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Preview Percy looks at footballers who aren’t quite dead yet, the naming of thoroughfares in a certain part of Dorset and just how the current US Government might mess up the 2026 World cup. Oh and Saturday’s visit of Bournemouth...

Next up we play host to AFC Bournemouth at the Olympic. It’s a Saturday 3pm kick-off which is right and proper for the order of the universe.




A couple of spots of engineering work to note this week. If you come in from Colchester and points east thereof there will be no direct service into Stratford/Liverpool Street on Saturday. Instead a rail replacement bus service will whisk you between Colchester and Billericay where you will be greeted by the usual service between London and Southend Victoria.

Also there’s no DLR service at the highly useful (if you can stomach sharing a train with the sort of person who thinks Abba were good) Pudding Mill Lane station. No replacement buses or anything, just find an alternative route is the instruction. Thanks a bunch TfL.

So Bournemouth then. Well driving back home from one’s visit to see the parental unit at the weekend the commentators on the wireless seemed unable to go for more than 30 seconds without mentioning what a great season the Cherries were having, largely because they had reached the FA Cup Quarter-Finals for the first time since they had started broadcasting in colour or something.

All of that may have been deflecting from the fact their form in the league has been rather indifferent of late. Since the beginning of February they have played seven times losing five, drawing one and winning one. And since the win came against Southampton it probably shouldn’t count anyway.

The draw came at Tottenham whilst the defeats came at home to Liverpool, Wolves, Brentford and, intriguingly the other night to Ipswich whist they also went down away at Brighton.

So whilst there had been much talk earlier on in the season of Europe, that talk has been a bit muted of late, though much will of course depend on how far down the table European qualification goes this season once they get the abacus out to calculate the co-efficient.

At present they sit in 10th place with 44 points from the 30 played so far, which is six points off the fifth spot occupied by Chelsea who are in play at the time of writing.

They are one of the few teams to do much in the way of business during the winter window, much to the dismay of Daisy who had to do some player research for the second week running. At 18 years-old, Mati Akinmboni is probably being looked at as one for the future.

The US Under 19 central defender fetched a nice round £1m fee on his transfer from the inelegantly-named DC United. Given the state of play over there at the moment he’d have probably paid £1m just to escape the country. He’s yet to make an appearance for the first XI.




They paid a bit more for Argentinian left back/wing back Julio Soler (no relation). The initial fee paid to Lanus was £6.6m but that could rise to £11m plus if add-ons get activated. Although Paraguayan by birth he moved to Argentina at a young age and has represented his adopted country at Under 20 and Under 23 level. Both of Soler’s appearances for the Cherries have come in the Cup.

We won’t be seeing the final signing of the window. Eli Junior Kroupi was bought for £10m from L’Orient, which as we all know is French for Leyton. Bournemouth immediately loaned the player back to “Les O’s” for the rest of the season. In what must have been a slow news day for the Guardian, they named him as one of the best players born in the world in 2006. On a Thursday. Probably.

Let’s move on to the Wild & Wacky World Of Association Football. And it was a case of “they all lived happily ever after” out in Bulgaria as top-flight side Arda Kardzhali welcomed former player Petko Ganchev as their special guest for their match against Cherno More.

Nothing remarkable about that you might think. Well other than the fact that the invite came a mere two weeks after the club had held a minute’s silence to mark the player’s passing.

Ganchev commented that he was so shocked to hear that he was dead he poured himself a brandy. The club blamed the “receipt of wrong information” for their error. Yes really. Meanwhile Spurs immediately put in a bid for the 78 year-old on the grounds that he was probably a free agent, a prospect that would probably have Ganchev reaching for the rest of that bottle.

Meanwhile Donald Trump has announced the creation of a “White House World Cup Taskforce” which will be charged with ensuring that next year’s tournament runs smoothly. So look out for a player being clean through on goal against the hosts being taken out by immigration officers and deported just as they reach the edge of the box as denial of goalscoring opportunity becomes official US government policy.

