Hey all and welcome back to La-Toon Newcastle as nobody but me and Freddy Shepherd are calling it. We’re deep into season 4 and lingering in 3rd in the table, a good few points off Man Utd. We still have domestic and european cups to fight for though….

Let’s start with some good news, shall we? Ohhh…

In this crazy world, Bristol Rovers run us close in the Premier League. Old Toon fave Ruben Sosa and popstar wannabe Nicky Byrne are no match for C-J-Lo. Alvin Hunter is a great 70’s footballer name, isn’t it?

Maybe more goals are what we need. I convince Freddy to gamble £3.5m on this Brazilian outlier. Valdir or Nadir – we shall see.

Hmmm, we’ll see

I start him in the place of Julio and he rewards me with a yellow card and getting injured. Geordio comes off the bench to wrap the game up. He’s frosty with me later…

Nothing serious though.

He’s cup tied for european competition anyway, but Julio can’t find a way past a Betis team short on their game start super heroes

Julio is a bit more up for it against Division 1 Blackburn in the cup though

It’ll be Batigol in the semi-final then.

Julio has the bit between his teeth now and a double see off Arsenal, how are struggling at the wrong end of the table, despite that squad….

We strike first in the return leg against Betis, but things look bad when Chili gets himself sent off and Senor Puche nets the equaliser. Lucky, I have Carranza on the bench to seal the tie. I wonder if Carranza is the derivative of Karenza, the Cornish name for ‘Love’ – would be appropriate with Valentines Day approaching, anyway, I digress..

The draw could have been kinder.

I let my Dorta fly the nest on transfer deadline day

The £625k tips me just into £5m in the transfer kitty so I try a cheeky bid for Marcio.

No, I don’t blame him either.

Talking of draws earlier, the lovely Helen denies us all three points at Maine Road.

Meanwhile, Paul ‘Ginger Goals’ Scholes wraps up the League Cup for runaway league leaders Man Utd. Everton are in Division One by the way.

This game hurt. Three away goals conceded but we have a glimmer of hope thanks to Juan Seba against his old club

There’s no second leg in the FA Cup and Batigol breaks our hearts deep into extra time.

Those extra 30 minutes took their toll and my lads are out on their feet in Sheffield. Better get that bent tinkler looked at.

I usually hate playing Leicester due to Kasey Keller, but here they have Peter doing some past/future emulation of Kasper and I’m all for it. Valdir gets his first goals for the club – happy days.

United have steamrollered it

Ridiculous. They are usually dep in debt by now..

We have some games in hand against Leeds, but it looks like a dogfight for second place now.

Time for our rematch with Parma and the omens are not looking good.

With Chili out, I turn to the dark arts, usually only practiced in deepest, darkest Wales and go for a keeperless formation with Tino the jam in my Claudio/Julio sandwich. It only bloody worked as well.

Normal formations are resumed when relegation threatened Bolton feel the wrath of Toon.

The chockablock fixtures begin in earnest now. It’s footballing cliche, but every game is like a cup final now..

We draw our first final with Villa and really should have taken advantage of A – the fact Stephen Hawkins was playing for them, and B – that he got sent off for foul and abusive language to the referee via his digitized voice.

Captain Mainwaring thinks we’re on the run but Ariel Ibagaza has other ideas. They don’t like it up em!

He’s been a bargain to be fair.

Moving on. Swiftly.

Take that Batigol!

Despite that win, Liverpool can still technically pip us to 2nd place, we just need a point in our last game at Wimbledon, or for them to slip up somewhere…

C-J-Lo’s love don’t cost a thing when he helps us lift the Uefa Cup. Simeone getting sent off was a bit squeaky on the old bum to be honest.

Ariel is the Merman of the match

Meanwhile, down in Liverpool….

All of which means we’ll be in the Champions League next season and a loss to Wimbledon is largely irrelevant

Confirmation – 58 goals conceded though…

Arsenal are gone!

Sheffield Wednesday add the Cup Winners Cup to last seasons FA Cup heroics.

And retain the FA Cup for good measure

Inter aren’t missing Ronaldo’s switch back to Barcelona judging by this

Awards and stats time

6 goals for Chili is nothing to be sniffed at

Right, that’s me done with these cranks for another week. I’m going to give it one more season to see if we can mount a title challenge. Hopefully the allure of Champions League football will tempt some big names to the club, but we’ll see.

PS, not that she’ll read this, but with Valentines Day around the corner, special shout out to my wife who kindly let me install CM9798v1 on her laptop now mine has given up the ghost x