A Journey of a Thousand Miles begins with a Single Step

By: Matt | April 5th, 2009

And so our season begins, the friendlies are over, the new faces have arrived and now the real work begins in trying to take this club somewhere. By the wonders of the alphabetic ordering system and that Bournemouth, Rotherham and Luton are all starting on negative points this season we’re currently lying in 20th.

I’ve never been in the situation where my club has entered administration but I’ve read that whenever an offer is made on one of your players, you have no option but to accept it. I’m presuming that these must be decent offers and I’m not going to be able to loot these three squads for less that the price of a couple of beers. Has anyone been in that situation before?

I’ve decided to stick to your everyday 4-4-2, in part because in League 2 you can end up getting a bit too fancy. I’m not into squad rotation every week so, barring any injury and fatigue, here’s how our starting line up should be looking.

One piece of final news before I get onto the match reports is that I’d previously requested a parent club from my board. Parent club’s are useful for two reasons, first they give you a sum of money every year and play a friendly in the pre-season which can give your bank balance a hefty boost, and secondly they are more open to loaning out players to you and if you do get one on loan, the parent will pay 100% of the wages. My board finally came back to me the eve before my first competitive match with the following offers:

Manchester United
Aston Villa
Stoke

I was very tempted with signing Manchester United as a sugar daddy and one look at their reserves will tell you why, they have a great list of budding young talent that would be willing to get some experience in the lower leagues. In the end though I chose Aston Villa as Birmingham is the local big city to Shrewsbury and I thought it was a bit more in keeping with what might happen in real life. Straight away I was regretting this decision as the Villa just don’t have the depth or quality in their squad. At least I can feel like I’ve not sold out a little, that should keep me going when we’re battling against relegation in March right?

First up Shrewsbury v Bradford

Shrewsbury 3 : Bradford 0
Goals: Almerares (15, 55) Charlie D (58)

The first game of the season so there was a bit of tension going into the match and the scoreline perhaps doesn’t reflect how the game played out. If Bradford had been a bit more accurate in front of goal it could have been a lot tighter.

Almerares bagged two on his debut which is very encouraging, the first a real pouchers effort getting a foot to a Davies shot that looked like it might just beat the Keeper anyway. The second getting his head to a Holt cross. Finally Charlie D pinged one in off the post from outside the area, I’m definitely telling him to attempt Long Shots often. I’m very pleased with our opener and its nice to get all 3 points.

Next up we’d drawn Derby in the League cup at home. Derby have just come down from the Premier League and so I was looking to try and keep the ass wupping to a minimum as I was desperate to build on the momentum from our game against Bradford. Almerares managed to twist his knee in training and will be out between three and four weeks so I decided to give Madjo a start hoping that he’d be in a good mood today. Almerares’ fitness has always been a concern to me and at the moment out of my plethora of Stikers I can’t see one that has the ability to make a good plan B. It was at this point I remembered how I hoped terminating the Walker loan deal wasn’t going to come back to haunt me along with not picking Manchester United as a parent club.

I set about looking for another decent Striker that could stand in if Almerares kept hurting himself. I put in a cheeky season long loan bid for Arsenal’s Jay Simpson with a wage contribution of 0%. I thought it would be a good starting point for negotiation only for Arsenal to go and accept it. As long as Jay fancies a bit of lower league football I might have got my stand in.

He’s got great Pace and for this level his Finishing is good so I’m hoping that he should be just what the Doctor ordered. Almerares’ Doctor that is, as he may soon become a regular around the training ground.

Shrewsbury v Derby

Shrewsbury 1 : Derby 2
Goal: Langmead (40)

Derby took the lead after half an hour when Daniels parried the ball into Emanuel Villa’s feet instead of catching a cross. Up until then the game was quite even and I was hoping head’s weren’t going to drop as I could still feel that wupping coming round the corner. Speaking of corners, we equalised through one 10 minutes later when one of our CB headed in from the six yard box. It ended 1:1 at half time and I started to think we might just get a chance to bag a lucky one when Daniels again parried a ball out to the feet of a Derby player instead of catching it first time. In the end I’m pleased with the result, I didn’t want the confidence drain of a high score loss but now we can concentrate on the League without having the distraction of the League Cup.

Another silver lining was that Jay Simpson had agreed to the loan deal and would be here in time for our next League Match to stand in for the still injured Almerares.

We’d lost out on a Cup run at the first hurdle but it didn’t matter as long as we got back down to business in the League.

Bury v Shrewsbury

Bury 1 : Shrewsbury 0

Words cannot describe how annoying this match was. Bury scored in the 2nd minute of the game and for the next 90 I slowly increased our Attacking Mentality but it got us nowhere. Also my stand in Striker, Jay Simpson ended up picking up an injury as well.

Its not all bad though I suppose, we’ve got 3 points from our first two games and Bury and Bradford in particular are two of the better teams in the League so I guess we’ve just got to concentrate on step two.