November to Remember
Part 21 | Yanbian FC | 延边足球俱乐部 | 연변축구 | FM23 Hardcore Mode
A Little Scary
Dalian Shide are a good team, and it showed in their match against us.
Kim Kuk-Jin, who the coaches now say has that contagious fear of big matches, showed up for this one anyway. He scored a goal in the first 15 seconds to give us a big 1-0 lead.
We then had 3 more goals from Guo Yi, who earned his first hat trick of the season — all in the first half.
And, of course, Lee Jin-Yong was in the center of it all, making numerous incisive passes that cut apart the Dalian defense. Charlotte’s Lee Jin-Yong fan club went home happy and noisy.
However, there were some problems.
Huang Bowen had an awful game, and looked like he didn’t want to be out there at all. I wound up having to fine him for his awful work.
Huang Jianwei came on at halftime, and contributed very little in his role in defense. Not only was he relatively ineffective, but he also handed Dalian a goal by fouling a Dalian player in the penalty box with about 25 minutes to go. We were still up 4-1 after the penalty, but I was starting to wonder where the magic went.
November to Remember
October was a good month for us. Here’s hoping that November will be even better.
With 18 straight league wins, we’ve set all sorts of records. Too many records to report on, in fact.
The easy way to think about it is that we’re basically going to set another record every single time we win a game. That will be particularly true if we can keep this winning streak alive. And I honestly don’t see any team in our league capable of beating us at this point.
Financially, we’re still a rich club — but you knew that already. I still can’t spend the transfer budget fast enough, and Chairman Guo is still upset with me for not buying more high profile players.
Speaking of Chairman Guo, I had another one of those smoke-filled room meetings with him. He told me that he’s chiefly impressed that I’ve got such strong backing from the squad, despite the fact that they come from such a variety of countries and backgrounds.
As far as the matches are concerned, though, he’s still not all that impressed. Not angry, but not beaming with joy, either.
The fans are much the same: happy with the tactics, happy to see players playing well, and somewhat lukewarm on our results.
Our performance analysts put together a few mildly interesting reports. Our defensive midfielders, for example, continue to lead the league in just about every category, though their pass completion rate is a bit below average. They make up for this by making progressive passes that move us forward rather than just passing the ball around in circles.
Our goal output is obviously a huge outlier in the league. We score far more goals per game than anybody else, and no club is better at preventing goals than we are.
And, of course, that’s because of our excellent defense, which usually stamps out scoring opportunities before they even begin. We face something like 4 shots per game and allow around 5% to score, which is insane.
It’s good and all — but it could be better.
Morale
Morale is at an all-time high.
I mean, that’s going to happen when you win 18 in a row, regardless of the league you play in.
Fan Xiang, our captain, is still clearly established as a team leader. Ye Jie, our vice captain, is highly influential, and Pak Myong-Song, the North Korean international fullback, has also become highly influential.
Han Jin is the most influential of the other players, which goes to show you just how important our Three Muskateers are to this squad.
We’ll hold onto them as long as we can, though I do worry that Fan Xiang, Ye Jie, and Han Jin will turn into fringe players once we move on.
Our social groups have also changed. Jonovic is still hanging out with the North Koreans, but Kim Kuk-Jin has apparently started hanging out with the Three Muskateers in the “normal” social group.
Now, I’ll warn you here: I’ve got so many transfers scheduled for January that we’re probably going to wind up destroying what little cohesion and good morale we currently have. I’ve got a funny feeling that a number of our players will find themselves out of a place, and we’ll probably end up maximizing the number of players we can have out on loan.
Nothing destroys a winning team quite like a nosy manager with a lot of money!
Tai’an Tiankuang
We’re hosting Tai’an next, in another game that we should win.
Tai’an is a smallish city (population of “only” 5.7 million) near Tai Mountain in Shandong Province. They’ve played a bit over their heads this season, but I’ve got a feeling that we’re about to help them return to earth.