Week 3: A lull in the action to commence

We have a new leader, a highest climber, a manager of the week and a someone going to Africa for a month.

And they are Guy Harewood, Edgar Rayner [up ten places], Lionel Larking [with 28 points] and The Chairman* [in search of new footballing talent, of course].

By the way - welcome to the league, Mr Smears.  The most senior amongst the managers.  We look forward to your continued underachieving and your relentless attempts at hoodwinking the Chairman into thinking you deserve some sort of age-related allowance.  Bloody good to have you back.

Oh yes, Alex Blundell has grumpily miserabled his way back into the bottom of the league.

*the OFFL HQ will be travelling with The Chairman to ensure his standard of living does not dip below 'profligate'.

Please continue to submit transfers during this down time.  Accuracy not guaranteed.

Week 2: LOOK AT ALL THEM BLOODY ZULUS

Waiting for the Zulus to finish their cups of tea

'Oh my giddy Aunt' as the Chairman's long dead Grandfather used to say.

It was an expression he often used to evince shock or disbelief, usually in a 'You've got to be Joking' kind of way. It preceded an open palm to his forehead and a disappointed shake of the noggin.

Not the best thing to hear if your little self, in shorts and sandals with an elasticated bow tie pinged around the neck, is naively predicting a proud pat on the pate for presenting him, in cupped dirty fingernailed hands, a potato. Dug from the garden after hearing him exclaim that he was hungry.

But then his grandfather never expected The Chairboy [as he was known back then] to have an over-developed awareness of language and totally disjointed logic at the age of three.

So it is of no surprise then that Our Most Gracious Chairman repeated history when he was presented, earlier today, with a Livercoolio 'potato of transfers'. Yes, by the League's current champion: Russell 'Panic Button' Bielby.

We kid you not, ladies and gentleman.

Ignoring Michael Caine's Zulu advice - to wait until he saw the whites of their eyes - Bielby has only gone and shot himself in the foot [thrice] while the 'Bloody Zulus' are still half a mile away in their trailers enjoying a cup of tea and awaiting their cue from the floor manager to cease polishing their spear tips and stitching back their cattle hide shields in order to assemble 30 metres out of shot.

Oh Mr Bielby... do we have to remind you?

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Having said that, Guy Harewood is this week's sprinter of the week, I mean manager of the week, with a very impressive 29 points - launching his promising young team of Stirling Charges into second place behind our portly pace-setter, Malcolm. Indeed, Fat Mal's Malcademicals doubles last week's waistline to 48 points.

Menarepigs3 fall dramatically, as if overcome by 'the vapours' in a Jane Austen novel, to slump down [forcing her over-elaborate peplummed bustled crinoline to billow ostentatiously] into the arms of the dashingly handsome, though sinisterly penniless, Gentleman that is Thirteenth Position.

And having gone on Forfar [Athletic] too long, we're going to flounce off, frilly cuffed, into Week 3.

Week 1: The World Cup Legacy

At the opening ceremony - photo by Steve Tierney

As with every olympiad, the world cup this year provided us with many things. 

A strong sense of Welsh national pride for one. 

Let's not forget too that we have also been blessed with the drone of 50,000 vuvuzelas still tinnitussing our every waking hour.

And after many headscratching hours trying to be cautiously prosaic in linking the drone with the Welsh this really was the best we could come up with. 

And then the deluded Welsh amongst us came up with the rest themselves, didn't you...?

Have we started yet? Are we on?

"keep your eye on the ball"

He nervously strokes back some imaginary hair behind each ear. The pad of the index finger gently taps the microphone in front of his mouth with a booming thud-thud that fills the shopping centre foyer. To needlessly reaffirm the amplification he blows his booze-befuddled breath into the semi-globed phonic mesh. Passing shoppers flinch and wince at the sound of this harsh and unnecessary tornado of white-noise being thrown forward from the powerful speakers.

He looks down the front of his waistcoat and sees a rather large skid mark of icing that had once been sitting atop a rather delicious cake which he'd launched himself into earlier that day. He frowns at it. It had been smeared into his front and was now securing tempting looking crumbs to his chest. Lifting his eyebrows he thinks that he might as well pick at these while he waited for their attention. Popping the sponge detritus into his mouth he is sure the cake tasted better this second time round.

An embarrassing amount of time passed.

He could wait no more and conceded defeat by phlegmmily clearing his throat...

Now what followed was, of course, [yes, you know it and I know it], the mad and incoherent bellowing of a man who believed he was giving great succour to the ungrateful Unwashed of the World. There was befuddled inarticulacy about rules and budgets but the delivery and demeanour was of a man who clearly believed, at the very least, that there would one day be a statue of himself, or some such plinth-based commemorative crossbow-wielding cherub, erected in his honour on a busy London park corner.

Not once did the thought that nobody really cared ever wander meaningfully through his misshapen mind to mellow his mania. Not once did he remember the scintillating apathy of the few who electronically turned up every year. And so we start this nonsense all over again.

Of course and yes... this is the official announcement of the opening of the 2010/2011 Office Fantasy Football League by our blessed and deluded Chairman.

He wants you to know that you can pick 11 players. 1 Goalkeeper, 2 Full Backs, 2 Centre Backs, 4 Midfielders and 2 Strikers. You use the Players List as your point of reference. You cannot spend more than £55m. You cannot have more the two payers from the same Premiership club in your side.

Download this spreadsheet and you can't go wrong.

Really, you can't.

Oh and a word of advice...
“It’s a marathon, not a ...oh you know it already”