erik45

November 2028. This really was No-vember... We didn't get anything done. I don't know if it is losing O'Connor or what, but we can't get proper chances at the moment. In the Stalybridge game we scored 4 goals in the first 20 mins - and then stopped playing. They were really close of equalising, but in the end we held our ground. All these teams have been in a good form, but still, four points is not enough. Table. We dropped a lot of points and that means we are outside of playoff positions. If there's some silver lining, it is the fact that we are still just 5 points from the top. Goal50 2028. I just wanted to show this because Kai Havertz is just funny to me. I think he is a good player and can get even better, but not Vini/Haaland/Mbappe level good. Arsenal had 8 players in the top 50! Upcoming fixtures. Seven games is a lot, but maybe we can use them to turn our form. Leek Town has been playing well lately, so it's a tricky start for the month. No major injuries and more than 12 points is what I'm looking for.

October 2028. Good start, bad end. We won the the games I thought to be difficult and lost the "easier" games. Padiham game was especially stupid loss as they scored with their first two shots and then we took a red card... Witton Albion absolutely shut us down, we had our first shot on goal at 79th minute (which we scored). Table. Three wins, two losses is not the best form, but at least we are still in the top group. Upcoming fixtures. No cup games left, so quite quiet month as we have no games mid-week. WD&C is the only game I think we should be clear favorites, the rest are very much 50/50.

Retirement. This happened sooner than I expected, but I can't say I'm surprised. I tried to sign him back as a staff member, but he was asking wages of 350 €/w...

That's an excellent idea, I hadn't thought of that! He doesn't have coach attributes, but I was able to send him to a coaching course. I thought that would actually be quite realistic, sending an older player with long-term injury to get his coaching badges. But, it didn't go as I planned, see below I even tried to appeal it, but the board literally said "In future, please do not waste our time with things like this."

September 2028. League - FA Trophy - FA Cup I think we got exactly what we deserved. In our wins we were convincing, and in our losses we were the second best. I'm not too happy dropping from FA Cup, but our focus is the league. Only two games, but we won them both, no complaining. Table. Two wins means we move to promotion playoff spots! It's still very early in the season, but if we can keep up with the 2 pts/game pace, we should be in the positions 1st-5th. Career-ending injury. Our loyal left-back Kevin O'Connor got a serious injury in the game against Stocksbridge Park. I don't know if any back-up can get close to O'Connors assist number. When I've been managing the team, O'Connor has assisted whopping 88 goals in all competitions, averaging over 20 assists per season! I hope he doesn't retire as I want to give him a proper farewell game at the end of the season. Finances. It is looking good, steady flow of income. Upcoming fixtures. Six games means we need to do some rotation. We don't have too many solid back-up options, but I think we are going to be fine. We are not interested in league cup, so there we will use as much rotation as possible. The first two games might be the trickiest, but at this level, you never know.

July/August 2028. Goals, goals, goals! We scored two or more in all the games, that's the start we wanted! But then there were two games where we conceded way too many. We should've won Whitchurch easily and we didn't deserve to lose against Staveley, but these things happen. Underlying numbers are quite good, so I'm not worried. @shd34_216_42, looks like we have at least some kind of FA Cup run going on! Table. We've been scoring and conceding, no dull days at the office. Let's hope we find a bit more consistency against weaker sides, they seem to be the problem for us at the moment. In-form player. When I was worried about losing our two best players, I was expecting us to take some kind of hit in the both ends of the field. I think the defence is the same as last year, but something wonderful happened in the attack. What happened? Kian Reddy found the form of his life! I guess he wanted to show me we don't need those youngsters searching for glory. Transfers out. Last month we lost two of our best, now we lost two more (maybe not the best, but still good). One more player from the first XI and another who was really, really close of making it in our team. But when big teams come knocking, there ain't much I can do. The sad thing is we don't get any sell-on clauses, but maybe something from the solidarity mechanism (or whatever it is called). But I'm not too worried losing these players as it looks like the players staying in the team are even hungrier of showing their capabilities Finances. Over 2,000 spectators in the cup game (in July) and two other home games makes our bank balance look very nice. Hope we can keep this track so we can afford facility upgrades this season. Upcoming fixtures. Three in the league + two in the cups. I think there will be more games if we advance in the cup(s). I don't care too much about the FA Trophy at the moment, but I really care about the FA Cup. We didn't get the kindest of draws as Mossley are a good side from our division. In the league we face Stocksbridge Park Steels for the very first time before, they got promoted last season.

