We asked Iain Macintosh to manage Newcastle United on Football Manager 2022 and he’s got himself a little bit too into character. He doesn’t even watch normal football any more. He just sits quietly, inking set-piece plans onto the back of his hand. It’s sad really.
Episode 1 (with links to Episodes 1-10)
Episode 11 (with links to Episodes 11-20)
Episode 21 (with links to Episodes 21-30)
Episode 31 (with links to Episode 31-40)
Episode 41
Episode 42
Episode 43
Episode 44
Episode 45
Episode 46
Episode 47
Episode 48
Episode 49
“Can you believe it, Bouldy? We’ve been here for two years and 253 days!”
Bouldy looks blank.
“That’s a weirdly specific number to mark out for special attention,” he says.
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “I don’t know what it is about today, but it just feels like a landmark milestone for some reason. Like it’s worth reflecting on how far we’ve come together. Perhaps we’ve proved the doubters wrong, Bouldy. All those people who said things like, “Why are they doing that then?” and “What’s this nonsense doing clogging up my feed?” But here we are, two years and 253 days down the line, and still somehow in gainful employment.”
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“I think they had a point, to be fair,” mutters Bouldy under his breath. I let it slide. He’s earned the right to mutter, bless him.
This is a big month. We’ve got an FA Cup quarter-final, two legs of a Champions League quarter-final and the small matter of that battle for a top-four spot with the likes of Manchester UFC, who we’ll meet again at St James’ Park. Oh, and Fulham too, let’s not forget them.
We’ve had some classic encounters with Aston Villa over the past two years and 253 days, not least when we beat them in the FA Cup semi-finals last season. We meet them in the quarter-finals this year and I think we’ve got a really good chance.
Andrea Belotti, who has been in great form since earning his place back in the team, will continue up front, Ademola Lookman will come back on the left and Hannibal will resume his duties as a box-to-box midfielder.
We make a fine start to the tie with a neat finish from Belotti, but it’s ruled out after a VAR check that seems unnecessarily harsh. It certainly didn’t look offside. I’m not too concerned though, we make all of the early running. We’re in great shape these days.
And then it starts to go wrong. First we lose Noussair Mazraoui to a nasty-looking injury, putting ourselves in the worrying position of having to rely on Sergino Dest not getting injured for several weeks. Then we lose playmaker Houssem Aouar too and all before half-time.
We’re playing well, but we’re just not converting chances. Belotti bounces one off the post, Lookman clips one wide from close range, this is all worryingly familiar. The last thing I need with this scheduling is a replay away in Birmingham.
Thank heavens then for Allan Saint-Maximin who gets behind his man, races down the left and lifts the ball up into the box, just out of reach of everyone. Everyone except Lookman who stretches to head it into the back of the net. We’ve booked ourselves another trip to Wembley.
With the 2024 European Championship on the horizon, there’s one final international break of the season. That gives me the opportunity to give some of the busier players a week off and to put some under-23 minutes in the legs of those who haven’t featured as much.
Both cup draws, domestic and European, pit us against Manchester City, which might not be as bad as it seems. We actually have a reasonable record against Marcelo Bielsa’s expensively assembled side. We’ve won two, drawn two and lost two in the past, including that memorable 5-1 win earlier this season.
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But we can’t get ahead of ourselves. First we’ve got to play Manchester UFC in the League (2-0-6, in case you’re wondering) and games don’t come much harder than that. Cristiano Ronaldo, now 39, has scored against us the last four times we’ve played them. Do I have a plan, ask the press. Ha ha. No, of course not.
We make a great start to the game when Belotti heads home at the near post, but for the second time this month it’s ruled out after a VAR check. That’s annoying. But it’s not as annoying as Josko Gvardiol falling over while trying to clear the ball and allowing Man UFC to open the scoring. And to be quite honest with you, it doesn’t come close to the annoyance of seeing a soft penalty converted by Ronaldo moments later.
We’re not playing badly, we’re making chances and we’re hardly being overrun. We just can’t break through. I am reduced to relying on the powers of Football Narrative, bringing on former UFC players Anthony Elanga and Wilfried Zaha in the hope that they’ll take the opportunity to prove a point. Zaha is quiet, but Elanga steps up for me, cutting a ball back for Aouar to score. But we run out of time.
I’m not too upset though. If you take the 0.8xG of their penalty off the board, we just comfortably outplayed them. I tell the players I’m pleased with their efforts and they seem to appreciate it. We’ve got a run of winnable games towards the end of the season, we’ve got plenty of opportunities to make up for this.
MAN RES
I want fresh legs against City in Europe, so Hannibal (who wasn’t allowed to play against his parent club) is back in to drive the midfield and young Benjamin Sesko will lead the line. City were beaten by Ange Postecoglou’s Leeds at the weekend and they played a full strength side, so fitness could be the edge we need to pull off a shock result.
For all our early promise, we suffer a grievous blow when we lose Kieran Tierney to injury. Borna Sosa is still sulking because I didn’t buy a left winger, so Sven Botman is our current back-up and he lacks the pace and flair of Sosa. We’re going to lack creativity now.
But we’ve still got Aouar and his ability to split defences with one deft touch is showcased when he pokes the ball through a gap to the sprinting Hannibal. The young Man UFC loanee still has so much to do, but he squeezes his way past two defenders and tucks the ball into the near post. It is a first-class finish.
Seven minutes later, I am left to eat my words. Botman steps up with the ball, waits for the perfect moment and plays in Saint-Maximin. We’re not even at half-time and we’re 2-0 up.
