Happy Friday everybody. Here’s Ross with the first of hopefully many reports of what we do on Zoom on a Tuesday night. The preview can be seen here if you need catching up.

158 days, 158 days since we ended CLM9798, It’s been a fairly chill 158 days worldwide. I think we can all agree. The Blog Squad lads are back on Tuesday evening with our regularly scheduled zoom call. I can’t speak for the rest of the lads but for myself the weekly zoom calls we had last year really were a fantastic tool to help relax and honestly it was brilliant for my mental health.

Anyway, we’re going again! This time we have all randomly drawn a Cup winners Cup winning team from 1991 – 2000.

We had a few cup games to get out of the way first up but I won’t bore you with all those results. Let’s just say the various league 1 and 2 Scottish teams didn’t stand a chance. We did have two all human clashes between Chelsea ‘98 and Zaragoza ‘95 we went to penalties in this one with Zaragoza taking a against the Flo win. The other all human game was My Parma ‘93 team taking on Lazio ‘99 being managed by Nath I triumphed 5-3 after being 4-0 up at HT.

Our inaugural league fixture of the new season took place between Philips Arsenal ‘94 and Dave’s Werder Bremen ‘92. Phil got off to a great start with a 2-0 lead at HT thanks to goals from Kevin Campbell and Ian Wright before Dave made a tactical change and managed to win the second half 1-0 but if you’re following me that does mean Phil takes the win 2-1.

Up next we get Matt and his ‘98 Chelsea taking on Rob’s ‘95 Zaragoza. For the second time this week Chelsea and Zaragoza face off and once again goals are flying in thanks to Vialli and Flo for Chelsea and another Ensinder goal for Zaragoza, Vialli and Di Matteo both got goals in the second half to take away a 4-1 victory and the top spot in the table.

Nath’s Lazio ’99 against Zak’s PSG ‘96 is our next match. Nath takes an early 2 goal lead thanks to two quick strikes from Viali before Big Sam fav Youri Djorkaeff and Xavier Gravelaine make it 2-2 at the break. A late late Patrice Loko goal takes all the points for Zak.

My Parma ‘93 team met up against my former charges of Man Utd ‘91 this time managed by Deano. It’s all action as it’s 5-2 to Man U by 24 mins. I manage to add a 3rd thanks to a late pen after a Viv Anderson Red card and this wild game ends 5-3 to Deano.

Andrew’s ‘90 Sampdoria team minus the now injured Gianluca Pagliuca take on Nicks Barcelona ‘97 team Barca race out to a 3-0 ht lead, Andrew is offered brief hope when he gets it back to 3-1 before Ronaldo makes it 4-1.

Matt’s Chelsea team travel to the Weserstadion to take on Dave’s merry men from Bremen. Bremen start fast and it’s 2-0 before we hit 20 mins, Vialli pulls one back immediately  before Arie Van Lent celebrates the start of lent by knocking in a 3rd before HT. Matt makes some tactical changes that have an instant impact making it 3-2 before Van Lent wraps it up with a late 4th.

We have another round of cup action to round up this week Zak’s PSG ‘96 team got smashed and grabbed(?) by Hearts as they scored with 2 of their 3 shots on goal to steal a 2-1 win. We didn’t have any Human v Human fixtures in this round so Zaks was the only thing of note from the round.

Here’s a quick look at the league table after the first round of games, take from that what you will.

That’s all for this week so thanks for reading and please join us again next week for another instalment of CWCM9798!