Alphabet Soup!

A new series of articles will start in WTBM…(the paper version) next month, and Barnsey is asking for your help!

In a nutshell, this is going to be ‘The Alphabet Cup’.

The premise is fairly simple: pick a team of eleven players. They must:

a) be Burnley players (or managers) between 1946 and the present day;
b) have a 4-4-2 formation with players where possible in their correct positions, or as near as damn it;
c) pick the players based on the number of appearances for the Clarets – NOT on how good they were. For example, you can’t have David Johnson up front for the ‘J’ team, as people such as Jepson played much more than him, but perhaps weren’t as good for us; and finally
d) [most importantly of all] where possible, or with a cheeky bending of the rules, have surnames which start with the same letter of the alphabet!

Now, I have taken the step of picking the teams, and there are EIGHTEEN in total. They are A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I+J, K, L, M, N+O, P, R, S, T and W-Z.

I have also done the ‘first round’ draw, and C play D and I+J play T.

Details are as follows for the C vs D match. All I want you to do is go to the thread in the WTBM… forum, copy and paste the line-ups and a) give each player a mark out of ten based on: how good a player they are/were and how much of an influence they were at Burnley and b) when you have done that for both C and D teams, including their manager(!), give the game a ‘score’ e.g. 8-0 for team C, with a brief outline of why and what you think would have happened if that game had actually been played.

Sounds complicated? It probably is, but it is also just a bit of fun, and I hope that you can help me out with this. Deadline for player and match scores are midnight on Friday 14 November, and then I’ll put up the 2nd match….

‘C’ Team
P Crichton

M Camara
T Cummings
I Cox
J Chew

D Collins
P Cook
R Coates
J Connelly

A Cooke
F Casper

Manager
S Cotterill

‘D’ Team
D Coyne (1st name!)

M Docherty
S Davis (1)
S Davis (2)
R Deakin

R Daniel
J Deary
M Dobson
L Donowa

P Devine
T Donovan

Manager
W Dougall