For the umpteenth time,
Max Crocombe draws praise for his training ethic.
I try to negotiate a deal for an elite DM from
Mansfield, but though they're interested, we can't come to terms with the player, who has outrageous wage demands.
@Cambridge (8th)
GK Max Crocombe
DL Stevland Angus
DC Taylor Parmenter
DC Sergio Sanchez
DR Izak Reid
DM Aaron Wickham
DM Seanan Clucas
ML Callum McNish
MR Courtney Harris
ST Gianluca Gracco
ST Lewis Taaffe
Injuries and rest needs continue to cause backline shuffles.
27 - BS penalty awarded, but
Crocombe blocks it!!!! A knock on
Harris a few minutes later, but he'll play on til the half. We aren't doing so hot out there, by the way.
34 - Geez, now a knock for
Parmenter
38 - Great boomer by
Angus, but really, this is about
Gracco showing once again why I love him so much. Out-heads his opponent, then zooms his way the rest of the way to a one-on-one, which he wins for the score.
1-0
44 - A third injury, and this time it's serious enough to need a sub.
Clucas goes off for
Solkhon
47 -
Wickham crosses to the far post on a free kick, and
Sanchez breaks free of the crowd by the time the ball gets there and puts in for the oh so late, oh so critical insurance.
2-0
Noble comes on for
Harris, who had a lousy first half anyway (6.2), the injury clearly affecting him.
53 - Jesus. Another knock, this time for
Solkhon.
60 - Despite the knock, team captain
Solkhon steals the ball and passes it to
Taaffe, who puts it up nicely for
Gracco on the left flank. Our Italian Stallion gallops down the wing and then centers it to where none other than
Solkon is there to rise up and head it in!
3-0
81 - I swear their guy was offsides, but at this point, it doesn't matter much.
3-1
Nobody thought we could pull this off, but we showed them. It's a huge win not only for the 3 points, but because it pushes a potential challenger for a playoff spot down further.
Sanchez earns Player of the Match with an 8.5,
Gracco grabs an 8.3, and
Solkhon rounds out the 7.5+ guys with exactly a 7.5 Nice performance from our team captain in what will be his final year with us.
Unfortunately
Seanan Clucas is out 4 weeks, adding to our injury issues.
But guess what? We're now in first place! Granted, it's only by a point, and 2nd place
Mansfield, who has been as fast rising as we have, still beats us on goal differential, but it's a delicious thing to savor.
Elvis Hammond is hurt in a reserves game and is out 6-7 weeks.
We lose
Leon Clowes for 2-3 weeks with a virus, although on the bright side
Samuel Bangura continues his stellar development.
vs Dorchester (20th)
GK Max Crocombe
DL Tom Sharpe
DC Samuel Bangura
DC Sergio Sanchez
DR Izak Reid
DM Taylor Parmenter
DM Aaron Wickham
ML Callum McNish
MR Courtney Harris
ST Gianluca Gracco
ST Lewis Taaffe
We're having some good discussions with some teams about possible loans, I think, so we may see this shake up again by end of season. But for now, this is probably our best lineup. This should be an easy win.
7 - We're playing like ass right now, and should've surrendered a goal there. Pathetic.
16 - Knock for
Parmenter. Suck it up, buttercup.
22 - Bullshit offsides call to stop what would've been a sure goal on our side.
24 - After an insanely long sequence that see us pass back to
Crocombe twice and do a lot of movement,
Harris finds
Taaffe, and our biggest surprise of the year dribbles a bit, finds a seam, and knocks it in. They cry about it being offsides but fuck you. There were defenders well in the way.
1-0
Placing someone in sub of
Parmenter at the half involves a lot of risk that I'm not comfortable with, so we'll roll with it for now.
64 - The injury issues just keep mounting.
Taaffe's next on the list, and
Guedioura comes on for him. Now's the time when I roll the dice, putting
Challoner at DL, moving
Sharpe and
Bangura down the line at DC, and shift
Sanchez to DM.
