Hello everybody, it’s Dave here just borrowing Dean’s post. Today marks 28 years since the release of CM9798, no doubt a day you all have circled on the calendar. We have of course celebrated this game every year for at least the last 10, who knows how many more I’ve lost track of when we started this. What I do know though is that I have a great set of writers here who started out as fellow nerds I know on the internet to being good friends who I’m lucky to have stumbled across one day. Deano has prepared a great one off post which I wanted to use as our birthday post rather than me rehashing some sort of quiz type, which may yet happen next week but we’ll see. There’s also posts lined up from Matt & Andrew, so you’ll have some full weeks ahead w/c November 3rd. Anyway, enough from me, here’s Dean and “Harry Houdini” which I’ll let him explain.

Good Day to you. I haven’t done a blog for a while, it’s just finding the time these days. But today it’s pissing down so thought I’d dip my toe back in with a short challenge.

“Harry Houdini”  Simple premise; Let the game run, take over and try and save the club who’s bottom at Christmas. 

Happy Monday to you all! Not really, I hate Mondays. 

If you’ve just joined us me and my brother are doing a head to head to see who can do the best in one season with our own 97/98 Team GB squads in Serie A. 

I’m currently ahead of Darren at the halfway stage, but that can all change. 

My boys are currently doing okay. 2nd in the league and into the CL Quarters. We’re out of the Coppa Italia though. 

We kick off the New Year with a gift from Sampdoria. The game was won in the first half and we made a load of changes which let them back into the game. 

For an explanation of sorts, please see part 1.

Right, let’s get into it. 

Tactics. I’m not 100% married to the players in these positions, will see how it goes. But these are the tactics I will employ for Team GB. They usually do me well, and as it’s only a one season challenge, I don’t have the time to experiment……go with what you know eh.

Catch up with part 1 here.

After a couple of friendlies I’m going with this formation and starting line up. Competition for places.

This had alway been my go-to formation. Again before joining Twitter, was unaware of the 2-3-1-2-2. That’s a good formation and effective, but I find it’s difficult to get the whole team to play well. Wing-backs in particular. This formation will get everyone 7.20+ if they are the right fit and good enough. It’s all opinions and preferences.

Happy New Year & welcome to a new blog series. Apologies if you are expecting more of the same. I did start a new blog with another stupid backstory but I lost interest in it.

The backstories came long before I started using Twitter. It was always me, my brother Darren and mate, Rennie, who would set each other challenges.  We would always come up with fictional reasons why we were doing a challenge. Things like saving Bury from terrible events which all started with their club folding, after a visit from Doc from Back to the Future who said we had to win the Champions League or many people would die! My last blog on Partick Thistle, was based upon an in-challenge a few years ago about melting English trophies into a sword to take back to Scotland. 

So after joining Twitter and asking Dave if I could do a blog on his site, it was always going to be in that style. BUT….. I think I’ve milked the joke as far I can now. Haven’t really got any new good ideas and the truth is I’m a bit bored of it.

For my next couple of blogs I’m going to focus on the game itself.

The backstory of this blog is pretty simple. We had a Secret Santa between the bloggers with the idea of getting someone a mystery shirt and challenging them to write a blog based on that team.

Welcome to the series finale. I’ll try and make it better than the end of LOST. And less weird. 

If you’ve followed this blog from the beginning, you might be thinking that we must have won the lot then? What’s the point of reading? Well we did and we didn’t. Have a nosey…

Kicking off with a run of league games & a FA Cup replay with Chelsea before the League Cup Final. We’re 4 points off Man Utd, which is not great but not insurmountable.

Despite last weeks loss to Celtic, Wallace’s Thistle have started off well in the PL. 2nd. 

The main goal is to win the treble. Tough ask but at the very least we need to beat Celtic. It’s looking good so far.

Forest are taken care of in the League Cup.

Into the Premier League. Not a lot of players out there. This Thistle team is getting pretty old so I’m on the regen hunt.

Here we have Gordon Durie, Ian Ferguson, Kevin Gallcher, Ally McCoist, Andy Goram & Colin Hendry.  Andreas Thom is there as well but he’s not for sale.

The kids are going out on loan to get some experience. I can’t afford to blood them in the Premier League just yet. My first team is in its prime & will be given the chance to smelt some trophies this season.

After a disappointing season 3, we had news of Rangers relegation. We will compete with Rangers for the Div 1 title in what has been dubbed the Battle of Glasgow. William Wallace issues a rallying call

“Listen up you bunch of basstads. Last season was fucking disgrace. But the Gods have given us a chance to defeat Rangers up close and personal. This is why we are here. The Gers abandoned all decency. All pride and the great people of Scotland. We are here to remind them of that. Fight and you may get injured. Run and you’ll stay free of suspension, at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one season, just one season to come back here and tell Celtic and Rangers that they may take our Scottish Premier League, but they’ll never take our Windscreen!”

Everyone is pumped after that.