Animo et Fide - A Stockport County Story

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Elena197

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Hi guys! Just an introduction, I'm fairly new here and have never attempted this before so sorry if it fails.

A little bit about the club:

Stockport County FC were formed in 1883 as Heaton Norris Rovers by members of the Wycliffe Congregational Church, and played their first recorded game in October the next year. The club adopted 'The Hatters' as their nickname,owing to Stockport's history as the centre of the Victorian hat-making industry, a nickname that is shared with Luton Town.

Stadium

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They play in blue and white stripes at the Edgeley Park Stadium with a 10,900 capacity crowd that is regularly packed with very vocal home supporters. Despite being only 15 minutes drive from Old Trafford and 18 from the Etihad Stockport have a large amount of local supporters who come no matter what to support their beloved Stockport.

Animo et Fide is the club motto, recently incorporated into their badge in 2010 - it roughly translates to "With Courage and Faith".

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Our story begins with myself, James Murphy, a semi-professional footballer who retired about 6 years ago with his National B Coaching License in hand, most definitely a suit and boot guy with his brain involved in tactics and youth development, far from the technical coaching areas - might've made a better player if I had more nouse in that respect!!!

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We find ourselves placed ready and raring to go on the 8th July 2014.

Is promotion on the horizon?
 
So an excellent start was an injury to our best striker for 4 weeks, nevertheless, having made our way in the transfer market, here is how we line up:

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Using a 4-3-3 offensive pressing tactic that takes advantage of our best players (and skips all types of wingers, I hate wingers in LLM - sometimes they are ME breaking, and not one winger at this level has half an ounce of technical ability).

Here are the transfers in and out:

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I only wanted to get 2 players out of here, and they both went for "decent" fees. Gateshead approached me on our winger before I even listed him!!! God knows why they think he's worth that kinda money - but believe me he isn't. Many of our transfers are to allow us to rotate in a league that pays no attention to fixture congestion. We've stretched beyond our wage budget - which actually goes against my morals and the gametype I want to play, but lets just say I'm going for back to back promotions and am extremely overconfident!

So we line up with plenty of depth, and I feel we outclass our league by a long way - first place or nothing. We packed in as many games as possible for some team cohesion, to increase our match training (we're semi-pro - and that means I can't run 2 match prep days - so I played more matches for formation training!) - not to mention the money (all at home). Here is how we did:

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Overall I'm not particularly bothered, I autopicked the teams and let the assistant manager have his fun, all in all it doesn't look too bad! See you at the halfway line!

NB: I am currently trying to pick up a DR, GK and STC on loan for some added depth and perhaps some more talent, you can never have enough players down here, especially with no youth squads worth mentioning, everyone has been promoted who wasn't greyed out!
 
@Lippo255 - thanks, a bit of encouragement always helps, I will almost always post at 3am though!
 
So it might only be September, but I felt it was time for a small update - we have an injury crisis! I predicted the match scheduling would be rough, and it has been:

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Nevertheless we have struggled through our fixtures thus far - the 2-2 draw to Stalybridge involved 2 goals on their part in the last 3 minutes as our players hit 50% fitness, even with 3 subsitutions! Was definitely tough to take - being semi-pro has made it hard on the match training too.

Even so, with a game in hand, only Oxford seem to be outracing us for form right now, and even though its' 7 games in, I'm feeling hopeful!

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Roll on January!
I did manage to loan 4 players in the end, 2 strikers, 1 dr and 1 gk. The goalkeeper has been a brilliant find, and a permanent fixture in the no.1 spot, but all 3 of the others have struggled with fitness and injuries. Typical conference!
 
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