Down to the wire – An incredible season ending
This little story was not something I thought I’d ever write, mainly because although I have enjoyed other’s stories over the last few years in here, my seasons never seem to throw up the kind of excitement of others in this forum. Until now. I was keen to write something in the past, but having just finished a season inside FM2006 with my beloved Newcastle, I felt I just had to share this with you guys.
It isn’t the most incredible season in terms of results, far from it. An ordinary (and lets face it these days, expected) season of high promise and pitiful (like real life) Newcastle performances. You know the ones, they beat Liverpool 3-0 away from home when they have no chance and then become only the 2nd team all season to lose to the 20th placed team, at home.
I won’t go into every game here, or even cover most of my season in any great detail, because my season was only extraordinary in the last few games and in fact became down right Unbelievable when I played a 39th Premiership game and no this was no bug this time…
As an overview though, its worth explaining how my black and whites managed to become title contenders throughout the season, even if they couldn’t progress in the league cup, uefa cup or the damned (why do I always draw Chelsea) FA Cup.
My season started off with the usual wheeling and dealing only associated to a non-Abramovich owned club with 3 “steals” coming in to bulk up the squad. I make no bones about the fact that we had only a few million to spend and coulnt afford to go searching the signature of a certain Gudjohnnson (who headed off gleefully to Liverpool for £20 million). No, for us, it would be searching through the cheap seats to find a few players who could at least fill in whenever Dyer or Bowyer or any of the other prima donnas felt their Porsche needed an extra coat of wax. I also had a decidedly dodgy wage bill, already over £100k a week above what the board wanted (thanks Graeme Souness).
The acquisitions didn’t go too well either, I got bombed out on a few, turned away with a fat door slammed in my face on others, but finally managed to wrestle Billy Jones (to shore up the ever leaky sieve that is the Newcastle defence) from Crewe and shrewd purchase of Mark Kerr (mid) from Dundee United for just £600k and a poultry £250k for the attacking midfielder Jaime Ruiz from Cortulua. All of these players would be “useful additions to the squad” my trusty sidekick Alan Murray informed me.
My tactics varied throughout the season, but mainly involved having Michael Owen as a lone striker, because although I had the services of Magpies legend Alan Shearer, he would tire easily, not score many and generally be only good enough for a sub. Ameobi will get better of course, but he wasn’t ready to lead my line just yet. I tinkered, ala Benitez, but usually it was just lonely short stuff Owen up front. My defence would be based around Taylor and Boumsong and for the most part this worked well, until Taylor decided to punch Teddy Sheringham in a late season match and get himself banned for a lengthy period. Babayaro was one of those I eyed to cash in on, early in the season, but he survived my cull of useless idiots and played reasonably well at left back. The right back spot featured numerous players, even having to resort to testing out a few of the “kids”, but finally settled on Carr to fill the role late in the season as his form got better.
Midfield included Luque (a stellar season from him), Parker, Emre and Solano in the main with Dyer playing the man behind Owen. Alan O’brien was the only man to really break this setup, coming in for Solano or Dyer when needed. Odd appearances because of injury from Lee Clark and new signings Mark Kerr and Ruiz would pretty much sum up my midfield.
Shay Given was the only choice for goalkeeper and played an incredible 52 straight matches, missing not one game all season. Harper was not best pleased…
We didn’t really have a pre-season, one of the difficulties in having to play “Euro Vase” games I guess. Despite this, we were playing well early on and with Owen bagging a stunning 11 goals in the six games, we made it through to the Uefa cup proper after wins over Gloria, Deportivo (4-2 agg) and finally Ahtletico Bilbao (5-4 agg). Our run in the main competition though came to an end early on with defeat to Belgiums Germinal Beerschot, losing 5-4 over two legs in round one. Flattered to deceive once more you see. You get used to this as a Newcastle fan, so I wasn’t that surprised, if a tad disappointed.
The league cup would prove no different for us with a 2-1 home defeat to Man UTD in round three, leaving us to “concentrate on the league”. Concentrate we did too, for we got off to a flyer in the Premiership with 3 wins and draw (Chelsea) and followed that up with a run to mid December which saw us in 2nd place without a defeat, although a few too many draws.
