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.
