Summer News Roundup #37

New Players
The club has been trumpeting the arrival of a seemingly endless list of journeymen to the club. Some of them may be up to scratch but the Wycombe way is to herald all of these players as saviours for three minutes, then to start destroying them before they've even kicked a ball. One man to escape this fate so far is rangy striker John Sutton. Brother of Chris, which is in fact his middle name, he comes to the club as a genuine transfer coup, or so they say. But does anyone else have the feeling that scoring 11 times for St Mirren in a league as bad as the SPL is not really that impressive? This was a division in which Henrik Larsson used to rack up 39 goals before the August Bank Holiday.

Still, he's on youtube, he's white and he hasn't played yet so the Drone Army are yet to savage him like a dog eating a chump chop.


Old Staff
The news that Steve Brown, Keith Ryan and John Granville were all being booted out of the club was a sad moment. No-one begrudges Paul Lambert the opportunity to shape the staff as he wants but the way that the news about the trio was handled was appalling. The club maintain it is for financial reasons but this blatant spin has generally been coughed back in their puffed-up faces by the fans. Ryan in particular, made many financial sacrifices for the club in his playing career, and now is officially being let go so that we can waste money on facepainting tents and Keith Blagbrough's long-held dream of a seven-course lunch.

These men were all heroes and they should depart knowing that they will always be remembered by Wycombe fans, long after the club sign their 4000th loan player of the 21st Century.

Let The Right One Slip In

Sensational news in the world of Wycombe Wanderers today as it was announced that the new writer on the club website is none other than Henry Hill. This surprising move has sent shockwaves through the Wanderers fanzine community with one person commenting "if Hill has turned state's evidence then none of us are safe". With mattress sales going through the roof (something that will please stadium sponsors Dreams) these are confusing times for Wanderers fans.

South Bucks has seen many friends of ours nervously building bonfires and hiring slots at the jpeg incinerator as the news spreads like wildfire. Rumours that Hill has been wired for years has led to certain investors in SMBU moving their families down to Miami.

These are extraordinary times and until the knock on the door at midnight comes from the police or the Ballboy Manageress we at the Meat Clinic will continue to operate business as usual.

Power Chords

I, Tucker Chump, was a visitor to Wembley last Friday for a game between two disinterested teams in front of howling fans, faces painted with blood and stained with cherished memories. Little stood out, other than the CGI architecture and the crows swooping down from great heights to feed on the dead grass.

But at half-time as I urinated powerfully I could not avoid the truth any longer. The two men either side of me had clearly been eating asparagus as the stench of their foaming piss was more than enough evidence. This is some change from the old Wembley, where the piss smelt of a simpler era, one when men were men and vegetables were processed and tinned.

We have lost this forever. Mourn it.

Die Mensch-Maschine

Vile news emanating from the club this week in the form of Wycombe's pre-season in Dortmund being a behind-closed-doors special. Yes, that's right, no Wycombe fans will be allowed to watch their side taking on a bunch of keen Germans, instead they are being offered the chance to watch Wanderers play dreary failures Oxford United later in the summer.

Fair enough, you might say, Wycombe will be working on some special tactics so that they don't lose every fucking game once the season reaches February. Or perhaps the German side will be smashed up on growth hormone and could endanger the fans. But the fact remains, the club pumped this trip like Christmas Day earlier this year and for many Wycombe fans it was the only thing keeping them going towards the end of the campaign.

At Barnet I saw grown men toying with cyanide capsules in the palm of their hands at half-time, so physically repulsed were they by the dreadful exhibition they were watching. These haunted, troubled dreamers were only kept from the sweet stench of suicide with the promise of Germany, the Fatherland, and a continental summer. These luckless lads must now cancel their foreign roving and instead trudge down the A40 like so many lame horses before them.

Wycombe Wanderers take your dreams and pack them into a tiny ball and then fire them into the heart of the sun. And they laugh while they do it and they charge you for the privilege. But book early and you'll get €3 off.

