Take Me To Church, Ep 5: Fiddler on the Roof
Sarge and I head to The Raj of India on Upminster Road to celebrate that comeback win over Grays; he’s become something of a well-paid confidant to me since my two assistant managers are always bickering over who gets to move the little magnetic pieces around my whiteboard. Jorge is better, but Mick was here first, so he sulks if I don’t let him join in.
I talk Sarge through my ingenious tactical switch mid-game from 4–4–2 to 4–1–3–2, claiming it all as my own work and not mentioning that I saw the other team do it and nicked their idea. His chicken madras gets a bigger reaction than I do, but that’s okay — Sarge is more of a listener than a contributor. I find myself snapping my poppadoms into small pieces and arranging them on a plate, with trails of raita indicating forward runs. Yes, yes… this feels right. This is where I came from. This is my tactic.
And we’ll try out said formation, with said players, for the upcoming visit of Hayes. They haven’t started well, sitting just outside the relegation zone with one win from their opening three games, but we aren’t quite in a position to be all judgy yet. We can do that after the game.
Well, we win comfortably, but I’m not sure how happy I am about the whole thing. Let me explain.
By the time Adam Birchall puts us 1–0 up just before half time, we’ve already had several chances to take the lead and have been pretty much all over Hayes, who — it has to be said — are desperately poor. Whether we make them look poor or they just are, I can’t tell. However, at half time, the most worrying thing I see is that both Ronnie Green and Lee Sharpe are on 3s.
Yes, you read that correctly. The rest of the team is on mostly 7s, but literal 3s for Green and Sharpe have me very concerned. I’m used to FM players being able to operate slightly out of position, and playing a FRC in midfield with forward run instructions or an AML on the left side of a three has worked for me countless times in the past, but apparently not here. And you wouldn’t know from their performances; they looked fine to me in terms of what they did on the field. Usually that would be all that matters… but 3s? Out of ten? That can’t happen.
I fiddle with it, seeking answers. I move Green into AMC, creating a diamond midfield, with an instruction to run beyond the forwards. That must be fine — he’s built to play that position. Sharpe goes left and Booth right in the centre, with instructions to run up to the flanks; hopefully that’ll let Sharpe start centrally but flourish into his more natural position.
It sort of works. Both players move from 3s to 4s, and meanwhile, the rest of the team continue to pepper Hayes. Steven Watt powers home his first goal for the mighty Urchins with a thunderous header from a Sharpe corner on 73 minutes, and it’s around that time I decide that changes must be made. Sharpe, up to a 6 because of his assist, gives way to Cooke, Green remains in AMC but now we have two actual MCs in MC, and we look… the same. I really can’t distinguish any change. Our third goal comes from another corner, this time Cooke crossing for Windross to jostle ahead of three defenders and the visiting keeper to put some icing on the cake, but… well. I don’t know what to think. I’m very glad for the win, but this game has been incredibly confusing.
The only conclusion I can come to is that Sharpe and Green can’t play those roles in this system. We just thrashed a very useless team in a game where you’d expect 7s and 8s for everyone, but even despite that, Green still ended with a 4. And yet, against Grays, he came on, admittedly on the right of centre, but within this system — and absolutely crushed it, scoring and assisting our final two goals. If you look at what he did in the game, it’s all fine: he actually won more tackles (6) than anyone else on the team apart from Booth, who was imperious in his man-of-the-match showing, while he also made three key passes, four interceptions, completed two dribbles… and yet, still a 4.
Is it an issue with the game itself, whereby it simply assigns an out-of-position player an incredibly low match rating even if they play well simply because they’re out of position? I don’t understand! Where’s Sarge? He’ll know what to do.
THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT, SARGE.
Oh for crying out loud.
I give Lee a warning for his indiscretion, which he accepts, and I consider my options. It would certainly seem as if my concerns from earlier have been proven correct: one game in a new position, and Sharpe is protesting. I would normally throw the book at him, but I don’t own one, so I decide to let this slide for now. This feels like a symptom of the way the game was made rather than the actual attitude of one of my players. And so, in an attempt to keep Sharpe in the team since he’s my most productive player so far, as well as my corner and penalty specialist, while also getting Booth in there along with Ronnie Green in a position he might actually prefer, this is what I settle on.
My tactical magnetic whiteboard is a mess of half-rubbed-out marker pen and furious corrections. I dispatch Mick to the local co-op to get some nail polish remover — it gives him something to do — and sit the players down to talk them through my latest hare-brained scheme, with Jorge translating for the extremely confused-looking Cabrera.
