Season 29 Round 9

[Kemal]

Being a tiny ray of light in the misery that was yesterday, Snaken increased their total points this season by 50% going from 6 to 9 after a 4-2 win over my main rival for direct relegation.

I've now moved up from 7th to 6th spot again, it will probably be really tight as to who will directly relegate from my division. I still have 3 home matches and a derby coming up in the last 6 games of the season, where I can utilize my midfield strength, so I'm hoping to get at least another 6 points but I think I'll need 9 more really...

quote:
Overcast weather free of rain made for a crowd turnout of 30851 at FC De Snaken Arena today. Snaken started off with a 3-5-2 lineup. Starters: Mi³ek - Suárez, Balyon, Farenhout - Espinola, Heintalu, Broertjes, Geiger, Pipeta - Billand, Kronskär.

Braxter started off with a 3-4-3 lineup. Lineup: Alanko - Cameron, Broendsted, Toering - Rosskär, Advocaat, Díez, Gapp - Boom, Prado, Bernier.

Snaken decided to play creatively. Jose Maria Espinola's name was chanted throughout the stadium after his 7th minute goal up the middle gave Snaken the 1 - 0 lead. Braxter's Hartwig Gapp was shown a yellow card for standing over the ball and blocking an opponent's quick freekick in the 14th minute. Things were going to get worse for the visitors. Per Kronskär squirmed himself through the central defense line in the 24th minute, bringing the lead to 2 - 0. By now, Snaken were drawing the troops back in order to defend their lead. The home team's fans were upset when, in the 41st minute, the visiting Daan Advocaat broke through the central defence and kicked the ball past the keeper. 2 - 1 was the score. Cheers filled the stadium as Reikko Heintalu broke through the visitors' central defense line to put away the 3 - 1 goal for Snaken. The referee showed Braxter's Lorne Cameron the yellow card after a particularly nasty challenge. 3 - 1 was the halftime score. This half belonged to Snaken, who controlled the ball 66 percent of the time.

After several obvious shirt pulling incidents, Braxter's Sergio Díez got himself booked. The corner kick from Agapito Suárez set Per Kronskär up perfectly, as he soared to meet the ball, heading it in for 4-1. Agapito Suárez seemed to be dragging his feet by the 82nd minute of the match. Hartwig Gapp of Braxter took advantage of his obvious fatigue to chip in the 4-2 goal. Snaken, bringing their ball possession to 65 percent, dominated the battle.

Snaken's top performer was clearly Stanis³aw Mi³ek. Agapito Suárez on the other hand, had a terrible day. Braxter's top performer was clearly Sergio Díez. Espen Broendsted on the other hand, had a terrible day. The match ends 4 - 2.

Any other good CDZ results yesterday?

[Aggie]

I lost my game 1-3. So after getting 4 points vs the nr 1 I'm back to reality... All I have to do now is win three games vs clubs who hardly have active managers. Two of them haven't logged in for a month. Next season should be better, I just started 3 weeks too late with this game to have a chance in this season.

[Darth Pugwash]

I won 1-5 to get my title campaign back on track, though it seems that no-one is safe in the Pugwash FC squad at the moment, as on top of my CDZ cup injuries I have ANOTHER injured trainee.

That's 3 out of 6 trainees out, including my star my player, a 20 year old world class winger, out for two weeks.

Luckily I should be able to win the next two league games without him, though next week may turn out to be a banana skin after I MOTSed this week.

[Kingreno]

3-3 at home where I should have won. I even got the midfield...so pretty disappointing.

[Shabbaman]

I draw v.s. the bastard that was suddenly playing counter 3 weeks ago. Guess what? After 3 weeks of countering, now he was playing 3-5-2... But hey, still 1 point and a very, very high TS. Unfortunately that SOB injured my best midfielder for 3 weeks.
Next match is another counter team, and I think I'm going to loose that anyway, so I don't really need that mid. All-out defense, I hope I can sell a forward and buy a world class defender in his place. If my competitors for the bottom places are doing as bad as the first half of the competition I'm almost sure that I'll place 5th after all.

[BCLG100]

lost again, 3-1 this time, the good things is that ive scored the last 2 league games in a row

[Mistfit]

The Marauders pull one out this week 2-1 against a stronger club. I am pleased as I can see a tiny chance of staying in the 5th division if I can win 2 more matches this season... well at least get a Q-Match instead of auto relegation.

[akots]

Had an overconfidence event and lost 1-6 going down to 3rd place. Really don't know why because before the match confidence was only wonderful and not exagerrated. I would have probably lost in any case even without overconfidence.

[Mistfit]

@akots - how are you finding the keeper training? Do you think you will stick with it? IS it going to be profitable enough for you to stay in the 5th? Can you forsee a possibility of advancing to the 4th with that training regement?

[akots]

quote:Originally posted by Mistfit

@akots - how are you finding the keeper training? Do you think you will stick with it? IS it going to be profitable enough for you to stay in the 5th? Can you forsee a possibility of advancing to the 4th with that training regement?

It seems the keeper training is OK. I'm making some cash (about $3.5 million made for half of last season and beginning of this and about $1 million of that is cashed in. The training is pretty fast but the market is not very stable. I don't think I'll stick with it for more than 2 seasons. Primary aim was to get for myself a decent keeper (may be supernatural) and forget about defence overall. It is certainly profitable enough to sustain me in the 5th division. But I'm not sure if it is enough to get me to the 4th. In general, I don't see how I can substantially increase the income without changing training type. Good thing about keeper training is that now, you have approximately the same income if you train 17-year-old from solid to outstanding compared to all the way to titanic or divine. Wages really bite and I cannot afford such long term investment of training into high level keepers. To keep the things running, I have to select only one trainee and train him all the way up to leave for myself while trying to train another keeper for short term benefit.

But, as I've told you earlier, advancing to 4th division is a major task. I have no idea how it will turn out and if I ever will be able to accomplish this epic endeavor. Other teams are also progressing very well through the game.

The major problem as I see it is increased wages for the level of players required for the 4th division. All team has to be at least world class in primary skill (minimum of 53-57 stars) to have any hope of performing in 4th. For that kind of income, I have to double and probably almost triple whatever income I have now.

Considering now I can field 45 stars barely, and this can be probably easily increased to 48-49 stars with some small investment, I'm progressing at about 3 stars per season. However, wages are progressing exponentially. So, with my current performance and income, it seems I will top it out at about 50 stars maximum. Then, I would just have to wait and do something creative with training or invent some other source of income like may be daytrading for half a season. But daytrading is extremely time consuming and lowers performance.

Ok, sorry for a long post.