Hope you had a good new year!

Back soon, but in the meantime ... check this out for some <George Hatfeild Dingley Gossip> ...

Hey, look. I translated your name into Latvian (impressive, eh?) … and submitted it to <Val Zemitis> for inclusion in his wonderful Encyclopedia. Imagine my dismay when he insisted that you must be an <actual Latvian chess champion> to grace his pages. A stickler for standards that man.

Aaargh, football. The main reason my yuletide was not so merry this year. Absolutely no joy to be gained from watching ManU (or Newcastle). And from what I remember, not too many golden moments at White Hart Lane either. Thank goodness for chess and american football, and the small amount of respite they have afforded my miserable life over the holiday season.

I can only forlornly hope that ManU do buy this <Bruno Fernandes> fella, as has been much speculated about on Twitter. He certainly looks the biz, both as a playmaker and a finisher:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKF...

Losing out on <Erling Haaland> was bearable because, in theory, we have good strikers and it seems Ole has finally started to push <Trashford> into a more right-sided or central position where he isn’t tripping over <Field Martial>’s toes. If only there was some incisiveness and ingenuity about the build-up play, then these two and <Mason Dreamgood> might start to flourish on a more regular basis.

And it should be really obvious by now that <Jesse Coastguard> and the ever-absent <Paul Dogma> do not fit the playmaker role, thus making it a matter of urgency to cough up the £50m and take a chance on this creative star of Sporting Lisbon. From the clips I’ve seen, his energy levels are crazy high and I could imagine him working well with <Andreas Pereira Rocher> and <Scott McDominate> who also put in the effort but without a lot of flair or end-product.

Changing the topic completely, I had hoped that watching the much publicized <Dracula> mini-series might lift my Christmas footy gloom.

Sadly not. Episode #1 was actually very good and promised much, but by episode #2, you could tell they were running a bit short of ideas and the final part … well, let’s just say I stopped watching when the action switched to a nightclub disco in England where I think Robbie Williams was playing in the background. This idiotic idea to go modern and discard the laudable authenticity and atmosphere of episode #1 backfired massively in my book. IMDb have it at 6.9/10. That’s pretty generous and I think reflects how good the first episode was. To be fair, <Claes Bang> and <Dolly Wells> were also well cast in the main roles.

Super Nezh annotates his own favourite game (v Polugaevsky, Sochi 1958)

<Tim>

I don't mean to sound Flipper, but this was most certainly the "catch of the day":

<<CG: Type Alert> The Russian Championship Superfinal (2007)

The title reads: "Russian Championship Superfinal (2007)"

The text reads: "the Russian Championship Superfinal was played in the Central Chess House in Moscow, Russia, 18-30 December 2009.">

<Port Moresby Dragon>

The almost total collapse of Spurs has put me in a fowl mood, but if you support a Premier League club you can't chicken out when the Foxes raid your coop. At least your Reds are still putting up points on the board despite a maddening inconsistency.

The best sign for your lads is that management seems to have some idea what the actual problems are, and are taking steps or likely to take steps to fix them- as your alert reprise of the issues suggests.

I get no sense of anything similar happening at White Hart Lane. I long suspected it was the owner who is the real root of this malaise. I never thought <Poncho Villa> was the real problem. Notice how there are no George Gossip notes on who <Spurs> might buy. When they *do* buy they usually get a pig in poke. Maybe they should draft in a few scouts who know what they're doing before spending any more money.

Worst scouting record in over 2000 years of English footy.

To be honest I have been enjoying the <ManU> saga. Right now it's a much better side than mine and I have no problem cheering for them. When <Spurs> are going well (if you can remember that far back) I would typically cheer against any traditional top six side, but I've given that up now. Like <Harry Sugar Cane>, I want to "enjoy me footy."

Tragic for both Spurs and England- <Harry> is proving to be similar to <Gareth Bale>: a career already marred by chronic long-term serious injuries.

You are the gill of my dreams. You hooked me good with your line. I have a few "rod" puns but there are children about.

