Part 77: Chapter the Fourth: Giving as good as we get.

Chapter the Fourth: Giving as good as we get.
October 10, 2018-November 25, 2018

We have four home games in a row, against teams ranging from 3rd to 21st on the table. Burnley and Brentford are off to hot starts, while Barnsely and Nottingham Forest are our near neighbors on the table. Our final match of the update sees us take on West Ham at the 2012 Olympic Stadium in London. Before any of that, though, we have another 10 days of international competitions.



Yikes. That sounds like a nasty illness.

vs. Barnsley, October 20, 2018
Championship


Barnsley sit in 21st place. Let's make that QPR loss a mere bump in the road. We're without both Simpson and Harrison for this match, so Mateo Mujkic is getting the captain's band. His leadership isn't that good, only 11, but he does have 16 determination and is one of our longer tenured players at this point.

Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack
Starting 11: Higgs, Siegrist, Todd, Lewis, Garuti, Troelsen, Shirra, Tedesco, Gorman, Mujkic (c), Pym.
Subs: Love, Vaillant, Poole, Holland, Bailey, Rainey, Coulson.

Troelsen scores for the wrong team early on, but it's followed in short order by goals from Mujkic and Pym. That still leaves the door wide open for Barnsley, and they tie the game up thanks to our poor defending. I harangue the team at halftime, and Mujkic scores the go ahead goal at 59 minutes with an assist from Siegrist, who goes off to cheers as I had already been planning to sub him off due to earning a yellow card. His replacement, Vaillant, then immediately goes down with an injury not three minutes later, and I'm forced to play Chris Todd out of position at right back. He's more than passable in his emergency duty, and we go on to victory. It's good to get the win, but I'm left well aware of how much trouble we'd be in if we didn't have Mujkic.

Man of the Match: Mateo Mujkic




Wrexham 3-2 Barnsley



He learned this preferred move in about two weeks. I'm impressed.



We're doing as well as we are no thanks to you. He's suspended for another game, and he'll have to earn his way back onto the pitch.



If we didn't have Meteor we'd be in a relegation fight. He's clearly the best player on the team now. I've switched his individual training to focus on leadership ability, if he can get up to a 13 or better I'm going to make him captain. Also, he's now just as fast as Harrison, giving us two players with 18 pace and 17 acceleration. There's fewer than 100 players in the entire world with a pace of 18 or greater, and only 30 of them play attacking positions (center forward or attacking midfielder/winger). In general, a stat of 16 or higher is considered “world class.” Mujkic has Crossing, Technique, Determination, Decisions, Acceleration, and Pace of 16 or higher.



He's finally willing to talk with us. So I put up the following board vote.


The board voted to let me extend Mujkic's contract by a tally of 9-2. I am giddy when I reach his agent, we quickly hammer out an agreement that extends his contract through 2022 and doubles his release fee to 20 million pounds.



There's a bug here. Thorpe was a Wrexham player in the first year of the game, but was released before I took over. Cooper was our less than successful attacking midfielder from our first League Two season. They never played side by side. Also, comparing Mujkic to Cooper is an insult, Mujkic should be compared to Shaun Davies if anyone.



Hopefully that knocked the slump out of him. He's only getting 16% of his shots on target, which is way off his 42% shots on target rate from last year. I expected his SoT rate to drop some, it's a harder league and his chances will be more difficult, but even at 30% he would still be a legitimate goal scoring threat. At 16% he's been completely ineffective.



Mujkic quickly accepts the contract offer, and becomes our first Million Pound Man. The reason he was willing to negotiate now is because he's no longer slightly concerned about the quality of the team, if you remember back last spring he came to me about that issue. It also helps that I'm now one of his Favored Personnel.

vs. Nottingham Forest, October 27, 2018
Championship


Let's make like Robin of Locksley and steal the points before the sheriff notices.




Since we've gotten a tactically clever coach, I've been using him to help me set opposition instructions. There's four individual instructions you can set. Marking, Tackling, Closing Down, and Showing Onto Foot. Over the next few matches we'll be exploring these instructions, but an excellent, detailed primer is here. The first thing to know is that these instructions can conflict with your team instructions, for example if you have a defensive setup that asks your players to stand off their opponents so they can't get broken down as easily then setting multiple orders to “always” close down opposition players will lead to jumbled play. That's the reason I haven't been asking my tactics coach to set instructions when we're playing very defensively because he loves watching our boys close down opposition players like a heroin addict loves heroin.

The second thing is that they override the instructions you give to individual players. If you tell a player to never tackle hard because they have poor tackling skills and decisionmaking that would lead to lots of yellow and red cards, that instruction will be overridden if you've ordered your team to tackle an opposing player hard. We'll get to the specifics of each instruction over the next few games, there's a lot to unpack here and it's one of the most in depth tactical parts of the game. You can do just fine without ever touching opponent instructions, I've barely touched them to this point. But given that we need every edge we can get this season, and that we've got a coach with good tactical knowledge we can ask to set them, it's time to start implementing them.

Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack
Starting 11: Higgs, Siegrist, Lewis, Poole, Garuti, Troelsen, Bailey, Tedesco, Rainey, Mujkic (c), Pym.
Subs: Love, Vaillant, Todd, Holland, Shirra, Gorman, Harrison.

Siegrist is tripped in the fifth minute by Nottingham's left winger Casey, which earns Casey a yellow card. Minutes later Siegrist returns the favor and gets a yellow of his own. Nottingham Forest takes the lead on a questionable goal where an offsides player's movement draws Lewis to him, allowing a second player able to receive the cross and score. The second player may have himself been offsides, but that's a much closer call. Siegrist takes issue with the ref allowing the goal, and earns a second yellow card for his complaint. The second yellow sends him to the showers. We have most of possession for the rest of the half, but it brings us to the half down one.

The team is furious in the locker room, incredibly upset at the ref, and I can't get them to calm down. They lose focus, and allow two goals immediately after the restart. Pym and Rainey both miss clear cut chances at the hour mark, and we're sinking without a trace when Nottingham adds a fourth goal minutes later, and a fifth shortly after that. Todd is sent off with two yellow cards, and we're down to nine men for the last fifteen minutes. We get a lone consolation goal to finish a game where we started strong and ended an omnishambles. The first goal was questionable, and Siegrist did not deserve getting sent off, but that doesn't excuse the lack of focus and collapse after halftime. I'm not blameless in this, my oration only served to confuse and demoralize the defense.




Wrexham 1-5 Nottingham



Siegrist has been average or better since his nightmare game where he allowed two goals. He'll be fine.



And since he didn't deserve to be sent off by that power hungry, vain, and incontinent referee, I'm not going to punish him. I'm not asked about the ref in the after match press conference, which surprises me but probably saves me a fine from the FA since I don't have a chance to tell the media how I feel about him.




Todd getting sent off, though, is unacceptable, especially as he only played 40 minutes before picking up two yellow cards. He's professional enough to understand why I have to warn him, but next time it's a week's salary.



He cost us £950,000, and he's gotten into two games thus far.



Our captain returns to full health, he missed only two games.



Fulham and Sunderland played musical coaches, with noted match fixer Mark Bowman going to Sunderland and Sunderland hiring Brentford's former coach. This makes our next match against Fulham more interesting, but does take something away from our Sunderland fixtures.



Still secure, but they're not happy about that Nottingham loss. We're also going to need a big cup run, we're spending a lot of money this year and it's not just on players salaries. We've still got over a million in the bank, but we're likely to burn through it before the end of the year.

vs. Burnley, November 3, 2018
Championship


Burnley has won two top division titles and an FA Cup, but the most recent of those honors was way back in 1960. They're doing well this season, currently in third place.




The easiest of the opposition instructions to understand is “Show onto foot.” With it you instruct your players to try and force their opponent to use their weaker foot. In this case Burnley's striker Chris Garner is “right foot only,” he's absolute rubbish with his left. By forcing him to use his left foot we significantly reduce how well he can play, but it will also lead to him cutting to the left more often as we position ourselves to play in a way that makes him use that foot. Generally this instruction is definitely worth using whenever an opponent is listed as “Right/Left Foot Only” and absolutely not worth it when they're “Ambidexterous.” Ambidexterous players are awesome, being able to use either foot can tie defenders in knots, but they're also rare.

It's also worth using on wide players who are dominant footed (left wingers and backs are almost always left foot dominant, vice versa for right wingers and backs) and have good crossing stats, this will make them more likely to pass the ball rather than cross. Players who have good technique, ball movement skills, and the ability to create space for themselves have the best chance of being unaffected by this individual instruction.

There's another part to this technique about showing players onto a specific foot, in order to force the other team to always go a certain way as part of a larger strategy to control the opposition's ball movement or for when your centerbacks are taller, stronger, and more aerially adept than the opposition striker and you want to force wingers to cross the ball rather than cut inside. Those might get their own section later. For now, feel free to look here again for more information.

Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Counter
Starting 11: Higgs, Peters, Lewis, Poole, Garuti, Simpson (c), Holland, Shirra, Gorman, Mujkic, Harrison.
Subs: Love, Mejasic, Vaillant, Troelsen, Djurovic, Coulson, Pym.

After two flubbed chances in the first hour of play it's looking like we're going to earn a draw. But a free kick clearance is picked up by Garuti, who moves it up to Mujkic on the wing. Meteor dribbles up and past the fullback marking him, and launches a cross that's met by the head of Harrison. Harrison flicks the ball on to Gorman, who has put himself in perfect position to head the ball with authority past the keeper. Goal. Victory.

