It's no secret that, much to the malaise of many T11 players, a team that has 10 men often seems to perform better than they should. It doesn't seem to matter whether they are injured or sent off...indeed, I've seen 9-man teams overturn a goal deficit and emerge victorious. Since it was me, I didn't complain.

Having watched this over the past, few seasons, I've noted that this only seems to be the case when the manager did not attend the game. And today I think I figured out why.

Today was a CL semi away from home and I set up with a 4-1-4-1 against a narrow diamond, quietly confident that I could sneak a win. However, an emergency work meeting stops me from attending. I log on afterwards to discover I had drawn 2-2, but my striker was sent off in the 26th minute, so I played most of the game with an illegal formation.

My tackling is on normal, so the red card is a random event. It would have been pretty unfair if I had lost because my job is more important to me than T11!

This doesn't explain the injury issue, when auto-subs are available, but perhaps Nordeus have set this up in the understanding that not everyone can attend every match...

Maybe not, but it's a thought!