This blog starts with a secret, a secret Santa.  I was gifted this beauty, Burnley’s 1994 Wembley away shirt. Funnily enough, my Irish grandad chose Burnley as his club when he arrived in Lancashire, so I’ve always had a soft spot for them, how did blog squad member @Matt_C_Wills know?

The challenge is obvious, try and win it all with The Clarets, the rules are these:

• I can only sign players from The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (thanks Grandad) or any nation that begins with a B. (Burnley begins with a B, it’s incredibly innovative.)
• There are a maximum of three wild card slots available in the match day squad, these can be taken up by:

i) Any French player, the Bene and Hot rule, (Burnley is the only team to serve the French liqueur Benedictine topped up with hot water, selling in excess of 30 bottles at each home game, thanks Wikipedia.)

ii) Any random player as long as they have been signed directly from the official Wikipedia rivals list. The Clarets official Wikipedia rivals are Blackburn, Accrington Stanley (not on the game), Blackpool, Bolton, Preston North End, Bradford and Leeds.

The first order of business is to check the current squad, and discover that not one of them is eligible to stay.  Some will have to play while we build the team, however the current transfer budget is £0 so I will need to try and cash in where possible.

Until I make a sale there are seven spaces available for new players, so I head off to the International squad screen to find some free gems from the nations beginning with B, Bahamas, no players loaded, Bahrain, no players loaded, Bangladesh, no players loaded. Finally Barbados have three active players, all at clubs all costing more than £0!  Belgium, they have loads of players, but they are all pretty good and not interested in Burnley. Not the best start, we keep going, Benin, no players loaded. Bermuda, yes Bermuda they have Kyle Lightbourne, he’s free, he’s scored some goals in his career history, he’s our number one marquee signing.

I give up with the international squads after finding Kyle, Bielorussia, Bolivia, Bosnia, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkino Faso and Burundi can be looked at another time, I move over to the two Irish markets to bring in some more bodies.  Not a bad haul, all repping some sort of international pedigree, and with Patty Bonner between the sticks I can’t see us dropping the ball.

The first game is away to Brentford, all the new boys will be making their debut, except for McVeigh, he got injured for a month on his way to the training pitch.  We line up in one of my favourite formations, it has pedigree, taking Stoke 93/94 to victory in the Blog squad Auto Windscreen Championship.

It’s a humdinger of a first match, however Rob Taylor’s 79th minute goal means we lose 2-3 in our first outing, Lightbourne’s goal a positive, Bonner’s keeping less so.

Game two of the season is our first foray in a cup competition, the League Cup round 1. Lightbourne continues his positive start, a brace inside 10 minutes helping the Clarets to their first win.  I wish I’d edited my away strip colours to the black and yellow of my shirt.

We love goals, Kyle loves goals and Wikipedia rivals Blackpool are destroyed at Turf Moor. It’s’ the first Turf Roar of the series and the Bene & Hots are flowing.

McVeigh returns from injury, he’s only at 70% so it is a place on the bench for the League cup second leg.  Lightbourne scores again, Burnley win 3-1 and 7-3 on aggregate. However I seem to have forgotten to take a picture, you’ll just have to trust me.

Back to the League and a trip to Grimsby, Kyle capitalises on some grim defending, scoring a hat-trick inside 20 minutes.  It’s another comfortable win for the Clarets.

Burnley play host to Millwall next, McVeigh’s now fully fit and in the starting eleven (I mean, he has to be because of the rules, but anyway).  He scores his first goal in the 20th minute, however that was as good as it got, less a Turf roar, more a whimper.

Finally we manage to bring in some money.  Chris Vinnicombe goes to Doncaster for £600,000.  There is a space in the squad and I’m determined not to waste it.  I’m going to take my time.

Meanwhile Southend are no match for the new deadly duo of Lightbourne and McVeigh.

A rare game where Kyle fails to find the net, no bother though, McVeigh with a brace to help secure the three points.

The long trip south to Plymouth is a positive one, Lightbourne and McVeigh are joined on the score sheet by Tony Scully, I’m assuming he and Pat are brothers.

