I hadn’t really noticed the speculation in the press. I was so focused on what I was doing that it must have passed me by somehow. Besides, there’s an awful lot of rubbish spewed out onto the back pages of newspapers. So when the job offer came in, I was shocked. Would I like to manage Bradford City?
I badger a number of wealthier clubs into visiting us for pre-season friendlies. Big clubs mean big bucks. I imagine that the locals turn out to see the famous players strut their stuff at a stadium that resembles a ploughed field with a shed next to it. Then there’s the away support with some money to spend. Five games in and we’ve already covered the players’ wages for the coming season.
“We can win promotion this season,” I told the chairman. Oh God! What am I saying?
Ostensibly, it’s the same team as last season. These players just about managed to get the club to fourteenth in the league. Now they have to do much, much better. I’m taking a gamble, I know, and the odds aren’t good. 20–1 according to the bookies. That’s like a 95% chance of finding myself unemployed in the next twelve months…
The season starts badly as my worst fears about the strength of my playing squad are realised. A pattern emerges over the first few games: FC Halifax go ahead, build up a two goal lead, then go on to lose the game 3–2. We don’t record a win until the sixth game of the season, giving me a false hope that things are going to turn around. This hope is quickly squashed by a 4–3 defeat then a crushing 6–2 defeat away to Barrow. Read more
I think I might have made a mistake. Read more
After walking out of Basingstoke, my morale was at a real low point. It’s the gap between what you hoped to achieve and what you actually achieved that causes the pain. The bigger the gap, the more it hurts. I wondered whether those five dismal months at Basingstoke would be it for my career in football management. Read more
It was my first job. I was nervous. Who wouldn’t be? Still, I knew what to do. What needed to be done. Faced with that room full of men for the first time, though, I felt something akin to fear. “Who are you?” they were thinking, “And why should we listen to you?”
“I’m the man that will put Basingstoke on the map,” I thought. Read more
I occasionally glance at this blog as an exercise in self-reproach. It’s noticeable that the last six entries consist of an account of my time playing through Final Fantasy X. After that, nothing. Nada. Zip. For over a year. To the untrained eye, it could appear that Final Fantasy killed my blog. Read more
In the end, it was simply depressing.
It is depressing that I failed, of course. Failure is always miserable. Failing to finish FFX, though: that particular feeling of depression pales into insignificance when compared to the sheer morbidity involved in contemplating even looking at those terrible terrible characters with their terrible terrible whiny voices for even another minute. I just couldn’t do it any more. It had become too horrible a prospect. I survived maybe thirty hours; and every single shred of hope for some tiny glimmer of fun to be had with this monumentally bad game was systematically stripped away over those thirty gruelling hours. No more. I just couldn’t take it. It broke me. Read more
I really did try. I know that some people won’t believe me, but by having a good old moan about why I would loathe Final Fantasy X, I thought I’d pre-empt and somehow offload some of the annoyances and start with a something like a clean sheet. OK, maybe not a clean sheet exactly, but I thought I’d at least be able to sit down and play with some semblance of good humour. I thought that I’d maybe overstated things a little, and if I had lapsed into hyperbole, I’d still glean some entertainment from the process, even if it was merely to have an enjoyable rant at various aspects of the game. After all, I do actually like playing games and FFX is described as a game. Read more
