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X11 season 45 - de rigueur Mortis

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    Absolutely. Despite not holding with all this "Ultimate League" nonsense, the idea of OTFers so high in a Pro League is something else. And VNU on the cusp of the top table. Doesn't that mean you could be challenging for a place in the Xpert Champions' League in a season's time? I've never investigated the concept as I'm not expecting to see LCC up there in the foreseeable future. And with juniors too!

    Hats off gents.

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      Originally posted by Etienne View Post
      We'll done VA. Cardiff Dragons won a big one against table topping Sporting Lisburn. That pretty much guaranteed us a play-off place to get back to Division 1 and makes us title favourites.
      Golly, yes sorry Etienne – I had your 'live' score up to keep track of that one while watching my game, but obviously got a wee bit distracted by events in my own match and forgot to check on your final score. Great win, best of luck for the Dragons' run-in. We'll see you in Division 1 the season after next, perhaps...

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        Having had a quick look at the potential playoff opponents (especially in Div 2A where there is a team worth 325m and 2 others worth over 190m) I think going for the title is the only way we are going up this season.

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          Well quite, I know where you're coming from: this is why I was so keen to win yesterday and have the other result go in our favour – I wouldn't give us great odd at all of beating the Division 1b runners-up in a playoff.

          Originally posted by Sits View Post
          Absolutely. Despite not holding with all this "Ultimate League" nonsense, the idea of OTFers so high in a Pro League is something else. And VNU on the cusp of the top table. Doesn't that mean you could be challenging for a place in the Xpert Champions' League in a season's time? I've never investigated the concept as I'm not expecting to see LCC up there in the foreseeable future. And with juniors too!
          Haha, yeah I know it's not as impressive as the Golden League, obviously, but...

          As you may divine from my comments above to Etienne, yes indeed when you put it like that we'll technically be "challenging for a place in the Xpert Champions' League" next season, Sits, but I don't hold out much hope of our being able to even stay up. The teams in the top flight are going to be in a different stratosphere: in yesterday's match VNU defender and best player Birger Klovning became my first ever X11 player to register a 22 rating, while midfield veteran Clive Whittingham became our second to nudge up to 21 (also achieved recently by Magda Fevereiro at VSU), but these are the kind of levels that will struggle to get a place in the team of the round at the highest level. Whittingham (34/16) is also on a mere 6 DV, so he's guaranteed to be a lesser player next season unfortunately, and I'll likely to still be relying on Kent-Arne Fridholm (35/15, 9 DV right now) to get the key goals.

          Birger at 27/17 is also out on his own as our sole genuinely 'world-class' talent, and we struggled without him when he was lost to a bad injury in midseason – so our defence is going to prove a particularly weak link: our only other three in that department are 33/14, 24/11 and 20/9. Yesterday's team performance was easily the best in club history; on the Match Report the ratings registered 16 for Defence, 18 for Midfield and 18 for Offence. A week earlier it was a more typical 13-15-17. In the parallel Division 1b, though, where two ascendant Romanian giants are dominating, we saw a clash between the top two yesterday where Ichnusa leapfrogged compatriots Montemor to the top with ratings of 21-20-13, while the losers picked up 19-18-11. Yikes.

          So, all told, I was conscious that last night's celebrations might be as good as it gets; frankly, I'm already wondering what the point is with VNU henceforth as we're simply never going to be in the same class as all those ultra-teams who have been forged by managers building and selling off players for huge money, then buying in squads of Hard Training 16- and 17-year-olds and hothousing them into unstoppable footballing machines, so there's little chance of me being able to take this side any further. In four years in charge, I've never really imagined beyond the point we effectively reached yesterday. Just try to secure the Div 1a title and then try to enjoy the ride in the top flight while it lasts, I guess.

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            I know it's frustrating to compete with the mega teams, but playing them is amazing for the younger players DV!

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              Hah, yes, I'll have to cling onto that thought.

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                Barnstormer of a week for the Pig Collective so far:

                P7 W0 D3 L5

                Does anyone else ever feel they’ve lost their X11 mojo or is it just me?

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                  Happens fairly regularly. Thankfully it's fleeting, although individual clubs can be stubbornly cack.

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                    Hopefully the slump lasts one more day, Sits.

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                      Bet your house on it.

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                        Originally posted by Sits View Post
                        Barnstormer of a week for the Pig Collective so far:

                        P7 W0 D3 L5

                        Does anyone else ever feel they’ve lost their X11 mojo or is it just me?
                        Rotten luck indeed to have failed to win eight out of seven games.

