retired_pahuja_satish

I like the story, but I don't think many will appreciate your comment in your first post about other people's stories. Everyone has their own style of writing, people may find yours tedious and boring also.

retired_mekeesha

Unchartered Waters

Pre-season friendlies have their uses but they are little guide as to how your opponents will fight in the competitive real world, so it was with some trepidation that I approached our first fixture, away to Halifax. I knew my choice for match day squad and tactics; now to put it all to the test. I had to also consider the coming seven days; the next two fixtures would be against teams also expected to struggle this season; Leigh RMI and Forest Green, games I’d really have to win if I was transfer the confidence I was feeling to the supporters and get the board off my back for a while.


Saturday 9th August: Halifax 5 – 1 Stanley

I had no injury concerns other than Clitheroe who’s done his groin for a couple of months, but he wasn’t in contention for a first choice line-up anyway. Reiter looks after the onion-bag whilst I put the mysterious Roberto on the bench, partly to get to know him and assess his reactions. For my central defenders I opted for the old guard of Howarth, Halford, and Smith, joined by Coulson on the bench owing to his pre-season form. We can call on him if our defence is outgunned in the air. The unlucky Clarke would miss out on this fixture but I expect him to contribute well in coming matches. Brannan and Armstrong would control the middle of the park with Durnin shouting the odds from the touchline, ready to deputise should the need arise. Mama and Houghton would of course be responsible for creating our chances and I gave them licence to roam, switching wings to bamboozle the fullbacks. I was left with a dilemma in the centre of midfield – I decided to start with Campbell whose attacking qualities impressed me in the friendlies rather than the more cautious Langley even though we are away to a strong opponent. Simon would be on the bench should we need to consolidate or I decided my judgement was misplaced. Up front partnering Bhutia I’d be taking a major risk with the dubious Gary Williams – he has something to prove. James would be ready to come on should Wacko Williams go weird again.

I’d worked so hard to prepare for this moment – the training and tactics were fine tuned, and now with kick-off approaching my stomach was turning liquid. It’s a strange new experience when you first realise that what happens is your responsibility but that you can’t run onto the pitch to sort problems out yourself – and boy did we have problems. You feel helpless once that whistle blows; to cover my nerves I stood on the touchline and shouted myself hoarse to no good purpose. Together with Darren and John Durnin we drowned out the away crowd throughout of the match, bringing wry smiles to the faces of the Halifax bench and the poor fourth official. “Newbies!” they all jeered, sagely.

The referee blew the whistle and we were away. And you know, for a golden literal minute there it all looked so good. Straight from the kick-off the ball was fed to Mama and he went tearing down the wing, striking terror into the startled Halifax defenders who had no idea who this kid was. He slammed the ball into the six-yard box but our front two were a little slow to read him. The defence half cleared the ball which found its way back to Mama; he fired at goal but their goalie was up to it. He did the same again two minutes later – life was looking so good.

Halifax quickly rallied and within a couple of minutes they’d launched their first attack, rattling the woodwork twice in rapid succession. The first ten minutes had seen an end-to-end thriller with six decent chances and entertainment such as you wouldn’t get at the Bernebau. Then disaster struck; Michael Houghton took a nasty knock and had to hobble off. I didn’t have any cover for his position so I had to stick Langley on even though he can’t dribble or cross. As a result we completely lost our rhythm and lost our way.

On 16 minutes we conceded our first goal when one of their forwards was left in acres of space in the penalty box – Smith had gone AWOL. Slowly we got back into the game and on 33 minutes equalised. Inevitably it was Mama weaving his magic and crossing so sublimely that even the woeful Williams couldn’t miss a tap in. At half time we went in level despite a disappointing performance. All to play for, but some rude words would be required in the dressing room. I told the lads to pull their fingers out of their arses, especially at the back, and threw in the suggestion that they send the ball down the right at every opportunity – Mama was our only player to worry the opposition and we had to exploit that.

Halifax came out for the second half with a different, 4-3-3 formation - clearly my oppo Chris Wilder had kept a calmer head and thought through his tactics more effectively than I had; he’d reasoned that our defenders could buckle under a serious onslaught. He turned out to be right - look, I’m new to this side of the touchline, okay? When I saw what was happening I screamed out instructions to tighten up at the back and was still trying to tell Brannan, Armstrong and Langley to drop back and support the central defence when they went ahead with a carbon-copy of our goal after Langley failed to track back. “Ignore what I’m trying to tell you!” I bellowed, drowned out by the home crowd, “Attack! Attack!” I could feel the blood pumping in my forehead. The rest of the second half mostly involved being out-thought and out-played as we endeavoured to soak up the pressure. Our few moments of respite all came courtesy of Mama’s mazy runs but no one could capitalise on his crosses. Over 90 minutes he put in almost a dozen dazzling runs but unfortunately he wasn’t just more than the opposition could cope with – he proved too damn good for our pack of mules.