71 - Long free kick by
Reid sees
McNish beat out everyone else and his header finds its way home for majorly majorly important breathing room.
2-0
77 - Goal by them is disallowed due to offsides. Whew.
80 - We're robbed of a clear penalty, which is ridiculous.
Despite spirited Dorchester efforts, we fend them off the rest of the way, and get a solid, workmanlike win. 7.5 for
Crocombe, 8.0 for PotM
McNish and the usual spate of 7s galore.
Damn it.
Lewis Taaffe is out 2 months. Major blow.
By a single attendee, we broke the attendance record and now have 881 as our high mark.
Another injury.
Brad Varney out 4 to 5 weeks. Granted, he's a reserve, but still.
Max Crocombe in Team of the Week.
Although we tried to get him on a straight transfer and failed due to contract demands, we nonetheless secure
DLR Ben Nunn on loan from
Boreham Wood for the rest of the season. He's right up there with
Izak Reid for second best DR behind
Bangura, so the 24 year old gives us versatility and options.
Poor pitch conditions cause a game postponement and I really need to talk to the board about that for next season.
Oh, and
Liam Priestley and
Jordan Smith finish out their loans. Neither one impressed much in their time there.
@Portsmouth (6th)
GK Max Crocombe
DL Tom Sharpe
DC Samuel Bangura
DC Sergio Sanchez
DR Izak Reid
DM Taylor Parmenter
DM Aaron Wickham
ML Callum McNish
MR Courtney Harris
ST Gianluca Gracco
ST Ashley Yeoman
Going to be a tough matchup against the team I wanted to manage, so this game takes on major significance.
19 - Wow. So this is what a Premier League stadium looks like. Massive, to where players look smaller.
Reid shoots an amazing pass forward, which
Wickham of all people finds, dribbles forward, and calmly plants in like he was a striker. Damn. Never would have imagined that!
1-0
24 -
Harris heads it to
Yeoman, and our much misaligned striker sends it up for
Gracco, only Portsmouth intercepts, but the defender can't control it, and the Stallion swoops in. From there it's a one on one, and he's not going to lose that one after missing an easy shot earlier in the game!
2-0
42 - Terrible job of marking.
2-1
We'll keep this going for now.
48 - He's tired and just had a terrible pass, so off goes
Yeoman and on comes
Guedioura.
71 - Fabulous game by
Wickham but he's running out of steam, so
Ben Nunn comes in at DL, with
Sanchez moving to DM and slidings for
Sharpe and
Bangura
75 - Uhoh. Knock for
Gracco
81 - Oh how awesome!
Parmenter tackles the Portsmouth midfielder, gets up, runs and gets the ball, and threads it to
Gracco. Knock or no, our superhero striker surges through and bangs it home!!!
3-1
And it's ours! Terrible game by
Guedioura in the second half though, no matter what the 7 rating was, and
Nunn's debut 6.5 did not excite. What does excite? How about
Gracco and his 8.8 Player of the Match performance,
Parmenter's 7.8, and of course
Wickham's 7.9?
Oh, I forgot to mention, since I missed it in the news items,
Parmenter did sign that contract extension, and for the same salary as he's making this year, with a little bit of finagling on my part.
So here's the good news. With the win, we have a game in and 2 points ahead of
Mansfield, though they're still 2 ahead of us on goal differential. We also have a 7 point buffer and a game in hand on 4th place.
Here's the bad news. 3rd place
Forest Green has a game in hand as well, and with a win get to 69 points, which would leave us with only a 1 point lead if we lose our game in hand.
And the horrific news?
Gianluca Gracco is out 6 to 7 weeks, and his 7.55 average rating is the highest in the entire league, in addition to his 20 goals. Lewis Taaffe, our other starting striker, has 9 goals, and between them, they have 29 of our 62 goals.
And we have just two days left to the transfer window close
Good Trains
Sergio Sanchez
Samuel Bangura
Taylor Parmenter
Bad Trains
Dale Binns
I finish in 2nd to
Altrincham's boss for Manager of the Month voting, and
Mansfield finished 3rd. Frankly, I think that's a bit of rob job for Mansfield.
