The Wonderkids is an assortment of players from the CM9798 database who have unlimited potential. We’re trying to see if they can become the world beaters the scouts thought they would. Catch up with Part 1 or Part 2 here.

Welcome back to the life of a Wonderkid. We made a decent start to life in Division Three but haven’t set the world alight. We’ve had some ‘keeper troubles but Sorenson and Manninger appear to be growing with the season. We’ve had some bizarre results and at times have been defensively frail but a lot of our young starlets have less than 5 strength and stamina.

Lauchlan and Bak-Jensen are out for the season with the bone crunching battle of the football league taking its toll. But we did make a shiny new minus man addition to the side. Meet Marco Almeida:

Okay, its time to get this show back on the road. Down at the Riviera We get ourselves ahead with ten-men after Duarte flips out, but Trinder swipes all our chances away after losing our lead again.

Back at the slicer we have an absolute nightmare. Billy Mac makes two poor back-passes and despite double saves from Sorenson we fail. The strikers are not blameless either. We haven’t won since the MoM award for November.

We break the curse with a superb away day at the Deva. Some top performances all round.

Meanwhile, Terry Mc has secured a job bringing along a team full of fellow minus men.

The ‘kids get their biggest game so far against former European Champion Nottingham Forest. We make an excellent start, and it gets better as Geoff Thomas gets his marching orders. Then we spurn our chances and another minus man (Ian Moore) pops up with two goals to kill us off. The board are very disappointed.

That stings. We move into January right up their in the battle for automatic promotion, but its wide open. We need to do better at the slicer.

Pesky-solido and that man Tony Thorpe dump us out the Windscreen Shield, the board couldn’t care less this time. Capitulation against better sides is a worry:

Not quite at the slicer but Darlo are torn apart. This is more like it.

For the second time this season, the swans teach the ‘kids a lesson. We were poor.

The chips are down as we scrape a draw at rock-bottom Scarborough.

Brutal. We flake at Colchester; we are really struggling to hold our nerve at the moment. This could go badly wrong if we don’t get promoted and lose half the squad.

Now that’s more like it! Mansfield get what should be coming to teams at the slicer.

Ah shit!

Ah double shit! Juan is out for two games as well. And we’ve only got bloody 2^nd placed Leyton Orient next. We think we’ve pulled off a massive result with 7 minutes to go Constantino comes on to shore up the back and within seconds he’s given away a penalty that a legend converts. Orient’s minus man Winston also gets in on the show.

DODGY BARNET! Manninger saves a Devine penalty as Balling and Drummond get the result. Sloppy though as we should and could have had a few more.

And with that we’ve got a quarter of the season to go. We find ourselves having fallen to and remained in 5^th failing to win our game in hand we find ourselves stuck in a rut.

The stats don’t lie, we’ve continued to suffer defensively. Manninger is back in as Sorenson has had a fall from grace and lost his form. With Inzaghi and Bak-Jensen out, Balling, Drummond and Curtolo need to step up and get the goals.

To have conceded almost 60 goals is an abomination. Our centre backs Almeida, Constantino and Chandler are all averaging 7.40 so far but between them give away numerous penalties. The loan players are not delivering wonders in Division Two but hopefully the game time continues to do their progress some good.

That’s all for this week. This is proving to be a tough old challenge, but I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am. We’ll be back next week to see if we can get up the ladder. If so, we’ll probably need to see who is available/interested in the minus club to continue the push, and offload those who can’t progress. See you next time.