SUE Gray has completely exonerated the chairman of any wrongdoing in her report filed this week.
The inquiry found the vice chairman guilty of touching several children in his club’s academy, and Sue Gray has reported him to the police.
The vice chairman’s side was ditched out of the Covid Cup this week ahead of the knockout round, along with Judean Peoples’ Front, Thieving Magpies, and Test Team (please ignore).
“When I arrive at the transfer window on Saturday the chairman’s going to get both barrels,” fumed the vice chairman while loading his colonial cosplay elephant gun.
Even though the window promises to be a special event, with many league members not having seen each other in person for at least two years, the managers of Reds and Casuals maintain they’ll be drinking nothing stronger than coffee on the 10.34 from Oxford.
Transfer window schedule this Saturday
11.37am – Idris Elba tries to get into the Colton Arms but is turned away
12pm – managers gather in the Colton Arms
12.45pm – window opens
6pm – window closes
Free agents scoring at least three points a week this season
NOT for the first time the Dynamo Charlton manager goes into Friday’s transfer window with the biggest budget to waggle around.
The spendthrift Surrey man takes £46.5m into the open market auction looking to fill a space vacated by Ander Herrera.
The Dynamo manager is sure to light up the window with big spending on one of the three top-scoring available players: Stephen Ward, Chris Lowe or Richarlison.
“I can’t wait,” said the Dynamo manager to media outside the club’s Stone Lake training facility.
He’s the richest of the 19 managers to claim the £10m bonus for releasing players before midday today.
Here are some some headline stats from Kenna deadline day plus all the released players and remaining budgets:
19 – managers to release players
47 – players released
£46.m – biggest manager budget (Dynamo Charlton)
£11m – smallest budget (Walthamstow Reds and Thieving Magpies)
5 – most player released by a single manager (Judean Peoples’ Front)
4 – Bramble players released
2 – managers who made no contact at all with Kenna HQ
THE Green Man is a fabulous cider pub just a short walk from Oxford Circus.
On Friday evening it was peopled mainly by local office workers, with tourists cheerfully beyond the ken of the pub’s tucked-away location.
Many tipplers were huddled smoking outside on the pavement, despite the inclement February weather of Storm Frank, Godfrey, Henrietta, Ivanhoe or whatever the Met Office have begun overzealously renaming the same kind of wind and rain each week.
Inside the bar faces the front door and large windows. A high ceiling provides patrons with plenty of headroom to enjoy the multitude of beers and ciders. The Veltins and the Thatchers Old Rascal were delightful.
For a Kenna transfer window it was cramped. Managerial grumbles were heard of the pub’s unsuitable aspect on more than several occasions.
Against this dissent the show went on, as the league packed around a high corner table to make themselves heard over the din of ad agency creatives who regularly take deliveries on late Friday afternoons.
Business was conducted swiftly and with the minimum of fuss. In fact, it was so Bramble free an emergency meeting was convened immediately afterwards between the chairman, vice chairman and whoever else happened to be waiting for bar service nearby at the time.
The chairman summed up Kenna HQ’s dilemma at a press conference this morning.
“The simple fact is: managers aren’t drinking enough,” he said upon showing a deadly Periscope video replay of a bunch of managers crowded around a small table full of pint glasses carefully studying lists of available players.
“We need to introduce some sort of spirits imbibing system into league meetings. No one’s Brambling, no one’s resigning in anger halfway through auctions and no one’s almost coming to blows over whether a contravention of made-up, fantasy-football-league regulation minutiae constitutes a breach of gentlemanly conduct,” said the chairman in reference to the acrimonious 2012 Emmanuel Olisadebe Euros auction.
“Four years ago we had a shot of tequila midway through the Euros auction and look what happened. When it comes to the [2016 Jean-Alain] Boumsong auction in June managers should prepare themselves for carnage.”
An increase in entry fees to cover rounds of moody top-shelf spirits is among rumours to be on the drawing board.
The chairman was heard to say after the press conference that plans a manager would drink a shot for every player bought would ‘be the next vanishing spray’.
KENNA managers were set the task of releasing players for tomorrow’s second transfer window in the form a death threat to the chairman.
Just fewer than half the league responded to the challenge, with varying degrees of creativity and menace.
