Fleetwood - The Story of the Cod Army
Well i'm just up to the start of the season so here is an update on what happened in the first couple of weeks in charge.
Well the team was pretty poor to start with. There were some pretty decent experienced midfielders in the mix but nothing shone out too much other than Chris Holland previously of Huddesfield, Birmingham and Newcastle and John Hills, ex Everton, Sheff Wed and local team Blackpool. Hills is pure quality and he could probably still kick it at League 1. Hills is only 30 too so i'm sure he will be ever present in my potential rise through the leagues.
There is a decent RB called Walmsley who is decent at corners and freekicks. I might have to play him purely on the basis that i'm hoping to score a lot from set plays. With the poor technical skills the teams in the league possess I need to get scoring from corners so i'm sure he will be priceless in my first season.
Basically if i'm to do anything i'm going to have to think big and bring in pretty much a whole new squad. I don't really like doing this but at the end of the day my team wasn't going to do much with the current set of players.
After scouring the thousands of free transfers I picked out 20 players and played the percentages thinking most will reject as we are relatively unknown. I offered a couple of fairly big contracts to a few key players that I thought would be integral and out of the 20 I went in for I got 14 which is pretty impressive.
A few highlights were Max Cream... maybe just for his name but he still looks a decent midfielder for BSN.
Guy Melamed - Former Israel U21 player and decent either at CB or MC/DMC. Good stats and pretty luck to beat Torquay to him.
James Pangagi - Strong CB who bags a good couple of goals a season. I had im in my Wimbledon days and he was a rock.
Giannis Kyriakou - Looks far too good for this league but he chose me over York and i'm sure he will be ever present with his amazing technical skills.
Anton Greyling - Another former U21 international but this time for South Afria. He is DR and will be intergral I would have thought. He seems to be 10x better than anyone i've got stats wise.
I was looking at free transfers by nationality and seemed to find some American gems. Cream, Sagare, Wexler and Smith all yanks and now starting some sort of American revolution in the North West of England.
A couple of players went out but not as many as I would have liked. A lot of my team had just joined and didn't want to leave so I will have to wait until January till they go. Unfortunately this makes me bordering on exceeding my wage budget and that is always asking for trouble. Hopefully my gamble of bringing in quality can prove fruitful and get me a sexy cup run and fill the coffers with green. Fingers crossed anyway!
Managed to do a deal and get Blackburn as my parent club so i'm sure Big Sam will throw some youngsters my way to hone their skills.
The Backroom:
I started the game with no staff so I was quick to bring in John Lukic.. yep.. THE John Lukic as a coach. Steve Constantine as my Assistant, Chris Vinicombe as a coach and Peter Malone my 3rd and final coach.
I forgot to get a physio to start with and a couple of players got injured and I wondered why they weren't healing or had a time scale of when they were back.
Luckily, Steve Constantine was on the ball and told me we needed someone to fix those knocks and niggles so in comes Roger ***** as my sole physio.
To finish of the backroom staff I brought in old Bobby Saxton and John Williams as my scouts.
Pre-season went as well as I had expected. I had a good few friendlies lined up against good teams and all at home so that helped quite a lot. A highlight was losing 1-2 to Leicester to a sold out Highbury Stadium with us putting up a good fight.
We also played Hamilton Accies, Brentford, Newcastle Reserves, Queen of The South and drew 1-1 each time. Our only other defeat was at the hands of Blackpool infront of 2,000 0-1.
On pre-season form i'm hoping we can hold our own at this level but who knows. Lower league can be tricky business but I am quietely confident of a playoff position come the end of the season.
Club captain is Guy Melamed and Greyling as Vice. Both as I said will be rocks at the back and get me mounting a serious promotion bid.
Well the first game is upon is and it's is away at probably the best team in the league, Southport.
I will let you know how it goes tomorrow!
View attachment 5652
View attachment 5653