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Just two matches to go! We can do this! We can win two cups! And we're gonna have two friendlies.
Woohoo! Goalkeepers doing great! Adrian Lee saw Aerial Reach, Command of Area, Communication, Kicking, First Touch, Throwing, Technique, Anticipation, Composure, Work Rate, and Pace improve. I praise him and his Morale goes up to Exceptional. Burns had green arrows for almost everything and Crossing, First Touch, Penalty Taking, Concentration, Decisions, Off The Ball, Positioning, Vision, Acceleration, Agility, and Strength went up. His Tutoring by Macey has not taken effect yet, I think. I'll address Kris Newton in Youth Watch below.
Marshall has collapsed. Every other Technical attribute fell a point. I know he didn't get a lot of time in April but that's just ridiculous. Macey, well, he's just getting old. So is McGregor.
Yep, the losses continue thanks to taxes. We would have made £10,000 or so if we didn't have to pay them.
Wanna guess what my Untouchable rating is up to now? If you guessed 100% then you are prophetic.
Well this was unexpected. Alfie Barnes moving on up. Too bad his Determination is still low; he'll never be a Captain.
Peter Smith won the league Young Player of the Month Award. I congratulate him to get his Morale back up to Perfect. He thanks me but he stays at "only" Exceptional. Kids these days!
The word of the day, kids, is permanent. Permanent: Something that will not go away. I'm making this section permanent.
Another youth, but who's not a key one, who had a great month was Kenny Holden. He had several gains including half of his Physicals. He can be a multi-sub in the U23s for several years.
That kid Jethro Swain I picked up some five, six weeks back? His Media Description went from Young Striker to Promising Striker. That...is...interesting... And unexpected. He had a good number of green arrows plus his Passing, Composure, Decisions, Off the Ball, Vision, and Balance each went up a point. Good job! Oh, and my AssMan thinks he's currently worthy of the Conference National.
Ben Evans is having a growth spurt! On 16 April he went up to 190cm! At 19 years, 4 months, and 9 days of age. I've never seen something like this before! (This means, by the way, that his Jumping Reach is now 16!)
Dean Rice is now at 12.0 for his Bravery.
I set up two friendlies with some local teams. We'll host Badshot Lea on 6 May and Hampton & Richmond on 13 May. We should make somewhere around £16,000 for these matches. I actually had the option to host reserve teams from several famous clubs in Germany and France. Like Bayern and Paris Saint-Germain. Strange.
For the last game of the season three of our lads get int the Team of the Week. And they are all properly placed! Alfie Barnes at left centreback, Peter Smith at right midfielder, and Mickey Morris at left striker.
Oh man, some good, unexpected news comes in. My Head of Youth Development thinks John Burns is a Decent Premier League Striker now. He's not as good as evaluating as my AssMan but it's got to be pretty close.
Our youths beat Manchester United's youths, 3-0, so we won the FA Youth Cup. And we got 1,823 fans at Brockwell Park to watch!
The first round of the Conference National playoffs see Barnet visit Forest Green and Wycome visit Kidderminster. Both homes team win.
In the FA Cup Chelsea beats West Ham into the ground, 6-3. Two of the Hamster's goals are from Kemar, naturally.
Scottish Premiership club Patrick Thistle evidently have interest in U23 left fullback Sam Sterling. Their manager plays coy to the media. After Mark Curran, Sterling or Pike or Rice are essentially equal to fill the second fullback role. I prefer Sterling for next year but would sell him for the right price.
Our friendly with Badshot Lea (sounds like a sheriff from an old Western movie) on 6 May went...sadly? Yeah, we won 3-0 but the third goal was a penalty after 90' and we were accurate on 10 of 27 shots. Several players we Complacent or looked Uninterested. I tell them there performance was sub-par and a few of the lads looked Stressed or Confused and Demotivated. Kids these days… Oh, and Mark Flitcroft bruised his ankle, out 2 days. :-\
The next round of league playoffs happens on 7 May. The previous winners have to travel now, Forest Green goes to Leyton Orient and Kidderminster go to Sutton. I want the visitors to win as I like the name Forest Green and I have a small emotional attachment to the Kidderminster Harriers. Andddddd, my dreams are dashed. Home teams win again.
On 15 May the winners will face each other. I'm guessing at Wembley.