Look out also for the home side getting knocked out in the group stages, but the tournament being delayed for months as the results go through the courts system because the other countries “Stole The Tournament”.

Enough of this biting political satire and on to us. Us? Well that was a bit of a dog’s dinner, wasn’t it.

We set out with what was best described as an experimental starting line-up giving rare starts to Luis Guilherme and Evan Ferguson. Ferguson’s lack of form manifested itself in another scuffed miss that, although the pass was slightly behind where he might have wanted it, he still would have adapted enough to have put away before his lay-off.




Clearly that long injury absence has done him few favours. At half time, the experiment having been deemed a failure by Mr Potter, a triple change saw us with a more familiar shape and it showed. Niclas Fullkrug missed one he should have scored and hit the bar with another.

Worst of all was the usually reliable Tomas Soucek missing from close range. Fullkrug was handily-placed in the centre which got me musing as to the motive behind Soucek’s decision not to square the ball.

Of course, no game is complete without PGMOL’s finest electing to rewrite the laws of the game – this time we found out that a kick in the head no longer constitutes an offence for which a free-kick will be given. You think that they’d announce these things, wouldn’t you.

So the game was sadly symptomatic of where the season has gone. Two teams safe from relegation with no danger of much else happening. From our point of view it was clear that Mr Potter has a number of players in his inherited squad who he wanted to have a look at in the starting line-up, rather than from the perspective of 20 minutes at the end of the game.

I think it’s fair to say that by the time this fixture occurs next season, our squad will look a lot different as the manager develops a squad he wants to work with.

On the injury front, Michail Antonio and Crysencio Summerville are the two long-term absentees. They may be joined by Mohammed Kudus whose hip “knock” the day before the Wolves game was poorly timed, such was the extent to which Tuesday’s game was crying out for someone to run powerfully at a Wolves defence singularly ill-equipped to deal with such matters.

His hip problem is improving so there is a chance that he will be available. Jean Clair Todibo was under the weather with an unspecified illness on Tuesday but seems to be recovering well whilst Emerson should also be clear after a knock picked up at Molineux.

And so on to the prediction, then. Well, I think Mr Potter may have discovered enough about some of his fringe players to revert to a less experimental line-up, injuries permitting. Bournemouth are out of form and, presuming we put a league side out rather than Tuesday’s League Cup-style starting line-up I think we will get back to winning ways.

So the £2.50 I was going to put towards augmenting Canvey Island’s defences in case Trump decides to annex the place, will instead be placed on a home win. Make it 2-1 to us please Mr Winstone.

Enjoy the game!




When Last We met At The Olympic: Won 1-0 League Cup August 2024

Both sides missed decent chances throughout a warm and sultry evening so it was probably inevitable that the tie would be decided on something of a fluke. Kudus’s shot from the edge of the box took a wicked deflection off Bowen to wrong-foot the ‘keeper and spare us penalties. The visitors claimed that the ball had come off Bowen’s arm but with no VAR in use common sense prevailed and the goal, which would have stood in pretty much any other era, counted so we could all get off home.

Referee: Tim Robinson

Last seen at Villa Park in January where, inexplicably, nobody thought to submit the hapless whistle-blower to a random drug test. Villa’s equaliser came from a corner that resulted from a shot that didn’t get within 5 yards of a defender on its way 15 yards wide of the post. Robinson then went on to ignore Rogers committing two identical yellow card offences, leaving the winner to be scored by a player who shouldn’t have been on the pitch. So pretty much par for the PGMOL course then.

Danger Man: Justin Kluivert

Top scorer this season with 15 across all competitions, though his manager claims he was exhausted at the end of Sunday’s cup match.

Percy and Daisy’s Bournemouth Fact Of The Week Type Thing

Apparently Bournemouth only has one street. It is said that the good councillors of Bournemouth and Boscombe back in the day thought the word “Street” sounded too working class so there are all sorts of roads, avenues and what have you but just the one street which presumably slipped through the net due to an admin error.

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