fantasy football – Page 13 – The Jeff Kenna League

Violent shitness

The Kenna League chairman has called Professor Thomas Chamberlain from the Lyle Centre to help find 12 months of missing posts from the Kenna blog. Chamberlain sends Dr Nikki Alexander and Jack Hodgson to Kenna HQ. They are with the chairman in his executive office.

NIKKI: I can see this body’s been here for quite some time. Let me get my big camera with the circle light on the end.

CHAIRMAN: That’s not why I asked you here. The last 12 months of Kenna blog content has gone missing.

NIKKI: But there’s a dead body in the corner of your office. It looks to have been decomposing for nearly a decade. There are blow flies here so long they’ve chalked out some football pitches and are on the second four-year cycle of their own World Cup. Who is it?

CHAIRMAN: That’s just the spirit of the Kenna. It died at the 2012 Euros auction when the Dark Lord unmasked himself as the tactical Brambler.

JACK: Let’s take a closer look at your desk.

CHAIRMAN: What’s that you’re holding?

JACK: It shines UV light to find evidence. It’s a called a jizzlamp.

CHAIRMAN: I’d rather you didn’t….

Jack switches on the device

NIKKI: Good God!

JACK: The jizzlamp doesn’t lie.

CHAIRMAN: Ignore those stains. They’re nothing to do with the missing Kenna posts. They’re to do with a website that’s unrelated.

JACK: Unrelated how? Like a stepmom?

NIKKI: Or a MILF?

CHAIRMAN: That website material is nothing to do with this.

JACK: I need to get Clarissa on the blower.

CHAIRMAN: Well, it certainly wasn’t that sort of content.

JACK: Hi, I’m going to send you some data from the Kenna HQ porn laptop.

CLARISSA (on speakerphone): Interesting.

CHAIRMAN: Why are you calling it the porn laptop?

JACK: Because the jizzlamp doesn’t lie.

CLARISSA: I’ve run the data you sent. There are about 50 posts. Most of them appear to have been about someone called the Dark Lord.

NIKKI: The tactical Brambler.

JACK: Nikki, this really isn’t the episode to develop a love interest.

NIKKI: Don’t worry about me. I’m still seeing that Yank.

CHAIRMAN: Alexi Lalas?

ALEXA: Playing The La’s, There She Goes

JACK: Heroine. Here, in your desk drawer.

CHAIRMAN: It’s morphine. It belonged to my father. Mixed with beer, wine, gin and tonic, cognac, tobacco, diazepam and a changing family dynamic it’s actually quite useful for the early stages of bereavement.

CLARISSA: I found something here about football chants.

CHAIRMAN: Oh yes, I published some chants based on Newcastle United and the potential takeover by….of course!

JACK: What?

CHAIRMAN: The Saudis. Don’t you see?

NIKKI: See what? A dead body in the corner of your office and a desk that looks like a painter’s radio?

CHAIRMAN: It was the bloody Saudis! Those thin-skinned tyrants. They must have deleted all that content because they were offended by the football chants.

CLARISSA: Before you get carried away, may I ask if you ever backed up the Kenna website?

CHAIRMAN: What’s that?

CLARISSA: From what I can see here you didn’t back up your site before changing your hosting arrangements.

CHAIRMAN: No, it must have been the Saudis. I bet they’re working with vice chairman. That rat.

NIKKI: Didn’t the vice chairman come up in a toxicology report a couple of summers ago?

JACK: The whole league did, after the Dmitri Kharine Russia World Cup auction.

CLARISSA: Mr chairman, you didn’t back up your site. That’s why the posts have gone. It’s nothing to do with the Saudis.

CHAIRMAN: Then why did I receive this invitation to the Saudi consulate in the post today?

JACK: That’s a receipt from your local butcher.

CHAIRMAN: The swine.

Kenna League – three weeks to go

Full scores available from The Rub

Coronavirus Cup – last 16 results

Test Team 57 – 45 Cowley Casuals

Dynamo Charlton 66 – 46 Hairy Fadjeetas

Clotted Cream First 46 – 40 TNS

Barry Town 43 – 75 Daggers

JPF 30 – 43 Lowry Travel Tavern

Fat Ladies 43 – 43 Magpies (Magpies progress as they less players who scored no points)

So Good 46 – 68 Young Boys

Bala Rinas 51 – 44 Pikey Scum

Quarter final fixtures

Cowley Casuals v Bala Rinas

Dynamo Charlton v Young Boys

Clotted Cream First v Magpies

Daggers v Lowry Travel Tavern

Operation Fluff

Project Restart was not going well at Kenna HQ.

Having proclaimed himself champion in March because his side were top of the table, the chairman of the world’s leading London pub-based fantasy football league was hoping the season would be called off.

