Hello, lads.

David here, Hamburger manager and Top 100 Game World admin.

Hope you’re all doing well and looking forward to the weekend and another round of the Youth Cup and Youth Shield.

Last weekend’s Youth Shield was, frankly, a bit of a disaster.

Nine matches weren’t played because they hadn’t been arranged by the managers involved, and we ended up with 17 managers being disqualified, which I think must be a record.

There was quite a bit of feedback about that on the newsfeed, and some of the criticism was fair.

The fixtures weren’t easy enough to find for some managers, and the 24-hour rule on the website was obsolete.

That came from a time when the away manager was supposed to chase their opponent up until the day before the match.

That doesn’t work anymore because for a Saturday friendly, the request now has to be sent by Wednesday at the latest.

So I’ve updated the rules to reflect that, and I’ve made changes to the new tournament app, which will hopefully make fixtures and responsibilities much easier to find and to know what they are.

Thanks for the feedback from everyone who posted.

Obviously none of that helps those managers who were knocked out last weekend, but where something isn’t working properly, we should fix it.

Some of the other criticism, though, I don’t agree with.

The argument basically seemed to be, I did nothing, but my opponent was supposed to do something first, so their doing nothing was worse than my doing nothing, therefore I should qualify.

No, sorry, you’re both out.

The rules have always said that managers are responsible for arranging their own games.

The home manager has the primary responsibility, of course, to send the friendly request.

But if you’re the away manager and Wednesday is approaching and nothing has arrived, send them a message.

Ask what’s happening.

It takes two minutes.

Somebody suggested it would be easier if I copied and pasted every fixture onto the newsfeed.

Well, no, it wouldn’t.

It would certainly be easier for you, but it would not be easier for me.

And that’s actually part of the problem I’m trying to solve.

You guys all registered to play in the Youth Cup.

I organised the competition, published the format, the rules, the eligibility and the fixtures.

Soccer Manager, unfortunately, doesn’t make arranging friendlies particularly easy, and I appreciate that.

But ultimately, managers have to do their bit too.

I’m not even playing in the Youth Cup this season.

There was a cock-up at the start and I dropped out so somebody else could take my place.

So I’m doing all of this for you lot.

The least you can do is to arrange your bloody fixtures, and I think that’s fair enough.