Take Me To Church, Ep 19: Fresh Start
I’m not happy with the way our preparations for the new season have gone so far; it’s been about as disjointed as it possibly could be. Times like this always make me assess my formation, especially when I’m seeing Jorge play his 4–4–2 and getting decent performances out of the players. Then again, my 4–1–3–2 doesn’t give us bad performances, it’s just not getting the results my ego needs to not collapse in on itself like a dying star. I’m going to persist with my system throughout pre-season and then make a choice nearer the start of the big opener, when there will be actual consequences for my ineptitude if I get it wrong. Mañana, mañana.
The board, at least, expect us to be relegation battlers this season so the pressure is off in the immediate term, plus I’m pretty sure that once the players are actually match-fit and at 100%, which they haven’t been for a single second of pre-season so far, we might end up looking more like a football team and less like a four-night Amsterdam stag do.
We overcome an even more lacklustre Alvechurch 2–0 away before our first really big test of the summer: Notts County at home. All eleven of my starting team “need match practice if they’re to be ready for the new season”, so we’re still miles off full fitness. I am at least able to field the starting XI that I think will make up my first-choice team once we really get underway, though, so that’s… something. I’ll take anything right now.
Oh, this is better. This is much better. Thank goodness.
We never look in trouble throughout the whole game, even when I make all my subs, and in fact are far more likely to score. Dennis de Nooijer is a menace up front, missing the target once after taking on the entire County defence before forcing a very smart save from Saul Deeney and then having a further effort cleared off the line with the goalkeeper flailing. Taira also misses a gilt-edged chance from four yards, we finish the match having created 11 chances and put five on target, whereas our visitors only hit it twice — and I’m very, very glad to see my new number one Marko Simeunovic handle them both confidently. It’s a 0–0 draw, but it’s massive progress from the dross we witnessed in Wales. Any game where their keeper gets man of the match means you can’t have done much wrong.
That’s a team a full two divisions above us, so I feel like we might finally be hitting our stride. Next up? Championship relegation contenders Burnley.
Oh but wait. There’s a touch of news before the Burnley game starts. One of the things I’ve identified as an issue in my current brand new squad is the fact that Jorge Cadete is now our only target man. With Windross gone and the Portuguese increasingly injury prone as he enters the twilight of his career, we will definitely need a spot of cover on the left side of my front two. Someone to give opposing defenders a dead leg, then thrash them in the air to knock down for, say, a flying Dutchman. Well — I’ve found a man who’s happy to both take a pay cut and drop down a league in the interests of spending a year bullying hapless Conference defenders.
14 goals and 18 assists in a relegation season from League One, I reckon Tommy Mooney could be a very good signing. Among all my glamorous new players, I’ve tried to make sure there are some influential bruisers in my team: Joe Dolan at the back, Steffen Freund in midfield, and now Tommy Mooney up top. This could be a lot of fun.
Okay then — Burnley are up.
It turns out that we are not equipped to seriously challenge a Championship team, which should come as no surprise, as Burnley pretty much batter us from pillar to post over the course of the game. They have Mike Duff at right back, so in a sense the result was inevitable before kick-off.
The one thing I am pleased with, though, is that despite the result, we do actually defend pretty well for a good while, and Jorge Cadete comes on to really roll back the years and demonstrate why Tommy Mooney is not his instant replacement in East London. He gathers a pass from Eleftheriou on the left, seemingly too wide to make anything happen, but just tears towards goal and curls a sublime finish in off the far post.
In the end we finish with six shots on target to Burnley’s seven — but that stat doesn’t tell the whole story. They made twice the chances we did, and actually, my maligned new stopper Jorge Silva puts in a brilliant second-half display to keep them from extending their lead further. I’m not sure it absolves him of the horror shows in Wales, since substitutes are definitely overpowered in this game, but it’s nice to see he’s not entirely inept.
Next up, we welcome League One’s Swansea City to The Stadium. Today’s experimental home dugout pie is steak and sweetcorn; someone make sure the cleaning staff are on high alert.
Honestly, it’s another bad result but another good performance, so despite this rash I’ve got all up my arm, I’m actually not worried. The two best players for Swansea are their goalkeeper and their substitute goalkeeper, while we put in really solid performances all round against a side that’ll be challenging for promotion to the Championship this season. A wonder-goal from the enigmatic Lee Trundle is the only thing that separates us.
In an opportunity to get a measure of revenge on the entire nation of Wales, Rhyl then arrive at The Stadium as our next friendly opponents. After our last couple of performances, I’m feeling frisky.
Everything finally clicks and we are irresistible, especially in the first half. While I hate taking credit for things, as you all know, the switch to put Kostas Frantzeskos in the middle of my midfield three rather than on the left has the exact impact I expected. He’s so technically gifted but has the physical attributes of an asthmatic sea turtle, and my left and right CMs end up having to do a lot of huffy-puffy work to fill in along the flanks. The guy in the middle usually ends up with the ball at his feet at the edge of the box, or flying in late behind the strikers — and that’s exactly where we want him.
