Good afternoon guys and it’s Thursday which means time for blog revelations haha. This blog could become the new WikiLeaks on the Kinnear family. I can already see me being taken away in cuffs or having to flee to Russia to go into hiding but I will not stop blogging no matter where I am. Anyway enough with the fantasy world and let’s get to the real one.
It seems like I am in the bad books this week and have been accused of being rude and ignorant after Janene, the youngest daughter, thought it was a good idea to have a boyfriend. At 18 years old she is free to do as she please but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. When she told us, I didn’t say anything, not a single word. Of course there was a bit more going on inside my head as I played out the scene where she says she is only joking. Anyway, the rude and ignorant part came when, for some strange reason, she brought the boyfriend home. Of course, Alison said it was a good idea to bring him into the house so she could meet him. I, on the other hand, couldn’t think of anything positive about this and decided to have an early night and have some time on the laptop. That’s exactly what happened and all was going to plan when the dreaded call came thundering upstairs and straight to my superman hearing ears. I actually do have very acute hearing. I can hear plenty things that no one else in the family can and things like me asking the kids to turn their TV down is usually met with they can hardly hear it and if they turn it down then they would be as well turning it off. So,back to the visit of the boyfriend. The call came up ‘Gordon, are you not coming down to meet Janene’s boyfriend?’ My obvious answer should be ‘No I am busy’ but the words coming out of my mouth were along the lines off  ‘Erm, yeah ok I will be down soon’.

This is not a great idea as I know I won’t handle it very well. If any boy thinks he is going to kiss my daughter and I am going to congratulate him then his head is in lala land. A few minutes past and the shout of ‘Gorrrdonnn!!’ comes up again so I decide it’s time to go down. Down into the living room I go and the wife, eldest daughter Elise and Janene are there, and of course The Chancer. Now here comes the alleged rude bit. Janene says ‘Dad, this is Ross’ and I say ‘Hello Russ’. Maybe my hearing isn’t as good as I thought, or was that a deliberate error. Only In know :)’. So he actually has the nerve to speak to me and says ‘No, it’s Ross’. Wait a sec, he is actually correcting me in my own house!! So there it was ‘No, it’s Ross’ and my instant reaction is ‘Whatever’. That was the rude bit according to my wife, the two girls, the six dogs and the four pups. Even the characters on the TV seemed to stop and look at me. At that, it was time for a hasty retreat upstairs. Alison followed soon after while Elise was going to her bed. Janene took Russ, Ross or whatever into her bedroom. Erm what!!!! Alison says it’s fine, they are only watching some TV. I said ok. Sitting using the laptop makes time fly by and before I knew it, the time was twenty to one in the morning. I went to the loo and I could hear that he was still here. Time for my text messaging skills to be put into action. I send a text to Janene saying ‘Are you taking the piss? I think it’s time Ross was going home’ Again I was slaughtered for saying that and that she was 18 and grown up now. I beg to differ. I know she is 18 but inside she is more 15/16. A few minutes later and he was away home. I know I might have seen a bit harsh and I am sure that you think I was OTT but I don’t trust teenage boys. I get plenty on my bus and I know they can be twats. Maybe Ross will be different and it will work out ok but he also knows now that he has work to do to win me over.

It’s not been a great week. My relationship with my young girlfriend came to an end. The thing that led to this is probably pretty stupid but I will explain. As I have said before, she increased her working hours for the obvious reason of needing more money. That was fine, in fact I thought it was great, but it did mean that the only chance I would get to see her properly would be a Thursday. So on Monday we were messaging and after a while I asked her about this Thursday. Her reply didn’t thrill me. She said she was going to the gym on a Thursday as she was trying to lose weight and that was the only day where she had free time because the kid was at nursery. So when do I see you? She said she wasn’t sure but we would work something out. I told her Thursday was always our day and she said ‘I know but do you not want me to look better for you’. No, I don’t care how you look, I would rather see you. This escalated and it turned into a full blown argument which at the end we decided we should at least take a break. I said well, if you would rather go to the gym than see me then I didn’t think she was as dedicated to me as I was to her and therefor it’s not worth carrying on. So that was it. Now, we have broke up before and then get back after a few weeks but this time I am not going to do that. It’s time to concentrate on the wife and stop being a cunt.

That will do for the real life events although there are a couple of other things that would have made the page but I will keep them for another day.

A week ago I decided to quit Soccer Manager due to the changes that were made. I explained on this blog my reasons for doing so. I didn’t realise, however, that thanks to a Mr Beddows that the blog would end up on twitter and facebook. Normal views of this blog have been around 35-40 but last week’s explanation for quitting had 130 as at today. SM decided to bring back the old interface for a while at least until, I believe, they sort out the new interface and the bugs that it had. Now, I don’t know if, in fact I doubt, my blog had any influence on their decision but I do believe they have read it. I tend to think that the backlash from so many players took them by surprise and they brought back the old interface to try and stem the flow of people quitting the game.
So where are we now? The old interface is back, but it is not the same. While I am pleased to be able to carry on with the old one, on the laptop it looks like it is zoomed to 120% and is too big. That is a very minor thing though and there are other more concerning stuff.

