Notts County

Anyone else managing them and trying to emulate IRL by getting them to the premiership within a 5 year plan?

So far I am 6 months in and 3 points ahead at the top of League 2. Akinbiyi is banging them in for fun as my loan striker?? 20 goals in all comps so far!

(BTW...not sure if this is the right place to post something like this...but thought...its a GENERAL discussion)

just got the game and about to start with Notts County.

I wanted to go a lower league team and build up my manager profile from there. I do not like to start at a big club, i like to earn it. It takes the fun out of the game by cheating your way to the top. I like to get the whole experience of building a team to get it to the best possible position and hope a bigger team wants me as manager and then get the excitement of joining them and rebuilding a new team. Its so much fun.

Yes I am playing as them. However, I don't like Akibiyi, sold him. Hughes, Hawley, Mantorras, and Febian Brandy (loan) are my four of choice.

First season I won the league by a big margin (14 points), and the owners kept pumping money into the club. However most of my signings were frees.

Yes I am playing as them. However, I don't like Akibiyi, sold him. Hughes, Hawley, Mantorras, and Febian Brandy (loan) are my four of choice.

First season I won the league by a big margin (14 points), and the owners kept pumping money into the club. However most of my signings were frees.

I didnt think Akinbiyi would be my main striker but injuries meant i played him... and then since then he has scored in each game so cant drop him really. last game just played he scored another 2 goals...so 22 goals so far this season and I'm in Jan 2010.

Played with them in the demo. Akinbiyi was a long ways out in front in the league for goals. He was awesome.

just got the game and about to start with Notts County.

I wanted to go a lower league team and build up my manager profile from there. I do not like to start at a big club, i like to earn it. It takes the fun out of the game by cheating your way to the top. I like to get the whole experience of building a team to get it to the best possible position and hope a bigger team wants me as manager and then get the excitement of joining them and rebuilding a new team. Its so much fun.

So you like to earn your rep, why start with Notts County then, Surley this is the same as bein a top for team, as it should be a walk in the park, no challenge there, Go lower if you want to start off at the bottom and work your way to the top.

Notts County suck. Why not manage that team the other side of the Trent? NOTTINGHAM FOREST!

there are challenges in any league. Even with top teams, say make a challenge to win the CL 3 years running. Im playing as Wolves and aiming to win the CL withing 10 years

I got them in the Prem inside 6 seasons on FM09.

I think it is great game so far, and intend on making it my only FM2010 save.

anyone else finding Ben davies amazing? He has scored three hattricks from midfield and has hit several screamers from free kicks. After dodgy start and facing the sack am now on the verge of promotion coming to end of the season after a 17 game unbeaten - good fun being rich in a poor league

Yeah he is a great player for me also. I also bought the Southend Skipper..Barrett (is that his name) and he has been a rock at the back for me.... 14 games unbeaten so far but out of all the cups. Lost to Plymouth in the 3rd Round of the Cup 3-1.

Just got the game so going to give this a go, Prem in 5 years is still a big challenge will keep you updated.

Good luck... I reckon to do it in 5 years as they are trying to do IRL (and what I am also trying to copy) you need to get outta League 2 in the first season as the Championship I reckon will take more than one season to get promoted from... I may be wrong though...

ive just started wiv notts county as well...only played a couple of friendlies, im playing a 4-3-3 in a direct manner. i hoping i have enough fire power to get me up.

i havnt made any huge big fee signings yet but i found in the youth team a player called pendleton (i fink) he is 16 and awesome but middleboro are in a tribunal with him.

im getting rid of akinbiyi as he stats arnt great and age is against him, im trying to build a team!!!

ben davies has been awesome.

have signed oliver bernard at left back and mettomo both on free (mettomo wages are low)

Akinbiyi has scored 20+ goals for me as the lone striker... he had his chance due to injuries...but now cant drop him.....

I would recommend the Notts County thread in the GPTG should be quite relevant

I would recommend the Notts County thread in the GPTG should be quite relevant

Cheers

But this is why I said this in my OP

(BTW...not sure if this is the right place to post something like this...but thought...its a GENERAL discussion)

My first long term game is with Notts County and I'm doing ok. Bought Ygor Titov at AMC to sit just behind Akinbiyi. Titov's 33 but a class act especially in League Two. I could do with another striker but the budget won't stretch that far at the moment.

Just started At Notts, 6 games into the season, 6 wins, +17 gd, and Amir Zaki 10gls!

Absolute bargain 1.8m!