Christmas is usually the time the side I manage go to pieces, if its gonna happen, it will happen over Christmas for me. With a home defeat to 19th placed Portsmouth on boxing day, my fears were realised. The team then surprised me, by winning the next 5 straight, including wins over Arsenal and (5th placed) Aston Villa. This elevated us to top spot for a while, although Man UTD regained that with their in hand games won. Chelsea at this point lay 7th and well out of it. In fact our closest challengers for 2nd were Liverpool in 3rd and Arsenal in 4th.
January also saw us go through two rounds of the FA cup with wins over Swansea and Derby respectively, but a fifth round clash with Chelsea made sure we were not going to progress any further in February. This month also saw our mini slump with 3 0-0 games and a defeat in the league to Chelsea. This allowed Man UTD to open up a 7 point gap, but we remained in second place all the same.
March saw 3 wins and another draw, which left us with just 2 defeats in the league all season. The problem was, Man UTD had lost just two as well (to Chelsea and Everton (4-3)). We had managed a 2-2 draw at old Trafford in November, much against the run of play it has to be said and now at the start of April, crunch game had arrived. Due to play Man UTD, 3 days after their Champions League quarter final (against Chelsea) I was hoping for a bit of a chink in the armour to show. With Chelsea dealing first blood to the devils by beating them in the Champions League game (3-0) I seized my chance to pour scorn on Alex Ferguson’s title ambitions and frankly, he was having none of the mind games. We fought out another close game and with us just 2 points behind them, they went all defensive at St.James park to claim a boring 0-0 draw. That left 5 games in the Premiership and a 2 point gap from us to them.
Arsenal then put them to the sword in their next league game and we won away at 3rd placed Liverpool to claim top spot by a point with 4 games to go. Michael called for us to win the remaining 4 games to take the title (something the fans were now regularly talking about in the media as being something incredible as they were only expecting mid table obscurity before the season started). A 0-0 home draw against Fulham then followed for us, an 86th minute Owen goal was ruled out and how I would rue that one…as United went back top again with a win over West Ham (which sent them down).
Three games to go and we were tied at the top on the same points and same goal difference. The only thing keeping us in 2nd was the fact we had scored one goal less then United. We temporarily went back top after a shocking 1-1 draw at West Ham, but United made no mistake against Aston Villa and regained top spot by 2 points.
Two to go. We sunk Portsmouth at Fratton park at lunch time to give us a chance and with Man City taking Man UTD to 1-1 in the evening, we were back all square again with just the final league game remaining. Once again the only thing between us was they had scored 1 more goal than us, but we had the same points and the same goal difference. Our final games would be played on Sunday 7th May alongside each other, so I had a keen eye on their game against Everton (whom they lost to earlier in the season) and obviously trying to mastermind a win over Blackburn, who were on a 7 game unbeaten run. We too were on a rather good run with no defeats in 11, so I was confident we would not lose.
At half time the league table showed no change, except that we had clawed back the goal difference to level. We lead 2-1 and Man Utd led 1-0 against Everton thanks to Rooney’s goal. At this rate, we’d finish on the same points, same goal difference and incredibly the same goals scored. I wondered for a second how the league would separate us, but then the second half got under way and Blackburn equalised straight away, which made my thoughts academic.
With 10 minutes to go, I switched to an all out attack and brought Shearer and Ameobi on as we went to 3 up front. With 8 remaining, Owen was bought down in the box and we had a penalty! Meanwhile Id noticed that Everton had equalised thanks to Newcastle old boy Duncan Ferguson with a penalty on 79!!! This was too good to be true. United now drawing and with Owen about to take a penalty to score his 45th of the season with 8 minutes remaining. Surely if he scored this, we would be Premiership Champions against all odds.
Maybe we would have, in fact I am certain we would have been, but Michael spooned his penalty over the bar just like a Chris Waddle England penalty…why oh why do football clubs do this to you? Build you up, get you all excited and then **** on your dreams just as u start to dare to believe the impossible.
Our games both finished, us a 2-2 draw with Blackburn and Man UTD managing a 1-1 draw with Everton. Our title dreams were over. Or were they?
