This post is really just for myself and for HRHomer who I talk Football Manager to, but I figured I’d post it here anyway. Seriously if you’re not HRHomer skip over this. You won’t care.

I’m a Football Manager addict, although I found it hard to get any games going in FM 2010 and completely skipped FM 2011. I spent about 2 months trying to get into an FM 2012 game before finally getting into one with Everton.

I’m just finished my 2nd season, so a quick summary:

Season 1: 0 transfer budget. Finished 4th to qualify for champions league.

Season 2: Only had a small budget. Qualified for Champs League Knockout rounds(where I got knocked out). Came 3rd in the EPL with the title coming down to the 2nd last game of the season.

And with that, I’m onto season 3 - which I plan to make my championship season. The board agreed, giving me a transfer budget of 30m+ which blew my mind. So rather than waste it on the highest valued players I want to fully analyze my squad first and determine where I really need to spend it.

So first of all, here’s the formation I used for the 2nd half of Season 2:

This formation worked great and will be my base formation for Season 3. So with that it’s time to break down the positions, the players, and my thoughts:

Goalkeepers:

Tim Howard: Solid enough keeper. Does his job okay, but hasn’t got a man of the match award in over 80 games for me which says a lot.

John Ruddy: Brought in as backup and possibly challenger to Howard. Did okay, but was unable to push himself into first team on a regular basis. Transfer listed by request, probably going to leave.

Conclusions: I might try and keep Ruddy purely as a backup keeper as he’s solid and only on 9.5k a week. However I think I could do better than Tim Howard, and am going to add a goalkeeper to my shopping list. Will only sign one if I can get the absolute best though.

Full Backs(Left and Right):

Leighton Baines: Left back. Solid enough performer.

Andres Guardado: Left Back. Didn’t fit in well this season and is interested in possibly leaving the club. I’m probably going to grant that. The problem is his tackling is just 10, and that can cost us. For example my fullback Seamus Coleman who is a regular is #1 for Tackles/Game in the EPL, showing how relied on my full backs are defensively.

Seamus Coleman: Right Back. He was very solid. Tackles/game was ridiculous, and he assisted a few and got a couple of MoM awards. One concern was he got really tired/jaded near the end of the season, and there was a particular moment where his fitness caught up with him and cost us an important game vs Liverpool. We had no other right back so he played majority of games.

Gregg Wylde: Left Back. Young, fast, should be a solid enough backup for Baines, and can also play upfield if needed.

Phil Neville: Retiring.

Conclusions: I have two solid full backs, but I really need to get an additional full back in. Most likely as a backup,ideally able to play both positions(but RB for sure) and a solid tackler. So will be purchasing a full back definitely. Will also sell Guardado.

Center Backs:

Neven Subotic: Solid first choice CB. Only 24 yrs old.

Phil Jaglieka: Solid first choice CB. 30 years old, so still a few years left yet(and I’ll probably have quit Everton by the time I have to worry about his age).

John Heitinga: DC & DMC. Had a frustrating season for me with a poor disciplinary record. Also a fair amount of underwhelming performances. However his attributes are solid, and being able to play in midfield helps. Plus only 29. He’s wanted by a couple of clubs so we’ll see.

Shane Duffy: 21 years old. Attributes aren’t the best but he’s thrown in solid performances in the 6 league games I played him. A fine backup player.

Joseph Yobo: Played 9 games for me, was solid. 32 years old and will be 33 soon. Stats wise age hasn’t hurt him yet but it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. With a 50k a week contract, I’m going to see if I can renegotiate it lower. Failing that, I’ll maybe look at off-loading him or just let him stick around until his contract expires end of season.

Sylvain Distin: Got a really bad injury and is retiring because of it. Pity as he’s quality but oh well.

Conclusions: With two solid CBs(Subotic/Jaglieka) and one or two solid backups(Duffy, Heitinga, possibly Yobo) I’m good - but I think my defense could be better. With Stoke being relegated, Ryan Shawcross is available and probs not too expensive, so will be my #1 target to really add to the defense.

Central Midfielders:

My central midfielders usually have to work hard. Passing, tackling etc are both important, as are crossing ability. With that said…

Kwadwo Asamoah: The Ghana international is phenomenal for me. 27 games, 10 assists, 6 man of the match. Real hard worker, great passing ability, solid tackler, can even dribble like a mofo. Had the best cross completion ratio in league, just fantastic. #1 central midfielder easy.

Jack Rodwell: Hits way too many long shots, and is horrific at them. Broke his leg and only played 9 games in my 2nd season. Expect him to play a lot more in the 3rd season and really turn it on.

Marouane Fellaini: Very solid player. He’s never stepped up to have that A+ season, but he’s been good.

