Rainford does one

Jamie Rainford has finally left the Exacta after a turbulent time at Chester.  The decision has been criticised by fans who believe that whilst the club's other forwards are "mis-firing", it is important to keep a striker who has scored three goals for the club, of which one was a penalty and another was reported as an own goal in certain media outlets.

Rainford arrived from Marine in pre-season with an impressive goal-scoring record.  Having failed to reproduce this at Chester, and after branding certain sections of the Blues faithful as "muppets", he was subsequently villified by a number of CFC fans, who did their best to justify the 'muppet' tag.

"We own the club he plays for," said one of those fans who has gotten a bit carried away with the idea that they own the club.  "Once I put that £5 in, I'm basically Roman Abramovich.  It's a full time job, this being part of The CFU malarkey.  And I don't want to listen to anyone who suggests that as the club's owner, I shouldn't be slagging the players off to start with.  I had the RIGHT to go on Jamie Rainford's Facebook and call him bobbins, and he should have just taken it because he is a professional footballer, and I own him."

Rainford also made some comments on Facebook that could be construed as offensive to Neil Young, but no-one really cared about that, as despite the fact that Young has won one league and is now leading another, he's really not all that popular amongst Chester fans, and when push comes to shove, they'd probably side with Luke Holden, a player who was at the club all of two months, in any given dispute between the two.

"We should be in the Football League by now," said Bryony Metatarsal.  "Young is a joke."

With supporters threatening to fire elastic bands and blow raspberries at Rainford should he ever feature for Chester again, The Blues Boss was left with no choice other than to farm Rainford out on loan.  At the same time, Young brought in the above-mentioned Holden, feeling it necessary to have at least one player in the side who mouths off on Twitter.

Rainford's progress at Halifax was watched closely, and as he scored a number of goals - often in lost causes - for the Shaymen, Chester spent his entire loan period going unbeaten.  As such, Blues fans reached the obvious conclusion that Rainford was needed at Chester and clamoured for his return, which eventually coincided with Chester losing two on the bounce, including their first home defeat in over a year.

"In fairness to the lad, many strikers have made a niche out of scoring goals for under-achieving football clubs," said pundit Darth Hooks.  "You just have to net a load of goals to mask the fact that your all-round game actually isn't helping the team.  It's known as the Ruud Van Nistelrooy Paradox."

"Emile Heskey managed to use the discovery of this concept to his advantage by leaking the idea into the brains of managers and fans that whilst he doesn't score many goals, his all-round game enables others to be at their best.  He managed to substantiate this with statistics by only making himself available for games where Michael Owen was fully fit and the opposition weren't very good."

Despite the fact that Rainford's departure comes across as nothing other than the best move for all parties concerned, it is inevitable that every game he plays will be mentioned on Intelligence Emporium The Deva Chat, and every goal he scores considered proof that Neil Young doesn't know what he's doing.

"If we don't go up, and Rainford scores the odd goal for Halifax, then it's only logical that Young should be given the boot," said Tim Carwash, P Block regular.

Neil Young was unavailable for comment, as he had to pull a night-shift on the trains following the unexpected resignation of a ticket inspector who is a big fan of Rainford.  However, Young's assistant Gary Jones did admit that "it's nice to offload a player that isn't Bradley Barnes.  I've received no death threats over this one, yet."