FOR the first time in history the Kenna League title race is more exciting than an American industrialist’s Moscow hotel room.
Thieving Magpies reestablished their position at the top of the table, cutting short the FC Testiculadew tenure of first place to just one week.
Many feared the FCT manager’s accession to the Kenna summit would mark the end of a competitive season but ‘Pies midfielders Pedro (15 points) and Yaya Toure (10) quickly struck back.
WNS and ‘The Burqs’ will be duking it out in two weeks time to see who will avoid an unwanted playoff match to get out of group B.
Elsewhere those struggling in the league are also experiencing Narcozep squeaky bum time.
The Pikey Scum manager’s sphincter may be more resigned than others. Having completed all his cup games, he must rely on the side above him in group D losing by more than 20 points to the group leaders.
And in what situation could you imagine Young Boys being whipped by Two Goals One Cup in a haze of Narcozep?
Other than in an American industrialist’s Moscow hotel room?
IT was only a matter of time before the Kenna’s own pussy-stroking villain went top of the league.
Having hovered around the top four for the first half of the season, FC Testiculadew saw Tom Heaton, Kyle Walker, Christian Fuchs, Alex Iwobi and Eden Hazard score in the teens in a bumper week over New Year and Zlatan rack up 25 points.
Known as the Tactical Brambler for his ruthless interpretation of league rules, the FCT manager was also in the winning tag team of the inaugural Roque Santa Claus Christmas Cup.
“Pathetic earthlings!” Ming the Mercilessed the Tactical Brambler to journalists outside the club’s Death Star training facility.
“Hurling your fantasy football teams out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the Kenna League, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror.”
But there was unwelcome turn of events for the FCT manager.
This evening Kenna HQ issued details of the Christmas Cup prize and confirmed only the weaker half of the winning tag team – in this case mid-table Walthamstow Reds – would gain free entry to next season’s Kenna League.
Reds face Christmas Cup tag team partner FCT in Narcozep Cup group A this weekend, which is now being touted as a grudge tie.
Ironically, the dip in form in the last month that saw Islington Sports Islam & Leisure fall from first to third place is the only Christmas catastrophe to which ISIL have not laid claim.
Swann, who took 255 test wickets, believes he witnessed three league managers abusing drinks at a free bar on the Strand, including two high-ranking officials from Kenna HQ.
“Everyone was having a quiet drink but these three were planted at the bar ordering round after round, and on a Monday night too. At the time you think ‘is this normal?'” said Swann.
The incident followed ‘Graeme Swann’s Great British Spin Off with Henry Blofeld’ at the Duchess Theatre in Covent Garden in October.
Three Kenna managers and their entourage attended a VIP event with Swann and Blofeld after the show (pictured, above), where they are reported to have consumed more than the recommended daily allowance.
Challenged by the media at a press conference outside Kenna HQ this morning, the chairman tried to deflect the scandal.
“That was Graeme Swann?” he shrugged. “Oh…this is going to be awkward. I thought it was Peter Such.”
Waiting in the wings while twirling his moustache, the manager of FC Testiculadew leapt into second place ably assisted by a 21-point haul from striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
AFC Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe has said a chance meeting with a Kenna League manager inspired his side’s incredible comeback against Liverpool.
Howe (pictured, right) claims he used a surprise visit by the Thieving Magpies manager before the match to deliver a stirring half-time motivational speech. His side recovered from 0-2 down to win 4-3 last weekend.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw an actual Kenna League manager in our stadium,” Howe said of the encounter with the ‘Pies boss.
“For me, just to be working in football and managing a side in the Premier League is a joy, but to manage a team at the top of the Kenna – the world’s leading London pub-based fantasy football league – that’s the ultimate dream.
“I said to the lads at half time ‘we’re amongst football royalty, there’s a Kenna League manager in the stadium today. Now you get out there and show him why he should consider signing you for more than £0.5m at next August’s auction’. The rest is history,” explained Howe.
The Thieving Magpies manager, who extended his lead at the top of Kenna by 12 points this week, said it was important to support young managerial talent coming through.
“I’m an English manager in the world’s top league which – whether I want it to or not – makes me a role model to guys like Eddie,” the ‘Pies gaffer told reporters outside the Vitality Stadium.
“It’s great to see these young English guys in the game. If he works hard and brings that creativity to bear in every match, in every training session, perhaps one day Eddie will be managing in the Kenna League too. We need to support the English talent pipeline,” said the manager whose policy of signing St George’s Cross players has not always brought success.
Bournemouth midfielder Jack Wilshere once criticised the Kenna League for having too many foreigners.
At the time only four Kenna managers hailed from south of the Watford Gap, thereby qualifying as English under Wilshere’s stringent nationality test.
