Is this the stuff of Griffin Park fantasy? Win a prize, too.

Tense. Nervous. Headache? Sweating over who’ll be in the team for Saturday ? Keeping fingers and other extraneous appendages crossed ahead of ‘that’ window closing on Thursday evening? Yes, there’s always the risk that Benrahama, Watkins or Henry may leave Brentford. Plus ça change on that front. Besides, Brighton have already torpedoed us below the water line when it comes to this campaign’s round of heroes exiting. Farewell, Neal Maupay. Just hoping you cut the phone lines and locked the doors, windows and gates on the way out of Griffin Park to stop anyone else leaving. Out of interest, and on a totally unrelated note, does Aston have a beach? 

Who could forget Simon Moore’s trip to Cardiff beach?

But we digress. Griffin Park related transfer activity and the weekend team news isn’t just a case of those on pitch departures to the Premier League. There’s only the small matter of Fantasy Football, with this season’s tournament kicking off on Friday evening when Liverpool host Norwich City. And, as we did last season, The Last Word will be running a Fantasy Football competition. Unlike last season, I’ll actually keep an eye on things this time around rather than promptly forget about it until I was reminded 6 weeks before the season ended. And then promptly forgot about it again.

Primarily because this time around there will be a prize of a shirt on offer to the winner. This is not a drill. This is not a false alarm. There WILL be a prize for the winning Brentford fan. In addition, the league will be played out in the ‘Head-to-head’ scoring mode. Initially because I hit the wrong button – you try doing this on a fast moving train – but having dug in to it a little bit more, the format sounds intriguing :

In a league with head-to-head scoring, every team plays a match against another team in the league each Round. The match result is based on the Round score of each team minus any transfer points spent preparing for the Round. The Head-to-Head schedule is generated at the start of the league’s first Round. Once the schedule has been generated the league is locked and teams will not be able to join or leave.

Those aren’t my words but those of the Fantasy Football people. I ‘think’ I get it but let’s just play along and see how it all works out. If you’d like to join you have until Friday afternoon to get your teams submitted.

The website is here: https://fantasy.premierleague.com

The League name is: The Last Word – Brentford

The Pin code : iep75s

Thanks for your time. And see you there. With, perhaps, a chance to see how some of our former stars perform at a higher level……

Nick Bruzon

Big Al and ‘Hot’ Sam lead the awards as the season ends

And so the day after the on pitch season finished for Brentford, fans and players celebrated like they’d won the FA Cup (sorry, couldn’t resist one, last crack) at the awards dinner.

For sake of completion, the list of winners, starting with the most coveted is :

Hottie of the Year – Sam Saunders

Hottie of the year (right)

 

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.

The one thing worse than a goldfish in the house.

There are now just a few days to go until the big announcement.

Brentford fans are waiting anxiously as the committee considers their decision. With the vote soon to be revealed I have to say that, personally, I won’t be upset if it doesn’t go our way. Whilst, of course, victory will be thoroughly deserved after all the hard work, it comes with a terrible price.

Yes – its League One manager of the month time and Uwe seems, on paper, to be in the hot seat for November’s award. With 13 points out of a possible 15 over the period, including victory over third placed Peterborough and a draw at Wolves, only Preston’s Simon Grayson (who won in September) seems in a position to challenge.

Whilst, clearly, a prestigious honour the more jinx conscious amongst us fret at the thought of this coming Brentford’s way.

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.