacon), and off the field the club was embroiled in the British betting scandal of 1964 in which three of its players, Peter Swan, David "Bronco" Layne and Tony Kay, were accused of match fixing and betting against their own team in an away game at Ipswich Town. The three were subsequently convicted and, on release from prison, banned from football for life. They were reprieved in the early 1970s, with Swan and Layne returning to Hillsborough, and, though their careers were virtually over, Swan at least played some league games for The Owls.

Wednesday were relegated from le Championnat last season, 24th of 24, with 41 points and a GD of -21 (which wasn't, in fact, the worst GD in their League (ask Derby - who should be joining us next season (if we stay up) - and Bristol City) ............. They released 24 players in the summer, including striker Jordan Rhodes and CB Tom Lees (hello Tom!), who both joined Huddersfield, MF Luke Hall who signed for Sheffield, RW Khadeem Harris (isn't that the VP of the USA?) who went to the Ukraine to play for Football Club Metalist Kharkiv (which is a great place for a Politician to go and see what's going on on the ground), LB Matt Penney to Ipswich, and Dutch MF Joey Pelupessy, who went to Turkish side Giresunspor

Nine came in, best known being Saido Berahino from Belgian side Sportvereniging Zulte Waregem (also of the Baggies and Stoke); best new name I thought was Sylla Sow, a Dutch winger from RKC Waalwijk, which is a Dutch club, currently competing in the Eredivisie: its name is derived from 'Rooms Katholieke Combinatie' (Dutch for 'Roman Catholic Combination' ) and it was established as a merger of HEC, WVB and Hercules. So there

Managed now by Darren Moore, after four games of the season (three wins and a draw without conceding a goal) they were top of the table and red hot ........... two defeats later they were twelfth, and they've been between 12th and 8th since ......... at home they're playing P8 W4 D3 L1 GF11 GA5, and away it's P9 W2 D5 L2 GF10 GA11 for a combined P17 W6 D8 L3 GF21 GA16 for 26 points and 8th place ...... their 8 draws are two Proper Desmonds, one Goalless Desmond, and five Half Desmonds ...... defeats are 1-0 at Morecambe and 3-0 at Plymouth, and 2-1 at home to Ipswich; last 7 games are two wins and five draws ....... they're out of the FA Cup, losing 3-0 at Plymouth in a replay, out of the EFL Cup 4-2 to Huddersfield on pens after a home goalless Desmond, and through to the second round of the Troffy, playing Hartlepool on 1st December

Question; have we ever played Sheffield Wednesday before? Technically, no - but Accrington did, losing 2-1 in the FA Cup in Feb 1890, losing 5-2 away in the League on 10th September 1892, but winning the return a fortnight later by 4-2 .......... however, I only count League games since 2006, so no, we haven't ....... Leading scorers are Lee Gregory with 6, followed by Florian Kamberi (Albanian, from memory) and Dennis Adeniran, each with three

Deadline for entries is, as always, scheduled kick-off time, which is 3.00pm on Saturday 20th November .......... to give myself something to talk about for the return fixture I'll leave "famous managers", "famous players" and "famous people from Sheffield" for next time ........ but on "Famous Ex England Players No Longer With Us" it was sad to see the reports of the death of Ron Flowers (who I remember seeing at Maine Road back in the late 50s) who died last week aged 87 .......... a wing half (when they had wing halves) he was a stalwart of the Wolves team for 15 years up to 1967, and then played a couple of seasons at Northampton as player-manager; 529 games recorded (but don't rely on that number) plus 49 international caps, and some 47 goals scored - and of course a member - one of the few left - of the Team of 66 ....... RIP Ron - a quality player, and a gentleman

And on the Starters for Ten; San Marino's only International win was against the Soccer Powerhouse that is Liechtenstein ....... and the three previous double-hat trick scorers were Vivian Woodward, an Amateur (or maybe a Gentleman) who played for Chelsea and Spurs, Everton's Dixie Dean, and Busby Babe Tommy Taylor ....... and the 10-0 win was England's first double-figures score line since 1964 (when they beat the USA 10-0 away), and the fourth time they've managed 10-0, although their biggest-ever international win was in 1882, 13-0 v The Little People (aka Northern Ireland). Begorrah!

Good luck to everyone! ............. Keep the Faith! ............ And thanks for playing!

COYR!

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