“This club is going to give me a complex,” Klaus said.
“You sure it’s not the Indian food you had earlier disagreeing with you? Again?” Sasha asked.
“Christmas season got you down?” Heinrich added to the conversation, setting a tray full of beers down on the table and handling them out.
“We could win the League!” Klaus said.
“Not unless Bayern stumbles,” Sasha sighed. Heinrich gave her a bit of the side eye, Bayern was usually a curse word when she said it. “And with €220M Euros spent so far, I don’t see the tumbling anytime soon. Dammit.” She sighed, and drank down half a blass of beer.
“We could finish Second!” Klaus said.
“Shockingly, we are all OK with that,” Heinrich said.
“But what if-” Klaus started to say, until Paul, who was sitting next to him, wraped his arm around his neck and clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Think very carefully on what you are about to say, and then sit and theink of the consequences you will suffer should what you want to say come true. Ja?”
He purposely avoided looking at Sasha, she was throwing enough daggers in Klau’s direction he didn’t want to get hit by any more unfriendly fire than necessary.
“Next round is on Klaus!” Heinrich said, and the table responded with mostly cheers.
We aren’t doing anything really different formation wise this season. Any changes to the instructions have been minimal at best. I am playing a 4-2-1-2-1 formation that I started to use last seasons, and for whatever reason, that and the players I signed, the players I kept, and as good summer worth of training, have helped us get off to a very good start.
I didn’t put to much stock in our August games, with the exception of Eintracht they are all weaker teams than us, but it’s nice to see MacLennan hitting the ground running, and scoring. By all rights were should have lost that Eintracht game, because were simply better than us.
September is made me start to worry, if only because Hertha and HSV are not the best teams. On paper at least we are better than them, but for whatever reasons our defense was nonexistent against Hertha, and both offense and defense were lackluster in the Hamburg game. The Bayern game was a great game, until the 89th minute, when Benjamin Šeško scored to claw the draw back. We were absolutely dominating that match, but one defensive “Whoopsie” later I was chucking bottles at the guys.
The team responded, really well.
The good news is that we’re winning a lot of games. The bad news is that noone has really stepped up to be “Der Mensch”. While on one hand I abhor an offense where one player is responsible for 90% of the goals and assists, on the other hand it’s annoying to have yet another player step up and carry the team for a game or three. MacLennan appears to be trying to be the focal point of the the offense, but he’s to streaky at the moment, and the issue is I don’t know what games he’s going to show up for. When he doesn’t show up for games, Cezar or Novotony steps up, usually. And if they don’t, someone else does and our defense holds. It’s not a reliable plan, but its working. So Far.
The plan worked very well all of October, then not so much against a good Borussia Team and a horrible Mainz team. It was surprising to see Tenorio score against Werder, because he is more of a facilitator, but I suspect if I wanted to retrain him as a striker/attacker, he’d be pretty good, but right now he’s an excellent support player, and why take that away from him?
Leipzig bossed us, and while I could blame the three games in eight days thing, the fact is we were 6/2 with a .67 xG, and they were 13/6 with a 1.35. We tried playing keep away, with a 63% possession rate, but it didn’t work. We went into the short break strong though, and at midseason, are in 2nd place.
I am not sure how, or why, or how long it’s going to last, but I am pretty sure we are finishing top 6.
Not that I’d lay money on that sort of thing…
THE FOOTBALL MANAGER BLOG OF FM_JELLICO 