FM10 - From the Bottom Up

[Radii]

-- We have a week off but 10 guys (some youngsters) are called up for international duty for a match in between Blackburn and West Ham. The guys that start I issue instructions to only play 45 minutes.

-- Kirkland and Donnelly are named in the EPL Team of the Week.


November 21st, 2020

Ipswich (4-4-5, 9th) @ West Ham(8-3-2, 5th)

West Ham are doing great so far this year and are big 4:5 favorites against us at their house. We're 3:1 to win today. We're 0-1-4 lifetime against them. In our last EPL season we played them 3 times, once in the league cup, losing two and getting a 0:0 draw at home.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Quartey/Jackson
M: Burton/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Negredo/Constantino

Quartey/Welsh at DC, Burton in for Adagsmar at ML, Mills is happily back in the lineup at MC, and Negredo up front, all changes from our last match.

1': They kick off, go up the right side of the pitch, a through ball into the area.. Welsh just looks completely oblivious as his man goes by. Shot goes in by ST Turner.. saved! But there's a rebound and its put in before Capitani can recover. We are down 32 seconds in. 0-1

11': They have 6 shots, 3 on target, and 4 corners, 77% of the early possession... this is rough.

18': We get our first offensive highlight, Mills with a free kick from midfield.. after a couple passes Mills gets it to Constantino, his man tries to close in and tackle him 20 yards out, Constantino seems to effortlessly sidestep the defender, he's into the area and strikes it near post by the keeper! We've got 1 shot and 27% of the possession but that's all we need so far. 1-1

39': A long break with just a couple of weak tries by West Ham, here though they attack and get midfielder Nsue open in the area as he breaks on to a ball with perfect timing to get behind Kirkland. He shoots from the right side of the area and drills it into the net... the commentary "No keeper in the world would have stopped that shot." 1-2

HALF: Quartey is getting killed out there, 5.1 rating today, Welsh 5.9, Jackson 5.9, Burton 6.1. Constantino kept us in the match with that one great move, but this is all West Ham so far. They have 11 shots to our 4, we have 1 on target, they have 5. Possession did even up a good deal, just 58/42 now.

60': McKerr in for Jackson, Adagsmar in for Burton, in both cases replacing guys who are having very poor games.

73': I tell our guys to attack. Gotta try to make something happen.

76': Khan in for Negredo.

79': Welsh is hurt, he can stay in and we'll check on him postmatch.

89': We win a ball in our defensive end and try to counter, we get it ahead to Adagsmar, a pass to Mills and Mills makes a briliant pass to Khan, Khan pokes the ball ahead with his first touch, runs by his man, shoots from the edge of the penalty area.. and its by the keeper!!! We get the tying goal! 2-2

94': We give up a free kick from just outside the area, its blocked by the wall and goes out for a corner. Corner is taken to the near man in the area, he tries a centering pass but Adagsmar clears it out to midfield, and the whistle blows. Whew!

West Ham 2 : 2 Ipswich

A great result!!!


Man of the Match: Steven Mills (8.0)
Goals: Constantino (7.6), Khan (7.2)
Assists: Mills 2

Jackson and Burton had a 6.0 and 6.1 rating respectively, everyone else ended up faring pretty well in the high 6's. I really like McDonald Mariga, but Steven Mills fits into this offense so so much better.


-- DC James Welsh is out for ~2 weeks.

[Radii]

-- Chris Mason is hurt for the 3rd time this year... this time he's out ~3 weeks. He's missed about 75% of the season with injury problems so far.

-- We are, for the first time I believe (since perhaps the first few matches of the year), closer to Europe than we are the Championship. Newcastle have struggled this month and are stuck on 21 points. We're in 8th, 4 points behind 7th place, 7 points ahead of 18th.

November 28th, 2020

Chelsea(7-4-3, 6th) @ Ipswich (4-5-5, 9th)

Chelsea are struggling this year compared to normal. Their worst finish in the EPL going all the way back to the 03/04 season is 3rd and they've won the league 3 of the last 4 years. Arsenal and Man U have still not lost and are sitting on 36 and 34 points. Chelsea has 25, 6 back from 4th and 11 back from 1st. Chelsea are 1:2 favorites at Portman Road today, we're 9:2 to win. In the League Cup 4th round they beat us 3:1 at our place.

Chelsea head coach Carlo Ancelotti tells the media that I'm a good coach. His relationship status with me is "thinks we could be friends". No reason to piss off the manager of Chelsea. I respond saying that I hope to emulate him one day.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Henrique/Quartey/Jackson
M: Burton/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Chelsea's Mario Balotelli leads them with 7 league goals. Henrique starts for the injured Welsh and Khan is back up front today. Adagsmar is back in at ML.

Its pouring rain today out there fwiw.

11': first shot of the match for either team, a 25 yard effort from one of their mids, its on target but Capitani saves it easily.

12': Gordon loses the ball at midfield, they quickly pass ahead to Carlos Vela who blasts a shot from long range, Capitani saves it but can't hold it, behind for a corner. We clear it easily.

25': highlight opens with the ball coming forward down the left side, a counter for us, Constantino is there, he gets into the left side of the area.. he doesn't seem to have any options here, but he's completely bailed out as he's tripped while trying to advance on the keeper... its a penalty! Constantino takes the PK and sends it low to the left, its a goal! 1-0 Our 3:1 loss to them we scored first too right?

35': Henrique with a yellow.

46': As we try to attack they clear a ball out.. Quartey goes up uncontested to head it back forward to try to keep the offense going... he comes down awkwardly and goes to the ground immediately, he's hurt. I'm going to bring him out at the half.

HALF: We only shoot 2 times but one is the penalty for the goal. Chelsea shoot 8 times, but to our credit all 8 shots are from long range. It seems like many times they've settled for long shots when they could have continued to work forward to try to find a better shot. McKerr in for the injured Quartey at the half.

46': defender Badstuber with a yellow right after kickoff. We earn a free kick out near midfield wide to the right. Gordon puts it into the area and its headed back for a corner. Corner #1 is headed behind, the second one is cleared out safely.

51': They build up on offense, a through ball into the area, midfielder charging in from the right side.. his first touch is very poor though, he still gets a shot off but its way too close to Capitani and he cuts off the angle.

61': We have it in their end on a throwin, after a short throw a pass is deflected and falls to Donnelly, he shoots from 25 yards out... off a defender, falls to Constantino... he's got a really good look, but saved by the keeper. It wasn't considered a clear cut chance. Corner comes to nothing.

66': Donnelly with a yellow. They get a free kick about 25-28 yards out, its off the wall and we clear it out.

68': Darren Johnson in for Donnelly, the yellow + a pretty poor game...

77': They have a throwin at midfield. Its thrown to the closest man but he controls it really poorly, Steven Mills is on top of it, he immediately sends a long ball ahead, Khan is there, he's into the penalty area and he blasts a shot high and by the keeper!!! Could we beat Chelsea!?!? 2-0

We see two more highlights but both end in long shots for Chelsea that go nowhere near the net. We did it!!!!!

Ipswich 2 : 0 Chelsea

Man of the Match: Michele Capitani (8.7)
Goals: Khan (7.8), Constantino (7.0)
Assists: Mills (7.4)
Notables: Jackson (7.6), Kirkland (7.4), Henrique (7.0)

Gordon Donnelly had a really bad game with a 5.8 rating. Just an aberration I'm sure, he's been amazing this year.

Obviously a lot of credit goes to our defense but I don't know what the hell Chelsea were doing out there. They shot 15 times but took 13 from long range, a majority of them seemed like quick shots where they lacked the patience to try to find something better.

-- We are now 5-5-5 with 20 points in 15 matches. Two years ago when we relegated out of the EPL we finished the year 5-5-28 with 20 points.

This may not be the best Chelsea team ever but what a win for Ipswich!!!!

[Izulde]

Now watch you lose 23 straight to end up back in Championship.

Just kidding.

Man, I can't get over Constantino.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Izulde

Man, I can't get over Constantino.

No kidding!! I figured he'd get some goals and remain a starter but I'm shocked to see the kind of crazy success he's having.

[RPI-Fan]

How has his value progressed since you purchased him? How old is he?

[Radii]

Originally Posted by RPI-Fan

How has his value progressed since you purchased him? How old is he?

Man City bought Constantino from Barcelona in the 11/12 season for $1.9M. Aston Villa bought him from Man City for $2M in the 14/15 season. I bought him from Aston Villa in the 17/18 season for $1.1M. If I were to ever sell him I would owe 50% of the entire transfer fee to Aston Villa.

I believe when I first loaned him in at Woking in League 2 he was valued around $3M. When I bought him he was valued around $1.8M but I was able to get him for less with the insane 50% clause.

Last year in the Championship his value had gone up to $8.5M at one point, and right now it sits at $12M, the highest of anyone on my team.

He's currently 25 years old, turns 26 at the end of April.

When I first brought him in to play for Woking in League 2 he was 20. Back then he was all speed and not much else. He's improved greatly in some key areas to make him a more well rounded player that can succeed at this level.

Attribute...Then...Now

Strength...8...14
Pace...17...18
Accel...18...19
Agi...16...18

Off the Ball...13...16
Anticipation...11...16

Finishing...11...15
First Touch...13...15
Dribbling...12...14

He loves it here, loves playing for me, has never wanted to leave. He's nowhere near as talented or well rounded as the best players in the league, but he just seems to fit in perfectly for this team.

[Radii]

December 5th, 2020

Ipswich (5-5-5, 9th) @ Arsenal(11-4-0, 1st)

Arsenal are massive 1:3 favorites at home today, we are 7:1 to get a win. They haven't lost yet and while the preview refers to them as "injury stricken" they're still expected to have more than enough talent to get the job done. Arsenal ST Hans Nooij, a 23 y/o valued at $52 Million, has 13 goals in league play (and another 3 in the Champions League). He's tied with Constantino for most goals in the EPL so far.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Henrique/Quartey/Jackson
M: Burton/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

No changes today, this is the lineup that beat Chelsea, why mess with it.

9': We get forward twice early on, decent looking shots int he area for Constantino and Gordon both early, both saved. We earn a corner here, but they clear that away.

23': Arsenal builds up here and ends up with a strong shot just outside the area that Capitani has to dive to save.

29': Donnelly has picked up two injuries so far... nothing long term but his fitness is shot. We'll see if the rest at halftime helps or not.

38': Free kick Arsenal 30 yards out, taken by ST Bugra Yidirim, one of the best scorers in the league, he rockets a shot in that Capitani dives and saves, very close, he turned it into the post and it bounded away, whew.

42': midfielder Thiam with a yellow.

46': After a missed tackle they are able to get a pass into the area, a strong shot comes in from Nooij... another diving save by Capitani! Whew again.

HALF: Capitani would be man of the match if it ended right now and it wouldn't even be close. Arsenal have 10 shots, 8 on target. They do have 6 from long range but their long range shots have been much, much scarier than what Chelsea was sending at us. We are hanging in there, we've taken 5 shots, put 3 on target and had a couple nice attacking moves, but they clearly feel like the better team right now. We're tackling well and doing just enough to hold our own in the air. Donnelly stays in for now but there's no way he'll finish the match.

48': They have a throwin... huh I dunno if this is bullshit or just stupid play by us but its a complaint I've had before... we sent a ball out of play due to an injury. They throw it back to us but immediately attack after the throw... they throw it deep into our end to Clive Jackson, they charge him and tackle the ball away setting up a very quick strike by ST Nooij that we can't stop. 1-0

48': Donnelly was the one hurt, Darren Johnson is in for him.

59': Arsenal are piling it on now. They're up to 17 shots (8 in the first 13 minutes of the half) while we haven't had a highlight on offense yet.

68': Yellow for midfielder Gamliel. This gives Gordon a free kick out to the left maybe 25 yards out, he tries a shot but its right at the keeper. Actually its considered a poor cross I guess, our shots stat didn't go up.

72': We have a throwin in their end, its taken to the MC's, Johnson to Mills, Mills ahead to Constantino, he comes in from the right, tries a cross through the 6 yard box... its off a defender and deflects a bit weird, Khan charges it and he's first to it, he puts it in before the keeper can recover!!! 1-1

77': Guarin in for Khan, 4-1-4-1, and Mariga in for a tired Mills. Defensive/retain possession, lets get us a point b/c this team is too damn good plus we're in their house, I'm going all out for the tie.

92': They get a through ball into the left side of the area, a quick shot, their 2nd clear cut chance of the match, but Capitani is there yet again and makes the stop!!

Arsenal 1 : 1 Ipswich

The ratings totally tell the tale on this one:

Man of the Match: Michele Capitani (9.3)
Goal: Khan (6.9)
Assist: Constantino (6.7)
Notable: Kirkland (7.1)

The entire rest of the team was rated 6.8 or 6.9. Our defense played fairly well but basically Capitani withstood a massive barrage for 90 minutes brilliantly and got us a point. They shot 27 times, putting 13 on target. We shot 6 times, 4 on target.

[Radii]

-- Capitani is named to the EPL team of the week this week.

December 9th, 2020

Ipswich (5-6-5, 9th) @ Newcastle(5-8-3, 7th)

We are getting a lot of respect for our play now, Newcastle are only 5:4 favorites today, making us a fairly close 7:4. We're 2-0-6 lifetime against them, but the 2 wins are in the 09/10 season back in the Championship. Ever since then its been all Newcastle all the time.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Henrique/Quartey/Jackson
M: Burton/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

No changes again today.

1': They start with the ball. They get it ahead to ST Lewandowski, he's a good 30 yards out though and Quartey comes way too far out to defend him instead of letting Donnelly drop back to pick him up... that leaves a hole that is filled by midfielder Clarke, an easy pass ahead, he's into the area and its a goal... 36 seconds in. 0-1

4': Quartey is hurt...

8': We build up on offense, Adagsmar to Khan, Khan with a ball ahead for Neil Gordon who cut perfectly behind the defense, he strikes it with his first touch and scores!! Newcastle are crying for an offsides and it was really really close, but not called. 1-1

13': Khan with a yellow for a tackle near midfield.

43': There have been some highlights before now but I was eating a snack and saw nothing worth typing. Here they get a through ball in to ST Lewandowski, he's still just at the edge of the area, but he shoots and its a clear cut chance, but Capitani makes a solid save.

