Parking at the Top

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CondemnedGurkin

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Part 1

Before this years edition of FM was released, I decided that i wanted to manage in a small country that I had no knowledge of, and work my way up with a Sunday League reputation. My first attempt at this fell flat on its face and I was sacked in December of the first season.

Now it's time to try again. This time around I've chosen a team with lower expectations to give me time to settle into the club, and to give me a bit of room for error.

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So there we go. That most famous of clubs, Moyola Park AFC.

"I appreciate you may already know a little bit about the club already, but i can send a detailed overview to your inbox if you would like?"

I think I may be the only person ever to actually read the overview that i was send but here's a few highlights:
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  • [*=center]The club is 134 years old when the game starts in June 2014.
    [*=center]They currently play in the third tier of Northern Irish football.
    [*=center]They were the first ever winners of the Northern Irish cup in 1881.
    [*=center]They have won no major trophies since.
    [*=center]They play at Mill Meadow which has a capacity of 2000. (Although looking at pictures it seems closer to 200 that 2000)

Anyway, I've already played through the first season to make sure that the save was going to last, and details of that are to follow in Part 2.

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Part 2

Season 1 - League:

Top of the agenda at the start of the season was ridding ourselves of the deadwood and bringing in some proven quality for our level. We can only sign non-contract players which makes any long term planning almost impossible, as the top talent at the club can be snapped up at any time throughout the season. Based on this, I brought in players purely on ability no matter of their age, and bolstered squad depth before the season started.

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For the first part of the season, I was switching between a 4-4-2 and 4-2-3-1, and this was bringing mixed results at first. However, 5 straight losses sent us spiraling down the league and into the relegation zone.

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I could feel a similar trend to my last unsuccessful effort starting to appear. Taking a step back and looking over the previous games revealed 2 concerning trends.

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  1. [*=center]We conceded a lot of goals from long shots, and teams were having to make little effort to find space on the edge of our area.
    [*=center]Although our striker Chris Dowie had a good goal record, he was squandering a lot of easy chances.


I switched our formation to an asymmetric 4-2-3-1, and signed Jordan Gibson to break up play and keep possession from the DM position. He had a great influence on the team, and all of a sudden, we were defending much better and playing with more confidence.

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Between the end of November and the beginning of February, results picked up and we picked up some decent wins. I dropped Chris Dowie for a few matches and played David Healy instead and he did a good job until he suffered a minor injury, which saw Dowie return and pick up form.

Even so, I still felt that we lacked something at home, and the counter attacking system was simply not going to do the job. I employed a 4-4-1-1 for home matches with a more attacking mentality and this did the job perfectly.

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10 matches unbeaten and confidence higher than ever, i honestly believe that we could have snatched promotion with a few extra games. Nonetheless, the league season ended well above expectations and a 6th place finish is not to be sniffed at, even more so when you consider where we were before that last run of games.

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Cup results and other good stuff on the way!
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Hopefully. Only problem might be getting the money to turn professional and bring in some better players. If we can bring some good players through the academy that will definitely help.
 
Part 3

Season 1- Cups, cups, and... 2 other cups:

"Steel and Sons Cup" and "Intermediate Cup"

If you have as much knowledge of Northern Irish football as I do, then you'll have no clue what these are. From what I can gather, they are basically versions of the Johnston Paint Trophy. Both competitions feature teams from my league and the league above me, and the Steel and Sons Cup includes non league teams as well.

I played slightly weakened sides in both competitions and payed the price, getting knocked out in the second round on both occasions. Looking back, we did stand a good chance of winning the competitions due to the high number of good teams getting knocked out in the early stages, and next season we'll definitely be aiming to go all the way.

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League Cup

The League cup was a different story altogether. The second round saw us knock out rivals Tobermore (from our division) on penalties after a thrilling 3-3 encounter. I was even happier about the fact that we won with 9 men after half of our team was injured by Tobermore's aggressive style of play. After the match, I took my chance to lay into their manager in the press conference, and this made me feel a bit better about the fact that a lot of our key players had been injured.

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The third round was better still as we knocked out Premier League side Glenavon 1-0 at home after some good saves from Farniok.

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The quarter final was a step to far. We faced reigning Premier League champions Cliftonville at home, one of the few teams in Northern Ireland that I've actually heard of. They taught us a lesson and won with ease and we picked up £1k in prize money for our epic efforts. *sigh*

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Northern Irish Cup

In the counties main cup competition, we faced poor opposition throughout in reaching the 6th round after a convincing replay against Donegal Celtic, the toughest opposition we faced. A disappointing performance against fellow C2 team Coagh United was enough to end our cup season in the beginning of February, which was probably one of the factors in our improved league form at the end of the season.

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Players of the Season

Our 3 players of the season this year are all nominated because of their outstanding goal and assist contributions. Honorable mentions go out to our 2 main wingers, Aaron "Wilko" Wilkinson and Jason Paul, and our 39 year old genius at centre back, Paul "OAP" Muir.

3rd - David Healy - 14 starts - 10 goals - 3 assists

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2nd - Dean Carlyle - 32 starts - 4 goals - 13 assists

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1st - Chris Dowie - 23 starts - 19 goals - 2 assists

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Part 4

Season 1 - Misc:


Since season 1 is over, and I haven't found time to play through the pre-season, I thought it would be a good idea to outline some of the off-field distractions at the club.

Youth Intake

Our youth intake in February produced some good results. The assistant manager at the club had almost every player valued at 5 star potential, but I narrowed the prospects down to a much shorter list.

