I am the manager of Crystal Palace in the Mystify soccer game.
One of the joys of following all forms of football is the fact that the coaches and managers tend to use the same cliches and metaphors week in and week out, no matter what the details of the sport. This page gives me a chance to exercise my creativity with some Manager's comments on the results of my team in the Mystify game.
| Week 1 | Everton | (Home) | Won 3-1 | ||
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Its good to get of to a positive start to the season. I was particularly pleased to see that, if you look at the three goals scored today, none of our goal scorers was over 21. I think that really gives the fans something to look forward to over the next few seasons.
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| Week 2 | Leeds United | (Away) | Lost 0-1 | ||
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At the end of the day, its a disappointing result. I thought we played with a lack of passion and conviction today, and I will be asking the lads for a much better effort in the weeks to come. We had too many days like today last season, and I won't stand for it this season.
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| Week 3 | Charlton Athletic | (Home) | Won 1-0 | ||
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I know that the win is enough to push up into fourth place, but that flatters us. A win is a win, but I don't think we showed anything today that will be having the other managers quaking in their boots. Still, we kept a clean sheet, and we didn't give away any free kicks, so I was pleased withe maturity shown by the team in that sense.
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| Week 4 | Coventry City | (Away) | Lost 0-3 | ||
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Its never easy coming here to Coventry, but I did hope that we would make a better fist of it. I don't know if it was the schedule in Europe, or some of the things that have been happening off the pitch, but I felt the lads were giving less than they should have been today, and we'll need to sort that out right away.
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| Week 5 | Portsmouth | (Home) | Drew 0-0 | ||
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Well, after letting in three against Coventry last week, I suppose keeping a clean sheet here is something to be happy about. Other than that, there wasn't much to be happy about. We were flat today, and if you ask the fans, 90% of them will tell you it was a boring game.
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| Week 6 | Newcastle United | (Away) | Lost 0-1 | ||
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When you come up to Newcastle its a very intimidating atmosphere, but we need to learn to deal with all the conditions that are presented to us. Newcsatle hadn't won a game up here before this, so obviously we know they are beatable. On the other hand, as they showed today, once they get a roll on, they are very hard to stop.
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| Week 7 | Tottenham Hotspur | (Home) | Drew 1-1 | ||
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Its a relief that Johna was able to get us that goal in the last few minutes. In the end, I guess a draw was a good result, but it does leave us pretty vulnerable down in 11th spot. We're not too far from the drop zone right now.
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| Week 8 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | (Away) | Won 2-1 | ||
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Obviously we're very happy to come away with the three points. I think we did very well at keeping Wolves home town crowd out of the equation. Even when they were a goal up on us, I still felt like we were a good chance to score, and I think the fans sensed that too. The forward line still isn't firing as well as I'd like, so we will be looking at that in the coming weeks.
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| Week 9 | Sheffield Wednesday | (Home) | Lost 0-2 | ||
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We've had a very busy schedule over the last few weeks, so we took a risk and rested a few of our players before the UEFA Cup second leg mid-week. Obviously, that risk didn't pay off for us today, but hopefully we'll be reaping the rewards later this week.
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| Week 10 | Watford | (Away) | Won 2-0 | ||
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Our last few performances haven't been good. This was a big improvement, but it needed to be. The real challenge will come next week. We'll need a really strong performance against Oxford in order to silence the doubters about our credentials.
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| Week 11 | Oxford United | (Home) | Lost 2-3 | ||
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On the one hand, it was encouraging that we were able to take the lead twice, against one of the tightest defences in the country, but at the end of the day, it'll be marked down as a home loss. I hope the fans will have been encouraged by what they saw today, even though the result wasn't quite there in the end.
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| Week 12 | Manchester City | (Away) | Won 1-0 | ||
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I'd like to be able to say it was a game played in good spirit, but thats just not true. I am pleased that our lads did respond to the physical style that City seemed to want to play this afternoon. The ref dealt out plenty of cards, and I thought every one of them was deserved. In fact there were a couple of dangerous incidents early on that I thought the ref let slide. Fortunately our players came through unscathed, which I was grateful for.
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| Week 13 | Birmingham City | (Away) | Drew 0-0 | ||
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I think we were able to keep Birmingham under pressure all day, but at the end of the day, we didn't have goals on the board, and thats what its all about. Unless you score, the best you can hope for is a draw, and we got the best possible outcome today, but we really need to work on our avenues to goal, because at the moment they are all blocked up.
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| Week 14 | Chelsea | (Home) | Drew 0-0 | ||
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When we look through the record books this will show up as a dull goalless draw, but there was much more than that to it today. We've had three games in a row where we have been able to keep the opposition scoreless, but we've only scored once ourselves in that time. We've got to work on scoring without slacking off in defense.
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| Week 15 | Grimsby Town | (Away) | Lost 0-3 | ||
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What can I say? Its a disappointing result, however you look at it. We'll have to dig deep in the second half of the season to make sure that we don't slip down into the relegation zone. Its obvious we aren't in the same league as the likes of Grimsby, Oxford and Coventry, so we need to spend some time working out how we will go forward and make a bid to play at that level next season.
