Welcome to a summary of Season 2 of our Networked Football Manager Career as Morecambe and Dagenham & Redbridge. Season 1 can be found here, and please note you can click on photos to enlarge them so you can actually see what’s in them! Enjoy!
Morecambe Season 2
Following on from the disappointment of last season, hopes were high at the start of season two. I managed to sign a few season 1 loanees on free transfers and add a couple of handy additional players. The “big name” highlights being James Hanson, Asa Hall and Michael Coulson.
Things started off quite brightly, and a third of the way in to the season it was looking as though I might have hallucinated some of the first season as my team were looking like, and playing like, potential play-off hopefuls.
Morcs above Daggers… First time for everything!
Unfortunately there was to be no fairy-tale for Morecambe this season, and things quickly went downhill. It looked for a while as though sneaking in to 7th might be mathematically possible, but eventually even that remote probability was extinguished by an utterly depressing run of 5 points from a possible 42.
How not to finish the season:
It’s like déjà vu all over again
Just to give a flavour for how bad things had become by the last game:
Mansfield, who spent most of the season in the relegation places
My backroom staff kept advising me to tell the lads to keep their chins up by having team meetings. Eventually, the effectiveness of this tactic wears off however… or so I am told:
It’s not like the previous meeting(s) did much good anyway to be fair
By March my season was pretty much over, so I turned to some of my favourite FM hobbies, namely: signing players with funny names, making frivolous use of the transfer market and finding weird bugs. Here we see the three working together in perfect harmony:
Damn you %person#4-!
Summary:
League 2: 19th / 24 (6 points off the drop, 27 points off the play offs)
League Cup: A creditable 3-2 defeat at Preston in the first round.
FA Cup: Lost to Exeter rather unspectacularly in the second round.
JPT: Thrashed by Fleetwood in the second round.
Best signing: Reuben Lameiras – a young left winger I had on loan from Spurs in season 1. Signed on a free transfer. Has the potential to be a very good little player if I can find enough success to prevent him from wanting to leave.
Best novelty signing: Not much novelty this season. Edgar is still around though.
Worst signing: Myles Hippolyte. I had some money to spend at the start of the season after selling one of my high-earners for £100k. I spent £30k of this on a promising young striker from Braintree who had scored 5 goals in his first two games. He scored 2 during the rest of the season. Ooops.
Best Moment: Managing not to lose to Dave and his mighty Daggers (0-0, 1-1). Also winning 5-1 away at Cheltenham, who ended up getting promoted.
TLDR Summary: Much improved team, but nowhere near consistent enough. Massively disappointing performance in the second half of the season. Very much a work in progress, you might say.
Rating: 1 / 5 Tiny Balotellis:
Mario angry
Dagenham & Redbridge:
Pre-season Thoughts:
The first season was a pleasant surprise, albeit it ending in heartbreak in the playoff final. This gave me a good base to start from for Season 2, and the Wembley visit allowed the wage budget to take another tick upwards. However, so had the board’s expectations – this season they wanted a top half finish with their money.
Our Wembley visit had also allowed our youth and training facilities to be upgraded – admittedly it does feel like polishing a turd, but it’s a start! My hopes for the seasons were basically to replicate last season, but hopefully either sneaking into the automatic spots or having a tad more luck than the previous season in the playoffs.
A few players were released at the end of their contracts, but nobody of any real significance from the previous season. The big move came towards the end of pre-season, when Motherwell came a-calling for big Abu Ogogo. Abu had made noises about wanting to move to a bigger club (the fool), and his constant suspensions were proving to be a bit of a hindrance, so I decided to let him go for the princely sum of 135k and a sell-on clause. Not a great deal of money, but enough to allow me to bolster my squad with a couple of new additions on free transfers to hopefully make the long winter months a bit more bearable this time around.
Key players:
- Neil Etheridge – goalkeeper. Neil proved his worth immediately when signed the previous season, and would hopefully play a big part in keeping a good defensive record this year – when he wasn’t away on international duty with the Philippines that is.
- Rhys Murphy – striker. Smurf was into the last year of his contract, and would need to prove his fitness to earn a new deal – would he stay fit enough to make a difference?
