*If the pictures are too small, please right click and open in another tab.

Well well well. I’m back and boy do I have a lot to cover. Before I start though, I will try to do you all a favour and keep this as entertaining as possible to keep your minds temporarily off the shitshow that went down last night across the pond.

Premier League





Now, at first glance everything looks rather great and I would love to be boasting about my managerial ability. However at closer inspection it does look less deserved. As can be seen, we are conceding FAR too many goals. We have one of the worst defensive records in the league, and it doesn’t look to be getting better anytime soon. Now you are probably thinking “well that’s your fault for selling Reid and bringing in two lesser known, inexperienced players”, well I don’t put the blame on my CB’s, I’m finding my fullbacks are more the problem.

My CB’s are regularly getting above a 7.0 each game, and to be fair so are my full backs, but what I’m finding is my RB position is considerably weaker than the rest of the defence. Arbeloa is my starting RB, and I actually really like him and he’s really reliable. However, he isn’t quite the player he once was and does get caught out when chasing players. To add to that, my back up RB Sam Byram is just not Premier League quality at all. As much as I love him in real life, in this game I’m finding him a complete liability whenever he plays. Maybe I need to get him on loan next season and see if he can develop a bit, but I’m already thinking of selling him as I have a replacement already lined up.

What might stick out the most there is a certain defeat to a certain Premier League winning club that rhymes with IStillCantBelieveTheyWonTheLeagueeicester. This game is definitely a reason as to why our GA is so high. The best way I can describe the game is that it was a complete anomaly. They were 5-1 up at half time and there was just nothing I could do to stop Jamie Vardy (who scored 5) and Leicester. I’m actually pretty happy I managed to keep the margin of loss to 4.

The 6-2 win to Everton later on in the month made up for the lost goal difference, so overall I’m not too concerned anymore. We are scoring a hell of a lot of goals, so as long as that is happening and our GD stays above our rivals, then I’m not going to try and do too many drastic changes before next season.

A few stupid loses were in there too. We have lost too many games already this season and I fear it could effect us at the end of the season. Two losses to Watford and a loss to Sunderland and Southampton should have all been preventable and we should have achieved draws at least. Fortunately Manchester City had an awful start to the season which is what keeps us above them.

Lastly, I think I should comment how Tottenham are fisting everyone in the league. I’m not sure if this is a thing that a lot of players are experiencing with Spurs? But for me they didn’t concede a goal until their 15th game of the season and are just scoring and winning for fun.

EURO Cup

Here is how the EURO cup campaign went. We qualified through the play-off round much more comfortably than we did the previous round and were handed a relatively nice group. Fiorentina were the obvious big guns of the group and I did have a slight concern over FC Kobenhavn, but I was confident we could make it though.

Here is how the group finished. Nothing really too special to report on other than the fact I was surprised how badly FC Kobenhavn performed. I had never heard of Konyaspor so I didn’t know what to expect from them, but when comparing the two, Kobenhavn definitely gave me the harder games, despite the draw I got against Konyaspor which was just a typical FM’ing.

The next round sees us against Spartak Moscow who I believe we should be beating. What is interesting is that there are not many “great” teams left in the knockout faze. Manchester United are the standouts, but other than that I quite fancy it.

EFL Cup Now some of you may remember from my previous post (If you haven’t read it please go back and check it out!) that I said I was going to be taking this competition seriously due to its European spot. I have stuck by my word an found myself in the final.

In my opinion we took the hard route. We beat both the top two teams in league to get to where we are. Yes, they may have had weaker sides whilst I played strong teams, but we still beat them.

The Bournemouth game did give me a mini heart attack as they were far superior in the first leg, but we brought it back and scored 3 in the second half of the second leg.

FA Cup

The FA cup route so far has been fairly routine. We have been given a nice draw so far and our aim was to reach the fifth round, which we are now in. Depending on if we win the EFL cup is whether I decide still take this seriously as we are still in all competitions and there are a lot of games and we don’t have the biggest squad in the world.

Transfer



I only made a few transfers this winter. I have been playing Randolph as my number 1 for most of the season, but I feel like we really needed a step up, and so I brought Matthew Ryan in. He’s only 24, so he has potential in him to still get better.

Secondly, I feel this one is a bit surprising. Ronaldinho himself has decided to give the Premier League a go at the ripe old age of 36. He was mainly brought in to tutor for the last 6 months and then hopefully be employed as a coach. Although he isn’t registered for the league, he did manage to get a goal in the FA cup game against Cardiff.

SQUAD

Lastly, here you can see how the team has been doing on the whole. What you can see is not my first team, but the team that beat Cardiff.

Zaza has continued his form and is our top goalscorer (18) by quite a margin, followed by Calleri (11) and Sakho (9). Payet had a slow start this season, but around Christmas he really started to pick up and is now really doing bits for the team.

The big surprises for me were how well Feghouli and Tore have been. 8 goals and 3 assists for Feghouli and 4 goals and 6 assists for Tore have really helped the team come out of some sticky situations.

Despite Lanzini’s 5 goals and 8 assists I have still found myself a little bit disappointed in him. He seems to show up for maybe 1 or 2 games and then go missing for the next 3. The same goes for Ayew, who has 6 goals and assists. He has recently started to improve, but at the start of the season he was lacking any real impact.

I feel maybe I’m being a bit too harsh though. We are scoring a lot of goals and they are coming from all over the place. I’m hoping our defence shapes up a little bit more over the second half of the season, but that is really all I’m concerned about.

I hope you have enjoyed this! I will have another update at the end of the season.