Zilla Blitz
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Posts posted by Zilla Blitz
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Oops! I signed a Belgian player by mistake and played him, so I'm out. No worries, I'm thinking that at the pace I'm going I never would have made it anyway. Fun times, though. Good luck to any who give it a go!
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Club
Season 4: September 2023
A Big Bag of UglyTable: 3W-4D-4L, 13 points (15th place)
Manager Notes
Bloody Nora, we are bad. We manage zero league wins over month. We draw 3 matches and lose 3 matches and only end up with 3 points out of six matches. The final ignominy is when last place Barrow beats us 1-0 at the end of the month. Although our defense isn’t horrible, our offense is anemic. We manage only 3 goals in our 6 matches. We plummet in the standings, dropping from 5th place after our solid start to 15th place.We’ll need to sort things out in a hurry, or this will be a short stay in League 2!
Season 4 Episode 2 & Season 4 Episode 3 are up on YouTube.
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Club
Season 4: August 2023
Better than Expected
Manager Notes
Chesterfield welcomes us to professional football with a 4-1 drubbing. We follow that with a dreary 0-0 draw against a weak Grimsby Town. League 1 Peterborough then knocks us out of the EFL Cup via a penalty shootout, and after 3 matches we’re winless and floundering. But we snap into form after that, ripping off three wins in the back half of the month. The 10 points is enough to get us a respectable 7th place in the table.All in all, I’m thrilled with how we’ve turned it around to start things out, but it’s clear we’ve got weaknesses and that the better teams are going to be an uphill battle. Still, for a first taste of professional football, this has gone better than I expected.
Season 4 Episode 1 is up on YouTube.
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Club
Season 4: Summer Preseason 2023
Turning ProManager Notes
Chaotic progress defines our off-season, which starts with no rest the day after our National League season ends. We officially turn pro on June 12, but League 2 rules demand that our stadium hold more people, so work on a £2million expansion starts immediately. It won’t be done until the middle of October.Roster-wise, we’ll approach things with the same general strategy we took with last summer’s promotion: bring back the top half of our team and replace the bottom half with better players. Our greatest challenge, however, will be fielding a competitive team on a wage budget that ranks second-to-last in League 2. Chairman Jimmy is holding on to his cash, and even after shifting over almost all of our transfer budget into wages, only Bolton lies below us in wages paid. It’s a tall order to go pro, and an even taller one to go pro on a shoestring budget.
Nevertheless, we get busy, looking to renegotiate our semi-professional contracts, find good value in low-cost players, and walking away from players who simply demand too much. Generally speaking, we’re successful at renegotiating contracts with the majority of the players we want to keep, but it does take more money than before. It’s only until the latter days of summer before we manage to bring on some promising new faces at midfield, center back, and striker.
As the season starts, we could still use reinforcements at a number of positions, and we seem weak on the outsides, in particular at wing. Expectations are mid-table from the owner, and that might be a tall order on this wage budget...
Season 4 Opening Episode is Up
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Year 2: 2022-23 Summary
Table | Manager ProfileSeason Notes
Consecutive championships, woot! Although our Cup success was off from the previous year, we can only be thrilled with gaining promotion to League 2 and to be going professional.We picked up a number of awards in the post-season. I received the National League Manager of the Year award, which added a bit of gold to my reputation stars. Yassine En-Nayeh picked up National League Player of the Year. Jack Bearne also go National League Goal of the Season (for a goal that really didn’t strike me as being all that exceptional).
But there is hardly a day of rest of us, as the day after our clinching match against Macclesfield Town, the board approached me about going professional, which will officially take place on June 12. We’ll have a lot of work to do in the off season. We’ll need to switch everyone over to full-time contracts, find new and improved players for League 2, expand our stadium seating, and hopefully pry some money out of Chairman Jimmy’s hands for an increased wage budget. Initial projections for a wage budget would put us second to last in wages in the National League, which would be a huge challenge in trying to stay up.