- Mathias Pogba – target man. Brought in on a free to do a better job than Brian Woodall (sorry, Brian). Really excited by this signing as I thought he could make a real difference up top, and also hopefully bring out the best in Smurf in a little and large partnership.
- Matthew Dolan – central midfielder. Brought in on a free to replace Abu, Dolan could also play across the back line so added some versatility. Would hopefully be the engine in midfield.
Tactics:
Exactly the same as the previous season! If it ain’t broke…
Transfers:
Money in! Thanks Abu!
Despite selling Abu, I only had a limited amount to spend, so again I was forced to use the loan market as much as possible, which again was helped by having Aston Villa as a parent club.
Key signings:
- Mathias Pogba – target man. As mentioned above – Poggers did exactly as I hoped, and was a menace all season up front, winning the fans player of the season for his efforts (again, sorry Brian!).
- Graham Burke – winger/striker. Signed on loan from Aston Villa for the season, played excellently as a winger and his injury at the end of the season was a real blow. Could also fill in up front when Smurf was inevitably injured.
- Adam Nkusu Landu – striker. Signed on loan from Ipswich for the season – initially would be second choice behind Smurf, but would get regular playing time due to the Smurf regularly having pieces falling off him during matches
And so to the results, which are shown in the two pictures below, with a summary of each competition following.
I’ve always been a fan of December…
Even more heart-breaking than last year
The cups:
- League Cup: Out first round to Reading, but like last year, a very creditable performance. Would be nice to get a draw I had a chance of winning at some point…
- JPT: Out first round to Leyton Orient. Couldn’t care less.
- FA Cup: Out in the first round at home to Yeovil. Slightly disappointed by this, wanted to get to the 3rd round for the chance of playing someone who wasn’t Middlesborough.
League 2:
Deja-vu anyone? Another solid season, helped by a fantastic December saw us in and around the automatic promotion places. Poggers was a revelation up front, and the signing of Scott McBride at the beginning of February helped supply him from the wings. However, a run of 1 win in 8 around March saw that hope fade, and we had to settle for 4th place (higher than last year but with less points. Go figure). And so we got Wycombe in the semi-finals of the playoffs…
Less points, higher position. Because League 2.
And promptly smashed them 4-0 at their place, which was completely unexpected. This allowed me to make a couple of changes for the return leg (which we comfortably won 2-1) to make sure there were no niggles for the final, where we would play Shrewsbury.
So, to Wembley, again! On the one hand, we couldn’t do any worse than last year when we barely threatened mighty Hartlepool at all. On the other hand, we had failed to beat Shrewsbury in either of our league encounters, and so it was almost inevitable that…
I’ve always hated Shrewsbury
We would lose on penalties. Aihngklnglksngsuiegtnsivfnslkgnipetnapion. I think that accurately sums it up. I honestly thought we would win this game, as opposed to last year where I was fairly confident (?) we would lose, so this was a bit of a gut punch. To be in the play-off final two years in a row and lose them both, one of them on penalties, is a tad ridiculous (although that is exactly what Luton have done in real life…so clearly I’m just replicating the uselessness of my idols. Excellent).
Favourite moments:
- The 4-0 thumping of Wycombe in the first leg of the playoff semi-final was a great feeling. Shame it was completely pointless though!
- Beating automatic promotion finishers Cheltenham 5-1 at home in the penultimate game of the season. Again, completely pointless as I couldn’t catch them and was secure in the playoffs, but still felt nice!
-
This season was the season my name started to get linked to other jobs – and I got invited to a few interviews (as did Mike). This one was probably the highlight (which shows just how lowly we are!):
Could never move to near-neighbour rivals (plus at this point I still thought I would be promoted!)
Next season:
It’s pretty much impossible to go any closer to promotion and not get it next season…so surely I’ll do it?! What will probably happen instead is that I’ll lose out on an automatic spot on goal difference due to conceding a last minute goal on the last day and then have 5 players sent off in the playoff final while leading 3-0 and hence forfeit the match. Should be fun!
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