Eventually I replaced Howarth and the inexplicably poor Armstrong with Coulson and Durnin but no sooner had I done so than they scored again, directly from a corner, followed five minutes later by a goal from a direct free kick. As if the torture wasn’t deemed enough, they slotted one more in on the final whistle to make the result a humiliating 1-5.

Forty-five minutes of utter stress and misery left me profoundly depressed and really at a loss as to understand what happened. One game in and my job was on the line – as I saw it. The chairman wasn’t speaking to me, the press gave me a roasting and the view from the terraces was, ‘We expect to go down, but not to tamely lie down and surrender.’ They were right – with the exceptions of the two Indians no one displayed a modicum of fighting spirit after the opening ten minutes – why? This was such an historic fixture. It’s not as if Houghton died or anything. The most visibly woeful individual performance was from our new Austrian goalkeeper Reiter who performed more like Julie Andrews in ‘The Sound of Music’, so he’d have to pay the price. I figured I’d put Speare between the sticks for the next fixture even though he’d bad-mouthed me in the local rag on Friday and we’re discussing a bid I’d received for him from Hendon.

Incidentally our physio Scott Clarke reckoned that Houghton needed a week to recover from his twisted knee, thus missing what were now two crucial matches, at home to Forest Green and away to Leigh RMI, both of whom worryingly won comfortably (Forest Green 3-0). Prendergast would have to deputise, and he’d have to be part of a team that delivered both results and performances, particularly in our first ever Conference fixture at the Crown Ground.

Watching the fiasco unfold with our management team was another of yesterday’s semi-legends in the lower reaches of the English league and good friend of a number of our coaching staff, Ally Pickering. He was moving on from a less-than-successful spell in the twilight of his playing career with Mossley and he’d accepted my invitation the week before to pop round for a chat. This was at a time when we still had a few pennies left in the kitty and I’d forgotten to call him to cancel. I really wasn’t in the mood after the match but he was the only person willing to talk pleasantly to me anyway. I apologised for wasting his time, but he was far more positive than me and offered some very useful constructive criticism concerning our defensive inadequacies. He’d been intending to retire but after our conversation he announced that he’d like to give himself one last playing challenge – one last season on the pitch to organise our defence and share in the coming glory; he saw the potential that I’d believed in until some point after 4 p.m. that afternoon. In addition, he said he’d help out with coaching, particularly in helping with my goalkeeping situation – he’d gently pointed out the problem that I’d created in importing two new ‘keepers who didn’t understand a word of English between them and unsettling the two decent English incumbents. He’d persuaded me of his value to our cause but I felt I had to bring him back down to planet Earth by pointing out the financial plight I’d brought about.

The next morning at 9 he called on the chairman and offered to sign for us on a three-year contract with a reasonable salary of £20000, and with Whalley having his own concerns about the mood around the club was moved by Ally’s generosity. He did have a degree of self-interest in the arrangement; he realised that from his stint as player/manager at his home club Mossley that he needed to gain more coaching experience before returning to management and he wanted to work with us while collecting his badges and suchlike. Fair enough – an honest symbiotic relationship in the making. An hour later as the squad turned up for the extra training session on defending set pieces I’d imposed Ally was there to greet them. I almost broke into a smile – what a guy!

On Monday morning I got a call from Nikki Bull’s agent informing me that after much reflection he’d definitely like to come to us. Jeez what a saga; now that I’m nervous about whether my two foreign ‘keepers will settle I realise that I should have stuck with my rule of only bringing in players I know and can vouch for personally. Now we’re definitely out of cash. Damn! But then an hour later we got a call from the Hendon chairman offering £12000 for Jamie Speare. A dilemma, but then Jamie had lost all faith in me and Nikki appeared to be keen on me so I decided Speare could go. He was a firm favourite with the fans however and I was risking further alienating them at a time I could ill afford to do so. I wasn’t sure I really liked this job after all. I’d also have to revise my plans for Tuesday and leave him out after all.

retired_mekeesha

You're quite right SoS. I should have stressed more clearly that I find the contributions in this forum to be very readable and entertaining, but there are some other fansites on the Scene where the nature of the stories is quite different. But even there I'm sure many people do enjoy those and would be immediately turned off mine. Reading tastes are always subjective.

