Our First Stumble

By: Daryl | June 10th, 2009

It was all going so well under the new democratic regime, but we’ve officially had our first stumble.

So now’s the time for some serious debate.

But first let me tell you what happened…

As almost unanimously agreed, we went out to face a depleted Portsmouth team with our attacking 4-1-2-1-2 formation:

Pompey didn’t even have a striker (Nicko Kranjkar started up front), but my worst fears came true as their three man midfield (one DM and two CMs) overpowered our more spread out middle men. They beat us 2-0 with both goals coming from our ex-player Mascio. Grr.

Here are the final stats:

Result: L 2-0

Next up was an FA Cup 4th Rnd tie vs Crystal Palace away. Palace are down near the bottom of the fizzy drink Championship so I gave some of the fringe players a run out.

You’ll notice there’s no Rodney Sneijder there, he’s gone out on loan to Sheff Utd. I’m going to give it a month and see how much they play him. If not eneough, he’s coming home. Ditto Thomas Knudsen who’s gone on loan to Hartlepool.

Nice to give Per Ciljan Skjelbred a chance. He lost his spot after an injury earlier in the season, but he’s a player I really like. Even if he did recently yak up on the field in real life:

(video via 101GG)

We beat Palace 2-0 with goals from Laurito and Dzagoev. But the fact that Shay Given got Man of the Match tells you we were lucky:

And the fans were not at all impressed, doing plenty of complaining via either 606 or Talksport:

I hope Tim Lovejoy/Stan Collymore stuck up for me.

More bad news, things aren’t going very well on the transfer front. Per Metersacker doesn’t want to discuss a contract just yet while Reading have refused all my offers (starting at £2m and going up to £3m). Plus the money situation does not look good:

Despite my staying well within all budgetary constraints, the club is somehow £2m in the red. And they’re only making 5% of transfer sales available for reinvestment (so of the £250k just received for Charles N’Zogbia (his contract was up in the summer and West Ham made a good offer) only £12.5k is available to spend). Seems digital Newcastle is no better run than real Newcastle.

So, on to the questions. After the above wobble, the next game is pretty important. And it’s against Chelsea, at home. Chelsea are managed by Jurgen Klinsmann and struggling a bit in 7th. They play a 4-4-2, with Goran Pandev and Mario Gomez up front:

After Chelsea, it WBA away, Arsenal at home, Everton away and then the Champions League knockout vs Barcelona.

So, for those still reading, here are the managerial questions:

1. Which formation? 4-1-2-1-2 or 4-4-2? We got it wrong vs Portsmouth, as they outnumbered us in midfield. So what should we do vs Chelsea? This is an important decision in my opinion.

2. Who starts up front vs Chelsea? We now have Pog, Lewandowski, Laurito and Marquinhos available. Marquinhos could play wide right (and has had more success there than up front) but someone still has to miss out. Who should it be?