Pre-season & season preview. Reputation. We are now back on track of getting a better reputation after a small decline a year ago. This should mean e.g. we have more chances of getting good players from youth intakes. Expectations. Top-half finish, that's pretty much it. I expect us to fight for the title. Or I was until late July... more about that in the next screenshots. Transfer offers. This kind of view is a weekly thing during pre-season. I even offered better non-contract contracts to some players to make sure they are very, very happy. But was it enough? Not with all. Transfers out. We lost two of our most important players at the same time. How is it even possible?! This game is so frustrating at the moment... fortunately we have quite good prospects waiting in the U21s, they just need to step up sooner than I expected. Season preview & key players. We were expected 7th before we lost McCrory & Cameron. McCrory was in the media dream eleven. Even after these unfortunate transfers out, we have slightly better odds than last season. So, there is hope! Manager development. I show this as I noticed the personality of Pherick Ramsey has changed from balanced to fairly loyal! I think the coaching and mental attributes are really good for this level. I have no idea how level of discipline is so good, especially as I can't fine anyone yet. Finances. After last season was used to recover from the last youth facility upgrade, we are now back in a strong financial position. I'm not expecting many upgrades this season, but I might ask for a training facility upgrade if we have more than 0,5 m€. Pre-season friendlies. Bradford City was the only opponent that plays on a much higher division than us - so that defeat was expected. We ended the pre-season with a totally chaotic 9-4 win, I don't know if I want to see more or less of that during the season. Upcoming fixtures. The almost traditional start of the season: extra preliminary round of FA Cup, where we host Whitley Bay who play on the same level as us. After that we should have relatively easy start to the league, but you never know what is going to happen.

Season review. We did really well, if you consider we were expected to finish 12th. We got to the same place as last year, but the underlying numbers are much better now (e.g. xGD almost 12 points higher than the season before). I think the main thing was that we got more consistent as the season went on. We don't know what next season brings, but if we can get just a bit better OR luckier, we should be in the title battle. League & xG table. We conceded too many goals, but other than that, this season was a success. The important thing to point out is that we were quite close to our xPts, so we didn't rely on luck. Clitheroe and Workington were just a bit better than the rest, so they deservedly got promoted. Awards & records. We have first awards for a player from the academy as McCrory 27a was selected as the young player on the season as he finished as our top scorer. 18 goals in a season is not amazing, but he shared much of the playing time with our former #1 striker Kian Reddy. In the list below, we have all of our academy players who debuted this season. Transfers. This was very much one way traffic. No transfers in, 4 loans and 5 permanent transfers out. I would've needed Scott 27c in the promotion run and I didn't like losing Harris 26a, but all in all we didn't lose too many important players. A lot of teams are circling around our best talents, but let's hope they want grow together with the team. New contract. As the board was happy with my season, I took that as a hint to ask for a contract extension. My contract was up at the end of the next season, and the board agreed to get one year extension, with an extra +1 year clause if we get promoted.

Yeah, we are in a good position for the next season if we can keep the best talents. This season we only lost one player from the first XI (two players the season before), so it's looking good! The only worry is that reputation declined a bit in the beginning of the season, I don't know how much that will affect our ability to keep players.

Playoff semi final. F**k this. It looked like it's going to be a cagey contest and when we scored the first goal I felt we had a really good chance of advancing. Then our yellow card machine Jamie Doyle did the unexpected and got a second yellow. He's had 11-15 yellows every season, but only once before he has gotten a red card. And now it was time for the second red... After the red card, we changed to a less attacking system. We still wanted to keep the ball to control the tempo of the game. We didn't get things working until some tweaks in the second half. Then we had one chance to equalise - and Murphy 27d took the chance beautifully! I was mentally preparing for extra time. I didn't know how our players had energy for that. But then, at 90+3 minutes, Mossley's Bridgman scored a volley goal from outside a box...and that was it. We lost in the playoff semi finals. Again.

