We’ve made it past the mid-season transfer window in Season 5 of MFL, the first full season for the Motherwell Eagles in MFL. We came into the season hoping for a mid-table finish in our Spark league as well as a nice run in the IMFF Cup. So with half the games played, let’s check in on how the Eagles are faring and have a look at how progression has gone for the players so far.

The League

Since the season started we have had Azadi FC join, they have 650 overall for their best 11. Heading into the season, there my aim was to finish in 6th place in the league, with Azadi joining and 25 points overall above us that would now be 7th overall.

So far we’re about where I aimed for. We’re above the 4 teams that are significantly worse than us and just a point behind Husqvarna Gunsmiths MFC. The results have been pretty variable, as you might expect with multiple teams 50-75 points ahead of us. I have also rotated pretty heavily against some of the better teams to let me put my strongest side out in the cup games.

The biggest area of concern has been our defensive performances. We’ve conceded 35 goals in 11 game so far. Admittedly, that is inflated by some hammering from the top sides but we have only kept one clean sheet so far. In fact, we conceded against all the teams below us – the one clean sheet came against Unreal Madrid. Strangely, the only clean sheet actually came with our backup Goalkeeper in the side.

The Cup

The Aspirants Cup got off to a really positive start as we beat Viborg Vikings in the open game. We followed that with a loss to Pulga 10 before beating Common Farms in the third game. With 6 points from the first round of fixtures I was feeling pretty good about our chances of getting out of the group.

The second round of fixtures started with back-to-back losses against Viborg and Pulga 10. Despite that we went into the final game of the season knowing a win against us and Common Farms would make it out of the group in second place. All was looking good for us as we took a 4-2 lead in the 63rd minute. However, we gave up goals in the 65th and 77th minute and a draw left us in 3rd and out of the cup.

The plan going into the competition was to prioritise the cup games and make it into the knockout rounds. It’s definitely a disappointment not to achieve that, especially with how the final game of the group stage ended. With the Cup drawing groups with similar overalls, it perhaps isn’t a huge surprise to go it – all things being equal you would expect to qualify 50% of the time.

Progression

Progression has been excellent so far this season. The squad has managed +13 overall spread across 10 different players. Happily, the players that have gone up multiple points are two of my top starters in Karlheinz Stangl and Timmy Cooper.

Both Ivo de Arruda and Thiago Almeida have made the step up from common to limited. On top of that both have also gained stat increases since going up a tier. It sounds like tier breaks can be pretty hard to come by overall, so I’m really excited to get two tier breaks.

Beyond the players rising in overall, there has also been a handful of players that have earned stat points but no overall changes yet. Progression has been the highlight of the season so far for sure.

Finishing the Season

Over the second half of the season, I’m hoping we can improve our results a little bit and get 7th place come the end of the year. That would give us enough MFL to bring a couple of common players packs ahead of next season.

Improve our defensive performances is something that needs to happen if we want to push on in the long term. I’ll try some tweaks over the second half of the season and see if it can make an impact. I’m a little hesitant to go to far, we do at least score very well so there’s a balance to be struck between tightening up defensively whilst still providing a threat going forward.

Finally, I’m sure progression will slow down as we head towards the end of the season. But, it’d be great to get a few more overall increases – especially if they continue to come for the star players.

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