2020/21 Prediction League; Game 3 v Oxford United (home)

Div3North · 24-09-2020, 00:53

Accrington Stanley

v

Oxford United

2020/21 Prediction League; Game 3 v Oxford Utd (home)

I thought that someone might have asked about, or commented on, the fact that I started last week’s thread with a joke (“Is that a custard, or a meringue?” .......... “No, yer no wrang, it’s a custard”) ...... nobody did, which I put down to the fact that you were either all too polite, or possibly all too p1ssd ................. in fact, the joke has a football connection, which is why it was there; the comedian whose act still includes the routine that gag comes from (the drunken radio announcer who hates kids and broadcasts the Noddy Show (p1ssd) every Monday) - in the days before he started entertaining at Poncetins - was on the books of Portly Vale as a GK; this was Back in the Days, when Sir Stanley Matthews was General Manager at the Valiants, and our star turn – although he didn’t make the grade – was good enough to play in the England Youth team trials, only to lose out, eventually, to Peter Shilton ................ and your Starter for Ten is; who is he?

And sadly, as promised; In Memoriam - The Silkmen

And Lo, It Came to Pass that at a public meeting on 21 October 1876 it was agreed that the 8th Cheshire Rifle Volunteers and the Olympic Cricket Club teams would be merged to form Macclesfield F.C.; initially their matches apparently alternated between association and rugby rules (you’d give away a shed-load of penalties if you forgot which game you were playing one week!). At the beginning of 1878–79 MUFC (no, not Man Utd FC) merged with Macclesfield Football Club; the new club played in the FA Cup competition for the first time on 18 November 1882, apparently losing 3–4 to Lockwood Brothers – an amateur works team from Sheffield (hands up who knew they’d been in the FA Cup); the info on Lockwood Brothers FC charts their four years in the Cup but makes no mention of Macclesfield ........ They became members of The Combination at the start of the 1890–91 season, and moved to Moss Rose on 12 September 1891, which remained their home for 129 years

The Silkies were founding members of the Cheshire County League in 1919–20; renamed Macclesfield Town in 1946, they were then founder members of the Northern Premier League in 1968, winning the league in its first two years. They made it to the Conference in 1986–87, and Sammy McIlroy led them to the Conference title in 1993–94, although they weren’t promoted because Moss Rose didn’t meet Football League requirements. However, they won the Conference title again in 1996–97 and this time were promoted, going straight up again in their inaugural FL campaign (1997/98) with a second-place finish in Division 4 (17 points behind Notts Co and 7 ahead of Lincoln); they were GreasyPoled after just one season in Div3, and stayed in the fourth tier from 1999 to 2012 before dropping back to the Conference. Despite financial problems, manager John Askey led Macc back into the FL in 2017–18, winning the Bananarama, but significant financial issues continued to affect the club , and it was relegated to the National League following a savage points deduction activated on 11 August 2020, and wound up by the High Court with (at least) large six-figure debts on 16th September, making Tim Flowers’ reign as Manager one of the shortest on record .....

Biggest ever League victory was 6-0 against Stockpot, and biggest defeat was 8-0 v the Hammers in the EFL Cup in 2018/19; the most they ever paid for a player was £40,000 to Bury for Danny Swailes, they got £300k from Stockpot for Rickie Lambert, and their oldest-ever player in a League game was Paul Ince, aged 39 years and 196 days ............. Most appearances was John Askey (see above) – who managed Shrewsbury and currently Port Vale – while Most Goals In a Season title holder is Fatso Parkin (with 22), one of several overweight strikers who’ve scored hat-tricks against us in the Old Days ............ including, of course, You Fat Bastard .....

I suspect that it won’t be long before we find there’s a Phoenix League been formed, comprising Les Disparues - the teams who’ve disappeared and been born again .......... Bury, Aldershot, Halifax, lots more – and Macclesfield .......... in the days of my youth, when I watched Altrincham, Macc and Stalybridge were always among our big rivals ......... so good luck Macclesfield Phoenix, and RIP Macclesfield Town

Oxford is the County Town of Oxfordshire, a City with an estimated population as at 2016 of 170,350 (although I believe two of them did a moonlight to avoid the tallyman recently), the 52nd-largest city in England, and one of the most ethnically diverse, which might have something to do with the University .... It housed the Court of King Charles 1st during the Civil War (1642) after he was expelled from London, and the Court of King Charles 2nd during the Great Plague (1665/66) – so both times during a National Emergency – and there must be a chance therefore of Charlie and Camilla descending there one of these days; the National Emergency then might well be Randy Andy, who’s a disaster of epic proportions ..........

The University of Oxford maintains the largest university library (the Bodleian) in the UK, and, with over 11 million volumes housed on 120 miles of shelving, it’s the second-largest in the UK, after the British Library. It’s also a legal deposit library, which means that it’s entitled to request a free copy of every book published in the UK; as such, its collection is growing at a rate of over three miles of shelving every year ..... And Oxford, you might like to know, is ‘twinned’ among other places with Bonn (Germany), Grenoble (France), Ramallah (Palestine) and Padua in Italy ... all I know about Padua comes from “Kiss Me Kate” ...

