Spurious Logic

An era of discontent.

Those clouds you see are nothing compared to the storm in the club house of Moratalla. There you see beautiful steel greys and blues rolling over a peaceful verdant forest. We have only mud, rain and strife.

I feel I may have over reached. Inspired by our fine performances in the first quarter of the season I foolishly decided that a more forward thinking approach to the art of foot to ball would be an appropriate way to push the club forward.

I was wrong. Oh so very, very wrong.

Games 1 & 2

The first two games of this quarter saw me trying for a more offensive approach to the game. Using the 4-5-1 as a more attacking formation with wingbacks, not fullbacks and attack minded wingers instead of wide tacklers aimed at chaining the opposing fullbacks. Also, because Fernando was getting restive and Inglesias wasn't performing I gave the older striker a chance and demoted the young gun to the u19's to let him settle a little.

Suffice it to say we got hammered. 0-3 and 0-3 with barely a credible shot on goal.

Game 3 & 4

For the third game I tried a 442 and while we scored, we still lost 3-1. The fourth was a limp one-nil defeat.

All this was not helped by the long term injury to Iacob who I'm beginning to think is the only good defender we have at the moment. Without the Romanian man-mountain next to him Cavalieri has fallen to pieces. He's conceded 2 penalties and missed any number of headers. Neither Kowalczyk nor Joe can play with him. Such is Cavaleri's poor form, his confidence is shot and whoever his defensive partner is, they're under such pressure that they cannot play well. I'm thinking that Cavalieri just needs to be dropped until Iacob gets back. I just hope the loanee and the kid can manage to pull it together.

For all his bitching and moaning Fernando hasn't impressed. Mind you he's still not match fit so there's still hope. He hasn't played any worse than Inglesias so I think I'll stick with him for a while longer yet.

The other covering player Óscar Cases has also failed to impress. I'm looking at his stats again and I spot something I missed on the first look over. He's slow. Like, tortoise slow. Pace and acceleration of 5. I know the technique and workrate is great and all but at this level it's speed which is wingers pre-requisite.  I'll see if he can play a latter-day Beckham role. Just check out the striker who waltzed past my defence with a dribbling of 7 and a pace of 19.

Óscar Cases

Sergio Montero of Lorca

The end result of this 3 match pasting we've suffered is that the team's dropped from a respectable 11th all the way to 18th. Unless this is going to turn into another relegation battle I'll have to do something between now and new years. I'm planning a return to the trusty warhorse of defend in depth and hope to grab an equaliser.

In financial news we actually turned a profit one month because one of the visiting teams brought 2000 fans with them. I wish I could play them every week.

Game 5

In the very next game Juan Jésus grabs a precious early goal and we hang on to win 1-0 after 80 mins of desperate defending..

Game 6

There follows as creditible 0-1 defeat to the second placed team. The press is worried that José's confidence is shot. Dire warnings that he hasn't scored a goal in 10 hours of football!!! You remember the first quarter of the season? That oh so brief period of hope and confidence? He scored 4 goals in 9 games. It wasn't exactly world class but it kept us ticking over. Well I think the whole team has suffered from poor tactics, bad preparation and as he's an easy target. You can't score if you're back in your own penalty area helping out all the time.

Game 7

Next is a 0-3 defeat to Jaén. Hold on, we played them last year and beat them. Have we regressed so much?

Fernando is so awful so he's gone straight to the transfer list. It's not a snap decision as he's been edging closer to it since last spring. Now he's got no confidence so is not scoring and he's not scoring because he's got no confidence. He only worked one opportunity and passed it meekly into the hands of the keeper. It's like he want's to go. I can deal with poor performance but he's moaning that he's not getting game time and then when he does get it he doesn't put in much effort and fails to work well with the rest of the team.

This means we're back to having just José and Inglesias as our two strikers. And José is sick.

Game 8

My makeshift centerback pairing of Kowalczyk and  Joe seems to be working. There are a few hairy moments when Joe races off to the corner flag but we hold on for a 0-0 draw.