International call up news! U18 striker Richard Phillips is called up by Trinidad & Tobago. This is senior team stuff so I'll have yet another capped player. Awesome. He doesn't score a goal but he does get a 7.1 rating in their 2-1 defeat of Guyana. A few days later in a match against Saint Kitts & Nevis he gets a goal and rates at 7.3.
Wow! Manchester City lost to Sheffield Wednesday on penalty shots in the FA Cup Semi Final and now will face Chelsea at Wembley in the Final. Crazy. Crazy because Wednesday are 16th in the Premier League.
The unfortunate side-effect of this is that our match versus Weymouth is postponed until 1 June because the FA Cup Final will be at Wembley. Dammit. One of the earlier matches required a replay and thus pushed things later. Dammit. I'm going to play that game and include it in this update so June can be all about preparing for League Two. Dammit.
In the interim, I send my scouts out to look at the players on my shortlist to get updated reports. Gotta be ready on 1 June to pounce on those in the final month of their contract. But the news is not good. The good ones don't want to come. I remove some that I thought were something three years ago but no longer are. Oh well.
So of course the next day, emails start flowing in about higher-reputation teams scheming to yoink my players away. Brentford (Championship) want Morris and Oldham (League Two) want Evans. This one prompts a call from a reporter. "Get bent, Oldham" or something like that is my reply. The next day Morris is linked to Wigan (Championship, being relegated). And Evans is now being linked to Hearts (Scottish Premiership).
Also, more international news. Henson Debellotte gets called up by Grenada. In their victory over Barbados he scores a goal and gets a yellow in 90 minutes of play. I repeat, he got a goal. He ended with a 6.5 rating. How? I don't know. Maybe his goal was a penalty shot. I don't have high details set for matches in the Caribbean Championship so I'll never know why. I give him a call to congratulate him and I get his Morale to improve from Excellent to Superb.
Now for our friendly versus Hampton & Richmond. Well, it was a low-scoring American football match. We drubbed them 7-0. We had 25 shots, they had 4. Was a good bit of fun for the lads. And an extra £13,000 in the bank.
The destination speculation resumes. This time it's Marshall going to Mansfield (League Two, promoting). And now Bury (League One) is in for Curran, having actually expressed their desires to the media.
The league playoff final pits Leyton Orient at Sutton. I'm like the Neutral Planet guys from Futurama. "I have no strong feeling one way or the other." And it's Sutton getting promoted! The game went to penalties.
So as we move past the final league match we enter award season. It starts though with bonuses being paid out to the players. The squad gets to share £63,000 for winning the league. I unlock a Steam Achievement for a player winning leauge highest goal scorer, of course M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-RR-I-S. (The coding doesn't factor in leagues brought in by a supplemental databases.) Mickey also wins Player of the Season. He also comes in second for Goal of the Season.
On the morning of 16 May, a Monday, I get an email bringing to my attention all the contract triggers that happened. Macey and Collopy each get a one-year extension for making it into 10 league matches. For gaining promotion the following staff get an extra year: Graham Rutherford (AssMan, it never gets old), Fitness Coach Ray Evans, Attacking Coach Daniel Cheetham, GK Distribution Coach Alex Gray, and GK Handling Coach Albert Tunnicliffe.
Now Preston North End (Championship) are kicking the Morris tires. Urgh. I don't want to lose all these players! And Gillingham (League One) want Peter Smith. So much so that I get a journalist calling about it. I give the, "He ain't leavin'" response. So then Millwall (League One) rear their ugly head, but at least they don't go to the media, so it's purely speculation at this point.
So, that FA Cup Final with Sheffield Wednesday v. Chelsea? Hahahaha! Sheffield is 16th in the EPL while Chelsea is 3rd. And Chelsea dominates. I like this because Sheffield knocked us out of the competition and this pushes the Euro Cup qualification down to 7th place in the EPL, where Kemar Kirkpatrick's team, West Ham is. It'll be cool to see him get more continental competition.
In the end of season review for the FA Cup some website deems the match where we got abused by Wednesday as the Best Match. Easy for them to say...
The World Cup rosters are announced and Gareth O'Keeffe and Kemar will be playing for England. So cool. Love this game! (If you remember, Qatar lost the right to host because FIFA is a giant heap of human garbage so the matches will be played in Australia.) England are in a group with Iran, Peru, and Scotland. They are shoe-ins to get into the elimination rounds. The USA are in a group with Algeria, Romania, and Spain. They might get out of group stage but won't advance beyond the second round.
