Consolidation

Once again, apologies for the lack of updates. It's been a busy time for me IRL with both a big exam and a house move coming up, plus of course the small matter of a World Cup to watch...

Fortunately this has co-incided with a pretty slow time for the team in game. We crawled to 12th place in our season 3 top tier qualifier, which I think will be good enough for Championship football in Season 4, but because of the fiendishly complex league reputation system I won't know until after FA lockdown on Sunday. Whilst on the whole I like the shift to 3 season qualifying, I do think this now knowing where you stand is one area that could be improved. I may write a longer post on the qualifying system some other time.

Since the season finished the main news has been the sale of our young starlet striker Israel Santos. Picked up in the starting pool for a 55k AF, he went in transfer auction for just shy of £2.7m plus a 20% future profit clause. I actually thought he might fetch a bit more than that - perhaps the fact I wasn't online much to plug the auction didn't help.

But still the money will be helpful as I move in to the consolidation phase. Those of you who have followed this blog from the start may recall that when the new GW first began I intended to see how things went before deciding on a longer-term strategy, but this quickly went out of the window when I examined the economy more closely and saw the big financial benefits of short-term success that allowed you to buy good players early on and then ride the inflationary wave. At that stage I argued for 2-3 seasons of full-on going for victory to give the team a high rep, followed by some financial consolidation before the big wages kick in and the teams who are still on the edge of their overdrafts get in to some serious trouble.

Well, the time for that consolidation is now. Actually it has been for a little while - I haven't made a major signing for more than a season. But the sale of Santos takes it up a level. The funds are paying for about 80% of a new North stand (named the "Israel Santos Stand" in his honour) - a handy 2 tier Ospitalita II with lots of seats and corporate box slots filled. This will bring The Pearl Stadium's capacity up to close to 19,000 - suitable for a level 12 (i.e. lower mid-table Championship) team. In addition, I am up to three academies and preparing to open a fourth and fifth now that it looks like the system may not be changed for a little while. And the bank balance is around £1m with the projected showing another £1m profit over the next season despite stadium repayments.

So things are looking reasonable. The priority now will be to stay in the Championship whilst I complete this consolidation - and then look to press on in a few seasons time. This does however mean the next few seasons may be a bit dull. Thank goodness for real life ;)

All quiet on the Eastern Front

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, but there really isn't much to report! Out of both cups at the Last 16 stage, and in the league we're midtable once again. Played 20, Won 6, Drawn 8, Lost 6. At this rate we could be in for another tight finish to achieve our aim of 12th place but until we get a bit closer to the end it's impossible to say.

The only thing that has livened it up a bit was a wonderful psycho keeper moment from Sebastien Martens. Early in the second half of a tense 0-0 game their goalie took a goal-kick and despite all my back four being in position Martens decided to run halfway to the halfway line and handle the ball! He received a red card for his troubles and we went on to lose 1-0, so I was pretty annoyed but in a funny way it actually restored a bit of my faith in the Match Engine. The fact that despite a situation like this happens very very very rarely (this is the first time I've seen it in 15+ years of playing CM/FM) SI have seen fit to code it in does lead me to think they've thought of most things. The ME has many flaws and the intense environment of PvP play shows these up cruelly as many teams look to exploit them, but still it's the best that's out there, and still it has the power to surprise so I've resolved to cut it some slack for a bit. Let's see how long that lasts... :p