Game 9

For the last game of the year Iacob is back from his broken ribs and suddenly Cavalleri is reborn. He plays fantastically until he gets taken off injured. I'm starting to think that theirs is more than just a professional relationship and that he was pining. Kowalczyk comes on and again with Iacob next to him starts making clearing headers and interceptions like a seasoned pro. It's clear by now that Iacob is the key to my defence. He doesn't get great ratings himself but he's solid whoever's in next to him really improves. The match ends up nil all.

Inglesias was put through on goal again and again but just can't score. As I said, he's got the ability to be fantastic all he needs is that first goal and I think he'll be knocking them in for fun against everyone. The match ended with a draw and despite 3 forced substitutions the only injury is Cavalleri who is out for a month.

Game 10

Last match of the quarter I go for a counter attacking 442 with slow, narrow time wasting approach. The 451 is fine but the problem at this stage is less not conceding, and more not scoring. We don't generate any chances and because the opposition are free to attack at will we're getting hammered. It's as far from the freeflowing, attacking 442's as can you imagine with its focus on defence but we should be able to offer more of a threat than sitting back as we were with the ultra defensive 451.

In addition to this, I've signed a new Lithuanian striker, Virginijus Ramonas, who will hopefully spark the front two, providing a bit of a shake up and confidence boost to the team. Of course he scores within 5 minutes of his debut only for us to concede 10 minutes later to a long range screamer in off the post. The match stays at 1-1 but we're generating more of the chances and frankly, it's more interesting than the previous grind fests. Maybe with some more football like this we can attract in some crowds and keep ourselves up.

After all that drama we're 16th. That's the play off relegation spot. But we're only 2 points off 15th spot (occupied by the team we just drew with) so we're not in too bad a situation. The collapse which threatened to happen during the three run of defeat was held off with some decent if not great displays.

In short:

When I get my board evaluation every month I see that consistently the most popular thing I have done all season is dump Guerrero. It'd be nice if I was liked because of some reason other than firing a player.

I've made another new signing which I haven't mentioned. A 34 year old defensive minded central midfielder Miguel Ángel Gálvez. He is slow but I'm hoping that's not such a huge issue as he's not meant to be racing down the wings but pinging passes about and making timely interceptions. I'm also hoping I might be able to bring in another striker as I really need to start scoring and if Ramonas doesn't work out then I want to have options. Extra wide players would be nice as well. I'm even considering recalling Caballero from loan to provide backup/competition for Otero/Martínez as Cases has failed miserably to do so.

In terms of signing players I talked before how limited my options are. Well also because of the registration rules of the Spanish league, when I find a player that's good enough for the team and want to join, they're usually over 22 and so take up one of the "older players" slots. This means any new "older players" I find has to be definitively better than what I've already got. And I have to operate a "one in, one out" policy which results in ill feeling and disruption within the squad. I'd love to sign players under 22 as a bunch of those slots are currently taken by u19 players who don't need to be registered at all , but they're either not good enough or don't want to join

Having seen how we played with a short, slow, narrow 442 I think I may have been underselling the players. They were good. Not great just yet but they created more chances against Ontinyent than they did in the previous 8~9 games. Having an additional dedicated forward means that there is more of a attacking threat so maybe- maybe the opposition can just keep on firing in shots from 30 yards.

A proper 451 (or as I was trying 4-1-2-3) requires the full team to be set up correctly to function (as does any tactic).

So the whole thing fell apart the way I had set up my team and with the players I have. So I'm going to go for a controlled 442 as in the last game and hopefully I can keep these cloggers up. Nothing fancy just not hoofing it forward every time we have the ball.

The 442 will have

As with all great plans it'll last until first contact with the enemy and then it's all down the bravery of the individual soldiers.

Apologies for the game by game breakdown on this. A flat description of win-lose-draw isn't interesting to read unless you're actually playing the game but I was busy with other stuff this week so I just padded out my play notes with extra detail and called it a post. I'll work more at picking out the high-low lights and focus on them. More stories from Murcia coming up.