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| Week 16 | Everton | (Away) | Drew 1-1 | ||
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I thought a draw was a pretty fair reflection on where we are at, at the moment. It would have been a bit of an unfair reflection on the game for Everton to have gotten all three points here. I was pretty relieved when Simone scored that goal for us, let me tell you.
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| Week 17 | Everton | (Home) | Lost 0-1 | ||
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Its another game that we've lost without managing to trouble the scorers. Simone Loria getting sent off was always going to make it tought for us to pull that goal back. I agreed with the crowd, that the decision looked a bit harsh, but these things happen in football. Its how we react to them that defines who we are as a team, and today we weren't who we had hoped we could be.
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| Week 18 | Charlton Athletic | (Away) | Drew 0-0 | ||
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At the end of the day, you have to look at the league ladder and say to yourself, "We've played the worst team in the league today, and we couldn't score. Maybe we don't belong in this league after all." Its not something that we can allow to go on this way for too much longer.
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| Week 19 | Coventry City | (Home) | Drew 2-2 | ||
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It was a big improvement on last week's effort. We gave a few of the younger lads a run today, and I think the whole side responded to their enthusiasm. Sure, they weren't polished, nowhere near as polished as Coventry, but the energy out there was really great.
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| Week 20 | Portsmouth | (Away) | Lost 0-1 | ||
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Its one of the games we really needed to win in order to have an sort of chance of getting a European spot this year. All the lads knew that when we went into the game, but the way they played today, you wouldn't know that they knew.
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| Week 21 | Newcastle United | (Home) | Drew 1-1 | ||
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We were in front for over an hour, but we weren't in front at the end, and thats the only thing that matters. I think the lads gave a good showing, but we just needed that bit extra to get us over the line.
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| Week 22 | Tottenham Hotspur | (Away) | Lost 0-2 | ||
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Spurs are the top of the table at the moment, so I guess its not too bad a result. We still need to find ways to beat these top teams, and we will leave all stones unturned until we manage to achieve that.
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| Week 23 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | (Home) | Won 5-4 | ||
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Tony Niro. What can you say? Five goals in a Premier League game is almost unprecedented in my experience. But having said that, we only just scraped home today. Defensivesly, I thought some of the efforts were pretty weak, and unless Tony is going to score five goals for us every week, we're going to struggle unless we tighten up a bit.
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| Week 24 | Sheffield Wednesday | (Away) | Lost 0-3 | ||
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Well, I said last week that we could rely on Tony Niro to score five goals for us each week, and I think I've been proved right. No goals from Tony this week, and no goals from anyone else either. It tells the story.
Realistically, we're safe from relegation, and we're six points shy of a European place, so there's not much for us to play for over the rest of the season. We'll be giving some of the young lads a taste of first team football, and looking at how we want to reshape the team for next season.
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| Week 25 | Watford | (Home) | Won 2-0 | ||
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I know that Watford have pretty much resigned themselves to relegation, so I don't know how much we can read into the performance. Still, a win is a win, and we're glad to have the three points, and I know the fans enjoyed the game.
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| Week 26 | Oxford United | (Away) | Drew 1-1 | ||
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Oxford have been one of the benchmarks of the competition for the last few seasons, so to take a point off them at home is a great effort. With three of our last four games at home, and a couple against the teams below us, it gives us a bit of faith that we can string some good results together and sneak into a spot in Europe.
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| Week 27 | Manchester City | (Home) | Drew 1-1 | ||
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Last week a draw was a good result. This week its a very disappointing result. Thats what football is all about. We're only as good as our last result, and our last result was pretty poor.
In fairness to the players, they never gave up. They just kep pressing, and eventually the pressure paid off. We trailed for most of the day, so to pull one back in the last 15 minutes was very important.
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| Week 28 | Birmingham City | (Home) | Drew 0-0 | ||
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Its another draw for us, when we really needed a win. A win would have given us just a glimmer of hope of being able to sneak into 10th place, but as it stands, we'll finish 11th, regardless of our results for the next couple of weeks. I think its fair to say that we will be trying a few new things over the next couple of weeks, now that we have nothing to lose.
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| Week 29 | Chelsea | (Away) | Lost 1-4 | ||
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At this time of year, we're trying a few new things, and a few new players, and it'd be fair to say that, at the end of the day, those experiments didn't pay off this week. Thats taking nothing away from Chelsea. Theye were very good today, and they probably would have beaten us, whetever we did.
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| Week 30 | Grimsby Town | (Home) | Lost 0-3 | ||
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Look, its a disappoingting way to end the season, however you look at it. I mean, you can make excuses about how Brimsby are the second best team in the league, but at the end of the day we just weren't able to take the game up to them. I think the lack of intensity was most diappointing.
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© 2001 timnfromoz timnfromoz@hotmail.com
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