Life of Brian 3

Cardiff City Managers Office. The phone rings.

Faithful Lee 'Blimey' O'Rielly picks up.

Lee has been looking a bit distracted this week. BBM has asked Lee to make sure he is always in between Nathan Jones and BBM on the touchline on Saturday so when Nathan goes full Blaenrhondda Lee can step in and take the flak. Lee is not from Blaenrhondda, has never met anyone from Blaenrhondda and doesn’t want to meet anyone from Blaenrhondda. He is going to be out of his comfort zone.

Lee; ‘Pep, It’s Glen Williams from WalesOnLine’

BBM; 'Lee, stop calling me that. I'm my own man. I don't just do everything Pep does.'

BBM puts on a block polo neck jumper.

Lee; ‘Says he wants to do a splash on you and is offering lunch at the Cameo Club in Pontcanna.’

BBM; ‘Tell him I’ll only do it over zoom. I need to record it all so I can do a full statistical analysis on my performance to see if I can learn anything about myself for the Charlton game. Book it in for 10.30. The players will be training then and out of my hair.’


Later;


Glen; ‘Thanks for this Bri – I'm keen to understand what makes BBM tick in the week building up to a crucial match.’

BBM; ‘Have you read The Boys from Brazil, Glen?’

Glen; ‘What the seminal tale of the 1970 World Cup winning team that set a bar for the beautiful game that has rarely been surpassed with the possible exception of the Total Football of a Rinus Michels inspired Dutch team of 1974?

BBM; I meant the 1976 novel about a group of idealogues who want to create another Hitler by replicating all aspects of his life in an effort to produce a duplicate Furher who will instigate a 1,000 year long 3rd Reich.

Glen; ‘I think I’ve seen the film, Gregory Peck, wasn’t it.?’

BBM; I’m part of a covert project to recreate The One True Pep and carry on his legacy into the indeterminable future.

Glen; ‘You’d need quite a lot of assistance to do that, Bri.’

BBM; ‘it’s just me and Lee at the moment.’

Glen; ‘How’s it going?’

BBM; The stats say we’re bang on track, but the end product is not quite delivering the targeted goals yet.

Glen; ‘Sounds like an Ollie Tanner cross followed by a tame header into the keepers midriff by Yousef Salech’

Glen looks wistfully at his steak bake.

BBM; ‘I leave that kind of stuff to the analyst.’

Glen; ‘Right, how’s the new guy fitting in?’

BBM; ‘ I’m hoping he will come into his own on the harder, frozen pitches of January and February. That's where his background and expertise really lies.

Glen; ‘You know the CCS has undersoil heating? We don’t play on icy or frozen pitches here.’

BBM looks down and writes on a post-it note – it seems to say ‘Turn if off??’

Glen; ‘Is there anything else you can add to the goalkeeper coach situation? Trott looks a bit off the pace this season – is there any connection? How was it visa issues when he’d been at Man City?

BBM; ‘I’m afraid he was saying a few things that undermined the unity of the management and the team.’

Glen; Heh. ‘It wasn’t that joke going around about Our back four needing 2 keepers on the pitch, not 2 keepers on the bench’ was it?

BBM loses eye contact.

BBM; ‘Let’s not talk about that.’


Glen; ‘Come on Bri, give me something here. WOL are laying off journo’s quicker than you’re losing backroom staff. Everyone’s getting their news, rumours and wild speculation from the influencers, the message boards, the blogs & the vlogs. There’s even some guy posting hilarious piss-takes on-line of the season so far. He's not getting the traction he deserves, not yet anyway. How can I compete with that? WOL want to charge £1 to read 400 words on Perry Ng’s pre match calm down regime, or make readers view it through 189 pop up ads that cover 94% of the page?

‘I just need a story.’


BBM; OK Glen, Pep always admitted his mistakes, so let's go with this. Let me tell you about the recent trip to Norway. We did go there on a private jet in the window and we did sign a player. Lee and the new analyst went there but unfortunately, the analyst had the wrong tab open on the excel sheet and we signed an ice-hockey player.

Glen; ‘Oof. Still, he’s probably more mobile than Anwar El-Khazi was.’

BBM; Maybe, but she’s a woman. Jena Hjerte-Dahl. Norwegian 2nd Division Ice Hockey League.

Glen; ‘Where is she now?’

BBM; We’ve kept her in the cryo chamber at the back of the training ground, but we’ve had to give her a run out now again. She’s certainly more aggressive than Chris Willock in the tackle and she’s the main reason we’ve got so many centre back injuries this season.

I'm trying to organise a loan deal/swop option/sex change with the Cardiff Devils. If it comes off I can get a net minder on the bench, so there are positives.

Dalman is coming over on the weekend and he’s going to go ape when he finds out. I need you, Glen. I need your media skills to help manage this story. There are no statistics for this situation. What do you think, Glen?


Glen; ’Blimey!’

Love it. You've been far to kind about the WOL web site though. Even Mossad can't decipher it.