The Rhine Runs Red

“I had a dream, a song to sing” blurted out life long Benfica president Nuno Bento on 21st May 2017 as Tom Parfitt, the Messiah, the Chosen One, the One who would bring balance back to Portugal and overtake Andre at Porto was appointed - yet it was not to be as “Nuno’s dream” has turned into a disaster!


The Portuguese press have nicknamed Parfitt “A Paddlefish”

Hirst has caught out "Paddlefish Parfitt" on many ocassions

The name refers to Parfitt's failures in the Portugese captial which have been so many that they cannot be listed due to word limits!

Mr Noisy looks happy as Leverkusen beat Benfica again!

Nuno had built a team so strong that he firmly expected the former King of Spain to reign - yet it appears Parfitt has destroyed the hopes of Nuno, a man so downhearted and defeated by his crushed dreams that he has ended up at West Brom - a place where dreams go to die!

As for the Paddlefish  - a fish that is so primitive and toothless whose infamy for foraging found no success in Portugal - he must now swim elsewhere if he is to survive extinction that befell his Chinese cousins!

With Season 7's end coming upon the horizon it appears that as ever the jobs market will jump into force with sackings left right and centre, some managers moving on - others moving up and some, having failed at the top, moving down... BUT who will end up where is anyone's guess - one thing is for certain though it is likely to yield a flurry of transfer market activity as all managers look to make their new squads there very own and put their own stamp!

A few jobs stand out as "must have's" - Benfica and Liverpool:

Benfica:

With Parfitt struggling to muster anything more than surviving relegation on the final day over the past 3 seasons - the curse of Nuno is set to look for its next victim to see who can next struggle to take Benfica to the top of the world, apparently the place they should be.

So how many applicants are there - well 11 applicants have completed the process and some wish to remain "secretive" but here is FrankBet's odds on a few of them.

Mr "Whats Occurin Mark Stewart" - 3/1 no one can deny what he has achieved at Berlin with successive promotions and potentially a third would be remarkable. Yet his loyalty to Berlin and the lack of trams in the Portuguese capital could possibly count against him.

Rahul - 6/1 - considered by some to be an outsider for the Benfica job - yet the managers talents should not be doubted - had success with numerous Top100 clubs including Aston Villa, Man Utd, Dnipro and Sampdoria - it is thought though that Mr Benfica Life Preisdent and God Nuno if he has any input would question the mans lack of Portuguese and knowledge of Benfica youngsters.

Rob Ryan - 8/1 - a very good pedigree - if Top100 managers were thoroughbred horses then Rob Ryan would be in the running for the national every year - arguably overachieved consistently at Napoli and would be a great shout if the committee choose to give him the job! 

Liverpool:

With Wayne Bullough proving to be a failure at Liverpool and apparently being forced to announce his departure earlier than anticipated as the search for a new man enters  critical stage here is a low down of some of candidates who have presented themselves for the Liverpool job so far.

Garry Crawford - 4/1 - Mr PSV as he has become known is almost as Scouse as Steve Mclaren was Dutch so it appears an obvious choice - a manager who toiled for a while at many SM T100 clubs who has finally found his home and turned an average PSV side into challengers for promotion - he would be a safe choice for Pool.  

Jason Hines - 5/1 - A lifelong Liverpool fan who is freezing his balls off out in Moscow and is said to be sick of the cold shoulder from Putin and the lack of state investment and intervention in helping him to take Spartak back to the promised land - but a good steady season this year could convince the committee to consider his talents

Andrew Kelly - 6/1 - Another lifelong Liverpool fan - done a fab job at Villarreal who have been punching above their weight for the entirety of the history of SM. 

Like I said this is a snapshot of the applicants for both jobs - the talent is immense and applicantons will not be accepted after game 33.

