And thus the 2009-10 season comes to an end (before you get confused, I mean in the comfortable enclosure of Football Manager 2010, the football simulation game I've written about earlier). There's no easy way to get my actual history or statistics out of the game, so the following is from memory.
The year didn't start all that well: being a complete newbie to FM2010, I had no idea what I was doing, and consequently (1) signed up lots of so-so players at exorbitant rates, (2) moved people around quite a bit trying to come up with a flexible strategy, which meant that my team took ages to get to know each other, and (3) took a while figuring out all the ways I can affect on-field performance (I'm still discovering new ones!). Still, at some point early on, my team did quite well, moving up to the mid-ranges of the Scottish Third Division (as high as #5 or maybe even #4, I think) and a couple of games into the Scottish Cup (2, I think). So not a bad start.
Things only really started to go pear-shaped in the last three months of game time (two weeks in real world time). Something went wrong somewhere - tiredness? A lack of senior strikers? Some angst over players whose contracts could not be renewed because of, ah, mutual differences? I had no idea: all I know is that once my two favourite players (Craig Gunn and Gary Tierney) were out of play because of injury, the squad slowly collapsed from a winning, positive team to a depressed group incapable of scoring against the weakest opponents. I managed to drag us through to the final, narrowly winning one match, which at least kept our losing streak to a merely-embarrassing eight. And that victory - along with the return of Gunn, Tierney, and some very talented new players - buoyed us up enough to keep us scoring goals (without, alas, clear victories) through our last few matches.
... which is pretty awful, as those last few matches ended up deciding our final position in the list. For ages, we maintained a very respectable #6 in the season (not bad for a team the press had written off to a #9 or #10!). As the last six matches came upon us, #7 and #8 were edging closer and closer to us. The last two matches - with those two exact teams - sealed our fate; a draw and a loss results in us having to settle for a very disappointing #8.
On the plus side, we've got some fantastic new players coming in over the transfer period (one of whom I played in that crucial last match: a good move, as he set up a crucial goal assist and played excellently in general); we have a lot of older, expensive players (thanks to my ineffectual negotiation last year) who will be renegotiating their contracts or leaving altogether. And now that I have a more-or-less clear strategy (aggressive 4-3-1-2s moving to 4-2-1-3 or 4-4-2 depending on our opponents), I can pick up players who fill those roles, and fill them well. Most of all, I'm looking forward to picking one or two core teams, and having them play each other extensively to build up camaraderie before Third Division season 2010-11 starts. Next season: #4 or bust.
Incidentally, losing out on #6 is slightly less grating now that I've discovered that the actual Elgin City team came nineth that year! Okay, I'm only doing one position better than the actual team, but for somebody who started the season knowing nothing about football, it's not a bad start.
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