Our first match was away to a team called Oldham Victoria, a classic, grizzled, County League outfit. Their team was full of players in their late twenties and early thirties, men who had been playing at this level for a decade.
They were not going to be intimidated by our reputation. They were not going to be impressed by our fancy football. They were going to be hard, they were going to be organized, and they were going to be a brutal introduction to our new reality.
I set the team up in a cautious 4-1-4-1 formation, a new system I had designed using my 'Advanced Formations' skill. It was a solid, defensive setup, with Scott Miller as a deep-lying anchorman, tasked with protecting the back four and dictating the tempo of the game.
I had sacrificed a striker for an extra man in midfield, a clear sign of my respect for the opposition. My plan was to be solid, to be compact, and to try and hit them on the break with the pace of JJ and Liam on the wings.
