Motlhen

Off Field Improvements The board surprised me by announcing they wanted to build a new stadium in Enfield. I am delighted to be relocating from Ware back to where we belong, but do wonder how we are going to fund this. On the Club Info page, I found that they are looking to build a 1,272 seater stadium, which is ever so slightly bigger than our largest home attendance last season of 38. This size stadium should prove useful if we continually rise through the leagues, but if we end up stagnating in a division for a few years, or even get relegated, I can see the financial side of a new stadium build catching up with us. However, this is all speculation for now as I do not know how much it will cost us. Before I knew about the new stadium plans, I requested for both youth coaching and youth recruitment improvements. Both were accepted and I am currently very happy with Mick Sampson (Chairperson). During pre-season, I also asked and was granted permission to start training for my first coaching licence, our under-18's got invited into a youth league and we got the news that we had doubled the number of season ticket holders from last season! All of this progress has to be matched with improved performances on the pitch and a push for promotion this season.

Other Enfield Clubs 2023/24 Season Halfway through the season, Enfield Town looked like they could push towards new heights for an Enfield-based team, but they couldn't mount a promotion challenge and fell to mid table, where most of the Enfield teams finished this season. Hinton won promotion to level 10 and Brimsdown were relegated to level 11, meaning we will have the same number of teams at each tier as we did last season. Level 7 Enfield Town 8th Level 8 Enfield FC 12th Level 9 Cockfosters 9th Level 10 Enfield Borough 19th Brimsdown 21st (Relegated) Level 11 Hinton 1st (Promoted) Bush Hill Rangers 3rd Cockfosters Reserves 12th

Apr 2024 Our winning run continued with two huge wins. Our biggest margin of victory previously was 3 goals, so to win two games by 5 goals, with 7 of the 10 goals being scored by players from the recent youth intake, means we finish the season very strong. Despite our unbeaten run, we could only manage a draw on the final day of the season, meaning we slipped back to 3rd place.

Mar 2024 With our new additions, we have managed the longest winning streak of the season. This gives me more confidence going into next season that we can push for the title and promotion, after Hinton ran away with the title this year.

The rest of the intake:

Youth Intake breaking into the 1st & 2nd XI After evaluating all of the youth intake, I was very surprised to think that my favourite two players were the two centre-backs rated the worst from the intake by my assistant. These two will be immediately starting the last few games of the season as I rate them higher than any of the centre-backs that we still currently have at the club. The only other player going straight into the starting XI is Blake. He looks like a great asset on the wing and will also be taking all of our corners and free-kicks. These are the other players from the intake that will be part of the squad.

Youth Intake 12 from the 16 youth players were from Enfield, including the top 4 by current ability, which is great news! The non-Enfield born players have immediately been released. Below I have shown that I have renamed each of the players with the BH0Xy where X is the intake number and y is the position in the list. I have also renamed the players that we released so that I can keep track of their progress away from our club. *Gardner was signed to an amateur contract, but as I'm posting this I realised he's from not from Enfield, so he's been released - not sure how I missed that first time round.

Transfer Out Sure enough, Thrower leaves his brother (and cousin?) behind and becomes the first of the signings I made whilst in charge of Bush Hill to also depart.

Non-Contracts It looks like we are about to lose the best of the Thrower family. Josiah has had interest for a while, but over the past few days he's been bombarded with offers and I don't expect him to be around for much longer. This is the reality we are likely to face when any player performs well and we are still an amateur club. If we push for semi-professional status too early, we could end up in financial difficulty. If we stay amateur for too long, the quality of player moving into our starting XI will keep decreasing. The quicker we get up the leagues, the less risk there will be involved in turning semi-pro so next season we have to aim for the one automatic promotion spot!

Feb 2024 A month of draws, with one win and one loss (which was a also a draw). The cup loss was hard to take as we got a very early red card and I feel we would've been able to get through to the next round easily if we didn't have the man disadvantage. The board aren't too happy about the cup loss. They want us to finish in the top 4 in the league, so now there is a much higher emphasis on making sure we do just that!

Loans In Since taking over I've been making the odd, sporadic loan offers to anyone who might be available to us. It's only now in February that we have had a couple of successful offers. Joining us is Angel, a third member of the Thrower family, as well as Whitney from two other Enfield teams.

Jan 2024 A couple of disappointing results at the start of the year, despite our new signing getting off the mark in his debut after 2 minutes. Hinton look like they are going to run away with the title after extending their lead at the top to 11 and knocking us down to 3rd in the process.

Transfer In We've signed a very well-rounded attacker (for our level), he's fast and strong, has decent (6+) attributes across all of the relevant technicals. The only issue is he is tiny (162cm = 5'3") and has a jumping reach of 1. I think his best position is as a diminutive winger on the left side and I'm hoping he can immediately contribute to the goals.

I absolutely loved this journey, thanks for sharing! Now to start reading the Rangers side story...

Finances According to this graph, we started with a huge negative balance in May. Sponsorship worth £135k plugged that hole before I took over and we have been teetering just above a zero balance ever since. I am not sure we can expect such a big sponsorship payment year-on-year, so I will concentrate on monitoring the finances from June onwards. We've made over £1k on 3 categories (Fund Raising, Match Day Income & Gate Receipts). If we get promoted, I would expect the latter 2 of these to increase. As you progress up the tiers, the locality decreases, meaning that if we do get promoted, we will likely be paying more for Travel Costs. Hopefully we can draw big enough crowds to mitigate this increase. We've spent over £1k on 5 categories (Other, Scouting Costs, Ground Maintenance, Tax, Non-Football Costs). I can immediately save us money by reducing our scouting. But we don't have any control over the others (afaik). Despite already improving our Youth Recruitment and Youth Coaching, we haven't spent any considerable amount on the Youth Setup, so I'm very keen to push for more improvements as soon as possible.