“We open in Venice, we next play Verona,
Then on to Cremona (lotsa laughs in Cremona)
Our next jump is Parma, that stingy, dingy menace,
Then Mantua, then Padua, then we open again, where?”

There was a Prison – you know I like Prisons - in Oxford (in the Castle), but it closed in 1996; its most famous inmate was maybe Mary Blandy (1720 – 6 April 1752), who was an eighteenth century English murderess having, in 1751, poisoned her father Francis Blandy with arsenic. She claimed that she thought the arsenic was a love potion that would make her father approve of her relationship with William Henry Cranstoun, an army officer and son of a Scottish nobleman ........... yeah, right, darling, pull the other one! (Which is probably exactly what the hangman did .....)

Oxford also has several football teams, one of which plays in the EFL, having climbed there in dead mens’ shoes (you know of what I speak!); Oxford United – for such it is – was formed in Headington in 1893; they joined the League in 1962, and in just 23 years achieved a place at the Top Table (Division One), having had two promotions in successive years (83/84, when they were 8 points ahead of Wimbledon and 12 ahead of the Blades, and 84/85, when they headed Birmingham by 2 points and Man City by 10), managed by the Bald Eagle (Jim Smith) – who then went to QPR! In their first season in the First Division they finished 18th of 22, one point and six goals above the DropSlots, and won the League Cup to boot, although they missed out on Europe ....

They finished last season in 4th place; they drew twice in the PlayOff semis with Pompey (one and a half Desmonds in total), and then did them 5-4 on penalties, only to lose 2-1 to Wycombe in the P/O Final , Joe Jacobson hitting the winner from the spot on 79 minutes (and YFB subbing on after 62 mins) .... Oxford had 76% of the possession, 13 shots to 5, and 8 corners to 2; summat, I suspect, to do with the Voodoo Gods of Football .......... and said V Gs of F have carried on sticking pins into wax effigies, because Oxford are currently plumb last in the table – P2 L2 GF 0 GA4 Pts 0 - although 4 goals conceded isn’t the worst (Wigan are on 5 and the Wombles have let in 6 in two draws, although they’re also the biggest scorers with 6) ........ Oxford got nowt at Lincoln (0-2) and the same at home to Slumberland (0-2) .......... and it won’t have escaped your notice that after 90 mins last Saturday the Posh were also on nul points, before two goals on 90+1 and 90+5 spoiled Joey Barton’s chippie tea .............mwahahahahaha!

Five departed the Victor Kyam Kassam Stadium (“I liked it so much I bought the Club”) ... striker Jamie Mackie retired, DM George Thorne was released (or he might have escaped, I’m not sure), CB Robert Dickie joined QPR, GK Max Harris went free to Cheltenham and MF Aaron McCreadie moved to Gosport ......... they signed seven, of whom four were strikers (Sam Winnall from the Owls, French-born Derick Osei from Stade Brestois 29 (Brittany) who play in Ligue 1 en francais (“Ici, cretin, sur ma tete”), Dylan Asonganyi from the Dons, and Matty Taylor from Bristol City) which probably explains why they haven’t scored yet; their other signings include Sean Clare – who we had on loan in 2017 – who they signed from Hearts, a left winger and a centre-back ........ Manager is still Karl Robinson, leading scorer is ....erm ..... the whole squad, and the likelihood of them finishing in the bottom four is slight; I’m not sure that the same can be said of Wigan and Crewe, currently 22nd and 23rd ...... Crewe have no goals; Wigan have two, but they don’t have a pot to p1ss in, have released/sold 21 players, have four GKs (two Jones’s, an Evans and a Tickle), have lost twice in the League and once in the EFL Cup, and whose only win was on Tuesday when the beat Liverpool u9s 6-1 in the Troffy ......................

And your second Starter for Ten is this; the current longest-serving manager in the EFL/Premiership is Gareth Ainsworth at Wycombe (followed by Sean Dyche, John Coleman and Jurgen Klopp): true or false?

Deadline for entries is, as always, scheduled kick-off time, which is 3.00pm on Saturday 26th September with a crowd limit of zero .......... Last season we took a point with a HomeDesmond, three of the four goals being scored by players who are now – less than a year on from the game - ex-Stanley (Clicker on 59 and Zanzala on 73 for us, with Tariqe Kumahl Malachi Akwesi Fosu-Henry on 28 and MF Cameron Brannagan on 70 for them) ........... the return game saw us stuffed 3-0 just before the season halted .......... and although we hope the players will try to improve their performance and the result from last week, we shouldn’t forget that none of the PL players even forecast the result correctly, so we also need to look to our own performance – and where are the missing names among our ranks? Where’s Wynonie? Where’s DaveInDeutschland? Come back guys, all is forgiven .......... Well, nearly all ...............

And the goalkeeper/comedian (aren’t they all) is Michael Lawton, better known as Mick Miller,, who rose to fame in The Comedians, and is the guy with the bald head and the curtain of hair lower down, and the longest serving manager in the EFL is now Harrogate Town’s Simon Weaver, who’s been in the hot seat since 2009 .......... good thing his Dad owns the Club!

Good luck to everyone! ………….. Stay safe and keep well! ………… And thanks for playing!