⚽️ Gooch To Glory | Episode 10

Read Episode 9 Here.

🏟️ The Nightmare Before Futmas

Groans roared around Molton Road as we slumped to yet another defeat.

Guzan lumbered off the pitch and punched a hole in the advertising hoardings, Darlington Nagbe wept as someone shouted ‘you’re the reason Tesco locks away condoms’ and ‘you’re a waste of your dad’s sperm’ at him, and Barry caught a pie-shaped projectile that was heading straight for his head. He took a bite and then threw it back at a 7-year-old child for the crime of existing.

This week was supposed to be positive, but it was a blood bath. We’d spent seven Rivals games getting slapped around by people who had clearly snorted a litre of diesel with a cocaine chaser.

Something had to give.

The next game we switched things up, and I’m not proud of it. However, with the teams we were coming up against, we can’t afford to stand on the moral high ground and die on that hill.

That’s not us. We needed to fight.

Barry and I concocted a 4-5-1 formation that, on the surface, makes us a rat on the sinking ship that is FC26. However, there would be no ‘drop back and counter’ here.

In true Goochball fashion we’re going balls to the wall, and by god it worked.

Even after Barry sold the formation to the squad via séance, the tension was still palpable — the faithfuls demanded a performance, and you could cut the atmosphere with a very blunt knife. But then something extraordinary happened.

Darlington Nagbe played like a man possessed.

One moment he was in our box blocking a shot, the next he was jinking into the opponent’s to score our opening goal. The way he was moving had people looking like they were watching a match at Wimbledon.

He was instrumental in everything we did, and the earlier chants of ‘bellend’ turned into ‘bravissimo!’ by the time we were 3-0 up and Nagbe had his brace.

This was a comeback for the ages, and by the 35th minute we were 4-0 up and the opponent just left the pitch. Gone. Finished.

Nagbe did a lap of honour, Sabbi limped down the touchline, foot now only in two bits being held together with duct tape and Barry’s loose grasp of human anatomy, and Crystal Dunn was still dribbling around the centre circle, fans screaming ‘OLE!’ at every touch of the ball.

The party atmosphere was firmly back at Molton Road, ‘Sweet Caroline’ blared over the speakers, and Barry sat on our penalty spot in just his underwear, chanting ‘GOOCHBALL, GOOCHBALL, GOOCHBALL’.

I allowed myself a brief moment to bask in our glory, before the sudden realisation that we had to do it all again set in.

⸻

⸻

📺 Previously On…


Gooch rose from the dead — literally — smashing in a 92nd-minute winner after we blew a 3–0 lead, cementing his Rise From The Grave Evo in pure Hollywood fashion.

Meanwhile, Barry mumbled dark prophecies about giants, moustaches, and “balance returning to Goochball,” which definitely won’t come back to haunt us.

⸻

🆕 New Arrivals & Squad Tweaks

#HereWeGo – New Players:


🇺🇸 Lily Yohannes — 84 Showdown (CM)

Lily Yohannes plays midfield like she’s reading the match two minutes into the future. Calm, clever, and annoyingly efficient, she glides through pressure with the serenity of someone parallel parking a Fiat 500. Barry calls her “the quiet storm,” mostly because every time she touches the ball the opposition midfield visibly ages.

** 🇺🇸 Rose Lavelle — 88 TOTW (CM)**

Rose Lavelle is back — upgraded, unhinged, and absolutely not here to mess about. With an 88-rated Team of the Week card, she moves like a ballerina possessed and hits passes so accurate they could thread a needle in a wind tunnel. Barry claims she’s “the closest thing to divine intervention since the 2002 U.S. Men’s World Cup run,” and frankly he might not be wrong.

She doesn’t just run the midfield — she is the midfield.

⸻

⚙️ Tactics:

4-5-1
Not the boring, ratty, ‘park the bus and pray’ kind. No. This was a Barry-blessed, chaos-tempered reinterpretation.

Five midfielders swarming like angry wasps with ADHD, a lone striker up top ready to pounce like a malnourished lion, and fullbacks sprinting hard enough to trigger seismic activity in Barnsley.

We may look like rats on the sinking ship that is FC26, but make no mistake — this is Goochball 4-5-1: reckless, relentless, and absolutely unapologetic.

⸻

🎯 UEFA Primetime Week One — The Week in Review


A Champions League focussed promo means very little to us, so I spent the week sorting out our ever growing list of Evolutions.

I have spent A LOT of time grinding out squad battles thanks to the frankly absurd requirements on Hickey and Gutierrez I mentioned last week, but it doesn’t stop there.