The day before the FA Trophy match we have a press conference. The event is laden with trap questions but I am surprised at the final question: Which player in the U18s has a bright future ahead. Oh damn. That's a tough one. I choose Shaquille Bailey as he's very good now, is going to be great, and plays in a position (AMC) that doesn't really have any beasts standing in his way. Jason Cosgrove would be my second choice. Then Gael Barbier.
Curzon Ashton are lacking in quality players so I'm not too worried about the challenge we face. There are 19,363 fans "packing" Wembley Stadium so I do foresee a beautiful addition to our bank account.
vs. Curzon Ashton at Wembley Stadium, 24 May 2022
Formation: Arrow (GK, DR, DC r, DC l, DL, DMC (Regista), MC c (BBM), AMR, AML, ST r (DLF), ST l (AF))
Starting XI: Lee, Lawford, Evans, Barnes, Curran, Caffrey, Flitcroft, Smith, McGregor, Burns, Morris
Subs: Legg, Nickson, Ferreira, Collopy, Rice, Noulas, Lemon, Dryden, Leary, Marshall, McLeish, Parker
A lot of match statistics are presented in 15-minute increments. The report on the opening period today would read, "Lots of misplaced shots." But at 16:57 a throw-in on the right eventually finds its way to the left side where McGregor, realizing the GK is too well placed, nods a floater back to Morris and his 8-yard shot is true. (He's playing Advanced Forward on the left today.) Four minutes later Alfie Barnes takes a Smith corner directly, from the ground to his head, into the goal. Woot! I was thinking the rest of the half would got quietly as we are inaccurate again but then in the 37th Morris is fouled in the box after embarrassing some defenders with his sublime dribbling. I select Burns for the penalty thinking left-footed shooters are better and he proves me right. (Well, I mean, the sample size is a little small...) Hol-lee she-eet! Their left striker was dribbling from left to right about 28 yards out and shot a cross-body prayer at goal and it went into the upper right corner. Lee had a chance but his hands were too weak to turn it aside. Wow!
With no action in the first 25 minutes of the second half I feel comfortable switching the players out. It eventually pays dividends in the 78th when Lemon sends a corner from the left spot to the left post where Ferreira nods it on to the right post and Collopy nods it in. I'm feeling better now. And so it ends! It really helped that the defense allowed only one more shot in the second half and that was off target. Another trophy in our case! Huzzah!
POM: Peter Smith 9.0 (1 assist, 5 key passes, 5 chances created)
We played very well but I did get a little nervous when the miraculous goal happened. Should be voted Goal of the Cup. (His Long Shots is 3. Total fluke.)
We've won the FA Trophy four years in a row, quite an impressive feat. We won't play in it next year so we can't add to the record but I believe the record streak won't ever be beaten.
We made £122,000 from winning the trophy but we are still operating at a major deficit. The curse of only one match for the month.
The post-match presser includes question that give me a chance to praise Morris, Smith, and the opposing manager.
Well, today is the day I have to give Peter Smith a new contract. This is really gonna wound the wallet. Oh oh oh crud. They start with £4,500 per week. Ouch. Should have re-upped sooner. We finally settle on £4,000, £750 appearance fee and goal bonus, and £15,000 bonus for being on the Team of the Year. This gets him to stay with us until 30 June 2024.
Next guy with a new contract...Pat Lawford. Huh? Only £475 per week?! No, no, no. How about £750, £200 appearance fee and clean sheet bonus, and a £500 goal bonus? And I want you until 2025. Like Smith, he needs to take some time to think about it.
Okay, Caffrey, you're next. Okay, they open at £2,800. How about £2,500 and £500 per match just so I can keep you until 2025? And some nice other bonuses? Fine, 2024. Yes, yes, take your time.
Huh. Smith takes all of 32 minutes to make up his mind and puts pen to paper. He really admires me.
More player movement rumors. Evans to Gillingham, who are in League One, is the latest buzz. Hmmm... Then more believable news about Morris being linked to Walsall. At first I was like, no chance in hell, you minnows. But then I looked and it turns out Walsall just finished second in League One and are going up to the Championship. Please don't go, Mickey!
Lawford signs his contract on the morning of 30 May. Glad to have him locked up until 2025. Especially since he's a Brixton Youth Academy graduate.