Anyway I hope people will make honest comments on this story, whether they be positive or negative. But of course I hope you do enjoy it!

Bomberman

One tip: make your story easier on the eyes. Atm its just chunk after chunk of writing. Add some bold text or summit, it will look nicer. :thup:

btw, are you really Indian too?

retired_mekeesha

Thanks fo rthe tip Karanfett.

I'm half Scottish/half Bengali. Bangladesh aren't in the game but when my father was born it was all India.

In my savegame I actually started out with an alter-ego managing Mohammedan FC which is an all-Muslim club in Calcutta but I went on permanent holiday to focus on Accrington.

So the intro to my story is perhaps 10% autobiographical.

BarryLFC

there's an all-Muslim club in Calcutta? That gives me an idea for a story...

retired_mekeesha

It's true - Mohammedan have the biggest potential fanbase in India. it's their first season in the top flight and it's touch and go as we approach the end of the season whether they'll stay up.

Of course managing them in CM (and I'm sure it'll be no different in FM) is nigh-on impossible without personal knowledge since there's no indication in the database to tell you the religion of players.

The db does let you know who's Basque (an ethnic criterion) for managers of Athletc Bilbao which is always a great challenge but I do accept that me aside there's no great commercial pressure to make that sort of effort for Mohammedan. It would be the ultimate LLM challenge though!

So keeping winking HD; in the meantime here comes my next installment .....

retired_mekeesha

Tuesday 12th August: Stanley 3 - 1 Forest Green Rovers

I refrained from making wholesale changes and simply pleaded the lads to put on a show for the fans who’d backed them for so long. I put Roberto in goal with Reiter on the bench – and crossed my fingers very tightly. Pickering was straight in with Smith dropping to the bench, Prendergast was in for the injured Houghton and I started with Lutel James up front and Williams on the bench. I sent them onto the pitch with a silent prayer.

In the first minute, straight from the kick-off we started with our characteristic opening pressure although this time it merely resulted in a booking after ten seconds for James. throughout the first half we had the bulk of possession and did put them under some pressure, creating a few half-chances without setting the stadium alight. Satisfyingly however, we controlled the midfield and kept their forwards well away from our young Spaniard. In the 38th minute we made out dominance count after Armstrong found Bhutia in space with a good long pass. Bhutia charged into the box and although the defender with him got in a fair tackle as Bhutia was about to pull the trigger the ball rolled invitingly to the feet of his confidence-lacking striking partner who was following up. Thus the quiet first half drew to a close with James’ goal bringing a relaxed ambience to the dressing room analysis, in contrast the that at Halifax three days before, and the 2000-odd Reds who’d turned up to see their first Conference game were content.

Soon into the second half the game came to life when Armstrong, determined to make up for his dismal last performance lofted a ball into the penalty box which Mama connected with, only to see the ball cleared off the line. Then we started to show some real class with lovely passing moves most of which involved the experienced heads of Armstrong and Pickering along with the vision of young Steve Campbell which drew warm appreciation. On 67 minutes Armstrong broke up a Rovers move and quickly fed the ball through to Bhutia who broke the offside trap. The ‘keeper parried his shot but the ball fell kindly to Prendergast who gratefully converted the chance.

With the game sewn up I took off the tiring Armstrong and James and brought on Durnin and Williams. Within seconds in their first attack in the match Rovers scored with a simple route one manoeuvre aided by an unnecessary back-header by Howarth. the poor Spanish kid hadn’t had a shot to save throughout his debut and there he was picking the ball out of the castanet.

Before I even had a chance to panic we were straight up the other end peppering their goal with chance after chance, and within five minutes we’d restored out two-goal cushion through a fine goal by Campbell. A free kick on the halfway line by Brannan found Prendergast who won an aerial challenge to nod the ball towards the penalty spot for the onrushing young attacking midfielder to steal in Scholes-like and finish with a sweet half volley.

With ten minutes to go Smith came on to relieve the 36-year old Pickering. With his departure Rovers promptly created an opening in the very space he’d owned and forced Roberto into his first competitive Stanley save. Other than that they never seriously troubled us and our victory was a comfortable one – I could breathe, I could sleep; life wasn’t so bad after all. It wasn’t a great performance other than in patches but for the time being we were more than content. Prendergast had filled in well down the left, Campbell in front of the two defensive midfielders had controlled the middle of the park, and Mama earned the man-of-the-match award despite being relatively subdued. Already the wags on the terraces were encouraging him by breaking out into a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody whenever he was on the ball.

