Make it Beesy’s Big Johnstone’s Paint Trophy “Special” (MIBBJPT”S”)

Hello.

You may remember this website from such seasons as the turbulent 2003/04 season (the demise of Downes) and the exciting but disappointing years 2004-06.

Now there has been false dawns since then. Scroll down and you will most likely the remnants of one. However and strictly for a one week only thing Beesy is back.

Why? Well, Beesy LOVES the Painted Vans Trophy. It was always our favourite tournament (in the absence of the Anglo-Italian cup) mainly thanks to its excellent name and ever changing structure (South Eastern group stage? Really?). It is a somewhat bitter irony that the one year Brentford have done well in it is the year we’ve showed general indifference.

That said we were one (two) few to be bored rigid at Stevenage. Stevenage is a terrible terrible place.

Anyway here’s a list of things we’ve been doing instead of writing about Brentford:

1. Manly things like hunting and drinking and shit.
2. Coming second on the pro-celebrity hotrod circuit. We’ll beat you next year Chico
3. Living in the midlands (if you can call living in the midlands living)
4. Designing a new style hat
5. Learning to cry.

Southend defeat preview

Beesy has always hated Southend. With their non-league boys made good Essex fairytale, irritating as hell local DJ “stadium” announcer and beyond-irony ‘win a Ford Fiesta’ half time competition they stand for the sort of ambitious betterment of small clubs that is the antithesis of everything we believe in, making them as welcome at Griffin Park as a bowel movement on a rainy day.

They also have a settled team comprising proper strikers, pace, a little tactical nouse and some clever loan signings of skilful players from a higher level; in short the antithesis of everything we expect to see in a red and white shirt tomorrow.

For Brentford let’s assume we will persist with Sam Wood at left back – correctly picked by one GPG user as a non-league full back – and probably Leon Legge upfront. An assortment of ineffectual wingers will feature on the opposite of their preferred wing, while a pedestrian midfield will watch Southend bypass them with ease.

Ever get the feeling morale is low?

- Southend’s pier will continue to be the longest in the world until it burns down in March 2010.

- Fat-tongued c*nt Jamie Oliver is from Southend.

- Southend striker Lee Barnard invented the laser jet printer.

- There was another one but I’ve forgotten it.

Welcome Bristol City

Returning to Beesy’s quasi-nostalgic theme that we should never really have left division three in the first place, it’s quite surprising to see our regular soccer foes Bristol City have changed their name to “Rovers” and become much smaller. And less good.

Ignoring the James Wilson shaped hole in this argument, Bristol City/Rovers’ team has changed markedly since we last met at this level and now features relegation expert Jo Kuffour and flash-in-the-pan (and not a very good pan at that) Chris Dickson.

Brentford’s Great Game – can Kabba or Cort score before Christmas – continues apac… Well, it continues. This week’s random defensive reshuffle is yours to guess.

We haven’t bothered researching any stats and we can’t be bothered to go either. It’ll finish 1-1 and Alan Bennett will get sent off. The end.

Hit the North – Huddersfield Town Preview

the ground is the second road on the right, bring own hungry child

Right

Beesy has been to Huddersfield. Once.

It proved surprisingly hard to get to… climbing aboard a trundler in Sheffield, dodging the prams and chavs as you go through the Meadowhall Interchange, through a place called Penistone* and jump off before Leeds.

In an incident that in no way clouded Beesy’s judgement about Huddersfield the first thing we saw when venturing out of the quite nice station was a man urinating at the side of a big church.

Now this is a somewhat odd way to get a first impression and I’m pleased to say it was the last time I saw some dude’s wang on my snakelike voyage to the Galpharm. Still I did encounter several northern stereotypes including people in flat caps, drunk rugby league fans, several Greggs (the baker) and slightly against the run of things… a really cool record shop where I bought Captain Beefheart’s seminal Shiny Beast album.

Huddersfield then, to this correspondent at least, is the very epitome of the north with its dank concrete buildings matching the dank grey skies, miscellaneous meat pies and a constant banging of drums from a hostile football crowd.

Oh, and I was almost killed by the Brentford Team coach… but that is a different story.

Huddersfield Town, founded in 1908, had a remarkably good 1920s winning the FA Cup and the Division One Championship 3 times on the bounce.

Fast forwarding to the modern day… mainly because their history from the 20s is a little bit boring

Now owned by Mr Card Factory “t’own” (or whatever they call themselves) are amongst the favourites to go up this year and can probably, realistically, challenge Leeds and Charlton for automatic promotion. A fortune has been spent and at present they have two players who have each scored as many goals as Brentford have in their entirety this year. The trio of Simpson, Rhodes and Robinson are rumoured to cost several hundred of thousands of pounds.

