Spurious Logic

Personnel issues.

The dressing room door is a plain brown door decorated by a white sign with black lettering reading "Home". It's scuffed and scraped from hundreds of careless passers by brushing against it. It swings loosely and quietly when I push it inwards.

The hubbub inside quietens down as I walk in.

"I'm your new manager. I don't know which of you consider yourself starters but you'd do best to forget that right now. As far as I'm concerned, none of you are on the first team squad as of right now.

It's up to each and every one of you to impress me over preseason and show me that you're worth putting on the pitch."

It's only been a day or so since I arrived and I'm already understanding this bizzare language they speak up here. Somewhere between Scottish, Norwegian and Dutch with Pictish thrown in for good measure.

So this means no more "what a funny accent they have up here" jibes.

Now I'm sitting in the dugout watching our first team struggle against the reserves. As the game progresses the first team go 0-1 down to the reserves. The only bright point is a forward, John Yates, who all through the first half has looked decent without really sparking. In the second half a nippy striker, Lee Brown, comes on. He creates the equalising goal with a breakaway dribble down the right flank and then goes on to score himself. He has no real technique, just all pace and furious intention getting the better of the opposition.

I make notes against each of the players over the course of the game. For each I've got a broad category of abilities and give ratings to each. Afterwards, looking at these player notes I can't help but think "So many 1's". Almost every player has at least one category of 1 or 2. In particular the midfielders have poor workrate and physical attributes. This is a really bad sign. At this level physicality, workrate and above all determination are key. So if the 'engine room' of your team are lazy wimps you're going to have major problems in any game you play.

I particularly liked that one player, who I won't name, self-described as an 'attacking midfielder' that I rated at stamina 20 and workrate 1. I can only imagine that he's got Olympic long distance runner level of fitness but because he's so lazy he was just hanging around centre circle all game. Onto the transfer list you go me boyo.

The other thing which strikes me is that even including the useless with all these players I'm going to be short staffed. I didn't even have the 22 I usually like to be able to swap out all the players at half time in friendlies and I even thought I put the backup reserve goalie in a centre forward there were still three players out there for the full 90 minutes.

I'm going to have to at least six or seven players as they're just not up to standard. So, I'm basically going to be looking for another 10~11 players who can fight for first team places. This isn't a really big issue as it will allow me to decide how I want to play and choose suitable players rather than having to adjust tactics to who's available. A fresh start as it were.

Speaking of clean starts, later on I notice that for a club with extensive history of excellence it's very new squad. In fact, the entire team joined just before I did. It's as if their previous team were wiped out in some tragedy so horrific that no one dares speak of it and rather than let the club die out, the board drafted in new players over the summer.

Actually, that might explain what happened to the previous manager...

I examine the upcoming fixture list I see only a tedious progression of no-name clubs which will actually cost us more money to host than we'll actually bring in. Match fitness and morale boosting victories are all well and good, but the sinews of war are infinite money. I try for a host of high profile matches and I manage to entice Newcastle united to our ground. The Northumberland derby will bring a full house and £20,000 in revenue with just one match. I'm going to have to make this a yearly event. Neither Sunderland nor Middlesbrough would return my call.

Actually that would make a cool a medium term side goal. Establish the "Sparta Cup". An annual friendly tournament of teams from the north-east. I'm going to try and get Blyth, Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough all to play. I eagerly start doodling designs for a cup with the motif of a lump of coal...