No more Coldplay. And a video to make Mike Sullivan, chuckle

Derby County are Saturday’s visitors to Griffin Park, to face a Brentford team still smarting from last weekend’s 3-1 reverse at Bolton Wanderers. It was a game which even featured Trotter’s fans singing, “How sh*t must you be, we’re winning at home?” (didn’t one of our own club figures once tell us off for doing that?) and so Bees supporters will, of course, be hoping we can bounce straight back from that one and prove them wrong.

To read the rest of this article, season 2014/15 is now available to download onto Kindle (and other electronic reading device) in full. Containing additional material and even some (poor) editing, you can get it here for less than the cost of a Griffin Park matchday programme or Balti Pie.

 Thanks for reading and all your comments over the course of the season. For now, I need to make more space on the site for any follow up. However, ‘close season’ will continue in full, further along.

“Nobody wants to see THAT”

As gloating goes, it really was missing the point somewhat. Walking into the office on Wednesday morning, I was rounded on by my West Ham supporting boss (whose team edged past Cheltenham 2-1) and a Gillingham supporting co-worker (whose team didn’t even make the second round), keen to try and rub it in about the League Cup result at Derby. To be honest though, I didn’t mind. It’s the biggest cliché in football that a side can now ‘concentrate on the league’ but the fact of the matter is, that’s exactly what I was thinking.

Listening to the slightly flat sounding commentary on Tuesday, I’d been quite convinced that Uwe had done the right thing with the side he named. It was a chance to test youth and squad players in a cup we had no realistic chance of winning, whilst avoiding any further injury to those likely to start at the weekend.

So why then, 24 hours later, does it suddenly feel rather hollow given it was a team selection I agreed with and a headache of a tournament we don’t need?

To read the rest of this article, season 2013/14 is now available to download onto Kindle, in full. Containing previously unseen content, you can do so here for less than the cost of one matchday programme.

 Thanks for reading over the course of the campaign. For now I need to make space on this page for any follow up.  The ‘close season’ / World Cup columns continue in full, further on in this site.