Bom Dia! and welcome back to the eleventh and final season with Nick and his pack of Portuguese Wolves that he’s assembled over the last decade. They’ve made a decent start in the league and Europe so far, but will they take their chance to become world champions? Here’s Nick to update us…

Here’s how the league table is looking after twelve games. We’d be a lot better off if we could just hold onto a lead, but that said, we’re only a point behind Liverpool, so hopefully they won’t be on their perch for long. Let’s go..

We begin our defence of the League Cup away at QPR, who hold their own for 20 minutes, and then their keeper gets sent off and it gets easier from there…

Man City await…

An own goal puts us ahead at Forest, but ten years down the line, our bottom of the table curse lives on, and we surrender yet another lead to leave with one point instead of three…

We do the same in Europe against AGF, and this time it costs us all the points. Who needs a real keeper when your grey has a worldie? Our next game against Vejle is now huge…

Chico becomes the third wolf to turn into a Lama, and spits at me on his way out the door.

All is good in the world again at home to Leicester at the weekend. Amaral has been a bit goal-shy so far this season, so it’s nice to see him finally get going with a hat trick…

A Portugal squad containing nine of our players fails to qualify for Euro 2008 after finishing 4th in a group containing Poland, Austria, Ukraine, Albania and San Marino…

The Portuguese FA are understandably upset, and decide to sack Fergie there and then…

We do as much as we can at Leeds, but get no reward, and are foiled time and time again by another keeper playing like his life depends on it…

I was half expecting this, and I’d have been tempted if they’d qualified for the Euros, but I politely decline…

We’re behind in the blink of an eye against Vejle, and can’t seem to find a way back until The Boa scores what could be a massive goal to keep us top of the group with one game left.

An emphatic victory over Man City keeps things ticking over in the league, with The Boa among the goals again, this time with a hat trick, and Rui Costa getting in on the act…

The FA Cup ball bag is emptied, and we start with first division Derby. I’ll take that…

It’s World Club Cup time, and we’re without Anselmo, Freitas, Vitinha and Amaral (basically the spine of the team) as we jet off to Tokyo, and any hopes I had of a nice easy game against a load of greys are throughly quashed when I look at their squad. Oh sh*t…

We go behind, then in front, and then level, and have to see out the last 20 minutes and all of extra time with 10 men, but we manage to hold our nerve in the penalty shootout to be crowned world champions. Two more to go!

There’s no rest for the wicked, and two days later we’re back in England to face City again in the League Cup, and after a tricky start, we sail through with a repeat of the league result..

However, the win comes at a massive price, as we lose Gomes for a month and Freitas for the rest of the season. For f*ck sake…

Do you like owls? I know a cracking owl sanctuary, how about it?…

Our table top clash with Liverpool goes pretty much as expected. I won’t miss them one bit.

Time for our last champions league group game, and we’re just lucky it’s Banik Ostrava, because I wouldn’t fancy our chances against anyone half decent at the minute.

The squad is depleted with injuries, loans and suspensions, and Portugal U21s just happen to have a match on the same night, meaning I’m only able to name 15 players in the squad…

Dani Boy gets us off and running before Rui Costa doubles our lead, but then Banik start to battle back, and were it not for Futre’s goal and their red card, it could have been a very different story…

We top the group on goal difference, and it’s Real Madrid in the quarter finals. To be honest, there aren’t really any easy draws in that lot, but at least it’s the away leg first…

Meanwhile back in the league, we start to wobble, and a point at home to Birmingham sees us slip down to 5th in the table…

Our first visit to the owl sanctuary turns out to be not so cracking, hopefully we’ll enjoy success when we return in the League Cup…

And then we make it four games without a win at Newcastle, continuing our descent down the table to 7th. It’s all going Pete Tong…

So let me get this straight, we’ve drawn two and lost two of our four league games in December, and that somehow makes me manager of the month. How? Just how?!

As ever, the FA Cup arrives just in time to distract us from the league, and thankfully we manage to get ourselves together against Derby to end this week with some good news…

Which is of course swiftly followed by some bad news. Oh well, it’s a one-off game, I guess.

So after covering just eight league games this week, we seem to be in free-fall at the minute, and have managed to drop five places in the table as we reach the halfway point of the season. It all started off so well too…

That’s about it for this week. Do come back next week for the penultimate episode of this adventure to see if we can beat Lyon to lift the European Super Cup while also trying to beat one of our trickiest opponents in Leeds as we try to win that elusive FA Cup. See you then. Adeus!