YOU could almost pity the fantasy football managers absent from the Kenna auction who left their teams to be picked by autofill.
There are many reasons those regular attendees were unable to take part in the live event, which was delayed a month by sentient 5G masts.
Among the excuses there was the Lokomotiv Leeds manager’s house move, whatever the vice chairman was doing travelling slowly east through Turkey, and a child’s birthday for which the JPF manager has been summoned to Kenna HQ for a ‘priorities’ meeting.
So you could almost feel sorry for the four managers who couldn’t even dial in for a few minutes to stop all their whole starting XI get hatecrimed by the autofill. Almost. But there are two reasons why there is no pity.
First, given the infamous bureaucracy of the world’s leading London pub-based fantasy football league the autofill didn’t happen for a week or so after the auction proper.
Which meant post-auction imports Thiago and Gareth Bale were part of the pick, so two of the four absent managers have world-class talent in their ranks alongside the usual mix of squad players, tweaked groins and Ahmed El Mohamady.
After some jostling on the Kenna Whatsapp group, the powers that be declared Thiago and Bale ‘on loan’, which means they’ll be released at the February transfer with only £0.5m going to their respective managers. Like unfortunate inhabitants of Epstein Island, those in charge want the talent to be part of the action, but also want them to make themselves available to Prince Andrew when the time comes.
Overall, though, those two managers who couldn’t be bothered to attend have done well. When the loan solution was first proposed, the chairman had to put down a minor insurrection from a poor man’s Tony Greig threatening to form a breakaway league. Oddly enough, now poor man’s Tony Greig is 38 points clear at the top of the table not another peep has been heard from him at Kenna HQ.
The remaining two sides have no stand out players to make loanees. Alex Iwobi? Bobby De Cordova-Reid? Dwight Gayle? Kepa? Punishment enough, one might assume.
But the league has devised an even more tortuous, slow-burn forfeit to choose their loan players. Just ahead of the much-feted February transfer window the remaining two managers will be subjected to the Wheel of Misfortune.
All eleven players from each team will be entered into an online wheel spin to determine the loan player. By that point a Dennis Praet or a Jorginho could be a valuable asset, and auction attendees can bathe in the schadenfreude of seeing them made available at the window.
You could almost feel sorry for those two managers. But then you remember the second reason why not. The fuss they tried make.
If you don’t turn up to the auction and then try to influence decisions about your autofilled team… well, it’s like standing up a third date and then wondering why the following Sunday with a severe case of Kežman’s Nostril they won’t respond to your 4am booty call.
EVEN the world’s leading London pub-based fantasy football league is not beyond the reach of a global pandemic.
Usually, 20 managers gathering in a boozer to run an auction is enough to socially distance them from anyone who isn’t a ranting nutcase, a drunk dwarf or landlord with a ringing till.
Two weeks ago the league was forced to into the remote world of video conferencing.
But Kenna managers are a worldly bunch, and far from wholly unfamiliar with shutting themselves away in a dark room to stare at people performing strange acts online for hours on end.
The weirdest act of the auction came early in the day. Six managers who had gathered outside one household – which came to be known as ‘the garden’ – witnessed first hand one of the most unprovoked and suicidal acts of Brambling the league has seen for many a year (excluding the Pirate).
Having picked up midfielder Willian at a snip in opening game of chance The Wheel of Misfortune, the Walthamstow Reds manager then bid for and bought fellow Gooner Gabriel Martinelli, triggering the Titus Bramble forfeit for buying two players from the same club.
Once the schadenfreude has subsided and Willian replaced by Bill Cosby, the Reds manager appeared unable to account for his actions.
He said he thought he’d bought goalkeeper Emilio Martinelli, another Gooner who would have also lost him Willian.
“It was remarkable,” said the chairman. “There I was auctioning Martinez to a man who had just bought Willian. All through the bidding the Reds manager appeared confused, like he couldn’t stop himself from making this Kepa.”
Rumours immediately began circulating the Reds manager’s bulk order of six per cent Buxton beers may have been behind his peculiar error.