April 2028. Yes, yes, yes. Three clean sheets, three wins. In the only loss, we created much more than the opponent, but they were really, really efficient. Table. Final results are in, and we are once again fourth, for a second season in a row. We were really close of getting a home advantage to playoff semi final, but we are not complaining. Clitheroe clinched the title on the final day. They were leading the league for most of the season, but almost choked in the last two months. Record. We got really close of scoring 100 goals, could we reach it next year? Even though I felt we also conceded a lot, we had the sixth best defence! More about these things in the season review. Injuries. During April we lost two of our starting strikers. Jones has been pivotal for us from the beginning, as he is basically the only one capable of playing target man. Or so I thought... when looking closer at our new youth prospects, I noticed that there was one player who had relatively good attributes of strength, bravery, jumping reach, heading and finishing. He's not the tallest, but at least in previous versions of FM I've had good success with a bit shorter target men (my best target man ever was 183 cm tall). Here's our new target man, Gethin Jones 28e: Transfer offers. I think our new intake has caught the attention of teams in Vanarama... These are all 16-years old, so I can decline all the offers, but as soon as they turn 17, they can choose to leave. If some team offers proper money (and re-sale clause), I would be tempted to do that just to see their value in a better team. Playoff semi final. We face Mossley, who have been with us for all the years, as they got promoted the same year we did. For the past two seasons they've been a really difficult team for us, but I'm confident our good form continues and we can properly challenge them. I would put Mossley as favourites, but just slightly.

Youth intake 2028. A golden generation you say? Let's see all the players, so I can tell if I agree: I do agree. Big time. Jesus, this is an amazing intake again!! We have 13 players with 5-star CA, that's soooooo good. Then we have three players with 3-star CA, those players will get playing time in the first team soon! The best defenders and Goodman 28a are going to go the first team straight away. As a cherry on top, we have a player who is born in Isle of Man AND has British Overseas Territory Montserrat as his 2nd nationality! He has the worst CA of the intake, but I don't care. I will find at least one official game where he will get minutes, he is a true island player. Here are (some of) the best players from the intake: Squad unhappiness. Day after the youth intake some of the more seasoned players came to me to talk about the lack of sufficient quality in squad depth... they clearly didn't go to see the U18s game against the youth intake team! I promised them to develop youth players for the first team, let's see if I can deliver!

March 2028. LET'S GOOO! Five wins from six games is amazing! From the last 10 league games, we've won 9. This month something changed, as we scored fewer, but also conceded less than previously. The only change I made to our tactic was to change our goalie's role from SK(de) to G(de). Workington were really good and I hope they win the league so we don't need to face them in the playoffs (if we get there). Table. It is still very tight. We have a theoretical chance of winning the league, but our realistic goal is to remain fourth. There are four teams below us who still have a chance of going past us and we face one of them next month. Upcoming fixtures. Last league games of the season! If we can get a win from the Silsden game, we have a very good chance of getting to the playoffs. We need to continue at this level of playing to get to the playoffs. It would need a miracle to get a home advantage. Before playing the next month's games, I will post about youth intake. Last year, all the players from the intake had at least 1,5-star CA and 15 of 16 had 5-star PA. It is almost impossible to top that, but could we get something similar, please?

February 2028. The first game was painful, but after that we found both our shooting boots and the goalkeeper gloves! I'm also very happy with the attendance numbers! Table. This means we are getting close to the playoff spots. I'd say the top three have almost confirmed their place at least in the playoffs. Then there are five sides battling for the two playoff spots that are left - and we are one of those teams. Transfer. We lost our starting DLF less than two weeks after he turned 17... He hade been really good this season and had a lot of PA, so I was sad to lose him. Murphy 27d is the guy who got his chance when Scott 27c left - and he really took it! It took him 20 seconds to score Development. Our best player McCrory 27a is getting better every day. He is also the first player who has more value than 0 €. I think his value will be 0 € when he turns 17 as he has a non-contract. He has scored 13 goals in the league so far, hopefully we can keep him for some years! Upcoming fixtures. A tough month as we face teams in positions 8th, 9th, 12th, 2nd, 1st and 19th. Wins at home, draws away? That would be nice. We will also get the next youth intake, can't wait what it will bring us!

