FM16 — A Brentford Tale

Evening all.

As with much of the nonsense I spout on here, this all comes back to the oft mentioned group chat I am part of — the Global phenomenon where Lukas Podolski’s name has quietly become part of our lexicon. As with around 60% of the chat, Man United’s recent peril is a hot topic — particularly with those of a Brentford supporting persuasion as they attempt to talk themselves out of the very-real possibility that all-round-good-guy, possible Bond villain and tactical genius Thomas Frank may be lured to Old Trafford to spearhead SerJim’s reawakening of the sleeping giants of Manchester.

This of course means that he’ll get to take charge, get sacked 6 months in because Dave Brailsford read something in the tea leaves about Danes being responsible for more carbon dioxide that his pigeon farm, then beat Manchester United 4–0 as Dortmund manager 18 months later in Kieron McKenna’s latest Europa League humiliation.

But what of Brentford?

This beloved club seem to be up there as a lot of people’s second favourite team. They’ve a wonderful cast of eccentrically named sparkplugs that seem to overachieve every season since they’ve been in the Premier League and constantly cause the bigger teams problems. It’s only been a little over a decade since Matthew Benham bought the club yet they’ve now become one of the most well-run clubs in the Premier League — finding gems over and over again whilst retaining the services of a manager who is fucking brilliant.

Whilst they may have moved from the quad-publican Griffin Park to the newer, shinier Brentford Community Stadium (bonus points for it not being named the VX7 Vietnemese Dog Fighting Crypto Illuminatium) — they still have a quaint old-school feel that lends itself fantastically to me ruining their legacy with a money spinning FM16 save in charge of them. Therefore, it’s time to plunge headfirst into one of the FM greats in order o build a bee-keeping legacy in the West of London.

The Squad:

Unfortunately for me, previous incumbent Mark Warburton appears to have organised a post-season ‘It’s a Knockout’ style event and put too many bubbles on the slip & slide. McEachran & McLeod are out for 4 months each with Scott Hogan’s 9 month injury dwarved by Andreas Bjelland being sidelined for 15 months with cruciate ligament damage. By which I’m assuming that West London organ smugglers drugged him and physically removed the entire ligament from his knee(s).

This leaves a tight squad with the class of Vibe and Djuricin backed up by the solidity of Harlee Dean. Young loanees Swift and Canos should see gametime whilst the goalscoring burden appears to fall on the shoulders of Philipp Hofmann (not Seymour). I’ll be honest, it’s not the most balanced squad in the world — I have 1 senior striker, 3 centre backs for a 3 CB system and 1 senior goalkeeper. Yet I have at least 7 players capable of playing right-wing-back. It’s like the spirit of Lee Clark has entered Griffin Park and is playing the spoons with our transfer policy.

Pre-Season:

We shuttle off to the mountains of Austria, where the hills come alive with the sound of…well not much. Goalscoring immediately looks like it’ll be a problem as we muster 22 shots in a 0–0 draw with (titters) SV Wiener. It takes us another whole 45 minutes to dispatch a similarly quaint village outfit before we return home to lose to Brno and beat Boreham Wood.

The transfer market has been somewhat challenging, with various loan targets joining other clubs and a marquee free-agent centre back turning out to have the back of Robocop before the invasive surgery. We send Alan McCormack to the land of Bob Servant to open up a burger van on the terraces of Tannadice, adding another right back in Passlack (who is stupidly good on this version so indulge me) and Alberto Zapater to add some latin flair in the midfield. This leaves us lining up for the opening game like so:

Of course, we’ve lost another two players to injury with Djuricin falling out of a pub and damaging his neck whilst Yoann Barbet crocks himself for a month reaching for a packet of crunchy nut. Luckily we have Ipswich visiting, who have just announced the installation of electricity at their training ground. Surely we can get something done.

Game 1:

In the spirit of current-day Brentford, we race out of the traps and Not Seymour gives us the lead with 2 minutes on the clock with a header from a Bidwell cross as we dominate the first half but fail to add to our one goal lead. This of course absolutely comes back to haunt us late on as 2ft Ryan Fraser causes chaos and crosses for Daryl Murphy to level, causing me to break out ina cold sweat as I contemplate all the Championship journeymen strikers I’m likely to come across. No matter though as Ryan Woods and Konrad Laimer combine to free NS — who runs through and slots past Dean Gerken to give us a 2–1 win.

And as a bonus, I made an enemy of shit-chatting fraudgoblin Lee Johnson whilst endearing myself with the wonderful Mick McCarthy.

Absolutely fucking delicious.

The Rest of August:

All in all, a very positive start to the season albeit our pre-season struggls in front of goal necessitated a shift in tactic. Bristol City and Lee Johnson (Grrr) give us a doing, mostly thanks to Zapater and Passlack both getting reds in the first 25 minutes of the game. We shift to a couple of wide forwards supporting after the Birmingham game and get a brace of wins in the league, firstly against Burnley before the most comprehensive 1–0 you’ll ever see against Reading — which sees us finish August 7th in the league, 3 points behind the leaders Boro.

We make a couple of late signings as well, with Dwight Tiendalli and Adel Chihi joining us as we already have 6 loanees in a league which allows 5 in a squad, making this a meaningless avenue to pursue.

POTM — Ryan Woods — a massive month for the midfield workhorse as he pairs up with Alan Judge to be the heartbeat of the side. Despite the face he’s our joint-top-scorer, Lasse Vibe needs to bring some more Vibe-s to the team and improve his frankly awful finishing so far.