Played two, won two.

Yes, that really is my Coventry City, blurrily riding high in the #1 spot.

I won both games 1-0, playing well and scoring with Schwarz (he’s 19 now - they grow up so fast these days…) in the first game, and, crucially, Frutos in the second game. It’s reassuring to play with a solid striker at last.

Frutos’ goal was nothing special - a snapshot finish during a melee on the edge of the area. I scored it early in the first half of the second game, and spent the rest of the match defending for my life. My new CB, Rami, played in this match (Suzuki was unfit). Rami was immense. He seemed to head everything away from my goal. A commanding presence in the centre of defence is what I’ve been lacking.

I also played a first round game in the Division 2 Cup. I played Hammarby away. (I always seem to play Hammarby in the first round.)

They went 2-0 up before half-time. Both of their goals were among the worst of the worse goals I have conceded in PES2008. Here we go again, I thought.

I decided that I needed an away goal at the very least to take into the home leg and give me a chance. Shortly before full time, Macco came on as a substitute and I switched my formation to Strategy Plan B - the ultra-attacking 1-2-4-3 formation.

I got my reward in the 90th minute. It was a rare kind of goal for me. A sliding tackle on the right wing broke my way for once, and I passed inside to Macco, then jinked past a couple of defenders. After going on a rare dribble and getting in on goal I usually panic and blast it high and/or wide. But I kept my focus and executed a nice dinked finish past the Hammarby keeper.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuHRtfiHVH8&rel=1]

The game ended 2-1 to the hosts. I think I’ll turn them over back at my place.

The cup is a nice bonus - a way to earn extra spending points and experience for certain players, and it would be nice to win the D2 Cup before I hopefully leave the Division forever. But the league is the priority.

The league table right now means nothing. I won’t be taking my eye off the ball. Promotion is the ball. And I’m not taking my eye off it.

Goals! They’re what football is all about, and I’m here to talk about particular kinds of goals…

I’m talking bread and butter goals - the kinds of goals you cannot have a football team without. Oh, those 35-yard, curling, dipping, wonder strikes are all well and good (thanks Macco)…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jiQ33oaAwI&rel=1]

(and let’s see that again, slowed down and from another angle)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Y-PBmZB3U&rel=1]

….but without the routine tap-in types of goals, preceded by methodical team-work, you’ve got nuthin’ to back up all that window dressing. Here’s Schwarz finishing off an incisive move:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdo0lfZttfk&rel=1]

It’s fair to say that Shimizu is a vertically-challenged kind of player. It’s almost comical to see him next to a big defender out on the pitch. One game I was so short of strikers that I had to play Shimizu in the middle up front. But I got my reward. Here’s Shimizu leaping like a salmon in the box:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8jQwcIIBWk&rel=1]

Sadly, while I’m now getting the bread and butter goals, I’m still just as leaky at the back. It is starting to infuriate me that the CPU teams can seemingly score at will, at times, in certain games. You know you’re in trouble when you mysteriously cannot clear six CPU corners in a row and the constant pressure only slackens when the CPU has got the goal that it’s clearly after.

I’ll write at greater length about PES conspiracy theories (aka ’scripting’) another time. I tend to flip between the two camps: those who believe in it, and those who believe that it’s all down to the Formation settings and the human player’s skill - or lack of it - at defending. It depends where I am in the game. Here at the start of my Master League career, I have to say I believe in it. There are too many last-minute CPU equalisers and winners. There are too many times when my previously formidable centre-backs falter and trip over their own feet with no one else around.

But this post is meant to be about goals. The bread and butter kind.

This one was tapped in by Folan in the 90th minute at the end of a good move that featured a raking 50-yard cross-field Circle-pass from Guimaraes. The score had been 2-2 for most of a dour second half, and this won me the game. I was jumping around the room. Almost incidentally, this goal completed a hat-trick for Folan in the match:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwDNFTBOYX0&rel=1]

Take a look at the two goals below.

Who scored them? Was it Castolo? Ordaz? Guiterrez? Diego bleedin’ Maradona at his peak?

Nope. It was Ruskin who scored them - and in the same match to boot. Ruskin. He got both of them with his right foot as well. Yes, that’s the default left-back, RUSKIN. The player who can barely muster an arthritic shuffle to intercept yet another CPU winger bombing down on my goal.

First is a long-range shot from distance after a good set-up pass from Macco. I’d have been proud and happy to score that one with Ronaldinho or Gerrard a few seasons hence. But with Ruskin? In my first season? The world has turned on its head.

Not happy with scoring what would probably have been my Goal of the Season, Ruskin thought he’d go one better.

Later on in the same game, I’m 1-2 down and looking for an equaliser. I’m using my ultra-attacking 1-2-3-3 formation (mapped to a strategy button) to get some pressure going. Ximelez, shoved over to the right, does some good work down the wing (for once in his miserable life), checks back onto his left foot, and floats the ball over to the other side…

And there is Super Ruskin once again, lurking just outside the box to dispatch a first-time volley high into the top corner of the net. One of the most picturesque picture-book goals I have ever scored on any ISS/PES game. My gast was indeed truly flabbered.

I actually lost this game 2-3. I’m now looking goggle-eyed at the foot of Division 2, and seeing Coventry City headed that way. This first season will not end well for me. Derby County just phoned me up from the real world to laugh at me. But what the heck. I’ve scored two unforgettable crackers.

Ruskin?