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So having failed to get Percy a transfer during the summer, we’ve decided to go the full Infantino and sell shares in the arthritic old buffer. Might we suggest that such an arrangement would particularly suit the makers of incontinence wear? In the meantime here’s his preview of the league season opener up at Burnley... And so the league season opens with an away trek to Burnley. Kick-off on Sunday is at 4pm with Sky having broadcasting rights. Nothing in the way of engineering works up there so if you’re going by train you just have that interminable schlep from Preston to endure. So Burnley, then. Last term they were relegated by April, something that led to the dismissal of Scott Parker from the managerial seat. He was replaced on an interim basis by Mike Jackson who saw them through to the end of the season. Jackson’s replacement last month by the incoming Nicky Heyen has spared you some (probably bad taste) material I had involving Neverland. Belgian Heyen arrived from Genk and this is his second spell in the UK with an improbable year at Haverfordwest County sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the list of Belgian clubs that form the bulk of his CV. Heyen opened his English account with a 1-1 draw in the League Cup with Notts County, Burnley eventually prevailing 4-3 on kicks from the penalty mark after Fleming had equalised Roberts’ 42nd minute opener three minutes into the second half. Whilst two saves from German custodian Max Weiss in the shoot-out were sufficient to see them progress through to the 2nd round there will be concerns over their failure to dispatch a Division 3 side over the course of 90 minutes. There again it is the earliest of early days of course. On the transfer front, Daisy informed me that the first arrival formed part of one of the odder deals she has encountered in recent years. Portuguese midfielder Florentino spent last year on loan at Turf Moor from Benfica, paying a €2m fee for the deal. At the conclusion of the season the Clarets spent a further €24m to make the deal permanent. And then promptly sold the player on to Ipswich, making a reported £2m loss in the process. They stuck with the Iberian peninsula for their first proper signing. Catalonian winger Lluc Castell arrived in from Espanyol for an undisclosed fee. At 19 years old he may be one going through their development system rather than forming part of their regular starting XI. Others may beg to differ but I can only recall one player in recent times with the given name Ugo, that being the late Ugo Ehiogu who passed away from a heart attack whilst coaching Tottenham’s Under 21 side. Doubling that number is Ugo Raghouber, a midfielder whose arrival from Lille cost Burnley €5m plus a sell-on clause. He only made two league appearances for Lille in his five-year spell over there, featuring largely for the Lille reserve team or on loan to clubs in the third tier of French football. He doesn’t seem to have caught the eye of the international selectors across the channel either. Unlike goalkeeper Ben Amos who gained caps at a number of different age levels over the years whilst coming through the ranks at Manchester United. Now 36 he’s had spells at Bolton, Charlton, Wigan and any number of clubs on loan over the years, pitching up at Port Vale a couple of years ago, whence he arrived on a free this summer to fulfil the increasingly common “veteran keeper on the bench all of the time” spot. So that’s them. Off we go then to the Wild & Wacky World Of Association Football. More stuff about Gianni Infantino of course. FIFA have come out with a statement criticising those who would prefer Infantino to pick another job. “The FIFA president was democratically elected by FIFA’s Member Associations and continues to serve with their mandate”. The words “democratically” and “elected” are doing some pretty heavy lifting there guys. For those of you unfamiliar with the rules, no FIFA president should serve more than three terms, totalling 12 years. Infantino is seeking re-election for a fourth term starting in March which, if served out in its entirety, will keep him in post until 2031. How so? Well it’s like this: his first term before re-election only lasted three years instead of four coming in as he did after Sepp Blatter’s reign came to its inglorious end. So FIFA simply decided that it wouldn’t count, leaving Infantino free to seek a somewhat dubious fourth term should he be able to Blatter enough votes. Incidentally – and I’m sure totally by coincidence – one of Infantino’s best friends is currently in a similar position. FIFA’s own “Peace” Prize holder Donald Trump is currently talking up his chances of serving a third term as US President – something that the country’s constitution expressly prohibits. It’ll take some form of messing about with the rules for that to happen. Something that sounds familiar. Maybe if Trump and Infantino simply swapped jobs it would work? Elsewhere, spare a thought to Brazilian footballer Jacy Maranhao, whose goal celebration when scoring for Coritiba went ever so slightly awry. Having put the ball away, Maranhao vaulted over the advertising hoardings, only to find a stairwell exactly where he had anticipated the ground to be, the player disappearing in the general direction of the city of Chapeco’s equivalent of the Elizabeth line. However, we couldn’t help but award an extra 1,000 bonus points for this one – as the bruised and battered player returned to the pitchside to receive treatment for his unscheduled descent into the underworld, he must have been slightly dismayed to discover that the goal had been disallowed. Henderson? Pah – a mere amateur. And so to us. Well job done – eventually. In a way there were elements of a classic cup tie here. Portsmouth made up for a lack of quality by working their socks off whilst we seemed to have forgotten that, although the league season starts next week, this was still a competitive match. Maybe the weather helped foster that attitude. Although the visitors’ opener did take a wicked deflection (it is an unwritten law that all deflections must be described as “wicked” when writing match summaries) one couldn’t argue that they didn’t deserve the lead on the balance of play. At that point if you had told me that we would go into the interval 2-1 up I would have called for some gentlemen to come along with clothing that fastened at the back to assist you to an institution playing some soothing calming music. However, the goal seemed to wake us up a