FM: Rushden & Diamonds, 2004-05

[Katon]

The nice thing about living in England is that I can get my hands on new versions of CM/FM as soon as they come out. So, as I did with each of the last two versions, here comes my first dynasty. I'm trying a new format for this dynasty, doing one month of my team's matches and then a summary of what went on elsewhere in the world during that month. Thoughts on the change or suggestions for further changes would be appreciated.

Technical details: running a large database and the top division of most of the big leagues in Europe in addition to all the English divisions. I picked a League Two team with no press expectations, neither promotion candidates nor relegation strugglers, more or less at random, and wound up with Rushden & Diamonds.

[Katon]

I am expected to finish in the upper half of the table in my first season, although the board don’t feel like giving me any transfer budget with which to achieve that aim. The squad which I take over is quite well-suited to an upper-mid-table finish, though. We have a lot of decent players, people who are not out of place starting for a League Two side, but nobody who I would expect to really set the division alight. We also, courtesy of some slightly dodgy transfer policy on the part of my predecessor, are paying £13,500/week when the board has set a wage budget of £10,500/week. So. Sign some killer players and cut wages, simultaneously. This should be interesting.

My preseason transfer policy was notable for its ingenuity, its ambition, and its complete inability to get put into practice. I went after a lot of potentially useful players, but I only managed to accomplish three things: getting a vastly overpaid centre-back to move on, signing a midfield prospect who has no chance of getting a game this year, and signing a left-back who retired the day after finalizing the deal. So on opening day, my squad was essentially the same as the one I inherited.

Goalkeeper
This is the one position I most want to bring in a new player for. Billy Turley, the starter here, is a very good keeper for this level, but he’s being paid £2,000/week. I’m not sure I could justify paying Gianluigi Buffon £2,000/w on our current wage budget, so I am hoping to sell Turley and replace him with someone slightly cheaper. Unfortunately, all my attempts at loaning in the someone cheaper have failed, so rather than let backup Lee Worgan start I am keeping Turley around. For now.

Left-Back
Given that we only have one senior left-back, it’s not hard to guess who’ll be starting. Peter Hawkins is the man, although I’m not a particular fan of his. Another position where players may well be brought in.

Right-Back
Again, there’s only one senior player who prefers to play at right-back. Sean Connelly is losing a bit of pace at 34, but he is still a useful player. Midfielder Andrew Sambrook will provide the cover.

Centre-Back
Here is where Rushden’s youth squad comes into its own. One of the starters, Barry Hunter, is a 35-year-old player-coach, but everyone else on our depth chart is 23 or less. Rob Gier, the 23-year-old, will get the other starting role, but I won’t be panicking if 18-year-old Andrew Hodges gets a game or two. There are also a number of prospects in the reserves who I could call on in a pinch.

Left Wing
This is Andy Burgess’s spot. Burgess is one of the best technical players in the squad, and not too bad at the physical side of the game either. Which is a good thing, since if he goes down we are reduced to either Marcus Kelly – who can run and dribble very well but doesn’t do anything else – or moving one of our central midfielders over.

Right Wing
If you believe the coaching staff, David Bell is an astonishing player, who should be valued at £300,000. I don’t see it, but he’s still worthy of a starting role. Especially given that the alternatives are the same as on the left: Kelly or shift a central mid.

Central Midfield
All three of our first-team central midfielders are very similar players: hard-working, hard-tackling, unimpressive when in possession. Stuart Gray and Andrew Sambrook can both also drop back to defend or move out wide; Gray moves to the left, Sambrook to the right. Gary Mills will come off the bench.

Striker
The squad here looks almost exactly the same as everywhere else: a lot of decent, unexceptional young players. We are swimming in strikers of a certain type: mediocre technically, slightly larger and faster than average, can do a competent job. Alex Hay is probably the pick of the bunch; the other starting spot goes to 17-year-old Simeon Jackson, whose good finishing and lightning pace make up for some distinctly raw passing. Craig Dove will be waiting for one of the other two to slip up, or for the right wing situation to become so much of an emergency that I won’t mind his abysmal crossing. Gareth Seddon is also only half a step behind the starters. Again, there are a few prospects in the reserves who might get called on in an injury crisis but probably won't be seen outside of that.

