FEBRUARY 2010Groundhog DayFebruary was an odd month, not least because Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell show up.
Let's have a look at my fixtures for the month and see if you can work out what I mean...
February 2010
Chelmsford (H)
Stockport (A)
Salisbury (H)
Southport (A)
Stevenage (H)
Stevenage (H)
Stevenage (H)
Stevenage (A)
Grays (A)Yes, like the guy who has to move out of his rented place five days before completing on his new flat and so comes to stay at your house and never goes home, Stevenage set up shop in our back yard and we had to get the council in to evict them in the end.
Fucking pikeys.
The month was already fairly surreal even before we wandered into the Stevenage Tri-angle, because I installed the new
patch enhancement pack and that forked my tactics.
The old 8.0.0 version mostly ignored team orders and mostly followed individual opposition instructions, whereas the new 8.0.2 version does... well... I'm not sure. Suffice to say for a couple of games I couldn't get any one to stand where I wanted them which led to much swearing and wondering if I could go back to the old version.
Still, I powered on, with mixed results.
The first signs of trouble come when I struggle past Chelmsford at home, going up 2-0 and then allowing a goal which makes the last half hour tight, but we hold on for the 2-1 win.
The score is repeated in the following game in a fantastic win in Stockport. When you look at just the squads, they're clearly the best team in the division, but this is the second time we've done them and defender Tom Roberts gets his first goal for the club.
We're then off the rails though, with none of the control that we've seen in earlier games as we're just not in the running in a 2-1 loss to Salisbury at home and then a 1-0 defeat in Southport.
So I fiddle with the tactics a bit before our Stevenage-fest and give the new look a run out in the reserves, taking over from AssMoo for one game. Which we promptly lose 5-0 to Ipswich reserves.
As it's so clear that that isn't working, I decide to stick it in against Stevenage anyway and the real team seem to follow the new instructions much better than the stiffs do, as Ademeno spanks in two goals and Rob Dale gets a third in a 3-0 win for a much needed three points in the league.
We then face up to Stevenage in defence of our Setanta Shield and do them again, 2-0, thanks to another brace from Ademeno.
Unfortunately, with Ademeno injured in that one he won't be around for the second-half of what turns out to be our Stevenage-foursome.
So I push Tom Webb on with Rob Dale for Part III, (FA Trophy, today), and call up David Connolly from the reserves. He's an academy product and Moo said he was going to be really good... some day... but he hasn't really looked the part so far.
It's actually another youth product who saves us here though, as we try to chase a 0-1 deficit in the second half with a knackered team, so I send on Connolly and midfielder Ian Cooke who had been tearing things up in the u18s, rating a 7.87.
Cooke looks a bit lightweight, as you'd expect of someone who has a whopping 1 in strength, but on 84 minutes he's clattered outside the area, picks himself up and tonks a freekick toward goal.... which smashes Kaid Mohamed in the face and bounces into the other corner from the one the keeper is now standing in for the equaliser.
Which takes us to game four... the replay which is back in Hertfordshire.
Large parts of the team are now either knackered or injured or suspended, to the point that when I pick my team I'm left with no subs who can play DL or, more worryingly, DC.
So things are not going too well when Craig Pead is injured in the first half and we go to the break trailing 2-1 with the only good performance coming from goal-scorer Rob Dale.
So when defender Martin Kelly is sent off on the hour, we're really in trouble. I push 5'9" fullback Marcel McKie into the vacant DC slot and move DM Chris Lines back to DL and pretty much give up on the game.
No one's told David Connolly though and the kid gets his first goal of his career as he barges into the box, robs the goalkeeper of the ball and taps into the empty net to tie the game at 2-2.
With extra time and penalties on the cards it's still going to be really hard for us to survive.
Although maybe not. Young kid Cooke curls in a corner and Tom Roberts goes from never having scored for us to having two in three games and we've won!
So even though our last game is a bad one - we scrape a draw against Grays in a game that features another red card for us and a yellow for Tom Roberts that will see both of our starting DCs suspended for the first game of March - we're still happy because Ian Kid Cooke scores his first career goal and at least it's not bloody Stevenage any more.
Thankfully for us, while we've been struggling, so has everyone else...