It was at this point of dejected despondency that I thought the game had decided to throw a bit of a Wenger, sorry, wobbly. Alex Ferguson saying in the press that “if Newcastle win, they are champions!”. He’s lost his rocker I thought, what the hell does he mean IF we win? We’ve ended the season. The guy has finally lost his marbles (or maybe SI have?). I checked the league table to make sure I hadn’t been drinking and sure enough we had all played 38 games and the season was done. The only thing I did notice however was that no “C” sat proudly next to Man Utd’s name. Hmmm, I wonder. I clicked continue and the news the next day showed that we did indeed have one more fixture to play in the premiership. The Premier League Playoff!!!!!
I have no idea if this is what would really happen, but it is fantastic to dream, although why dream when you can live them out in FM2006? It was set then, a one off playoff game at the new Wembley with nearly 90,000 in the ground to see who would win the English Premier League. Winner takes all 1 match with extra time and penalties if needed (oh god).
I wasn’t rising to Ferguson’s mind games, much in the same way as he hadn’t to mine earlier in the season, so I simply picked my strongest line up to face them and prayed for Owen to be on form.
The game started badly with Van Nistelrooy opening the scoring with a goal after just 8 minutes. Our team just weren’t playing and weren’t getting much of the ball earlier on either. We were then dealt two of the cruellest blows of all time. Inside a 6 minute period half way through the first half, Michael Owen went off injured on 26 thanks to some ridiculous “tackling” from Smith (who’d been shown the yellow in the first minute for a lunge on Luque. I should have seen what they were doing, but I didn’t and 6 minutes later, Shearer was off injured too. Again it was a “clumsy challenge” by Smith and STILL he remained on the pitch. Ferguson had simply set out to injur my strikers with his pet Pitbull, Alan Smith and working well it was too.
Despite the flow of attacking football, intertwined with various lunges on my players from the Pitbull Terrier we managed somehow to escape further torture, either in terms of player loss or goals. 1-0 half time.
I know I shouldn’t have, but I sympathised with my troops at half time, for they were being battered (in a physical sense) and I wanted to show them that I cared. I know, I’m an old softy.
Repaired, patched up and ready to give it their all again they headed out for the second half. Despite a few close shaves (Ameobi hit the bar) we couldn’t break their defence down. With 10 to go, the 3 man striker tactic came in and once again we forced a penalty, this time with just 4 minutes remaining and with Owen and shearer both off the park, it would be Kieron Dyer to ensure we made extra time.
He SCORES!!!!! The celebrations in the front room involved crushing the dogs leg as I whooped for joy round the living room and a rather sore ankle as I clumsily (Alan Smith like) clattered into the coffee table.
The remaining 4 minutes played out with us all over United like a rash, but no further goals and yet another injury, this time to Emre who had to go off. With 4 minutes of injury time to play (how on earth it was only 4 minutes I have no idea) we still had a chance to steal the title, but alas it wasn’t to be as the clock ticked away and we headed for Extra Time.
I gave the lads a pumped up team talk and told them they could win this and with 3 minutes of extra time played, Dyer forced his way into the box to shoot, only to be bought down by Silvestre, its was another penalty!!!
To win the League Title with a penalty in extra time of a playoff I never knew existed, Kieron Dyer had an immense responsibility, but this time Tim Howard was ready for him and saved it. Silvestre was dismissed for a professional foul, but I had 2 other players with less than 55% stamina remaining, so it was like 10 v 9 at this point.
Two minutes later and our dreams were finally shattered thanks to a solo goal of brilliance from Ryan Giggs, admittedly against a very tired and stretched team (id forgotten to change my tactics to a regular 4-2-2 at the end of the game in the excitement).
The remaining minutes saw United enjoying their football as we were run ragged for a final 10 minutes of pure hell.
It was over, we had lost the title and united had scooped it. Dramatic, incredible, unbelievable and sadly a trophy-less seasons for us in the end, but my, it’s a season I won’t forget in a hurry.
Here's to season two and less ankle sores.
http://redeyepc.co.uk/FM2006/final_table_pre_game.jpg http://redeyepc.co.uk/FM2006/new_playoff.jpg http://redeyepc.co.uk/FM2006/prem_playoff06.jpg 
Down to the VERY end - Premiership Playoff?!!?! 
and you'll soon learn what we don't like (just look for locked threads!) 
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