Real life vs Fantasy life

Newcastle United 0 – Hull City 1

FA Cup Third Round 2008-2009 season.

It’s times like these that make you want to tear your hair out in frustration (if I had any that is).

So, in real life:

Newcastle United are in the lower half of the league.

Can’t buy a win for love nor money, have a massively injury hit squad - players who don’t want to play for the club (Charles N’Zogbia, Little Saint Mick and Shay Given) while other players just want to sit on fat contracts doing fuck all (step forward Alan Smith) and fans who are bordering on the rebellious.

Management structure is up in the air – The owner can’t sell the club, the scouting networks are in ruins and we have a director of football who can’t tell his arse from his elbow and a manager who was killed by a sniper on a grassy knoll in 1963 (sorry – wrong JFK).

And to cap it all off we are the butt of a lot of jokes from the media (step forward Henry “scumbag” Winter and Martin “looks like a sex offender” Samuel as two examples) and fans from other clubs.

What a fun time to support the team I love.

However, in the magical happy land of Football Manager 2008 it’s a somewhat different story.

Newcastle United have a new chairman in charge who wants to win things.

Their sophomore manager Damo has taken Newcastle to 3^rd in the premier League in his second season in charge.

He is playing a progressive 4-4-2 at home and away, got rid of the dead wood in the squad (Little Saint Mick £9mill to Lazio, Alan Smith contract terminated, Milner to Villa for £9Mill, Geremi £1mill to Getafe, Damien Duff £4.5mill to Celtic).With the dead wood gone the first team currently looks a little different.

GK – Steve Harper, with John Ruddy from Everton as cover while Given is injured and Krul is on loan.

RB – Habib Beye – Fit, providing assists

LB – Jose Enrique – Taken his time to acclimatise, but doing really well

CB – Fabricio Coloccini – Awesome CB

Cm – Steve Taylor – Looks decent but keeps getting booked – a new CB is on the cards at the end of the season.

RM – Aaron Lennon – secured from Spurs for hardly any money – isn’t able to cross the ball though.

LM – Jeremy Menez – awesome

CM – Evar Banega – Bought from Valencia for loads (18mill) at the start of this season – best player by a mile

CM – Stephen Defour (liege) – bought for a song in my first season and is showing world class form on the right central side of midlfield.

ST – Oba Martins – on a hot scoring streak with 12 goals in 8 games.

ST – Jimmy Briand – Future France legend – bought on the cheap – can’t stop scoring.

Oh – and Man Utd are 11^th in the league. Fuck you fergie.

In the game my managerial skills are helping me trouser £31,000 a week.

Looking at the two – I know which one I’d prefer.