This no doubt can be explained by the presence of Cort and Kabba as much discussed in the Hobo Challenge. With the anticipated return of Charlie MacDonald hopefully there will be more of a goal threat from Brentford but the month of September appears it may turn out to be a chastening month for the West London tyros.

Anyway bet your house on a Jordan Rhodes hat trick. Beesy genuinely fears the result tomorrow.

Huddersfield facts anyone??

• Huddersfield is a hotbed of acting talent. Patrick Stewart was born in nearby and James Mason hails from the area. Both of these are acted into a cocked hat however by Rene Artois himself Gordon Kaye. Ohhhhhh RENE!
• ‘Allo ‘Allo is the greatest British Sitcom ever written.
• League Egg Chasing was founded in Huddersfield and despite the Thrice Champions era the odd shape ball game is still probably the prefered sport of the town.
• Lee Clark is personally responsible for the current sale of Wispa Gold, having successfully persuaded Cadbury’s to sell the caramely chocolatey treat based solely on a petition of 468 names, all of which are “Lee Clark”.
• Huddersfield is in the Domesday book as Oderesfelt. There also was a Roman Fort around about the Roman period.
• The train station is quite nice

*If that name isn’t funny enough on a visit to Hillsborough Beesy once espied an advert for Penistone Erectors.

Charlton preview – and not a proper one

With a jaunty hat tip to Sesame Street, this preview is brought to you by the following quote from Kevin O’Connor (as nicked from the official website) referring to the FA Cup game in 2006 (we think):

“I played in that FA Cup game, to play them in the league shows how far we have come and also that they have come down.”

Beesy would like to point out that when we played Charlton in the Cup that day, we lay third in division three. That folks is precisely how far we have come.

Anyway, so to the game that will inevitaby see your correspondent have to buy food for a homeless type. Your PMA wristband-wearing Brentford fan will tell you that we’re unbeaten and unbeatable this year. Your disappointment-hardened Brentford fan will point out that we’ve only won twice this season, one of which thanks to a managerless Norwich side imploding in the second half but still only being beaten by two set pieces, while our strikers have stunk the place up horrendously all season.

Which means 2-0 Charlton: a Deon Burton belter and a soaring Sam Sodje header from a corner.

Bah!

Southampton Preview: Wot no Beam Back???

So where were you on Feb 19th 2005? If you were a Brentford season ticket holder/ club member you where probably gnashing your teeth whilst sat at Griffin Park cursing all those non fans that had stolen/ bought your Southampton away day ticket.

Now Beesy’s take on Beam Back has always been that it must have been the best, most magical way of viewing a game given the opportunity for dancing girls, booze and fireworks.

Of course Beesy has never actually experienced the delights of Beam Back. We made a decision to get up early and using phones got tickets quite easily. So we were at St Mary’s for the Isiah Rankin wondergoal and the hilarious disallowed goal for Kevin Phillips right at the death. But we still are outraged that the option for people to pay to huddle around a large screen at Griffin Park hasn’t been taken up. Beesy can only think of three reasons for this:

1. That there suddenly is space in the large, usually half filled stadium for paying visiting fans?
2. That it’s going to be a hard Christmas for those in the Large Screen/ Beam Back Business?
3. Or that a League of the Damned match featuring two mediocre teams is of a waning interest to most?

You, dear reader can of course decide.

What can be said with certainty is that following two relegations in five years Southampton FC (formerly a subsidiary of Southampton Leisure Holdings PLC) is in decline from the Keegan/ Le Tissier / Le Saux glory years of virtually all of our football watching existence which saw 27 years of our 30 in the top flight of English football.

Currently on a net tally of minus nine points, with two goals scored and Southampton can be found firmly rooted at the bottom of the League of the Damned. As has been well reported a summer of financial travails has left the club feeling their way into the new season tentatively with an opening day draw with Millwall the highlight so far, with two away defeats to Huddersfield and Swindon making up their other fixtures.

Having turned to Alan Pardew in the summer Southampton stll have a squad of players you’d have heard of: Chris Perry, Graeme Murty, Marek Saganowski um… ok maybe not that many players you would have heard of but with new signing Ricky Lambert in line for a start it should be expected that tomorrow will be no easy tie.

But then Brentford, buoyed by victory over one of the other too-big-for-this-league club Norwich City in the week will take solace from the loss of Alan Bennett by the new loan signing of James Wilson, everyone’s favourite very good Bristolian central defender (even if it does mean bad news for fans of Karleigh Osborne’s unique haphazard style of football).