Dec 2023 We started the month with yet another goal fest. This time round Thrower's 95th & 96th minute goals won it for us! We lost twice this month, but considering these games were against 3rd & 5th in the league, I don't think I can be too disappointed. I am thrilled to have finished the month and the year with two back-to-back clean sheets and 4 points ahead of 3rd place. The new year also marks the halfway point in the league and we have a 10-point gap between us and Hinton. We're still the only team to have beaten them this season and if they manage to keep up this form, there's no catching them. I am hoping that we can push on and be in a position to capitalise on any blip in form they have.

Youth Intake Preview We need our intakes to be good, and we need the best players from our intakes to be from Enfield. Anyone who is not born in Enfield will be released immediately. I'll try to keep track of all of the players we produce throughout the save and will try to avoid anything that will make us more likely to have players come through the intake born elsewhere (eg. foreign affiliates). We are a long way off of that now though. Now, we need stronger backups and I am hoping we get at least one Enfield-born academy product at first team level.

Nov 2023 Including the 5-4 win at the end of last month, we went on a run of conceding 15 goals in 3 games. This coincided with the defensive departures of Carley & Collins as the players that replaced them clearly weren't ready for the first team action. I'll try to adapt to more rotation between the first and second XI to ensure that we are slightly more prepared for any more sudden departures. I was happy that we managed to end the month with a win, and despite all the goals conceded, we're sitting in 2nd place with a goal difference of zero. Top Performers Matt Newton has been our best player, playing as a box-to-box midfielder. He's scored some incredible long-range strikes and cropped up with assists too. Ben Nichols has also been performing well playing as our attacking midfielder, behind Shayne Phillips (who was our backup striker at the start of the season before Robert Goulding got injured in pre-season) and he's stepped up to the plate and has kept his starting spot despite Goulding coming back from injury.

Transfer Out One of our starting centre-backs George Collins has left to drop down a level to tier 12. Each time a player leaves, I promote a player from the group of backups we have in the under 21's, plus I am also on the constant lookout to see if any other Enfield-born players are interested to join.

Oct 2023 We're in one cup this season, the Aubrey cup. I believe that this is a regional cup between teams in the 11th and 12th tiers. We're in the Hertfordshire Senior County League Premier Division and we played Evergreen who play in the Hertfordshire Senior County League Division One. After a rotated side got us through to the next round, we'll be facing Harpenden Town Under 21s, who also play in the Hertfordshire Senior County League Division One, but that game doesn't happen until February so we will have the league to concentrate on for a while. In the league games this month, we scored our 5th penalty after 6 matches before our 7th game opened up into a goal fest! We came out on top in a 9-goal thriller and we are up in third, making it an Enfield 1-2-3 in the league as both Hinton & Cockfosters Reserves, who we've already beaten this season, occupy the two spots above us. Under-Performance The final player I brought in before the start of the season instantly became our best-rated player at the club. In this case, I agreed with my assistant and stuck Sam Byles straight in the centre of our defence. After a few games there, he wasn't having the impact I was hoping for, so I moved him out to right full back, which I believe is his best position. But still after 7 games, he hasn't put in the level of performance we would hope from any first team starter, let alone the supposed best player at the club. I'm hoping he can turn things around soon otherwise he'll be replaced in the starting lineup.

Transfer Out I was wary of having no control over losing players. Once a bigger club is interested or any sort of money is offered, there's nothing stopping our players from walking out the door (and fair enough). The first to do so was our starting left back (and player with the best name at the club) Charlie Carley.

Youth Improvements The board accepted my second round of requests for Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment improvements. This is the first step in the direction we need to go to generate better quality Enfield-born players and I will ask the board to continue these improvements every chance I get.

Sept 2023 In our first 5 matches we scored 4 penalties and 1 free-kick with only one goal (in our 4th match) scored from open play. We have played against the other two Enfield-based clubs in our division and as they were the top 2 favourites for the league, two wins in those two games is a very positive sign. Goalkeeper Goalkeeper Robyn Williams was the best rated player at the club when I joined. However, my first signing was Isaac Fordjour who I chose to be our number one for the start of the season. He immediately showed me that was the right call with two big penalty saves in the game against Hinton, the club we signed him from!

Brothers The first of our players I want to introduce are the Thrower brothers. Left winger Sam was with us from the start when I joined the club and his older brother Josiah was brought in not long afterwards to play on the opposite wing. [Full disclosure, they were not brothers until I used the in-game editor to update their favoured personnel. Throughout this save I will be using the in-game editor for such aesthetic reasons, to increase immersion, but never to look at attributes, PA, CA etc).

Pre-Season The 11th tier has 1 promotion spot and 3 relegation spots and we are predicted dead last and adrift from the other teams. This looks like a tough league to get out of. The other two Enfield-based teams are the first and second favourites for the league. We played some friendlies and made some transfers and as the new players arrived our performances and results markedly improved. We've brought in 14 players, including FIVE players from both Hinton (our league's favourites for promotion) and Brimsdown (favourites for relegation in the tier above). Our activity in the transfer market means we are no longer favourites for relegation, but we're still in a mix of a dozen unfavoured teams in the division. Squad That leaves our squad looking like this as we approach the first league game. Our first and second XI contain only half of our new signings as the rest did not improve the focus group, but were brought in as emergency backups for if any of our players leave mid-season. As all of our players are amateur, that means that they could leave at any time for free, but it also means that it doesn't cost anything to have more players than we need too.