In addition a technical error meant all the content from the Kenna site from May 2019 had been deleted.

Kenna news, tables, teams, cup competition details and even the football chants about the Saudi takeover of Newcastle. All gone.

‘Damn it!’ said the chairman, slapping his desk in frustration, ‘There’d normally be hyperlinks to at least three other pages by this point of the post.

‘The last thing I have about a Devonian winning last year’s cup on 17 May 2019 containing Westcountry slang so ludicrous some pasty muncher will be toppling my statue.’

To add to his problems, and there were many, the restart had seen the Chairman’s XI toppled two places to third place despite the continued imperiousness of Bruno Fernandes.

Trophy-less challengers Test Team (please ignore) not only resumed their place in first, but saw their striker knighted for services to free lunches, Sir Marcus Rashford.

While the Kenna purist hopes such sanctity in a team’s ranks cannot win the title, the Kenna realist sees the parsimonious Dynamo Charlton manager just two points off the lead chasing his first championship and the Dark Lord lurking in fourth chasing his third.

And what of the cup competition? There’s no record of how the last 16 matches went and there’s as much trust among managers in the Kenna as there is among officials in the Lubyanka.

The chairman said: ‘With another five weeks remaining, the last 16, quarters, semis and final could be played in the last four.

‘We’ll call it the Lockdown Cup.’

And that appeared to be that.

Kenna table publication dates

Tuesday 30 June
Tuesday 7 July
Tuesday 14 July
Monday 20 July
Monday 27 July

Kenna League – six weeks to go

Kenna League - 23 June 2020 — Kenna League – 23 June 2020

Rising to the top

NEWINGTON Reds all but won the Kenna League on the weekend, but failed register a double.

The debutant manager at Clotted Cream First defeated Reds in a tense Krakow Cup final.

The Wile. E. Coyote of set pieces Trent Alexander-Arnold was the difference, a clean sheet and two assists earning him 13 points.

“Trent be a helluva bhuy, gert lush ee iz,” drawled the Devonian manager of The Cream.

“Fan zee zat, a Janner scoopinnt Krakoff dreckly ee be int Kenna? Although I was savage to see me bhuy Ake gettin minus two. Madazza barbed wire badger, ee iz.”

While Clotted Cream First shaved Reds in the cup, in the league second-placed Hairy Fadjeetas are in no danger shaving anything.

Third placed Fat Ladies also appear unlikely to shave anything from Hairy Fadjeetas’ 13-point advantage this Saturday. Fadges take Raheem Sterling into the game, while Ladies rely on Americ Laporte.

There’s an outside chance Bala Rinas could spring 18 points into third place if Gerard Deulofeu and Ederson combine.

Krakow Cup final – individual scores

Newington Reds 30 – Fab 2, J Evans 7, Robertson 7, Coady 1, C Taylor 0, Mili 1, Hojbjerg 2, Camarasa 0, Babel 1, Murray 7, Higuain 2

Clotted Cream First 33 – Lloris 1, TAA 13, Ake -2, Lascelles 7, Nordtveit 0, McArthur 4, Xhaka 0, H Costa 0, Barkley 2, Kun 7, Austin 1

Kenna week 36

No coming back

IN a week of dramatic football comebacks the Kenna failed to deliver in spectacular fashion as Newington Reds marched undisturbed towards a maiden league title.

Glenn Murray and Gonzalo Higuain (as I said, unspectacular) were both on target to put yet more distance between Newington Reds and the rest of the league.

However, the weekend will be far from a Sunday stroll for the trophyless Reds boss, who will be keen to claim the double by outperforming Kenna debutants Clotted Cream First in the Krakow Cup final.

It will be no easy task. The Devonian manager at ‘The Dairy’ lists final-day specialist Sergio Aguero and set-piece maverick Trent Alexander-Arnold among his ranks.

Battle for second place in the league sees more pressure heaped on the Hairy Fadjeetas manager, who topped the table for most of the season before being usurped by Reds.

Going into the weekend 2008 Kenna champions Fat Ladies ‘snap at the Fadge’, and Ladies’ trio Eden Hazard, Jamie Vardy and Virgil van Dyke are favourites to overturn a 10-point gap.

Not only are the Fadges missing Roberto Firmino to injury, but the boss has been under intense scrutiny from United Arab Emirates authorities for some time.

Rumours abound in the Persian Gulf the Fadges boss fled the region stowed away in an Emirates cabin drinks trolley having formed a relationship with an airline employee.

The Yorkshireman’s exact whereabouts are unknown outside reports from the Swiss Alps he was seen in an Irish bar buying two pints for himself at the same time and telling anyone who would listen he ‘couldn’t give a fucking bollocks’.

