Sears — FM11 Queens Park: Spiders and Motherwell go toe to toe 13/14

Hello all and welcome back to my Queens Park story. In my last post you saw all our transfers activity and you met our new staff, but following our dismal pre season fixtures I was fearing the worst. Thankfully this was put behind us with two excellent wins in the League Cup and Challenge Cup. You may remember we started poorly last season in the First Division, although after signing some new players in January we led a late title challenge but ultimely failed. However on this occasion I was anticipating a decent start which would lay the foundation for a solid and consistent title challenge. Were my amateurs prepared to take on the best of the First Division? Let’s find out……

Challenge Cup:

After knocking our 3rd Division side Berwhick, we’d to play Morton, a 1st Division team. Unfortunately we couldn’t repeat our wonderful semi final appearance of last season as Morton beat us 2-1. It was disappointing to lose but we still have the FA Cup and League Cup to fight for.

League Cup:

We undoubtedly overachieved in the Scottish League Cup, and we arguably attained our best result since I became manager. 3rd Division side Stenhousemuir were easily beaten 5-0 in the 1st round, then a bumper crowd of 990 supporters saw us destroy Queen Of Sth 5-2. This win pitted us against the most successful Scottish club ever in the 3rd round.. I’ve waited 4 years to play an Old Firm side and I finally got my chance to take on the best of Scottish football. Our opponents were Rangers!! I was absolutely trilled! My preparations began immediately.

Rangers Versus Queens Park — Scottish League Cup 3rd round

Here’s how both teams lined up:

Rangers obviously predicated an easy victory hence why they left out key players such as Jelavic, Steven Davis and more. They did however play some other decent players like Danny Rose, Jamie Ness and Giovanni. I put out my strongest XI and told them that ‘you can win this’. Let’s take a look at the match highlights:

Never in my wildest dreams did I think we could win but we did. We restricted an under strength Rangers team to just long shots and they only managed one shot on target. We also went down to ten men with 15mins left but Scotland’s finest couldn’t even break down a bunch of amateurs! Unfortunately we lost the quarter final to Inverness CT.

First Division results:

August —

We all know how important it is to get off to a winning start and that’s exactly what we did. Our season began with a tense 2-1 victory over Dunfermline. We then played out an entertaining 3-3 draw with promoted Livingston. Their equalizer coming in the dying moments of the match. Hamilton were beaten 1-0 away which was a fantastic result and we finished the month with a 5-1 trashing of Queen Of Sth.

Spetember —

We continued our great start in September with a marvelous victory over Motherwell. Unfortunately we failed to record a win in our next two games: Raith dismantled us at home 2-0 and Ross County held us to a 1-1 draw. However we did end the month with a win as we defeated Kilmarnock 2-1.

October —

We remained undefeated throughout October, further enhancing our chances of challenging for the title. Morton were first up, they were easily overcame 2-1 away. Another 6 goal thriller ended in a point gained than 2 points lost as on this occasion it was us to scored a late goal. Livingston were then hammered 3-0 at home.

November —

Our 5 match unbeaten run prolonged following our 3-0 win over Hamilton. Despite our recent form, two back to back defeats followed for the first and hopefully last time this campaign. Queen Of Sth beat us 1-0 and then we lost a crucial game at home to title rivals Motherwell 3-1. Fortunately our rot demised and we returned to winning ways with two back to back wins against Raith and Ross County.

League Table:

Following our tremendous start it’s no surprise that were close to the top of the table. Ourselves and Motherwell are leading an extremely tense and tight battle for the title. Any slip ups from now on will prove costly as Motherwell have some outstanding players like Alan Smith, Adam Hammill and Ross McCormack.

Player ratings:

Mayulu has been my most consistent performer this term with 11 goals in 13(1) fixtures. This Frenchman has really taken the 1st Division in his stride. Sobiech is a player I missed most last season. He’s a commanding center back and has scored 7 times, mostly from set pieces though. Schnitzler and Olumbia have coughed up goals when called upon and are leading the attack brilliantly with Mayulu. Shikanda has improved immensely since last season where he struggled for large parts of the season and Adam Smith has been phenomenal at right back too. I’ve been pleased with Reece Hands latest performances as well, this youngster certainly does have potential.

That’s it for today’s post everyone, thanks for reading and I look forward to hear your thoughts on our season thus far.

ps Do you like my new skin?