I was on deaths door for the Birmingham FA Cup tie, flued up, but somehow I managed to crawl off my sickbed and given the shocking reports of our 1-1 draw I had from Jeppo and Mick Jones, I thought a bit of team bonding was in order.
I had some happy times down in Barnsley as a player and like in the film Kes, one of the most wonderful things about it is the abundance of second-hand shops there is in the town. I understand pro-rata Barnsley has the biggest number of junk shops per head than any similar size town in Europe.
Sharon came up to see me when I was flued up and we sat on the settee watching "Cash in the attic" and "Bargain hunt", two shows I thoroughly enjoy. It struck me, to buffer team spirit I'd do our very own "Bargain hunt" before the Barnsley game.
I told the lads to report for 8am and by half-nine, my track suited, bleary-eyed track suited troops were braving the biting winds of Barnsley. I gave them a tenner each and their task was to buy three items and they would go on sale at our local Church in Cornwall's spring fair's "White Elephant" stall, the winner being the player who's items sold for the most-the final decision being that of Mrs Bloodsworth, who had arranged the spring fair for 53 years.
I must admit some of the players looked less than enthusiastic with my challenge. A couple of them wandered off to sign autographs, Dioufy stuck his shades and Dres on. Becchio said something about speaking to his agent to "see if this sort of shit was in my (his) contract"
They were told to meet me outside the Codfather chippy at 12 noon. To say I was disappointed was an understatement, only Aidy White had made the effort coming back with a small but chipped vase from the Arc charity shop, apparently the others had found Costa Coffee and spent nearly three hours in there spending my money huddled over the free wifi.
I was shocked! A Costa Coffee in bloody Barnsley of all places!
As they boarded the coach, a few young tykes had gathered to shout the usual expletives and obscenities. I noticed Becchio was missing.
"Where the f**k is Becchio?" I asked.
One of the grubby faced young blades who were abusing us piped up "Think I saw him in the indoor market buying some corned beef Mr Warnock!"
They all burst out laughing. None of our lads had seen him. I even got our coach driver to drive slowly thorough the bus station to see if we could spot him, but we couldn't and we didn't get to Oakwell until 10 to 1.
Becchio casually strolled in an hour later. Somma was already stripped.
"Where the f***ing he'll you bin?" I asked.
"My agent" Becchio shrugged.
He had this annoying habit of speaking Spanish mid-sentence, as well as pretending not to understand English, plus I never got the tenner back I gave him.
"You've lost him, he's heads gone" Mick Jones said and Mick is seldom wrong, other than when he betrayed me and took on the Plymouth job behind my back.
Watching his shocking performance against Barnsley, it was hard not to disagree.
"Might as well sell him now" Mick said. So when it emerged f***ing Snodgrass had been texting him how wonderful Hughton was and how great it was at Norwich, I had to do a deal even though Morison was out of form, unfit and didn't really fancy moving up north.
I still say we got the best deal though, any player who was not willing to barter in second hand shops for the good of my local church roof fund had suspect commitment in my opinion. In some ways it was a blessing that Mrs Bloodworth suddenly passed away from pneumonia before I could present the chipped vase to her.
Final episode seven: "The Damned Reunited revisited"
Any resemblance to any living characters etc