“A Toast!” Uwe said, holding up his beer, and everyone followed, although more than a few of them spilled.
“To Hannover, to Stuttgart, and to Union Berlin!” HE said, leaning over and making a ‘ptui1’ noise towards the floor. “Thank god you are all in the Bundesliga this year, or we’d be in a relegation fight!”
“It’s like we spent all that money for nothing,” Heinrich said.
“But, European football!” said Klaus, who was on the wrong side of sober.
“Big. Deal,” replied Ulrich.
“Tulli is pretty good though, isn’t he?” asked Richard.
“Shame he won’t be here past the summer trasnsfer window?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” Erick asked
“Why would he be?” replied Sasha, lifting her head up from the table. “We all knew before he signed he was going to be here short term.”
“But a year?” asked Heinrich.
“Still longer than any relationship you’ve been in,” Sasha mumbled, laying her head back down on the table. She didn’t see Klaus reach over and stop Heinrich from knocking her on the head.
“Any ideas on the January transfers?”
“Sell them all, start from scratch,” Sasha mumbled.
“No more beer for her,” Ulrich said, sighing.
It’s then end of December, and JFC have we taken a huge step backwards. I don’t know if it’s because a lot of the team in new and has yet to gel together, if its the FM Gods toying with me or what, but in the Immortal Words of Bart Simpson:
The season actually got off to an OK start:
The good news about playing in th Conference League is that it’s European Football, the bad news is that the luck of the draw can really bite you in the ass early, and thats what happened to us. Beşiktaş is a solid squad, but on the whole our squad is better than theirs, and it showed. Yes, it took a 91st Tulli goal to beat them in the first game, but the second game was solid.
Then we drew Aston Villa, a club who outclasses us almost everywhere, and it showed just how far we have to go to be competitive at the upper levels of European football. The wins at Stuttgart and Werder were nice, and the September hit and the team just just enough to make me think we could pull out a few more draws.
It’s not the fact that we went 1-5-2 in September and October, it’s that our goal differential was -7. From a player point of view, defense is supposed to be a strength pf the squad, and we are giving up way too many cheap goals. And it’s not all Popovic’s fault, when two of my defenders cant agree who’s covering the attacking forward so neither of them does and he runs between them unimpeded, I can’t blame the keep for not making the save.
Sure, the Quigley Hat Trick against Hoffenheim was nice, but it was 4-1 at the half in that game. Against Hertha, Augsburg, BMG and Main we were just…lackluster and listless. They Bayern game looks good, but we were down 3-0 after 109 minutes and 4-0 after 24, and Heidenheim took us to penalty kicks in the Pokal…Penalty kicks.
This looks good, but its really kinda mid:
Beating a solid Wolfsburg team is nice, but Hannover and Union are both horrible this seasons, and it took a 91st minute goal for us to beat Union. then it took extra time, again, for us to beat Nurnberg. That and them having a man sent off in the 103rd minute…
Eintracht clawed the draw back in the 91st minute because three of my defenders though Savioli’s ball dribbling skills were binge worthy, and watching him was more important than defending him…
Against HSV everyone was just…ready for break, so not only did I throw a lot of bottle and do a lot of yelling, I changed the schedule so everyone was doing a ton of fitness work, and the guys responded with a 4-2 win against Bayer, and I thought maybe I had turned the corner with the team but it turns out I was just out of bottles to throw because a week later we were bossed by a very good Freiburg squad, and we went into the Christmas break well below midtable.
Now, I was expecting us to drop off a little after last season, but this, this is freacking ridiculous, and to be honest if it weren’t for the fact I am a popular coach with a good record at the club, I’m sure more people would be calling for me to get fired.
We need to turn it around the second half, but I don’t think this hole is something I can spend our way out of…
THE FOOTBALL MANAGER BLOG OF FM_JELLICO 