[Katon]

August

Our season opened at home to Yeovil, and we played them off the park. Unfortunately, you have to put the ball in the net to win, and we had real trouble doing that. A David Bell header cancelled out their opener, and it finished a draw. Rushden 1-1 Yeovil

Any time you see your opponent playing a 4-2-4 for the whole match, you know there are going to be goals, and our trip to Scunthorpe was no exception. Four of them, in the end, Scunthorpe taking the lead twice only to be pegged back by Stuart Gray from the penalty spot and by Simeon Jackson after Andrew Sambrook had a headed goal called back for jumping unfairly. Scunthorpe 2-2 Rushden

Another youth prospect, a right winger named Philip Gilder, joined on a free transfer shortly after the Scunthorpe match. He’s not that good at the moment, but at age 17 he shows some real promise.

At the beginning of the season, Mansfield were seen as being among the promotion contenders. They haven’t looked it so far, though, losing their first two matches without scoring, and things didn’t get any better for them against us. We went ahead early through Simeon Jackson before their right winger got sent off for his second bookable offence just half an hour in, and further goals from Jackson and Alex Hay completed a comfortable win. Rushden 3-0 Mansfield

In spite of Alex Hay’s early breakaway goal, our trip to Shrewsbury was an extremely competitive match for the first forty minutes. Then Andrew Sambrook fired home from just outside the area and Shrewsbury stop putting up a fight. We could have scored four or five in the second half alone, but we only wound up getting two: another from Hay and one very good finish from Andy Burgess. Shrewsbury 0-4 Rushden

A League Cup first round tie at home to Nottingham Forest was always likely to be our last match of the competition. Nottingham Forest are, after all, a very good team. You could see it in the way they reacted to the crazy goals we kept getting. When Simeon Jackson scrambled an extremely fluky opener, they responded with a brilliant long-range drive and a neat counterattack which looked likely to see them through until Gary Mills grabbed a late equalizer. Then, when Marcus Kelly saw his shot deflect off a defender and wrongfoot Paul Gerrard in the Forest goal with five minutes left in extra time, they went straight down the other end and scored another thirty-yard effort. The match wound up going to penalties, where the only man to miss was the unfortunate Gary Mills.
Rushden 3-3 Nottingham Forest (4-5 on penalties)

Andy Burgess was completely shocking (a rating of 2) in the midweek cup tie, so I warned him about his performance before a rather tired Rushden side faced Bury. He seeme to recover fairly well, playing a prominent role in a dominant performance. Such was our control that it was only a question of when we would score. The first came with twenty minutes to go, Simeon Jackson heading in a corner; two more, for substitute Craig Dove and for Jackson again, came on the break shortly after. Rushden 3-0 Bury

Burgess feels that his warning was unfair. I have some sympathy, since he has played very well apart from the one match, but anyone who plays as poorly as he did against Forest deserves some criticism.

Of course, even if the warning was unfair, it is hard to feel much regret about it given how Burgess has reacted on the pitch. Another man-of-the-match performance against Rochdale helped put us top, as he set up David Bell for our second after Alex Hay put us ahead just before the hour mark. Yet another dominant performance sees us now with both the best offence and the best defence in the league. Rochdale 0-2 Rushden

That dominance is reflected in the end-of-month awards. I took second place in the Mirror Manager of the Month Award; given the Mirror’s general level of accuracy and intelligence in football reporting, I’m not entirely convinced this is a compliment. Simeon Jackson, the league’s joint leading scorer, was second in the Young Player of the Month, while David Bell and Andy Burgess finished 1-2 in the senior award. Bell really has been the class of the league so far, looking a lot closer to my coaches’ preseason valuation than to my own. I release a public comment praising him.

[Katon]

Elsewhere during August

First, the transfer wrapup. After a July completely devoid of major moves, things finally picked up when the deadline drew near. The big move was unquestionably Michael Ballack’s £17,750,000 transfer to Chelsea, but there was also a lot of activity further down the price range. Dirk Kuijt went to Marseille for £7,000,000, to be replaced at Feyenoord by Russian Alexandr Kerzakhov, while Sevilla spent some of the money they received for Jose Reyes on Carlos Tevez. I’d have rated Tevez at twice Kuijt’s price, minimum, but he went for the same fee. Sevilla also brought in Roma ‘keeper Ivan Pelizzoli for just over four million pounds, so they should be a team to watch this season. Rafa Benitez at Liverpool went back to Valencia for Rufete; Everton, meanwhile, were bringing in Brazilian forward Dagoberto for £6,000,000.

The Premiership had a distinctly odd August. Arsenal lost away to Bolton, Jon Macken took the lead in the Golden Boot race, and the Player of the Month was Crystal Palace teenager Ben Watson. Newcastle are currently leading the Premiership, although with Chelsea, Tottenham, and Arsenal all within two points I don’t expect that to last. Man U are in twelth after losing both of their away games, including one 4-0 hammering in Newcastle. The biggest shock is probably a Ben Watson-inspired Palace hovering in fifth; most of the other relegation favourites are already down there, though, with Everton yet to win in spite of Young Player of the Month Dagoberto’s four goals.