He proves this by opening the scoring in exactly this fashion, arriving at the tip of the D (steady) to collect a Shane Tolley pass and curl it unstoppably into the top corner. Tolley then releases Mooney to run through and slam home a left-footed drive, then gets on the scoresheet himself — running beyond Franz and gathering a Eleftheriou pass before finding the same bottom corner for 3–0 at the break.
We’re a bit disjointed second half as I make all my subs, but we’re never in danger. It’s a confident, assured performance with the result to match, and I assume the rest of the Welsh Premier League are quaking in their boots in anticipation of next season’s pre-season tour.
In the wake of this result, we pick up another very solid backup player. Tamika Mkandawire adds another unspellable and unpronounceable name to my expanding roster of Scrabble options, and even though he’d probably start for any other team in this league, he heads to my reserves to get his match fitness up and will be a brilliant option in any kind of injury crisis.
We also finally welcome Richard Witschge to The Stadium, yet another name I can’t say or spell. I might have to start assigning nicknames to everyone sooner rather than later.
Our final friendly before the big curtain-raiser against York City is a visit to my old rivals Kettering. Little Ricky goes straight into MCL, Tolley is rested, let’s see how we get on.
Yes. Yes yes yes. Kettering are now a division below us, but this performance shows just how much better we are than the Conference North/South. Lil Ricky gets man of the match, we dominate the game and restrict our hosts to zero shots on target. We create 14 chances, score three goals through a de Nooijer solo effort, a deflected Pegger strike and a last-minute Booth offside trap-beater from a stunning 60-yard Nelo through ball. We are just about hitting full gear at exactly the right time, and you can actually smell the relief coming off of me, although I may just need a shower.
There’s mixed news as we continue. I’m forced to finally give up my pursuit of René Higuita after the DWP strike it off for the third time. It’s looked unlikely ever since that first rejection, so with three increasingly generous contracts also not making it through the minimum requirements, our hero will have to remain in Colombia, sipping aguardiente, smoking cigars, and batting away hordes of women who just want to be close to him. Poor guy. I guess that one-bed semi in Upminster will have to remain a dream.
In better news though, the apparently very wealthy board of your mighty Urchins have been plowing money into the club to help with running costs, to the point that they’ve almost removed all our debt:
It’s probably in anticipation of the financial crisis my new wage bill is about to cause, but even still — it’s nicer to be closer to zero than we were a few weeks ago, when we were pretty much £500,000 in the red.
I feel good as we all prepare to board Limey for his biggest test since Sarge nicked him from that car park in Thurrock last year: a drive all the way to York and back, since the Conference National cares not for your mileage or how often your radiator makes that loud knocking sound. We’ll be greeted by a Paul Merson-led York City, who only escaped relegation by a single point last term and come into the game with their two first choice strikers on the injured list; star man Derek Holmes has broken his leg, the poor sausage. They also only won a single game in a pre-season that featured a 2–0 defeat to so-far-down-the-pyramid-they-have-no-league Slough Town. Even though we are away, I feel confident going into this one. Whatever happens, I reckon I can coax my opposite number out for a pint afterwards.
We’re in great shape. Richard Witschge is the only player who isn’t at 100% fitness since he spent most of pre-season on a beach in the Antilles, I assume, so he misses out — but he probably wouldn’t have gotten in anyway. Goalkeeper is an automatic choice, since Simeunovic has looked far more reliable than Silva, and there’s no way Steffen Freund doesn’t play whenever he’s available, but the rest of the team is a real struggle to pick. I eventually decide on brand new centre-halves but the same full-backs, as hard-man Joe Dolan is tasked with protecting cravat-wearing flouncer Gerard de Nooijer in the middle while Cabrera and Pastuszka patrol the flanks.
I feel awful for leaving Taira out but I want Tolley and Eleftheriou as my two marauding middle men, leaving it down to a straight choice for the heart of my team — and while Taira has a big claim for it, Frantzeskos has so many killer dead-ball deliveries in his locker that I feel he ought to start against a team that might be tough to break down. Up top, I love Tommy Mooney but I can’t resist the sheer dernier cri of Dennis de Nooijer and Jorge Cadete, surely the most vivacious strike partnership in Conference history. Honestly, I’ve set myself up for a fall here, because looking at my team sheet against theirs, I’m expecting nothing short of a mauling.
It definitely isn’t a mauling in the first half; if anything York look the most likely to score, and I’m very frustrated in my technical area for the 43 minutes that preceed a magnificent Jorge Cadete solo goal, taking down a pass from Tolley, mugging his marker off something rotten, then curling an unstoppable shot into the top corner for 1–0 at the break. Gerard de Nooijer finishes the half on a five, and I’m not even sure he knows which team he’s playing for.
