PSP

Played this on the train to London today. (On the way back I read pop -sorry, rock – magazine The Word, which is annoyingly pompous and snobby, but has some good stuff between huge swathes of infuriating tosh.) I can’t quite remember what happened, but I know we didn’t do very well. Or maybe we did. I’ve completely forgotten. I could check, but after a day walking round London looking at Terracotta Chinese guys and plastic American/Japanese guys I really can’t be bothered to fetch the PSP to check.

So, anyway, I played. Stuff happened. One thing I do remember – one of my most important players has been bought by Crewe. I wouldn’t have sold him, but he had some sort of release clause in his contract. Very annoying indeed.

Well, Mansfield kicked us out of the FA Cup, but we’re on a winning streak in the league, our goal difference is now positive and we’re up to seventh. Didn’t hurt that Weymouth were down to nine men in the last match.

Went to a match.

Played for ten minutes.

Game crashed.

PSP turned itself off.

I said, “Bother!”

Last save was before the Altrincham match. Sigh. This time, though, we got a draw, so that’s good. If we fail to win against Cambridge I’ll be very, very annoyed.

Not many games would survive in my PSP with these bugs, I’m telling you.

The first thing I had to do today was take Opinel aside for a quiet word, telling him how disappointed I’ve been with him recently. It seems have had a positive effect, but as he’s suspended I can’t really tell yet.

After that, it was an away game against Rushden. It was a fine 2-1 win for us, but Gary MacDonald went off injured in the twenty-seventh minute and will be out for about three weeks. That’s a big blow as he’s one of the few players I’ve got on the left. Luckily, Hawkins is just back from injury and can play the same positions, but he was pretty terrible against Rushden. Hopefully that’s just because he was rusty after being out of action for so long.

I’ve made a few loan offers to clubs, but they’ve mostly been rejected. I have just managed to get Kevin McGarry from Preston, though. No idea if he’s any good – he’s only sixteen so I doubt he’s great – but he can fill in some gaps if we get any more injuries.

Hey, I’ve just checked something. This is odd. Before asking to loan players I checked my wage bill. I was at the maximum, so when asking to loan players I didn’t offer to pay any of their wages, but now McGarry has joined I’m over the wage budget. I guess maybe you always have to pay their wages and the amount you offer to pay is an extra fee to the club you’re loaning from? I need to check that. (I can’t believe this has never come up before in all the time I’ve been playing Football Manager.)

Anyway, I just released a player I wasn’t using from his contract, so now our wage bill is okay again. (I didn’t actually mean to, I was just investigating my options, but I pressed the wrong button. Oops. I hope the board don’t get too annoyed by the £19,000 that’s going to cost us.)

Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t in the running for Manager of the Month this month. Maybe next month, eh?

We lost the game against Torquay, as expected. It wasn’t a total disaster, though. We only lost 2-0 and it gave some other members of my squad a chance to show me what they’ve got. No individuals messed up horribly, so I don’t think I’ll be dropping any into the reserves quite yet. I’ll keep an eye on that, though, because players are probably better off getting some games there rather than rotting away in the first team but never playing a match.

(Incidentally, playing against Torquay was an odd experience because they’re the team I managed in the original Football Manager Handheld and some of the players were ones I was using back then. I had a great “yeeessssss!” surge when Bedeau scored, only to realise that he wasn’t actually one of my players in this game and I’d just conceded, not scored, a goal. Oops.)

The next match, against Droylsden, was incredibly frustrating. In the first minute, Opinel decided in his infinite wisdom to kick the ball away after he’d been given a yellow card and was sent off. We duly conceded a goal from the free kick. Opinel had been very tired and I’d been working him way too hard, so I’m not going to hold it against him. I had to pull Nadé back to play in midfield with a single striker upfront and play Stacy Long out of position on the left, where he actually acquitted himself very well. (Opinel was my only – only! – uninjured left midfielder in the squad for this game.) The rest of the game saw me raining shots down on the Droylsden goal, only to see them all saved. (I need to work on my corners. Of my twelve corners, I don’t think a single one reached one of my own players.) And, then, completely against the run of play, they scored another. So that was a loss.

Before the next game I managed to loan a left midfielder named Joey Waterhouse. His stats didn’t look too great, but he was at Wigan, so I thought there must be something to him. Indeed, in the next game he was instrumental in getting us three early goals, before his lack of fitness showed and he hardly had a touch for the next hour. Indeed, the tiredness of the squad as a whole really showed, with us conceding two goals in the second half. We did, however, managed to hang on for a win. It should probably have been more convincing, but my strikers had a terrible time of it. Even the usually reliable Ebrienne ended the match with a 5 out of 10 rating after coming on as a sub early in the second half.

We’re currently in tenth place in the table. I’m going to have to see if I can get any more loan players in to cover the weak spots and I might have a look at training, see if I can improve my squad’s fitness levels. If we start matches in good condition I think we might be able to make the playoffs this season.