HALF: Newcastle have 8 shots, 4 on target, 2 clear cut chances but Capitani stopped one of them. My biggest worry is that they control 60% of the possession. We have 4 shots, 3 on target, the 1 clear cut chance for a goal. They are winning 70% of their headers to just 43% for us. We'll have to see how they come out in the second half.

56': We've given up a few corners but just 1 shot so far, not the insane barrage that we faced against Arsenal.

63': A quick strike for Newcastle, ST Cavani receives a pass 25 yards out, a through ball close to the 6 yard box, midfielder Hamsik was making a run there and Capitani likes to sit back most of the time, and he does so here... it ends up being an easy finish. 1-2

72': Mariga in for Mills, Welsh in for Quartey.

77': Just a very slight misstep here, Donnelly to Constantino, there's a big hole between their DC's and Constantino exploits it perfectly... but he's just a step offsides. He scores but its clearly not a goal.

82': Hughes in for Kirkland who went down hurt a few minutes ago. I tell the guys to attack to try to tie this thing up.

86': Yellow for defender Vitali

Not happening.

Newcastle 2 : 1 Ipswich

They didn't go crazy on us or anything with the 30 shots like Arsenal almost did but they got their second goal and defended extremely well. We only shot 3 times in the second half, just 1 of those on target.

Goal: Gordon (7.4)
Assist: Khan (6.8)

Clive Jackson with a 6.2, everyone else in the 6.7-6.9 range.

[Radii]

-- Jonathan Quartey was injured in our last match, he's got a pulled hamstring and is out 3-4 weeks.

December 12th, 2020

West Brom(2-5-9, 18th) @ Ipswich (5-6-6, 9th)

We're huge 4:6 favorites at home today. WBA are sitting in the last relegation spot, a couple points behind Blackburn. We're 1-0-4 lifetime against them.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Henrique/Welsh/McKerr
M: Hughes/Donnelly/Mariga/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

3rd match on short rest, Welsh is in for the injured Quartey. McKerr gives Jackson a day off at DR. Hughes starts at ML, and Mariga in for Mills at MC.

2': So much for Clive Jackson resting. McKerr is hurt very early in and he is forced to leave the match. Ugh.

12': ST Bartlett with a yellow

15': Mariga with a yellow.

28': Each team has 3 shots, we've got one on target but its a real slow match.

34': We get our first legit chance as Hughes receives a ball after we clear out a corner of theirs, he plays a long ball cross field to Neil Gordon, he gets to the edge of the area and blasts a shot, but the keeper pushes it away and they clear it. A pretty good shot though!

36': We're going to attack for the last 10 minutes.

37': We build up on offense down the right side, Donnelly with a ball to the edge of the area for Khan, Khan shoots right away and sends it by the keeper! 1-0

40': They attack and cross into the area... Mariga goes up to head it away, but commits a foul... its a penalty and they score. 1-1

44': Welsh with a yellow.

HALF: We're the better team here but we need to start playing like it. We shoot 7 times, putting 4 on target. They shoot 4 times, just 1 on target. The penalty gave them a chance, hopefully we can push ahead and pressure them hard early in the second half.

47': We get our second clear cut chance as Donnelly puts a ball in the area for Constantino but he gets a little too deep and the keeper cuts off his shooting angle pretty nicely.

62': Highlight opens in our defensive end, a quick pass up to Bartlett, one of their strikers, he passes, cuts to the goal, gets the ball back perfectly and drills it into the net. Henrique takes the blame for that. 1-2

65': We bear down to get that one back, we build up, Mariga out wide to Gordon, Gordon to Constantino and he shoots from 18 yards out and puts it in the upper right corner of the net, nice finish! 2-2

70': Johnson in for Gordon, Negredo in for Khan.

90': We recover a ball in the midfield and build up, Donnelly passes ahead to Negredo, its tackled away from him near the penalty area... Hughes is first to the ball, he sends it into the area, Negredo is there and launches a shot far post, we get the "No keeper in the world would have stopped that" commentary as it goes in! 3-2

Its dicey but we come through in the clutch and get 3 points!

Ipswich 3 : 2 West Brom

Man of the Match: Gordon Donnelly (8.3)
Goals: Constantino (7.4), Negredo (7.2), Khan (6.8)
Assists: Donnely, Hughes (7.7), Gordon (6.8)

Henrique with a 5.9 today, he struggled a lot. I'm pretty impressed with Jack Hughes! He must know I wrote something in a post recently where I am considering whether I should sell him or not.


-- McKerr has a torn hamstring and he's going to miss 3 months. Ouch!

[Radii]

December 19th, 2020

Birmingham(12-4-2, 2nd) @ Ipswich (6-6-6, 9th)

Birmingham were predicted to finish 14th by the media but have been on a real tear and with a recent Arsenal loss have actually moved up to 2nd place. Despite that they're only 6:4 favorites to win today at Portman Road. We are 13:8 dogs. We're 2-1-3 lifetime against them, getting one of our very few EPL wins last time we were up over Birmingham.

Sylvain Berthet, long time MR/DR at Ipswich has been starting with some regularity for Birmingham. He's got a rating of 6.62 in 14 total matches with 1 goal

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Henrique/Welsh/Jackson
M: Hughes/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Birmingham are led by Colin Meade with 9 goals and 5 assists in 16 league starts. I seem to remember that name from the Championship, QPR? ...checks history... yep, QPR bought him from Man U for $6.5M a few years ago, and after 2 straight seasons of 33 goals in the championship, they sold him to Birmingham for $14.75M. Birmingham are the first team I think Ive seen run a sweeper...

Jackson is back in at DR. I decide to give Hughes another start after a solid performance last outing, and Mills is at MC over Mariga again.

Its raining pretty heavily out there today.

7': We get a free kick 25 yards out. Neil Gordon takes it, its a sharp bending effort around the wall and into the right side of the net by the diving keeper! 1-0

11': They build up quickly on offense, a pass in from the right by Berthet, it skips by ST Ba and into the area, Ba chases it down, he's in the area, Capitani rushes out and tries to dive onto the ball... but doesn't get it, Ba puts it in easily. Maybe that pass was intentional but it looked a hell of a lot like the rain and wet field was causing weird things to happen there. 1-1

13': Another free kick for us, this one is a little right of center about 20 yards out. Gordon takes it, its another solid shot bending around the wall... and into the net by the keeper!!! Two free kick goals for Neil Gordon!!! 2-1

16': We attack down the right, Jackson deep near the end line... he crosses to the far side of the 6 yard box, Hughes with the header, our first clear cut chance, but the keeper saves it.

33': They get a free kick 20 yards out.. off the wall and behind for a corner. Corner comes into the 6 yard box, there's a header.. its high, whew.

36': They pass it around on offense looking for an opening, finally they find it with a through ball to a man who has beaten Welsh badly... he strikes from 15 yards out, their second clear cut chance.. but Capitani saves it! Poor shot, he had lots of room there to do better, but good save nonetheless.

44': Jack Hughes is hurt, he has to leave the pitch.

45': Free kick for us, this one is a bit left of center, right at the edge of the area, the most dangerous position yet... Gordon takes it, and just buries it into the left side of the net, its a hat trick all from free kicks!!!! 3-1

HALF: They shoot 11 times to our 5, they only have 3 on target, we've put 4 on target but this is just 100% Neil Gordon today. 3 free kick goals, incredible! He's a set piece master, our focus on Constantino up the middle sees his brilliant crosses and corners often going to waste, but its awesome to see this kind of outburst today. Burton is in for the injured Hughes at the half.

49': defender Bent with a yellow.

70': Cestor Mike in for Kirkland, Guarin in for Donnelly, getting some of our lesser used players in for a bit.

88': Mike with a yellow.

We end it easily.

Ipswich 3 : 1 Birmingham

So yeah, a very workmanlike, confident win against the 2nd best team in the EPL right now. We are pretty damn good right now!

Man of the Match: Neil Gordon (9.6)
Goals: Gordon 3
Assists: Constantino 3 (7.8)
Notables: Jackson (7.2)

All other starters earn exactly a 6.9. We didn't see the plays leading up to the free kicks but it looks like they were all Constantino running around drawing fouls!

That was our 19th match so we're at the midpoint of the season.

Injury Update

-- Jack Hughes is out 2-3 weeks.

[Radii]

2020/21 English Premier Division Mid-Season Update

Standings

1. Man Utd - 44 pts
2. Arsenal - 42 pts
3. Birmingham - 40 pts
4. Aston Villa - 39 pts
5. Chelsea - 35 pts
6. West Ham - 34 pts
7. Man City - 30 pts
8. Newcastle - 29 pts
9. Ipswich - 27 pts
10. Tottenham - 23 pts
11. Liverpool - 22 pts
12. Huddersfield - 22 pts
13. Sunderland - 22 pts
14. Everton - 20 pts
15. Sheffield Utd - 20 pts
16. Nottingham Forest - 18 pts
17. West Brom - 14 pts
----------------------------------
18. Blackburn - 13 pts
19. Wolves - 12 pts
20. Bristol City - 9 pts


Our consistent play actually has us in a position now where we are legitimately within striking distance of that coveted 7th place spot and a place in the Euro Cup (assuming the FA Cup Winner is a top team). It seems hard to fathom that as a realistic goal even as well as we've played. What is realistic though is to note that the EPL pays out prize money based on the spot we finish in. 17th place (just avoiding relegation) would pay $6.8M. Our current position of 9th would pay out $20.4M. staying in the top half of the table would be worth millions.

Financially we are doing just fine, we're not making tons, but we're spending $675,000/wk on salaries and breaking even, so that's saying quite a bit.


Stats

Goals

1. Constantino - Ipswich - 14
1. Hans Nooij - Arsenal - 14
3. Colin Meade - Birmingham - 9
4. Emilio Nsue - West Ham - 9
5. Bugra Yidirim - Arsenal - 9


Assists

1. Constantino - Ipswich - 10
2. Cesc Fabregas - Arsenal - 9
3. Fabian Delph - Aston Villa - 8
4. Gordon Donnelly - Ipswich - 6

5 others also have 6 assists.


Man of the Match Awards

1. Cesc Fabregas - Arsenal - 6
2. Ibai Platas - Huddersfield - 5
3. 5 tied - 4

Gordon Donnelly has 3 man of the match awards to lead Ipswich. Constantino and Michele Capitani have 2. Constantino has been a strong, consistent player this year but rarely *the* standout in any one match.


Average Rating

1. Cesc Fabregas - Arsenal - 7.70
2. Fabian Delph - Aston Villa - 7.58
3. Ishak Belfodil - Man Utd - 7.51
4. Bugra Yidirim - Arsenal - 7.47
5. Pedro Avila - Man Utd - 7.40
5. Constantino - Ipswich - 7.40

Gordon Donnelly is 13th with a 7.32 average rating. Steven Mills is 34th at 7.13. Matthew Khan 44th at 7.08. Stuart Kirkland 48th at 7.07. Capitani and Neil Gordon are also both in the top 100, Capitani at 7.02 and Gordon 6.99.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Radii

We are pretty damn good right now!

It's the annual return of the injury curse that worries me at the moment.

Is there anything that influences those that you can control differently? Any red flags about stamina/condition, I dunno, something that might have been overlooked in seasons past.

I wouldn't normally ask such a thing (esp. not about a game I don't own/haven't played) but you've occasionally mentioned during the thread that there are nuances that weren't as familiar to you so I'm throwing this out there just in case it triggers something useful.

(It's also an easy way to note another faithful follower of this dynasty)

[Radii]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

It's the annual return of the injury curse that worries me at the moment.

Is there anything that influences those that you can control differently? Any red flags about stamina/condition, I dunno, something that might have been overlooked in seasons past.

I believe last season's incredible injury woes were an aberration that I caused myself. I mentioned at the start of last season that I put a *lot* of work into completely overhauling my coaching staff and focusing on better training and thus hopefully better player development. What I glossed over a bit is that I downloaded a new, more complex set of training schedules last season, and the workload in almost all of them was *much* higher than what I was doing. Once I started running into the massive injury issues last year I went in and lowered the overall workload in all of those training schedules.

I think an accurate analogy is that I was putting my guys through two a days well into the regular season and they just started breaking down midway through the season.

I'm hoping that I fixed all of that last season, though I suppose we won't know for sure for another 4-8 weeks in game as late December/January was when it really got bad.

My biggest worry would involve having something happening to Capitani or Constantino. I think any other individual loss could be withstood just fine. There are combinations of injuries that would really hurt, any two of Mills/Donnelly/Gordon getting hurt would severely weaken our playmaking abilities, etc.

I'm sure we'll have to deal with the same issues that every squad faces, and I wouldn't be surprised to see 3-4 players consistently unavailable during the second half, but last year at one point I think we had 8 players hurt long term, I think that's avoidable.

[Radii]

Contract Updates

-- We're too far over our wage budget to be able to offer anyone reasonable salaries at this point, but we do get our next update on expiring contracts and lets take a look and see what we want to do once we solve our wage budget problem in January.

-- ST Alvaro Negredo will turn 36 before the next season starts. He's held on to his ratings very well and has a 7.13 rating in the 8 matches he's played. I could make a case for keeping him around just b/c he wants to go into coaching and I'd like to see if he could be a quality attacking coach. For now though I can't offer him anything anyway, wait and see.

-- DC Henrique has a 6.6 rating this year. He'll turn 35 during our next season as well, but he's been dropping in ratings for awhile now. He'd be willing to take a ~40% pay cut but I think I'd be better off letting him go entirely and continuing to spend at DC next year.

-- My assistant, Steve Burns, has served me well and I extend him.

-- MC McDonald Mariga turns 34 at the end of this season. His ratings have held up quite well, he seems to be happy not starting every day, and he's willing to take a pay cut from $33,000/wk to $22,000/wk. I offer him the 1 year extension(looks like if its a pay cut I'm allowed to offer it... Negredo wants the same that he makes now and we're not allowed to do it yet).

-- I'm keeping most of my scouts and letting one coach go, not much need to go into all that. I have some 3 1/2 * coaching areas that I want to try to upgrade to at least 4*.


December 26th, 2020

Liverpool(5-7-7, 12th) @ Ipswich (7-6-6, 9th)

We're actually slim favorites today hosting Liverpool, 6:4 to their 13:8. They finished 7th last year but have a fight ahead of them to earn a spot in Europe again this year. We took an early lead when we played them at their place back in August but they won 2-1.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Henrique/Welsh/Jackson
M: Adagsmar/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Adagsmar starts at ML again.