January 2028. Unbeaten month in December, but something very different for the new year. We knew we had a really difficult schedule, but still... 5 points from six games is not enough. What makes it even worse is the fact that we controlled the games and created more chances and xG than the oppostion. The only game we deserved to lose was against Bamber Bridge, but there we somehow kept the score even. Table. Such a woeful month means we dropped from second to eight. One major reason for our form can be found from the picture below: Training. On a more positive note, our players have been training really well! Every week I try to remember to praise all the players who got training rating of 8.0 or more. At the moment of the screenshot, 10 first-team players achieved that, and none of the players were below 6.5! Job interview. AFC Wimbledon from the Championship offered an interview. I think it's very unrealistic, but if I had more of a journeyman save, I would definitely taken the chance to coach them. Now, I did not attend the interview. Upcoming fixtures. We have really good chance to get back on track as we face five teams who are all below us, Vauxhall being the best with 12th place. We are playing well, but not getting the results at the moment. If the luck gets on our side, this should be five wins. I just hope we are in a better position at the end of the month.

Youth intake preview. I forgot to post this with the December update. This is looking really good. Goalkeeper is not a must at the moment, but full-backs and a centre-back really are. On top of good potential, I'm happy to see we will get many players to the centre of the pitch: 3 DCs, 3 CMs and 2 STs.

Bravo! Congratulations on the promotion and the title!! As your team is flying high at the moment, I'm eager to see what they can do against Pool in the cup

December 2027. Christmas came early! We started the month with an amazing against league leaders Clitheroe and then continued to win games. Only four goals conceded is really good for us, specially comparing to the previous months. We had a good chance to win all the games, as we were leading Buxton 2-0 after 16 minutes, but we just couldn't hold on to it. League table. We are second in the league! It is very thight below us, but it's looking good at the moment. Clitheroe are still the clear favourites for the title, but they are not an unbeatable side. Finances. At the beginning of season I made a guess that we would be back in black around the turn of the year. Not a bad prediction! Upcoming fixtures. A good old hahaha month. Most the opponents in January are in the playoff contention, so a lot of "six point" games. Based on our form, I would say the most difficult opponent will be Warrington Rylands, who are in the relegation zone atm. I just haven't had a good game against a side in relegation battle for a while.

November 2027. Well, I was looking for six points and that's what we got. I thought we will win the first two and a have a chance on the third game. But we had no chance in the first two, but then ended up winning two after those. The worrying thing is the amount of goals we concede. I'm not going to change anything in the tactics yet, but if this continues I might have no choice. League table. I think we are where we deserve to be. In the xG table we are a few spots higher. I think we've been good, but not playoff spot good. We are mostly playing well but in almost all games we have very weak moments where our opponents score 1-2 goals. Upcoming fixtures. We played against 4th and 2nd in the last two games of the month and now we host the league leaders. If we want to get to the playoff spots, we'd need 12+ points. It is not impossible, but we need to concede much less than in the previous months. We will also get our youth intake preview in December, let's hope for an excellent intake!

October 2027. I said in last month's update I would be happy with ten points. I got exactly that, but still feel like could've done more. We deserved a win against Whitchurch, but couldn't score. Then we played four excellent games and won then all! In the last game we faced Trafford, who are last in the league without a win. I don't know what happened, but they were much better than us and we were lucky to save a point. League table. Clitheroe has found an amazing form, while rest of the top half is quite even. We are close to playoffs, but so are many other teams. Finances. We had only two home games, but still made a nice profit this month. We are getting out of red soon! Upcoming fixtures. Four in the league, one in the cup. Difficult set of games, I would say us being favourites just for the first two. Six points or more and win in the cup is what I'm looking for.

September 2027. Not too many games as we had even time to play a friendly. Maybe it helped, as before the friendly we were awful, after it awesome! The losses and draw were all against difficult opponents and we just didn't know how to get our defence to function. One reason for that was we lost our starting keeper to injury in the first game, the back-up didn't deliver. League table. Not the month we wanted, but maybe one we deserved. If I want to find something positive, that the gap between us and promotion spots is very small. Clitheroe is a very good team right now, let's hope they don't run away with the title. Upcoming fixtures. One more cup to do as we head to Kidsgrove in the league cup. Our focus is very much in the league. We have games against two teams we are yet to face in this save, Whitchurch and Squires Gate. I would be very happy with ten points, I don't care about the league cup right now.

