FM24: Eachtra Gaelach – Part 2

Media meeting over with, it’s sink or swim time, straight in at the deep end…and other ominous and challenging clichés. First league match is away at Sligo Rovers. Allegedly a local rivalry according to Football Manager despite being 91km and over an hour’s drive away. “Well they’re up there in north, so they are!”, seems to be the general gist. Apologies to those readers from Ireland who may not take too kindly to the odd stereotypical reference thrown in. I promise not to bring Leprechauns into the equation…

A bit of current squad status – only one injury which is vice captain Eoin Wearen who is out for 2-4 weeks with sprained knee ligaments. He’s had a few knee issues over the years including a damaged kneecap in 2023 and damaged cruciate ligaments in 2017. He is 31 and arguably my best defender/defensive midfielder. Bugger.

For those wondering, I’m starting with 5-2-3 DM WIDE. I enjoy playing 3 at the back and wing backs in general so we’ll see how we get on here. I could do with a left sided centre back and a deep lying playmaker when the transfer window opens in 73 days. I have some good players on the right defensive side including Noah Lewis and Noe Baba. Plus a top left wing back from USA called Ryan Flood. He’s four stars!

As expected, we lost. Only 2-1 which is no disgrace. We were 2-0 down at half time and playing pretty poorly. A bollocking at half time and a few tweaks with more focus on counter attacking and we played much better second half, Gerard Shortt bagging our goal on 58mins. The day’s big news, however, was Shamrock getting beaten at home 1-0 by UCD.

Feeling good about our chances at home against Shelbourne but it didn’t last long as my one and only left wing back, the 4-star Flood, decided a two footed tackle from behind on 2 minutes would be a good plan. It was not, off he went for an early bath. We were on a hiding to nothing from then on and lost 1-4 with substitute left winger and former Shelbourne player Alex Cetiner getting our only goal. No consolation really though, we were crap; they managed 18 shots (12 on target) to our 4(2).

Next up was an away trip to Cork who are just above us. Things didn’t look good going in as we lost Ryan Flood and Ryan Rainey to suspension as well as Gordon Walker who was ineligible to play against his parent club. That left me with kids coming in to fill the gaps. 20 minutes in and we were 2-0 up and cruising… until a shambolic second half cost us dearly and we finished the game 2-2 following an injury time equaliser and us missing a penalty. The saving goalkeeper was Jimmy Corcoran, whom I had selected for the under-21 match against Italy…bastard. Oh well, can’t beat a bit of market research while on the job. Our goal scorers were South African attacker BJ Banda and Irish defender Declan Watters. Not holding onto a lead is a worry, but more concerning was Cobh Ramblers beating Bohemians 1-0 away and sending us to the bottom of the league by one point.

Back to a pretty much full strength side, the next match was at home to Dundalk. The Lilywhites were going great guns so it was always going to be tough and true to form we were rubbish in the first half, capped off just before half time by another red card for Ryan Flood. Turns out in the Irish league, a straight red card only gets you a one match ban, even if you’ve got two of them in as many games! So, another week’s wages to be transferred from his bank account to ours. He’s on €1.1k per week so it’s not peanuts really. We were 3-0 down at half time and so it stayed for the 90 minutes.

At this point, I managed to bolster the defence by signing Georgian centre back Bakar Mirtskhulava on a free transfer. He’ll be earning €850 per week on a one-year deal. He has played almost exclusively in Georgia except three seasons on the books at Benfica in his youth. My scouts tell me he is a B- player at 3.5 stars. Most importantly though, he prefers to be on the left in a two or three man defence and that is exactly where he will be.

And so we go onto an away match at Bohemians. The good news is that we played a hell of a lot better, even going 1-0 up in the second half thanks to striker Patrick Ferry. The bad news is that we threw it away again. Six minutes after taking the lead, we picked up another straight red card, this time for right wing back Gordon Walker. On the defensive we went, but we conceded a penalty on 85 minutes. So, we drew 1-1 which isn’t too bad, and the silver lining is that Cobh got battered 4-0 at home so we are off the bottom on goal difference. Mirtskhulava turned in a decent 6.7 rating too so we can be fairly happy with that.

Next up, the proverbial six-pointer – Cobh Ramblers at home. Could this be the break we need? The first victory of our journey together? The match where it all finally clicks into place?

No.

We couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. We got absolutely battered 3-0 by the worst side in the league. Correction: second worst side. Safe to say I thrashed my arms and told them all they weren’t good enough. I stopped short of kicking the water bottle though; I’m not a monster.

This is now starting to look like mission impossible. We are one match away from the halfway point in the season and we have a grand total of nine points.

I bet you started reading this thinking, “this will be great, I bloody love a good Football Manager blog where someone manages a lesser known club and takes them to new heights!” Well, as you will have gathered by now, you are dead wrong. I mean, I hope you’re right in the end. But right now there looks to be more chance of finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow…sorry.

So one game left to complete the first half of the season, and it’s St Pat’s away. Time for the old team talk. You all know how it goes – “I’m really keen to ensure our heads don’t drop…yada yada yada”. It went well, in fact it was “exactly the sort of reaction I was looking for”. A tweak in formation to accept defeat and put four at the back with a defensive ball winning midfielder ahead of them, that being the newly fit again Eoin Wearen.

Unsurprisingly, we lost. Only 1-0 which isn’t too upsetting. We got battered and the goalie kept us in it but still, we have had worse results. And that brings us rather unsuccessfully to the midway point of the season. Away from the pitch, I have managed to build up the staffing numbers which were fairly depleted and I took a French striker on trial for a week from Atlanta United which proved promising. He’s out of contract at the end of the year but may accept a fee in the transfer window this summer.

Speaking of summer, the upcoming schedule is as follows:
UCD away
Shamrock home
Lithuania U21s away
Large break for the European Championships in Germany

 That takes us to July and the transfer window.

 The table after 18 games currently stands as follows:

1. Shamrock Rovers 38
2. Dundalk 36
3. Shelbourne 30
4. St Pat’s Athletic 27
5. U.C.D. 25
6. Bohemians 25
7. Sligo Rovers 22
8. Cork City 17
9. Cobh Ramblers 12
10. Finn Harps 9

I am truly sorry that this is so disappointing. Hopefully it picks up in the second half of the season and we fare better on the international front! Until the next time…