11': They send a ball into the area at the very start of a highlight, they get an attacker behind our defense, Kirkland tries to make the tackle... but its a penalty. Midfielder Ademi steps up for the penalty, but Capitani saves! And we clear it out.

15': Another attack right up the middle for Liverpool, a through ball into the left side for Ademi, its his second clear cut chance, and Capitani saves again!

20': Welsh with a foul right outside the area... free kick taken but its off the wall and we clear. Clive Jackson chases the ball down and begins a long run down the right, he gets a cross in but they head it away, no shot for us there.

38': They seem to be digging in on defense, any time we get down there it feels like there's 25 men in the box with Liverpool red jerseys.

HALF: We only manage 3 shots, 1 on target. They have 9 shots, 5 on target and 2 clear cut chances. We've done well to get to the locker room 0-0.

62': We have a throwin in their end, its taken short and passed into the area to Mills. He turns and shoots from the left corner of the penalty box, its a solid shot, but just wide.

69': We have a long amount of buildup, passing it around 30-40 yards out looking for an opening. Mills passes ahead ot Constantino at the edge of the box, his man outright misses an easy interception, Consatntino turns and quickly fires, its by the keeper in the right side of the net! That was a huge defensive mistake, they had that covered perfectly well. 1-0

69': Negredo in for Khan, Mariga in for Mills. We switch to defensive and add the Retain Possession order.

82': Seems like we've almost totally controlled the last 10 minutes. We earn a corner here but they clear it easily.

We increase our possession advantage over the last 10 minutes and seal it!

Ipswich 1 : 0 Liverpool

Man of the Match: Constantino (7.7)
Goal: Constantino
Assist: Mills (7.3)
Notables: Jackson (7.3), Kirkland (7.5), Gordon (7.2), Donnelly (7.1)

Khan had a 5.6 rating before being subbed out, all he did was lose out on headers.

Capitani saved our asses early and after allowing a penalty attempt and very dangerous shot in the first 15 minutes our defense settled in and we played very well for the remainder of the match.

[Izulde]

Wow. Just wow. That's all I have to say about how you guys are doing.

[Radii]

December 28th, 2020

Ipswich (8-6-6, 7th) @ Man City(8-6-5, 8th)

We're playing on the road on two days rest here. We're listed in 7th but Man City has one less match than us. That being said, its a legitimate match for 7th here. We're tied in points with 1 more match played. Should we be able to get a win here we would earn 7th outright. Man City are 4:7 favorites, we're 4:1 to win here. They're clearly better than us but after everything we've done so far this season why not go get a win here really. That said, they did beat us 3:1 at our place with our only goal coming on a penalty.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Henrique/Welsh/Jackson
M: Burton/Donnelly/Mariga/Johnson
F: Khan/Constantino

We make 3 changes in the midfield due to playing on 2 days rest. Burton, Mariga, Johnson in for Adagsmar, Mills and Gordon.

19': Each team is trying to outrun the other so far. We're flying up and down the pitch before a defender steps in and makes a good play. No serious threats but like 8 or 9 instances of "oh if only he got by that one defender what a goal that would have been!"

41': We get our first legit chance after a throwin, Donnelly puts a ball into the left side of the area for Burton, he shoots but its saved and parried away.

HALF: This is a pretty crazy match, very very fast paced with almost no real scoring chances. They manage 8 shots to our 6 but only 3/2 on target respectively. Man City does have 61% of the possession. It feels like they're a more dangerous team but that either team could sneak in a goal and win still.

52': They get ST Alipio by Henrique after a poor tackle attempt, its the first clear cut chance on either side, but Capitani makes the save! They shoot on the rebound but its a poor shot way high.

56': Mariga gets a ball into the area for Constantino, he comes forward to the penalty spot and its our first clear cut chance, but their keeper makes the save there too.

66': Mills in for Donnelly, Adagsmar in for Burton, Negredo in for Khan, trying to get fresh legs out there in the attack.

88': We've seen Alipio have no accuracy at all on 3 shots in the last 10 minutes, nothing really promising but spots where something well placed would have been hard to stop.

We'll take this one!

Man City 0 : 0 Ipswich

We don't get a lot of nil-nil finishes. Their keeper ends up man of the match. Not sure why, Capitani stopped more shots.

Notables: Capitani (8.2), Jackson (7.1), Kirkland (7.6), Welsh (7.0), Mariga (7.0)


We play again in 2 days, and again in 3 days after that.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Izulde

Wow. Just wow. That's all I have to say about how you guys are doing.

hah no kidding. Probably lots of little reasons, better coaches, better training plans, key players (Constantino/Donnelly/Gordon) closer to/in their primes, huge huge upgrade at keeper, early success breeding confidence and morale... and most importantly, last time we were here, our wage budget was $450,000/wk even after slashing our transfer budget. This year we are spending $660,000/wk and it shows.

Even with all these things in our favor I expected to avoid relegation and to sit in like 15th place. The fact that we're currently in 7th is stunning.

We're about to hit January, and we can't spend anything and we're surrounded by extremely wealthy teams that will do something presumably. I'm curious to see if that causes us to fall back a little closer to our expected standing.

[Radii]

December 30th, 2020

Huddersfield(5-8-8, 15th) @ Ipswich (8-7-6, 7th)

Huddersfield are 9 points clear of relegation so things are looking good for them, but we are massive 4:7 favorites here today at Portman Road. They're 4:1 to get a win. This is our 3rd match in 5 days, but its the 3rd match in 5 days for Huddersfield as well. We played them on the road in our first league match of the season, taking a 2:0 lead into halftime but giving up 2 goals in the final 10 minutes to get a tie instead of a win.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Henrique/Welsh/Jackson
M: Adagsmar/Guarin/Mills/Gordon
F: Negredo/Khan

Totally different midfield from our last match. 3 starters though + Guarin instead of Donnelly. The big change is that we start Negredo/Khan up front and sit Constantino. He's available for say 20 minutes at the end if need be.

16': We earn a free kick 25 yards out, shot is blocked by the wall... we control though and set up our offense but Guarin ends up taking a long shot that's way off.

21': Kirkland is hurt, he can, and will, stay in but injury symbol and all, we'll check on him post match.

35': Our first shot on target... Khan steals a ball near the edge of the area as they send a backpass to a defender, shoots, but its right at the keeper and saved.

HALF: I think both teams are really tired here. We switched to a standard mindset around the 15th minute to try to create more action. It seems to have worked, we have 9 shots to their 3, but only 2 on target and most of them not shown in highlights.

50': Donnelly in for Guarin.

56': We have an extremely long sequence where we earn a total of 5 corner kicks, most of them just headed back for an additional corner. Finally Gordon to Khan, Khan controls it, runs to the end line and puts a pass through the 6 yard box. A defender takes the blame for missing an interception, Henrique is there to receive the ball and puts it in! 1-0

67': Defender Baddely with a yellow.

70': Mike in for Kirkland, Johnson in for Gordon, we set back to defend and hold possession. Everyone's tired, lets just make it hard for them to do anything at all and get out of here.

77': Mills with a yellow.

80': Mills plays a ball ahead to Khan, he beats a defender to get a shot, but its blocked. The ball falls to Darren Johnson, he gets into the area and fires a shot... right at the keeper, but there's a rebound, Khan is first to the rebound and puts it in! 2-0

Its easy after that.

Ipswich 2 : 0 Huddersfield

Man of the Match: Henrique (8.2)
Goals: Henrique, Khan (7.7)
Assists: Khan, Johnson (6.9)
Notables: Jackson (7.4), Kirkland (7.1), Welsh (7.6)

No long term Injury to Kirkland. We play Walsall in the FA Cup in 3 more days before finally getting a much deserved week off.

[Radii]

-- The Champions League finished group play earlier in the month. Chelsea won their group, Man Utd finished second behind Juventus, Arsenal won their group, Tottenham finishes 3rd behind Athletico Madrid and Ajax and is done. Play is on hold until February. Man U plays At. Madrid, Arsenal and Ajax, Chelsea and FC Bayern in Germany. Also of note, Inter plays Barcelona. Inter have made the finals the last 3 years in a row, winning twice, and Barcelona is, well, Barcelona (4 years in a row without a Champions League win for them).

-- The Euro cup is down to its knockout round as well. Sheffield Utd and Newcastle make it to the single elimination rounds. Exeter in the Championship made a wild run to the FA Cup finals last year and got in, finishing last in their group, but they were able to get 2 wins.

Transfer Decisions

-- As January opens I have a couple decisions to make.

-- The first is easy, I transfer list Carlos Antonio. He's not getting any playing time, he's starting to get pissed off about it, he's taking some reserve team time away from Chris Mason to stay fit, and he's still valued at $3.5M.

-- The second is not quite as easy. DLC/ML Jack Hughes has developed into a decent player, he's still just 20 and he's got some value. My #1 problem is that he's *really* well suited to play DL and is not nearly as effective at ML or DC. My #2 problem is that he's very very foul prone when I put him at DC. He has a determination of 19, bravery of 17 and composure of 11 and the three seem to combine into some crazy things sometimes. Last year he gave up more penalties than the rest of the team combined, so I'm terrified to use him there. Maybe he'll grow out of it? I hope this doesn't piss him off too bad... he's valued at $3.8M. What I decide to do is offer him up to clubs around the league but set an asking price of $8.5M. If someone wants to pay me more than double his value then they'll make up my mind for me. Otherwise I'll hold on to him for another year.

-- A third but much more minor decision is one to get rid of ST Ian Taylor. Taylor is on the reserve team and its become clear he doesn't have what it takes to ever play at this level. He's only valued at $875,000, I don't really see that going up much and he deserves a chance in league 1 or something like that. I go ahead and list him as well.

-- Let the fun begin. Birmingham offer me $7.25M for DC James Welsh. Welsh has a 6.81 average rating in 17 matches(13 starts) in league play. He's only 25 y/o. With Henrique and Quartey older players and Cestor Mike an abject failure, Welsh is essentially indispensable.

January Update

-- We play on the 2nd, 9th, 16ht, 26th and 31st. If we beat Walsall on the 2nd we'll also play on the 23rd in the next round of the FA Cup.

-- Stuart Kirkland is the young player of the month in the EPL!

-- Chelsea went 5-1-0 in December to get into the top 4 and to be ready to pounce if Man U or Arsenal make a mis-step, that earns their boss manager of the month. With a 4-2-1 record, I'm 3rd in manager of the month voting.

-- The board is "absolutely delighted" with my leadership. Our EPL play is the highlight and the only negative remains the signing of Cestor Mike.

-- We make a profit of $425,000 in December.

-- I get an offer worth ~$775k from Leyton Orient for Ian Taylor right away. Its a bit of cash now, money over the next 24 months and 50% of the profit from his next sale. They're 4th in league 1 and clearly feel he'll push them up a level. I accept it.

-- WTF. Inter offer me $3.5M for Carlos Antonio. I stall the negotiations and try to change my asking price to $7M. Inter?! Really?!

-- Olympique Lyonnais make a loan offer for Carlos Antonio. They'll give me $1.3M and pay his salary for the rest of the year to have him be their backup keeper. FC Bayern make a similar offer but only offer me $650,000. I go ahead and accept the Olympique bid. Get him off the books, make some cash now and maybe sell him in the offseason. I guess what I'm learning is that this is the type of guy that is an ideal backup for these top clubs. But I don't think I'm quite at the level yet where I can pay $27,500/wk for my backup keeper.

January 2nd, 2021

FA Cup 3rd Round

Ipswich(EPL) @ Walsall(L2)

We're crazy 1:6 favorites to win here, they are 10:1.

GK: Carlos Antonio
D: Mike/Welsh/Quartey/Jackson
M: Burton/Guarin/Mariga/Gordon
F: Hamilton/Constantino

Wholesale changes today as we end a 4 games in 8 days stretch. Constantino is in just by virtue of the fact that I rested him last match. Backups almost everywhere else. Neil Gordon in since Darren Johnson has the same fitness level. Its one of the sure subs I'll make though.

Just Commentary today.

HALF: Its a really crappy half. We shoot 3 times, they shoot 4, all off target. Darren Johnson in at MR for Gordon. Henrique in for Quartey who got hurt in the first half.

54': Oh that's not good. We allow a corner, they take it to the near man, passed to a striker charging in from 20 yards out, he shoots... off the foot of Cestor Mike on the line, and into the net. 0-1

61': Thanks for waking up guys. Welsh with a long clearance, Hamilton heads it on, Constantino runs onto it and scores easily. 1-1

69': Donnelly in for Guarin.

72': Donnelly with a nice run by a defender, he puts a perfect ball into the area for Darren Johnson, Johnson runs onto it and strikes it near post by the keeper. 2-1

88': We finish it finally, Hamilton with al ong run down the left side, a cross to the 6 yard box, Constantino is unmarked and heads it by the keeper. 3-1

Walsall 1 : 3 Ipswich

Thanks for not embarrassing me out there today guys, whew.

Man of the Match: Constantino (9.0)
Goals: Constantino 2, Johnson (7.5)
Assists: Hamilton 2 (8.5), Donnelly (6.9)
Notables: Jackson (7.0), Mariga (7.0)


-- Jonathan Quartey just came back from an injury and now he's back out for 2 more weeks.

-- We receive $110,000 for the win.

[cschex]

Oh Hughes, just keep in mind that he actually has more value to you as a "homegrown" player should you make it into European in the next year or two. UEFA rules require you to have 4 registered players out of a 25 man squad who have spent at least 3 years on your books between the ages of 15 and 21, so even if he's a squad player, you want to keep that in mind (if you haven't already)

[Alf]

Originally Posted by cschex

Oh Hughes, just keep in mind that he actually has more value to you as a "homegrown" player should you make it into European in the next year or two. UEFA rules require you to have 4 registered players out of a 25 man squad who have spent at least 3 years on your books between the ages of 15 and 21, so even if he's a squad player, you want to keep that in mind (if you haven't already)

Didn't know that rule. Is that a UEFA official rule ? Could you link it ?

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by Alf

Didn't know that rule. Is that a UEFA official rule ? Could you link it ?

EUROPA - Rapid - Error

[Radii]

Fromthat link:

Home-grown players’ are defined by UEFA as players who, regardless of their nationality or age, have been trained by their club or by another club in the national association for at least three years between the age of 15 and 21.