AN ALEXIS Sanchez hat-trick this weekend helped end Islington Sports Islam & Leisure’s thirteen-week spell at the top of the Kenna.
The Chilean forward deftly chipped the goalkeeper for his third to put Thieving Magpies five points ahead of The Pirates.
ISIL striker Diego Costa found the net, got an assist and somehow managed to avoid the melee and cards being dished out in the closing stages of Saturday lunchtime’s game, but it wasn’t enough.
Surprise leaders of the Kenna from the start of the season, the Pirates have put out some increasingly mediocre team performances since the manager resisted the urge to tinker with his line up in the October transfer window.
Fans now face growing concerns more weeks of middling team totals could see their manager hit the February window with the cutlass between his teeth.
The Roque Santa Claus Christmas Cup
Bala Monkeys lead the inaugural Roque Santa Claus Christmas Cup after the first week.
The festive tag-team contest sees two Kenna sides paired by random draw. The best combined score over December wins the cup and free entry for into next season’s Kenna League for the highest-scoring half of the partnership.
There was early disappointment for Vauxhall Chinese Takeaway whose star player Sergio Aguero will miss four of his five games over Christmas due to suspension.
“Can I change my tag-team partner?” said the Young Boys manager after Aguero was sent off for clattering David Luiz on Saturday.
FANTASY football has been hit by shocking allegations of historic alcohol abuse going back over a decade.
Alcoholic drinks have begun to come forward to tell of their mistreatment at the hands of ‘diabolically drunk and out of control’ Kenna League managers. Victims could run into their thousands.
Throwing off the legal mantle of anonymity, one pint of lager told the media nothing was done to address irresponsible drinking, and in some cases it was actually promoted by ‘senior figures at Kenna HQ’.
“It was Wednesday when usual punters were genteel and enjoyed their drinks at a reasonable pace. We were completely unprepared for what would happen next.”
The pint said eight men entered the bar and crowded around a table to begin ‘drinking at a rather alarming pace’.
“There was ribald laughter and strange references to someone called Tomas Repka,” said the pint. “They were literally tearing through us without a second thought for our flavour or centuries-old Belgian brewing tradition.
“All they cared about was who would sign Frank Lampard. Dozens of us were left feeling used and empty afterwards.”
Emboldened by their actions, which remained unchallenged by witnesses, Kenna managers continued to abuse a multitude of alcoholic drinks with abandon over the next 10 years.
The harrowing experience of a pint of cider at a transfer window night in October 2012 shows just how unchecked the wild behaviour went.
“No one spoke up about it. There was a culture of silence. It was like a Taboo. Or an Archer’s or a Barcadi Breezer. It wasn’t something people would ever consider talking about. You just had to ‘man up’ and get on with it.”
Fast forward to this summer, and tales of abuse were now intertwined with something far more sinister – trafficking.
A Czech bottle of absinthe who claims to have been abused at the auction this August said: “They make abduction me Prague, input me dark suitcase for long time.
“I very confused and disorientate. They take me dark cellar in London and leave me months.
“Then one day they take me pub. All people drunk but not yet 3pm.”
Continuing in recklessly inappropriate broken English, the absinthe told how it was poured into shot glasses and downed by managers with ‘Godless’ faces who showed no interest in its distilling process or its botanicals.
“No sugar. No spoons. They just tip down me like water. I simple feel shame.”
Confronted with allegations of historic abuse outside Kenna HQ this morning, the league chairman stonewalled the scandal.
“I’ve been at every single auction and transfer window since the Kenna was founded and I have never seen anyone so much as touch a drop of alcohol. We’re a responsible fantasy football league.
“We’ve always organised league activity in public places for the convenience of managers. If they were pubs I’m the last to know about it. I think some of the venues had bars, I really can’t recall.” said the man in charge of the self-proclaimed ‘world’s leading London pub-based fantasy football league’.
“Of course, we will be commissioning an independent inquiry to find out where these stories are coming from. That is if this intense media scrutiny doesn’t blow over in a few days.”
MANUEL Lanzini and Stewart Downing became the first footballers in Kenna League history to be part of a cash-plus-player deal, it has emerged.
Two managerial debutants unwittingly made the transaction at last month’s transfer window to set a new precedent, which has left one of them is left with egg on his face.
Attending his maiden transfer night the Two Goals One Cup manager rung the changes releasing five players including the 1.5-points-per-week Lanzini.
The So Good They Named Him Twice manager couldn’t make the window so released the 2.75-points-per-week Stewart Downing and bid via broadcasting app Periscope.
While So Good signed Lanzini for £8m, Two Goals picked up Downing for twelve.