<Teem: Detective> (starring Trini Lopez as "Teem")

[Event "Ventspils v. Riga Match"]
[Site "Correspondence"]
[Date "1921.??.??"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "City of Ventspils"]
[Black "City of Riga"]
[Source "Latvijas Sacha Vestnesis 1932, Nr.2"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 f5 5. Bxc6 dxc6 6. Nc3 Nf6 7. Nxe5 fxe4 8. d4 exd3 9. O-O Bd6 10. Re1 O-O 11. Qxd3 Qe8 12. Bf4 Nh5 13. Nc4 Nxf4 14. Rxe8 Nxd3 15. Rxf8+ Bxf8 16. cxd3 Bf5 17. Rd1 Rd8 18. d4 c5 19. d5 b5 20. Ne3 Bg6 21. f3 c4 22. Kf2 Bc5 23. a3 Rb8 24. g3 Bd3 25. f4 a5 26. Rd2 Re8 27. Ncd1 b4 28. axb4 axb4 29. Kf3 Be4+ 30. Ke2 Bg6 31. Kf3 c3 32. bxc3 bxc3 33. Nc2 Re2 34. Kxe2 Bxc2 35. Nxc3 Kf7 1-0 --------------
(d=1990493 City of Kuldiga vs Riga, 1921 tid=98449)

Btw, please note that when I asked you to <wait until they are <processed>> when you submit different gametypes, by 'processed' I meant processed by the uploader (published on the site), not just processed by the submission page. The queued games are stored by user, so it makes no difference if you submit them separately or all together, I will still have to separate the gametypes waiting in your list in order to assign a gametype to the whole batch at once, if you don't wait for the previous type to be cleared from your queue before submitting another type.

As a new Old Traffordite, it is however incumbent on you to write to the management and tell them to scrap those horrible <flesh coloured> shirts that we sometimes wear to away matches. I can only imagine that some art school dropout is responsible for such a vile colour scheme.

Yes, I feel your pain when lamenting the form of <Totteringham> in recent times. I’m not sure that they’re that much worse than United, but <No Kane, no gain> is a ridiculous state to be in, because, as you rightly point out, it’s all of their own making. Completely incompetent to have no back-up striker. Moura, Lamela … these guys are midfielders all day long. In fact, Spurs have hundreds of midfielders, but a replacement forward? Apparently not.

Oh wait up … according to the fantasy footy roster, there is a striker named <Parrot> on the books. Nothing more than shoulder decoration by the sound of it, but I can’t even say I’ve seen him on the pitch.

Do you think there was an expectation that <Son Of A Gun> would miraculously switch to the Kane role? That hardly seems realistic. Son works well because he has the freedom to wander about, play from deep or wide, and generally, NOT be a centre-forward. This has all come at a bad time, what with the <Bo Dereksen> situation needing resolving. And I think it’s affecting <Bowling Alli> too. A few weeks back, he looked like he had found a new spark, but has since slipped back to his more subdued form.

I don’t know if you saw the Spurs-Middlesborough FA Cup game, but there was at least one spectacular performance from your new wing back and man of the match … <Tom Ganja> I think his name was. It’s going to be a pleasure to check out his supply and delivery skills over the rest of the season.

One other bit of good news - Son’s solo wonder goal made ‘goal of the month’ on MOTD, and I would think has a very good chance to be ‘goal of the season’. Let’s hope that 2020 is a better year for all things Spurs, and if they do bring back <Gareth Bale> then they at least make him take a big wage drop.

So, a fellow-sufferer. I try to mitigate the pain by betting against them. But whenever the dough starts to accumulate, they go and undo all the good work by pulling out a result like last week-end's. Ah well, as long as they can finish above That Other North London Team again ...