Some managerial appointments for Season 8 can be confirmed tonight:

Werder Bremen: Wayne Bullough has official been unveiled at a Bremen Beer Hall alongside his family when he declared that having previously been at Sunderland and Liverpool he felt living abroad for the first time would be a daunting experience for a man from Accrington but he'd give it his best go and admitted he'd already learnt how to order a sausage and beer in German already!

Also Mr Craig Braidwood - the man behind [ec7046blog.wordpress.com](https://ec7046blog.wordpress.com/) will be going to Sampdoria where he hopes to challenge Mr Frank Hirst for being the top manager in Genoa!

At the start of the Division Two season, newly-promoted St.Etienne were written off, given no chance of survival in a league where every single side, bar none, had better players, higher ratings, better depth, and everything else needed to stay in a division of this quality. Yet, with ten games to go, as we approach the home straight of what’s been a thrilling season, Les Verts remain outside the bottom four. There’s no doubt it’ll be tight and will go down to the wire, but the French side have proven that this game is not played on paper, and that with the right tactics, the right attitude, and a fair slice of luck, anybody is able to compete.



The season started off with a bang, 7 points in our first 4 matches, including a stunning 5-0 win away at Sunderland, before the wheels started to come off, slightly.

‘We’ve been a side who’s gone on a lot of runs this season, but these runs have tended to be no more than four or five matches.’ said Powell, who took over from Josh McMillan at the start of the season, ‘We’ve tended to go on a little run where results haven’t gone our way, and then all of a sudden ground out a few good results, and it’s been back and forth in that same vain for entire season. It’s worked well for us though. What it has allowed us to do is to avoid ever getting into a situation where it’s been a run of seven, eight, nine games without a win. When things have started to look bad we’ve found a way out. For example, when we won 2-1 away at Internazionale, we’d lost our previous three games in a row. Likewise when we won at Sampdoria, we’d lost our previous three before that as well.’

St.Etienne are, to an extent, on a similar run at the moment, having lost their last two against Villareal and Southampton, after having been on our best run of the season beforehand, where we won 4/6 matches, including an outstanding 3-1 win at Leverkusen.

Powell had this to say about Sunday evening’s home match against high-flying Sevilla ‘They’re an excellent side, having an excellent season. David’s built a wonderful team there and we’ll have to be at our best to get something. I’ve actually been slightly disappointed with how we’ve been at home. We’ve won five at home, which is as many as we’ve won away so we need to try and improve on that. It’s a crucial game for us though. Having lost our last two, we can’t afford to go on a run where we fail to pick up victories at this late stage of the season. I feel if we can pick up three wins, maybe four, that will do it for us and we’ll stay up in the division. I think we deserve it, because we’ve played so well in a league where, realistically, the vast majority of our players would be nowhere near other sides starting XI’s.’


Whatever the last 10 matches bring, St.Etienne will hold their heads high this season, and as they welcome Sevilla to the cauldron of noise awaiting them at the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium, they are determined to make it count, and pick up three more points on their road to survival.

As it has been mentioned on the newsfeed in Season 8 Top100 will import a new process of appointing managers.

Here for everyone to see is a download the “process”



Stage 1

All jobs that will 100% be available at the end of the season will be offered here, via facebook or via newsfeed or via whatapp group.

Stage 2

ALL JOBS need to be applied for by messaging me  Stephen Beddows, or Frank Hirst DP 91. In  your PM, application you must state.

(1) job or jobs your are applying for
(2) why you want that job
(3) a brief overview of your T100 career, jobs, honours etc…

Obviously the ‘bigger’ the job then arguably the bigger application will be needed. So for example a Division 5 club could be just a simple “Yes” I want it. 

Stage 3

Your application will be added to the spreadsheet which will at stated time be shared to the “super secret” committee - the SS - who will rate the applicants for the jobs by stating their Top 3 candidates for each role - with the job being offered by the manager who gets the most votes. The committee will judge the applicants as such

1st choice - 3 points
2nd choice - 2 points
3rd choice - 1 point

Therefore with the committee having “5” managers on it - the maximum points anyone could get is 15. The manager with the most will then publicly be offered the job, should they choose to decline it it will be offered to next said candidate and so on.