I tell him to say it’s pretty much still a 4–4–2, but with some spicy new changes. Instead of starting centrally and hoping they move into the channels, why not start them wide and tell them to cut inside, with overlapping full-backs going down the line? Elcock has two assists from open play in his four appearances so far, and Cabrera has none because he hasn’t been getting forward enough. This could — COULD — work out beautifully. We’ll see what Dorchester Town have to say about it.
Overall, it’s a very even first half. I make some changes after about 20 minutes to the two lads on my right-hand side — both have plummeted straight to 4s with their current instructions, so I pull Elcock out of his forward push and change him back to his previous run to just-before halfway, plus Green is doing the square root of nothing so I tell him to run all the way up in between the strikers, and he actually does a great job of it for a while. The freedom to push into a front three encourages him to take the ball and run with it — he creates one chance for himself and another for Windross, neither of which find the target, but it’s some nice footballing from him, for a change.
Lee Sharpe, on the other hand, is having a whale of a time, and as a team — in an attacking sense — we look really good. Defensively we still feel a bit all over the shop, not helped by Dorchester’s 3–5–2 that drags everyone out of position, but when we get the ball, we swarm. Our goal comes from exactly this: Cabrera picks the ball up on the left, both my strikers are offside, but Sharpe makes a run from deep, Cabrera finds him, Sharpe makes it to the byline and cuts back for Adam Birchall to nod home his fifth goal in four games, and it’s 1–0 at the break. We don’t look amazing, but it’s not not working, and that’s good enough for me.
Unfortunately, Dorchester are quite good, and they get the equaliser they deserve just over the hour mark. It’s a good team move, to be fair — nobody is particularly out of position, they just get forward, Booth can’t make a tackle, they play a good ball between the lines and their right back goes around Corderoy before tucking into an empty net. It’s annoying, but on balance, they should score somewhere along the way. Sharpe is man of the match, Green slipped to a 6 before being withdrawn, I’m still not sure what my best system is, but a point on the road at a top-tier club is not to be sniffed at.
I am in a serious tactical quandary. I decide, on reflection, to go back to 4–4–2 for the time being and accept that Ronnie Green is a deputy striker rather than any kind of midfielder. That goal/assist sub performance looks like it was a flash in the pan rather than an indication of where he should be playing. That’s fine. I’m still learning. Does the fact that I still know nothing about how these games work really surprise you at this point?
In response to shipping half the old players out on transfer deadline day, freeing up an extra £1.5k in the wage budget, I pick up a new forward who’ll join on January 1st. We’re going to lose Adam Birchall when his three-month loan spell ends with no guarantees that I’ll be able to extend it, so just in case, my definitely-not-long-lost son Lee Paul is moving all the way over from Charlotte, North Carolina to join up with the mighty Urchins. He can’t be mine — way too much Flair.
In confirming the transfer I notice that his strike partner at Charlotte Eagles is a man by the name of Dusty Swinehart, so of course I make a full-value bid for him as well. How could I resist?
He rejects me out of hand, but his memory will live on my shortlist forever.
And the tough games keep coming; this week it’s top-of-the-table Margate at The Stadium. Mick is back with the nail polish remover and has done a great job of scrubbing up my whiteboard, so I decide to make further tweaks to maximise my players’ preferred positions and roles, swapping Lawless in for the underperforming Green. Those of you who hate asymmetrical formations, look away now.
Jorge, my friend, you’ve got some serious translating to do this week.
It’s another draw, and I think my attempted right-sided Ramdeuter experiment is over. Back to reliable old Danny Williams I’ll go.
Lawless this time ends the first half on a four, I go to something a bit more traditional, and in fairness we’re the better side — Margate don’t muster a shot on target, whereas we have six, but find Scott Findlay in inspired form to keep us out entirely. A 0–0 draw that doesn’t really help anyone, but again, it’s another point on the board against a top side. And a clean sheet! That must count for something? Oh yes… one point. Gotcha.
Before kickoff against mid-table Havant & Waterlooville, I notice that Stephen Cooke has a better average rating than Williams from his limited appearances so far this season — and Williams, although he’s sneakily left me with the impression that he’d done really well, is sitting on a 6.5 overall. He did complete seven dribbles against Weston-super-Mare, so maybe that’s what I’m remembering.
Oh well. Cooke starts, Williams is on the bench, and we go back to an almost-familiar 4–4–2 because this experimenting is making my head hurt. Havant’s three in midfield scares me since AMCs always seem to cause problems for us, but let’s go ahead with Pegger and Boothy for the time being. Oh boy, they’ve got Dean Holdsworth up front as well, swoon.