No one went so far as to nail the cat to the door of Kenna HQ or send a funeral wreath, which for any fantasy football league chairman is always a bonus.
The top five death threats are below, as well as this week’s table (not including Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s games).
For the first time, the transfer window will be broadcast live from The Green Man on the borders of Fitzrovia and Marylebone using Periscope. Absent managers can bid at https://www.periscope.tv/jeffkennaleague.
Regardless of whether they’ve released players or not, Kenna managers can still play one wildcard when the window is open between 7pm and 10pm tomorrow night.
A full list of available players and managers’ remaining budgets will be published at Friday lunchtime.
The Lokomotiv Leeds manager was the first to admit this was less of a death threat and more a reminder even the chairman’s side could come unstuck by scandal. However, still very amusing although there’s a greater threat Funky Pigeon has reported the LL boss to the authorities.
One of many classic lines from that Alan Partridge sex swap episode. The release graphic was a highlight, but the close is far too polite, softening the sinister connotations of the kiss at the end.
The Reds boss has gone to the trouble of creating an innovative word puzzle death threat which contains an actual threat on the chairman’s life, while simultaneously appealing to his penchant for crosswords. Marks taken off for using a space for a hyphen. Not great crossword etiquette.
A jump in death threat class to a message with proper intent and intimidation. It’s a blurry image, but it doesn’t take much imagination to decipher the Anders Breivik lookalike’s promise to rain down judgement not just on the chairman but the whole league. He also takes time to single out the Young Boys manager, a definite plus. The coffee ring shows this has been on display at Kenna HQ all week.
Personal and chilling. The Young Boys manager has taken time to rifle through the chairman’s social media profiles to dig out the aftermath of Cambodian tuk tuk misadventure. Insinuates the YB boss was somehow behind the 2007 road traffic accident while threatening further harm. Inside is a clear threat to take over the league.
NEXT Friday heralds the Kenna League’s second and last transfer window of the season.
A typically scratchy affair, without a host of available players, a handful of footballers will command eye-watering sums of Kenna club war chests for showing even the briefest hint of form.
Here are eight of the most likely candidates.
1. Charlie Austin, Southampton striker
Despite rumours he spends more time in pubs than the Kenna chairman, Austin has not only managed to get into league but also scored a goal on the weekend. Albeit completely unmarked against an opposition defence struggling for form and consistency, bids will be readied from all corners of the Kenna management. Except, that is, for the Walthamstow Reds boss, who bought Austin on the basis of tittle tattle in August only to release him again at the October window when a move didn’t materialise. Kenna regulations prevent the Reds manager buying back Austin this season, so he’ll be a spectator while others court the striker.
2. Jermian Defoe, Sunderland striker
Given the choice of releasing Defoe for the promise of Anthony Martial in early October, many would have followed the path of the cash-rich Dynamo Charlton manager. Sadly for the south London outfit the Frenchman’s form has evaporated while Kenna veteran Defoe has scored five goals in the last five games.
3. Delle Ali, Tottenham midfielder
A sumptuous strike on the Saturday, and week-in-week-out appearances of guile and creativity would make one think this midfielder was a household name. Ali’s now scored more points this season than Eric Lamela, Nacer Chadli and Moussa Dembele. Will Tottenham midfielders flood the market to make way next Friday?
4. Adam Johnson, Sunderland midfielder
Eager to disassociate himself from the consequences of inappropriately touching a schoolgirl, the Wandsworth Network Solutions manager handed Adam Johnson his P45 at the October window to the sound of terrace speculation about the nature and geography of his alleged offences. Since then the winger has gone on provide nine assists and occupy a central midfield creative role. Are any Kenna managers desperate enough to sign Johnson just five days before his appointed trial date? Yes. Yes, they are.
5. Claude Makalele
Of course, the diminutive Frenchman no longer patrols the outskirts of Kenna auctions, but his patented role certainly does. The likes of Southampton’s Steven Davis, Sunderland’s Yann M’Vila, Norwich’s Jonny Howson and Aston Villa’s Idrissa Gueye don’t create many chances, let alone score, but they have all made at least 20 full appearances this season. While not appealing to the hope of flair on a balmy August afternoon, on a cold night February these players are the chance to fill those non-scoring gaps a manager’s midfield.