Man of the Match: Ryan Gorman




Wrexham 1-0 Burnley



Players injuring themselves in training may be pushing themselves too hard. Between Garuti's general training and his individual focus he was at a heavy workload, I've reduced that to a medium one.



Oi, step down and give someone else a go! Term limits! Term limits! Term limits!



We keep having more and more players called up. Last time it was sixteen call-ups. No matter, we're not scheduled to play anyone for the two weeks after our next match.



Get your damned flu shot! You're responsible for herd immunity, and you were contagious for over a day before you became symptomatic! He's going to miss the next game for sure, so there's no point in not sending him home.



That makes 20 of our 43 players on international duty. This isn't uncommon, at the big clubs pretty much everyone is on their national squad, and all the youngsters are on the youth national squads. Almost makes me feel bad for the few players on those teams that are left with nothing to do during those stretches.

vs. Brentford, November 10, 2018
Championship


I accidentally clicked on “Quick Pick” before the match, looked at the lineup and subs it suggested and said “eh, that'll work.” Brentford will be another challenge, they're well up in the table right now. We keep facing these teams when they're playing their best.




The second easiest opposition instruction to understand is Tackling. There's three settings, Easy, Normal, and Hard. Easy tackling essentially asks your players not to dive into their tackles or make strong challenges for the ball. Hard tackling tells your boys to get stuck in. Players with low bravery are prone to getting nervous after you knock them down a few times, and hard tackling is more likely to cause injuries. Hard tackling is also more likely to earn you yellow cards, especially if the tackler has a low Decisions attribute which leads to stupid challenges.

Hard tackling against players with poor balance is also fun, they tip over easier, and doing so on opponents with poor dribbling, agility, and technique makes it less likely they skip over you and leave you for dead. Likewise, opponents who excel in those stats are ones you should be wary of tackling hard, and should consider setting a soft tackling order for so your defender stays upright and doesn't risk letting the opponent past easily. Hard tackling is also useful for pressuring your opponent and attempting to win possession, and good against creative midfield players who have high passing scores but don't have the physical and ball handling skills to get away from the tackle attempt.

For this match we've set the tackling against the leading scorer in the league, Center Forward Jaume, to hard. While he's technically adept enough to hurt us if we miss (dribble 16, technique 15), he's only got mediocre agility (11) and balance (10). More importantly, he's got a bravery of 2. We need to take advantage of that cowardice and make him fear for his life when he has the ball.

Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Counter
Starting 11: Higgs, Siegrist, Vaillant, Todd, Mejasic, Troelsen, Holland, Shirra, Gorman, Mujkic (c), Pym.
Subs: Love, Peters, Poole, Tedesco, Djurovic, Coulson, Harrison.

Gorman lashes a long distance shot that blasts off the crossbar an directly to a waiting Mujkic. He scores, but it's properly called off as he'd been well offsides when Gorman unleashed his leg cannon. We play Brentford dead even, allowing them plenty of shots but not many chances. What chances they get Higgs stonewalls. We shut out the highest scoring team in the league, but as we didn't score ourselves it's a draw. Brentford remains in 2nd place, we move up to 17th. Jaume earns a 6.5 rating before being subbed off in the 63rd minute, and his body language shifted between "looks nervous" and "looks very nervous" from almost the word go.

Man of the Match: Danny Higgs




Wrexham 0-0 Brentford



I've mentioned that Higgs has cost us points in two games, so it's only fair to say that he's also been the reason why we've earned at least three of our draws.



Well. That's not good. Mujkic is being called up for the ASEAN Suzuki Cup. I can't make him pull out of the team. The other teams in the tournament are minnows, the second best team in the competition is Vietnam, ranked 104th in the world. That means Australia is virtually guaranteed to move well past the group stage, which ends at the start of December, and be gone until the new year.

I hate you, Australia. This is a competition with a reputation on par of the Skrill North. You're supposed to be playing your goddamned B team, not making the most vital player on my squad miss 20% of our goddamned season so you can beat the tar out of East Timor. We have nine matches during this stretch, out of a 46 game season. If he gets hurt or sick, I swear I will find you via the game editor and delete you from existence.

This is the most upset I've been at an Australian since I got dumped by a girl from there the better part of a decade ago. And your meat pies are overrated! So is your beer! And Aussie Rules football! Go make sweet love to some sheep with your besties the Kiwis! Shrimp on the barbie-ing, dingos ate your baby, now this is a knife, most comfortably racist, descendants of prisoners, upside-down shitheels. Asshole!



Not in the mood for this, Claudio. This is the first player who has complained to me about something so far. He doesn't get alienated, just mopey.