We have a belting opening ten minutes that see us fly into a 2–0 lead. A second-minute Lee Sharpe corner ends up on an Urchin head, this time that of Kevin Gaughan, and by seven minutes Sharpe has had his man on toast down the left and crossed for Windross to pump home his third goal of the season. The rest of the half, it has to be said, is quiet, and we reach the break 2–0 up and looking good.
The second half starts with Mark Booth flashing a shot across goal before Holdsworth heads over from the penalty spot. Windross then has two gilt-edged chances from which he really should make at least one count, but Darren Donnelly in the Havant nets is having a good game now, and makes two crucial blocks to deny him.
I introduce Sarge and Williams to proceedings and the two combine almost instantly to release big Willy down the right, but he can only blaze over the crossbar from a decent position. However, on 68 minutes Windross is tripped in the box as he bears down on Donnelly once again, it’s a penalty to the mighty Urchins, Lee Sharpe makes no mistake for 3–0, and that’s game over. 4–4–2 all along, who’d have thought? Yes, yes, I know… everyone except me.
Lee Sharpe quite rightly gets man of the match and takes the plaudits for another sensational performance, but the following day, he fails to report to training for the second time this month. Rather than send Sarge to mete out his own brand of justice on our wantaway winger, I go for a wander along Upminster Road, leaving Mick and Jorge to argue over who’s going to put the cones out. At my very first stop, I find Sharpey — elbow-deep in a sausage supper at the Atlantic Fish Bar.
This could go either way, but considering his form and flowing locks, I decide to put my arm around him rather than squeeze a bottle of ketchup over his head. He gets a final warning for unprofessional conduct, a fine of half a battered sausage and some of those chips before they get cold, and before this indiscretion can get to the press, I go straight down to the Romford Recorder to get ahead of the whole situation and tell them, instead, how happy I am with Sharpey’s recent performances. I couldn’t have played this any better if I’d planned it, which — let’s be clear — I absolutely didn’t.
There’s barely enough time to break wind before we’re welcoming Sutton United to The Stadium, another mid-table team who boast Adrian Mariappa in defence, on loan from Watford, and D/SC Joff Vansittart, who has scored seven in seven for them. However, Joff aside, the rest of their team’s average ratings are well below average, so as long as we can keep him quiet, we should do fine. Huge asterisk on that statement as ever.
For my part, I swap Cooke with Williams on the right but keep the other ten intact. Last time was good — let’s build.
I love the way Mark Booth bursts through midfield, and he does to great effect in the opening two minutes — creating a chance for Windross and then himself, but both miss the target. The second one goes out for a goal kick, which is cleared straight onto the head of Booth, and he pumps the ball back over the top for Birchall to chase, and just like that, it’s 1–0 to the Urchins, with less than three minutes on the clock! Boom, hoisted by your own petard, FM2005! Have some of that!
The minutes tick by and the game is all half chances for us, until a massive one arrives: Sharpe looks like he’s out of ideas on the left flank, but swivels and finds an unbelievable inch-perfect pass to put Birchall clean through the centre! He makes it into the box, but fires wide with the keeper advancing — it’s a massive chance, and he must hit the target. Only Mick’s hands prevent my head from hitting the ground.
Sutton’s threat comes from, you guessed it, Joff Vansittart, who forces Corderoy to tip a firm drive around the post for a corner after beating Gaughan easily. However, from said corner, the ball is cleared, comes back in, and Vansittart scuffs a shot straight at Corderoy that somehow dribbles through him and in for 1–1. I tell you what, Corderoy occasionally makes me want to slap him right around the face.
Four minutes later, a long ball humped forward by Sutton falls to their other striker, Ben Thompson, who hits a shot from just inside the area that is definitely within arm’s reach of Corderoy… and it’s 2–1. You know, I might actually slap him at half time. What the hell is he doing in there? There’s absolutely no way we should be losing this game.
The second half starts, Sutton pump another ball into the box… and Cabrera hoofs Thompson into the sky for a penalty to the visitors, which they promptly score. Then, Peter Fear runs onto a loose ball, hits a shot that deflects off Watt, spins high into the sky over Corderoy, and it’s 4–1. From literally nowhere, we’ve gone from 1–0 up and cruising to 4–1 down. My jaw is on the ground.
I go to a 4–2–4 for the last 20 minutes, but what difference does it make? That’s right — zero. It’s very much one of those days. Fortunately we’re at home, so I’m off to the Windmill the moment the game ends. I could do with a stiff one after that result. Elcock, Bonar, Pegger — you’re with me.
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