Day 234

We held a backroom meeting today. It was the same old, “X should be put on this training regimen, you should scout Y.” The highlight was a suggestion to look at veteran Icelandic defender Ívar Ingimarsson, who’s on his way out at Bournemouth. The former Reading regular has quite the sun-in-his-eyes scowl in his headshot, but if he’s still got enough of his old chops he’d be a great addition to my squad next season.

The initial judgement on him is that he’s better than Gowling but not as good as Marques, so he’d be a chance to earn a regular starting berth for me. I am concerned, however, that he’s bereft of pace. Even this far down the professional footballing spectrum, being that slow could cause all manner of disruption in our defensive game. A quick striker could destroy Ingimarsson without even playing an intelligent positional game. That pace could well get worse between now and the start of next season, too.

I also changed Francis Laurent and Alan Power to backup players in their official squad statuses. I hope they don’t take offence—because I still need them—but that’s the reality of the situation now.