Season Six, August: A tough start indeed

My first three fixtures, away to Liverpool (who had finished 2nd two years ago), at home to Chelsea (who had finished 2nd the previous seaon), and away to Newcastle (who had finished 3rd two years ago, and signed Woodgate and Hargreaves during the Summer), would look tough to anyone, let alone a team who had been promoted two seasons running and so was still largely made up of players more used to Huddersfield and Brighton than the Premier League elite.

Therefore, I present my summer signings:
Harry Kewell (free transfer, Liverpool), a genuine left-winger, and one with vast amounts of top flight experience. He was injured after 25 minutes of my first match :P
Giuseppe Rossi (free transfer, Man United), a talented young striker with bags of potential.
Victor Anichebe (£675k ,Everton), bought on a permanent basis after a successful loan spell. He's happy to be a back-up striker for now
Sorin Nicusor Radoi (£875k, Dinamo - Bucharest, presumably), a right-back with good stats, brought in to provide competition to the error-prone Bodnár.
Jack Hobbs (Season Loan, Liverpool), a centre-back who starred as England U21s dominated during the summer of 2010.

I also added some more staff members, most importantly, an assistant manager you will have heard of: Sammy Lee, from Bolton. Here are his stats:
16s across the board, making him easily my best coach.

So, now to the matter of taking on Liverpool at Anfield. I played a defensive formation, with a flat back four, two defensive midfielders (Silva and Flamini), Iversen and Nordtveit on the wing, but as ML/R rather than AML/R, and Lercher in central midfield with just one up front. We lost 3-0 thanks to a couple of goals from set pieces early on. For the visit of Chelsea, I used the same tactics. We took the lead early on through fans' favourite Kyle Wilson, but were 3-1 down by half-time. Away to Newcastle, the difference in class told again, and another 3-0 defeat kept us rooted to the bottom spot.
I felt we had more of a chance at home to Man City, so I switched to 4-4-2. We still fell behind, but Anderson Silva forced an equaliser and it was 1-1 at half-time. City scored again early in the second half, but still we pressed on in search of our first point. Then just a few minutes from the end, we had a goal disallowed :-(
Four defeats in a row, but at least we were off the bottom (on goals scored), as Norwich were still on zero points and had lost by more.
Then, some salvation: we won 2-0 away to Southampton, who would have gone top had they avoided defeat! Rossi, partnering Iversen up front, scored both goals, and it was comfortable in the end. So we're up to 18th, and the next match is at home to fellow strugglers Portsmouth. I'm not too down-hearted yet, since all five of the teams we have played are in the top seven, but it would be nice to get some more points...


In light of our leaking goals at the back, I've splashed just over £4m on another Scandinavian, Espen Ruud. He can play anywhere across the defence, but I'll be using him at left-back. I'll let you know how he settles in next time. Hopefully the presence of Iversen and Nordtveit should make it easier.

Summer Transfers