It promises to be a busy summer!
Scoreboard
England: 3/12 (National North 21-22, FA Trophy Cup 21-22, National 22-23)
Scotland: 0/7
Ireland: 0/8
Northern Ireland: 0/10
Wales: 0/5
European/World: 0/5
International: 0/3
Total: 2/50Year-By-Year
Season 3 Wrap Up Video
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Year 3: 2022-23 Summary
Season Notes
Consecutive championships, woot! Although our Cup success was off from the previous year, we can only be thrilled with gaining promotion to League 2 and to be going professional.We picked up a number of awards in the post-season. I received the National League Manager of the Year award, which added a bit of gold to my reputation stars. Yassine En-Nayeh picked up National League Player of the Year. Jack Bearne also go National League Goal of the Season (for a goal that really didn’t strike me as being all that exceptional).
But there is hardly a day of rest of us, as the day after our clinching match against Macclesfield Town, the board approached me about going professional, which will officially take place on June 12. We’ll have a lot of work to do in the off season. We’ll need to switch everyone over to full-time contracts, find new and improved players for League 2, expand our stadium seating, and hopefully pry some money out of Chairman Jimmy’s hands for an increased wage budget. Initial projections for a wage budget would put us second to last in wages in the National League, which would be a huge challenge in trying to stay up.
It promises to be a busy summer!
Screen Shots
Table
Manager Profile
TransfersYear-By-Year
Season 3 Wrap Up Video
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Club
Season 3 Summary 2022-23
Table | Manager ProfileSeason Notes
Consecutive championships, woot! Although our Cup success was off from the previous year, we can only be thrilled with gaining promotion to League 2 and to be going professional.We picked up a number of awards in the post-season. I received the National League Manager of the Year award, which added a bit of gold to my reputation stars. Yassine En-Nayeh picked up National League Player of the Year. Jack Bearne also go National League Goal of the Season (for a goal that really didn’t strike me as being all that exceptional).
But there is hardly a day of rest of us, as the day after our clinching match against Macclesfield Town, the board approached me about going professional, which will officially take place on June 12. We’ll have a lot of work to do in the off season. We’ll need to switch everyone over to full-time contracts, find new and improved players for League 2, expand our stadium seating, and hopefully pry some money out of Chairman Jimmy’s hands for an increased wage budget. Initial projections for a wage budget would put us second to last in wages in the National League, which would be a huge challenge in trying to stay up.
It promises to be a busy summer!
Career Overview
Season Club Division Position Champions League Notes 2020-21 Nuneaton Town National North 7th - Lost in 1st Round of Playoffs 2021-22 Nuneaton Town National North 1st - Promoted, Won FA Trophy Cup 2022-23 Nuneaton Town National 1st - Promoted0 -
16 hours ago, vara said:
great back to back promotions there, mate. well done.
how's the finances on the back of the trip to Wolves in the cup?Thanks! It’s definitely been the best consecutive seasons I’ve had since playing FM, fun to show up at a match and figure you’ve got a good chance to win. Be interesting to see how it goes next year, though. Could be tough...
Finances are pretty good. Wolves gave us about £150k, and I think we were about £500k in the clear at that point. Looks like we’ll have to upgrade our stadium now, and that’s costing £2m. I think it’s half paid for by grant and half by loan, so we still have a good cash balance, but a £1m debt on our rolls too.
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4 hours ago, Nobby_McDonald said:
Nailed it.
Yes, that was a fun season, thanks! I'm not sure I've ever had consecutive first-place promotions before, and I think I've only done consecutive promotions once before, but both of those seasons may have been via playoffs.
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Club
Season 3: April 2023
Woot!