6. Wes Morgan
A defender and club captain who has started almost every game and whose side are top of the Premier League. A Kenna manager must have snaffled Morgan already.
7. Enner Valencia
This compact Ecuadorian burst into Kenna consciousness in the 2014 Emerson World Cup with his explosive and direct displays for his country. He was having a stop-start sort of season but has come alive to score four goals in the last two games. Anyone in the Young Boys manager’s technical area would surely be considering the release of Diafra Sakho to make way.
8. Andros Townsend
No, not really. This is just in here as a joke. The last time someone signed ‘Dros’ Townsend in the February window they forfeit a debut Kenna League title. Literally.
CASTING around for a pub for Saturday’s Kenna transfer window, league blazers found a previous auction venue had rebranded.
It was worthy of note only because The Golden Fleece in the City of London, which now belongs to the Metropolitan Pub Company, hosted the August 2012 auction scene of the infamous ‘Bramble Hour’. More of that later.
The Metropolitan Pub Company also runs the Kings Stores, a back street boozer in Spitalfields where managers congregated for Saturday’s second and final window of the Kenna League season.
The pub proved to be an excellent venue, but it wasn’t the interesting range of beers or smart decor that most remarkable. The table service available to the 10 managers gathered was superb.
The man on duty Tumi was attentive and friendly, always on hand to take a drinks order and keeping up with everyone’s individual tabs, all while rendering the same care to other patrons.
Service of this sort was thought to have died with the Victorian era, but the gaggles of passing Jack The Ripper tourists could well have marvelled that like beery conversations between Londoners in narrow thoroughfares outside buzzing pubs, this heritage survives into the 21st Century.
A Kenna tradition in no danger of being scotched is the transfer window turning into a farce after a couple of hours. The steady flow of craft lager did not disappoint.
Just as the summer 2012 auction saw 60 treacherous minutes of managers falling over the Titus Bramble forfeit ruling after a few drinks, Saturday saw two relegation-embroiled sides suffer from all sorts of recklessness.
Going into the window to make a record 10 changes to his side, the Fat Ladies manager even contrived to lose his one remaining player – and only decent one at that – Daniel Sturridge.
After watching the north London derby followed by three hours of transfer activity, the exact events are hazy. Nevertheless, a clear memory remains of the Fat Ladies labouring under the assumption Jonathan Walters was a midfielder, buying one striker too many and ending with a forfeit player.
So called ‘Bramble players’ are chosen as much for their current affairs status as for their inability to add any value to a club. For this window the outgoing members of Rotherham Council and convicted deviant Paul Gadd were being doled out to errant managers.
At the foot of the table, the Hoxton Pirates manager’s last chance of salvation was beached when he ended the night with two northern councillors and the former rock star numbered among his ranks.
Like the quality of the pub itself, the Pirates manager’s protest and the debate to follow therein will live long in the memory of all managers present. Gary Glitter: midfielder or defender?
All new signings will begin scoring from tonight. For a full roundup of the weekend’s scores download The Rub.
Storm through the window: FC Testiculadew scouts are on the lookout for talent ahead of the transfer window.
IF all the Kenna managers lived on a surburban mews, this would be the most vigorous week of curtain twitching.
The season’s second and final transfer window takes place next Saturday and managers will be keen to size up which footballers they can sign to most improve their teams. The events of the afternoon will decide who lifts the league title in May.
Managers have until next Thursday to send their players to be released to Kenna HQ – by post if they want to claim the £10m war chest supplement.
Here are five most pertinent questions dogging every Kenna manager this week.
1. Can Lesbians resist a little fiddle?
The Sporting Lesbians manager is having a dream season. Alexis Sanchez and Graziano Pelle up front in their first season in England playing like they’re to the Kenna born, a back five of De Gea, Coleman, Demichelis, Luis and Tomkins all putting in a shift from week one and a modestly creative midfield where even Egyptian flake Ahmed Elmohamady has become a regular starter.
At 77 points ahead of the pack Lesbians can surely cruise towards their second league title. But with a couple of pints in him come next Saturday, will the manager stand idly by only to regret his inaction come May? Or will the finger slide tantilisingly towards the button of release? Just a quick play, temptation will say, it’s so naughty but it feels so good…and then ‘pow!’ You’ve just bought Morgan Amalfitano, stuck a Bramble a sensitive area and blood’s running down your leg.
