RebelClown's Hattrick Weblog » Log Archive » Season 15 » English
14-10-2008 Goals
AFC Ursel United dominated the VI.280 in the previous season and won the title. RebEleven began terrible, looking more like a relegation candidate than a team that just came from Vth division. In the second part we came back strongly and ended not far from second place. Now that Ursel has promoted and been replaced with a weaker team, I thought I should go for the championship myself. I don't think the team is ready yet to return to V, so ideally I wouldn't autopromote. I guess by loosing the first match I'm all right on that one. :(
Talking about his replacement, that's fc chopchop. Interestingly he demoted from Che_G's league, one of my long time supporters who can hopefully give me some insider info on him. The owner of Chop Chop, beenie, seems to have lost interest in the game, logging in only once every 2 weeks and occasionally missing a friendly. Still, that's not as bad as another new face in the league, fc stumpers. They hardly ever play a friendly, and got kicked out in the first cup round after playing an odd 3-4-2 formation. They topped that by fielding a 3-3-2 in the leaguegame, getting trashed 10-0 by the other debutant Di_Tommaso. Tommaso have recently released a press anouncement stating that they will take it easy for a while and sell all their players. The best of them are indeed on the transfer list. Add to that the fact that masterteamphil did not really improve himself, and I might me looking at quite a boring season. I've scored the highest Hatstats in the first round, not a fair comparision until next Sunday when everyone has had a home game, but enough to still feel confident that I have a shot at first place, even after losing the opening game.
13-10-2008 First hurdle
Last season started very badly, but I managed to pick up the pace halfway through. In the end I did my very best to finish in third place, so I could start the new season with a home game. Have succeeded I now faced the first league game against the #4 Geen vuiltje aan de lucht. The two previous clashed were very anxious affairs ending in a draw and a one goal win for me. This time I was confident that my boys would do better. I shouldn't have been.
Even though I scored the highest HatStats rating of all teams in the league, I feel victim to the old 'midfield is evrything' trick of the match engine. Somehow, defence did not play any part in this match. Aerosool's team gained 60% possesion, go the majority of chances as a result, 5 to be exact, and found the net on each one of them. Even when attacking on the wings, where my defense was strongest. Interestingly they scored from an indirect free kick, which I think is the first of such events I have seen in one of my matches. Anyway, the fact that the Rebels scored from all of their attacks did not matter anymore. I hope I will be lucky at some other time when I most need it, to offset this, otherwise my goals for this season can be thrown out of the window.
10-10-2008 First game of the season
The traditional opening game of a new season is behind me. The first round draw for the KNVB cup matched me up with the Rotterdam Blazers, a relatively new and promosing team from the VIII division. Of course they should never pose a threat, but with Hattrick you never know. RebEleven won with 4-1, but in these games it's not really the result that matters, as long as you win of course. More importantly, there were no cards or injuries, and two players gained a level in experience. Guy Lastman and Cornelus Konijn, both midfielders, that will help the coming season. Konijn is now formidable, unfortunately he's a disastrous leader, so no sense in making him a coach in a few years. That should be Fred Oeynhausen by the way.
The other event this week was training, these one-game-a-week weeks always create a puzzle. This time I decided on set pieces, I think actually the first time ever I've trained that. I decided on that because of the new indirect set pieces feature, which means the skill will be more important for everybody. I'm fairly happy with it, all my players that had a low level have gained one. Sadly my regular kicker Konijn hasn't improved nor his backup, but well, can't have everything.
09-10-2008 Changes
Hattrick has made some unexpected changes recently (at least to me). Last week the mail system was upgraded and now works as a proper one. A long due changes, with seceral good features like being able to use markup in your text, but I don't I like it the way it is now. There's loads of whitespace under each mail, which means I can't find the reply button until I remember that it doesn't exist anymore and I have to scroll down. Then there's the weird layout: 2 buttons on 1 row followed by another one on a new row, even when there's plenty of space for it on the row before. And finally a drop down box featuring 'More actions' namely 'Mark as unread'. Good feature, but why is it not a button? And why is the unread message stored in 'read messages'? Confusing I think, especially because it doesn't have a number indicating there are unread messages in it. Anyway, I could go on.
Next new thing: the friendly pool. Can't say how this works yet, as I'm still in the cup (and hope to be for a long time). It looks promising as something I could use when away on holiday, I'll give it a go when and where. I wonder if this was tested in Stage though? I keep looking to see if there are empty spots for that, but no luck so far.
06-10-2008 A new beginning
Time for a new beginning, so let me (re)introduce myself. I am RebelClown, manager of RebEleven. The coming season will be the 15th of the club in the Dutch competition. After starting in the IX division I managed to work my way up to the VIth, where progress stagnated for a while. Four seasons ago I finally grabbed the title, only the second in the history of the club, a bit of a pet frustration to be honest. The Vth proved just a little bit too taxing for me at the moment, so I'm back in the VI since last season, but definitely looking up. The team has done reasonably well in the national cup, reaching the 7th round twice. Talking about cups, you might know me as the organiser of the Alltid friendly cups of the past 5 seasons.
So, to my 'old' readers, sorry to bore you with that, and good that you came back! To the new readers a heartfelt welcome, and a little explanation: this blog has been going on since before I even got my team, but in the beautiful language of Dutch. Because I now live in London, and I play Hattrick and everything else around it in English, I've switched to writing in my grandmothers tongue. So a lot of the site might be incomprehensible for you at the moment. I will translate the general pages into English over time, but all the older stuff will stay Dutch I'm afraid. Anyway, that's it for now, from now on the blog will be about the world of Hattrick again.