Oldham Story — October and November 2011

Hello everyone, welcome back to my FM 2010 Oldham story! After playing October I saw that we only had three games in November, so I decided to crack on and play them and do both months in one post. At the end of September we were doing well, we started well in the Premier League and we were top on goal difference.

October

We played 5 games in October, here are the results:

We started with a good win against West Brom,  I was pleased with our performance, especially as it was away, we haven’t been anywhere near as good on our travels as at home this season. We followed up the win with a solid win against Everton, but we failed to cause an upset at Old Trafford, Man Utd should have scored about five goals, we were quite poor that day. It seems the players were still thinking about that poor performance in the next game against Reading, but they couldn’t spur themselves to play better, we were even worse and our League Cup dream was over.

I think this was our worst performance of the season, Reading were all over us and deserved to win, in fact, they should have scored more goals and made it more embarrassing for us. 

We needed to get back to winning ways against Bristol City, thankfully we did that, a fantastic hat trick from Guilherme, he was incredible against them, I was delighted with his performance, he really is becoming a good signing.

I was also pleased with the form of Pablo Hernandez, he scored a couple of goals and chipped in with a few assists, looking lively on the right flank for us. We are scoring a lot of goals, I am pleased with how dangerous we look going forward, I feel we have a great chance of scoring in every game, against anyone.

November

Like I said we played just three games in November, it was a very mixed month for us, with one win, one draw and one defeat. I was annoyed because the teams we played weren’t particularly tough games, all of them are in the bottom half of the table.

We played well against Burnley, good performances from Marco Verratti and Guilherme got us the win. Jo finally got his first goal for the club, I was pleased that he ended his drought, it was becoming a real concern for me.

The Hull game was incredibly frustrating, we were 2-1 ahead when Kamil Ghilas equalised in the 76th minute. A draw wouldn’t have been too bad, but we had a great chance to win it in the last minute, but substitute Martyn Waghorn missed his penalty. As if that wasn’t bad enough we were punished when Ghilas ‘scored’ his second. I say that because it was clearly offside, have a look at the picture as the ball was played.

Notice that Ghilas was coming back from an offside position as the ball was played, he was actually further ahead of the play as the ball was played, the screenshot is a split second after Bullard heads the bald.

It was a cruel blow, we didn’t deserve to lose the game.

The Bolton game was also annoying, we created 6 clear cut chances but had to wait until the 90th minute to get a goal, Guilherme rescued a point for us in the dying seconds, it was our first draw of the season.

We have dropped a place to second in the league, two points behind Arsenal, but I am still very pleased with our performance so far this season.

Next month will be very busy and difficult, we have eight games to play and have to face Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City, it will be a really testing month.

That’s all for now readers, I have to go away for a couple of days on Monday, so my next post may not be until the end of the week.

Thanks for reading!