Not wanting to waste the Vinnicombe money I carefully search the Irish markets for a central midfielder, none of my other transfer avenues are providing much fruit at the moment.  I spend a whopping £37,000 on Michael Cummins from Middlesbrough, despite being weak and quite unfit he looks half decent for such a small sum.

Michael slots into midfield alongside Mark (hopefully soon to be sold) Ford for the visit of Wrexham.  We are currently up to 8 out of 11 players meeting the challenge criteria, which isn’t bad for mid September and for the most part it is the new boys who are doing the damage.  McVeigh gets his first and hopefully not last, hat-trick of the season and brother Patrick says, whatever Tony can do, so can I.  Unfortunately Dorothy picks up a knock that will see him miss a couple of weeks. 

Goals do not seem hard to come by at the moment, long may that continue, we hope.  New boy Cummins scores two from midfield, Lightbourne and brother Patrick, with his second in two games, get the others as the Clarets come from 2-1 down against Wycombe.

The League Cup draw has not been kind, Wiki rivals Leeds are our second round opponents.  It’s a valiant effort by the boys, Cummins with another goal as we go down fighting at Elland Road.

A nice chunk of cash is brought into the club via the sale of Mark Ford, can’t imagine he is going to get much game time at Celtic, but that’s not my concern.  I’ll pocket the cash and look to spend it wisely.

While I search for a replacement for Fordy, we have to make do with a future discardie in midfield.  There is no negative affect on our performance, four goals in the final 30-ish minutes for a well earned victory.

Brimming with confidence we head into the Auto Windscreen Shield group game against third division Chester.  You would think this would be a breeze, however Cheter have signed Barry Venison and his flowing blonde locks distract Lightbourne and co., we lose 1-0.   

I use £325k of the Fordy money to buy Jimmy Crawford from Newcastle, he looks alright on paper and despite his lack of strength and passing ability he won’t stop running.

It’s back to winning ways in the League, Dorothy gets a brace against another Wiki rival and it’s enough to see us through despite a late goal from the hosts.

I felt like there was a possibility that we could capitalise on our away goal in the second leg of our League cup tie, however in an out of character move Patty scores and own goal.  There is a glimmer of hope in the 62nd minute when McVeigh scores, however that is extinguished four minutes later.  An expected and relatively respectable loss.

Oldham prove to be tough opponents at Boundary Park, Lightbourne has been quiet recently so it is fortunate that McVeigh has found his scoring shoes.

Our next match is at home to York and I’m surprised when Cummins, Dorothy, T Scully and McVeigh are all on international duty.  Fortunately Lightbourne gets back in the goals and Andy Cooke is pretty handy up top, he’s wanted and has a £1.8 million price tag, so hopefully some more money will be coming our way soon.  You never know, we may be able to look at some French, Brazilian or Belgian players soon.

Micky Cummins is looking like a bargain at £37k, his MOM performance is supported by a couple of McVeigh goals and one by the interlopers, Paul Smith, as a half time losing position is reversed at Dean Court.

For some reason our fine league form cannot be replicated in the Auto Windscreen Shield.  Despite Lightbourne’s hat-trick we draw 4-4 with third division Rotherham and finish bottom of the group, what on earth is Pat playing at in goal, he’s was worse than a cardboard cut out here.  To make matters even worse McVeigh is out for two months with some broken ribs.  The only positive is that we will now have a few less games in this already overloaded schedule.

I didn’t think this through, I remembered Alessandro De Souza from some previous saves, he’s a quality Brazilian youngster who would be perfect behind the front two. Unfortunately I’d forgotten about work permits. No opportunity to say he is indispensable and pay him £40,000+ in wages here.  Back to the drawing board.

It is a real shame that Cooke doesn’t meet any of the criteria, hopefully these goals will boost his value when the offers come in.  This is also the first time we have over 10,000 fans at Turf Roar for a league game, surprised it’s taken this long with Kyle banging in the goals and the Bene and Hot’s on tap.

The Carlisle game is number 15 in the league and therefore roughly a third of the way through the season.  Despite the Auto Windscreen disappointment, it is all going a lot better than I expected, that does mean the only way from here is down though or at best a plateau.

Join the Clarets next week for some more Bene’s and hopefully a few more roars.