August 2027. FA Cup started really well as we showed Ossett United why we are in a higher division than they are. After that, games were much more even. Against Rossington Main, we deserved to win the first match, but they were better than us in the replay. Table. Not the perfect start we wanted, but not the worst either. The worrying thing is that Avro, who got promoted two seasons ago and were relegated straight away, look like ready to fight for the title again. We can't let us get too far away from the top if we want to be in contention for the title. Injury. Losing our only target man didn't make this month any easier for us. We switched from DLF(s) - P(a) - TF(a) to DLF(s) - P(a) - PF(a). Not the most dramatic change, but now there are less crosses towards the right-side forward. Transfer offer. I show this just because this is the first offer from a Championship side. No money yet, but there won't any expected before we can offer proper part-time contracts for the players. Finances. After starting the expensive youth facility upgrade, we've had negative bank balance. It looks like we could be already before the end of the year if the match day income stays at the current level. Upcoming fixtures. Just four games in September (there were just two before the FA Throphy match and re-scheduled Victoria game). Why so few games? Anyways, really difficult games. We lost to Clitheroe in the playoffs and both Mossley and Northwich have been really good sides in the last few seasons. The wild card of the month is Warrington Rylands, who got relegated to the division.

Pre-season. Good warm-up for the real stuff. Harrogate are League 2 side, so there's no shame in losing to them. Guernsey is our Crown Dependency frenemy who we've met every pre-season, the record is now 1-1-1. Four players from the academy in the scoresheets, that's a positive signal! Season preview. Same division, new expectations. Last season we needed to avoid relegation - ended up as fourth in the league. This time we are required to get to mid-table positions - could we battle for the title already? The cup expectations are contradictory. Be competitive doesn't mean anything concrete, but still it's importance in two cups is "required". Board culture. This is what board is expecting us to do in the field. Most of these have been there from the first season onwards, but one addition was made during the summer: develop players using the club's youth system. At the moment we have 21 players in the first team roster, 12 of those are from our academy. Facility upgrade. As the board had new culture expectations about nurturing youth players into the first team, they decided to put it all in for youth development! This puts us financially in the red for the first time, but last season we made a profit of ~200 k€, so I think we should be back in black in no time. Transfers. We didn't sign any players, as the players available at the moment aren't better than the ones we have coming from the academy. Players who could actually go straight to the first team don't want to relocate to Isle of Man (unless they get a full-time contract). Moving out of the team were three players, two as permanent transfer, one as loan. I show Joe Harris 26a's profile as there's one thing really standing out from it: the valuation! Stockport County are in the League 1, I don't see Harris 26a making it in that league - and neither does Stockport as he got only a youngster as his playing time. But maybe he will get better (Stockport has good training facilities) and we can get him back to the club later on. Reputation. This felt weird. We are doing better season by season, but reputation goes down? I hope this doesn't mean decrease in home attendances! We are still 0,5 star reputation (while the manager Pherick Ramsey has 1,5 star reputation already! Upcoming fixtures. This season starts already in July, as we head to Ossett United in the FA Cup. They are in the league below us, so we should be able to get a win there. Now as our bank balance is negative, we really need the extra income from the cup games. In the league we have a challenging start. All but Stockport Town have been in the playoff battle for the last two seasons (Stockport Town is a newly promoted club).

Season review. League. We were expected to finish 16th in the league and the board wanted us to avoid relegation. We did much, much better. I'm really happy with the season, even though we couldn't win promotion. Next season we should much more consistent (and better) as we have more players who are capable of playing at this level (thanks to this year's youth intake). Cups. Nothing to write home about. For the next season we wish to get more home draws Players. Here's a list of all the players who played in official competitions for us (and two players who were on loan elsewhere). Fans voted Robert Jones as the player of the season, and they're not wrong, but for me the player of the season is Liam Hutchings 26i, who took over the DLF spot when two of our attackers retired. He won't be playing there too much next season, as we have better players (read: Ben Scott 27c) waiting in line. Tracking of players from Crown Dependencies, British Overseas Territories & Youth Academy. Most of our players from CDs or BOTs come from Isle of Man or Gibraltar, but this season we debuted players from Bermuda and Montserrat! I forgot to update the games column for this chart, but remembered to do it in the youth player tracking. I don't know what I do with the youth player tracking, it's something new I'm trying. This season whopping 11 players from youth academy got their debut. Blackmore 26f played the most (as he was the replacement for the GK we lost early in the season), but he is already replaced by Morris 27g who is hopefully our number 1 for years to come.

Playoff semi final. Well, we didn't get anything happening in the game. We had excellent chance when the game was 0-0, but their keeper saved it. That worked as a wake-up call for Clitheroe and from that point onwards they dominated the game. It would've been nice to get promoted now, but I'm not too worried. I feel next season we are going to challenge for the title! Season review coming up next!