little. And we equalised with what really was the first bit of football in the match, Kante’s fine work down the left being completed by a tidy first-time finish from Taty. Not long later I’d have been sending a recall message to that institution as Pablo’s run ended up in traffic and Bowen – with the aid of another “wicked” deflection gave us the lead. The build ups to both goals showed quality and you could see the odd Pompey head going down as a collective realisation dawned on them that it was going to take a bit more than hard work for them to progress further. As if to underline that point Taty picked up his second after the interval at the culmination of another decent move involving Bob Danvers-Walker and Bowen. Good football which, for all their efforts Portsmouth were unable to match. Pompey boss John Mousinho was a little bit put out that Alvarez’s challenge on Swanson merited only a yellow – I was lucky enough to be able to see a number of replays when the incident occurred and I don’t think Alvarez could have had an argument had the red been produced – one of those oranges that commentators often refer to. Not that Pompey were shrinking violets in that regard – Adams in particular was fortunate to have not duplicated the yellow he received before the interval. We were treated to a couple of hydration breaks, the booing of which, for me, missed the point. Whereas in the Infantino/Trump Cup the breaks were planned solely to allow US TV to insert one of the haemorrhoid cream adverts with which they seem to have an unhealthy obsession, that’s not the case here and it was a warm day down there in the bowl. What I did have was a bit of an issue with was the timing of the second half break, coming as it did just after a lengthy injury break – during which the players – and most likely the ref himself - indulged in some thirst-quenching. Veltman came on and immediately fell foul of the new law requiring departing players to leave promptly, thus delaying his debut by 60 seconds. I look forward to Arsenal & Liverpool coming to terms with one of their main tactical ploys being outlawed, assuming that, unlike most of the others, that particular law actually applies to them. Talking of booing, the introduction of JWP met with the predictable barrage from the Portsmouth end, mindful of his associations with M.I. Southampton. Funny though how Bob Danvers-Walkers’ history seemed to have escaped them though. I will admit to being slightly disappointed with the Sunday Times match report mind, which concentrated on the non-story of David Sullivan’s appearance at the match. I realise that they were responsible with the BBC for (officially) breaking the story in the first place and so have some sort of responsibility for keeping some fire underneath the matter. However it seemed a bit much to devote the front page of the sports section to a photo of the shareholder at the match before devoting much of the match “report” to his attendance. There was some humour to be gained from the photo’s caption, which described Mr Sullivan as sitting “with a friend”. The chap in question looked much like the sort of “friend” who wears an armband and stands at the entrances to the more busier hostelries throwing out the more troublesome members of the clientele. Or, in the case of my local The Swan And Superinjunction, more likely throwing them in. So to this weekend. Well it’s a full squad that we have – sort of. Questions on the futures of Jean-Clair Todibo and AWB were met with the sort of forward defensive shot from Nuno that would have had Geoff Boycott purring. I wouldn’t be wasting too much on first goalscorer bets on them anyhow. Tomas Soucek’s ankle will keep him out for a good while yet. We will see a few changes from Saturday I am sure as one or two of the youngsters will make way for some more experienced heads. And, of course we have rescued Manor Solomon, presumably encouraging the player to sign by telling him we had already named a park up the road after him. At 27 he should be reaching his peak and he already has experience of English football with Leeds and Fulham, and English non-football at Tottenham. He’s one shy of 50 caps for Israel so a seasoned international to boot. For the prediction, well I have little to go on other than our respective League Cup matches. Based solely on that I will plump for us to take our first three points of the season. On that basis I will be placing the £2.50 that I would have been paying a “friend” to sit with me at the next away game lest someone take exception to something written in these pages, on a wager at Winstone’s digital turf accountancy emporium for us to prevail by the score of 2-1. Enjoy the game! When Last We Met At Turf Moor: Won 2-0 (Premier League February 2026) Summerville opened the scoring with what was his 5th in as many games, latching onto a cleverly-weighted ball from Fernandes to clip over the advancing Dubravka. Summerville was also part of the second goal, his nice flick around the corner setting up Diouf whose excellent cross was headed home by Taty. As usual we sat back in the second half but the defence was resolute enough to deal with the home side who were booed off at the end. Referee: Josh Smith We will see a lot of new faces this season and this is one of them. Lets hope that refereeing Championship matches doesn’t lead to the “look at me” syndrome far too prevalent in the Premier League. Danger Man: Zian Flemming Amsterdam-born striker who came through the Ajax youth system only to find himself swapping total football for Millwall. Clarets’ top scorer last season but no Dutch Caps so far. Also very close to being the author of the James Bond and Chitti Chitty Bang Bang books. Percy & Daisy’s Burnley Fact Of The Week Type Thing Some places are more difficult to find out facts for than others. Especially when, as in this case, we’ve played them a lot. I’ve already done the Benedictine thing, for exzmple. Even Facts.net – often a good standby on these occasions – could only come up with the fact that the motorway network is good enough to make it easy to go somewhere else. However their FAQ section redeemed itself with the following entry: Q: Who is Burnley’s Current Manager ? A: As of [current year] the manager of Burnley is [manager’s name] Sign of the times I guess! * Like to share your thoughts on this article? Please visit the KUMB Forum to leave a comment. * Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the highlighted author/s and do not necessarily represent or reflect the official policy or position of KUMB.com.