That makes it sound like I just need guys that train in England, not on my squad specifically? So Constantino is home grown because he trained at Aston Villa and Man City,I think?

[Radii]

Just checked my roster, 13 of the 23 that I've given squad numbers have trained in England and have the "HG" label next to them. Of them, Hughes, Jackson, Kirkland and Gordon trained with Ipswich. Khan may count as well depending on how they do age cutoffs. He was 19/20/21 for the start of three seasons with me but turned 22 in January of that 3rd year. Interesting.

[cschex]

Originally Posted by Radii

Just checked my roster, 13 of the 23 that I've given squad numbers have trained in England and have the "HG" label next to them. Of them, Hughes, Jackson, Kirkland and Gordon trained with Ipswich. Khan may count as well depending on how they do age cutoffs. He was 19/20/21 for the start of three seasons with me but turned 22 in January of that 3rd year. Interesting.

IIRC, the way it is coded in FM10 is that for the Premier league, you can submit a squad of up to 25 players 21 yrs are older. Of that squad, at least 8 need to be trained in the "nation", in this case the UK. For the UEFA competitions, you would need 4 trained at Ipswich and at least another 4 trained in the nation. I believe thats how the game has it coded. Sounds like you will have no problems meeting that, just thought I'd mention it

[Radii]

Originally Posted by cschex

IIRC, the way it is coded in FM10 is that for the Premier league, you can submit a squad of up to 25 players 21 yrs are older. Of that squad, at least 8 need to be trained in the "nation", in this case the UK. For the UEFA competitions, you would need 4 trained at Ipswich and at least another 4 trained in the nation. I believe thats how the game has it coded. Sounds like you will have no problems meeting that, just thought I'd mention it

Definitely glad you mentioned it, I never would have thought about it and would have gone into Europe whenever I do make it totally blind to that rule. Thanks!

[Radii]

January 9th, 2021

Ipswich(9-7-6, 7th) @ Bristol City(1-7-14, 20th)

We're 4:6 favorites on the road against the worst team in the league. They're 7:2 to get a win. We beat them 1-0 at our place back in August. We're 3-8-6 lifetime against them.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Henrique/Jackson
M: Adagsmar/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

We start our best 11 today with a week off.

5': Mills misses an interception, allowing a through ball to go into the area for ST Sa who easily beats Capitani... ouch. 0-1

36': Khan is hurt... I changed it to key highlights and there haven't been much here!

39': We build up on offense, Jackson to Constantino and he's not supposed to be the best passer but he puts a perfect ball into the left side of the area, Adagsmar runs onto it and shoots near post and beats the keeper! 1-1

HALF: They shoot 6 times, we shoot 5. Just one on target from each team, its pretty even and pretty ugly so far. We have 53% of the possession, they're tackling and heading way better so far, we need to pick up our play a bit.

56': Long buildup on our offense but we're struggling to get a shot.. finally we take something from 20 yards out, blocked and its a corner. They clear that easily.

59': They attack, a pass to ST Keane, he puts it ahead to Sa who has beaten Henrique badly, its another clear cut chance and another goal. 1-2

78': We win the ball in defense, its sent ahead to Constantino, he races down the right side of the pitch... gets near hte end line, sends a low cross through the box and Khan is there, no defenders nearby, Khan pokes it into the net to tie it up! 2-2

78': Negredo in for Khan, Hughes in for Adagsmar, Johnson in for Gordon, fresh/non-injured legs in to try to get a win here.

92': We earn a corner, taken near to Constantino, he shoots... saved but there's a rebound, Henrique is there and its a clear cut chance... and he sends it wide.

94': 2 minutes of extra time are called for... we're 3 1/2 minutes into extra time now. We earn another corner. Taken to Constantino, he trues to beat his defender... tackled, penalty!!! Constantino takes the PK and buries it!! Bristol City is going to be unhappy after this one. 3-2

Bristol City 2 : 3 Ipswich

Man of the Match: Constantino (8.8)
Goals: Constantino, Adagsmar (7.5), Khan (6.8)
Assists: Contsantino 2

Neil Gordon with a 5.9. We didn't really play great, we let them get a couple easy goals and had to scramble like crazy to win at the end. Its great that we were able to, but we've played better.

Injury Update

Biggest injury in awhile, Matthew Khan has a groin strain and is out for 2-3 weeks.



-- For the moment we're in 6th place. However, we have 2 matches on Man City and 3 points over them, 1 match over West Ham and 1 point over them. We are absolutely in the mix right now but need the competition to choke a little.

[Radii]

Loan Out

-- GK Carlos Antonio is going to spend the rest of the season in France with Olympique Lyonnais. With this we receive $1.3M and they're going to be paying his salary for the rest of the year.


-- The New York Red Bulls offer Negredo a contract for next year. I'd like to keep him around and try to offer him a deal, but we'll see how that works out. I can't quite offer him the salary he wants so I offer him a bigger signing bonus.

Future Transfer Out

-- Ah well, nothing I could do there. Alvaro Negredo is going to play next year for the New York Red Bulls. He'll be 36, its not a huge loss, but I did kinda want to keep him on as a cheap backup for one more season. This changes nothing for the rest of this year.


January 16th, 2021

Sheffield Utd(8-5-10, 11th) @ Ipswich(10-7-6, 6th)

We're 5:4 favorites at home over Sheffield Utd. We tied them 2:2 at their place earlier in the year and have a 2-2-10 lifetime record that we're trying to improve upon.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Henrique/Jackson
M: Hughes/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Negredo/Constantino

With Khan injured, Negredo starts up front. Jack Hughes starts at ML today.

24': They have a throwin in our end, they work the ball into the area a couple times but we defend well and block a coupel shots, but can't win possession, finally a through ball goes in to their star striker Vanelli, he's got a clear cut chance from 15 yards away... but Capitani makes the stop! Shot right at him really.

39': We finally put our first shot of the match on target, Mills shoots from 20 yards out and its saved by the keeper, turned back for a corner, we can't do anything with the corner.

HALF: They got 3 shots in that one highlight and there wasn't a whole lot else going on. Sheffield Utd has 7 shots total, 3 on target. We have 3 shots total, 1 on target. Possession is slightly in our favor but like last match we're not tackling well and we are doing awful in the air winning only 40% of our headers. It seems like they have been the better team today but only slighlty.

46': The attack from the whistle, a couple passes up the left sideline, a centering pass to ST Vanelli, he turns and fires from 20 yards out and its a hell of a strike, by welsh, by Capitani and into the left side of the net. 0-1

58': We get a quick counter attack after winning a ball in defense, Hughes with a long ball forward to Negredo who gets a very easy goal... but he's offsides... I dunno about that one, tha'ts close.

67': We attack, they are really crowding the defense... Hughes to Mills, Mills plays is into the very left edge of the area, way out wide for Hughes, Hughes cuts inside, shoots.. and beats the keeper!! His first ever senior squad goal for Ipswich! 1-1

80': they attack, and its another ball into the area for ST Vanelli after very little buildup... he's behind the defense and has a very easy finish. 1-2

80': Hamilton in for Negredo, Johnson in for Gordon, Mariga in for Mills

84': Clive Jackson comes off injured... he's got to leave the match immediately... and we just used all our subs. Doh.

There's no comeback to be had today.

Ipswich 1 : 2 Sheffield Utd

Goal: Hughes (7.5)
Assist: Mills (7.0)
Notables: Kirkland (7.2), Gordon (7.0), Donnelly (7.0)

Welsh was beaten repeatedly today and ends up with 5.7 rating, worse than anyone else in defense. He really couldn't handle Vanelli at all and their star won the game for them.

Injury Update

DR Clive Jackson is going to miss 2-3 weeks with a twisted knee suffered in the match today. That's actually a bit of a problem as the guys on the squad that can effectively play DR are McKerr, Jackson and youth player Denis Haskins. All of them are currently hurt. McKerr is still out for 1-2 months. We'll either switch to a 3-1-4-2 or something like that, or sign a free transfer DR to fill for a couple weeks.

[the_meanstrosity]

Originally Posted by Radii

I believe last season's incredible injury woes were an aberration that I caused myself. I mentioned at the start of last season that I put a *lot* of work into completely overhauling my coaching staff and focusing on better training and thus hopefully better player development. What I glossed over a bit is that I downloaded a new, more complex set of training schedules last season, and the workload in almost all of them was *much* higher than what I was doing. Once I started running into the massive injury issues last year I went in and lowered the overall workload in all of those training schedules.

I think an accurate analogy is that I was putting my guys through two a days well into the regular season and they just started breaking down midway through the season.

I'm hoping that I fixed all of that last season, though I suppose we won't know for sure for another 4-8 weeks in game as late December/January was when it really got bad.

My biggest worry would involve having something happening to Capitani or Constantino. I think any other individual loss could be withstood just fine. There are combinations of injuries that would really hurt, any two of Mills/Donnelly/Gordon getting hurt would severely weaken our playmaking abilities, etc.

I'm sure we'll have to deal with the same issues that every squad faces, and I wouldn't be surprised to see 3-4 players consistently unavailable during the second half, but last year at one point I think we had 8 players hurt long term, I think that's avoidable.

Radii, you weren't by chance using SFraser's 2010 training schedules were you? I'm thinking about using those in my next run, but was hoping for some input from you if you've been using them. Thanks in advance!

[Radii]

Originally Posted by the_meanstrosity

Radii, you weren't by chance using SFraser's 2010 training schedules were you? I'm thinking about using those in my next run, but was hoping for some input from you if you've been using them. Thanks in advance!

Yep, those are the ones I switched to. I really liked the idea of schedules catered towards developing the young guys and maintaining the older ones. I'm not sure if the ones I downloaded were just not really complete yet, or if they require the facilities and physios one might find at Man Utd, but the overall workload on all of them was *way* higher than the ones I was using before. I've kept the U-18 ones really high and lowered all the ones that I use on the senior squad but because of my lack of experience with this stuff am considering moving back to a more basic set that should work "out of the box".

The set I was using before were from here:

Tugs Training 2010.

I dunno which one I wanna keep long term.

[Radii]

January 23rd, 2021

FA Cup 4th Round

Ipswich(10-7-7, 8th) @ Wolves(2-6-16, 19th)

We're 4:7 favorites to beat these guys on the road. We crushed them 3:0 at our place back in September and haven't lost to them since I took over at Ipswich, 3-4-3 lifetime, 2-3-0 under my tenure.

GK: Capitani
D: Hughes/Welsh/Henrique
DMC: Guarin
M: Adagsmar/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Negredo/Constantino

With Jackson and McKerr hurt I seriously consider sticking a good athlete out at DR out of position, but instead decide to mess around with a different formation. 3-1-4-2, Guarin DMC, 3 DC's, a little more support from the wide midfielders like in a 3-5-2 and Negredo and Constantino up front.

2': Mills with a long pass ahead to Constantino, he turns by his man and shoots... the keeper dives to his left, shot is off the post though and back into play. Negredo pounces and puts the rebound into the empty net! 1-0

16': We have a goal kick and win the long ball in our offensive end. After a couple passes Donnelly has it 30 yards out... he begins a run forward, makes one man miss, the others stick to the forwards they're marking and Donnelly is into the area, he's got a clear cut chance and he scores!! 2-0

20': They build up on offense, a pass goes to ST van Wolfswinkel, he's 25 yards out and he just burns the defense... he runs by two men, Hughes misses a tackle and he gets in the area and drills a nice shot into the lower left corner. 2-1

35': they begin to attack hard, over the last 15 minutes they've taken 5 shots and are putting a ton of pressure on us, Capitani has made a couple great saves.

41': Guarin is hurt... he can stay in but we'll check on him post match.

HALF: They end up with 10 shots, 7 on target. We shoot 7 times, 5 on target. They have the bulk of the attack in the final 25 minutes or so after we got off to a fast start. Possession is even and stats are fairly even, we're tackling a little better (but a few key missed tackles have made Capitani work hard) and they're heading the ball better.

52': Highlight opens with Donnelly near the midfield stripe. He comes forward and waits for an opening. He spots it and sends a ball ahead of Negredo, who cuts by his defender, gets into the area... keeper rushes out but cannot stop the shot, Negredo puts it into the net! 3-1

63': Adagsmar just went down injured for no reason at all, it was during a highlight, no one touched him. Maybe I haven't fixed training enough after all (or maybe there's something else I need to fix). Or maybe I just have a bunch of injury prone dudes. He's forced to come out immediately. Burton is in.

68': I was in a standard mindset til our first goal, changed quickly to counter attacking, but now I'm sitting back to defend. Retain possession, drop the defensive line back, etc.

78': Johnson in for Guarin, up to MC, a flat 3-5-2 going now.

86': We earn a corner, taken short to Hughes, his man goes in for a slide tackle... and its a foul, penalty! Constantino takes it and drills it. 4-1

Wolves 1 : 4 Ipswich

Solid win to advance in the FA Cup.

Man of the Match: Gordon Donnelly (9.1)
Goals: Negredo 2 (8.9), Donnelly, Constantino (8.6)
Assists: Donnelly, Constantino, Guarin (7.1), Hughes (6.8)
Notables: Capitani (7.5), Henrique (7.1), Mills (7.2)

Some uncomfortable moments in that formation early, but we got some good goals as the match went on.

-- We receive $150,000 for the win.


Injury Update

-- Adagsmar is out for 2 weeks. Guarin is fine. That's only 4 players injured but its 3 in the last 3 matches...

[Radii]

FA Cup 5th Round Draw

-- Down to 16 teams, 9 EPL, 7 lower league teams. We get a lucky draw and will be travelling to play the winner of the Aldershot (L1)/Hull (CH) replay.


January 26th, 2021

Ipswich(10-7-7, 8th) @ Nottingham Forest (7-4-13, 16th)

Nottingham Forest are 5:4 favorites today, we're 7:4 to win. Our first match against them was our breakthrough match where we started to figure out that we had a pretty good team as we destroyed them 5:1. We're 5-2-7 lifetime against them.

GK: Capitani
D: Hughes/Welsh/Henrique
M: Adagsmar/Donnelly/Mariga/Mills/Johnson
F: Hamilton/Constantino

Nottingham Forest's Ivan Popov has 7 goals, Chris Wood has 6 to lead them. I move to a flat 3-5-2 today and put Mariga in the midfield with Donnelly and Mills. Burton wide left, Johnson wide right.

2': midfielder Sanchez with a yellow.

