Hello and good welcome to you. The Brits Abroad are part way through season 7, just the early knockings really of what we hope will be a long and successful campaign, culminating with Euro 2004 if I can guide England through the final few qualifying games. We’re at the time of year in real life where there’s stuff on every night, or nearly every night, and it occurred to me on Wednesday evening that if I don’t get this played by Thursday night there would be no blog. Sacre bleu. To the football then, where the domestic table loos very nice and we’ve got an opportunity to make the Champions League group look similar…

Greetings, bonjour and so on. We’re back in Portugal, who utilise neither of those greetings but you join us at an exciting time nevertheless. The aim is to retain everything, add the Portuguese cup to the list and get England well on their way to Euro 2004. It is at this point that I realise I have not paced this season’s bloggings very well. Strap yourselves in, there are many games.

Good morning and greetings to you. The Brits Abroad are going from strength to strength, having won 9 out of 9 domestically to start the new season. Robbie Fowler is settling in nicely and later on in this episode we’ll try and retain the World Club Cup and European Super Cup. But first, there’s some other important business that needs tending to.

Greetings and welcome back to the Brits Abroad. Have a brief absence last week to celebrate this great game turning 26, we head back to Portugal looking to win the whole lot this time. That cup final defeat still annoys me. Anyway, we’re also World Champions as England but qualifying for Euro 2004 is about to get underway. To the games!

Good morning and hello to you. I’m about to head out for my son’s fourth birthday party so if you land on this blog from X (Twitter, in old money) don’t be surprised if this misses the 10.30am post time. It is an annoying loss that these things don’t automatically post anymore. In any event, welcome back to Portugal where the Benfica Brits as nobody is calling them are fighting against the tide. After winning everything, I took the England job and for some reason our form dropped off a bit. So now we’re chasing down Sporting Lisbon and trying to defend everything and then all the same lads will go off to Japan for the World Cup. Wish me luck at the party – we’ve got a journey to go on first.

Good hello to you all! What a week it has been, for reasons I’ll not get into but the sanctuary of the weekend couldn’t get here fast enough. For Benfica, their squad full of Brits have made a mixed bag start to the season. It’s always been a mystery of this game where sometimes your unstoppable team just drop off. Did calling them all up for England prove to be a bad idea? I won’t have it. It was only a good idea. Let’s bring on the nonsense of this week.

Well hello to you. It has been a week since we last spoke, I hope your ascent into October was seamless. This weekend my son moved up to the next year group for his Saturday morning football group. It’s barely football but of the 30 kids in the class, 29 of them seem quite content to go it alone. Their parents sit on comfortable chairs sipping coffee at the side of the sports hall. The 30th child wants Daddy to run around with him, so there I am, like a sporty version of Will Ferrell in Elf, playing what’s the time Mr Wolf as a 6 foot 3 giant amongst children. That is in no way relevant to what you are here to read but sharing is caring, or something. The Brits Abroad meanwhile are proving to be giants amongst mostly Portugese men, having won the league at a canter and going on to become European Champions. How do you top that?

Good morning to you from probably sunny Portugal! We’ve totally transformed Benfica into a British winning machine. A contradiction in terms, perhaps, but when Kevin Gallen is scoring for fun and we’re top of the league, what’s not to love? Let’s see how the season plays out.