Also fingers crossed for Steve Kabba. Let’s hope that he can deny a hobo a nutritious and possibly life saving meal.

So lets see those Southampton Facts:

• Southampton is a bloody big port city but will always be more famously known known as the “gateway” to the Isle of Wight than for, say, being the fourth largest UK port by tonnage.
• Southampton has a “special relationship” with Kaliningrad, that weird bit of Europe near Poland that isn’t really acknowledge on maps (due to it being owned/ ruled/ part of Russia). Beesy couldn’t possibly say what this special relationship is but, well.. y’know Sailors and Vodka
• Brentford’s current home kit is remarkable similar to the Southampton’s Admiral 70s numbers. Look here for proof: www.historicalkits.co.uk
• These people come from Southampton… see if you can spot them at the match: Benny Hill (Comedian); Craig David (Singer-ish); Sir John Everitt Millias (Pre Raphaelite Painter. He was the good one). Admittedly you may only see one of them.

Canary dwarf: Norwich preview

Ah, Norwich. Having cast themselves succesfully as one of those clubs that would perpetually remain in Coca-Cola Purgatory, they gailly waltzed out the back door through the tried and trusted technique of two dire managerial appointments on the bounce.

Apparently their first game in the League of the Damned didn’t go entirely to plan, and they now find themselves in the midst of a fortnight of unemployed managers who wouldn’t lower themselves to managing anyone below the Championship hinting at an interest in the job, like a gaggle of increasingly desperate ageing dowagers secretly hoping the local squire will whisk them away to a life of leisure and privilege, while hedging their bets by flashing their garters at the down-on-his-luck local turkey farmer.

Saturday’s too-early-for-any-significant-conclusions-but-still-bloody-tedious yawn-off with Brighton has hopefully dampened the laughably unrealistic hopes of back-to-back promotions which had begun to fulminate. Improved performances from the midfield and strikers will be sought.

For Norwich Grant Holt seems set to assume Pawel Abbot’s mantle as our perpetual striking foe, and after their goal-each-off with Exeter at the weekend it seems hard to predict particulalry goal-laden fare tomorrow.

Anyway, here is your fact stat attack pack:

• Norwich have a squad of 33 professionals to choose from, none of whom are particularly good.
• The University of East Anglia has a Sainsbury’s on the campus. The number of recent graduates manning tills is currently unknown (to us).
• Craig Bellamy is their most famous ex-player. Just about.
• Norwich was home to the ‘New wave of Nu Nurridge” movement in the mid 90s, focussed on about five crap local indie bands getting gigs at the Waterfront which got written about in the NME.
• Norwich City’s website features an entire page devoted to their 1958-59 cup run, in which they got to the semi final and did not win any trophies.
• The Club is the focus of utterly mental lo-fi 1974 film “The boy who turned yellow”.
• Striker turned central defender Gary Doherty survives on a diet exclusively of rice cakes. In a 2006 interview Doherty estimated that he eats in the region of 1,400 rice cakes a day “the small ones, not the big ones, as I don’t like biting into the big ones when I can eat the small ones whole”. His favourite flavour is rumoured to be plain.
• There are six long articles about the Club’s history on Norwich’s website, and Beesy is damned if it’s going to read them.

Brighton Preview

In what is turning into a moderately odd week for the club the visit of Brighton(and Hove Albion) will be the first time most bees have had the opportunity to see this years crop in full effect.

I say odd week because despite the inevitable goal-less defeat to Bristol City in the weeks Milk Cup distraction, Brentford have a. made a successful start to League of the Damned survival; b.have a fair amount of intrigue surrounding the Matthew Benham deal (ably discussed on Beesy here) and c. seen the continuation of the strange goalkeeper and winger signing policy (which unless the pitch is changed to the shape of an octagon with four goals in this season means we surely have enough now).

Brighton have been familiar visitors to Griffin Park over the years and in general have  struggled recording their last win over Brentford at Griffin Park in 1995′s Boxing Day clash. Of course history is no guide to future events and no doubt Brighton will be anxious to improve on their current back to back defeat record this season having been beaten by Walsall and Swansea.

Having escaped relegation late last seaon after replacing Mickey Adams with Russell Slade the seasiders may be facing a similar battle again this season. The arrival of Liam Dickinson is most likely to prove problematic and the presence of Nicky Forster suggests that thanks to the law of returning players the Bees will have to score at least twice to win.