1st season got Notts promoted through the play off's , 2nd season mid table in league 1 , great strikeforce of Earnshaw and Harewood it's just the defensive part thats letting me down, only 6 points off the play off's tho so a couple of wins and hopefully get myself up there. Will keep all updated.

anyone else finding Ben davies amazing? He has scored three hattricks from midfield and has hit several screamers from free kicks. After dodgy start and facing the sack am now on the verge of promotion coming to end of the season after a 17 game unbeaten - good fun being rich in a poor league

Never a more true word said. Must say Notts County have been a great team for me too! I'm playing a 4-2-3-1 with Willy Topp (free transfer) up front. 11 games into the league and he has 14 goals in 8 starts. Ben Davies is my current top scorer on 17 goals from 17 starts but he's getting very tired now.

In response to other quotes Akinbiyi has been pants on my save, the best back up is Lee Hughes as a fantastic poacher of goals. His ability to hold the ball up to allow the wingers and trequartista to catch up and cause havoc. Also managed to bring in Sol Campbell, Jay Spearing and Ciaran Clark for cover. Turned summer window off to make it more realistic but i'm regretting it as the squad is too lacking without key guys. January will be busy I think. Wonder if Edgar Davids fancies a spell with the Magpies??

Promoted in my first season in League 2 as Champions. Now into the second season and its January and I am in 6th place. A Play-off position would be great, seeing as the board want a top half finish. Also have Spurs away in the FA Cup....

Sold Hughes and Akinibiyi after they helped with promotion, last year but they were too old to keep. Instead have a Portuguese guy called "Chico" and he's doing OK for me. Also got the youngster Randall from Arsenal.

Just got the game today and funny enough also started with Notts County

Also wanted to start at "the bottom" with a decent team and get to the Premiership in 5 years

If Liverpool offers me a contract before then I am GONE

If Liverpool offers me a contract before then I am GONE

I like your loyalty to Notts!

Promoted after my first season, we ended up with 115 points from the league. Willy Topp, Ben Davies, Wayne Brown (6 month loan from Fulham) and Sol Campbell were the star performers and rightly earnt their place in the team of the season. Willy and Sol were the 2 signings of the season. Indifferent cup form, knocked out in the League Cup 3rd round to West Brom and lost the JPT North Final over 2 legs to Huddersfields so we were found wanting against better competition (played off the park by Huddersfield).

Pre season wasn't too frutful in terms of replacing the "allowed to leave players" with players of the quality to play League 1/Championship football. Sol Campbell demanded to leave the club but to date hasn't gone anywhere yet (Shakhtar Donetsk are the team sniffing around!). Not all doom and gloom however, had 9 million to spend so i've revamped the backroom staff (all training ratings are up to at least 4 stars) and brought in Jordan Rhodes from Huddersfield for 2 mil, Gabriel Ozkan from Crewe, Michael Bradley from Leeds, Yves Makalumby (sp??) as GK cover (signed purely on the basis of his un pronouncable name which I purposely did a Joe Kinnear with in the press conference to announce his arrival; it went unnoticed), David Wright from Ipswich and signed Wayne Brown full time from Fulham. Stacked my pre season with Premier league teams, managing to keep the lead against Man U for 70 mins before losing 3 - 1 (bear in mind they started Rooney, Valencia, Carrick, Vidic, Foster, Neville, Gay O'Shea and new signings Luca Modric and Leighton Baines), we then got a 4 - 1 win over a decent looking Sunderland team.

Looking forward to the challenge now of League 1 football with the new look team and bench. We have played our first league game however, after taking a 2 nil lead into half time away to Swindon we let in 3 goals in the last 2 mins (2 of which were 30 yrd screamers) to lose and remind us of the work we have to do to get out of this league! Still optimistic though. League Cup round 1 is next up (away to Scunthorpe) followed by a home tie against Crewe who came up through the play-offs. We beat them twice last season so hopefully it'll be the game to really start our campaign. I'll post a team screen shot after a few games so you can all see the team gunning for the Championship!!

Do notts county stay rich or after a couple seasons become "secure"

Notts County suck. Why not manage that team the other side of the Trent? NOTTINGHAM FOREST!

who??? do you mean NOTTS FLORIST???

Just finished my second season in League 1 in 4th place...so was looking at back to back promtions via the play off but lost to Peterbrough 4-2 over two legs in the semi's....doh! So 3rd season about to get and still in League 1. Still a League 2 title and a 4th place finish in League 1 in two seasons is not to bad. The board want promotion this time though.... I've bought in David Healy on a free transfer and the Polish International RB (Begins with "W") aged 31 i think...so a bit of experience there.

They are already dropped to secure for me on Jan 1 2011.

My usual starting eleven:

Schmichel

Kerrea Gilbert

Jose Goncalves

Martis

Joe Martin

Ben Davies

Diego Gavilan

Clarence Acuna

Gareth Ainsworth

Lee Hughes

Edixon Perea

Am 10 games in to 5th year with Notts County and it WAS going very well and to plan.

