Diamond Geezers, Episode 92: Make or Break
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Hauling in Manchester United’s scarlet juggernaut isn’t going to be easy. It’s probably not even going to be possible. But if we’re going to have any chance of beating them to one of the most unlikely Premier League titles in history, with ten games to go after this one, we have to head to Old Trafford and get a result. It’s a seemingly impossible task.
Or is it? The Red Devils aren’t the force they used to be at the Theatre of Dreams, and in fact, they’ve lost all of their last three games: two of them at home, to West Ham and Celtic. They’ve also been bested by both Crystal Palace and Leicester at Old Trafford this season, two teams we know well from the way they put themselves about against us. Perhaps this isn’t the suicide mission it feels like. Say it under your breath over a warm pint, but… could we beat them here?
Fernando Torres certainly thinks so. Our newest bargain-basement signing, the Spanish under-21 international was basically released by Atletico Madrid after they dumped him to the stiffs despite his obvious potential and already remarkable attacking attributes. He’s not the all-round striker he will be in a few years, but with either max or near-max attributes for Pace, Acceleration, Finishing, Off the Ball, Flair, Agility and Determination, he’s already a young man that can deal damage to any defence in the world. He’s also five years younger and two stars better than Meysam Javan, our all-time leading goalscorer, and so he will make his debut for the mighty Diamonds against our championship rivals alongside human battering ram Azar Karadas.
In fact, it’s fair to say that we could hardly arrive at Old Trafford in better shape. We’ve got the best team that the Rushden Ultras have ever seen, with proper household name players lining up in the famous white and blue. Dionisis Chiotis in goal; Jamie Carragher and Philippe Mexès at centre-half; the Mahouvé Dam anchoring midfield; Frank Lampard and Deco as roaming playmakers… it’s proper fantasy football stuff. I really wish that Paulo Sousa was fit for the game today, as he’s been pretty fantastic since I let him have a regular run in the side — but I trust that Rhys Weston can give virtually anyone a sore knee if he’s allowed to get close enough. Plus, we shouldn’t be building our team around an injury-prone 34-year-old midfielder. Our summer warchest will be mostly spent on a new friend for Marcel who can play alongside him next season. I might check in with how Tommy Svindal is getting on.
There’s not much you can say about Manchester United that everyone doesn’t already know. Sure, they’ll miss Jaap Stam, Amoroso and Eldar Hadzimehmedovic through either injury or suspension today, but really, they don’t need those three players to clean up in the Premier League. The only players they’ve sold for money since the start of the game are Beckham and Veron, two players they also don’t need considering that they’ve signed Figo and still have Butt, Scholes, Keane, Yorke, Cole, Van Nistelrooy, Barthez, Brown, Neville… if anything, it must be very boring to manage Man Utd. You don’t really need to do anything. Don’t sign anyone, don’t sell anyone, just put the players you like the most out in a 4–4–2 every game for ten years and you’ll sweep the league without even trying. That’s what’s been happening, anyway. But we haven’t been in the Premier League until now.
We literally couldn’t make a worse start to this or any game. Four minutes in, Silvestre crosses to Van Nistelrooy, and he beats Chiotis to the ball and nods over him for Nicky Butt to arrive at the back post and tap into an empty net. A minute later, Figo gets down the right wing and crosses to the far post, where Sivestre has charged into the area and heads home United’s second goal of the day. There are five minutes on the clock, and we are 2–0 down. I’m already on my way down the tunnel — I’m not sure I can watch the rest. Chiotis isn’t entirely to blame, but he’s already dropped to a 5 and we’ve barely even finished the warm-up.
Thankfully, Fernando Torres ignores the clusterfuck he’s made himself a part of and sets about making an impression. Five minutes later, he meets a Karadas cross and clangs a shot against the inside of the post with Barthez rooted. Mahouvé is then booked for tripping Roy Keane, with the Irishman carded himself seconds later for his revenge tackle that sends our great destroyer to the ground with an almighty thump. Gary Neville is also booked in the aftermath, and the game is in danger of descending into the kind of fight that United would love — but Torres finds a way to make it work to our advantage. Phil Neville heads a ball towards Wes Brown, but Torres nips in to steal it from his toes — and Brown takes him out! It’s in the box! PENALTY!! PENALTY DIAMONDS! Won by the determination of El Niño!! Oh Jesus! I STILL haven’t updated my penalty takers!!
