[damnMikeBrown]

No respect at all! These johnny come lately fofc'ers snubbing me out of my rightfull place in IV.19.

While this division doesn't have the top end that my old IV.25 had with Youth of the Nation, it does have much more depth. Every team in this series plays, and more than that, competes. I think my Aves are the closest thing in this series to a PIC victory. I'm sure it will be tried, but more likely than not, it won't work.

I didn't want to promote up into IV. I tried, last season, to PIC loads of games towards the end of the year so I'd at least have a qualification match. No luck though. I kept winning. As a keeper trainer, it is rather difficult to upgrade my team outside of small windows when I sell my trainee. As it stands now, my trainee won't be sold until next season, so my team is pretty much as is.

I splurged at the end of last year, buying myself some midfielders. By far the weakest position on my squad, I was counting on these aquisitions to up my competitive standard. I also picked up a decent forward to accent my wings.

The new additions ("Slow it down. You better slow it down. Oooo watch out, you're gonna fall in love.") Ok, bad New Edition reference. The new guys are

MI Bartosz Marciniak
I grabbed this crazy Pole with the intention of adding some stamina to his scrawny body & shipping him out at the start of this season. He has, however, been in good form & allowed me some creative uses of CD. He, to this point, is staying.

MI Erik Edvinsson
A Sverigian who likes to spend his time in the offensive zone. He's a capable offensive MI, who hasn't caused me too much of a hassle with form.

MI Louie Hoffman
Ahh, Louie. Louie was the star aquisition. Paid large dollars for him, in the hopes that he'd really make an effective difference in my squad. He was to be the center piece of my infield. To this point, he's been the center piece of my headaches. He lives in poor & wretched form. My hope is that he will climb his way out of it this season. I had similar problems with def MI/off CD Alan Napier his first year & he's come out of it like a champ. I'll give him the season, then he better show me something.

F Tao Yi-Da
A young gun to run the bad guys ragged. I've always been stronger on the wings, so Tao was purchased more for his ability to influence & assist them, than his ability to crack up the CD himself.

To this point, my purchases have been lackluster. Granted, I have placed 4 new players in my starting line-up in just the span of a few weeks. There's bound to be some turmoil. For the most part, the new guys form has been sub-par, and less than the surrounding team mates. I'm hoping my training plan will pick 'em up & put 'em into shape. If that happens, my midfield will be on par with the rest of the series. If it doesn't, I think auto-relegation will be in my future.

My first competition match was against fellow auto-promote, Kix. He put up his first excellent midfield, ever. I'm thinking he burned a MOTS early on to try to get a victory under his belt. Doing that at this time of the season, with cup games still PIC'able, he could reasonably expect to get his TS back up again. He downed me 2-1 at his place. Form was so bad on 3 of my starers, that they sat the bench. It's not an unexpected loss, but it's still no fun to start off the year with a 'L'.

My goals for this season are 1) to keep training my two keepers, with the intention of selling my trainee next season. 2) evaluate my midfield purchases & evaluate their long term viability(Hoffman) 3) experiment with attempting to maintain a high TS through strategic PIC games & judge it's effect on midfield 4) attempt to avoid auto-relegation 5) get out of debt

As far as IV.19 goes, I believe I can be competitive against every team, except Zyzzerz & EVillIVE. Note, competitive as in a possibility of playing them well. Every team in this series is better than mine, but only Zyzzerz & EVillIVE have midfields so obscene as to preculde the possibility of an occasional win.