Last season Leeds United started their League One campaign fifteen points in the hole, a mandatory FA penalty for any club that goes into administration during the football year. Londonist United, our fantasy crew of London-born players, finds itself in a similar situation; not because of any financial regularity (heck, we managed to assemble a cracking capital team with change from £50m), but we were too busy clowning around in August to actually register our team on time.
So by Week Three, everybody else has had a fortnight to amass an early stash of points. If we're going to claw our way back into championship contention, it'll take a sterling effort from the lads, so it's a good job that our front pairing were on song on Saturday. Jermain Defoe gave Spurs fans a reminder of his mercurial talent by blazing two fine strikes past a lacklustre Everton: the first goal was smuggled beyond Tim Howard following a finely-danced foxtrot of footsteps through the penalty box, the second a quite brilliant piece of individual skill as he chipped the keeper from distance, the ball rebounding off the underside of the bar and over the line and rendering Peter Crouch's enthusiastic follow-up header redundant.
Meanwhile, Carlton Cole's opportunistic tap-in as West Ham walloped Blackburn rounded off an impressive first week for the front pair. Elsewhere, Portsmouth's clean sheet earned Sol Campbell good notices. Ditto Scott Parker's assist for West Ham's third goal, and finally a superb penalty save by Robert Green bagged him eight points. Sadly, hopes for our trio of Chelsea players faded as the side were held 1-1 whilst entertaining London rivals Tottenham on Sunday, with neither Cole, Terry nor Lampard convincing.
Neither Rio Ferdinand nor new England man Jimmy Bullard played over the weekend as their respective sides were not in action, leading to questions about the manager's marbles. Oops. Yet despite this Londonist United helped itself to a healthy 63 points in its debut weekend. We're still languishing in last place in the Londonist League and, regrettably, 1,335,083rd in the overall league. But there's room to build here. After all, having started 07/08 fifteen points adrift, how did Leeds fare? They finished sixth and made it all the way to the play-off final.
Image courtesy of Slaminsky via the Londonist Flickrpool