Current jobs which managers can 100% apply for include:

BENFICA, LIVERPOOL, SUNDERLAND, SAMPDORIA

Cast your mind back to last season and the season before when PSV were dominiating games but losing by the solitary goal due to a lack of fire-power in the team and then think back to when Manager Gaz was appointed promising the fans that he was aiming to make his young team a force to be reckoned with by season three and that he would work flat out to give them a team to be proud of if they had faith in him and stuck by him!....



Well season 3 has arrived with a bang and the loyal supporters are finally reaping the benefits for their patience and undying support.
On Sunday PSV beat mid table Locomotiv Moscow 1-0 at home to record their 6th win in a row and climbed to 4th place in the table where they sit only 3 points behind leaders Hertha Berlin who they beat 2-1 away from home only a fortnight ago.
The transformation has been astonishing for the Dutch cracks and shows how believing in a squad and keeping them together will eventually pay dividends.
PSV and Gaz have a non-transfer policy and have been very shrewd in the market selling only 6 players in 3 seasons in deals which seen 4 of them used as part of 2 transfers.
Gaffer Gaz speaking on the Legends show on skysports tonight said.. 'This togetherness and team effort is our trademark and when its mixed with the right tactics it makes us rise above and defeat teams with better players'
Despite a good start to the season, PSV lost 3 games in a row in March leading to a total overhall in tacticschanging from their normal 4-3-3 to a more defensive 4-2-3-1 and after a good 0-0 draw away to Dynamo Kiev, another tweek of the tactics, both formation wise and defensive wise, they seem to have closed the hole at the back and opened up the floodgates in attack.
wins against Leicester, Cruziero, Hertha, Shakhtar, Alkmaar, and Locomotiv got the club and the fans dreaming of automatic promotion and with Sturridgem Bakambu and Kagawa on fire in attack, only a fool would right of their chances of going up this season.
Next up for PSV is Gav Harmer's Chievo Verona who have drawn their last 2 games and currently sit in 8th place in the table in a game that could see PSV go top dependimg on other results.

All the results from last night’s Youth Cup, Shield and Spoon knockout Round 1.

The draw for Round 2 will take place at 8 pm GMT (7 pm BST).

Youth Cup R2 (two leg ties) draw: http://www.randomresult.com/ticket.php?t=637333WYJJ9

Youth Shield R2 (one leg ties) draw: http://www.randomresult.com/ticket.php?t=637336PY2KZ

Youth Spoon R2 (one leg ties) draw: http://www.randomresult.com/ticket.php?t=637337ZGFJM

Youth Cup 

R1 - Round of Sixteen

Youth Shield 

R1 - Round of Sixteen

Note that losers in R1 are entered into R2 of the Youth Spoon (see below).

Youth Spoon

R1 - Round of Sixteen

Following the progression to the Youth Cup knock out stage, quarter finals of World Club Cup and beating Juventus away from home incredible scenes as Madrid release a commerative song!

Hala Madrid!

A quick round-up of all Saturday night’s Youth Cup results in the final round of group matches, plus a preview of the knockout rounds starting next Saturday 31 March.

The final Group Tables are here: https://smtop100.blogspot.co.uk/p/youth-cup-group-tables_28.html

Youth Cup draw and fixtures are here: https://smtop100.blogspot.co.uk/p/youth-cup_25.html

Youth Shield: https://smtop100.blogspot.co.uk/p/youth-shield.html

Youth Spoon: https://smtop100.blogspot.co.uk/p/youth-spoon.html

All ties are one-legged, to be played Saturday 31 March.

Group A

Barcelona	1 - 4	Juventus
Bayern	0 - 3*	Manchester United
SL Benfica	2 - 1	Genoa CFC

Group B

Group E

Group F

Group G

Group H

Group I