2. Does the Lokomotiv manager sell Bony or Silva?
Hovering just outside a top four finish, the Lokomotiv Leeds manager has the opportunity to turn this window into a springboard to riches but he faces the Bramble-tied quandary of the season. Does he stay with the squat Spanish Merlin David Silva or gamble on the power of Wilfred Bony. The Cote D’Ivoire striker will need time to recover from his country’s customary choke in the African Cup of Nations, but upon his return think of all the goals he could score.
3. Can the Cowley Casuals manager pull it off again?
If transfer windows were competitions taken isolation, the Cowley Casuals manager could be considered to have won in October. While Sporting Lesbians flicked a quick tinker in midfield, Cowley Casuals rummaged around to make four signings who have all contributed to the side’s occupation of second in the table. Casuals still have a fair amount of catching up to do, so the manager is left with a choice of hoping his eleven make it over the finish line or having a clear out.
4. Who’s got the most money left?
No one will be able to match the Dynamo Charlton manager’s desperate attempt to buy his way out of the relegation zone. Replacing Rickie Lambert with Harry Kane should be top of his list of priorities, or at least equal with busting some onions over attitude in the general area of Bafetimbi Gomis.
At fourth and fifth place in the league respectively, St Reatham FC and Hairy Fadjeetas have the most control over their destinies with each having over £20m in the war chest. Both managers will be in the Alps next weekend. How much will that impact on their tactics?
Moneybags
Averagebags
Grotbags
Dynamo Charlton – £45.5m
Piedmonte – £26.5m
Hairy Fadjeetas – £25m
St Reatham FC – £20.5m
Fat Ladies – £20.5m
Team Panda Rules OK – £19.5M
Bala Rinas – £16m
Just Put Carles – £15m
Headless Chickens – £14.5m
Cowley Casuals – £13.5m
Young Boys – £12m
Still Don’t Know Yet – £10.5m
Pikey Scum – £10m
Lokomotiv Leeds – £9.5m
Judean Peoples’ Front – £8m
Hoxton Pirates – £7m
Walthamstow Reds – £3.5m
Sporting Lesbian – £3.5m
FC Testiculadew – £2.5m
KS West Green – £0.5m
5. Who are the biggest targets?
Strikers
Up front Harry Kane has managers crowding around the shop window. With Senegal out of the ACN, Mame Diouf may turn heads. Andreas Wiemann could be a solid replacement for injury. Ashley Barnes and Eduardo Vargas are wildcard options.
Midfielders
Managers will be hoping Leroy ‘The Bouncer’ Fer continues to assault the opposition penalty area rather than their creative midfielders. He’s the top scoring available midfielder. Morgan Amalfitano is rapidly turning into the next Chris Brunt in Kenna terms – temperamental form merchants. James Ward-Prowse is having a promising run.
Defenders Astounding as it seems, Toby Alderweireld is still out there. He’s the second-highest scoring defender behind household shrug Aaron Cresswell. Aly Cissokho is third. KS West Green reject Mamadou Sakho is back in favour.
Goalkeepers
Three available goalkeepers are scoring well, which means there must be three Kenna managers looking to improve in that position. They’ll have to fight so dirty over Adrian, Lukas Fabianski and Rob Green that seedy men in mackintoshes are being charged to peep through the keyhole at that scene.
Full scores, tables and disciplinary records available at The Rub.
At the top you’ll find each manager, their available funds and the positions in their teams they need to fill.
Players are grouped into position and ranked by points scored this season. Those in black are unavailable unless a manager decides to make his one surprise release of the evening.
The blue circles are a hangover from the cut-and-shut format job of Kenna HQ weevils. Click the circle to open up the player’s individual stats page on the [national newspaper] site.
Players without a circle are either listed as injured or suspended. Don’t ask why they haven’t got the orange circle. There’s been enough swearing about the blue and orange circles this week to rebuild Billingsgate Market.
Fishy rumours are circulating about the Just Put Carles and Still Don’t Know Yet managers, who have both utterly failed to engage with the Kenna over the transfer window.
The Pirates manager was not going to attend the window because he’s taken up ‘Stop-tober’ or ‘Oct-sober’ or some other w@nky agency-inspired charity name. Now he has to spend four hours in a pub buying three average players. How long until he cracks, Brambles himself and resigns?