Neat, the Welsh national team used our stadium for their international friendly against Kuwait. Our old keeper, Naser Al-Beloushi, has retired, so he doesn't get to visit his old stomping grounds.



We've got four potential challengers to Sky Shadowing. If you want to run, post your favorite political soundbite or ad. My four favorite will be picked as contenders for the throne. Contest entry closes when the next update is posted. Feel free to use stuff from anywhere, any time. I've been rather involved in US politics in my lifetime so I'm likely to know most of the stuff from here, but I know there's also hilarious/awesome stuff from other countries.



A “where are they now” moment, Kadhim's international career plugs on after he was released from Stevenage last year.

At West Ham, November 24, 2018
Championship


This is a trip into the lion's den. West Ham are overwhelming favorites for promotion, and we're playing in the Olympic Stadium they moved into after London 2012. They're unbeaten in their last eight games. We're missing our best player because Australians are worthless, incomprehensible mockeries of humanity. I'll be ecstatic with a point from this match. It would be quite impressive for our fresh faced squad to take eight points from five games, three of which were against teams in the top five when we played.



We're looking at Closing Down this time. Closing Down has three settings, Always, Unspecified, and Never. It essentially determines how much we'll let opponents dwell on the ball and keep possession, and how much we'll move towards them to reduce the amount of space they have to play with and pressure them. When you order a player closed down your players will be more likely to break formation, which can clash with to your gameplan if you're trying to park the bus and make it difficult for your opponent to open up your defense, so you need to be careful about setting this order for too many opposition players if you're in a defensive alignment. Similarly, you don't want to close down too much when you're playing a counter attack, your goal playing on the counter is to lure your opponents into your area, get the ball back, and launch it upfield into the space vacated by their players moving into your turf.

Players are susceptible to being closed down if they have a poor first touch (which means they take longer to corral the ball), and if they have poor dribbling, technique, anticipation, pace, and agility. It's also handy to target the goalkeeper and a defender who has poor first touch for closing down, it will prevent the goalkeeper from launching long kicks and also give your forwards a chance to win the ball and create great 1v1 or open net chances. It should be noted that closing down is a high tempo strategy, make sure your players have the stamina to handle it, or turn it off if they're getting exhausted and you're not seeing any benefit.

Lastly, it can be good to close down players who have very good creativity, crossing, and passing attributes, as otherwise they get too much time to plan how they're going to carve up your defense. Conversely, if they're merely physical specimens with poor mental and technical stats you can choose to never close them down, and force them to try and get past your team with those lesser skills.

Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Defensive
Starting 11: Higgs, Peters, Lewis, Todd, Garuti, Simpson (c), Holland, Djurovic, Coulson, Gorman, Harrison.
Subs: Love, Vaillant, Poole, Troelsen, Bailey, Rainey, Pym.

West Ham look the better team in the first half hour, battering relentlessly against our defense as expected. We get a goal against the run of play in the 25th minute, though, through a counter-attack that shows what can happen when closing down goes wrong. Harrison and Gorman are flying up the left side of the pitch, when Harrison lays the ball off to Gorman. The Hammer fullback moves to close down Gorman, which leaves Harrison free to leak into the penalty area on the near post side, in acres of space, after the West Ham centerback fails to pick him up. It's a simple pass from Gorman to Harrison that leaves him plenty of time to get to the ball, settle it, and rifle it past the keeper to put us ahead.

We nearly give back the lead immediately, but are saved when the opposing player skies a one on one chance straight over the crossbar and into the stands. West Ham finally gets on the board a few minutes later on a perfect cross dragged in front of the goal. Higgs should have come off his line to get it, but instead the game is tied. It remains that way through the 50th minute, when Djurovic plays a cheeky side heel pass into the area that Coulson has the presence of mind to pass to the waiting Harrison. He blasts home the shot and has doubled his goal total for the season in one match. We hold off West Ham for the remaining 40 minutes without much difficulty, it's clear that they've been stunned by our performance.

Man of the Match: The Kid.




West Ham 1-2 Wrexham



We're only in 15th place, but we're actually closer to the promotion playoffs than we are to the relegation zone. We took ten points from five games, and three of those games were against clubs that were in the top three at the time we played them. Our only loss was to Nottingham Forest, a nightmare game from which we immediately bounced back. If we can keep our head above water until Mujkic returns in January, we'll be in excellent shape for a top half push, and potentially more.

Fun with selective endpoints: We got four points from our first seven games, a 26 point pace that would absolutely end in relegation. From that point on we've gotten 18 points in ten games, an 83 point pace that would either see us automatically promoted or in the promotion playoffs in each of the last five years.



Note: I apologize to any actual Australians, I may have gone over the top in my fit of pique at a video game. If I did, my bad.