They have effectively conducted the league’s first cash-plus-player deal – Lanzini plus £4m for Downing.
Since then ‘makeweight’ Lanzini has pulled up his socks to score at 2.7-points-per-week.
Downing has slowed considerably to an average of 1.9.
“Well, well. This is troubling,” said the Two Goals One Cup manager this morning outside the club’s Rimmer’s Way stadium.
Downing: his sorrows
For Kenna veterans, it was little surprise to see Stewart Downing become the first player take part in such an arrangement.
Managers under pressure or looking for quick wins at transfer windows regularly use Downing as a scapegoat.
In just over five years, the winger has been signed on 10 separate occasions by Kenna managers.
PROTESTS have erupted all over London’s leading pub-based fantasy football league after growing discontent with its leadership boiled over.
Under the hashtag #NotMyChairman and burning blazers in a mark of dissent, managers in the Kenna League are trying to oust the chairman, claiming the need to ‘Make The Kenna Great Again’.
“He’s out of touch. It used to be you got a weekly update which was witty and relevant. Now it’s just whatever chaff comes into his head too long after the event,” said the Lokomotiv Leeds manager at a demonstration outside the club’s Bellend Road stadium.
“There’s been no news on group fixtures for the Narcozep Cup. I’m 17th in the league and I still have convicted paedophile Adam Johnson in my midfield. I need a decent cup run,” said the Piss Poor manager from the rolled down passenger window of a Range Rover parked behind a Chinese restaurant.
“He hasn’t even updated the teams after the October transfer window. If Duncan Watmore or Sofiane Boufal gets an assist I’m looking at the Kenna site, I haven’t got a clue who’s signed them. I’m in a mid-table dogfight, for crying out loud,” chanted the Burqini Pool Party manager before assuring Dubai police his protest was nothing to do with UAE authorities.
ASTERIX is to blame for my fascination with hunting wild boar.
But with neither the resources nor connections, converting the Gaul’s exploits remained a daydream since childhood. Until I married a Pole.
It turns out my wife’s cousins in northern Poland are big hunters, so while visiting on the weekend I was invited along as an observer in their search for wild boar, or ‘dzik’ (pronounced ‘jeek’ in English).
Joining the party at 7am, the guns and beaters lined up to go through formalities, draw cards from a hat to decide where they would stand for each drive and be serenaded by a hunting horn.
The first couple of drives were dry, but the weather was bright and the lack of prey was small concern to anyone being fed shots of Jagermeister in the back of an Opel Frontera.
Then on the last drive before lunch standing on a track with cousin we heard a rustling ahead in the brush. All of a sudden five ‘dzik’ scurried into view 30 yards to our right. Dark, wet, hairy and not quite fast enough.
A quarter of an hour and much excitement later the whole party was standing around a wild boar being gutted. A fir branch placed in its mouth. Its blood ritually smeared on cousin’s forehead.
After an appropriate repast of ‘dzik’ and cabbage stew the second half of the day was more lively. Cries of ‘dzik! dzik!’ from beaters far off in the undergrowth. More scurrying swine. A short ceremony to celebrate the day’s victories.
Then the real drinking started.
Anyone who has played a drinking game called Centurions will be familiar with the format of a shot of beer every minute for 100 minutes. It felt like we were playing that with vodka.
Having polished off two bottles between six people we went to drop off the day’s haul in the town cold room.
The time it took to hang the meat was ample to see off another bottle.
WORRIED Kenna managers are expressing disbelief over the continued dominance of Islington Sports Islam & Leisure in the league this season.
Eight weeks in and the ISIL boss maintains a healthy gap over the chasing pack, set to claim his third Manager of the Month award in a row.
Head-scratching opponents are at a loss as to how to catch a side with in-form Diego Costa (£27m), Laurent Koscielny (£16m), Nathan Redmond (£13m) and Kelechi Iheanacho (£7m).
They are even more perplexed the ISIL manager is yet to muff it up.
“It’s an utter mystery,” said every Kenna League manager who’s ever met the Somali in the competitive fantasy football arena. “I thought in the first couple of weeks he was just jammy and he would soon slip up, but ISIL are still top.
“At the transfer window this month he made no changes. No changes! He was on pints of haram too. This is most unprecedented.”
Stories of the Somali’s auction and transfer window gaffes are in abundance.
In a press conference this morning at the club’s Spyglass Hill training facility, the ISIL manager lifted the lid on his approach.
“Dominance in ye Kenna be like dominance in ye Levant or dominance in ye Indian Ocean. It be about extremism, plunder and not letting ye parents find out you’ve eaten pork scratchings during Ramadan.”