Now Beesy, as you would expect from a preview would dearly love to give you some insight into Brighton’s past but… well its impossible to find. Wikipedia only lists their history from 1978 with the cryptic “Brighton’s life as a Football League club brought little in the way of success and headlines until 1979″ covering the period beforehand.

This clearly isn’t enough to build an exciting preview around… the official website being no better simply listing the history of their mythical Falmer stadium as opposed to anything interesting.

So here’s a list of things I’ve found out with hopefully no references to Homosexuality, Fat Boy Slim, Peir fires and sundry other Brighton cliches (well maybe a couple):

• Brighton haven’t always been known as the Seagulls. Earlier in their history they’ve been known as “Dolphins” and “Shrimps”.
• Brighton has the highest ball replacement costs in the entire Football League for the 2008/09 season losing a total of 14 balls in the Steeplechase Water Jump pit alone. Other ball threatening hazards of the Withdean Stadium include are rack of javelins, that big hammer throw net and disgruntled away fans who can see bugger all thanks to the running track.
• The Brighton and Hove Chess Club is one of the oldest chess clubs in Britain. Chess is rubbish.
• Apparently some people refer to Brighton as Silicon beach due to the large amount of new media business located there. Beesy has been to the beach in Brighton. Its stone, cold, hard stone.
• A YouGov survey proclaimed Brighton to be “Britain’s Coolest City” in 2006. Brentford didn’t feature. Possible because it isn’t a city.

Ugh, that’ll do. For the gay capital of Britain with a large music scene Brighton really isn’t that interesting.

Bristol City and the least important competition this season

And yes, that includes the Painted Van Trophy.

Truly the milk cup is beginning to serve as the canary for the ills of football today. In doing so the competition is now even more pointless for lower league clubs than for those who harbour aspirations of actually winning the thing.

It is perhaps the momentum-sapping second-game-of-the-season clash with boring championship teams with aspirations far above their station (and reality), teams who will put out an XI of fringe players who spent last season on loan and still win 3-1 (as Bristol City surely will).

It could be the knowledge that even if we were to win we’d perhaps end up with an away tie at a premier league club in front of 9,000 fans, or it could be the poor TV and victory money on offer (which is as nothing in comparison to the FA Cup).

Or it could be them all together, a conflagration of circumstances together smearing the milk cup with a taint of futility that would have even Nietsche reaching for the self-help motivational tapes in despair.

So meh, we’re not going.

Carlisle preview – back to the league of the damned

After two years in the Coca-Cola Abyss, Brentford make a return to their perpetual home, the Coca-Cola League of the Damned. It was always going to be an odd championship to celebrate given the Club should never have imploded so spectacularly as to get relegated in the first place.

Still, on the plus side, it means not having to play truly awful, fanless, quasi non-league sides like Accrington, Morecambe and Bradford next year.

Instead we get the great leviathans of league football, starting with the near-Scottish border botherers of Carlisle. After staving off relegation by a point, it’s hard to see what has changed in Cumbria over the close season (apart from losing their two good players) suggesting more of the same to follow. Still, the first game of the season is usually a red herring, so expect a comfortable 2-0 win for the striker-free home outfit.

The final week before the season begins has seen some curious transfer movement in TW8 making Brentford’s prospects all the harder to divine. Huddersfield’s – Huddersfield’s for goodness sake – chequebook willy-waving rendered futile Andy Scott’s months of fluttering his eyelids at Jordan Rhodes, Nathan Elder was sold and Carl Cort was brought in. News that Steve Kabba has joined him suggests something of a departure from previous policy, a policy we’ll refer to as simply a ‘goally’ policy. Turning our nose up at Billy Clarke doesn’t look so clever now, does it?

Still, basic competence is usually enough to allow you to prosper in the League of the Damned – is Steve Kabba any less good than Isaiah Rankin was? Carl Cort will presumably work harder than Deon Burton did. And they’re clearly better than Rowan Vine was when we had him.

Here are your Carlisle facts:

• Carlisle is the smallest city in the UK by population but the largest by area. That can’t possibly be true.
• The club history on Carlisle’s website is incomplete, and what is there is exceptionally tedious.
• Eddie Stobart started his Ginsters-subsidy business in Carlisle.
• Carlisle’s squad featuring Graham Kavanagh, Scott Dobie and Marc Bridge-Wilkinson would have been quite good, were Saturday’s match to take place five years ago.
• Carlisle doesn’t feature in the Domesday Book as it was part of Scotland at the time.
• Lenny Pidgely now plays for Carlisle.
• Carlisle cathedral is Europe’s largest freestanding structure made out of jam.