I feel the transfer market is dumbed down. I don’t like the fact that an 88 rated player, for example, has a set price. The only way his value will change is if his rating goes up or down. I don’t think this is fair to the small clubs who will not get any advantage of buying a good player when it comes to selling him on. A player they buy for 2.4m is still only going to be worth 2.4m even though he could now be the best player in the team.
The new match engine they say has been introduced doesn’t seem a lot different to me. Playing against an unmanaged team is still much the same with a good percentage of the games seeing the unmanaged side having their keeper as man of the match, with an outstanding display, as you lose 1-0 despite having 99 shots at goal to their 2. The red card, as mentioned last week, still doesn’t seem to have affect on the game with most of the time it being an advantage to go down to 10 men. I have not noticed what the differences are yet so I will sit on the fence concerning it at the moment.
Looking at what people are saying about the new interface, it seems to be geared towards smartphones and Ipads. Are laptops being phased out? Are tablets taking over as the thing to have now? For this reason I am going to give the new interface a try on the Ipad. For all I know this could be the difference maker and I might get to like it. As of today, I have 33 days of gold membership and I have decided that I will not be renewing unless I change my view of the new game drastically. I will not be quitting altogether though as I will almost certainly keep on 3, maybe 4, custom worlds including Top 100. The Ashclowbel will be another and the Brookfield Premier League is one I enjoy a lot.

Life in Brugge is good. The club are sitting in an automatic promotion spot with just one defeat in the last 7 outings. The players are totally focused on the job in hand with still up to 15 clubs having a decent chance of getting a play off place at least.
On the downside, we had a bit of a bust up at training on Monday when Domingues Claudemir took exception to a tackle from Sven Kums. Kums has only been with us for 3 weeks and I feel he has been trying to hard to impress. Anyway, a bit of a scuffle developed and although it was handbags at 20 paces, I did need to intervene and have a word. I brought them both into the office where I explained that we all need to be on the same page if we are wanting to win promotion without going into the lottery of the play offs. I avoided fining either of them but did tell Sven he needs to calm down a bit and just let his play do all the talking. In the end I have decided to keep Kums on the bench for tonights game at home to Dinamo Kiev to let him know that, while we can let this one go, I will not put up with indiscipline. Hopefully this will lead to Kums showing us why he should always be in the starting XI every game.
Talking of tonights game, we entertain Dinamo Kiev who are managed by Grant Cameron. While I have not spoken to Grant personally as far as I can remember, I know that he is a very tough opponent and that my guys will have to be on top form to get anything from the game. Dinamo are currently just inside the play off spots but have struggled recently with just one win in their last six games. Form points to a win for us tonight but if players such as Yarmolenko, Veloso and Dragovic hit some form then it could be a tough night for us. I am sure it will be a great game for the fans and they will be supporting us the whole 90mins. We won 1-0 in Kiev earlier this season but there were spells in that match that is was all hands on deck as we defended for our lives. On another day we could easily have lost 3 or 4-1 so we know how dangerous this team is.

Our youths made a great start to the inaugural Youth Cup when they took on and beat Borussia Dortmund Youths 2-1. The young boys in our defence have to take the majority of the credit for this win as they tackled and dived in on the more talented Dortmund players as if it was the Cup Final itself. We won the game in the first half hour with Latvian striker Sabala giving us a 12th minute lead and 20yo midfielder Reuten adding the second on 25min. Reuten is a young prodigy of ours and was born in Genk. He is improving every time he plays and we have high hopes for him. After his goal, Dortmund were stung into action and they controlled the game from then on. It was then that our defence stood up and they managed to restrict Dortmund to an 80th min goal from some unknown boy from England. Raheem Stirling or Sterling, something like that. Not been rude or dismissive but I doubt that boy will get any further than the Dortmund youth set up.
Next for the youngsters is a trip across the border into France to play Paris Saint Germain. This will be another big test for them and if they come away with a replay then it will be a great achievement. I might travel with them and take in the delights of Paris.
To finish up I once again have to congratulate Stephen Beddows on his televised draw for the 2nd Round of the Youth Cup. I seen he took my advice about the cameraman and the work was much more professional. As a bonus we also had a change in front of the camera where Stephen’s daughter made the draw. Again, it was much more professional than the geek making the draw the last time.

Well, that will do from me today and I hope you all enjoyed reading the Thursday blog.
A s always, thanks for taking the time out of your lives to read this and I will be back next Thursday with the latest news on all that has happened in real life and in fantasy land.

Ciao