Football Manager 2014 Networked Career – Season 1

Welcome to the first season update in Mike and Dave’s Network Adventure on Football Manager 2014 – below are summaries from each of the managers on their thoughts from the season. We’re currently over half way through the second season, so the next update shouldn’t be too long in coming!

Morecambe:

Before the season got under way, expectations were low. “Avoid relegation” they said. “Consolidate” they said. “You won’t win anything with kids this team of aging and terrible players” they said. Then the mighty Morecambe appointed me as their manager, and expectations were lowered even further.

For a while, all was looking very acceptable. A couple of decent loan signings made, and Morcs were sat in the upper reaches of mid table. A somewhat luck-based string of 1-0 wins in the build up to Christmas later; and we were flirting with the edge of the playoff places. As is my duty as manager, I was beginning to dream dreams of a very unlikely promotion. However, a twelve-game winless streak running from Boxing Day to March (managing to extract an impressively low 5 points from a possible 36) gave the lie to the dream and from that point on it was very much a case of making sure the spectre of relegation didn’t get chance to loom large over the mighty Morcs – and of waiting for the transfer window so that I could ship out some of the deadwood, and try and sign some of my loanees up on permanent transfers.

As you can probably gather from the above, there is not a great deal to say about the first season, so instead of boring words, here are some (slightly less) boring pictures:

An idea of the standard of football:

I shudder to think how Morcs would fare against some of the Azerbaijani teams

How not to start the year:

It did feel a little bit like the “venue” column was laughing at me

Summary:

League 2: 15^th / 24 (19 points off the drop, 21 points off the play offs)

League Cup: Out in the first round (lost to Leeds AET – respectable).

FA Cup: Lost in the second round to the mighty Leyton Orient (less respectable)

JPT: Lost in the North Quarter Final to Port Vale. No Wembley appearance for me!

Best signing: Aaron McCarey – a decent young keeper who will hopefully be the foundation for the team I build for next season.

Best novelty signing: Edgar Davids as player/coach – need I say any more? Sure he’s 41, but he’s still amazing.

Worst signing: I don’t make bad signings, they were all fantastic. Ok, you will learn in time that that is blatantly not true… but I got lucky this season. I think the fact that I only signed a couple of people due to budget constraints is probably the only reason that this is the case though.

TLDR Summary: Dull consolidation for the Shrimps.  More excitement to come in future, I hope.

Rating: 2 / 5 Tiny Balotellis

There are no words

 

Dagenham & Redbridge:

Not practical headwear for a football match

The Daggers play their games at Victoria Road, with a capacity of 6,070, however the majority of this is unneeded with an average attendance of only slightly north of 2,000. The training and youth facilities are nothing to write home about, and a brief stint in League 1 a couple of seasons ago is as high as the Daggers have risen in the football pyramid.

The first look at the starting squad brought with it a sense of mild panic. The second, closer, look brought a sense general hopelessness and resigning myself to scrapping in lower reaches of the table playing some startlingly unattractive football. The board set me the target of reaching a “respectable league position”, which in my mind was anywhere higher than 20th. With little to spare in the wage budget (although this was slightly helped by begging the board to give me more money – they kindly gave me a whopping £1,500 a week extra to play around with), I would have to achieve this target predominantly with the the squad I was given to begin with.

Key players:

• Abu Ogogo – midfielder/right-back. Guaranteed to get booked every time he played, Abu would play a central role as a ball-winning central midfielder (when he wasn’t suspended). Almost every highlight during the matches was guaranteed at some point to have Abu lunging wildly into a challenge – the guy liked nothing more than to have a good old-fashioned lunge.
• Rhys Murphy – striker. Nicknamed Smurf, not just because of his name but also because he has the physical strength of a Smurf leading to constant injuries. Main goal-scoring threat (when fit)
• Zavon Hines – right winger. A speedster on the wings…but that was about it. Don’t expect an end product from Zavon, but do expect him not to give you one quickly.
• Brian Woodall – striker. When a player is classed key just because he is tall you know you’re struggling a bit. To be fair to Brian, he played the Target Man role up top very well throughout the season, and actually ended up being named Fan’s Player of the Season (I’m assuming this was slightly out of pity).