The St Reatham FC manager emailed early this morning to say ‘I’ve been in San Francisco and not had a chance to email earlier’. Really? San Francisco? The home of Silicon Valley? He then tried to release a player he didn’t even have.
These are the kind of madcap antics that curry favour with the chairman, but be warned: the next window deadline is Wednesday 4 February. Miss that and there’s no respite and no bonus.
Chin, chin: Having been awarded the Bramble Jersey by the Kenna chairman, the former PSV Mornington manager (right) hit the bar and made no signings. He stands accused of ‘presenteeism’
A SOMALI, a Jew, two Catalans, three Welshmen and nine blokes who once considered it their capital city walk into a London pub.
It’s not the start of an inappropriate joke, but what happened last Friday night when Kenna League managers gathered for the season’s second transfer window.
Over three hours in the busy bar of The Enterprise in Holborn, nearly 40 football players went under the hammer as managers shouted above the din of brisk trade.
For those that turned out there was plenty to whet the appetite.
Sporting Lesbian laid £15m on Wilfred Zaha, the most expensive player of the evening.
Bala Rinas, in the mix for a first league title, splashed just £1m less on the formerly unfashionable Marouane Chamakh, and were immediately rewarded with a goal this week.
At the other end of the table, Young Boys were ringing the changes in a bid to escape relegation. Among seven new players was another £14m signing of the evening in the shape of Emmanuel Adebayor.
It was a typically haphazard night for fellow relegation strugglers Spartak Mogadishu.
Much to everyone’s amusement, the Pirates manager signed Danny Graham in earnest, but then realised the striker was ineligible to score points while languishing on the banks of the River Tees.
Graham was quickly tossed overboard under the new wildcard ruling, which allows any manager to dispense of one player at random during the window.
As an intermediary battled the miserable London winter to make five signings for Just Put Carles, the manager tweeted a photo of himself on the beach in Antigua.
When the Catalan returns from the Caribbean imagine just how much colder and wetter the runway at Heathrow will be when he discovers his new striker is Shola Ameobi.
Just a little prick: Harold Shipman was one of the notorious criminals revealed as part of the Titus Bramble Pub XI
The former PSV Mornington manager turned up to the window, collected the Bramble Jersey for being bottom of the league and proceeded to make no signings all night. He preferred to consume pints and cigarettes at an alarming rate until midnight.
With the window closing at around 10.30pm to end transfer business for the season, managers were left to open the envelopes containing the mystery forfeit Titus Bramble players.
Made up of some of the most high-profile deviants of the last 20 years, the inappropriate jokes could finally begin.
Serious business: Kenna managers gathered in The Enterprise in Holborn for Friday night’s transfer window.
By the Hairy Fadjeetas manager
TWO of the Kenna’s current powerhouses reacted with dismay after the season’s second transfer window descended in to farce on Friday evening.
Hairy Fadjeetas and Headless Chickens – two of the league’s so-called Big Four – were frozen out of proceedings as managers scrambled to fine tune or radically overhaul their teams in readiness for the business end of the season.
Accusations from the two mangers centre on the fact that league chiefs were unable to organise a piss up in a brewery/use Skype to allow team bosses on overseas scouting missions to bid for players. Skype has been the preferred method of bidding in abstentia for a number of years.
Speaking from an Alpine retreat, the Headless Chickens manager said: “Those at the top need to ask themselves some serious questions. Why we couldn’t engage in proceedings using a freemium voice-over-IP service and instant messaging client, I don’t know.
“I was asked to take part in what could be a season-defining auction using Whatsapp, that’s the digital equivalent of a carrier pigeon. They’re just self-interested Luddites.”
And the Hairy Fadjeetas boss, who recently fired a foul-mouthed salvo across the bows of Kenna HQ, added: “It’s not often that I feel like writing a strongly worded letter, but I am rather annoyed. C*nts.”
Kenna transfers nights are no strangers to controversy. During the Emmanuel Olisadebe 2012 Euros auction, the Horn of Africa threatened to resign his commission after a series of blunders while the very same evening saw the introduction of the pernicious practice known as tactical Brambling – the unloved brainchild of the current FC Testiculadew boss.
The Kenna chairman said: “Promises were made about wifi that weren’t kept.”