Ross Barkley Only 19. Has a solid future ahead of him. 3 assists in 4 games says a lot. He’s been out on loan the prior two seasons, but he’s going to be part of my squad this season and I’ll give him a fair amount of first team football to hopefully take his game to the next level.

John Heitinga: Mentioned previously in CB section. Will retrain him to play in MC position which should help if he’s ever called upon there. Would be good if we need ball winning midfielders.

Conclusions: MC area is fine. Asamoah is automatic selection, and Rodwell/Fellaini/Barkley/Heitinga is a strong mix for the other position.

Attacking Midfielders:

Tim Cahill: A fucking trooper, and amazing play for me. He’s now 33 and a half which is concerning, and he may only have 1 season left at the top level. 2 if he’s lucky. He’ll be my #1 AMC & Playmaker, but I’m going to start trying to get a replacement in, and have him work on a reduced schedule.

Jose Baxter: Has never “Wowed” me. This is his season to step up and try and oust Tim Cahill from the AMC spot. I don’t see it happening.

Diniyar Bilyaletdinov: I’ve given him 2 seasons, and he’s never really turned it on for me despite some great stats. Time to sell.

Leon Osman: Now 32 years oldi, and had a weak second season. His stats are decent and he’s only on 25k a week, so I’ll most likely keep him as a backup until his contract expires at the end of the season.

Conclusions: With Baxter, Cahill and Osman, I’m pretty much covered. Plus I have strikers who can also play in the AMC position(Gueye & Tevez). In saying that, I’ll be looking for the “next Cahill” and if the price is right, will get an up and coming player to step into that role.

Strikers

With 3 striker positions, I need a fair amount of strikers. I have:

Carlos Tevez: Untouchable. Led the league last season for key passes and it wasn’t even close. 35 games, 12 goals, 17 assists, just fantastic.

Nicklas Bendtner: In the 2nd half of the season, established himself as the #1 striker in that central position with some amazing performances. 27 goals in 32 games, the man is a machine.

Magaye Gueye: His attributes are nothing special, but he throws in excellent performances constantly. Fast, great on the counter attack, and a very valuable player who is only 22, and just gets better and better.

Victor Anichebe: Was great in the 1st season. Was okay in 2nd season but didn’t play much. 8 apps(6 subs too), 4 goals, 5 assists, 2 MoM. Those stats actually dont make him look half bad. Will be looking for him to play more this season, and hopefully challenge Bendtner for that central position due to height and pace.

Adriano: Now 31 years old. 6 apps(15 subs) with 6 goals, 2 assists. He fucking missed a lot of shots too though - with a 39% shot on target. 43.5k wages is a bit much too, but his contract expires end of season. Might be looking to offload him, because I’ve never felt he’s someone I can count on to come on and turn a game on its head.

Conclusions: I also have a fair amount of youth strikers I can call on. In saying that, I think one more striker could be a good thing. We’ll see if the right person comes up. There’s a few possibilities, like James Vaughan, Daniel Sturridge and Peter Crouch. All 3 I could probably get for cheap, and I would like to give Apostolos Vellios, Joao Silva and a few of my youth guys games so we’ll see.

Overall Conclusions:

Must Buys: At least one full back, RB position, good tackler, hopefully able to play LB(but not required). CB, probably Shawcross. Probably a cheap striker or two.

Probable Buys: A GK to replace Howard if I can find one good enough. AMC if I can find “the future Cahill”.

Well apparently I’m back at work!

As I’ve mentioned before, I was planning on taking a sabbatical for the rest of the year, and doing basically as little work as is possible for an internet marketer. I took time off for the whole World Cup, and enjoyed it so much I was hoping to take the rest of the year off.

The last little while has been going well as I’ve been doing the bare minimum, relaxing etc. However Maston started school last week and a funny thing happened - I just sort of gravitated to my computer chair. With peace and quiet in the house, I found myself getting back into the routine of waking up and then going straight to work.

Before I knew it - all the aspects of my routine were back, like going to bed at 10pm and waking up at 6am. Not sure how it happened but I am not complaining - I love work, and I’m really happy to be getting back into it.

The next couple of months are going to be very busy too. The two main aspects of work for me are:

Casino Answers: So freaking much to do on this website. We’ve already accomplished a ton - over 700,000 words of unique content in less than a year, and the million mark doesn’t seem too far away. I’ve started doing Casino Video Reviews as well. Google is really giving the website a lot of respect - as it should, considering the quality of it - and I can see it becoming one of the biggest casino portals in 2011.

Then there is Poker Affiliate Bible. I’ve been planning a big redo of that website - a whole new design, and a whole new layout and oh so much more. I finally got the design completed to my satisfaction - so now we have to get it coded, then I have to get to content writing. That’ll probably be about 100,000 words of unique content right there just to get the site ready for relaunch.