13': Constantino receives a pass 30 yards out and tries to beat the entire defense, he makes it around and through 5 players to get into the area somehow and earns a clear cut chance... but the keeper makes a diving save, damn! We do nothing with the corner.

16': Goal kick taken really long by Capitani... Constantino outruns the defense and controls it pretty well, into the area for a second clear cut chance, he's pretty close to the keeper though and can't get an angle to put it by him, nice save.

21': Mariga with a yellow.

26': Yellow for midfielder Garvan.

32': they earn their first clear cut chance, an attack down the left, passed into the area, crossed to the other side of the box, there's a header from very very close range, but Capitani makes a quick save to turn it over the bar and we clear the corner.

44': Constantino with a yellow.

HALF: We had a couple great chances to score and couldn't come through. Each team has 8 shots, most of their highlights were crosses into headers that went over... the one good Capitani save keeping us scoreless. They put 4 on target to our 3. Possession is about even and once again we are tackling and heading poorly, both under 50% for us while they have an 87% success rate on tackles and 67% on headers. That will keep us from getting anything going for sure.

56': Johnson with a yellow.

59': We have a corner, taken to the far end of the 6 yard box, Welsh tries to go up and get it but his jersey is being held and its spotted by the ref... penalty! Constantino takes it and scores. 1-0

63': Mills with a yellow, our 4th and the 6th total.

65': They get a through ball into the area, its looking like an easy goal for them, Welsh tries a last second tackle.. but its a foul, we give back the penalty, they take it and score easily. 1-1 Welsh gets a yellow for his tackle.

75': Negredo on for Hamilton, Gordon on for Mills. Johnson moves to MC, Gordon MR.

84': We have a throwin deep in their end, taken to Mariga, he avoids a tackle and gets a cross in, Negredo wins his header... keeper has to make a quick save and turns it back for a corner... that one they clear easily.

Nottingham Forest 1 : 1 Ipswich

I'll take that on the road. Two penalties for a 1:1 draw. Both teams had a couple really good chances and couldn't convert. Their goalscorer is man of the match.

Goal: Constantino (7.2)
Assist: Welsh (6.0)
Notable: Donnelly (7.0)

Henrique put up a 5.5 today, not good! He won 2 of 11 headers. Hughes won 3 of 11.

[the_meanstrosity]

Originally Posted by Radii

Yep, those are the ones I switched to. I really liked the idea of schedules catered towards developing the young guys and maintaining the older ones. I'm not sure if the ones I downloaded were just not really complete yet, or if they require the facilities and physios one might find at Man Utd, but the overall workload on all of them was *way* higher than the ones I was using before. I've kept the U-18 ones really high and lowered all the ones that I use on the senior squad but because of my lack of experience with this stuff am considering moving back to a more basic set that should work "out of the box".

The set I was using before were from here:

Tugs Training 2010.

I dunno which one I wanna keep long term.

Make sure you have the latest and greatest ones because his initial files caused a lot of injuries due to a mis-count of the attributes in one of the categories. So players were actually training much harder than he originally intended. I think the files I have are SFraser v1.1 (per the Import Training screen). Let me know if you need them.

I understand the basic idea behind using them, but I'm still wary of using the "Dev" schedules on young players who are also in my senior lineup though I believe that's the correct assumption. Is that how you handled it?

[Taz13]

I appreciate you writing this. It has inspired me to try again on FM 09. I figure if nothing else I might start getting a clue in time for FM 12.

[Radii]

-- Matthew Khan resumes full training.

-- A few last minute offers come in for some of our players. Stoke bid $1.2M for Darren Johnson, which we reject. I'm really happy with him as a role player for us. Inter in Serie A try their damnedest to tempt us. They offer us $16 Million for Steven Mills. But we can't seriously consider taking it. Mills is *really* good, Mills and Donnelly are a strong, strong midfield for us. Mills is only 23, and I'm not even 100% confident I could spend $16 Million and get better than him.

-- Steven Mills is unhappy that I don't allow him to discuss contract details with Inter.

New Signing

We pick up a backup on a free transfer, welcome 25 y/o DRC/MRC Andy Parsons to Ipswich. This is a deep depth move triggered by the Clive Jackson/McKerr injuries. I'm used to having one of my DC's able to slide over and cover in spots like this. Parsons isn't great by any stretch. He'll just make $5,250/wk and comes in with a value of $975,000.

Physical: Pace 12/Accel 10. Strength 15/Jumping 14.
Mental: Determination 12/Decisions 12/Teamwork 11/Work Rate 14/Compsoure 14. Most other ratings are poor in the 7-9 range.
Technical: Marking 9/Tackling 11/Heading 12/Passing 11/Technique 10.

Really he's not great but he can play a lot of positions if we have a desperate need to fill. I kinda feel like putting a "not quite good enough" DR in but being able to stay in a formation we're comfortable in is a better option than this 3-something-2. Even bigger than missing out on a formation we're comfortable with is that 3 DC's keeps Stuart Kirkland off the field. Kirkland won't be winning 3 of 12 headers...


January 31st, 2021

Tottenham(10-6-9, 9th) @ Ipswich(10-8-7, 8th)

Tottenham are big favorites today, 4:6 at Portman Road. We're 7:2 to get a win. We pulled off a 1:1 draw at their place. We're 0-1-4 lifetime against him.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Quartey/Parsons
M: Hughes/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Negredo/Constantino

Tottenham's Jan Molnar has 11 goals in league play, tied for 5th in the EPL right now. I bring Parsons in right away to get back to the 4-4-2 that we're doing so well in and hope that doesn't end up being an awful mistake. Quartey is back in after coming off his latest short injury. Hughes at ML, Negredo up front. Khan is available off the bench today.

7': Not a good start, they get a couple crosses into the area that are headed out but we can't get hte ball out of there... finally a through ball comes in for their star Molnar, he gets behind Welsh and scores easily on a clear cut chance. 0-1

11': We send a long ball forward after winning a ball in defense... there's a header into the area and Constantino gets behind the defense, he has a pretty tough shot from an angle out to the right, and sends it wide. Poor defending to let him even get the ball though.

26': We build up down the right side, Gordon hits Constantino in the area, again its a bit out to the right and not a clear cut chance but he has a nice look... and hits the left post. There's a rebound for Negredo but he sends it right to the keeper.

33': They get a clear cut chance as Parsons is out of position and lets his man get into the area and attack from the left... but their attacker comes in way too close to the goal and Capitani has the goal almost entirely cut off and makes a save.

HALF: Not a lot of action the rest of the way but its been a highlight filled half given that I only have key highlights on now! We end up shooting 9 times but only putting 2 on target. They shoot 8 times, 3 on target. We are getting a lot of long balls ahead to Constantino but he hasn't quite found an easy look, they're forcing him just out wide for weird angles or winning tackles in key spots.

47': Constantino has it 25 yards out, he spots Hughes coming in from the left and hits him with a nice pass, Hughes has our first clear cut chance, but shoots right at the keeper, no luck.

50': We have a corner, taken in to Hughes.. he passes to NEgredo who is up at the edge of the box, a shot goes in... off the right post.

62': Constantino is hurt... we hold our breath and wait til the end to see.

75': They attack down the middle, a ball ahead towards the 6 yard box for ST Schaap. Capitani comes out to try to get the ball but its by him and its an easy goal. Capitani takes the hit for that one for coming off his line by mistake to try to go after that pass. 0-2

77': Johnson in for Gordon, Khan in for Constantino, Mariga in for Mills.

87': Gordon Donnelly comes down with an injury.

Ipswich 0 : 2 Tottenham

No one really plays well today, Capitani puts up a 5.8 rating for his mistake in allowing their second goal.



Injury Update

The injury gods smile upon us today. Donnelly is out for 1 week and Constantino has no long term issues.


That was a pretty tough loss for us. We've played 26 matches now, if we could have won there we'd be 1 point out of 7th place with 12 to go. 4 points out feels a lot worse, but hey we're still putting up a tough fight.

1. Arsenal - 63 pts
2. Man Utd - 54 pts
3. Chelsea - 51 pts
4. Birmingham - 48 pts
5. Aston Villa - 46 pts
6. West Ham - 43 pts
7. Man City - 42 pts
8. Tottenham - 39 pts
9. Ipswich - 38 pts
10. Newcastle - 36 pts
11. Sunderland - 34 pts
12. Sheffield Utd - 33 pts
13. Liverpool - 32 pts
14. Everton - 32 pts
15. Huddersfield - 27 pts
16. Nottingham Forest - 26 pts
17. Blackburn - 25 pts
-------------------------------
18. West Brom - 15 pts
19. Wolves - 13 pts
20. Bristol City - 10 pts


A small losing streak could easily drop us down to 13th or 14th, a few big wins and we could still compete for that coveted 7th spot.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by the_meanstrosity

Make sure you have the latest and greatest ones because his initial files caused a lot of injuries due to a mis-count of the attributes in one of the categories. So players were actually training much harder than he originally intended. I think the files I have are SFraser v1.1 (per the Import Training screen). Let me know if you need them.

Could you send them to me (or point me to the right download?). I have the old one. I remember seeing comments about that mis-count but I thought I adjusted for it by lowering Strength and Aerobic training for every category, but its extremely likely I did it completely wrong.

I understand the basic idea behind using them, but I'm still wary of using the "Dev" schedules on young players who are also in my senior lineup though I believe that's the correct assumption. Is that how you handled it?

That's what I'm doing as well.

Originally Posted by Taz13

I appreciate you writing this. It has inspired me to try again on FM 09. I figure if nothing else I might start getting a clue in time for FM 12.

Thanks! It hasn't always stuck for me. I've only had two long FM careers in 10 years of off-and-on playing. Part of that is that right now I have incredible amounts of free time, but there have been years Ive given it a serious shot and just not gotten hooked on it like I have this time

[the_meanstrosity]

Originally Posted by Radii

Could you send them to me (or point me to the right download?). I have the old one. I remember seeing comments about that mis-count but I thought I adjusted for it by lowering Strength and Aerobic training for every category, but its extremely likely I did it completely wrong.



That's what I'm doing as well.



Thanks! It hasn't always stuck for me. I've only had two long FM careers in 10 years of off-and-on playing. Part of that is that right now I have incredible amounts of free time, but there have been years Ive given it a serious shot and just not gotten hooked on it like I have this time

PM sent Radii. I'll be online in an hour and will try to send those files to you then if you've responded to the PM.

By the way, great job on this dynasty Radii. I've been lurking since the beginning and check every day for updates. Keep up the great work! How's Woking doing after their relegation?

[Radii]

Originally Posted by the_meanstrosity

By the way, great job on this dynasty Radii. I've been lurking since the beginning and check every day for updates. Keep up the great work! How's Woking doing after their relegation?

Thanks!!

Woking sucks. They're in league 2, 1 point out of relegating back down to the Blue Square Premier. The year after they fell out of the Championship they had a massive selloff and in that one offseason got rid of every single player I had brought to the team. I lost a lot of interest in following them when that happened.

They finished 21st in their first year back in League 1 to fall back down to league 2. Their first year in league 2 they managed to hang on, finishing 18th with 53 points. This season they only have 26 points in 30 matches and are 22nd, but only the bottom two teams will fall back so they have a shot.

[Radii]

February Update

-- We play on the 6th, 9th, 13th, 20th and 28th. 13th should be our next FA Cup match, the replay isn't done yet for our opponent so its not officially listed yet.

-- I haven't really mentioned him much but we bought a young striker, Chris Bryan, from Oxford for $325k last year. He's mentioned in our training report this month and he's a dominant player for the U-18s. He has 42 goals in 33 matches. He's actually led us almost entirely by himself to the semifinals of the U-18 Cup, getting the young guys a lot of great youth experience. He's made gains in about 1/3 of his ratings over the last year and has made recent gains in pace (15), Agility (16), Stamina (10), Positioning (9), First Touch (13). He's valued at $3.2M. Similar to what I had hoped to do with Chris Mason earlier int he year, I'd love to loan Bryan out next year to a Championship team with a good coach. He seems like a guy that could easily be my #3 striker with another year of solid play.

-- The board is absolutely delighted with my performance still. EPL play is the highlight, Cestor Mike is the lowlight.

-- We made a profit of $1.89M last month, about the amount that we made loaning out Carlos Antonio and Selling Ian Taylor.


-- Clive Jackson resumes full training. Adagsmar as well a few days later.

-- Usually I hop on speculation about potential job openings before I can get an offer. Here the official offer comes before any sort of rumors. After 16 straight top 10 finishes in La Liga, Villareal finished 11th last year and are currently 16th and fighting against relegation. They have a wage budget of $1M/wk and a $22M transfer budget and I'm offered the job there. Of course I turn it down as I'm thrilled at the work we're getting done at Ipswich but its nice to be wanted!


-- There's a round of international friendlies taking place on the 9th/10th of February. We always have a number of players called up, but the new and exciting thing today is that Steven Mills and Neil Gordon are called up to England's senior squad!!

-- We have a match scheduled on the 9th against Sunderland that is rescheduled for the 17th due to international callups.

February 6th, 2021

Ipswich(10-8-8, 9th) @ Wolves(2-7-17, 19th)

We're even money favorites at Wolverhampton today, they're 11:5 to get a win. With 2 losses and a draw in our last 3 matches we'd like to get back to winning today. We crushed them 4:1 in the FA Cup just 2 weeks ago.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Henrique/Jackson
M: Hughes/Mariga/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Jackson is back at DR. Mariga starts for Donnelly who isn't quite fully healthy yet and Khan is back in the lineup.

2': Welcome back Clive Jackson! They clear a ball out of their defensive end to a striker but Jackson makes the tackle to win it back for us. A pass to mills, passed back to Jackson, he puts a ball into the area for Neil Gordon and its just perfect. Gordon easily beats the keeper for a very early goal. 1-0

14': they have a throwin, taken to van wolfswinkel, he doesn't control it well and Khan takes it away. van Wolfswinkel commits a foul... and I can't say I see why exactly, but he's given a straight red card!! We've got a 1-0 lead and they're going to be down a man for the next 75 minutes.

28': We attack quickly straight up the middle, Henrique to Mills to Mariga to Khan, Khan loses his man, gets into the area and shoots and scores! Welcome back Matthew Khan! 2-0

41': Hughes with a cross into the area from the left side, Neil Gordon heads it down for Constantino who is wide open and easily puts the ball into the net. 3-0

HALF: We're way better than them and they lost a man early, its a recipe for disaster. I sub Negredo in for Constantino and Guarin in for Mills, two guys I only rest when I have to under normal circumstances. Have a half off, you've earned it.