Manager Notes
We draw against Macclesfield Town 1-1 in our first match of the month, and that’s enough to clinch the title! We’re going up, going pro, and welcome to the football league! Our form on the month sees us win 2, draw 1, and lose our last match.We end up setting a league record for goals, but miss out on the league record for points and wins by losing our last match to Aldershot Town. A touch of a bitter ending, but it’d be hard to tarnish the glow from the season.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what we can do as a professional club. But this summer will have lots of work. Contracts to be redone, more players to bring in, and tough decisions on our roster. And we are still well short of our final goal: the Premier League! Much work to be done.
Season 3 Wrap Up Episode
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Club
Season 3: March 2023
On the Doorstep...
Manager Notes
We find our form as the season draws short. We win five of six matches, with only a 0-0 draw against Billericay Town to tarnish our month. Aldershot Town stumbles just a bit, and with 4 matches left we have a 15-point lead, although they have a match in hand. All we need is a single point to clinch. It’s all but mathematically over at this point, as we have a significant goal differential in our favor as well.Getting promoted would be a huge step forward for the club. We’d turn pro to play in League 2, and that would bring with it full-time training, more time to develop youth, and a host of other fun challenges.
One more point to go!
Season 3 Episode 9, Nuneaton vs.Macclesfield Town, up on YouTube.
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Club
Season 3: February 2023
Cautiously Optimistic
Manager Notes
We start out the month by embarrassing ourselves twice against mid-table National North Altrincham in the FA Trophy Cup. We draw away against them, then lost 2-1 in a home rematch, even though they lost a man to a red card in the 39th minute. We did outshoot them 60-20 over the two matches, but it just wasn’t meant to be.Fortunately, our results in the league were much better, as we collected wins in all five of our matches, many of them against top of the table clubs. Second-place Aldershot Town keeps winning for the most part as well, so we’re only able to gain 2 points in the table over that span. With 10 matches to go, we’re up by 10 points. If we can keep up our form, we might be going up!
Season 3 Episode 8, Nuneaton vs. 3rd-Place Barrow, up on YouTube.
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Club
Season 3: January 2023
Shots Taken21W-7D-3L (1st in Vanarama National)
Manager Notes
We play well at the beginning and end of the month, but Maidenhead United whips us badly 4-1 mid-month, and we follow that with a 3-2 loss to Fylde where we give up a lead in the last 7 minutes of the match. At that point, a red-hot Aldershot Town closes to within 4 points of us, but they stumble with successive draws at the end of the month to see us end the month with an 8-point lead over them in the standings.The turn of form mid-month is concerning, as neither Fylde nor Maidenhead are playing well, and we have the hard part of the second half of the schedule coming up. Aldershot Town continues to bring the heat, as they have not lost in the league since October 9. I fear there is little room for us to stumble with them so determined to overtake us.
Season 3 Episode 7, Nuneaton vs. 4th-Place York City, up on YouTube.
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Club
Season 3: December 2022
We are Meh
Manager Notes
Our December form in league is decidedly bland. We win one and draw two, and it starts to look like our magic is gone. Fortunately, the teams around us in the standings struggle as well, with the exception of the latest contender to rise to second place: Aldershot Town. They win consistently, and by the end of the month only sit 5 points back of us, although we have a match in hand.In cup play, we make it out of the FA Trophy Cup 1st Round with relative ease, but get demolished 5-0 against the Wolves in FA Cup play. Still, the match against a Premier League club nets us £150k, which pushes our bank balance to nearly a half million pounds. Chairman Jimmy still won’t spend any of it, but it’s nice to know that we’re heading in the right direction.
Looking ahead, we head into 2023 in first place, but we’ll need to sharpen up our play if we’re going to hang on to our lead!