At the other end of the table, where the bottom five face relegation, the Kenna’s only Somali manager dropped into the danger zone. Danny Baker has since deleted a tweet.

Kenna table week 35

Full scores available from The Rub.

Let’s get these out the way, shall we?

Sesame Street rubber duck collector Ernie

Doorstop dalliance devotee and dairy delivering daredevil Ernie

Author and daiquiri connoisseur Ernest Hemingway

Leadership legend Ernest Shackleton

Most prolific goalscorer ever in the Polish first division Ernest Pohl

Father of nuclear physics Ernest Rutherford

Gap-toothed American actor Ernest Borgnine

High street jeweller Ernest Jones

Mexican narco ‘Don Neto’ Ernest Fonseca Carillo

FC Barcelona manager Ernesto Valverde

Poster boy of the Cuban revolution Ernesto Che Guevara

Double murderer who escaped justice for 50 years Ernest Broadnax

Megalomaniac cat lover Ernst Stavro Blofeld

Homosexual Nazi executed in 1934 party purge Ernst Rohm

Kingpin bowling nemesis Ernie ‘Big Ern’ McCracken

Kenna table week 34

Full scores available from The Rub

Kenna week 34 - 30 April 2019 — Kenna week 34 – 30 April 2019

Travelling without winning

NEWINGTON Reds put in another commanding performance this week to both pull away at the top of the Kenna League and secure a place in the Krakow Cup final.

Gonzalo Higuain, Andrew Robertson, Conor Coady and Luka Milivojevic combined to thwart a resurgent Pikey Scum in their semi final second leg.

Should Reds now defeat Kenna debutants Clotted Cream First in the final, the manager could become the first in the Kenna to defend the Krakow Cup.

“Having been in the Kenna this long, I almost think it would be more an achievement not to win the league,” said the Reds manager, a nod towards all other founding members having lifted the trophy at some point.

The comment provoked a discussion among journalists. Should the Reds manager claim his maiden League title, who will be the most experienced Kenna manager without a winner’s medal?

Having topped the table for most of this season, Hairy Fadjeetas now appear to be a spent force this campaign and destined for life in Arabic confinement.

Yet the Fadges boss will have only competed for eight seasons by the time his side likely miss out on the league next month.

The treasurer is in his ninth season and looks set to add a fourth, third-place finish to his nearly man cabinet, but it turns out the most experienced manager (10 seasons) without any silverware will be the Judean Peoples’ Front boss.

That trend looks set to continue, given the JPF manager’s recent form for showing up at Kenna events not-so-fresh from all nighters with lonely, middle-aged men who might sell their car.

Krakow Cup – semi final second leg results

Turnpike Pirates 16 (24) – (43) 29 Clotted Cream First

Newington Reds 40 (63) – (46) 38 Pikey Scum

Final, 14 May: Clotted Cream First v Newington Reds

Kenna week 33

Kenna week 32

Reds manager rejects Black Country double talk

IT will be “almost impossible” for Newington Reds to win the double this season, their manager has said.

His Reds side beat Pikey Scum by 15 points on the weekend to put them within touching distance of the Krakow Cup final.

They are already five points clear at the top of the Kenna League, as they attempt to win their first league campaign in 14 years of trying.

“Surviving is a miracle. It’s nice to be there,” the Reds manager said.

“Nobody from Wolverhampton has done it [won the double], so why can we do it? It is almost impossible to achieve everything – that is the truth.”

The closest any Wulfrunian has come to winning both trophies in a season was when the Cowley Casuals manager won the cup in 2014/15, and finished second in the league 22 points behind Sporting Lesbian.

The last Black Country manager to win the league was the Thieving Magpies manager in 2016/17.

“Do you believe we can survive a six-hour Kenna auction drinking lager far stronger than Carling and give a fantastic performance every time? No-one from Wolverhampton can do that,” the Reds manager said.

Krakow Cup – semi-final first leg

Turnpike Pirates 8 – 14 Clotted Cream First

Newington Reds 23 – 8 Pikey Scum

Kenna table week 31

Kenna week 31 - 9 April 2019 — Kenna week 31 – 9 April 2019

Reds go top, Fadges flop

NEWINGTON Reds went top of the Kenna League this week, but the manager is clearly under pressure.

Asked how his team knocked Hairy Fadjeetas from their perch after 15 game weeks, the Reds manager’s response perplexed fans.

“Yeah – a lot of the other results are based on 6 questions, and one of those was that free text option – which never got marked so a bit misleading…,” read a Newington Reds press release this afternoon.

Journalists attributed the blunder to a manager facing pressure to get ‘results’, answer ‘questions’ and see his name ‘marked’ on a Kenna League title trophy for the first time in 14 years of trying.