53': They have a goal kick, its taken long, around 20 yards out from goal their ST Vokes and Welsh both jump for a header. Vokes wins it, Capitani was coming out to presumably catch the ball on the bounce, the header goes over his head and cuts in just under the crossbar and into the net. Oops. 3-1

I turned it down to commentary only for the rest of this. We must have lost our concentration or something as we generated 5 clear cut chances in the second half, ended up with 30 total shots, but didn't score again. That's ok, I suppose a 3-0 lead will do that for you.

Wolves 1 : 3 Ipswich

Their keeper is man of the match after seeing 30 shots come in, 14 of them on target, but only allowing 3 goals.

Goals: Gordon (7.8), Constantino (7.2), Khan (7.1)
Assists: Jackson (7.7), Hughes (8.0), Mariga (7.0)
Notables: Capitani (7.0), Henrique (7.0)

[Radii]

-- Jack Hughes is named to the EPL team of the week... in the DL slot despite playing midfield. Hughes has been impressive of late!

-- Neither Mills or Gordon see the pitch in England's 4:0 friendly win over Slovakia. Too bad.

Injury Update

-- Henrique hurts his chest lifting weights and will miss 2 weeks.

February 13th, 2021

FA Cup 5th Round

Ipswich(9th, EPL) @ Hull(10th, CH)

We are only 5:4 favorites here today over Hull. Given that we could gain entry into the Euro Cup by making the finals of the FA Cup we're really looking to push hard for a win here to get into the quarterfinals.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Quartey/Jackson
M: Hughes/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

We start the best lineup that we can today(given Hughes' hot hand he starts over Adagsmar, the others are all clear choices). Standard mindset today.

7': Yellow for defender Reed.

7': A quick series of passes from Mills to Hughes to Khan gives us a pretty good shot, Khan strikes it, their keeper is able to dive and make the save.

9': We build up down the right side, Jackson to Mills, centered for Donnelly, Donnelly puts it into the right side of the area and Gordon cuts behind his man, he controls it well, takes his time and puts it by the keeper! 1-0

28': We've shot 9 times but only 3 on target and nothing threatening after that goal.

33': Yellow for Donnelly.

36': Its a breakaway for Khan. We win the ball in the midfield, Hughes spots Khan wide open as their defense isn't set well at all, Khan makes a long run into the area and beats the keeper! 2-0

40': Gordon passes to Constantino, Constantino scoots by two defenders to get into the penalty area... he's tackled, its a penalty! But the keeper guesses right on this one and its saved.

HALF: We're in full control here. 14 shots, 6 on target to their 2 off target shots. We've got a 57/43 possession edge. The only thing we can't do is win a header, 39% success rate there.

58': Mills wins a ball in our defensive end a few yards outside the penalty area, he sends it ahead to midfield for Khan, Khan waits for Constantino to break and sends a ball forward for him. Constantino runs onto it, shoots from just inside the area and blasts it by the keeper. 3-0

66': Johnson and Mariga in for Mills and Donnelly. Lee Burton in for Kirkland, Hughes to DL, Burton ML.

72': We have a corner, taken short to Welsh, passed back to Gordon, Gordon crosses it into the area, Consatntino wins a header, its kinda weak but the keeper can't get there.. it hits the left post and bounces into the net! 4-0

77': they get it ahead to ST O'Neil, Quartey charges him and misses the ball entirely, O'Neil runs by him, into the area and gets this one past Capitani. 4-1

80': Khan down the left side, he passes low into the area, they have a man there but he misses an interception that looked pretty easy to make... Mariga takes advantage and fires near post by the keeper! 5-1

82': This is just silly now. They send a through ball into the area, Quartey screws up again and allows O'Neil wide open for his second goal. 5-2

85': Mariga passes to Constantino, Constantino lays the ball off to Neil Gordon who blasts a shot high to the far post from 20 yards out, by the keeper and in. 6-2


Hull 2 : 6 Ipswich

That got a bit insane late with 5 goals in the final 20 minutes but we were always in complete control.

Man of the Match: Neil Gordon (9.5)
Goals: Gordon 2, Constantino 2 (9.0), Khan (9.1), Mariga (7.9)
Assists: Khan 2, Gordon, Mariga, Hughes (7.9), Donnelly (7.1)
Notables: Jackson (7.2), Kirkland (7.3), Quartey (7.1), Welsh (7.2)


-- We receive $297,000 for this 5th round win.

[Radii]

-- Two non EPL teams tied in that FA Cup round and will have a replay. The other 6 that have advanced to the quarterfinals are all EPL sides.

FA Cup 6th Round Draw

-- Down to 8. With Man Utd and Arsenal still alive its not the worst possible draw we could have gotten, but we're not looking forward to playing Man City on the road. This match will take place March 6th.

February 17th, 2021

Sunderland(10-5-12, 13th) @ Ipswich(11-8-8, 9th)

The bookies aren't favoring us quite as much after just a couple losses here and there. Sunderland are even money favorites to win at our place, we're 11:5. Sunderland bought two players in January, a 22 y/o DR purchased for $8.2M from Watford and an 18 y/o that looks like a purchase for the future. Still, they did improve some and their new guy is playing well. We lost 1:0 to Sunderland at their place in October and are 0-0-5 lifetime against them.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Quartey/Jackson
M: Hughes/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Sunderland are the lowest scoring team not being relegated this year with just 22 goals in 27 matches. They've allowed 31.

Its raining pretty hard today.

12': Kirkland is hurt, bleh! He can stay in and we'll check on him after the match.

33': After a long buildup and 3 different tries to pass the ball into the area they get a ball in to a midfielder charging in from the left, he doesn't control it very well though and while its a clear cut chance Capitani is able to make a good save. They have 7 shots now, 3 on target, but few shown in highlights.

38': We get our first shot as Mills puts a ball into the area for Gordon, he's behind the defense and has a clear cut chance, he tries to go near post but the keeper dives and saves it. We earn a corner, they head it aside for a throwin. The throwin is taken to Hughes. Hughes passes to Constantino who is in the left corner of a crowded area... Constantino skips by a defender though to get a look, shoots high to the far post, and its a goal!! The defender that Constantino beat? Troy Brown, whom we sold to Sunderland for $100,000 in the offseason. 1-0

41': Quartey with a yellow.

HALF: Sunderland looked the better team for the vast majority of the half, we did pretty well keeping them from getting anything too easy though. We only shot 3 times, twice in that one sequence that led to our goal. Hopefully we can keep defending well in the second half!

57': Oh wow just spectacular, this one's going up on youtube I think. Donnelly picks up a bad pass int he midfield, passes ahead to Constantino, centered to Khan, a ball forward to Constantino into the area, a beautiful pass back to Khan at the penalty spot for a clear cut chance and a wonderful goal!! 2-0

62': Donnelly with a yellow

63': Constantino a yellow

77': We give one back as they build up on offense and have a nice through ball to midfielder Sinclair into the right side of the area, Capitani tries to cut off his angle but is a little slow to react perhaps, its struck by him near post. 2-1

78': Guarin in for Constantino, 4-1-4-1 with a DMC. Johnson in for Gordon, Mariga in for Donnelly, defensive/retain possession.. hold this lead.

83': We have a free kick from 25 yards out. Guarin takes it and strikes it really well, bending around the wall, the keeper has to dive to his left to save it, there's a rebound right in front of the net. They have a man who gets to it first but doesn't control it well, Khan takes it away and pokes it into the open net!! 3-1

86': Jack Hughes is injured and we'll be worried about his postgame report.

Ipswich 3 : 1 Sunderland

We held off what felt like a better team in the first half and played really really well in the second to get a solid win here!

Man of the Match: Matthew Khan (8.8)
Goals: Khan 2, Constantino (8.3)
Assists: Hughes (7.2), Donnelly (7.0), Guarin (6.9)
Notables: Jackson (7.1), Kirkland (7.2), Mills (7.0)


Injury Update

-- Jack Hughes has a sprained wrist and is out for 10-13 days.

-- Stuart kirkland has a gash in his leg and is out for 10-13 days.

They'll both miss two matches. Pretty crappy since they're our two best DL's to go down on the same day like that, but at least its just two matches.


Two wins a row has tightened up the race for 7th quite a bit. Most teams have 10 matches to go, a few still have 11 to play.

1. Arsenal - 64 pts
2. Man Utd - 55 pts (1 less match played)
3. Chelsea - 53 pts (1 less match played)
4. Birmingham - 50 pts
5. Aston Villa - 50 pts (1 less match played)
6. West Ham - 46 pts
7. Ipswich - 44 pts
8. Man City - 44 pts
9. Tottenham - 42 pts (1 less match played)
10. Newcastle - 40 pts

We've got the same number of matches played as man city and are ahead with a better goal differential (+12 to +8). We're actually only 2 points behind West Ham for 6th. Tottenham sits in 9th but has a match extra to play and is only 2 points behind so they hop into 7th with a win.

Looking at the FA Cup to see how many EPL places might make it to the Euro Cup, things don't look good. Man City, Tottenham and of course Ipswich are all still alive... that's also the 3 teams fighting it out for 7th. Man Utd is still alive. Arsenal and Aston Villa are both in it but they play each other in the quarterfinals. None of the other teams left have a shot to finish top 7. If we aren't able to make it ourselves we need to get a few upsets in EPL play AND root heavily for an Arsenal-Man Utd final.

[Radii]

February 20th, 2021

Ipswich(12-8-8, 7th) @ Aston Villa(15-5-7, 5th)

Aston Vila are in a tough fight for a top 4 spot and are 4:5 favorites here today, making us 3:1 to get a win. Earlier in the season we gave up a very early goal that set the tone in a 2-1 loss at home.

GK: Capitani
D: Burton/Welsh/Quartey/Jackson
M: Adagsmar/Donnelly/Mariga/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Lee Burton plays an acceptable DL and starts there, Adagsmar at ML. Mariga starts for a tiring Steven Mills.

12': Well this looks familiar. Their star midfielder Fabien Delph sends a ball to the 6 yard box, ST Delfounseo runs onto it and Capitani makes what looks to me to be a horrible, horrible decision not to charge and fall on the ball. Very very easy goal for them. 0-1

22': Oh boy. they build up on offense, there's a pass in from the right to ST Valpoort. He turns 20 yards out and fires from there... we can't stop it, into the right side of the net. 0-2

23': They win a ball from Khan in defense and send it ahead quickly. There's a pass to the midfield, then a pass ahead and a header into the area, Delfounseo is so, so much faster than Quartey its not even funny... he gets to it and puts it in easily. 0-3

25': Things fall apart sometimes. A pass to Valpoort and its another shot from 20+ yards away. Capitani has this one but there's just too much pace on the shot and he doesn't hold it, the ball seems to go through his hands, redirects slightly but its easily in. 0-4

26': Not sure if this is a good idea or not but I bring Chris Mason in for Capitani.

I turn off highlights too, commentary only to get this horrible thing over with ASAP.

HALF: Well we get into the locker room without giving up another goal. I bring Parsons in or Quartey and Johnson in for Gordon, two tired players that are having particularly bad matches.

68': Mariga to Khan, Khan is at the edge of the box, he turns right to try to find an opening and one of their men misses a tackle, Khan is able to get a good look at the goal and score. 1-4

91': Constantino makes a nice run, drawing both central defenders to him, allowing Khan to get completely free at the penalty spot, Constantino is able to make the pass and Khan is able to finish to salvage a little something here. 2-4

Aston Villa 4 : 2 Ipswich

Their midfielder Delph has 3 assists and is man of hte match.

Goals: Khan 2 (8.8)
Assists: Constantino (6.9), Donnelly (6.9)

Jackson (5.8), Burton (5.1), Quartey (5.2), Welsh (5.5). The defensive line was just awful today.

Man City gets a 5-1 win over Blackburn today and our goal differential advantage over them melts away in one day.

[Radii]

-- Matthew Khan is named to the EPL team of the week.

-- Henrique resumes full training, probably not quite in time to be ready for our next match. Michael McKerr resumes full training a few days later. He's been out 3 months

February 28th, 2021

Everton(9-10-10, 12th) @ Ipswich(12-8-9, 8th)

These are the types of matches we need to win if we have hopes of fighting Man City and Tottenham for 7th. We're slim 6:4 favorites at home today, they're 13:8 to win. Earlier in the year we led 1-0 and 2-1 over Everton before they blew us out in the second half and we fell 4-2. We're 1-1-3 lifetime against them. We're on TV today FWIW.

GK: Capitani
D: Burton/Welsh/Henrique/Jackson
M: Adagsmar/Donnelly/Mariga/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Mills is back in and Henrique is ready to go and gets the start today.

8': Their star striker and leading scorer Brian Kelly is hurt and has to leave the match, he's subbed out immediately.

11': Highlight opens with Donnelly 30 yards out charging forward, he gets to the edge of the penalty box before both their DC's converge and the ball is tackled away. It falls out to the left a bit where Khan fights a defender for it, Khan wins the ball, shoots, and scores! 1-0

17': We allow a free kick just inches outside the penalty box, dead center. Midfielder Luisma takes it and sends it into the left side of the net, no chance at all. 1-1

24': We get a free kick in a similar position, just outside the area.. but Gordon's free kick is off the wall, then off an Ipswich player, then out for a goal kick.

29': They build up on offense, a pass ahead to a striker 20 yards out, he passes right, cuts to the goal behind Henrique and Henrique doesn't even move. The pass goes back to the striker who score easily... 1-2

31': Welsh with a yellow.

47': We build up down the right side, Gordon passes to Constantino, he crosses through the 6 yard box, Khan gets up and wins the header and their keeper doesn't move, its into the net! 2-2

HALF: Fast paced half there. We didn't see a lot of highlights at all but when we did there were goals to be had. Lee Burton is just having an awful time at DL, he's got a 5.6 rating today. Henrique and Gordon are struggling as well. Everton shoot 8 times this half, every single shot has been put on target, that's pretty scary. We have 5 shots, 2 on target, both for goals. Possession is about even, the glaring stat is tackling where we are winning our tackles at an awful 54% rate while they are at 81%. We need to do a much better job there.

