RSL in the WSL Part 15
Almeria
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RSL in the WSL Part 15
It’s our first cup tie of the season. Just like every other team in the World Super League, we are enrolled in the FA Cup.
The World Super League FA Cup is designed just like the English FA Cup. Every team enters and participates. The games are single-elimination with randomly selected home draws. If the match ends in a draw, there is a replay at the visiting team’s stadium; if that ends in a draw, the game goes to a penalty shootout.
The teams that are at higher rungs of the ladder enter in at later stages of the tournament. Since we are in Super League 1, we don’t enter until now – the 5th round.
Here’s a quick overview of the rules as written in-game:
There’s not much in terms of prize money, but there is quite a bit at stake in terms of prestige and notoriety. I don’t think we can expect to go far in this tournament, though it would naturally be nice to at least get out of this round.
Almeria
Our opponents are the Spanish side UD Almería, yet another Super League 1 side (there are quite a few). Football Manager fans should recognize this side because it is one of the very few sides in all of Europe with a rich owner who loves spending money. These “sugar daddy” owners are not easy to find, and can make for a very different kind of game than we money strapped folk have to play.
The money isn’t helping Almeria, however. They’re doing just about as well in their league as we are:
They have a side that is slightly older than ours, with an average age of 23. We’ll see if their slight experience edge actually is an advantage or not.
Friendlies
Knowing that the players are down after our recent poor form, I scheduled a few friendlies against easy local teams to try to get our spirits up. We drew the first game, which is extremely concerning, but then pounded the next two teams. I hope this will help things out a bit.
Our team cohesion rating should increase as time goes along, assuming that we can break out of the losing spell. I’m hoping that the recent signings will help us along.
Tactics
Yeah, we’ve got a couple of new names this time around. Burke, Shehu, and Ørsahl are all new signings, brought in with the money we made from the big sales on the transfer deadline. We’ve already talked about Holm, who I hope will provide some spark to the offense.
Interesting 3 at the back approach by Almeria. I guess it’s a 5-4-1, though it looks more like a 3-3-2-1-1 Christmas tree formation to me.
First Half
Boy, we started out strong.
Ørsahl made his presence known with this goal in the 8th minute.
We then saw another goal off a set play, this time from Onuoha, the old man of the squad, 20 minutes later.
Halftime came, and we were 2-0 up. I was over the moon, and thought that I’d done it – that we’d finally broken the spell.
Second Half
Well, I wasn’t quite right.
We played miserably in the second half. Almeria came back quickly with this goal in the 60th minute.
You get this feeling with Football Manager every once in a while, this feeling that the equalizer is coming. The momentum shifted their way, and there was little we could do to prevent the equalizer from coming.
And that’s how it ended – a 2-2 draw. Our next match will on the road against Almeria.
Match Review
This wasn’t bad. I wish we could have prevented them from scoring at the end, but I can’t complain about our performance. This was a lot better than the last 5 games have been.
Almost all of those shots came in the first half. We were completely outclassed in the second half.
Dirkner had a really poor game, and our defensive central midfielder woes continue.
Burke, however, proves my earlier thesis – that the real weak points of the squad were at the left and right back positions. Once we get players who can actually play those positions, we should be good to go.
Fairly good performance all around, aside from our two strikers and Dirnker. I’m trying to get Tonin’s spirits back up. As I said before, I think he’s secretly an inconsistent player that just isn’t showing it yet. We’ll see, though – the coaches say that he has been training well, and he just might come breaking out of his shell before long.
Holm had a bad game, and was fatigued for most of the game. I made a mistake and didn’t include an attacking midfielder on the bench. I’ll fix that before our next game.
The sad news is that both Shehu and Ørsahl were slightly injured and won’t be available for the replay. I like to think that we would have been able to score again if both of them could have stayed in for the whole match.
We peaked early and basically ran out of steam. We are playing better than we were, but we’re not quite where we need to be just yet.
At least it’s a draw and not a loss. This should be helpful for morale – and I do think we have a chance of winning on the road, believe it or not.