Part 10: Interlude: Midwinter Night's Dream.

Interlude: Midwinter Night's Dream.

Everything's going as well as could be hoped. We're undefeated through our first half year, and solidly in contention for promotion. We've only had one major injury so far, and the team seems to have gelled into a cohesive unit. That doesn't mean we can rest on our laurels, though. It's all about constant improvement if we want to become the very best, and if we want to gain promotion into the Football League next season.



These are the contracts that end in six months. Teams from other nations can sign players on a pre-contract six months prior to the end of the contract, so for example an Irish team could sign any of these guys to a pre-contract starting January 1st. Teams from England can only sign players from other English teams one month before their contract runs out, meaning we don't have to worry about anyone in our league or above it coming after our talent. We need to decide who we're going to offer a new contract to and who we're going to let go. We've also got coaches whose contracts will be up.



Here's the team, ranked by the players average rating. Rosetti is naturally our best attacker, but Hester is right up there with him, which means we're missing our best striker tandem for most of the rest of the season. Oriogun has been OK, but Robinson has been downright disappointing. Our best midfielders have been our captain McCarron and Billy Holsgrove, both of whom usually play outside positions. Duchamps and Johnston are our advance playmaker/ball winning midfielder tandem, and they've acquitted themselves well. Duchamps is completing nearly 90% of his passes, which is exactly what we need him to do. Ally McLaren is our best rated defender thus far, largely because he's got a great nose for goal. Stamp, Robinson, and Standing have all been disappointing thus far.



You can see why our defenders have lower ratings than our attackers and midfielders in this heat-map of our match against Colwyn Bay. It's in part because we play a high line where the defense is playing relatively close to midfield. Also, in looking at this I just realized I had my defensive minded midfielder dropping back into the same area my covering defender comes up towards (#6 and #4). The covering defender should be behind the offensive midfielder so that the players don't get too bunched together on the pitch. Whoops.



The result of playing higher up the pitch with a possession game is constant pressure upon our opponents that leads to a lot of shots, but leaves us susceptible to an opposing player getting behind our defense and catch us out of position on counter-attacks. We're essentially playing Lower League Tiki-Taka.



Our U21 and U18 players. Many of them have and will play for the First Team at some point this year but the stats shown are their performances in the U21 and U18 leagues. Silver stars indicate their rating for the youth team, and are obviously worse than gold stars because Football Manager opposes bimetallism.



This is an abbreviated depth chart for the team. As you can see, there are some positions (Striker, Center Midfield, Centerback) that we run three or more deep, and others where we... don't. This doesn't include our youth players, we've got two other keepers on the U18 squad for example, but it does show where we might need improvements.



Our players are almost all improving, some by leaps and bounds. Derek McLaughlin has gone from being roughly as good a keeper as John Bradley to significantly better. The only two players who've declined are Hotte and Johnston. Both are over 30 and have had injuries that have kept them out over a month so far this season.



Johnston is on the downslope of his career, but still playing pretty well. His contract is up at the end of the year, I'm uncertain whether to renew it or not.



Rosetti isn't improving as much because he's well above the level of play in the Skrill North. Without harder challenges, he'll stagnate and have more trouble reaching his potential.



It doesn't matter what they throw at us, the 4-4-2 can handle all of them.



Our early season tendency to dominate the first half and get dominated the second half has gone away, and now we're the ones most likely to score late in a game. Our assists are coming largely from the wings, while our right backs give up nearly as many assists as the rest of the team combined.



We're remarkably good at scoring on headers, which accounts for our success on throw-ins and set pieces.



These assists don't even count goals from throw-ins, of which we've had 6-8. We're making it count on set pieces, despite set piece tactics not being anything special. Still, they've been working in a league where a good defender has a marking score of 10.



The board remains content, despite being irritated at our loss in the FA Trophy. They're especially happy about the low wage bill, which is kind of funny given how much cash they've given us to play with.



The fans are very happy with some of our signings, especially considering how little we paid for most of them. Holsgrove especially has been excellent, playing on either wing with aplomb.



They can't all be winners. Stamp still rates out as someone who has the potential to succeed at a much higher level, but I've been playing him at his secondary position of right back most often rather than as a defensive midfielder, and it's showing.



We've been playing well, and the fans are happy with several of the players. Edwards is naturally a fan favorite, and despite already being 30 years old his performances seem to be improving.



The disparity isn't quite as large as it looks, Rosetti alone is earning over £1m a year. But we are seriously outspending our opponents by a three to one margin just with the players I've brought in. This will change by the time we reach League 1, and will change a lot if we can't resign Rosetti next year and have to transfer him/risk him leaving on a free.



Here's how our stats match up against the other teams in the Skrill South. I apologize for the bad cropping/cut and pasting. I'm very, very new at this. These are attributes that matter to all players regardless of position. I'm pleased with the high work rate and teamwork numbers, it means our players don't slack off during games and are good at playing a team game rather than trying to make things happen on their own.



We're in such good shape here because of McLaughlin's development. We weren't nearly this high to start the season. Handling is the biggest problem, it's one of the most important GK abilities and is something that really needs improvement. I'm changing McLaughlin's training to entirely focus on that skill.



Our defense is physically adept, but not necessarily the best in the league. They're pretty quick for the league, though, which helps them recover when our opponents break through our high line.



Our midfield, by comparison, is much better than our opposition. Even when we're not #1, we're off by less than a single attribute point.



As I've mentioned earlier, our attackers are very technically adept, but are also lead-footed. It's one reason why I chose to play a possession based game, we're simply not fast enough to play strong direct football. Our strikers can break down a defense, but they won't win a whole lot of foot races.



All those postponed games are coming to bite us in the ass. We've got 6 fixtures scheduled over the course of 11 days. Fucking Yorkshire weather is the bane of my existence.

We've got plenty of money to play with, £120k in wages a week and a transfer budget of nearly £3m. What do the denizens of the TackLyfeFooty.co.uk Forum think the team should be doing? Who should we be re-signing? Who should we be bidding adieu to? And what, if anything, should the team look to add? Also, we need at least one team song. I have no idea what it should be, but it should sound good when chanted by 10,000 drunken supporters for a half hour on end. I'll start playing again Sunday night, or earlier if I don't get any response.