<Paint my Dragon>

Well it's been painful but not so much now that winning days have come back. I just finished watching <ManU v Chelsea> and was gratified to see the Reds pound the Blues for the third(!) time this season, if I have my maths correct? All the sweeter for the pre-game pundits predicting a Chelsea win. The ever dour <Gary Neville> didn't seem to hopeful either, but the "human Eeyore" cheered up a bit towards the end even though you could tell he was struggling to keep the hope out of his voice. I'm sure he was afraid of jinxing them. As I am of jinxing Tottenham. Our new footy poster <Cibator> unveiled his novel method of betting money against <Spurs> which seems to have paid off, though not in money, ironically enough. I tried to copy him by pretending to cheer against <Spurs> and that seems to have worked out fine as well.

How is your erotic fantasy football club doing?

I just finished watching the pre-game shoe for <Spurs v. Timo Weiner> and <The Special Bun> looked like he'd swallowed a canary in the interview. Who can blame him. Now both of our clubs have waltzed in to <The Stone Roses Stadium> and served up some humble pie to <Peppy Gladiola>.

<Cibator> A novel, yet expensive approach that has borne fruit!

I'm sure all <Spurs> fans are thrilled with your costly strategy. I know I am.

<Cibator> Did you cash in on Arse to win vs Newcastle? I watched that match yesterday and most entertaining. <Mikel Tete a Teta> breaks a 150 game streak of straight draws with a clean sheet full of goals including one by <Monsieur Oozol> the laziest man in football. I think Arse has been underperforming. There's no shortage of quality players there especially the enigmatic young newcomer <Saka Crap> who had a good match. Still, there are too many Frenchmen in that side. One is too many, but two is never a good sign. The World Cup holders are awesome in a bunch, but in dribs and drabs in the premiere league they invariably underperform. Or they take 3 years to acclimatize into something useful as in the case of <Genna Sosoko>. Even in that case, if <Sosoko> stopped spending so much time writing historical tell-all chess gossip he would show more on the pitch.

I did think Arse's world historical 10 man gutty performance of the century against Chelsea was magnificent though. Match of the year for me. What a stirring display of manly footy that was.

<VAR> debuts in the <No Hopa League> tonight ManU v Bruggge nothing good can come of this.

I like <Cibator>’s betting idea. I’ve often been tempted by an online betting account, but can never seem to get round to it. I used to work with a guy (who also staked little more than “washers” each week) and his thing was to structure his bets as super-ambitious ‘3-event’ accumulators. I recall one week he had (something like) <Rooney> to score a hat-trick AND <Andy Murray> to win Wimbledon AND <England> to win the Rugby World Cup. The first two miraculously worked out and if the third had landed then his minimal stake would have earned him a very tidy sum. It struck me that this would be great fun.

Regarding betting on the opponent, I’ve occasionally used my fantasy team in a similarly therapeutic way. For example, if ManU are travelling to SheffU, I’ll select my SheffU defender and goalie in the starting XI that week. That way, if ManU flop and fail to score, I stand to gain some serious FL points. In effect, the joy of one possible outcome mitigates the misery of the other. Heh, I can’t believe I’m even admitting to this.

In other news, I regret to report a total absence of eroticism in my fantasy football team. I shuffled finances a while ago to bring in <Vardy, Ings and Grealish> while they were showing great virility in front of goal, only to find they are now firing blanks. Sadly, it’s a crisis without an easy solution. My most recent purchase (I needed a cheap defender) was Hotspur wing-back <Tangyganja>. He was inspiring against Boro, so I took the plunge. Early days, but it would be helpful if he got a few more full games.

The season is very topsy-turvy at the moment, isn’t it? It’s incredibly hard to say anything insightful about Spurs or ManU without looking like a complete idiot a few days later. And just as mystifying are the fortunes of Chelsea and Arsenal. A lot of variables in play … unconvincing managers, moody players, see-sawing form, big name injuries, VAR!

More so than any other season I can remember, the focus appears to be on the end of season CL spots - like it’s the only measure of success that matters. A ‘good domestic cup run’ certainly feels a bit lame these days, with managers increasingly using these competitions to exercise the fringe players in their squad.