In other news, the Pirate now has Muswell Hill murderer Dennis Neilsen in attack after spinning The Wheel of Misfortune in a game of ‘North London’s finest’.
The two players the Somali missed out on – Aubameyang and Kane – ended up going to defending cup holders Clotted Cream First for £41m and £37m respectively.
After picking up Kyle Walker for £9m, the Cream boss rung off ‘the phones’ and left his side to autofill.
“People have tried to win the Kenna with two expensive strikers and dross. For all the good it’s done them they may as well have shoved it up their nose,” said a chalkstripe from the Kenna speculations department before entering a pub toilet.
As the sun beat down, the trio faced each other. Sweat trickling down faces. Fingers twitching over holsters. Ennio Morricone’s score ratcheting up the tension. The stage set for an epic showdown.
But in the end Clint Eastwood’s gun goes off too soon and takes out his big toe, Eli Wallach suffers a coronary and Lee Van Cleef has only to stare intently over his moustache as Kevin De Bruyne and Pierre-Emeric Aubameyang ram it home against lacklustre opposition.
For the Dynamo Charlton manager has become the 11th gun to win the Kenna title.
The loan player system introduced this season played right into the Dynamo manager’s parsimonious hands.
Infamously frugal at auction, the Dynamo boss walked out of The Albion onto Ludgate Circus in August with £46.5m left in the bank.
In previous seasons, his tightfisted approach was enough to sign sparse talent available at each transfer window, but not enough to win with them.
With loan players flooding transfer windows this season it was easy pickings.
Disappointed not to be claiming a record third title, the chairman had hoped Willian starting at Wembley would be enough to earn him second place. The Brazilian started and finished the game in the stands. And then changed London postcode.
Test Team (please ignore) prevailed in the runners up spot, but the polite request in the name to overlook the side’s efforts means the manager’s £70 prize pot is donated to the Kenna Foundation.
Clotted Cream First became the first side to retain the cup, albeit in a bastardised pandemic version.
Barry Town scooped the Wenger Trophy, Jamie Vardy, Granit Xhaka and George Baldock springing to life for project restart.
One manager you’d expect to turn the suffering and death of millions of people to his advantage, noticeably failed to do so. The Dark Lord‘s form was flying between Christmas and March, thanks to Teemu Pukki, Richarlison and Patrick Van Aanholt, but the team were miserable this summer.
Only one club were worse – Turnpike Pirates – and they finished bottom of the league, relegated for the third time in their history. It still won’t be the last time someone signs Michy Batshuayi.
Kenna managers now have just 26 days to prepare for next season’s auction, which is will be run remotely for the first time.
Prize money
Dynamo Charlton – £190 (Champions: £150, MOTM x4: £40)
Clotted Cream First – £75 (Cup winner)
Test Team (please ignore) – £70 (Runner up: £50, MOTM x2: £20)
BACK in the days when only highwaymen wore masks and before Kenna HQ installed a Batphone to the local Majestic, Kenna League managers went to pubs.
Since the Kenna was founded in 2005 there have been many Kenna managers who have each visited many pubs.
Even if you just count the number of pubs visited by Kenna managers competing this season, that’s 22 managers and hundreds, probably thousands, of pubs between them.
They will have seen and experienced every type of pub.
City pubs, country pubs, gastro pubs, craft beer pubs, hipster pubs, old man pubs, dog on a string pubs, pubs masquerading as private clubs, (mainly faux) Victorian pubs, pubs that used to be theatres or train stations which have stopped selling Jagerbombs for political reasons, pubs with yesterday’s hand dryer in the gents, pubs with tomorrow’s hand dryer in the gents, pubs with no hand dryer in the gents, ‘bridge and tunnel’ pubs, rough pubs, theme pubs, wannabe gangster pubs, pubs on ring roads serving overcooked slices of beef, foreign pubs run by questionable Englishmen, pubs where pints are discounted during live football matches, LGBT pubs, mews pubs, pubs with mock chalkboard point-of-sale marketing, après ski happy hour pubs, council estate pubs, pubs where the quality of the beer in no way warrants the price yet still you put more pound coins into a handled pint glass circulated by women with exactly five items of clothing including each shoe, and last but not least London pubs.
