As I am preparing the team lineup, I realize that Nottingham Forest has an aditional advantage over my team (as if they needed more). My team has not had the time to get rested after the match against Edimborough University. Even worse, engrossed by my attacking play in that match, I left my first team on the pitch for too long, so now they are dead. I can see clearly as they are in the dressing room that if I let them fight the british team in these conditions, I'm going to lose everything I had gained up to now, the morale of the players and some sort of cohesion. If one of my defenders makes one or two mistakes that lead into goals, he'll get depressed and then I will have a difficult task because he'll be a weak link in the chain. And I cannot afford this weak link.
I decide to minimize the force of the impact and I change the script on the spot. I bring out 10 reserves, only my brand new goalkeeper will play today. I also bring most of my under 19 team to be ready to play the second half. If I lose by a lot, then so be it.
In terms of tactics, I decide to use the same setup that worked so well before, narrow but not deep zonal defensive line, a rigid mentality and very low risk style of play. Only 3 players with any offensive orientation, the rest will not pass the midlfield line in the whole match.
As a result, I see Nottingham Forest dominate the sidelines and the midfield, but crash against my defensive midfielder. When they can escape my DMC, they give very compromised passes to the strikers, so ball control is difficult and they cannot score. Good.
In the midtime, we are 0-0 and I'm very happy, there must be something right in the tactic too, not only the players.
Anyways, the objective today is to reduce the score, not to win a medal.
I replace everyone, bring out the under19 and wait for the resting 45 mins to be over.
The match ends in a 0-2 for Nottingham Forest and I'm again very happy, the crash was not so bad as I feared, I can still stand.
This leaves me with one preseason match left and I think a pattern is emerging for the 2010 Queen's Park team.
Three matches against clearly superior teams have proven that my team is solid and that although I cannot create goals against a vastly superior team, I can still dream about very decent defensive performances when playing away against say, Livingstone. Also, the team's morale is good even with a 75% loss rate.
The creativity and goal making capabilities of QP remain unproven, specially against a defensive team, as well a the performance away from home.
It's a reasonable starting point.
A different matter comes to my attention when watching my under19: the striker that I hired some days ago is too good.
I got him as a potential good player for the future, he's 18 and does not have better stats than my "good" guy Ian Watt.
However, when in the match he plays a much better game than Ian Watt, he positions himseelf better, dribbles much better and shoots also better. I like him.
But of course, this match is not very relevant.
On the other hand, if this guy performed, then I could concentrate on getting the holy grail of a AMC and actually pay him real money, as I am well below the wage budget.
It sounds too good to be true.
I decide that, at least for the moment, my underage striker is going to be in the first team as a replacement and we'll see what happens. I also decide that he's going to play more than 45 minutes of the next match.
The next match is going to be the last in the preseason. I'm playing an amateur team and I will have the time to test my tactics in an interesting way.
Because by the way, my offensive tactics are ready.
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