Monday 9 February 2009

SFA Active / Ladder League - High Drama

Of all the things I've tried this series of comps is the best. With two games left I was sitting in a relegation spot a win over Pinkys made sure of our safety, but left Macduff having to get three points from his last two to save his bacon. He duly made it happen and condemned Nick's Inter to Division 2.

It's a really competitive league and the current Premiership leaders also went down!

Hopefully my injuries woes will start to ease tomorrow as Dudu is finally back and hopefully De Cler shortly after. I've always maintained that the DM in a 4-4-2 is vital and playing with a 19 year old (who has benefited from the experience) always meant we were going to have an erratic time. The young left back did a good job and even though the 32 year old De Cler costs £16k a day I might attempt to extend his contract.

I know the match engine has it's critics but playing an 18 year old and 19 year in defensive positions things pretty much went as expected, erratic! This combined with numerous transfer activity (not something I normally do mid season) has left us limping in terms of form.

Paul Wallace despite having assembled an amazing team and a steady top 3 in the rankings continues his tirade in the lobby against the match engine.

Some of his points I agree with, against teams that are underranked I get the impression it's a case of luck going against you and get a feeling of 'loaded dice'. I've always found it a little odd that the opponents goalie would have a great game, perhaps odd isn't the word..... twisted. Luckily in the SFA most are active so everyone is where they should be so we have a more 'pure' version of the game.

Whilst the match engine isn't perfect I still see some things that feel right, e.g. my recent form although this was me losing a lot of games I really couldn't say it wasn't fair.

From my own view I get the frustration but I think the match engine simulates football with all it's wonderful inconsistencies pretty well.

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