Back to back promotions from league 2 and 1. A year ending up mid table in the championship and the resulting probs keeping hold of my good players. Got promoted behind Ipswich the second year so, yes, it is possible to end up in the prem in 5 years but I seriously doubt it is poss for me to stay in the prem in the 5th year the way I am going.

The board keep injecting money. The gave me 27mill budget just to avoid relegation but it is looking like that isn't enough- or not the way I have spent it anyway! I thought I had gone to far with the spending (ie all of it) taking the balance down to nearly zero and with just a 20000 seater that I am not even filling but they have kindly just injected another 29 mill so don't think money is an issue in the foreseeable.

Since we are naming names. Ben Davies is a god all the way up to and including champ level. Especially with free kicks and corners. Got Luke Moore for quite little at start of second season and he is a goal machine. He was top scorer in champ last season and, although he isn't getting a game at mo is worth 4.2mill. Even picked up Berbatov at age 32 for an absolute bargain 1.4 million at start of this season and teamed him with a 10 million Italian wonderkid and they are both scoring well but just cannot stop shipping 3 to 4 goals a game. Suspect the board aren't going to have much sympathy with me when we go down but you never know. They might be as stunned as me that Wolves are top of the league and flying and not notice my results!

I am them 2nd season here is the squad (i am in league 1)

-Schmeicel ( legend)

-szczesny (spelling? but he is the arsenal keeper)

-martin taylor

-ryan bertrand

-shaulem logan

-shittu (dont know fist name)

- A faye (the one from stoke)

-o'hanlon ( regen from youth all ready championship level)

-jason Robert's ( from blackburn)

-rhys murphy (from arsenal)

- gary mcsheffery (from brummy)

-michael woods (from chelsea)

-Callum davenport (from west ham but can't play)

-kerrea gilbert (from arsenal)

-ritche de leat (from man u)

and a lot more but can't be asked to talk about them but i am doing quite well last season i dominated league 2 and i am second in league 1 I also got to the final of JPT (by the way I have none of these players on loan)

Notts County suck. Why not manage that team the other side of the Trent? NOTTINGHAM FOREST!

We want to get to the Premiership within 5 seasons, and Notts County have a better chance of that than Forest.

Won League Two and League One comfortably, but finding the Championship considerably harder. I'm currently 10th after 8 games, but have already played the only 4 teams given better or equal odds for promotion. Ben Davies, Schmeichel and Andy Nowlan are the only 3 players in my first team who were there when I took over. Kakuta was spectacular in the first two seasons, but then refused to come back to us for a third one, despite being available for loan and now having us as a favoured club.

im playing as Cewe and notts county have been flailing in my game. they may go down.

finding it easy, 10 points clear in January. A starting 11 of Schmeicheal (sp), Antwi, Balde, Mettomo, Bernard, Eikram, Spearing, Bostock, Davies, Jeffers, Akinbiyi

no challenge there

Of course there's a challenge The challenge is the expectation and pressure you're under to deliver instant success to the club, i imagine anything less than finishing in the play-offs and you'll be given the ol' tin tac.

I'm currently top after 33 games with 71 points and 12 clear of the team in 2nd place, we've banged in a massive 77 goals so far and we're 15 unbeaten having only lost twice in the league all season. Expectations were to get promoted so it looks like i'm going one better by winning the league, if i mess it up now i might cry.

Karl Hawley and Lee Hughes have been banging in the goals, with Hawley scoring 21 in 30 games and Hughes 23 in 34, my 3 other strikers have barely had a look in but when i've rotated or had injuries they've generally popped up with a goal or two. Ben Davies has been awesome, wheather i've played him out wide or through the middle he's created plenty of goals, currently has 19 assists in 39 games.

Before the season started i signed Nathan Tyson for 300K (that cheesed off the Forest fans ), Shelton Martis for 500K from WBA, Inigo Idiakez and Olivier Bernard on frees then Mark Little (CB, Wolves) and Gylfi Sigurdsson (CM, Reading) on season long loan deals. I also signed 3 youngsters on frees as hot prospects for the future as i then did in the January window. The board gave me £2.8M to spend in January and i made Matty Ritchie's deal permanent for a club record £1.7M and then signed El Zhar from Liverpool for 750K, Kerrea Gilbert from Arsenal for 325K and Stephen O'Halloran from Villa for the same fee.

My team usually lines up as follows:

Schiemichel

Gilbert/Little

Martis

O'Halloran

Bernard

El Zhar/Davies

Idiakez

Sigurdsson/Davies

Ritchie

Hughes

Hawley

in my second season for them won league 2 by 11 points!! akinybi scored 22 in 40 league games! hawley scored 18 in 43 and a guy that i picked up injanuary from bolton (on loan at cheltanham) scored 7 in 18 from the right wing and after scoring 17 for cheltanham was 3rd top scorer in league!! i made some great signings in 2nd season check them out!!!

