Anyone that knows me or is familiar with my blog knows that I love my sport and I am particularly passionate about the teams that I support. Week on week the performance and results of these teams tend to dictate my daily mood. I have had the idea of documenting the trials and tribulations of following my sporting teams, to share the stress and see whether it can give me a little therapy and, in turn, give you guys maybe a few laughs and an insight into my temporary insanity.

This week Dinamo have a home game on Friday night against Sepsi, Rovers have an away games against Bradford and Rochdale on Saturday and Tuesday and finally the Packers face the Bills at Lambeau Field.

Dinamo Bucharest

Friday night’s are a bit of a rush for me these days. I don’t finish coaching my under 9 football team until gone 6pm and then I make the mad dash across Bucharest back to my flat, dump my bag, have a shower and get dressed before catching an Uber back across town to the Trafalgar pub at 7:30pm.

The Uber driver arrived very quickly and then proceeded to drive like a maniac through the center of town. On more than one occasion he was having a set-to with other drivers, gesticulating and shouting in the classic Romanian way. I was half amused and half terrified!
We made the pub in record time and said ‘mulțumesc’ (Thank you) and wandered off to the pub.

The guys were there already. Tonights crew were Pete, Simon and Matt as well as my good self. I order a draft Ursus and it tastes pretty awesome, the first one always does. Ursus is a local Romanian lager, one of the many in Bucharest. My Burger arrives in double quick time and we all tuck into our food. The chat tonight is about how poor Dinamo’s start to the season has been and how, if possible, they can turn it around. It’s interesting hearing the views from the other guys that go. They teams they support in the UK are Man United, Man City, Everton, Liverpool, Stoke and Leicester City so their opinions on the game are slightly skewed from mine. These teams are all big relatively rich clubs that have a decent amount of success as opposed to my team Bristol Rovers who are a world away financially and more in keeping with Dinamo.

We pay up, leave the pub and head over to the ground for the 9pm kick off. The stadium is about a 10 minute walk away and we reach the turnstiles, get searched for coins, scan our tickets and find our seats. Once again the crowd is a poor one with no more than 2,500 people in attendance. With low expectations we turn our attention to the game which kicks off.

As expected it is a dour affair. Sepsi refuse to venture forward and Dinamo have not got the guile or craft to open up the opposition defence. The Dinamo crowd are disgruntled and impatient for success and they feel the owner is not doing enough to make this current squad good enough to compete, and they are right. In my 2 and a half years of watching this team they have gone backwards and any quality that they may have stumbled upon quickly looks elsewhere for a big payday which Romanian clubs cannot compete with. Half time rolls up with little to no serious action and the locals get out of their seats to get some popcorn. Popcorn! And salted at that!

The second half was as mundane as the first. Very little goalmouth action from either team and not much in the way of effort as well. In fact watching the crowd is so much more entertaining. Mutu is a bit of a celebrity in these parts. He is a middle aged guy with learning difficulties that, without fail, will be at every home game. He is very vocal and animated during the game, especially when the team are playing badly, and you can’t fail to notice him. He is popular amongst supporters and the players who regularly stop to shake his hand. He even managed to work his way up to the trophy stage after a cup win two years ago and presented the trophy!! Unbelievable.

Then something unexpected and unprecedented happened. Dinamo made a substitution and were going to bring on Subotic the new striker. What happens next is that they bring off the striker that is on the field and stay with one up front. It is the Romanian way and they just don’t seem to entertain the idea of two up top. The new manager decides to leave Popa on and bring off a midfielder instead. I nearly jumped out of my seat. It must of been quite a funny scene where 4 british guys are cheering loudly and everyone is just staring at us with no clue why we are happy. Hilarious!

Instantly, Dinamo are putting pressure on the back four defenders of Sepsi and we have a different game in front of us. Haleluya! The formation changed the game from an entertainment perspective and only the lack of execution stopped Dinamo from scoring the goal they needed to take the points. Two strikers at home from now on please.

Final Score 0-0

Dinamo are 10th on 10 points and are 5 points away from the target of the top 6 and the playoffs.

Bristol Rovers

Bristol Rovers had a tricky tie away to Bradford City on the Saturday. Bradford are second from bottom and are struggling at home. They normal get go home attendances and expect around 15-16,000 fans, which is decent for league 1. I am planning to watch the game on iFollow internet streaming service, once again. I am also Skyping my father so we can talk about the game as we watch the match 3 hours apart.

The Starting Line Up prediction league.

This is a prediction league that I have created for our group of friends. We have to predict the starting 11 players for each match. A task that is made particularly difficult because the Bristol Rovers manager likes to change his team a lot.

Results for Coventry

Mark, Gaz, Hols 5 players correct
Parky and Joe 6 (1pt)
Table
Gaz 12
Hols 7
Mark 5
Parky 4
Laura, Joe 3
Shaun, Chaney 2
Geoff 1

A low scoring round this week with 6 correct answers winning it.

My Prediction for Bradford
Bonham, J Clarke, Lockyer, Craig, Kelly, Bennett, O Clarke, Lines, Sinclair, Reilly, Nichols.

