F.C. Top Knot – 2014/15 A Season Review

Well it was never in doubt was it, the early season favourites have gone from strength to strength and delivered the double in 2014/15. League glory was also added by a fantastic day out at Wembley in front of 90,000 as F.C. Top Knot crushed all that went before them…well nearly all that went before them.

Out of a 40 game league campaign, the record reads W39 D0 L1 – A huge blemish on the season record and denting the hopes of finishing the season with a perfect 100% record and who ruined the party I hear you ask?. It was the fucking Wealdstone Raider, well not him literally but an awful away performance at Wealdstone led to the only blot on the copy book this season. The only reason I can attribute to this defeat is that the fixture backlog got a bit mental towards the end and I wasn’t rotating the attack line as much as I should have done so during this game they were like dead man walking. Maybe in hindsight I should have rotated a bit more but I wanted the Top Knot machine to crush the Vanarama Conference South with a perfect record only it wasn’t meant to be.

Here is the offending match in question:

Ironically I got into a spat with their manager earlier on in the season before we first met, how ironic it is he who had the last laugh…bastard. But let’s not dwell on that let’s take a look at the final table in all it’s wonderful glory:

A league record 117 points was amassed and a goal difference of +149 was registered, this is Goals For 158 Goals Against 9, yes a paltry 9 times was the defence breached but then again what a defence it was. Lets now take a look at the regular first eleven (screen shot taken at the end of the season so ignore the injuries)

As you can see the team has now morphed into a 4-3-3 formation to enable me to play Cavani, Ibrahimovic and Dani Osvaldo altogether, Ibrahimovic now sits in more of an AMC role which I also noticed meant he was getting injured a lot less. At the start of the season it was a simple 4-4-2 with Nacer Chadli and John Brayford in CM and Graham Zusi in RM, Zusi was the man who ultimately made way for Dani Osvaldo with Chadli moving out to the Right Wing.

But enough of the team let’s talk stats and primarily goal stats, just look at Edinson Cavani’s return for a season in the Vanarama Conference South:

Yes that’s right Cavani chipped in with 69 goals in 44 matches – just a stupendous scoring record to be honest but the experiment is all about seeing where the team’s natural level is and this has certainly proved that it’s higher than the Conference South. But let’s not down play Ibrahimovic and Dani Osvaldo’s contributions which was 37 and 33 respectively that’s 139 goals between these front 3 alone. Also Cavani won the League Player of the Season and I won the League Manager of the Season, here is a snapshot of the average ratings of my first team players:

Edinson Cavani rightly winning the award with an average rating of 8.53 which beat the wing wizard Nacer Chadli into second place with his 8.23 average rating, although Chadli only got 5 goals this season he would also be the provider of 20 crucial assists in F.C. Top Knot debut season.

But let’s not forget the day out at Wembley and the F.A Trophy Final at Altrincham. Their was a massive bit of selection drama due to the fact that it was International Weekend on the same day as the Final so my squad and more importantly my attack line was absolutely decimated, I only just managed to put out a squad and that was thanks to a youth team player and a greyed out regen. Due to the depletion I had to revert to a 5-3-2 formation but with Liam Ridgewell in centre midfield and Sergio Torres in a advanced left wing free role. Due to the lack of attackers it almost meant that Curtis Main would make his debut for the club.

So I somehow managed to get a team together to actually play in the final, here is how I got there plus all the other fixtures since the last update:

And yes I did thump Wrexham 13-0 on aggregate in the Semi Finals to get to Wembley. As for the final itself my patched up team couldn’t have got off to a better start as Sergio Torres put us in front against Altrincham after only 3 minutes. Delight turned to despair as Andy Carroll then had to hobble off after 25 minutes leaving a light attack line even lighter, thankfully some heroes were made as firstly Curtis Main made it 2-0 on his debut and then my 16 year old Attacking Midfielder Sam Cole who came on for Carroll capped a fairytale afternoon off by making it 3-0 late on in the game.  Jubilant scenes in front of 90,000 and the first trophy of two this season and hopefully many more to come.

Which leads onto to the 2015/16 season. As stated before I’m not buying or selling any players and the only new ones I will have in the summer is the new intake of youth team players which have joined the club and are now in the U-18’s side. The aim is to try and get a few of these to be good enough to play for the club in 4-5 seasons time when I should hopefully be making the final push to the Premier League. But you never know what Football Manager has in store.

What I do know is that a pre-season tour of South Korea awaits for F.C. Top Knot and the preparations for life in the Vanarama Conference have started in earnest, will this Footballing Juggernaut manage the same feats at a level above and march into the Football League – keep an eye on the blog and you will soon find out…