                        It goes in phases, I find. When I wrote the PRs for my four teams just a couple of weeks ago, I was able to report on three of them going to the top of their divisions, while the other one (Hideous Towns) had won a few consecutive games to pull clear of relegation trouble. I could do no wrong then. Since then, two of three league leaders have been deposed, and Hideous have suffered a catastrophic form collapse that makes us strong favourites for relegation. I can do no right now.

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                          Well, so much for Hornville being able to fluff their DVs* in the final fixture. Today's results have meant the final round of matches promise to be thrilling/agonizing depending on your level of involvement.

                          These are going to be terrible - really terrible - so they need all the fluffing they can get

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                            You know what's the best way to avoid pressure? Obliviousness! I was under the complete impression that the season was 22 games long, so didn't realise the Hornville-Banik match was the penultimate game, and an absolutely imperative one for my side to win. If I had know, I wouldn't have played the same way, and we probably wouldn't have got the same, crucial, result... Dumb luck is the best way.

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                              Ah, so that's the secret! I was possibly guilty of overconfidence as I remember just thinking "win this and it's all over". Now we have a tough away game that we probably have to win, so even though we're still top it could be argued we're the most likely to drop out of the top three and miss out.

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                                I hadn't realised until last night when chatting with Noj, that he has won the last two teams of the month competitions and is currently standing a few points behind me in second place for March. And my last game is against league-leaders-who-need-to-win Amwythig (and thanks to my current good run I no longer need to win). Has anyone ever won 3 teams of the month in a row before?

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                                  You can look for yourself at the bottom of the Team Of The Month screen. Answer is no, for OTF. Two in a row is common, both Zeugmaspor and Dandy Town have won three out of four, but no-one has won three in a row.

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                                    Oh yeah. I didn;t think to scroll down

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                                      I could well be wrong, but I have a faint notion Red Star Oakland might just have done it once. Alas, there's no ready way to tell now.

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                                        It was a real pity when Incidental Contact/Sexual Chocolate decided to leave. It always seemed to me RSO were destined for greatness. He also had a team in the Heineken, Manila something. Beachcombers? Sundowners?

                                        Meanwhile an update on the Porcine Football Alliance's Weekus Horribilis, competitive games only:

                                        P10 W1 D3 L6 with the beacon of hope being Gloucester Old Spots.

                                        Talking of spots, the eagle eyed of you may spot that this one adds up.

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                                          It was indeed a real shame Sits, RSO were one of those teams who felt like they could spring to the top of the heap if IC really tried. Likewise his Heineken side, who were Manila Sunbeams, who had been in HLC2 for several seasons when he left as I recall.


                                          A good day for VA Enterprises' teams today. Rædfearne Island won away to stay top of Brythonnic Second Division East, to continue their good recent run that seems to have justified my decision to sell off a pair of senior midfielders. Royal Atlantis won the first leg of their Heineken doubleheader to reach midseason moving the right way again in the Premiership, back up to 4th.

                                          And United Underground shot down Quidditch Quaffles 2-0 in a surprisingly one-sided Kevchenko Cup semi-final, to put us in with the chance of a fifth MLX Cup next Friday. And we don't have to face the Randoms, who were taken down – also surprisingly convincingly, considering – by 10-man Gotham City in the other semi.
                                          So it'll be a repeat of the Season 6 final (whereas if we'd faced RRR it would've been a repeat of Season 3's!) – which I've just worked out means it's the very first time that two showpiece events in MLX's history have been contested by the same pair of teams, rather amazingly. So far as I can see, every other Cup and Championship final has featured a unique pairing of opponents. It's taken until the 29th major final to break that run.
                                          Last edited by Various Artist; 24-03-2018, 00:36.

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                                            Oh well done VA reaching the final. Gotham eh? Always difficult, best of luck.

                                            That's an amazing stat about previous finalists.

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                                              Guzman, VA, keep flying that OTF flag

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                                                Thanks chaps, we'll do our best to bring it home for OTF, eh?
                                                Originally posted by Sits View Post
                                                That's an amazing stat about previous finalists.
                                                Yes, do correct me if I'm wrong as – even allowing for the number of 'heavyweight' teams in MLX history plus the number of outsiders who have sneaked their way through the draw – it seems implausible we've gone 14 seasons with two major finals per season without ever repeating the lineup. But I've peered at the Roll of Honour two or three times to try to make sure, and I really can't see any duplicates among those 28.

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                                                  P13 W1 D4 L8

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                                                    Hurrah, the week is over! For the record:

                                                    P15 W1 D6 L8

                                                    But today, it's a new week! <smiley thing>

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