Tuesday 5th September, 2004
The 4-2 aggregate defeat to Manchester City in the First Division play-offs the season before last was tough to take.
We were 2-0 up from the first leg, but didn’t turn up and shat the bed for the return leg.
Can you shit the bed and not turn up? Or must one turn up to shit the bed? Maybe one must shit it twice as hard to make people think that it’s not worth turning up?
Either way; despite how deflated I felt after that semi-final loss, the results we’ve had this week have left me feeling like this has been the worst week in my management career.
A 2-0 loss away to Norwich was followed up with another defeat against QPR in the Carabao Cup at Loftus Road.
But the 7-1 hammering against last seasons Champions League winners Liverpool – with Brazilian Ronaldinho in particularly irresistible form – was the minging cherry on a shit flavored cake made of crap performances and awful results.
What’s the answer? Drinking my lovely milky sweet English breakfast tea this morning, I thought about rearranging a few things on the training ground. A week full of defensive drills; strength and endurance training. Maybe even just five full days of set piece training.
Then it dawned upon me. Shola Ame-fucking-obi
A 22 year-old, six foot three, 220lb Nigerian unit who can put a shift in, our scouting team has been keeping an eye on him after he signed his first professional contract with Newcastle a couple years back, keenly aware that it could be difficult to pry him away from the party capital of the North East to the toilet surroundings of South Yorkshire
Which now means that we have Michael Branch, Steve Kabba, Jamie Vardy, Dean Ashton and Peter Crouch up top, with the potential of Big Shola up top providing yet even more competition.
How the fuck am going to play 4-4-2 and still keep all these strikers satisfied? Why the fuck have I decided to buy so many strikers? And, is it possible to play two massive beastly Target Forwards up front, such as Ameobi and Crouch?
I had no idea what the answer was to any of these questions. But I wasn’t that going to stop spending the rest of our transfer kitty on yet another striker.
Big Shola Ameobi was coming through the doors, and I’m convinced he can head us away from the relegation zone and into mid-table obscurity.
