Greetings to everyone, my name is Tomas Stoimenov and this is my first ever post at the forum. FM 2014 has grabbed my attention for the last couple of months .As I got bored playing with Liverpool, Schalke, Roma, etc I decided to start something completely new.
So…the first step was adding England,Scotland,Northern Ireland and Ireland as playable leagues, checking “Sunday league player” as past experience and last but, not least starting unemployed.From July 2013 to December 2013 no contract offers came, neither did I have any chance for a real interview.With a few words, six months of zero activity.And then a miracle happened Skrill South side Havant and W(semi-professional at that time) decided to offer me an interview and eventually a contract.They were just above the drop line, when I took charge.No transfer budget and almost no wage budget,but it was better than being unemployed.In January I released most of the players and signed young players with a lot of potential and a few more experience players to help the quicker progress.The start was not quite as I expected - four matches lost without even scoring and about 3-4 goals conceded.A “marvellous” start of my managerial career.I wanted to play attacking, free-flowing, very fluid football 3-4-3(something, which has worked very well for Liverpool, for example), but soon I found out that it was pretty much pointless in Skrill South or any similar league, where the pitch conditions are below awful.A drastic change from that to 4-1-4-1, defensive and rigid strategy…and results started to come one by one.A couple of bore draws and till the end of the season wins 1:0 or draws 0:0 in 99% of the matches.In the end of my first season I managed to took Havant to just 5 points from the play-off zone.The future looked bright.A good summer selection, with just a couple of new signing, as I already did the big clear-up in the winter transfer window. Not surprisingly, since the beginning of the season till the end I pretty much had no difficulties in winning the league and getting promoted to Skrill Premier and playing a final for the FA Trophy, which was lost, but it was not a priority for me. Without the necessary finances I could not afford to attract almost no new players and had to deal with what I bought during the first transfer period.No tactical changes, no staff changes.Everything remained the same.The pre-season was badly managed with only 2-3 friendly games against teams from lower leagues and that gave it’s reflection at the beginning of the new season.No points won during the first six game weeks, no goals scored and at least 2 conceded per match.Not the start I had in mind, but with time the players started playing better and again the same routine a excruciatingly boring 0;0 draws or just agonizing 1:0 win.That was all Havant could do.The stable defence meant I was able to stay in form almost during the whole season and found myself in the play-off zone, after a form of 18 matches without a lose.Then came the play-off tactical matches, all of them 0:0 and had to rely on penalties to get through the semi-finals and eventually the final against Telford.That was a very stressful match 1 shot off target, 0 on, 20% ball possession and many,many, many fouls made.Thanks to pure luck I won the final, once again thanks to my perfect defence(the tactic was 5-1DMC-2-1,contain, very rigid….”Bus Strategy” taken to a whole new level) and the magic of penalties.The fans, the board and the players were over the moon of happiness, but I knew this promotion was not a good thing to happen to the club, which barely coped with financial requirements of the Skrill North league a season ago.Now Havant had to became a professional club, which raised the costs and not surprisingly the new wage budget that was given to me was a complete joke.Could not afford to offer professional contracts to almost none of my players, just managed to keep Ed Harris, my best CB and the captain of the team, Ibrahim Mansaray the most useful player I had and could play everywhere on the field, and my striker TM Adam Cummingthon(not quite sure how his surname was exactly I will check for the next posts).The other players were just…awful, that was the best I had available.The season and survival were doomed pretty much from the beginning.The League 2 season started and with just 2 wins during the first half of it, last place and about 20 points from the “safe-zone”.
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So…the first step was adding England,Scotland,Northern Ireland and Ireland as playable leagues, checking “Sunday league player” as past experience and last but, not least starting unemployed.From July 2013 to December 2013 no contract offers came, neither did I have any chance for a real interview.With a few words, six months of zero activity.And then a miracle happened Skrill South side Havant and W(semi-professional at that time) decided to offer me an interview and eventually a contract.They were just above the drop line, when I took charge.No transfer budget and almost no wage budget,but it was better than being unemployed.In January I released most of the players and signed young players with a lot of potential and a few more experience players to help the quicker progress.The start was not quite as I expected - four matches lost without even scoring and about 3-4 goals conceded.A “marvellous” start of my managerial career.I wanted to play attacking, free-flowing, very fluid football 3-4-3(something, which has worked very well for Liverpool, for example), but soon I found out that it was pretty much pointless in Skrill South or any similar league, where the pitch conditions are below awful.A drastic change from that to 4-1-4-1, defensive and rigid strategy…and results started to come one by one.A couple of bore draws and till the end of the season wins 1:0 or draws 0:0 in 99% of the matches.In the end of my first season I managed to took Havant to just 5 points from the play-off zone.The future looked bright.A good summer selection, with just a couple of new signing, as I already did the big clear-up in the winter transfer window. Not surprisingly, since the beginning of the season till the end I pretty much had no difficulties in winning the league and getting promoted to Skrill Premier and playing a final for the FA Trophy, which was lost, but it was not a priority for me. Without the necessary finances I could not afford to attract almost no new players and had to deal with what I bought during the first transfer period.No tactical changes, no staff changes.Everything remained the same.The pre-season was badly managed with only 2-3 friendly games against teams from lower leagues and that gave it’s reflection at the beginning of the new season.No points won during the first six game weeks, no goals scored and at least 2 conceded per match.Not the start I had in mind, but with time the players started playing better and again the same routine a excruciatingly boring 0;0 draws or just agonizing 1:0 win.That was all Havant could do.The stable defence meant I was able to stay in form almost during the whole season and found myself in the play-off zone, after a form of 18 matches without a lose.Then came the play-off tactical matches, all of them 0:0 and had to rely on penalties to get through the semi-finals and eventually the final against Telford.That was a very stressful match 1 shot off target, 0 on, 20% ball possession and many,many, many fouls made.Thanks to pure luck I won the final, once again thanks to my perfect defence(the tactic was 5-1DMC-2-1,contain, very rigid….”Bus Strategy” taken to a whole new level) and the magic of penalties.The fans, the board and the players were over the moon of happiness, but I knew this promotion was not a good thing to happen to the club, which barely coped with financial requirements of the Skrill North league a season ago.Now Havant had to became a professional club, which raised the costs and not surprisingly the new wage budget that was given to me was a complete joke.Could not afford to offer professional contracts to almost none of my players, just managed to keep Ed Harris, my best CB and the captain of the team, Ibrahim Mansaray the most useful player I had and could play everywhere on the field, and my striker TM Adam Cummingthon(not quite sure how his surname was exactly I will check for the next posts).The other players were just…awful, that was the best I had available.The season and survival were doomed pretty much from the beginning.The League 2 season started and with just 2 wins during the first half of it, last place and about 20 points from the “safe-zone”.
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