Time After Time (Annelise)

Just how much of his career does Lulu "Lawrie" Sanchez owe to Liverpool FC? The gloom-filled tactician has benefitted from the Merseyside club over and over again and frankly I am sick of it.

1988 - "Sanch" nods a goal in for Milton Keynes against Liverpool and milks it so dry that even the molten surface of the sun has a higher humidity level.

2001 - Wycombe fight their way into the FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool. Cue Sanchez saying he "doesn't want to talk about 1988" more than 5,258 times and even going on Match of the Day to DEFINITELY NOT TALK ABOUT THAT GOAL. (They showed it twice, as Sanchez talked it through).

2005 - England draft in Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher for the away game in Northern Ireland and are left stunned when Sanchez's team dump them 1-0. Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has a dire game and is substituted with 15 minutes to go. Sanchez demands that the media talk about his players, not him, but refuses to leave the room.

2007 - With Lulu installed as temporary Fulham boss, Liverpool roll up at Craven Cottage with a team made up of local cub scouts, three milkmen and a triallist from Canal+ who Rafa Benitez knows from Spain. Fulham somehow scrape a 1-0 win and stay up, fooling Mohammed Al Fayed into hiring Super Sanchez permanently.

We all know it will go horribly wrong in the end but I have little stomach for the surly, preening interim.

Memorize The City

There is something about April & May in a football that seems to herald disaster. From Bradford to Heysel to Hillsborough, every fan knows the routine macabre order. Well another one can be added to the list after Tuesday night: Oxford United failed to get back into the Football League.

Yes, no-one was killed this time, and that's something to be thankful for, but the mental scars in Headington could take a long time to heal. If the city hadn't suffered enough after Inspector Morse died and the rowers came second, losing to Exeter on penalties was a low blow in anyone's book.

Why, it is only a few months since we met our comrades from across the border in the FA Cup and their friendly and enthusiastic chatter about returning to the League was one of the highlights of the season for many Wycombe fans. I know because I asked them. Oxford are a great example of a community club who pull together and value their place at the community table of football and it will be sad to see such a giant slumming it in the non-league for another season.

Their kindness even extended to thinking of building a temporary fourth stand at their ground to house the travelling Grecian fans, but the home faithful managed to find enough people to not go to the second leg so that the City followers could be housed in one of the three permanent stands. This attitude is sadly missing at Wycombe, where Adams Park was sold out in minutes for the visit of Premiership champions Chelsea in January. We could certainly learn from Oxford: the biggest game of the season doesn't have to turn into an ugly bunfight for tickets.

Frankly, the thought of former winners of the Milk Cup being in the fifth tier is hard for us at the Meat Clinic to stomach and we will certainly be backing the mighty U's in their trips to Histon and Droylsden next season. At least their league will be called "The Premier League" next season, and in these dark times that could well be a crumb of comfort for the passionate and loyal fans of Oxford United. Good luck!

Mongrel Love

As the ball heaved its way backward and forward like a tennis match played by the infirm and angered there was a stark moment of clarity, captured forever in the May sunshine. The Drone Army, The Geek Army, the muttering OAPs and the men in brogues all had the same thought at exactly the same time:

"This is fucking gash."

Away trips to Barnet are to be avoided at the best of times. Even if qualification for the FIFA World Cup depended on a win at Underhill you'd think twice about going, so why so many Wycombe fans trailed to Hertfordshire on Saturday remains a mystery. Perhaps it was the promise of the three middle aged men who gestured and gave it the full Gerard Lavin when Barnet equalised, seemingly mistaken that they were at a football match with atmosphere and importance. Perhaps not.

The game was similar to eating breakfast on Christmas morning when you were a kid. Something normally faintly enjoyable that you couldn't wait to end. Hurry up, hurry up, let's get it done and move out.

As the late Barnet winner laughed its way into the net there was a collective shrug of the shoulders amongst the Wanderers support and the players were already trudging back to the dressing room before the referee (the true enemy yeah?) had finished fellating his pea-whistle. 10 games without a win, our season ended when it was snowing and snowmen melt very quickly in the gulf stream.