Season 3 Episode 6, Nuneaton vs. Chester, up on YouTube
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Club
Season 3: November 2022
Invincibility Lost
Manager Notes
We lose our unbeaten streak at 21 matches, as we fall to a strong Billericay team 2-1 in the middle of the month. So much for that Invincibles achievement! The rest is all good, though, as we pick up 2 FA Cup wins and 3 league wins. The good month sees just shy of the halfway mark in the season with a 9-point lead and a match in hand on 2nd-place Billericay Town.Interestingly, we’ve made it to the 3rd round of the FA Cup, and now the big boys join the fray. We’ve drawn the Wolves, who sit 10th in the Premier League, for an away match next month. They are three and a half leagues above us, and we will have little chance. But it’ll be great fun to travel there and see how things shake out! We are so going to get killed!
Financially, we’ve picked up a good chunk of change from the FA Cup run. We now have over £300k in the bank. I approached our board to request a number of club improvements, but Chairman Jimmy isn’t having any of it. He simply tells me that we don’t have enough money and that’s that. Cheap bastard.
Going forward, I’m hopeful we can keep up our current pace. It’s starting to more and more look like we’ll be contending for the title.
Season 3 Episode 5, Nuneaton vs. Wolves, up on YouTube.
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Club
Season 3: October 2022
Shaken but Not Stirred
Manager Notes
We start out the month with a draw, then pick up 2 league wins and a FA Cup win to set us back on track. But the back half of the month is a series of stumbles as we pile up three successive draws. We end the month with 2 wins and 4 draws, a big drop from our earlier form.On a good note, York City stumbles even more than us. Despite our weak performance, we add 3 points to our lead, and end the month in first place by 11 points. It’s a solid lead, but with two thirds of the season left, we’ll need to figure out how to regain our winning form or this won’t last.
And on one other positive note, we still haven’t lost! 18 matches in, we’re still undefeated.
Season 3 Episode 4 is up on YouTube.
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4 hours ago, Nobby_McDonald said:
The Liverpool of non league?
Ha! It's still so early, but yeah, I'm pretty sure I've never gone this far in a season without losing. It's definitely my best FM start I've ever had. Fingers crossed we can keep it up.
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Club
Season 3: September 2022
Still Smoldering
Manager Notes
The football gods are still shining on us, as we complete consecutive months with nothing but wins. Our lead stretches to 9 points at the top of the table, and the victories lead to another Manager of the Month award.Despite all the good news, I feel a bit nervous about what lies ahead. We struggled in our final two matches of the month, squeaking by Wrexham more on luck than skill, needing two late goals to beat Swindon Town, and miraculously coming from behind with 10-men against Halifax Town. In short, we’re no longer brushing aside opponents, and things appear to be tightening up. With second-place York City on form as well, a bad run from us could see our lead vanish fairly quickly.
But it’d be silly not to enjoy the moment. The football world is full of difficult stretches, and you’ve got to enjoy the good runs while they last! Onward!
Season 3 Episode 3 is up on YouTube.
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On 16/01/2020 at 16:39, Nobby_McDonald said:
You're nailing it Zilla.
Thanks! I've probably played 50 seasons total so far across version, I think this has been the best FM season I've ever had so far.
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Club
Season 3: August 2022
A Red Hot Start
Manager Notes
After an initial speed bump, we roar out of the gate in our inaugural season in the National League. We end the month with six wins and a draw, good enough to see us top of the table. Things are clicking at both ends of the pitch. On offense, our #1 striker, Yassine En-Nayeh, racks up 8 goals in the 7 matches. On defense, once we switch in our new keeper, we shut teams down, picking up four clean sheets over the time span. The results are good enough that I pick up the Manager of the Month award as well.Acquisition-wise, we spend the month combing the loan market and pick up a half dozen players who should help fill positions of relative weakness. To prevent the team from falling into rebellion, we loan out a half dozen of our weaker players to offset the additions.
I’m somewhat at a loss to explain things, as a good portion of our team is the same from our previous year in the National North. The additions we’ve brought in are surely helping, but maybe there just isn’t that much of a difference between the National North and the National League?
In any case, we’ll enjoy the ride while it lasts!
Season 3 Episode 2 is up on YouTube.
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Good luck with Matlock @The Regista!