But there’s one pub across whose threshold a Kenna manager has never passed.
It has all those pub features which either endear or annoy the tippler, depending on how many pints down.
On the outside there are misted windows, which would give the pub a conspiratorial air if it wasn’t for two men swaying by the door whose total collection of clothes is worth less than the pouch of contraband tobacco from which they’ve made rollies to smoke.
One of the windows is decorated with the logos of sports broadcasters who have long passed into receivership.
The door is so heavy anyone arriving with a friend inadvertently slams it in their face upon entering. There’s a small glass entrance box on the inside so all the regulars can watch you and your friend make a pig’s ear with the door.
There are no hooks under the bar to hang coats. There are stools by the bar, but the regulars perch on them even during Friday night and Saturday afternoon peak times – when there should really be one more member of bar staff on – so queuing for a drink is as much fun as digging your own grave at gunpoint.
Out back is a bigger room which doesn’t know if it’s catering to disciples of Super Sunday or families eating Sunday lunch so it’s an unsatisfying experience for all involved, particularly when two men start shooting pool at the table in front of the big screen during a match.
The ‘craft’ option was brewed in the same premises as the mass market beers also on offer. Gin and tonic is served in a Paris goblet with a slice of lemon stored in a viscous substance. No one drinks the wine.
Like most of the locals, the Warner Howard in the gents has developed emphysema. And it’s not the best place to wear flip flops.
But there is one feature of this pub no Kenna manager has ever experienced before.
It’s the only boozer ever in the ken of the world’s leading London pub-based fantasy football league where a genuine trio of league title chasers has emerged at the tail end of the season. This pub is called….
Cup holders Clotted Cream First (275 points) have had the edge in form over Bala Rinas (234) in Project Restart, with loan players Raheem Sterling and Andrew Robertson proving useful additions in the February transfer window.
Bala Rinas look to Matt Doherty, Enda Stevens and Son Heung-Min to continue their streaks and compete for the league treasurer’s first piece of silverware.
No one’s every retained the cup, but the chalkstripes in the Kenna HQ speculations department are tipping the Clotted Cream manager to become the first.
THE FIFA ethics committee has been put on high alert after the Kenna chairman took a one point lead in the table and his cousin booked a place in a second consecutive cup final.
The Clotted Cream First manager is also godfather to the chairman’s son – the de facto ‘future chairman’ – sparking much intrigue in the corridors of Kenna HQ about his potential in the ‘Cardinal Richelieu role’.
The chairman scoffed at the rumours: ‘The cunning and intelligence of Cardinal Richelieu? On that side of the family?’
The vice chairman, as usual, was outraged: ‘There’s only one manager who’ll be grooming Young Boys in this league.’
Clotted Cream First beat Dynamo Charlton by a whopping 105 points to 48 in their semi final fixture this week, ending Dynamo’s tilt at a league and cup double.
Dynamo are still just one point behind the Chairman’s XI in the league, but will rue a week in which their star player Kevin De Bruyne was involved in just one of his side’s last 10 goals.
In third place, Test Team (please ignore) – who led the league for most of 2020 – are 12 points off Dynamo to form the first ever three horse race for a Kenna title.
Should the chairman prevail, he will become the first manager in Kenna history to win the league three times.
At the other end of table, defending champions Walthamstow Reds slipped one place nearer to the relegation zone.
Usually 36 points from the bottom four with two weeks to go would be a good cushion, but with so many matches before the end of the season, and Joelinton and Moise Kean up front, Reds could become the first defending champions to be relegated.
In the Coronavirus Cup final next weekend (not this), Clotted Cream First will face the league treasurer’s team Bala Rinas.
Even with an empty trophy cabinet, the treasurer is keeping a low profile at the prospect of silverware this season in case anyone looks too closely at why all the league finances are in his wife’s name.