We had some pleasant training sessions in the latter part of the week, and then on the Saturday morning as the rest of us boarded the team bus for Leigh Jamie Speare set off for the Home Counties and a new start at Hendon. I elected to retain the same line-up that played so well on Tuesday with the exception of starting with Paul Mullen rather than risking the unpredictable Williams again. I decided against tinkering too much with the tactics for fear of confusing the simple souls. We weren’t going away to repeat a Halifax – on that point we were unanimous.

retired_mekeesha

Saturday 16th August: Leigh RMI 1 - 5 Stanley

We got off to a tidy start, playing with confidence, stroking the ball around without any apparent hang-ups from our last away performance a week ago. We opened the scoring after only five minutes with Campbell getting onto a through-ball from Prendergast out on the left wing. Although Leigh started to come into the game after that we always looked threatening on the break. On twelve minutes Bhutia hammered the ball against the upright which they matched ten minutes later from a free kick. Then a poor Leigh free kick gave the ball straight to Pickering who lugged his aged legs from one penalty box to the other to lay on a pass to Mullen. The goalie blocked his shot but Mama followed up to score.

The Leigh forwards were breeching our back line too easily too often and at one point Roberto made a fine save to maintain a clean sheet. However we were matching every Leigh attack with a counter and on the half-hour mark it was Prendergast’s turn to hit the post. On the stroke of half time we sewed up the result when the glorious Mama did his stuff and laid the ball into the feet of his compatriot in the six-yard box who applied the finish despite the close attention of two defenders.
The break in the dressing room had almost a party atmosphere, but I insisted that we needed to fully avenge our thrashing of seven days ago; “No let up, no mercy” I urged. Sure enough straight from the kick-off Mama danced down the middle of the park leaving half the Leigh side dumbfounded as the rounded the goalie to make it four. It was so easy; it was poetry. Leigh did pull one back with an excellent free kick on the D and followed up with two hot chances including rattling the woodwork within the next two minutes. We rode the pressure although Mama picked up a booking for a reckless shove and I had to replace the elderly Armstrong and Pickering along with Prendergast; Smith, Durnin and Cook came on for the last half-hour. I’m realising that if the old boys are never going to last the 90 minutes it gives me problems should we have injuries on the pitch or if I need to make tactical changes.

Then Smith nodded home straight from a Brannan corner and it was 5-1, a reverse of a week ago – vengeance was mine. It was a thoroughly entertaining performance and a terrific result (we’ve now seen a remarkable 16 goals in our first three games – not all in the right end of course!). Admittedly our opponents again made it somewhat easy for us – but then Halifax might say the same of us; but the last two games showed that we have enough quality to stay well away from the drop zone. the whole team played well and as a unit, other than Halford who continues to look uncertain in the role at the heart of central defence and Mullin, who was willing enough but looked a little short of quality. Behind Bhutia our attacking midfield personnel were looking very exciting. The pundits generously if deservedly granted both Indians a perfect ten out of ten for their performances and again Mama took the man-of-the-match award. How many awards, how many tens would he accrue? ‘Mama, life had just begun….’

A Multi-national Force
On Monday, after discussions with the chairman I used £2000 of the £12000 we got for the sale of Jamie Speare to bring Nikki Ball to the club. Looking at them in training Ally, Darren and I felt that there was little to separate our three imported goalkeepers in terms of ability so we tried to assess their temperaments. Reiter seemed to be having trouble settling and was clearly subdued but Roberto had been assured so far. Nikki I knew to be up for it.

I followed that transfer up with another coup – a pair of internationals, no less. I’d invited two Trinidadians I’d met on holiday three winters back for a close look. Stokely Mason was a 27-year old striker with ten caps from the improbably named club ‘Joe Public’ who was still as sharp as I’d remembered him and was potentially that missing foil for Bhutia. If we could get a work permit the chairman was willing to release £3000 to secure him. I kept him on trial and got him to work on forging a striking relationship with Baichung while waiting for the documentation to arrive. His colleague from ‘Defence Force’ was appropriately a right-sided central defender with 17 caps by the name of Anton Pierre. I was very hopeful that he could plug that last gap in my formation in the middle of the
defence. in the meantime I accepted a bid of a grand from Kidsgrove to shift Steve McDonald off our wage bill as he’d never figure in my first team plans.

Bomberman

Oooo, forget meeting another Indian on this board, but another half Bengali too? What are the odds...