54': Adagsmar moves hte ball down the left side of the pitch, passing to Donnelly as we set up on offense, he passes to Mills, ahead ot Constantino, he evades two defenders and shoots from the edge of the area... its not a clear cut chance but its a rocket of a shot... and the keeper dives to turn it away, great effort there on both sides. Corner goes nowhere for us.

75': Haven't seen anything dangerous at all in awhile, here Donnelly shoots from 25 yards out and the keeper has to make a diving save. Corner goes nowhere.

82': Gordon has a free kick 25 yards out, he blasts it into the wall, the rebound falls to Constantino, he's in heavy traffic but he gets a solid shot off... right at the keeper though and saved.

87': Probably a little late but Negredo in for Khan, Mariga in for Mills, Quartey in for Henrique.

93': Things go really bad here, they head a ball weakly forward into the area, Welsh shows an extremely poor first touch and the ball bounds away. Welsh tries to chase it but crashes into their attacker just outside the area... its a foul and a yellow. He's already got one yellow card so he's gone. The man down shouldn't matter we're in the final seconds of the match, but they get a free kick from basically the same spot they scored from before... this one is shot by the wall, but Capitani is able to make the save... WHEW.

A really exciting first half leads into a fairly dull second half and a draw.

Man of the Match: Matthew Khan (8.8)
Goals: Khan 2
Assists: Consatntino (8.5), one goal is unassisted.
Notables: Donnelly (7.2)

Burton and Gordon put up 6.0 ratings today.


-- James Welsh is suspended for one match.

-- Matthew Khan has been solid all season but he's taken his game to another level lately. He's got 6 goals in our last 3 matches and has 9 goals in the last 7 league matches he's appeared in. Just a month ago it seemed like we had a superstar scorer in Constantino and a few guys that were good at cleaning up when he missed a shot or drew the defense out of the way... but all of a sudden Khan is only 3 goals behind Constantino in league play!

We are the second highest scoring team in the league. Arsenal have 57 goals and we have 53. The difference of course is that Arsenal have allowed 17 while we've allowed 43, but our exciting brand of football has allowed Constantino to lead the league in goals while Khan is now tied for second in goals scored.

-- With 8 matches to play Man City has turned it on and has 5 points on us for 7th place. We play Man City in our next match, but not in league play. We'll be playing them in the FA Cup Quarterfinals. As we see Man City slowly pull away, and as we see Man U, Arsenal and Chelsea still left on the schedule for us, pulling a couple upsets in the FA Cup is starting to seem like our best shot to sneak into Europe next year. 5 points isn't much of course, but this next one against Man City is HUGE.

[Radii]

March Update

-- We play on the 6th (FA Cup/Man City), 13th (Man Utd), and 20th (Blackburn) in a very light month.

-- Matthew Khan scores 7 goals in 4 matches in February and runs away with the player of the month award!

-- Stuart Kirkland and Jack Hughes both played well in February and came in 2nd and 3rd in the young player of the month voting.

-- The board remains absolutely delighted with my leadership. My ability to get the best out of Matthew Khan is the highlight, while the signing of Cestor Mike is still the only thing worth complaining about.

-- We made a whopping $25,000 in profit last month.

-- Our FA Cup match against Man City is set for TV and moved from the 6th to the 7th.

-- The day before our match the other 3 are played. Sheffield Utd upsets Man Utd and Aston Villa upsets Arsenal. Aston Villa is now the only team left in the tournament likely to finish in the top 5 in league play. It would seem extremely likely now that we'd have to find a way to finish 6th in the league to get into the Euro Cup... or make the finals of this tournament.

March 7th, 2021

FA Cup 6th Round

Ipswich(8th, EPL) @ Man City(7th, EPL)

Man City are expected to be ready to play today and are massive 2:5 favorites today, making us 13:2 to get a win and 11:4 to even find a draw. We lost 3:1 to them at our house back in August but managed a 0:0 draw in the rematch in December. We're 1-1-6 lifetime against them.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Henrique/Jackson
M: Hughes/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Kirkland back at DL, Hughes back at ML today. Welsh is suspended and Quartey is back at DC in his spot.

3': They shoot twice in the first 3 minutes, earning a clear cut chance as a ball goes into the right side of the area and their man gets behind Kirkland, Capitani makes a good save though.

6': Free kick from 20 yards out for Man City... its struck well but Capitani with a diving save.

11': Through ball right down the middle for Man City.. its clear cut chance #2, Henrique is harassing their striker well (after letting him by to receive a pass in a great spot).. and Capitani makes another stop.

27': Clear cut chance #3 for Man City as we clear a ball out but they very quickly send it back in and get a striker behind Henrique again... this one is just shot right at Capitani.

32': Finally they break through, a corner kick goes to the far end of the 6 yard box, Capitani dives out for it but can't get to the ball and their ST Lukaku wins a header and puts it into the open net. 0-1

40': We get a counter attack... Constantino to Khan, we've had a few counter attempts so far and they've just cut them off and aren't even allowing shots... but here Donnelly is in the mix too, he fills the open space left by the defender coming out to get Khan... Donnelly into the area, he's 10 yards out with just the keeper in front of him... and his shot hits the right post and goes out of play harmlessly. We needed to score there, badly.

HALF: They shoot 12 times, putting 6 on target and earning 4 clear cut chances. We have 4 shots, I've only seen one of them in a highlight and it was Donnelly's big miss. They have a 63/37 possession edge and that's a huge improvement for us, It was like 72/28 at the 25 minute mark. Capitani is trying to keep us in it and Constantino has received long balls 3 or 4 times to try to counter but they are very quick and are forcing him out wide and he hasn't been able to make anything happen yet.

47': We build up on offense, Mills to Donnelly, he's about 30 yards out.. he comes forward, seemingly looking for an opening to hit Khan or Constantino... their defenders stick to our strikers and allow Donnelly to run straight through the middle, into the area, and he has a shot from 15 yards out... and its saved. Our second clear cut chance, dang!

73': After a couple highlights we go a solid 20 minutes with nothing, then a highlight opens with a Man City throwin, two passes later they get a midfielder cutting to the goal behind Jackson, he scores easily. 0-2

73': We'll attack now and see if we can make something happen.

80': Mariga in for Donnelly, Johnson in for Gordon.

85': We build up quickly down the left side, Hughes sends a ball forward for Khan and Khan does it all himself, he makes his man miss, gets into the area and strikes a solid shot from 15 yards out by the keeper! 1-2 We've got a chance.

91': We have a free kick near midfield on the left side... its sent long into the area, they head it away but we recover, Steven Mills has it and sends a ball into the right side of the area, Darren Johnson runs onto it perfectly, shoots near post... the keeper dives, but he can't stop it!!!! 2-2

WELL THEN!

Man City 2 : 2 Ipswich

Their scorer Lukaku is man of the match.

Goals: Khan (7.6), Johnson (7.5)
Assists: Mills (8.1), Hughes (7.1)
Notables: Capitani (7.8)

An incredible comeback in the final 10 minutes after falling behind 2-0! They end up with 20 shots on the match and 57% of the possession. We shoot 8 times total, just 4 times in the second half. The two goals we scored were our only two highlights and only two shots of the final ~35 minutes.


We earn a rematch against Man City at home on the 17th. Before that though, our next match is @ Man Utd in league play.

[the_meanstrosity]

Originally Posted by Radii

Thanks!!

Woking sucks. They're in league 2, 1 point out of relegating back down to the Blue Square Premier. The year after they fell out of the Championship they had a massive selloff and in that one offseason got rid of every single player I had brought to the team. I lost a lot of interest in following them when that happened.

They finished 21st in their first year back in League 1 to fall back down to league 2. Their first year in league 2 they managed to hang on, finishing 18th with 53 points. This season they only have 26 points in 30 matches and are 22nd, but only the bottom two teams will fall back so they have a shot.

That's too bad. Would have liked to see them continue to compete for a few years. Are you listed as an icon or legend on their info screen? If not, you should be, lol.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by the_meanstrosity

Are you listed as an icon or legend on their info screen? If not, you should be, lol.

I am not!

That's not something I've ever really paid attention to before, so I checked Ipswich.

Constantino has achieved Legend status with ipswich! That's probably fair, the guy does have 113 league goals in (not quite) 4 seasons.

Matthew Khan's 90 league goals in (not quite) 6 seasons have given him "favored personnel" status with the squad.

There are a good number of legends and icons listed, I assume most of them are from the early 60s and late 70s/early 80s when the team was at or near the top of England, I'll look them up sometime.

I'd like to make it as an Ipswich icon at some point of course, and hopefully Gordon Donnelly will work his way up there even if he isn't a prolific scorer. He's got 7 years with the club as a leading playmaker and has become very respected by his teammates as captain. Many of our squad mention that they enjoy playing with Constantino or Steven Mills on the "personal" tab, and since I named Donnelly captain last year a good number of guys on the team instead "feel Donnelly is an influential player". I never saw that kind of love when Troy Brown was captain!

[Radii]

FA Cup Semifinal Draw

-- If we can find a way to beat Man City in our replay match we would host Sheffield Utd in the semifinal. Aston Villa host the winner of Tottenham/Everton in the other semi.


March 13th, 2021

Ipswich (12-9-9, 9th) @ Man Utd (18-8-4, 2nd)

Man U are 1:2 favorites at home today. We're 9:2 to win and 13:5 to tie them. I'm a bit worried about this one after our last league match on the road against Aston Villa where we gave up 3 goals in a 7 minute stretch in the first half. We're 0-1-5 lifetime against them, the draw was a 1:1 tie at home earlier in the year.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Quartey/Jackson
M: Adagsmar/Donnelly/Mariga/Johnson
F: Khan/Constantino

We make a few subs in the midfield today to ensure that we're as well-rested as possible for the Man City rematch in 4 days. Adagsmar/Mariga/Johnson are in, Hughes/Mills/Gordon sit.

Today we defend and try to keep possession, no counterattacking or anything.

16': They earn a clear cut chance after we turn it over in midfield, ST Belfodil runs onto a ball in the area but simply puts it wide... They have 7 shots already, but just one on target.

36': After a long break with no highlights a Welsh missed tackle leads to clear cut chance #2, here they get it on target but Capitani makes a nice diving stop.

43': We get a throwin in their end, there's a pass to Khan 20 yards out, he makes a really nice move to get by his man, into the area... and he's brought down... penalty given!! Constantino takes it, the keeper dives in the same direction as the shot, but its in the back of the net! 1-0

HALF: A pretty quick half, they shoot 9 times but only put 2 on target, the shots we did see in highlights were just very wild. We have 4 shots, 3 on target, we did get a couple runs by Constantino after clearances out of our defensive end, but they are fast and made it hard for him to do much, he got a couple tough shots off. We hold them scoreless and get the penalty to lead at the half, lets keep it up!

46': They have a free kick at midfield, its sent forward, headed into the area and they have a man open.. Kirkland tries to make the tackle, but commits a foul. Yellow on Kirkland, and ST Wright drains the penalty to tie it up. 1-1

53': Yellow for midfielder Pinho.

65': A highlight opens with Man U trying to counter attack... a terrible pass though is intercepted by Kirkland and we catch them going the wrong way... there's a quick pass from Kirkland to Khan, ahead immediately to Consatntino and Constantino is able to skip by one defender to get into the penalty area where he finishes nicely!! 2-1

95': Donnelly commits a foul about 30 yards out. They send the free kick into the area, Kirkland heads it behind for a corner. The corner comes in, they win the header... but its high and over the bar for a goal kick. The whistle blows after that and we pull a massive, massive road upset!!!

Man Utd 1 : 2 Ipswich

They were off today. They shot 15 times but only put 3 on target, our defensive outlook did help there I believe but they had shots that were just miles wide that were relatively uncontested. After trading penalties, our second goal came from a horrible, horrible pass that gave us a near jailbreak situation and an easy goal.

Man of the Match: Constantino (8.7)
Goals: Constantino 2
Assists: Khan 2 (8.5)
Notables: Jackson (7.1), Kirkland (7.0), Mariga (7.2)


We stay in 9th after that win but 8th and 7th are once again within our grasp. We also put a little distance between us and 10th place Newcastle, a big deal when every place in the table is worth about $1.7M in prize money. If we can stay in the top 9 we're looking at $20 Million.

[Radii]

Injury Update

-- Darren Johnson is hurt in training and will miss 3-4 weeks. Johnson has been a really solid sub for us so that kinda sucks!

March 17th, 2021

FA Cup 6th Round Replay

Man City (5th, EPL) @ Ipswich (9th, EPL)

Man City are 4:5 favorites here today, making us 3:1 dogs to win. No draws to be had in this replay, someone comes out a winner. We've played them 3 times this year now, two draws and a 3-1 loss. Time to find a way to beat them!

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Quartey/Jackson
M: Hughes/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Back to our starting midfield today. I debate using the more experienced ML Adagsmar, but Jack Hughes has just been too darn good recently, he earns the start.

We're going to start out defending today, I don't want to give up an early goal.

10': We build up down the left side, Hughes passes in to Khan, he draws two defenders, back out to Hughes, he crosses into the penalty area and its cleared out. Steven Mills controls it, passes back to Jackson and gets it right back... Mills to Constantino, Constantino avoids a tackle and sprints by his man, he's free in the area... shoots near post from 15 yards out, and its a goal!!!! We get the early lead today!! 1-0

14': We build up down the right side, Mills out wide to Gordon... Gordon plays a long ball into the area for Constantino, he doesn't really have a step on his man but somehow he gets to it first and manages a shot.. but right at the keeper and saved. It was a good idea by Gordon but Constantino was harassed quite well there.

17': Man City build up on offense with a number of passes, a ball goes ahead to a striker 20 yards out, he lays it off for their other striker as MC Vezzoli comes charging forward, he receives a pass in the area and has a clear cut chance and isn't going to miss that, nice play and nice goal. 1-1

45': Lots of shots but not a lot of highlights here as we fast forward to the end of the half. We have a throwin in their end, a few nifty passes see Mills send it ahead to Constantino, he lays it off to Khan, into the area for Gordon who has a good look... but saved by the keeper and turned over for a corner. They clear the corner easily.

HALF: Tons of action in the first 20 minutes then things slow tremendously. We shoot 9 times, putting 4 on target. They shoot 12 times with 6 on target. It feels like we're totally in this one.

