Schwarzer had left the field, and the celebrations had eventually burned themselves out the way all adrenaline does: loud as shit, then suddenly gone. By the time I made it to the car park, the stadium lights had blurred against my vision and my ears were still ringing like I’d been underwater too long.
I leaned against my car and finally let myself breathe. I hadn’t had the bandwidth pitchside. But now? I had time to explore whatever FMSim decided to throw at me.
First: Overall Rating.
Second: Skill Shop.
I pulled up the information tab on all the players available in the main squad, and this was the result for the goalies:
Our goalkeeper position was an obvious weak spot, and coincidentally this would be where overall rating was generally the most correct. Holmes . . . well, he’d only cut it for a worst-of-the-worst Tier 7 side. I ran the numbers in my head: a 54-rated keeper might survive against the absolute minnows. To even have a prayer of promotion, we’d need a GK hovering around 65 at minimum.
Here were the players we had for left-backs:
That was it. We had one player who naturally played left-back in our squad. Palmer was great with passes, but his rating despite that suggested he wasn’t really that solid going forward or defending.
For comparison, these were our right-back options:
Why were we having three on this side and one on the other? Granted, Hatherleigh could play left-back and probably should play left-back, but he wouldn’t offer much going forward.
Now came the center-backs:
We had a solid enough defense to not be leaking this many goals. Now why Mansfield was playing ahead of Boras if he was objectively worse, and why Boras’ morale looked like he’d discovered the team mascot had a higher contract than him, should really be looked into.
Now came our central midfield options:
Okafor was probably the best player in the entire squad, a true leader on the field, and frankly too good for this division. Yet, the team wasn’t built around him. I also wasn’t sure if his blank slate ‘Central Midfielder’ was the best use of his skill set. Judging from his work rate alone, he should probably be used as a workhorse.
Then, the wings:
Why were they all named James . . .
That aside, we were severely lacking in this department. Our left side was weak, and we had no cover options for Donovan. Even our best winger, Rothschild, wasn’t that inspiring, and he just went off with a limping leg.
Finally, the strikers.
Roberts had great presence and very often won aerial duels, yet he only had a rating of 60. This told me that, while he could out-jump a giraffe, everything else—positioning, pace, finishing, passing—was apparently performed at the level of a particularly unmotivated garden gnome.
If we fielded the First 11 we’d played against Plymouth, this would be how it looked like:
On average, our overall rating would be 68, which would be strong enough to challenge for promotion. However, having me in the squad inflated that rating by a long shot. When we replaced me with Mansfield, that number dropped to 63, putting us firmly in the uninspiring mid-table category. Due to the huge difference in quantity between our main centre pair and the back-up and the fact that both of us couldn’t play every game, it became very clear that Hungerford would be one of the weaker teams in the majority of gameweeks. Still, with this kind of quality, we should not be anywhere near the relegation zone. For some reason, we were.
The mid-term goal should be to bring the quality of the team up to around 65 even when we field a few substitutes, but while I loved numbers going up as much as the next guy, tactical fit and team coherence mattered a lot more even (especially) at low levels like this.
We had a lot of problems to solve. Our attack was pure rubbish, the wingers were trash, and the squad balance was. . . let’s just say ‘enthusiastically optimistic’ in the most charitable way. Yet, even through the chaos, I could already see the blueprints in my head.
A 4-5-1 looked like a viable formation. Firstly, it kept us solid at the back. A team with this kind of quality must start out with a solid backline. Okafor and Milner would form the main midfield engine, grinding and recycling possession, breaking up plays, and feeding anyone willing to make a run. That way, we could still keep the Rothschild–Johnstone–Reeves triangle intact on the right, but with a slight adjustment: Okafor would focus on winning the ball and threading through passes. Rothschild, despite his flair, wasn’t exactly a ‘cross it into the danger zone’ type anyway.
Then why were we keeping Roberts?
I’d rather play McAteer over Roberts. Yes, the kid would be worse right now, but he was 21, not 30. Roberts had aerial dominance, sure, but everything else was ‘meh.’ McAteer had the right movements for a foxy-type striker. Give the kid time to build chemistry with Okafor, teach him how to shoot a ball, and he could become a far more dynamic option.
Yeah. This tracked.
The only thing left was to phone Mitch and propose a new formation and possibly new training regimes to follow up. He’d get to keep his triangle, so maybe he’d listen to me after hearing my reasoning.
So I rang him. It took, what, six rings before he even bothered to pick up.
“You need something?” he said, like I was interrupting a nap or his philosophical debate with himself.
“Yeah, I actually wanted to talk about our squad selection . . .” I started.
He immediately cut me off, “Squad’s good. We just finished the game, mate. If it’s football, we can talk in training on Wednesday.”
Oh, come on. Wednesday? When I came to him then, he was going to say, ‘Can’t change it now, too late, should’ve come to me sooner,’ and my entire tactical blueprint would have aged like milk left in the sun.
So I said, “I want to talk about this now, so we have something to work with come Wednesday.”
“It’s Sunday, Jamie. Don’t you have a Sunday night plan?”
I groaned, but fair enough. Lots of people didn’t want to be bothered on a Sunday evening. It was that weird half-hour of domestic peace when everyone was firmly ensconced in their flat, the week hadn’t started yet, and messaging anyone about work or football felt like a minor crime against humanity.
I suggested, “How about 9?pm Monday?”
He was silent for a while. Then came the single word, “Fine.”
And, of course . . . poof. Disconnected. Gone, like he’d never existed.
I stared at my phone and let my brain do what it did best: wildly over-analyze. Mitch couldn’t possibly be that busy, right? He was just disrespecting me at this point. Why bring me in if you weren’t going to listen?
The man had the emotional availability of a brick wall and roughly the same responsiveness. For a brief moment, I considered if I should just attempt a coup and get him out of the club. The thought was seductive in the way bad ideas always were. A quick flash of imagination: boardroom whispers, starting with Kowalski, and we’d be peachy.
No. Absolutely not. Don’t be that kind of dick, Jamie. Mitch hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Disagreeing with me didn’t make him wrong. You don’t overthrow someone for being mediocre and grumpy.
Convince him, it is.
I was going to stare at a screen and click buttons in a new FMSim feature called Skill Shop. Yes. I was that kind of nerd, the slave to numbers-go-up.
So I unlocked the new feature. Maybe there would be something in here that could convince Mitch.
Skills Shop was the feature I’d unlocked after reaching Level 3. The screen didn’t explode with options like I’d expected. Instead, the interface was the tidiest I’d seen from this System so far; it felt like playing the quick-patched version of FMSim 26 after weeks of subjecting to the torture that was the Beta version.
The Skills Shop was laid out in branches, each one starting from a single, clearly labeled node, like the roots of a tree exposed in perfect cross-section. At the very top sat two headers:
For the love of sanity; Paths. I felt like grinding through Career mode on FIFA again.
Should Jamie kick Mitch out of the club?