After a subdued restart, City are looking desperate. They make three substitutions, but it changes nothing. They look flat, nervous and out of ideas. Erling Haaland shakes us out of our complacency in the 74th minute, bouncing a header off the bar from the edge of the area. I enact the ‘Throttle Back’ formation that slows the temp down without inviting pressure. Joe Willock and lucky charm Lookman come on to hold the game together. City make chances, but they’re not good chances and Ugurcan Cakir is equal to everything. That is a big, big win.
There can be absolutely no room for complacency now. We may be a better-funded outfit than Mike Ashley’s Newcastle, but we are still paupers compared to the European big-hitters. Our £104m wage bill is dwarfed by Real Madrid (£232m), City (£244m), PSG (£253m), and Man UFC (£260m). Unless something drastic changes at this club, opportunities to reach the last four of Europe’s most grotesquely bloated cash-orgy are going to be extremely rare.
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And that’s why I’m playing a weakened team against Fulham. We can’t blow this opportunity. I explain all of this to Bailey, but he is furious and tells me that he is perfectly fine to play. I accept his argument and tell him I trust him to know his own body, but he’s still angry and he starts to actively oppose me in the dressing room. He even moves seats in the dressing room so that he can sit next to sulky Sosa. This is very upsetting and I spend the afternoon locked in my office watching YouTube clips of Federico Chiesa.
Typically, Bailey scores and, of course, it’s from a Sosa cross. The pair of them celebrate gleefully together and I pretend I can’t see them gesturing toward the bench.
But it doesn’t reflect the pattern of play. Fulham are a little swifter to everything. Without our first-choice defensive pairing of Merih Demiral and Josko Gvardiol, we’re sluggish at the back. The power of Axel Disasi should protect us at set pieces, but even he is bested by Aleksandar Mitrovic at a set piece and Fulham go in at half-time with a deserved 1-1.
Predictably, Bailey is no longer fit to operate on the wing. He’s absolutely exhausted as I knew he would be. I haul him off and I can barely bring myself to look at him. The game descends into a messy back and forth that we could win as easily as we could lose and so I’m actually happy enough with a draw.
Afterwards Sosa says that he’s moved on from my transfer failings and is happy to stay. We’ll see about that. I’ve got a new generation England Under-19 left-back by the name of George Bradshaw and I bet he doesn’t have problematic opinions about net spend.
As pleased as I am to have almost all of my first-choice players fit and fresh, I am still angry with Bailey. His insistence on playing against Fulham means that he’ll have to start on the bench.
But I think our gamble has put us in a good position. Those changes cost us two points, but Bielsa played a full-strength side in his surprising defeat to Brighton. They’ll be tired, they’ll be depressed after three defeats on the spin and all we have to do is score a single goal to break their hearts and surely put ourselves into the Champions League semi-final.
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On the day before the big game, some wonderful news breaks. Cakir, the best signing I have ever made, pledges his future to the club with a new five-year contract. You could give me all of the money in the world and I couldn’t find a better goalkeeper than this boy. The mood in the camp is buoyant. Now it’s down to the lads to get us over the line.
City are up for this and, while we make chances, they make more. We struggle to contain Haaland and when his early shot is parried by Cakir, it falls at the feet of Raheem Sterling and he’s able to tuck it away.
But five minutes, we snatch the goal we need to settle the nerves. It’s a fine ball from Lookman, it’s picked up by Belotti and the finish is nerveless. I try to leap into the arms of Bouldy, but he turns his back at the last minute and I bounce off his shoulder. I anxiously try to style it out.
“They’re checking it,” he growls, pointing to the referee.
“We’ll be fine,” I laugh. “There was nothing wrong with that. Besides, it’s Belotti. He’s had two chalked off already this month, it’s the law of averages, innit?”
But that law is really much more of a guideline. The referee touches his finger to his ear, nods and signals for an indirect freekick. Belotti looks crestfallen.
We’re all crestfallen three minutes later when a big ball over the top by Pedro Porro releases Haaland and the young man makes no mistake. 2-2.
I throw Bailey on at the break in the hope that he can deliver something, maybe one of his trademark near post corners. But every corner is nutted away by the City defence. Even when we can get behind their defence, Ederson is equal to everything. And City are still in control.
“We’ve got one chance,” I say to Bouldy midway through the second half. “Look at them. They’re knackered, they haven’t rotated. We have to make our superior fitness count.”
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Bouldy looks concerned.
“You’re not suggesting…”
“I am, Bouldy,” I say defiantly. “I am suggesting it.” I put both my hands on his shoulders and I pull him close to me so that he can me over the crowd.
“Bouldy, this life is short. How many chances like this are going to come around? How many times are we going to have something like this within our grasp. Bouldy, there’s a time to be cautious, there’s a time to play it safe, but today is not that day. We have to stand up now. We have to be men. We have to fight like we’ve never fought before.”
“But Iain…” says Bouldy.
I reach out and press a finger to his lips.
“Ssssh,” I say. “It’s okay to be afraid. It’s only when we’re afraid that we can really prove our courage.”
He nods, like a little boy.
“Bouldy,” I say, and I take a deep breath. “Switch the tactics to geggidy, geggidy, geggidy.”
Christ, it’s a bold move. The geggidy geggidy geggidy plan relies upon reservoirs of energy, it’s aggressive, it’s attacking, it’s constant high line pressing, it’s a dogged belief that potential is realised only through pain. But I know my boys and I know they can do it. I know we can turn this around.
The ball is booted out of play and I call over the key players. I explain my plan, I encourage them and I see their little faces light up. They’re on it now, they’re motivated. They’re ready to seize back what has been take from us.
Two minutes later, Kevin De Bruyne nods home a header at the far post. 2-3.
And that’s it. There are 20 minutes left, but there could be 200 and it would mean nothing. We quickly run down our batteries, we barely make a chance of note and the game just ebbs away. We’ve blown it. We’ve actually managed to blow it.
Shit.
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