Chris Barker takes the ball from Torres, and places it down on the spot. I’m watching through my hands. Why is this happening. It’s almost like our shortcomings are somehow my fault.
Barker takes a deep breath, and starts his run up. He shoots… and Barthez saves! I scream and find myself several feet in the air as the ball rebounds back into play, but I should be paying attention because Frank Lampard has followed in, and is first to the loose ball!! LAMPARD! GOAL!! Frank Lampard has scored from the rebound, and despite Barker’s howler, it’s 2–1! We’re back in this game!!
We hang on until half-time, and in fact have had one more shot on target than United when we reach the break. That horrible, sickening one-two punch in the first five minutes has really done me in. I can’t believe we’ve given them an easy lead. However, all is not lost. We’re still in this football match. We just need to keep going, grab an equaliser, and then it’s balls out time. Let’s do it. Come on lads.
The second half starts. Carragher gathers a loose ball from a Barker tackle, and passes it across the area towards Mexès — but it’s not strong enough. Giggs nips in, steals the ball, crosses to the onrushing Paul Scholes… and just like that, United have their two-goal advantage back. I use a great deal of indoor language as we line up to kick off once again, with United straight back onto the offensive. Silvestre throws in for Giggs, who advances down the left apparently unchallenged, and crosses again… where Scholes has arrived once more. It’s 4–1. What the actual f — k are my defenders and goalkeeper doing? Have they come out for the second half yet?
It’s like looking in a stupid mirror. We’re five minutes in, and United have scored two goals. It’s just unbelievable. My defenders, in our most important game of the season, are invisible, and aren’t even trying to stop United’s attacks. However, suddenly, on 56 minutes, there’s a glimmer of hope: Gary Neville launches himself into a tackle on Fernando Torres, misses the ball and is the second player of the day to go straight through my new signing. He’s been booked already, I’m pretty sure… yes he has! It’s a second yellow for Neville, and he’s off! United might be 4–1 up with half an hour to go, but they’re down to ten men. Shit. After all this, have we still got a chance here?
I immediately go to my tactics screen to make some changes, and it’s even worse than I thought. Dionisis Chiotis has chosen this game to phone in the worst performance of his career, and is on a 3. That’s three. Against Man Utd at Old Trafford. Three.
Incensed, I make all my changes, including binning Chiotis for Pinheiro, who can’t possibly be worse, and throwing Bubb and Javan on for Barker and Weston, who are also utter dogsh — t. We’re 4–1 down due to our own incompetence, and so I’m once again going to have to pray that my attacking players can dig us out of another fine mess. We have a man advantage now, at least. We just need to score next, and soon.
Of course, ten minutes later it’s 5–1. Van Nistelrooy does what he does best, which is have one effort on target and score a goal — this time he beats Mexès in the air from a Scholes corner and nods past Pinheiro to pretty much complete the whitewash. I say pretty much, because my all-out attack strategy does yield a second goal for us through Jamie Carragher’s last-minute volley after a goalmouth scramble from a corner, but by then, the game has been long finished.
I’m sat in my technical area forlorn, bereft, and open-mouthed. We have simply handed three points to the most dangerous team in the country. It’s lucky that my drinks cabinet is several hundred miles away, and empty. Ottmar helps me to my feet, and asks me if I’d like to share a bottle of wine with him after the game. I’m sorry, Ottmar. I’m going to need something much stronger than that.
It’s a terminal result that pulls the plug on the life support machine of our title challenge, and after getting through almost £500-worth of wine with Ottmar (just three bottles — the man has expensive tastes), I try to pick through the aftermath. Our next game is against Chelsea at Nene Park in a week’s time, and quite honestly, I’m not sure what I should do. On the one hand, we conceded five goals in a game against a team who had ten men for half an hour. On the other, my goalkeeper put in the sort of performance that would previously have seen me strap him to a barge and push him out to sea, and also… we did score twice at Old Trafford.
Scoreline aside, it wasn’t the sort of battering we might have gotten; in fact, you could even argue that we did better than them in a number of key areas. We made more passes with better accuracy, had more shots and the same number on target, won more free-kicks, mostly through Fernando Torres, who finished on a very unfair 6/10 despite winning the penalty, getting Neville sent off, hitting the target three times, and generally buzzing around the United back four the entire game. If we’d just had defenders who didn’t play backpasses straight to their forwards and a goalkeeper who wasn’t basically a mop with a shirt hung over it, we could have held them down to perhaps just the one goal and come away with a famous win. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. It doesn’t matter now. Our chase for the league title is over for this season, that’s for sure. Now we need to focus on staying in the top four, and getting ourselves ready to challenge on all fronts next term.
