Hola, Bonjour, Greetings. Welcome back to Spain where Gijon are having a wonderful time in La Liga, establishing themselves as the best of the rest in season 2 and hopefully setting their sights on disrupting the El Clasico duo next. How on earth are we going to do that?

A reminder then of where the squad is. Allow me to indulge you, position by position, on what we have and what we need.

Goalkeepers – Jose Veiga averaged 7.75 last season, which is absolutely savage. Overworked? Maybe. But not throwing them in is good enough for me. Ablanedo is soon to be 36, Cudicini is a squad goalie and I have no idea if he’s good enough.

Defenders – Nikiforov and Lucic are safe as houses. Niki has average 7.82 and 7.72 in the 2 seasons, he’s unbelievable. He wants a bigger club though and 2 years to run on his contract, so we need to get big enough or I’ll have to sell him next summer, we can’t afford to throw away £7.5m. Duncan is the only backup but I do have Ricardo Silva in the B Team gaining some experience.

Wingbacks/DMs – We’re well covered here but I do need some cover for Lauchlan. He’s still only 18 but he is the only player I have with a left foot…at all, seemingly.

Centre midfield – Mickey is coming on well, his value has grown from the £275k I spent on him to £3m, so I think he’s the future. If somebody amazing became available, that would change things. Lediakhov is the other option in there.

Attacking Midfielders – Obviously Ba is the first choice (averaged 7.64) and Tcheryshev usually plays alongside him, or Lediakhov. After that though the depth is not great. Macon and Tomlinson have filled in, Molnar, Kaiku and Bakayoko are primarily used as centre forwards due to their low creativity stats. A world class player in here would be helpful.

Strikers – We’ve never really had an out and out classic number 9, with Kaiku and Bakayoko both forwards but getting nearly 50 goals between them. Bakayoko is worth £11m, wants a bigger club and like Niki, has a contract until 2001, so a big season ahead for us. Ideally some of the younger players can go out on loan, I will try them in the B Team but the manager is even more of a lunatic than me and plays some players you just wouldn’t expect.

Anyway, what nobody asked for is a load of regens but I can’t help myself. Lothar Matthaus:

Stuart Pearce

Ally McCoist – great name for a forward this.

Ian Rush.

The backup for Lauchlan, or maybe the competition, however you want to phrase it, here he is. Highly recommended by the always affable League Scout 1, I’m sure his lack of stamina and pace make him the perfect wingback.

Quinton Fortune and Philip Mulryne also arrive, both for the B Team, who I want to have a decent shot at promotion this season. I mean they can’t actually be promoted, but it would be funny if they won the cup or something.

Real Madrid will have a new manager as Juppy takes over the England job. I hope the Micker throws his hat in the ring.

The season gets underway with a narrow loss at Betis. Hopefully not a sign of things to come, even if Betis is always a tough place to go.

Things get back to normal in our first home game. The always welcome first minute red card certainly helps but we do make hard work of it.

That could be a lot worse. Maybe an opportunity to blood some players, finally.

Another narrow loss on the road makes me wonder if we need more at the top end of the pitch, especially with Tcheryshev going off.

£2m for Sibi. It’s a bargain if he hits the heights we know he can.

His debut sees him set up both goals as we stun Barcelona. That’s an incredible result and a reminder of how far we’ve come.

AIK are battered by our now super confident lads.

The B Team gaffer, we’ll call him Head B Guy, has been playing Mainwaring recently and 6 appearances have resulted in a rush for his services. £750k later, he’s a Newcastle player. That’ll settle the finances and hopefully leads to the Micker or Beardsley getting a game.

Unfortunately our away form in the league remains a problem. Another loss, this time at Celta, has me scratching my head.

Oh look, everybody’s favourite Icelandic regen is available. Yoink.

Home comforts bring 3 points. Kaiku has picked up a training ground injury but Molnar is a very capable replacement.

The return leg against the Swedes is fairly routine. We’ll have to manage without Tcheryshev in the next round and of course Sibi is cup tied having joined after the cut off. Who will we be lacking against?

Sooo here’s the story from AZ. I haven’t made that Spice reference in a few years, I’m sure you haven’t missed it. Slam your body down and party all around.

If we could just play every match at home we’d win the league. Sadly, that’s not how the Spanish fixture calendar works and we’ll have to make do with a fortnightly success.

All of that is enough to have us 4th, somehow. Barcelona are top of the pile having suffered their only defeat against us. Work to be done.

Meanwhile two of the class of Italia 90 are enjoying themselves in the B Team.

They sit 9th, having lost Mainwaring I don’t know how likely it is they will flourish but who knows.

There we have it then, a fairly in depth start to a new season if I may say so myself. It’s an International break so it seems the perfect time for us to part ways for another week. If anybody has any answers to my away day blues I’m all ears. Nothing has really changed, the keeper is averaging less than 6.60 which is obviously a drop off compared to his 7.5 last season. He’s young though, too young for his arms to have fallen off just yet. See you next week to try and unravel that mystery!