We're still bleeding money, losing $55k last month.
AFC Telford, a Blue Square North side, fucking steals a striker from us that we were just about to land on a season-long loan.
Fortunately, we're able to get two key season long loans in 23 year old striker
Jake Reed and 20 year old
DM Kieran Martin. The latter could in fact be a long-term starting defensive midfielder if I can transfer him, and almost thought about that instead of a loan, but wanted to make sure we control our finances.
Gianluca Gracco is in the Team of the Week, a bittersweet accolade.
Max Crocombe gets yet more praise for how hard he's working in training.
vs Lincoln (18th)
GK Max Crocombe
DL Tom Sharpe
DC Samuel Bangura
DC Sergio Sanchez
DR Izak Reid
DM Taylor Parmenter
DM Kieran Martin
ML Callum McNish
MR Courtney Harris
ST Jake Reed
ST Ashley Yeoman
Note that
Yeoman is at 87%. That's how bad a shape we're in up front, even with grabbing
Reed on loan. Our only hope? Fucking survive.
Oh yeah, Lincoln brought in 8, yes *8* transfers at the deadline, the busiest by far.
15 - Yellow for
Sharpe
33 - Yellow for
Reed. Also both our strikers are at 77% energy. This is not good at all.
35 - And there's
Crocombe out too early. Ugh.
0-1
39 - Yellow for
Yeoman. That's both our strikers now with a yellow, BTW. AND tired. And just... fuckity fuck fuck.
Yeah, this game had fucking trap all over it. I yank
McNish for
Hoban, on the playing like shit principle.
60 - Yellow for
Bangura
62 -
Martin pounds the ground with his fist after a fuck up play and well he should. Off he goes for
Clucas.
90 - Wide open shot for
Parmenter and he shanks it.
Completely fucking unexcusable for this pissant turd of a game. I don't give a fuck the striker situation you do not fucking lose at half to a motherfucking relegation candidate team fucking loading up the god damned fucking bus with 8 fucking new transfers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ESPECIALLY A FUCKING TELEVISED GAME! 
I make the bold claim just before our biggest game of the season that I see us as the title favorites.
vs Mansfield (2nd)
GK Max Crocombe
DL Samuel Bangura
DC Tom Sharpe
DC Sergio Sanchez
DR Izak Reid
DM Taylor Parmenter
DM Kieran Martin
ML Callum McNish
MR Courtney Harris
ST Jake Reed
ST Nabil Guedioura
Just realized
Bangura at DL and
Sharpe at DC gives us the strongest lineup. Nobody is giving us a chance in hell of winning this one, and nor should they.
Thing is, we lose here, and we're out of the #1 spot.
12 - Yellow for
Sanchez
We're playing extremely tense, but manage to get out of the first half with a tied scoreline.
Clucas comes on for
Martin at the break, who has played like ass his first two games.
46 - Well, that'll make things a lot easier. Double yellow for some
Smith on their side, and we now have essentially a full half of the power play.
64 - I'm tired of watching
Sharpe suck shit out there, so
Bangura moves down, and
Nunn hops in.
77 - While
Clucas gets a yellow, I'm really here to mention how we have a fucking man advantage
and yet they've had 80 million shots with only 10 guys and we can't even get a fucking one out there
We'll take the point, at this point.
Bangura wins PotM with a 7.4 - that's how uninspired this game was. Oh, and get this... I now find out that
Jake Reed hasn't scored in 20 matches. No wonder our striker showings have been such shoddy shit.
10 games left. We're in first place by 2 points, 4 points ahead of 3rd, and 7 points still keeps us in the promotion playoffs. By the way we've officially clinched that we can't relegate no matter what we do, so that's good at least.
If we can just hang on until March,
Lewis Taaffe should be back by then, and another couple weeks for our hero, our champion, our everything,
Gianluca Gracco.
I only hope we're not out of the title race by then.