That Was The Season That Was 2013-14 - Part Two

Having got pre-season out of the way, in part two of our look back on the 2013-2014, Gordon Thrower covers the first three months of the season. Will Andy Carroll be making his first start of the season? Is Harry Redknapp's grasp of the truth even more tenuous than that of Joe Kinnear? The answers are "No" and "Probably". For further detail read on......

August

And so the season starts. Joe Cole and Kevin Nolan are on target as serial whipping boys Cardiff are dispatched with some comfort. The 2-0 win looks like putting us top for a bit until Aston Villa add a late goal to win 3-1 at the library. Which almost compensates for not being top. Billy Bonds receives his lifetime achievement award and seem genuinely touched by the warmth of the reception he receives.

We head north for our next match where we draw 0-0 with Newcastle. Which sounds about right. No goals conceded then in two. The same weekend sees Cardiff beat a strangely complacent Man City 3-2 at home. Funny old game.

With the window closing any day now we get linked with Honduran striker Roger Rojas. Ramjet (as nobody else will call him) arrives in London with a loan with option to buy deal on the table. Jack Sullivan tweets that the work permit paperwork has gone in for the player who has 21 goals in his last 18 matches to his name. Nothing can possibly go wrong with this one.

The club announces – again initially via Jack Sulivan's twitter account – that something has gone wrong as the deal to sign Rojas collapses when the player fails his medical.

Back on the pitch we safely negotiate the 2nd round of the League Cup beating Cheltenham Town 2-1. A stunning Vaz Te free-kick and another Morrison effort give us a 2-1 win at the Boleyn. The one down side of the win is the knee ligament injury sustained by Alou Diarra, which is thought to be serious enough to keep him out for the season.

Vaz Te follows up his League Cup goal with a transfer request. Guess whose twitter account breaks the news. Allardyce agrees that the player can go if an appropriate bid is received.

The club comes out of a tribunal hearing potentially £2m richer from the sale of Rob Hall to Bolton. The complicated structure involves a fee of £450,000 plus so much a game up to the maximum of £2m. Plus some sort of share of any fee from any future transfer.

We get our first defeat of the season courtesy of a lack-lustre performance v Stoke. It still takes a dodgy dive and some blocking in the wall from the resulting free-kick to beat us. So the departure of Pulis has changed little then.

September

Transfer deadline day interrupts everything. Vaz Te is off to Palace, then Swansea. We are linked variously with loan moves or Dember Ba, Ronan Lukaku, Jermain Defoe and a clutch of mystery unnamed players. None of whom arrive in time for the deadline.

The failure to sign a new striker prevents Vaz Te from leaving and it is announced that Carlton Cole, who, as a free agent, is outside the scope of the transfer window, will be rejoining the club having failed to find new employment following hi release at the end of last season. Cole announce that he is overchuffed at the deal. Unfortunately, the club's fitness staff announce that Cole is actually “overfed” and confirm that the player will not be rejoining the club after all. Or maybe he will if he can get fit. Possibly.

With an England break in the offing, those not involved jet off to Barcelona here they defeat Espanyol 1-0 in a friendly, courtesy of a Noble penalty. England, for their part, stroll to a 4-0 win over Moldova followed by a laboured 0-0 draw against Ukraine.

There's another setback for Andy Carroll as his troublesome heel lets him down once more in training. The news prompts a move for free-agent Mladen Petric, who, like Carlton Cole, is not fit enough to make an immediate appearance in the squad.

Strange goings on in Wales where James Collins is left out of the squad for their Word Cup qualifiers. When injuries hit, the Taffs manager Coleman claims Collins has refused to join up with the squad. Which comes as news to Collins who doesn't get so much as a text message asking him to turn up in the first place. As if they have mobile phones in Wales anyway.

As we return to League action the affair has upset Collins so much that he misses a sitter away at Southampton. Nolan also has a goal incorrectly disallowed for offside. Jaaskalainen has a decent game to keep the home side at bay as the match ends up goalless.

Matchday announcer Jeremy Nicholas throws in the towel. With Mrs N being unwell, a 60% pay cut from the club means that he can no longer afford to turn down other work on matchdays. Good timing there Ms Brady.

The already poor standard of refereeing in this country is confirmed as for the third match in a row, decisions from the officials cost us dearly. We lose 3-2 to Everton, thanks largely to having to see out the match with 10 men when Mark Noble picks up a second yellow, referee Lee Mason deciding that winning the ball in a tackle is worthy of a second yellow whilst Barkley's stamp on Morrison isn't worth a first. Morrison and Noble (pen) are on target as the ref goes unpunished.

Back to the League Cup and an “experimental but still stronger than the last round” team defeat perennial whipping boys Cardiff 3-2 despite letting a 2-0 lead slip. Morrison – in under 20 seconds again opens the scoring. Jarvis with a comedy finish to round off an otherwise splendid move adds a second. The game should be sewn up well before Cardiff pull back two dubious looking efforts – a foul and an offside – level the scores. Vaz Te celebrates not ending up at Crystal Palace with a last minute header to spare us from extra time and see us through to the next round where Burnley await.

We thought the refereeing had been poor in the Everton match but it was spot on compared with the efforts of Kevin Friend in the next match. Hull's Brady stands waiting for a challenge and when none comes he throws himself to the floor anyway. A bemused Joey O'B is adjudged to be the culprit, presumably on the grounds that he was the only player with in six feet of the diving cheat. Brady manages to recover from the imagined foul to convert the penalty. Up the other end Livermore plays basketball in front of the ref who ponders “I'm sure the law says something about that but I'm buggered if I can remember what” as we are denied a spot kick and any share of the points by refereeing incompetency.

