Things were surprisingly progressing nicely and smoothly despite the injuries to both our wings and the loss of
Roger Lee. We picked up his replacement,
Chris Abbot, a 22 year old Englishman who is supposed to have great Physical attributes and solid Mental attributes. He's struggled, though... a lot.
Then,
Harrison Bell went off to
Highworth on a $4,000 Key Player salary. He's been a lot better there, so kudos to him. For his replacement, we brought in
Ian Sampson, a 25 year old Englishman. Great tackler for this level and supposed to be great physically. Terribly inconsistent, but I have hopes for him.
The big issue? Neither
Amir Geid or
Supat Rungsratasmee could find the net, resulting not only in
our first loss in 27 league games, but a second loss. In came a pair of 22 year olds:
Connor Collins, an Englishman with Flair (14) for days and great physical attributes bar the 4 Stamina; and
Justin Koeries, a South African with some solid technical and physical skill, but that 2 Composure and 1 Concentration need a lot of development.
That didn't help the drought, so we tried a 4-3-1-2. Nope. Until I finally broke my no old man rule and signed 33 year old DM/DR/DC/MC
Jake Ash, he of the 14s and 16s galore in Mental Attributes. Changeover to a 4-1-3-2 DM and we spanked favored
Teignmouth 3-0 to snap the drought. In that new formation, everyone is doing what they were, except Ash as the DM,
Darius Covaci as a supporting Ball-Winning Midfielder rather than a defending one,
Amir Geid as a supporting Target Man rather than an attacking one, and
Connor Collins as the Poacher.
The 3-0 squash - keyed by Geid's 2 scores - expanded our lead back to 9 points. So we'll run with this new formation for a while and see how long it takes our opponents to adapt to it.