Forever Blowin Bubbles

[BlakeSemp10]

I begin my career in Football Manager 14 rather inexperienced. I have played a couple of saves with Manchester United, Juventus and Portsmouth, the latter being a disaster after losing 6 in a row and dropping from 4th​ to 12th​ in my first season I was dismissed as manager. The other two saves I played were okay, but I wasn’t really enjoying it as there was no satisfaction in winning the games as I should been winning them regardless. It was a rather tedious experience with those two teams and Portsmouth was maybe too difficult, so now I am to split even. I’m thinking about a low Premier League team or fairly well off Championship Team.
Today (22nd​ July 2014) I went to watch West Ham’s open training at Eden Park and the captain Kevin Nolan really caught my attention, the way he conducted himself and the effort he put into the training was second to none. Not to mention after the game he was the only player to stay behind and see to every fan who wanted a photo or signature, for this reason I’m certainly contemplating West Ham with Kevin Nolan as the main man of the career.

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I also considered Wigan and Fulham, but…

In the end I decided to go with the Hammers. As a Manchester United fan it’s going to be strange trying to overtake them eventually but I think it will be a fun save, West Ham have a good squad in my opinion and I will be looking to bring youth into their fairly experienced squad.

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So straight into the game first thing I find out is that the chairman has allocated me $0 for transfers! I cannot believe they won’t give me any money whatsoever. So I have organized an intra-squad friendly and I’m going to play a lot of the youngsters to see who could potentially be promoted to the First Team from the Youth Team.

 

[BlakeSemp10]

Our first game in pre-season was the intra-squad friendly against West-Ham Under-21’s who to be quite frank could barely field a team due to injuries and has numerous players playing out of position, I started with my strongest (preferred) 11 shown below and at half time subbed the entire team. We had a comfortable win.

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West Ham 5-0 West Ham under 21’s
R.Vaz Te, M.Noble (x2), C.Cole and J.Cole

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Mark Noble picked up man of the match (M.O.M) with 2 long distance strikes after Vaz Te’s opening header, and the Cole’s both put one in each in the second half to put salt in the wounds of a poor opponent. Still a win is a win and it’s a good way to boost confidence at the start of pre-season. I have also realized the strength in depth I already have in my squad, and so having no money to sign players is not as big a problem I first thought, although we will see how pre-season goes first.

We have received bids for center back J.Tomkins and defensive midfielder Diame who there is no way I will let leave the club, he is a major part of the team and I feel one of the best players in my team. The other player though James Tomkins can go if we receive the right amount of money, and then I could possibly bring in a couple of youngsters with the fee agreed.

I also let young Danny Potts go out on loan to gain some experience at Tranmere Rovers as I believe he could be a useful asset to the team in the future, and he wasn’t going to get any game time this season anyway.

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The next pre-season match was against Gaz Metan a Romanian League 1 team who were set out in a 4-4-2 formation, this is certainly a game I expect the boys to get the job done. The team I sent out featured Borriello and Jarvis coming in alongside Jaaskalainen and Nocerino
We got the result in the end but certainly made it difficult.

Gaz Metan 2-3 West Ham
M.Taylor, S.Downing and R.Johnson

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Going 1-0 down really woke up the lads, in the end it was 3 substitutes who made the difference to put us 3-1 up before Gaz Metan scored a late goal to make the final score 3-2. Kevin Nolan picked up M.O.M in this game.

 

[roraimafilho]

Nice!! A hammer story!!! Go go!!!

 

[BlakeSemp10]

We ended up selling James Tomkins to Stoke City for a fee of 2.5 million pounds.

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Now I have a bit of money I decided to go in to the transfer market and bolster my squad, after looking around I decided young players on loan would be my best option. First I picked up promising striker Tom Bradshaw.

The next pre-season match was against Dinamo Bucharest, another Romanian team who played a standard 4-4-2. I decided to give a debut to Bradshaw and slightly rotated the squad;
A boring game to say the least.

West Ham 1-1 Dinamo Bucharest
M.Jarvis

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We didn’t really perform well at all and luckily Matty Jarvis came up with the good to salvage a draw, it was a fantastic solo goal beating two players then blasting the ball past the hopeless keeper. Bucharest’s Geanta picked up M.O.M.
We then picked up Michael Mancienne on loan who is a solid center back, once at Chelsea. He can hopefully add some strength to our back line this season.