Off we go to Brugge. This Europe stuff’s getting good.
We approach the halfway point of the group stages in the Champions League and the table’s looking better than we dared hope. Three games, three wins and no goals conceded; they may as well just give us the trophy now.
This week sees the first of the big trips, as we get on the Eurostar to Brugge. The place itself is like Stratford, without all the Shakespeare stuff and with a load of lace shops. There’s also the mythical Lost Tribe of Bordesley, who stayed on that time Small Heath took half a million there. Don’t bother drinking Stella; the locals certainly don’t. Belgium is a country built on chips, chocolate and beer. There can be no better recommendation.
There’s also a match to watch. Club Brugge KV are the current Belgian champions and they won it three of the four seasons before that. They’re currently second. What this means in European terms we’ll have to see, although they’ve not been too clever so far, with a win and two defeats. Their manager had a load of clubs with unfathomable names, including Haverfordwest in Wales. We gave them £22 million for Wesley but unfortunately didn’t get a guarantee with him. He went back there on loan and played four matches.
We’ve got just under 1,500 tickets but the possibility of a few of us being dotted around the ground can’t entirely be ruled out, There’s also going to be a good few wandering around without tickets, although we’ll probably leave the place in a better condition than the last time we played a European Cup match in Belgium,
After a disappointing few days we need a good win and here it comes. Another three points and qualification will be more or less guaranteed, which with half the games to go isn’t bad at all. Then we can concentrate on he league.