I let them be for the start of the second half, and we have the ball in the back of the net early on courtesy of his brother’s attempted offside-breaking run and finish off the post — but he went too soon, and it’s ruled out. We are quite lucky from then on, really — York have more chances and better ones too, but they’re just cavernous at the back. Their defensive line worked that one time, but for the rest of the match they’re all over the place, and as the home side tire and their attacks fizzle out, we simply play balls through the middle and de Nooijer and Cadete are wrong side, on-side, and 1v1 time and time again. York are playing a 16-year-old youth keeper in goal, so as you’d expect, he puts in a man-of-the-match performance to keep the score down to 1–0, but in the end, that is how it finishes.
I should be happy, and while I am delighted to start the season with three points, this lot are relegation fodder and we spent half the game chasing them around. We’re lucky that Cadete managed to stick one of his chances away, because on another day, we lose this by a couple of goals. Thankfully Freund and Dolan stepped up for just long enough to snuff them out, and we’ll get back on the M1 with a lot of contemplating to do.
The board are pleased with the win, which is probably the best outcome I could have hoped for. As long as they focus on scorelines rather than performances, I should be okay. I may well regret saying that.
As we pull down the Upminster Road and Jorge prepares to squeeze us into another too-small parking space, my phone buzzes in my pocket. Why, it’s Doncaster Rovers manager Dave Penney! Hi Dave, what can I do for you?
Hmm. This is a tough one. As one of my more mobile and reliable midfielders, I don’t really want to see Boothy go. However, like most small clubs, we’re only going to financially survive and thrive with the buying and selling of players — especially when you’re a small club that’s managed by me. I tell Dave I’ll take £120k, a friendly, and 50% of Boothy’s next sale. We’ll see what comes of that little wrinkle. He was probably our best player overall last season, but started to lose his spot towards the end of the year — and while he never, ever let us down, he’s one of those players whose attributes will probably start to tell as we go up the divisions. If he was 19 I might think better of it, but he’s already 25 and probably isn’t going to develop any more. I hate saying it, but that £120k would pull us out of the red for the first time in years. It would be a good deal, however you shake it.
Slightly concerned at my goalkeeping situation, I also move into the loan market to offer a season-long deal to Aston Villa for a young Wayne Henderson. He has already rejected me once since the start of the summer, but with nobody managing to secure his signature and his current prospects dangling somewhere near “might get a few games for the reserve team”, I feel like I might have a better chance. He certainly looks good, that’s for sure.
He quickly accepts, and he’s in! Hendo is a Horny boi. I am delighted. He’s not quite René Higuita, but he does come pre-approved by the DWP.
Leigh RMI will provide our first home test of the season, the only team still in this division who can say they were worse than York City last time around. The Railway Mechanics Institute finished 19th, the lowest you can go without being relegated, and only survived on goal difference — their -17 besting Forest Green’s -24. This should, should, be a gentle introduction to life in the Conference National.
As a result I decide to test the waters with some of my other players. Babb, N’Timbanzeh, Nelo, Witschge, Mooney and Ugarte come in for Dolan, who’s picked up a knock in training, Cabrera, Eleftheriou, Cadete, and the de Nooijers. Hendo has no match fitness so he only makes the bench for now, although I am sorely tempted to start him; I have enjoyed Simeunovic’s start in East London, though, so no need to make that change just yet.
Nelo almost flukes his first goal for the club after eight minutes as his marauding run down the left ends with what’s meant to be a cross, but floats all the way over visiting stopper Jon Worsnop and off the crossbar, where Ugarte can’t quite convert the rebound.
On 11 minutes, Pastuszka is making tracks down the right hand side and crossing for a completely unmarked Tommy Mooney to take a touch, set himself, and slap a shot over the bar from ten yards, and when Mooney then sets up Witschge in similar fashion only for him to fire straight at Worsnop, my hand might as well be permanently attached to my face as that familiar sinking feeling starts to set in. The good news is that we’re restricting our opponents to absolutely nothing, but at the other end, it’s not looking great at all.
I bring on Dennis de Nooijer for Mooney at half time, as the big Englishman has really not covered himself in glory, and we restart for the second half. A Frantzeskos free-kick clangs off the crossbar, I bring on Eleftheriou for Witschge and he sees a rangy drive saved by Worsnop, Harry N’Timbanzeh hits an absolute blockbuster that the keeper tips over the crossbar, and after de Nooijer twice misses the target horribly, an incredibly disappointing game finishes 0–0. Another opposing GK gets man of the match, which is becoming more than just a pattern, but make no mistake — we should have been far, far better here. I’m going for a pint.
Episode 20 coming soon!
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