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Confidence

Board confidence is high after the end of season form.

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Finances

Finances have been in steady decline from the minute I took charge of the club, and at first I thought this was going to be a problem. As you can see in the board confidence, the board don't seem to concerned with the situation, and I think this is the case at most clubs at our level.

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Developments

With a bit of persistence and pestering, I managed to convince the board to find us a parent club to make a bit of money, and to sign some loan players. Hopefully this will help us with squad depth next season, and add some stability to our financial situation.

My contract has also been extended by one year. £300 a week... woop!

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Part 5

Season 2 - Pre-season


Finally, I've found time to play through the pre-season of season 2, and can bring you the update. For this season, there are going to be 3 updates of 10 or so games as I progress through the season. Firstly though, lets look what happened in the pre-season.

Outgoings

Towards the end of last season, many of my under performing players, who I'd dropped earlier in the year, began to complain about their lack of first team football. After 2 or 3 of them telling me that they thought they had nothing to prove to get into the first team, I took the decision to release anyone who wasn't needed there and then, and use our newly found youth prospects as backup instead.

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Incomings

Going into the window, I was given a reduced budget for the same expectations of avoiding relegation. Looking at the club's finances, I wasn't too concerned or bothered about this, until I saw the league table.

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League restructuring has meant that this season, the bottom 5 teams get relegated instead of just the bottom 2. Not only that, but the 2nd place in the league has now changed from an automation promotion spot, to a promotion playoff with the forth bottom team in the C1.

With more chance of relegation, a lower chance of promotion and reduced budgets, prospects were already looking good for the year ahead. However, I did eventually manage to bring 3 quality players in on free transfers from other clubs.

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The three additions will all be first team starters for us this season, and this is complimented by their abilities to play in multiple positions. Combine this with low wage requirements from all three of them, and you have a perfect recipe for some good signings for the club.

After all the business was done, our wage budget was in tatters, and the board not best pleased.

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Friendly Results

We had a full squad available to us before the first friendly match was played. Here are the results, and the squad which brought us them.

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A mixed bag, all managed by the assistant manager, but I'm not concerned by this.

You may also notice one sad gap in the squad. Paul "OAP" Muir has decided to retire at the age of 39, after a fantastic season at CB for the club. He was going to start at CB this season, and it's disappointing to see that he couldn't make it to age 40 with the club. Him, and his 40th birthday party, will be greatly missed.

Onwards and Upwards

After all has been done, I'm now optimistic for the season ahead. I think we can really push on towards the top end of the league, and we'll need a good start in out first games to do so.

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Nice read, I like your format, I hope you stick with this as I'm always interested in British saves outside of England. KIU mate!
 
Thanks, really enjoying learning about the league. First save i've properly got into this year. :)
 
Part 6

Season 2 - Progress

Story So Far

After a solid pre-season, I went into the first 8 league games of the season full of optimism. 3 new signings and a small clear out should be enough to drive us towards the promotion places.

We backed my enthusiasm up with a good start against Ballyclare and Donegal Celtic, winning 1-0 and 2-0 respectively. Although play was pretty even, both teams had been relegated from the C1 last season so were expected to give us a worthy test.

EDIT: In between these two games we lost on penalties in the League Cup 1st round. We never stood a chance of winning it anyway.

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A blip against Coagh United did not deter us, and we came back strongly against Queens University and Ballymoney. 4 points from the 3 games was the minimum I would have expected and this is what we got.

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However, we didn't come out of the games unscathed. Numerous injuries to first team players left us with only 12 senior players going into the Steel and Son's Cup 3rd round tie, in a second game in a row away to Ballymoney. In the 2nd round, we'd beaten non league side Desertmartin 5-2 with ease and I thought at the time that this was going to be our first real shot at a trophy. I filled the bench with 4 16 year olds, and we were unsurprisingly played off the park.

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In the 2 week break which proceeded the cup tie, most of our players returned from injuries and we were back at almost full strength ahead of a home match against a Limavady side we really should have been beating.

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A terrible performance ended with a 1-1 draw and another injury. This was enough for me to lose my rag.

After the game, I was aggressive in telling them exactly what I thought, and spoke to most players individually as well. Looking back, this was a bit harsh and some were very unhappy, but I didn't care in the slightest. If last season's problem had been conceding from long shots, then this season it was crosses and through balls and I had had enough of switching between tactics for home and away games with inconstant results. I decided that the best thing to do was to create an attacking 4-2-3-1. We were to employ it home and away, regardless of the opponent, and if we were hit on the counter, we'd simply have to live with it. At least we would know we'd given it a good go.

Pushing higher and pressing more seemed to be stopping our opponents supply at source in a 3-1 win at Wakehurst (although they share a stadium with us so it wasn't technically away).

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Before the final game of period, we were second in the league, 4 points behind Banbridge, our opponents. Unfortunately, we lost centre-back Glenn Pierce to Coagh United before the game. For anyone wondering, this liable to happen at any time as all of my players are on non-contract deals. With only 2 centre-backs left at the club, and very little money, we had to be quick in signing a cheap replacement, and Kevin McLaughlin was the best player available.

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Unfortunately, we were unlucky to lose 3-1 in our promotion clash to a quality Banbridge team all round. They are beating pretty much everyone this year and we will have a hard job catching them.

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League Table

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So, after a mixed bag in our first period, here's where we are in the league:


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We've been left clinging onto second place going into our next set of 9 games, and this is where I'm hoping to be in the next update.

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