Tactics:

“Keep it simple stupid” was the mantra used here. Daggers played a very basic 4-4-2, with attacking wingers, one holding central midfielder and one supporting central midfielder and a target man in support of an advanced forward up top. The team was told to exploit the flanks and play a more direct game – firstly to make use of the target man and counter quickly, and secondly because I didn’t trust them to actually be able to string more than 3 passes together.

Transfers:

No money in, no money out

With a distinct lack of transfer budget (and nobody worth selling!), I was forced to use the loan market as much as possible, which was helped by having Aston Villa as a parent club.

Key signings:

• Danny Rose – striker. Signed from Barnsley on a season long loan, he could either replace Smurf when he was injured (frequently) or play as a deep-lying forward if I fancied giving Brian Woodall a rest. Picked up 12 goals and 9 assists over the course of the season, not too bad a return at all
• Neil Etheridge – goalkeeper. Signed on a free in November and immediately cemented his place in the first team with a string of fine saves, including a few from penalties. I was, and am, chuffed with this signing and he will hopefully rise up the leagues with us (or get in a huff when we’re still in League 2 after 3 years and leave on a free…)
• Andras Strieber – central midfielder. Signed on loan from Aston Villa, he added some much needed creativity in central midfield and chipped in with a couple of long range thunderbolts towards the end of the season.

And so to the results, which are shown in the two pictures below, with a summary of each competition following.

Far more green than I was expecting…

Heartbreak at the end…

The cups:

• League Cup: Out first round to Brighton, but a very creditable performance. Not even remotely fussed by this.
• JPT: Out first round to…someone or other. Again, not remotely fussed by this.
• FA Cup: A couple of nice draws meant we got through to the excitement of the 3^rd round draw, where we got….Middlesbrough. Anti-climax ahoy. We put in a good performance, but eventually went down 3-2.

League 2:

And so to the meat of the sandwich. From the moment we stole a last minute win at Fleetwood on the first day of the season, I began to think this may not be the slog-fest I initially feared. Despite a few dips in form (especially around Christmas, not helped by the small squad), we were always in and around the playoff places, and finished the season in 5^th, setting up a playoff semi-final against the big-hitters in the league, Portsmouth. Pompey had the league’s top scorer, Patrick Agyemang (yes, you read that correctly. Not only was he still playing, he was banging them in – 35 of them to be exact!), in their ranks, so I wasn’t particularly hopeful.

We managed a 1-1 draw at Fratton Park, in an ill-tempered game which included a red card for each side and a missed penalty by Portsmouth (saved by Etheridge). In the return fixture we somehow managed to pull-out a comfortable 2-0 victory thanks to strikes from Danny Rose and Smurf.

This meant we were off to Wembley! We would play the team who finished the league above us in 4^th position – Hartlepool. As a Luton fan in real life (well, someone has to be…), I knew I was in trouble as the Hartlepool front-line consisted of ex-Luton players Steve Howard and Enoch Showunmi. Unfortunately, my fears were well placed. We were never really in the game, and Hartlepool comfortably strolled to a 2-0 victory in front of over 50,000 at Wembley. I found it hard to be too disappointed, at the start of the season I would’ve bitten your hand off for a chance to be in the top half, let alone battling for promotion. The trip to Wembley also helped to fund improvements to the youth and training facilities at the club, which can only help us long-term.

So near and yet so far

Favourite moments:

• As much as this may annoy Mike (sorry dude), the two wins against Morecambe, both with 10 men, were very nice indeed. The highlights from both games are below.
• Bringing on 38 year-old player-coach Darren Currie while 2-0 down at home to Newport County, who then proceeded to set-up one and then score the equaliser. Still didn’t stop me releasing him at the end of the season though…ruthless.
• A 6-2 home win against Southend which made a nice change to scraping through games winning by the odd goal.

Next season:

The main aim over the summer months is to boost the tiny squad and see if I can pick up a few youngsters who can either fight their way into the first team or be sold for a tidy profit to fund Smurf’s injury bills. A decision must also be taken on Abu Ogogo, as he wants to leave for a bigger club. As if any exist! While he would be missed, his constant suspensions wouldn’t, and the money could be used to strengthen the squad elsewhere. Either way, with the Wembley windfall, there would be some money to bring in a few new faces and try and give the team the little bit extra it needed to push on from a surprisingly successful first season.