And Congrats on reaching the Premier Leauge, @SnakeXe!
And nice work staying up in League 2, @Scab!
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Club
Season 3: Summer Preseason 2022
Big Fish to Little FishBecause of our participation in the FA Trophy Cup Final in mid-May, we get a late start on our offseason, and with promotion right in front of us, the offseason is doubly challenging. We have a lot of work to do to make the jump to the next level.
As a general thought, we’re hoping to re-sign the top half of our team and not carry the bottom half of the team with us. We did well enough in the FA Trophy Cup against National League teams that it makes me think our better players can play up a level. If we can surround them with some improvements, I’m hopeful that we’ll have enough about us to stay up next year. The board lets us know that the expectations are to stay up and no more.
It’s not until mid-June that things start to take shape. We manager to re-sign most of our targets, but we lose our promising right back to a team from Ghana. By the time we hit the end of June, we’ve got most of a team together. In late June and July we add a dozen or so free agents, a few of them Premier League washouts. By the time we get to the start of the season, we’re largely in good shape.
We could use improvements at left back, keeper, central defender, and striker, but we’ve got enough about us as is that the media rankings at the start of the year have us listed as contenders for first place, which makes me wonder what kind of drugs the media take. It’s with decided confusion that we enter the season with a media prediction of first and board expectations of avoiding last. We’ll see where this goes!
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14 hours ago, SnakeXe said:
Nice video update @Zilla Blitz - subscribed! £15k is a pretty healthy wage budget for VNL, I think mine was £10k which was tricky. Parent club came in very useful that season!
Mini mid-summer update from me, we received a huge £5m plus addons bid from Newcastle for Michael Watts so despite him being our most important player I've cashed in and hopefully we can turn that into some squad-wide improvements. It's certainly a novelty being able to shop outside the free agent market!
Thanks, Snake! And thanks for the sub!
That's good to know about the wage budget. I poked about and checked out some other teams' budgets and the top ones are significantly higher, but there certainly are a number of teams below that too. I feel like it's certainly enough to get what we need.
And congrats on the $5m! Shopping time!
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Year 2: 2021-22 Summary
Season Review | Table | Manager ProfileSeason Notes
Nuneaton Town’s board challenged the team to make the playoffs, but the team exceeded expectations in every way. New signings blended well with returning players, and victories came in bunches. In the second month, Nuneaton reached first place, which it held for the remainder of the campaign. By the end, the team set league records for wins and points, and topped the campaign off with a surprising FA Trophy Cup win to earn the double. The two accomplishments give us our first two points in the British & Irish Steel Challenge! Woot! Progress! Only 48 more to go!Now new challenges await, as the club must navigate the tricky waters of promotion, and will go from big fish in a little pond to little fish in a big pond. Onward to Season 3!
Scoreboard
England: 2/12 (National North 20-21, FA Trophy Cup 20-21)
Scotland: 0/7
Ireland: 0/8
Northern Ireland: 0/10
Wales: 0/5
European/World: 0/5
International: 0/3
Total: 2/50
Year-By-Year
Season 2 Wrap Up Video
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[FM20] Devotion to Promotion
in FM Career Updates
Posted · Edited by Zilla Blitz
Club
Season 4: October 2023
Bleeding Stopped
Manager Notes
We manage to stop our freefall down the table by starting out the month with a couple of big league wins. We end up picking up three wins, a draw, and one loss over the month, which sees us inch back up the table, to 11th place. Our scoring and defense both seem to have settled down, and some of our new players seem to be getting things sorted out position-wise. Whew!
Interestingly, there are a blob of teams in the middle of the table, all separated by the slimmest of margins. Despite our mediocre results, we sit only 2 points out of a playoff spot. If we can continue to play like we have in October, we might be able to actually move into playoff contention. If we play like we played in September, we’ll drop quickly out of this pack into a relegation battle. Must. Stay. Focused.
Season 4 Episode 4 is up on YouTube.