So yeah that’s pretty much what I am doing. Not much time for XBoxing etc and I love it - just work, work, work. Oh, and family I guess.

Got a lot of fun excursions over the next little while too. These include:

- Week long trip to Mexico with the wife
- Norm MacDonald in Ottawa
- Billy Connolly in Ottawa
- Dane Cook in Kingston
- 3 day meetup with Frank & Marky Mark in Edmonton, featuring a strip club crawl.

So yes, good times. Oh yes, and Eminem in Detroit was probably the greatest concert ever. The energy etc was just amazing, and the crowd pop for Eminem was one thing - but the crowd pop for Dr. Dre still fucking gives me goosebumps.

Back to work!

Well I’m sure you all know about the tragedy right now in Haiti.  A 7.0 earthquake hit there on Tuesday, and there are a lot of people dead.  There are estimates of 100,000 to 500,000 which is just unreal.

I really don’t know what to say about it except it really sucks.  These are human beings, and their lives have just been taken away from them.  The people who have lived through it have most likely lost members of their family, their homes and so much more.

I’ve been on the internet for many years.  I’ve seen everything.  Goatse.  Two Girls, One Cup.  Cake Farts.  Guys getting their heads blown off.  Posts by Toptenguy on NPP.  All these horrible things - to the point where I’ve became desensitized to them.  Someone can send me a picture of - christ I don’t know - a kitten getting stomped on by high heels and I won’t bat an eyelid.

But this picture I saw today really got to me:

That is without a doubt one of the saddest and most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen.  I honestly don’t even know if that’s from Haiti - it’s being passed around the internet like crazy right now and no-one has said it isn’t from Haiti.  Regardless of whether it’s from Haiti or not, that’s the situation they are facing in Haiti right now.

Just sit back and think about the next week in your life.  Planning to eat out at all?  Going out for drinks?  Renting video games?  Buying DVDs? Going to hit the corner store and buy some junk food?  Picking up some weed to get stoned on the weekend?  Basically - planning on spending money on things that you don’t really need?

Put it off till the week after  Because Haiti needs it right now.  The International Red Cross is the best place to donate I believe, however if you go to any charity website you like/trust I am sure they have a special link for Haiti.

There are many worthy causes out there, but right now Haiti needs everything they can get.  Every little bit helps.

Well I finally got my new computer today, and everything has turned to hell since.  Wonderful.

I had everything backed up and prepared, so around 9pm tonight the process began of unhooking my old computer, and hooking up my new computer.  I opened it up, took out the packing stuff, had a quick glance around then hooked everything up.  That was a pain in the fucking ass as I can’t move my desk, but I finally managed to get it done.

I boot up, and I get an error that it can’t find a system disk.  I thought Windows 7 was meant to be pre-installed on it, so I was a bit concerned.  However I put in the Windows CD and booted up from that to do a fresh installation.  Well, that did not work out well at all.  Once it got to the part where I choose where to install it - I couldn’t.  The SSD wasn’t showing up, and I was unable to install it on the regular HD as its letter was X:, and Windows will only install on C:.

So I checked the BIOS and yep - not detecting the SSD.  Fuck.  I spend awhile googling, trying things and nada.  This was meant to have been tested before they sent it out too.  There’d been an issue with an Intel SSD Firmware update a few days ago which toasted a ton of SSDs.  The theory in my head was that after testing it all, they decided to give me the new firmware update but never tested afterwards and it had bricked it.

So after a couple of hours and no luck, I started thinking about what the problem could be.  It seems whenever something fucks up, I always forget the simple problems.  I look at what the bigger issues could be, rather than starting from step 1.  So after debating with myself, I start the chore of unhooking it to open it up - and sure enough, the SSD just wasn’t connected.  Yay!  So I connect it back up, and on we go…..

Or not.

The first issue was when I boot up, the monitors turn off.  Oh, wonderful.  Boot into safe mode right?  Well unfortunately another problem, which was it didn’t recognize my USB Keyboard.  Seriously.  In 2009. So fucking retarded.  So I go in the basement and dig out the PS/2 Keyboard, wipe the dust off and hook that up.  I get into safe mode, and it is set up to run the whole installation process.  Okay, no problem.  So I start that up, and it reboots itself once, then does some shit, then reboots itself again….

and I am back to the original problem with the monitors turning off.  I boot into safe mode and “setup is preparing your computer for first use” but OH WAIT Windows cannot complete installation in safe mode.

At this stage I have absolutely no clue how to fix this.  Yay for Windows 7!  It’s bad enough that I’ve been awake for pretty much the last 48 hours due to Mason being sick as all hell, now I have this wonderful stress to deal with.  Sigh.

I should really sit down and organize my e-mail.

You think?

There’s another 20 folders below that