January 2018
Don't stop me now
Welcome to 2018! Things to look forward to: Youth Intake Day, winning the league, and winning two cups. Can we do it?! Let’s find out!
Day picked the wrong time to have a bad training report. I’ve decided to move Spearing to our starting right central defender, sorry Day. You can come on when it’s late and take the captain’s band when Macey comes off. I’m pleased that kinda-of-recent arrival The Real Slim Shadi Al-Ziod is doing well, though none of his Technical skills have risen
Player Matters
I don’t remember when but I had Robbie Jones try to learn how to Knock Ball Past Opponents. I got an email on the 1st of the year saying he has mastered it. A great Trait for a Winger to have. Pretty useless trait for Winger to have.
Financial Matters
We
only lost £193,000 in December. This brings us up over £1 million in losses for the season. I wonder how long this is sustainable. Will we end up losing roughly £2.5 million per year? If we get consecutive promotions all the way until we’re in Conference South, will we be bringing in the crowds to make us enough money? I have serious doubts. At what point do I have to have a fire sale of our precious youth players?
The Week Between
We had an incredible 10 days between matches. I dropped the intensity of training for a bit then had us work on Fitness.
On 4 January 2018 I get an email from the board who want to discuss extending my contract. I’m currently on £625 per week but my contact expires on 30 June this year. The next day they offer £650 per week, which I’m good with, but offer only one year. I ask for two years and drop my Promotion Wage Rise 10%, leave in the 35% Relegation Wage Drop and bump the Managerial Compensation up to 90% because there is no way I’m leaving this club and it should make the board more agreeable to the extra year (the max I could ask for). To counter that, I ask for a contract extension upon promotion. The board immediately approve and there are drinks all around.
The team report for our next opponent, Grantham, comes in and they actually look like a respectable team. One thing struck me though; unlike FM2014, in FM2018, crappy players have crappy Determination. Of all the respectable players Grantham has, only two have Determination in the double-digits. I looked around some more and that seems to be pretty consistent across all teams.
This is our first match of the new year. Hopefully 2018 is as kind to us as 2017 was.
FA Vase Sixth Round
at Grantham, 9 January 2018
Formation: Spade (GK, DR, DC r, DC l, DL, MC r, MC l, AMR, AMC, AML, ST c)
Starting XI: Legg,
Maguire,
Spearing,
Carroll,
Jefcoate,
Nixon,
Smith,
Pearson,
O'Donnell,
Duckett,
Macey
Subs: Webb,
Parker,
Day,
Clark,
Al-Ziod,
Barlow,
McAdam,
Jones,
Taylor,
Martin,
Rae, Cullen
Spot on 13:00 Macey comes out of his slump. Duckett stole the ball from Lord Grantham’s right back and sent it into the box where a left-alone Macey struck as surely as ever. And exactly 41 seconds later Macey returns the favor; he received a long-ball from Maguire and took it out wide to the right to send a cross to Duckett at the far post and as simple as that we are in a commanding lead. The rest of our goals come at 15:23, 22:29, and 36:17, courtesy of Duckett, Duckett, and Macey. (Brixton’s newest law firm.) I do a complete outfield swap at half to keep the lads fresh for Saturday’s upcoming Southern League Cup match and get a recovering Barlow back to Match Fit. And in the second half we get goals at 45:30 and 75:10, courtesy of Rae and Martin. (Not a law firm.)
POM: Daniel Duckett (3 goals, 1 assist, 4 key passes, 1 chance created)
After the match I get another email from another agent. This time it’s Paul Taylor’s. Coming off a game in which he rated 6.7 and had one key pass in 45 minutes of action. Nope.
Before the match I got an email from Graham Rutherford again, this time to tell me that Peter Maguire is a “Potential Conference National Talent”.