The only positive was not having to head back west for a £65 carvery, that would have been like a shovel in the anus, a slap around the chops.

She's Lost Control

Today it is exactly 60 years since Frank Adams opened his wallet, pulled out the Visa Electron and said "Give me a Loakes Park with fries, Wycombe's gonna own it." Yes, the greatest benefactor in the club's history (even better than miracle man Brian Kane) is a person who should always be remembered by any Chairboys fan and we are lucky that until the club find a new sponsor, the ground will be called Adams Park, or the former Causeway Stadium, or Wasps' ground. A fitting tribute.

1947 eh? The rebuilding, the austerity, the NHS, it was a time of gestures and Franco's real estate gift was nothing if not a sign of the times. Fast forward 60 years and things have changed a little. No more will supporters get to see the player of the season being announced on the pitch. Instead, a cool £65 will see you get a slap-up roast dinner and a droning procession of club officials before a bored overrated player accepts a trophy and vows to himself to get a transfer in the summer even if involves moving to the Isthmian League or Poland.

Everything has a price now at Adman's Park and in an era when it is technically illegal to send your friend details of a goal on a text message from the ground, we should be glad that it is still (currently) possible to breathe air at the ground for free. And what about the supporters' representative Keith Blagbrough? Has he come out and said that hiding the player of the season award like it's a Jew in a Dutch attic is wrong? No, he has not, he is too busy seeing how many roast potatoes he can fit on his solid gold WWFC fork. Nice work.

Electric Avenue

Due to financial constraints this will be the final Meat Clinic entry in its current form. In an exciting development SMBU will now be incorporated into the club's official website as a "fun section" to go alongside the match reports, stats and great offers from Wycombe Wanderers.

The club have been courting us for a while now and the opportunity to work under the umbrella organisation of the excellent Premium TV is one that is very exciting to us and will make for some great reading for the fans!

This new era also means some new writers will join SMBU, including club director Keith Blagbrough and Sky TV's top commentator Alan Parry, both of whom will be providing maximum entertainment in their own inimitable styles. Sadly there will not be room on the club's web server to store all the old SMBU pages so these will be purged sometime this week.

Our new URL will be www.wwfc.org/SMBU/Krazy.html so make sure you bookmark it and join the party! It's been a great season and it will only get better as we move forwards together.


SMBU - OFFICIAL HUMOR SECTION OF WWFC

Cindy Of A Thousand Lives

It had to be didn't it? Like Shaggy and Scooby Doo pulling the mask from the friendly janitor, it emerged today (in the Daily Mail no less) that one of the keenest supporters of the harebrained idea of ending drawn Football League games with a penalty shootout was none other than Len Beeks, Wycombe's brown-coated figurehead. The howls of derision that greeted this news have led to a media crackdown from the club, with talk of misrepresentation and "the last decent thing the Daily Mail did was back Moseley in the 30s".

But the Meat Clinic cannot blame Robber Beeks, even if it does turn out he gave the penalty a huge thumbs-up. He is simply confused and nostalgic, and considering he sits through most games at Wycombe who can blame him for wanting some more excitement?

For starters, all Wycombe home games now finish as draws, most of them as turgid as a sandwich from a service station. Add to this the utter lack of atmosphere at the Adams Park in association with Magners Arena and you can see why Leonard was so keen to inject some excitement into the gnnnnnghg MATCHDAY EXPERIENCE in Sands.

He is wrong of course. Penalty shootouts should be used rarely like auto-asphyxiation and Night Nurse.

What Beeks should have realised is that years of dreary family-based policies and the banning of supporters for celebrating goals has made a game at Wycombe about as high-octane as a butcher's bicycle. Perhaps if he and his exalted friends on the Football League board stopped courting American corporations for just one second they would realise this and try to reverse years of damage to the game. Fat chance my dear, fat chance.