Dennis rommedahl

angelos basinas

nwankwo kanu (MUST BUY)

Daniel ayala

nacho novo

seol ki-hyeon

sasa ilic

callum davenport

marcus hahnemman

marlon harewood

paddy kenny

alvaro recoba these have all played well and i reccomend them highly!!

Well, i won back-to-back promotions to the Championship with them, and have since topped the Championship unstoppably too, 15 straight wins so far in all competition, but that is about to end as my next match is against Chelsea for League Cup round 4. I can still continue my 12 straight wins in the league though.

In truth, i never expected to dominate the championship so much, i was expecting a very hard fight for the playoffs, but i guess the team has gelled perfectly, so far.

Second season, top of the championship at the minute.

Team -

Schmeichel

Rosenior, Jose Fonte, McCarthy, Mark Wilson

Lasley/Markel

Barazite/Thiago, Gaitan/Miguel Perez/Jackson

Davies/Smeekes

Dindane/Saha, Tyson (with Makaay and James Brown on bench)

54 goals in 22 game so far - Tyson 22 in 22.

In my save, they made it in 2016.

smellyneo - how can you be in the championship in your 2nd season? or have i missed something.

Just finished my first season with torquay, we finished 3rd by one point after beating Notss County at home on the last day of the season 1-0. \O/

Notts won the league fairly comfortably, so its us, them and shrewsbury promoted to league 1!

top of league one haha.. sorry! Was looking at the Championship table before writing that.

ye managing notts here first season is simple.

We want to get to the Premiership within 5 seasons, and Notts County have a better chance of that than Forest.

Won League Two and League One comfortably, but finding the Championship considerably harder. I'm currently 10th after 8 games, but have already played the only 4 teams given better or equal odds for promotion. Ben Davies, Schmeichel and Andy Nowlan are the only 3 players in my first team who were there when I took over. Kakuta was spectacular in the first two seasons, but then refused to come back to us for a third one, despite being available for loan and now having us as a favoured club.

in ur dreams!!! they wont get there in 5 seasons, probs take them a min of 8 seasons, but thats only if eriksson and owners? whoever they are?!?!?!?! dont get sick of that level of football

i got them to the championship in 4 years not lookin good this season in 18th with 25 games gone

recently started with notts and doing ok, started dodgy but am now on a 24 match unbeaten run and have a 15 point lead at the top of league 1, starting 11:

GK: Schmeichel

RB: Antwi

LB: Barnard

CB: Seck

CB: Barrett

CDM: Abdou

CM: Parrett

CM: Davies

AMC: Bostock/Noble

FC: Akinbiyi

FC: Hughes

spent most my money on securing bostock and parrett for the future and have been forced to rely on all the strikers already at the club and seem to be holding out well at the moment, Hughes has got 20 goals, akinbiyi 15. lost the JPT trophy northern section after losing 3-1 at home to Leeds and then nearly getting them with a 2-0 win away but wasnt to be, knocked out the carling cup on pens away to wigan after drawing 2-2 and lost the FA cup 3rd round against Southampton 1-0 AET in the replay.

Just started a game with County. Just in feb ingame and ive suprised myself by how much ive got into it. I usually like to manage lower league teams so i thought that i would get bored but it really is fun being richer than all your opponents

Up till january i was struggling a bit but was hanging onto the playoffs i was playing a 4-1-2-2-1 and playing really well, dominating possesion and getting lots of shots on target but somehow never seemed to score enough goals and had as many draws as wins (but few loses) so i spent a bit of money and got iwelumo and simwon jackson in for 1.2 mil and wes hoolahan for another 400k but the same thing was happening. The best thing i ever did was switch to a simple 4-4-2 and just make subtle changes to exploit my opponents weaknesses during every game.

Oh yeah my team...

GK - kasper

RB - Little (on loan from wolves)

LB - Barron (bought for 60k from millwall)

CB - Lee

CB - Stjepan Tomas (50k from Rubin)

RW - Miguel Perez (200K from levante)

LW - Wes hoolahan

DM - Anthony Grant (60k from Saafend)

AM -Ben Davies

CF - Iwelumo

SC - Sim JAckson

I am not playing NC myself however I would recommend reading this blog as the writer has just started on a Notts County game.

http://www.footballmanagerstory.com/

The guy that runs it takes teams from the lower divisions and takes them to the top. The story contain excellent information and screen shots of every game.

Been following his stories since he took Chesterfield to premiership glory.