I played the Primetime League because the rewards are probably better than Rivals, but golly, it was sweaty. It probably wasn’t the most efficient use of my time when it came to completing the Evos (as we did require a lot of wins), but we got some done and got all of the rewards.

The sheer number of Evos did mean I only got the first part of the Hickey/ Gutierrez chain done, much to Barry’s disdain. His prophecy might have to wait another week before coming true.

I have made good progress though, and we now have — checks notes — seven left to do. Crikey.

When it comes to Rivals, we did manage to scrape 5 wins for basic rewards, but it definitely was a struggle. The final two teams I’ve faced are the most Credit Card FC squads yet.

We got our 15 points by beating a team with Alex Morgan, POTM Mbappe, Lamine Yamal, Virgil van Dijk, Saliba, multiple icons… we peppered him and he rage quit at 2-2. A weirdo, but we’ll take it.

All in all a net positive week in terms of the club, however I have one bone of contention.

Ultimate Scream 99 stat boosts.

The fact that these felt so underwhelming shows that stats genuinely mean nothing in this game. The most important things are roles and playstyles by a country mile.

Zoe Matthews has 99 passing for the week, but without a passing PS+ I might as well be threading balls through for Sophia Wilson myself.

Owen Wolff’s 99 physical? Fucking useless without any physical playstyles. And don’t get me started on Timothy Weah’s ’99 defending’. The lad is more Trent than Trent.

I just don’t see the point in it all really, and it does make me wonder when EA will start to bring more PS+ into Evos. We’ve had one so far (outside of individual PS+ Evos from the Season Pass/ Objectives), and now we’re heading into November it feels like they need to ramp it up.

But knowing EA? It’ll be January and we’re still getting 80-rated capped Evos.

⸻

📊 Week Summary

Played: 13 | Won: 5 | Drawn: 2 | Lost: 6

⸻

🌟 Player of the Week

Darlington Nagbe didn’t just play football this week — he conducted it. It was like watching a man glide through space-time on roller skates. One second he was sliding into tackles with the elegance of a flamingo doing the samba, the next he was bursting into the box, slaloming past defenders who moved like they were buffering.

His first goal was poetry, his second was punishment, and by full-time the crowd had thrown aside their usual insults and were chanting his name like he’d cured male-pattern baldness and won the lottery in the same afternoon.

Nagbe was everywhere, involved in everything, and absolutely refusing to let Goochball die quietly. A midfield general, a box-to-box menace, a balding Michelangelo with a football. Player of the Week? He practically owned the week.

⸻

🧬 Evo Watch

⸻

🪦 Closing Thoughts

Later that night, long after the last physio lamp had flickered out, Barry appeared in my doorway looking… troubled.

He didn’t knock, he never does.

His coat was soaked through, his hair plastered to his skull, and the half-burned Cuban cigar trembled between his fingers like even it wanted to leave the room.

He didn’t speak at first.

He just stood there in the shadows, breathing too slowly, staring at a point somewhere behind me — like he was watching something crawl up the wall that I couldn’t see.

Then, with a voice rougher than gravel dragged across bone, he whispered:

“The evolutions… they’re not taking, gaffer.
The Hickey stands tall, but hollow.
The Gutierrez boy spins in circles — a dancer without rhythm, a shadow without form.
I push them… the cosmos pushes them… but they remain stuck.
Refusing to grow.
Refusing to change.”

He took a step forward, rainwater dripping from his sleeves, eyes glinting with fear rather than fury.

“I’ve tried everything — chants, chalk circles, even blessing their boots with Guzan’s sweat.
Nothing moves.
Nothing shifts.
It’s as if something out there is holding them back…
Something old.
Something hungry.”

His voice cracked — an awful, inhuman sound I’ve never heard from him.

“But beneath it all… something else stirs.
A different power.
A soldier in waiting.
A Sargeant shackled by time itself.”

He leaned in so close I could smell the damp earth on him, the cigar smoke, the trepidation.

“When the final bell tolls… when Primetime awakens… he will break his chains.
Finesse sharper than moonlit steel.
Strikes guided by something not quite holy.
And when he rises, gaffer…
The ground will not hold.”

Barry staggered back, clutching the doorframe as though the corridor itself had tilted.

“The Hickey stands frozen.
Gutierrez spins in the dark.
But the Sargeant…”

His voice dropped to a tremor.

“…the Sargeant is coming.”

He left without another word — the lights flickering in his wake, as if something supernatural had passed through Molton Road.

⸻

Until next time,

YEEHAW!

Read Episode 11 Here.