Whether the Reds boss suffers a nervous breakdown or not in the next seven weeks, the prowess of Andrew Robertson (183 points), Glenn Murray and Luka Milivojevic (120 points each) could carry the team through.

Dumped from the Krakow Cup last week and surrendering his lead this, the Hairy Fadjeetas boss looks set to spend more time at His Majesty’s Pleasure in the United Arab Emirates unless the side can put aside its over reliance on Raheem Sterling.

In hard-hitting administrative news, Kenna HQ has a dilemma in deciding a date for next season’s auction.

Traditionally held on the first weekend of matches (this year 10 August), two veteran managers have already called for this to be brought forward seven days.

In a brewery tap room in Oxford on the weekend the chairman was quoted saying: “Saturday 3 August is tricky for me. I really need to be in West Worcestershire. It’s Tenbury Show and I’m integral.”

Show organisers were quick to contradict that statement.

“We’ve got enough drunken louts stumbling around the cider concessions, tripping over tent pegs and taking photos of Herefordshire bulls’ enormous testicles without him showing up again,” said a Tenbury Wells Agricultural Society spokeswoman.

Kenna table – week 30

Full scores available from The Rub.

Kenna week 30 - 4 April 2019 — Kenna week 30 – 4 April 2019

Fadged up the double

HAIRY Fadjeetas’ hopes of a Kenna league and cup double were scuppered this week in a tense affair at the Mogadishu Arena.

Turnpike Pirates narrowly won their quarter final tie by one point over two legs to knock out the Fadges.

“I’ve still got Moses in my side. He was supposed to have been released at the last transfer window. If Kenna HQ weren’t such a bunch of bungling buffoons I’d be through,” erroneously asserted the Fadges boss, who has Alfie Mawson in his side.

A drubbing for the chairman’s XI at The Dairy sees Pirates up against debutants Clotted Cream First for a place in the Krakow Cup final.

The other semi-final between Kenna HQ charts and graphs department veterans – the managers of Pikey Scum and Newington Reds – is being called ‘The Application.Speak.Speech(“Rub The Rub all over me”) Derby’.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the league, the Dagger’n’Redbridge manager has rushed to the defence of one of his….er….defence.

The Daggers boss claims a historic tweet by his player Declan Rice has been misunderstood.

“If you look at the context of his tweet at the time ,you’ll see he was probably enjoying a cultured evening in London at the Royal Academy with his partner,” began the Daggers manager, uncertainly reading out a briefing from the club’s snickering media officer.

“It says here the actual wording of the tweet was ‘Taking my girlfriend #UpTheRA’.”

Krakow Cup quarter final – second leg

Turnpike Pirates 10 (61) – (60) 24 Hairy Fadjeetas

Clotted Cream First 18 (85) – (68) 22 Chairman’s XI

Newington Reds 21 (97) – (58) 15 Dynamo Charlton

Pikey Scum 12 (56) – (34) 10 Sporting Lesbian

Krakow Cup semi final fixtures – first leg 9 April, second leg 23 April

Turnpike Pirates v Clotted Cream First

Newington Reds v Pikey Scum

Kenna – week 29

Kenna – week 28

Stitched up like a Kepa

KEPA Arrizabalaga’s insubordination at FC Testiculadew last Sunday has been added to the case for the manager’s declining status as a force in the Kenna.

With his calculated exploitation of loopholes in league rules and his relentless success on the pitch, the FCT boss once struck fear into the hearts of Kenna administrators and managers alike.

Kepa’s recalcitrance and a drop in league position to 17th has reduced the Tactical Brambler’s image from Ming the Merciless to Louis CK.

His fall from notoriety is being likened to that of the Judean Peoples’ Front manager.

The Welshman once regularly challenged for a top four place, dominated auctions with his gavelled repartee and had a face that looked like it could launch a single-handed amphibious assault on a remote island to neutralise dozens of Norwegian teenagers.

Instead of a Ruger Mini-14 rifle, the JPF manager now stares down the barrel of yet another relegation battle and turns up to transfer windows looking like Tin Tin after a nervous breakdown.

One man windowing much better these days is the Newington Reds manager.

The Reds have spent every week since 22 January climbing the table one place at a time to find themselves in second, just nine points from Hairy Fadjeetas.

There were contributions right through the Reds’ XI this week, but in particular the manager will be pleased to see February transfer window signings Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Ryan Babel and Gonzalo Higuain all make an impact.

“The trick is to keep our cool and not let the pressure get to us,” said the Reds manager, lighting his next cigarette from the last and pouring another absinthe.

Krakow Cup – quarter final first leg results

Turnpike Pirates 51 – 36 Hairy Fadjeetas

Clotted Cream First 67 – 46 Chairman’s XI

Newington Reds 76 – 43 Dynamo Charlton

Pikey Scum 42 – 24 Sporting Lesbian