There are not as many fans expected for the Conference League Cup, only 11,000. Should still bring us some coin though.
Weymouth have some good players and just sealed their promotion to Conference National, after winning the playoffs as the fifth-best team in that league. Wow. Okay, maybe I should take them seriously.
vs. Weymouth at Wembley Stadium, 1 June 2022
Formation: Arrow (GK, DR, DC r, DC l, DL, DMC (Regista), MC c (BBM), AMR, AML, ST r (DLF), ST l (AF))
Starting XI: Lee, Lawford, Evans, Barnes, Curran, Caffrey, Flitcroft, Smith, McGregor, Morris, Burns
Subs: Legg, Nickson, Ferreira, Collopy, Rice, Parker, O'Reilly, Dryden, Leary, Macey, McLeish, Noulas
Everybody loves the number 69, and not for obvious reasons like the year I was born. It's also how many seconds it took for Morris to dribble to the right corner and cross to Burns, who has yet another header for goal. Huzzah! Another 125 seconds go by before Burns is able to bamboozle the ball away from a defender over on the right just outside the box and cross it to Mickey. Morris uses his foot to double the lead. But Weymouth won't go away quietly, getting one back from a free kick. In quick order though, our own free kick goes from Caffrey to Burns to Morris to McGregor and the old man restores the cushion. They yet again reduce the lead but through our frightening weakness, the corner kick. But it's disallowed! On the restart we patiently bring it forward and that results in a Flitcroft to Burns goal. I can relax now.
I hate it when the second half starts with a prolonged action sequence. Smith is toying with people and then gets slide-tackled, allowing Weymouth to march into our end. Lawford doesn't like this and launches the ball to Mickey at the midline and he dribbles all the way down to about two yards from the right post and shots it in. Time covered, 58 seconds. Okay, I like those kind of starts! Burns gets another goal and Morris got the assist in the 48th. I then do a full swap. The makes everything go peacefully with no threats by either team.
POM: Mickey Morris 9.7 (2 goals, 3 assists, 4 key passes, 4 chances created)
What a way to end the season! Goals galore from our ace strikers. So long as I can keep them happy we should have no problems with League Two.
First off, I don't know why Lee declined in Potential Ability. The only theory I can think of is that my AssMan is thinking that Gael Barbier, my French Brixtonian, is going to be better? Michael Stewart isn't here yet so he's not part of the equation. Second, Barnes completely makes sense. Plenty of starts and rest. Third, I again am at a loss. McGregor, you are my mystery man. It's not like he got any younger. I'll take it anyway.
Woohoo! The Treble! There was no way in hell we were going to go far in the Carabao Cup or FA Cup so winning the two other cups and the league was the best we could have done. It was an easy month and an easy season. I expect to have a more difficult time next year, not only on the pitch but retaining players too. With us in proper League Football our players will be scouted more properly by the big teams, they'll swoop in to steal them, and it'll be harder to shoo them away. Oh, by the way, Mickey Morris finished first for goals scored in the FA Cup at 10. Kemar was second at 8. And Burns finished first with assists, at 7.
So it's been a while since I talked Consistency. Let's bring it up again. Gary Ferguson, he of the 8 Consistency back then. And, it turns out, still. Rats. Lee Beirne, he started out at 11 and still remains there. Maybe I should have picked regular starters. Hey, why not.
I know I have the save file from the end of last season. Let's load it up and take a peak. Because of the number of starts and new players and departing players, I narrow down the list of players to peak at: GK Chick Legg, DR Pat Lawford, DC Ferreira, DC Barnes, DL Curran, ML McGregor, ST Marshall, and ST Morris. I opened the editor and started looking at Consistency scores, being careful to keep looking down so I don't see the CA and PA. By the time I got to Barnes I started feeling guilty and re-thought my research. I forged ahead. First thing that caught my eye but really isnt part of the experiment is that Mark Marshall only as a 5 Consistency. Ouch. I won't play the game as if I know that. But after looking at all the players then and now these are the two key observations. One, there were two changes: Legg went from 13 to 12 and McGregor went from 15 to 16. Two, these guys are older than the average bear. So maybe when the players turns 25 or 26 the game assess them and modifies accordingly? I don't know. I probably won't carry on with this experiment. Consistency will remain (mostly) a mystery...