Hello to you – I’ve named the first part of Season 4 as ‘Africa Enters Europe’ as last season we won the FA Cup, which would allow Leeds to compete in the Cup Winners Cup, but we managed to pull a second place finish in the league out of the hat, giving us a shot at the Champions League. It is not about cans of Xmas favourite aerosols being inserted into the orifices of 80’s power ballad rockers, Europe. If you were expecting the latter, this is not the blog for you.

Anyway, Season 4 is about to start and we find out who stands between us and at least 6 games against Europe’s finest. It could have been worse with Monaco, Inter and Dortmund lurking.

In the close season we added Moroccans Naybet and Abdellaoui but I decide to further bolster the squad to breaking point with Abedi Pele’s regen and a couple of Angolan defenders.

I miss out on Peter Jamiroquai though as he takes his Canned Heat to Spain

Suddenly, the season curtain raiser is upon us and we edge out Man United thanks to two from the Quicker and one from Paschal. That’s our second ever trophy and yes, it does count.

Now to those European qualifiers and The Quicker and Paschal are at it again, this time also adding a red card for added drama. I’m quietly confident of progressing.

I think this is what’s commonly referred to as a hangover from midweek European adventures. Always good to see one of the blog favourites rise to the top though.

I can’t remember if we went 2-0 up in this game our regained the lead, but either way, the 86th minute was an eventful 60 seconds.

Victor Ageli, so prolific last season seems to have forgotten how to score so our new Moroccan forward shows him how to do it, just not from the penalty spot.

Off to Tblisi then and we wrap up the qualifier 7-2 on the aggy.

The draw really couldn’t have been any worse. I think we’ll be lucky to come 4th.

Especially if we can’t find any consistency – another midweek hangover

Things improve at home to Arsenal though and Agali seems to have found his scoring instincts

It’s closer against Villa but still a good win. I like showing these shots so you can see how teams develop and change players over the seasons. Ricky Magee sounds like a kids party DJ.

This is a great start to life in the group stages, bashing Monaco and N’Doram in their own principality. Injuries forced a makeshift centreback pairing, but it seems Barthez had the busier night.

The hangover curse almost sees us fall to Man United but two late goals from The Quicker and Victor give us a share of the points.

We also share them with Chelsea in a rather dull game where Richard Wright shines and Roberto Baggio is quiet.

Another tie in the Champions League group of death and another win! When we needed a hero, we found one in Agali!

This post european games shite is beginning to get on my nerves. Adrian Mole does too little, too late.

Much, much better against Coventry, we even score a 4th after the second sending off…

Real Madrid away next and this is what it’s all about, taking my African charges to the Santiago Bernabeu only for Dani to send us home empty handed.

At the half way point, this is not how I expected the standings to look

Standard fair in our next game – bloody Chris Sutton

Sellimi has been a real find though, despite his Technique rating of 1

Decent free transfer that – never signed him before – the joy of self imposed restrictions opening up new players 27 years later…

Didn’t wan to win the Coca Cola Cup anyway

I do want our league form to improve though, and I don’t care how many 1-0 wins it needs

It’s time for the return match with Monaco and we are aching close to doing the double over them, but they are stacked with talent and our defence could only hold out for so long

The Hangover Part 5

And on that note, I’ll wrap things up this week with a look at the table.

So, we have Man Utd and Real Madrid to face in our next Champions League games to see if we can stay in Europe into 2001. League wise, we’re drifting again. 4 of those 5 losses coming after midweek European games. I’ve stocked the squad to cope with things but the periphery players aren’t really up to it. Join me next week as our European adventure either continues or concludes and I try to wrestle some consistency out of these guys!