The game itself was one of the first times I have watched the Gas this season and felt confident in their performance. It is so stressful when a team has no identity and players that are representing your team are out of form or not giving everything for the shirt. After 5 years with manager Darrell Clarke at the helm and very little in the way of widespread changes to the squad, you would like to believe that we would have steady progression and work our way up the league table. That has not transpired this season so far and that is the most frustrating thing.

The one thing that we have quietly sorted in the last 5 games is the goals we are conceding. We have ‘steadied the ship’ so to speak and that means less shouting and bawling by me during games! Well, only a little less. Continuing that streak of being hard to beat we kept a clean sheet yet again, produced a solid performance and earned a point.

Final score 0-0

After 10 games played and nearly quarter of the season Rovers find themselves 18th with 9 points.

Green Bay Packers

The Packers played Sunday night at Lambeau Field in front of 78,312 very noisy people. I had my Game Pass season subscription ready and I was fired up and ready for some football. One drawback to the proceedings was that the Bears were playing at 8pm (GMT +3) too, so I had to share game time viewing with my footballing rival wife, who after three straight wins for her team is, quite frankly, getting a little cocky!

The Bears have the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who have started the season very well, so I’m confident that Jayne’s stinky Bears are going to get their comeuppance today. We. on the other hand, were playing a Buffalo Bills team fresh off of their mauling of the Vikings so I was a little twitchy about how this game was going to go.

One new thing that is going to become a permanent ritual was Cheesehead TV’s Watch Party. This is a live YouTube stream of a couple of Packers fans watching the game along with you and with live chat. They are Aaron Nagler of ex Packersnews.com fame and his buddy Corey Behnke. It is hilarious to watch a game with these guys in the background shouting and cracking jokes and going through the same stress that you are. I even chat to them a little and I certainly let them know that I am watching from Romania.

The games kicked off and first up is the Bears. Unbelievably, they are dominating over the Bucks and Mitch Trubisky is zinging the pigskin around like he’s Joe Montana. This is making Jayne’s head even bigger than it was before and mini bickering is starting to take hold with statements like ‘who’s top of the table’? It’s a good job then that my boys had a solid start and the defence looked up for the challenge otherwise Jayne was going to have a field day.

So the Bears were scoring for fun and pummeling the Bucks offence and the Packers were at least kicking field goals and keeping the Bills from scoring. Aaron Nagler on the stream was getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of creativity on our offence and I had to agree. So did Jayne who chimed in that the Bears offence was more exciting than our boring, stale old offence. Again, begrudgingly, I had to agree.

In the second half the Bears had pulled away from the Bucks and it was becoming a non contest, which for them against decent opposition, was impressive. Maybe they are the real deal! Gulp! Don’t tell Jayne I said that. :( The good news was that I got to watch more of my team because we were still in a competitive game, just. At this point we had held them to 0 points and we were starting to think about a shut out.

As good as our defence were playing our offence were stinking the place out. Dropped balls, conservative play calling and some uncharacteristic throws by ARod were rendering us pretty weak. It’s a bit of a head scratcher and we have to get it sorted fast if we are to be a playoff team. The defence did get their shut out though and that is a major boost.

Final Score 22-0

So the stinky Bears are top of the division but we are still looking solid in second ahead of the Vikings. The league also issued a statement to admit that Clay Matthews Roughing the Passer penalty that basically lost us the win shouldn’t have been called. Great! Thanks NFL rules committee. Technically we should be 3-1 not 2-1-1 and top of the division. Next up is a division tie, on the road against the Detroit Lions.

Rovers second game in 4 days was another long away trip to Rochdale on Tuesday night. My dad was skyping in and we were chatting about the previous game and whether we could get a result in this match. Rochdale are a bogey team. This means that regardless of the owners, managers and players our results against certain teams have a pattern to them. The pattern for Rochdale was that we usually get our asses handed back to us and sent home with no supper. The outlook was not particularly positive.

Starting Line up predictions
Results for Bradford
Joe 5
Chaney and Hols 8
Mark and Gaz 9 (1pt)

Table
Gaz 13pts
Hols 7
Mark 6
Parky 4
Joe and Laura 3
Shaun and Chaney 2
Geoff 1

My team for Rochdale
I missed the deadline!

Without going into the game description too much, Dale caused us the usual issues but our new found resilience was kicking in. We were trading blows without to much in the way of clear cut chances. Then Their keeper gets sent off for wiping out our striker just outside of the box and just before the half time break, they are down to ten men. Could this be the little bit of luck needed to give us a lift.

The second half was so disappointing. In a game that was there for the taking, we failed to press our advantage. If anything Rochdale attacked more than we did. It was such a frustrating 45 minutes and another indication that our team are in trouble. We have solved the disastrous defending situation but now we can't score goals for toffee! We need to find a balance and quickly.

Final score:0-0

We have now played 11 and have 10 points. We are worryingly close to the bottom 4 relegation places after quarter of a season. Next up is a Saturday home tie against Walsall who are also struggling to score goals.

That's three 0-0's in a week! That's a lot of zeros! :(

Thanks for sharing in my weekly sporting stress.

Previous Issues:
Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3, Issue 4, Issue 5, Issue 6

See you next week.

Gaz