Video Diary of FIFA Manager Bhurst99

[bhurst99 20]

[bhurst99 20]

Only one point above the relegation zone.

[bhurst99 20]

West Brom vs Manchester City, League Game 18

[bhurst99 20]

I'm not sure what happened with the post-match ratings.

[bhurst99 20]

Slipping down the table ...

[bhurst99 20]

You`re home sick. Boo hoo. That`s too bad because you might have been on the first team next season.

[bhurst99 20]

Stoke City vs West Brom, League Game 19

[bhurst99 20]

[bhurst99 20]

[bhurst99 20]

He already missed eight weeks with a dislocated shoulder and now he's hurt again. We can't afford these injuries on defense and we certainly can't afford to see the ratings decline like that.

[bhurst99 20]

Since we're halfway through the season, here's a look at the league leaders



Shocking that Gerrard leads in goals.

[bhurst99 20]

You can close the book on 2014. We have four league games in January 2015 against West Ham, Everton, Hull City and Tottenham with a FA Cup match against Oldham Athletic.

[bhurst99 20]

I'm going to try to get some defenders for the future and maybe a couple of veteran defenders to make sure we aren't relegated this season.

[bhurst99 20]

You, faithful reader, may remember he was complaining about his lack of playing time. The Board has decided he has to go. Too bad. He might have been decent in a couple of seasons.

[bhurst99 20]

West Ham vs West Bromwich, League Game 20

[bhurst99 20]

[bhurst99 20]

[bhurst99 20]

Saint Etienne offers a measley $10.5M for our best player this season. That's not even close to his value. I told them to get lost.

[bhurst99 20]

Hmm, pretty tempting to sell Baird. He hasn't played much and at 32 his best years are well behind him. We'll make a counteroffer and see if they bite.

[bhurst99 20]

We make our first signing a young defender who we hope will improve quickly. I thought it was a decent signing for $850,000. We are overpaying him with a salary of $22,000.

[bhurst99 20]

Once again we go cheap and try to address our defense -- this time on the left side. His salary is $10,000.

[bhurst99 20]

Crystal Palace rejects our offer of $705,000 for Baird so we caved and accepted their original offer of $675,000. We need the money to invest in new players and it's not worth fighting over $30,000.

[bhurst99 20]

We open our wallet, brush off the dust bunnies and sign Conte from Stade de Reims for just over two million. He's already rated 68 at age 20 so he could be something special. He's signed for a three-year deal at just $9,000. We're pretty happy about that.

[bhurst99 20]

I haven't said much about the other teams and players in the Premier League. But this certainly caught my eye.

[bhurst99 20]

It's FA Cup time. We had a good run last season with Liverpool until we were upset in the quarterfinals by Brighton of all teams. We had to play two replays to get that far and it really taxed the squad. I remember we needed to score four goals to overcome a 3-0 Aston Villa lead to win one game.

We need to have a decent run with West Brom if we don't want to get fired when you consider how poor our league form has been this year. It didn't help we got dumped in our very first Capital One Cup game.

We enter the competition in the third round against Oldham Athletic. All three of our new signings will start on defense. Let's see if we can keep a clean sheet.

Here's a look at what happened in the first two rounds.