sharpysharps
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Hi all, this is my first ever manager story on the forum. I've been a long time reader of some of the incredible tales that have been told on here, and just recently I have been inspired to try my hand at writing my own. Hopefully this won't be too rough around the edges ^^)
Anyway, here goes...
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Stephen Peter Sharples, at the age of 29 has been appointed the new manager of Nelson Football Club, replacing former manager Mark Fell.
Residing in the North West Counties Premier Division alongside the likes of AFC Liverpool, AFC Blackpool and AFC Darwen, there was something about this club that appealed to me. With my home town of Chorley about 45 minutes drive up the M65, and the club I support (Blackburn Rovers) not being too far away at all, it seemed like an interesting challenge to drop down 3 tiers lower than the Conference North. I've never managed at this level before, so I have literally no idea what to expect (other than the quality of football to be pretty dreadful).
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'The Admirals' play at Victoria Park, which lets face it is pretty much a field with some goal posts and a few railings. It'll be my objective to transform this club from lowly non leaguers to a professional football league outfit, and maybe beyond that. It's one heck of a challenge just to get to the Conference North, so it's going to be quite the journey.
As you can see, Nelson are a side that are a little short on success despite being founded in 1881...
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After a good introduction meeting with the club chairman Liam Roberts, I was given a fairly uninspiring task of securing a mid table finish on a wage budget of £325 and a transfer budget of £0. I chose to keep things simple and not to promise the Chairman anything more as looking at the squad of permanent players we were certainly lacking in numbers. Luckily for us most of the sides in the division are in the same boat or even worse off. I was confident that if we could get a hard working group together then we'd be able to achieve much greater things than the media prediction of 16th.
Never the less, I got straight to work with my team and the coaching staff already in place at the club...errr, or at least that's what I thought would happen until I discovered I had no staff! I immediately set about bringing in a couple of coaches and a scout to help me find the right formula. In came my first assistant manager in Phil Brazier, coach Ross Preston and scout Josh Crawford.
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As you can see Crawford in particular was not up to much but it's pretty much all I could attract in the scouting department. Preston however joined shortly after Brazier, and came as a recommendation from my new assistant. I was pleasantly surprised by some of his stats and swiftly moved to bring him in.
View attachment 170958
Anyway, here goes...
View attachment 170971
Stephen Peter Sharples, at the age of 29 has been appointed the new manager of Nelson Football Club, replacing former manager Mark Fell.
Residing in the North West Counties Premier Division alongside the likes of AFC Liverpool, AFC Blackpool and AFC Darwen, there was something about this club that appealed to me. With my home town of Chorley about 45 minutes drive up the M65, and the club I support (Blackburn Rovers) not being too far away at all, it seemed like an interesting challenge to drop down 3 tiers lower than the Conference North. I've never managed at this level before, so I have literally no idea what to expect (other than the quality of football to be pretty dreadful).
View attachment 170956View attachment 170955
'The Admirals' play at Victoria Park, which lets face it is pretty much a field with some goal posts and a few railings. It'll be my objective to transform this club from lowly non leaguers to a professional football league outfit, and maybe beyond that. It's one heck of a challenge just to get to the Conference North, so it's going to be quite the journey.
As you can see, Nelson are a side that are a little short on success despite being founded in 1881...
View attachment 170962
After a good introduction meeting with the club chairman Liam Roberts, I was given a fairly uninspiring task of securing a mid table finish on a wage budget of £325 and a transfer budget of £0. I chose to keep things simple and not to promise the Chairman anything more as looking at the squad of permanent players we were certainly lacking in numbers. Luckily for us most of the sides in the division are in the same boat or even worse off. I was confident that if we could get a hard working group together then we'd be able to achieve much greater things than the media prediction of 16th.
Never the less, I got straight to work with my team and the coaching staff already in place at the club...errr, or at least that's what I thought would happen until I discovered I had no staff! I immediately set about bringing in a couple of coaches and a scout to help me find the right formula. In came my first assistant manager in Phil Brazier, coach Ross Preston and scout Josh Crawford.
As you can see Crawford in particular was not up to much but it's pretty much all I could attract in the scouting department. Preston however joined shortly after Brazier, and came as a recommendation from my new assistant. I was pleasantly surprised by some of his stats and swiftly moved to bring him in.
View attachment 170958
In my next update I'll go into a bit more detail on the squad that I have assembled together for the season ahead and the system that we'll be playing with. There have been plenty of incomings to take us up to a decent selection of players to surpass most other sides in the league. It certainly seems like a case of quantity over quality will get you further down here.