A week goes by, and the Saturday fixtures are played: it’s good news. Both United and Middlesbrough draw, leaving us in third place, but with the chance to overtake Boro into second if we can beat both the blues and the Blues on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It’s another massive game — Chelsea are 5th, just back from us and Arsenal, and the signing of Rafael van der Vaart has really galvanised them. His average rating of 7.51 from 16 games makes me almost hulk up with jealousy; I’d kill for a central player who was that consistent. I’m also glad to see that Carlo Cudicini is suspended, so dodgy second-choice keeper Otto Fredrikson is likely to line up against us today. He’s played one game for Finland this season and let in five goals, and come on as a sub for Chelsea once, where he conceded another two. Surely he won’t be able to keep Fernando Torres at bay for a whole 90 minutes, he said, realising that it’s now inevitable.
My team is similar to the one that just got beaten by United, with only a few small edits. My post-match reflection has basically written it down as a one-off performance. After all, Chiotis is our second best player by average rating this season — and he was the best before he got that three. I can’t just bin him after one bad game. Sousa comes in for Weston, whose days might be numbered; Bramble replaces Mexès, and I give my full-backs a bit more license to get forward. It could be a risk, but they’re not providing any assists, and being cautious doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere.
We’ve got the strongest squad we’ve ever had on paper, but in reality, for the first time, I feel like I’ve got no idea what I’m doing. I’m just chucking names into the team and hoping they play well, and they mostly aren’t. Chelsea aren’t the team you want to play when this is how things are going. I load my suit pockets up with all the hip flasks I can find, and stride out onto the pitch at Nene Park for the pre-match ceremonies. The Rushden Ultras are as vociferous as ever. With any luck, my suit has absorbed an even amount of sweat so that it looks like there’s none there at all.
The first half is all us, thanks to the profligacy of Mikael Forssell. All of Chelsea’s chances drop to him, but he can’t put any of them on target — and meanwhile, at the other end, we look dangerous, and much, much more likely to score. Torres is a mosquito buzzing around the Chelsea defence, and he twice escapes from Mario Melchiot to hit savage right foot shots that Fredrikson, of course, saves. I had no doubt that today would be the day that he realises he’s meant to stop that round thing from going past him, and despite being complete toss in every other game of football he’s ever played, today he looks unbeatable.
Half time arrives and the scores are still 0–0, but we look good. For the first time in as long as I can remember, everyone is on 7s and 8s at the break even though we haven’t scored, and I’m particularly delighted to see that van der Vaart and Petit, the two men who are being followed by Mahouvé and Sousa, have both dipped well below their starting score. I decide to let the team finish the job, and send them back out for the second half.
It’s more of the same. I genuinely can’t believe the performance I’m seeing from Fredrikson. He first makes a world-class double-save from Torres and then Karadas on the follow up, who smashes a rebound goalwards from six yards only to see the Finn block it out to safety, and then defies the laws of physics to deny Torres yet again when he’s clean through on goal following a Deco slide-rule pass. I’m shaking my head and awaiting Chelsea’s last-minute winner from their first shot on target as Barker gets down the left flank and crosses to the far post — it’s over the head of Karadas, but Mike Duff is there! DUFF! OH MY GOD, FINALLY! It’s there! Mike Duff makes it 1–0, with ten minutes to g… WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT’S DISALLOWED FOR OFFSIDE? AGAINST DECO?! HE’S NOT F — KING INVOLVED IN THE F — KING MOVE! HOW CAN HE BE OFFSIDE?! ARGH!!!
I can’t believe this. I’m trolled even harder in the final five minutes, as Javan comes on and hits the post before Deco thunders a swerving shot off the crossbar, and eventually, a completely one-sided game ends with a brilliant gameplan executed to perfection by my wonderful players, a miraculous performance from Otto Fredrikson, and a 0–0 draw that I couldn’t be less satisfied with. We’ve completely taken Chelsea apart here, but come away with a single paltry point. There’s no justice in this world. Then again, I should have expected this, since United drew yesterday and the game engine seems determined to middle finger me by giving us the same results. At least the stitch up is consistent.
I’m going for a walk.
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