48': We try to counter after winning a ball in our end but pull up and set up our offense... Donnelly is about 30 yards out, he plays a ball forward to Khan in the penalty area, Khan is well covered and passes back to Donnelly, Donnely with his first touch sends it to the penalty spot, Constantino breaks on the ball perfectly, gets there and shoots and scores!! 2-1

53': Wow they get it back right away... a pass goes in to ST Lukaku, Welsh makes a nice tackle, but the ball falls to the feet of one of their midfielders who immediately sends it back to Lukaku, Welsh is out of position after hte tackle and he has an easy finish. 1-1

73': Mariga in for a tired Donnelly.

75': We're attacking as the highlight opens, there's a pass from Mariga ahead to Khan, he's quickly into the area and has a clear cut chance, but he shoots it right at the keeper and its saved... uggggh, Khan could have done way way better there.

80': Lets take a chance, this is what I was building towards the entire time with the defensive mindset... I tell the team to attack for the final 10 minutes, lets try to catch them off guard and get a goal. The odds are heavily in their favor if this goes into extra time.

87': Ahhh, the risk of attacking, they catch us on a counter attack, we send a low cross into the area on a free kick and its cleared and sets up a strong attack for Man City, there's a ball ahead to ST Lukaku, he's behind Welsh, into the area... and he drills a shot into the net. 2-3

That'll do it.

Ipswich 2 : 3 Man City

Perhaps we should have stayed more conservative, but at home, Constantino having a great game, I *really* wanted to go for the win here.

their scorer Lukaku is man of the match.

Goals: Constantino 2 (8.8)
Assists: Jackson (7.0), Donnelly (7.8)
Notables: Mills (7.3)

Hah, I described our first goal as Jackson to Mills to Constantino, I thought Mills got the assist. Watching the replay though Jackson played it ahead for Constantino from near midfield, the it was a low pass right through Mills basically and looked like 2 passes there.

We had a great run, but came up a couple rounds short. Taking Man City to a replay and playing them so well at home is worth something though!

Its also worth noting that Man City have been on a nice run in league play and are up to 5th place. If we could find a way to get into 7th, and if Man City stays up that high, AND if Aston Villa and Man City both advance to the FA Cup Finals, we could still earn a spot in Europe next year.

Birmingham (currently 6th) and West Ham (currently 7th) have both struggled lately, and we do have both of them still left on the schedule. Arsenal and Chelsea are still left to play as well which isn't very comforting, but we're not quite out of that race yet.

[Radii]

-- We set a new record for gate receipts in a single match, raking in $1.7M for our Quarterfinal Match against Man City. yea yea, raise those prices! We gave the fans a hell of a show at least.

March 20th, 2021

Ipswich (13-9-9, 9th) @ Blackburn (7-4-20, 17th)

Blackburn are 6 points clear of relegation with 7 matches to go. I said this recently before we played Everton, the same holds true here... if we want to fight for that 7th place spot we need to win matches like this one. We're 4:6 favorites on the road today, they are 7:2 to win. We're 1-1-3 lifetime against them but the one win was a 3:1 beating at home earlier in the year.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Henrique/Jackson
M: Adagsmar/Donnelly/Mills/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

Blackburn are led by Leigh Griffiths, he's got 16 goals and is one of the leading scorers in the league. Their #2 goal scorer has 2 goals.

We make just a couple changes due to playing on short rest, but ofr the most part I keep my best out there. Adagsmar in for Hughes, Henrique in for Quartey.

1': We kick off, move it forward right away.. Khan to Constantino... and I can't tell if this is a pass for a tackle, I think a tackle, but it plays like a through ball to Gordon, Gordon's in the area, shoots and its off the keeper and in! That's a 28 second goal. 1-0

11': Welsh with a yellow giving them a free kick from 20 yards out... its struck well but hits the left post and bounds away to safety.

21': We build up down the right, Constantino has it out wide, passes into the area for Gordon, its tackled away but Constantino is there, he crosses to the far post, the keeper dives out for the ball but doesn't get to it.. Khan is there and heads it into the open net! 2-0

34': Blackburn are pressuring us, they have 7 shots and 5 of them are on target... but everything I've seen has been shot basically straight at Capitani.

41': They clear a ball into our defense, Henrique controls it and passes it ahead to Mills... Mills to Khan, Khan runs out wide to the right, drawing a defender out of position with him... a pass to Donnelly, he gets it to Constantino who has filled the empty space and he has a very easy finish to put us up 3! 3-0

HALF: They shoot 9 times, putting 6 on target, though 5 are from long range and so many of them were just right to the keeper. We've got 3 shots, 3 goals. Pretty efficient! We'll defend and try to hold possession for the second half.

60': We hold possession for a bit on offense before Clive Jackson makes a brilliant pass from 40 yards out, a low accurate ball into the area, Constantino breaks for it perfectly, gets to it behind their defense and shoots right away, beating the keeper and scoring! 4-0

73': Mariga in for Mills, McKerr in for Jackson, Negredo in for Khan.

88': We're just not ones to pitch shutouts. Gordon with a stupid foul in the area, we give up a penalty and a goal. 4-1

Blackburn 1 : 4 Ipswich

Outstanding win. Blackburn shoots 17 times, putting 10 on target. We shoot 6 times, putting 4 in the goal.

Man of the Match: Constantino (9.3)
Goals: Constantino 2, Khan (7.9), Gordon (7.8)
Assists: Constantino, Jackson (8.2), Donnelly (7.6).. Gordon's goal was unassisted.
Notables: Capitani (9.1), Kirkland (7.4), Welsh (7.0), Henrique (7.4), Mills (7.4)


-- Birmingham destroy Tottenham. that's bad b/c it keeps Birmingham 5 points ahead of us... its good because it allows us to jump over Tottenham and take over 8th place for now. 7th place West Ham didn't play today.

-- Gordon Donnelly picked up his 10th yellow card today. That's a 3 match suspension.

-- We have a bit of a break after this, not playing again until April.

-- A couple days later Man Utd beat West Ham 2-0 and things get very, very interesting. We've played 32 matches, 6 more to go. Some teams only have 31. Here's how things look:

1. Arsenal - 70 pts
2. Man Utd - 65 pts
3. Chelsea - 58 pts (1 less match played)
4. Aston Villa - 58 pts
5. Man City - 56 pts
6. Birmingham - 56 pts
7. West Ham - 51 pts
8. Ipswich - 51 pts
9. Tottenham - 49 pts (1 less match played)
10. Newcastle - 44 pts (1 less match played)

West Ham have a +16 goal differential. We are at +14. Tottenham with a win in their extra match could leapfrog us both and take over 7th.

Our next two matches are at home. The bad news: the first one is vs Arsenal. Good News: The second one is against West Ham.

[Radii]

-- Constantino is named to the EPL team of the week. I've been way more focused on the team's play but its worth noting how amazingly well Constantino is performing. He has a legitimate chance to be the player of the year in the EPL. His 23 goals lead the league by a wide margin. In fact, Matthew Khan's 17 is second. Two others have 16. Constantino leads the league with 15 assists. 3 players are tied for second with 12. Arsenal's MC Aaron Ramsey leads the league with a 7.67 average rating. He's got 4 goals and 5 assists in 21 matches. Constantino is second with a 7.54 average rating.

-- DC Jonathan Quartey has a spectacular match for Ghana in their 2:1 World Cup Qualifier win over Benin, winning 13 out of 13 headers, getting an assist, an 8.4 rating and man of the match.

-- Turkey beats Northern Ireland 1:0 in world cup qualifying. Michael McKerr plays 90 minutes for N. Ireland earning a solid 7.1 rating.


-- In a coaches meeting I learn that Matthew Khan is talking about how he may want a new challenge in the future. He's happy here and contracted through next year. Hopefully we can just pay him really well to keep him. I've seen a message bout Gordon Donnelly mentioning the same thing... the coaching advice suggests just offering him money to stay... but when i go to offer a new contract he just asks for an extension at the same weekly rate he makes now. He does want a bigger goal bonus and he wants an $800,000 signing bonus. But that's just fine by me. I go ahead and offer him what he wants to extend him for 2 additional years.


Injury Update

-- Steven Mills suffers a groin strain in training and is going to miss 2-3 weeks. We only play 3 matches in April but they're all big ones at this point... with Donnelly suspended that hurts.

-- Alvaro Negredo has food poisoning. It won't keep him out too long... but just long enough that he won't be available against Arsenal.


Champions League Update

We're done with the round of 16, good news for England. Arsenal advances past Ajax and Chelsea beats FC Bayern, both are in the quarterfinals. Man Utd on the other hand lose 5:0 to At. Madrid at Old Trafford and are out(they won 2:1 on the road). The other matchup I was interested in was Inter vs Barcelona. Barcelona wins 3:2 to knock out the team that made the finals the last 3 years in a row. The quarterfinals are underway and unfortunately Chelsea are playing Arsenal so only one team from England will advance to the semis.


April Update

-- We play on the 3rd (Arsenal), 10th (West Ham) and 24th (Chelsea). Three teams currently in the top 7.

-- Matthew Khan wins his second straight player of the month award in the EPL! Constantino came in 3rd. We played 4 matches in March but only two were in league play. Khan put up an 8.5 vs Man U and a 7.9 with a goal vs Blackburn. Constantino on the other hand had an 8.7 and 9.3 with 2 goals each league match. Why did Khan win this again?

-- Clive Jackson is 3rd in young player of the month voting. I'm really happy how well he's played after taking over for Berthet last season! He's been really solid and he's only 21 y/o.

-- I'm second in manager of the month voting behind Man City's Henrik Larsson.

-- The board is absolutely delighted with my leadership. Getting the most out of Constantino is the highlight. Poor play by James Welsh is the biggest concern. Welsh did earn a red card in late February but he's been fairly solid lately... 6.8, 6.9, 6.8, 7.0 in his last 4 matches.

-- We made $510,000 in profit last month.

April 3rd, 2021

Arsenal(21-7-4, 1st) @ Ipswich (14-9-9, 8th)

We're once again getting crazy respect, Arsenal are only 6:4 favorites at our place today, we're 13:8 to win. Between the FA Cup, Champions League and League play Arsenal have lost their last 5 road matches. We got a 1:1 tie at their place earlier in the year.

GK: Capitani
D: Kirkland/Welsh/Quartey/Jackson
M: Adagsmar/Guarin/Mariga/Gordon
F: Khan/Constantino

With Johnson and Mills hurt, Donnelly suspended we are all of a sudden paper thin at MC. Guarin and Mariga both start and should both play 90 minutes.

4': UGH. In the 4th minute Sutart Kirkland is injured and forced to immediately leave the match. Hughes is in. Kirkland/donnelly/Mills... that's 3 of our best 5 or 6 players out right now.

20': Our midfield is weak and its obvious. Guarin misses a tackle in the midfield and is beaten badly by MC Ramsey... he's able to attack, draw a defender out and pass ahead to ST Nooij who finishes easily. 0-1

36': We have a free kick from 30 yards out, Gordon strikes it... it bends around the wall, on target... the keeper dives for it, gets his hands to it... but can't stop it, its through and into the back of the net for a goal!!! What a shot from Neil Gordon!! 1-1

41': We build up on offense again, a pass to Gordon in the area, he takes it and its a strong shot but saved by the keeper, it defelcts out wide, Khan passes back to Hughes, Hughes crosses to the far end of hte 6 yard box... Constantino is there, and their keeper is way out of position, he's still on the near side!! Constantino gets his head to the ball and its in!! 2-1

HALF: We get a couple crazy goals, a spectacular free kick and a cross from 20 year old Hughes to Constantino who scores on maybe 2 or 3 headers a season... We're playing well, our buildup through the middle has been really poor, Guarin has lost the ball a few times where Mills or Donnelly would have kept the offense flowing, but our play out wide has made up for it.

50': What's going on here!!! We attack non stop from the outset of the half, multiple corners, the pressure is on... they clear out a corner here but Jackson recovers, he sends it out left to Adagsmar, passed over to Guarin and he's finally found a good ball, he puts it ahead to the penalty spot for Constantino, he runs onto it perfectly and scores! 3-1

53': Ah they aren't going away easily, there's a cross in and a header by Bendtner, saved by Capitani but there's a rebound, Fabregas is there and puts it in easily. A quick answer to keep it close. 3-2

77': After 20 minutes without a highlight I tell the guys to hang on and try to secure the win...defensive/retain possession.

83': After Mariga gives the ball away unnecessarily in the midfield they build up their offense, a pass to Bendtner, a shot from 20 yards out... Capitani has to dive to his right... but he stops the shot, whew!

93': 3 minutes of extra time... we've got the ball but once again everything stops when it gets to Guarin... he has it tackled away and they have one last counter attack in them.. jesus can we make this any more stressful!? They get a run down the right... cross into the area, a header... its by Capitani, off the crossbar, it comes back down into play... Capitani dives on it and the whistle is immediately blown, its over!! Sheesh.

Ipswich 3 : 2 Arsenal

I really thought our offense would grind to a halt without Mills and Donnelly, and at times even in key highlights we were very disjointed, but we still find a way to score 3 goals and get another incredible win over a top team!! We've now beaten Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea all in the same season.

Their midfielder Ramsey is man of the match.

Goals: Constantino 2 (8.8), Gordon (7.6)
Assists: Guarin (7.1), Hughes (7.0), Welsh (6.9)
Notables: Capitani (7.4), Khan (7.1)

Guarin ends up with a solid rating despite the frustration I found watching his highlights.


-- Ahhhh damn! West Ham were hosting Chelsea and I was really hoping for a Chelsea win to push us into 7th. But West Ham come up huge with a 1:0 win, setting up a massive showdown next week as Ipswich and West Ham play for 7th outright. Tottenham lose at home to Huddersfield, that's a big result that keeps them down a bit.


Injury Update

-- Kirkland is out for 2 weeks with a thigh strain suffered in the match today. I hate to not have him available, but my confidence in Jack Hughes is drastically different now than it was a few months ago and I'm sure he'll do just fine.


Standings with 5 to go:

1. Arsenal - 70 pts
2. Man Utd - 68 pts
3. Man City - 59 pts
4. Chelsea - 58 pts (1 less match played)
5. Aston Villa - 58 pts (1 less match played)
6. Birmingham - 56 pts (1 less match played)
7. West Ham - 54 pts
8. Ipswich - 54 pts
9. Tottenham - 49 pts (1 less match played)
10. Newcastle - 44 pts (1 less match played)