Day 232

He may have only played half a match against Luton at the weekend, but striker Omar Koroma made the Blue Square Bet Premier Team of the Week. Remarkably, that’s his first appearance in the list, despite being rated best on ground five times, and despite having an average rating of 7.39 from 24 appearances.

Winger Benjamin Laurant fractured his arm in a heavy fall during training today. He has to see a specialist, and is likely to miss the next six weeks—which equates to eight or nine matches. His return looks as though it may be against either Forest Green or Mansfield (games that are only two days apart!) in April. This is a big blow, with Koroma, Russell, and Olembé all currently injured too. I’ll have to play either Nutter or Shuker out of position on the left flank until Olembé’s fit in a week or so.

But that’s football—things turn to shit at the drop of a hat, and injuries often come in twos and threes. It’s a game of skill, sure, but luck has made or broken championship runs, prodigious young talents, one-season wonders, and underachieving teams (I remember the shock of West Ham being relegated from the Premiership in the 2002-2003 season, when they were “too good” to go down).

[Football Manager has always had a sense of the chaos of football, where sometimes things happen that you don’t expect and can’t explain. And it does so in such a way that it feels consistently inconsistent, which makes it hard to develop a grudge against the programming (as I have done in other sports games, like the FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer series’). I’m actually stunned that my team is still top of the table; I’ve never, in my eighteen years of playing the series, had such a good first season with a club. (There’s still time for that to change, of course.)]