It’s only been seven games, but already the Championship looks decided. Leeds are six-for-six so far, courtesy of a lethal partnership up front between Julian Joachim and Michael Ricketts. While those two can probably be relied upon to turn back into pumpkins at some point, midfielder Michael Spring looks like the real deal, and a five-point lead with a game in hand is not to be sneezed at even this early in the season.

League One looks very balanced so far. Nobody has managed to avoid defeat in the first five games, and only Peterbrough have failed to win. Just three points separate the leaders, Bristol City, from seventh place. It could be that this represents consistently high quality of play, but judging from the lack of dominant players I would say the more likely explanation is simple mediocrity.

The various Conferences have played four games each, which is simply not enough time to make any judgements.

With every other league in Europe not really starting until February, the Scottish Premiership is the talk of the continent at the moment. More specifically, Celtic are the talk of the continent. Celtic and their grand total of one point from four games. They’re not scoring goals, they’re conceding more than two a game, and the entire squad is underachieving. It’s Dundee who, with wins in each of the first four games, are running away with the league.

The Champions League groups stage draw has thrown up several intriguing groups. Group B pits Rafa Benitez and Liverpool against his old side Valencia, with Bayer Leverkusen thrown in for good measure. Group C sees Real Madrid, Roma, and Arsenal fighting for two slots, while Group E features Deportivo, Milan, and Chelsea. Conspicuously missing from the group stage are last year’s runners up Monaco, who managed to get dumped out by Young Boys of Bern in the qualifying round, as well as Dinamo Kiev, who fell to FB Kobenhavn.

[Katon]

September

Of course, if I was in any danger of getting carried away with my early success then our first match of September would have brought me back down to earth. We were away to Wycombe, who were sixth in spite of a nasty injury situation, and we got outclassed. If their finishing had been merely bad, they would have been two or three up at half-time; it was horrendous, though, and so they only scored once. To add insult to injury, we equalized immediately through Simeon Jackson on our only breakaway of the half. The second period was somewhat more even, but I was still relieved to hear the final whistle go. Wycombe 1-1 Rushden

The next match, at home to Boston United, saw Billy Turley set the club appearance record. Unfortunately, his defence decided to celebrate by taking the night off. Two goals in four first-half minutes put us up against it, and after nearly an hour of ineffective pressure we managed to concede two more on the break in the last ten minutes. Rushden 0-4 Boston United

So after that debacle, we definitely didn’t want to be playing one of League Two’s last two unbeaten teams, right? Not quite. Lincoln were unbeaten, yes, but they had only won once all season. One win, seven draws, no defeats. The reason for this unusual record became apparent when they showed up playing a 3-6-1. With several players who hadn’t been starting recently restored to the lineup, we set about them immediately. It was one of the restored players, Barry Hunter, who headed us into a halftime lead. The lead looked perfectly safe right up until David Bell handled a corner in the area. Oops. Fortunately, Gary Mills restored our lead, and this time we managed to hang on to the end. Rushden 2-1 Lincoln

Cheltenham in the LDV Vans Trophy were next up, and I decided to use the match to give some of my reserves a run out. In particular, Lee Worgan replaced Billy Turley between the sticks, where he proceeded to reinforce my belief that I want Turley’s replacement in hand before I sell him. The one bright spot came from left-back Daniel Talbot, who produced a gem of a cross for David Bell to bundle in a consolation goal. Not quite the result I had wanted, but I’m not that upset about the LDV Vans Trophy. Cheltenham 3-1 Rushden

To nobody’s surprise, we were shut out of the monthly awards.

[daedalus]

What the . . . 3-6-1! They will surely lose a week of training! :Dand signing a left-back who retired the day after finalizing the dealHeh. That rocks. [Or not. Depending on perspective, perhaps. :)]

Sucks that you're having a tough time loaning anyone in. Hopefully, somebody shows up on the loan list for you soon. I'll be following!

[Katon]

I think part of the difficulty I'm having might just be overcaution. I'm generally waiting until I have people fully scouted before I make a loan bid, and other teams are nipping in while my scouts are preparing their reports. The only people who I've actually gotten a bid in for and failed to get were the real reaches - people like Alan Blayney, Southampton's third-choice goalie, who flatly refused to go on loan to a League Two team. I also missed the only decent unemployed goalie because we couldn't agree on a salary.