The interaction of the officials in the last three league games has left us ending the month one spot above the relegation places. Those who are stupid enough to believe that “these things even themselves out” ought to be booking tickets for next season's so-called Champions League final.

The month ends with Collison and Henderson being shipped out on loan to Bournemouth whose first opponents are going to be Millwall. Enjoy yourselves lads.


October

Collison and Henderson feature as Bournemouth give Millwall a two goal start before sticking away five without reply. A Bournemouth player is hit by a coin thrown from the scum section. The standard statement from the club about how they're hard done by and they've worked wonders to distance the club from such moronic actions is notably absent.

It's all doom and gloom as the prospect of going to White Hart Lane looms. Even the thought of being able to laugh at the most deluded set of supporters outside Anfield doesn't lighten the mood. Which makes what happens next even more glorious. The first half is pretty even with Nolan arguably having the best chance of the half, putting a clever Noble free-kick just wide. Jaaskalainen denies Defoe early in the second half before we gain a corner. Reid's heaer is cleared off the line by Nolan but the Kiwi stabs away the rebound. Vaz Te plays a one-two off the keeper to double the lead and Ravel Morrison waltzes down half the pitch and through the Spurs “defence” to make it three at what is now known at the 03 arena. The match is a tactical triumph for Allardyce who effectively plays with no strikers in a Spanish stylie.

A former Spurs manager has his new book out and his memory is selective and unreliable as ever. He bemoans the failure of an FA committee to give him the England job saying that they “don't know anything about football” - meanwhile he claims to have been “the people's choice “ for the job. I don't know about you but I'm old fashioned enough to think that I'd prefer Sir Trevor to pick the England manager rather than a few Sun readers who have been asked “would you like Redknapp as England manager or shall we stamp on this puppy?”

England get over a frustrating first half to beat Montenegro 4-1 before turning over Poland 2-0 to seal qualification for the World Cup in Brazil. Since we've now beaten Poland in just about every qualification group since, is there any chance we can stop showing the highlights of the 1973 Wembley draw that stopped us going to Germany?

Gus Poyet takes over at Sunderland from Paolo Di Canio who gets the tin tack after a string of unimpressive results and rumours of mutiny amongst the playing staff. Blimey. Never saw that coming. Failed politician and genocide apologist Dave Miliband is sadly (and that word is used quite incorrectly) unavailable for comment.

Also on his bike in October is Ian Holloway whose walks when his Palace side gets a thumping from an average Fulham team. Meanwhile the Redknapp autobiography is roundly ridiculed as even the usually taciturn Billy Bonds MBE is moved to point out that the tome bears about as much relationship to the truth as a Joe Kinnear press conference. “He's been a bit liberal with the truth” and “pathetic” are two of the comments that Billy makes during the excellent kumb.com podcast which gets widely quoted in the national papers, some of whom even remember to give us credit.

Brendan Rodgers is the latest person to query the book. “When I took over the England job Rodgers was going to be my no.2”. Says the book.“Was I?” said Rodgers, pointing out that all he had said was that he might think about it in the event that Redknapp actually got the job.

Back on the pitch we go down 3-1 at home to Man City. Vaz Te's overhead kick is the one bright spot of the game as the “false no.9” tactic is shown up to be effective only against really poor teams like Tottenham.

The snappily-named Asteroid 2013 TV135 is discovered and it is announced that it has a 1:63,000 chance of colliding with Earth. Queues form at bookies nationwide as punters dither as to whether to put their money on a Fernando Torres goal or the asteroid.

A storm in a teacup brews as it is revealed that a load of tickets were sold to community groups for the Man City match for a fiver. The row erupts as a group of Muslim supporters hold a prayer session during the match underneath the Sir Trevor Brooking stand. Some supporters feel that the prayer session is out of place whilst others are more naused-off by the fact that tickets for a top category (and therefore rather expensive) match were given away for a fiver. The club denies that any particular religious or racial group were targeted for the tickets and issues a wide and extensive list of groups that have benefited from the scheme, though the revelation that a local doctor was amongst the recipients of the cheapos didn't improve the mood amongst those priced out of the match.

Much needed light relief comes courtesy yet again of Henry Redknapp esq. Who is persuaded by someone who hadn't quite thought it through to do a Q&A on Twitter. The whole thing grinds to a halt as a stream of questions appear such as:

"Please can you help train my dog? I can't get him to sit, or beg, yet you got yours to open an off-shore bank account."

“I've dropped a load of pins. I don't want to tread on them. Can I ask about tacks avoidance?” and

“Is it coincidence the building you owned in Southsea burnt down after you were denied planning permission to turn it into luxury flats?”.

One final question of “have you sacked your PR yet” also goes unanswered, though we can make an educated guess.

The league month draws to a close with a 0-0 draw away at Swansea. The lack of striking options is all too prevalent as defenders and midfielders miss a number of good chances to give us all three points. Forward options are reduced even further by the news that Ricardo Vaz Te has dislocated his shoulder resulting in a lengthy absence.

There's just time in the month to fit in a trip to Burnley who are beaten 2-0 in the League Cup at Turf Moor. Taylor and Collison are both on target from the spot to send us through to the quarter finals, where we are given a bye into the semis courtesy of us being drawn away to Spurs.

So the first three calendar months of the year leaves us a point above the drop zone. Our strikers consist of a confidence-free Maiga and two free agents of limited fitness.

Concerned?

You bet.

* Like to share your thoughts on this article? Please visit the KUMB Forum to leave a comment.

* Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the highlighted author/s and do not necessarily represent or reflect the official policy or position of KUMB.com.


More Opinion