Lower League Team Management Start Guide

Lower League Start Guide

This is designed as a quick-step guide for new players who want to tackle the challenge of bringing a team from the bottom league (or lower leagues like Blue Square/League 2 etc) in their chosen country all the way to the Premier (First Division e.g. La Liga, Serie A etc).

I began as Havant & Waterlooville and I am now in January 2013 and I am 2nd in League 1.

Staff:

- Check assistant manager for 3 main stats (Judging Player Ability/Judging Player Potential/Tactical Knowledge)

- It is important to hire an assistant manager with these 3 stats as high as possible as he will be the best way to judge how good your players, and potential loans/singings will be as well as judging tactics for your matches

- If required, sack your current Assistant Manager in favour of a free transfer new one with higher stats (e.g. John Morling is a great Assistant for lower leagues)

- Check Physio as they tend to be very low quality at clubs and hire one with better physio/man management/discipline/motivation as players can return to fitness sooner, important as squads can be thin at lower leagues

- Hire as many people as your club will allow from countries OTHER THAN England, IRRELEVANT of how good/poor they are as it is important to build up your scouting knowledge because when searching for players in the main search screen, you can miss a lot of potential signings simply because they do not appear on the search screen as you do not have a coach/scout from that particular country. (I always like to start with staff from Spain/France/Italy/Ireland/Wales/N.Ireland and Scotland as a lot of free transfers and cheap signings can be obtained with the relevant scouting knowledge

- Try to obtain at least one scout with as higher stats as possible for looking into available players (poss. Stephen Fennell or Malcolm Shotton)

Players and Tactics:

- promote all reserve players to first team and untransfer/unloan list everyone (include under 18 squad if you’re still short of players)

- play a few friendlies with tactics set as ‘Default’/’Standard’/’Balanced’ (apart from formation which you can change to suit your squad) to see how your team plays together (do not alter them to match a particular style you would like them to play – the players are relatively poor and it is actually quite difficult to ‘coach’ them into playing a particular set of tactics. It is only when you obtain squads of relatively good players (mentally) that they will play how you tell them to.

Team:

- Request the board to link with a Parent Club (if you don’t have a decent one already) as when I was Havant & Waterlooville, I was linked with Portsmouth and managed to loan many of their brightest prospects without having to pay their wages.

Loan Transfer:

- I cannot stress how important this is – LOAN SIGNINGS ARE VITAL

- If you can, loan as many players as you can (dependant on League Rule Restrictions) for ZERO wages. This should mean you have a lot of strength in depth without having to fork out the transfer fee or wage costs…even if you don’t play them every week they can act as important t cover.

- If you have to, then pay as much towards the wage as the club wants, ensuring the player is worth it!

Scouting:

- Because when you search for players in the usual Player Search system using Transfer/Loan Listed or by position, it only brings up 'well known' players....

- For players who are, for example, french/spanish/german/dutch etc...i use the MAIN search facility for when you know who you want to look at and you simply type in their name...

- In that box i type names like Juan/Pablo/Marco/Pedro/Paolo/Jose/Van/Van De/de Silva/Silva/aa/zz/zh (i also simply type a '-' to bring up names that are hyphenated especially for middle eastern nationalities) etc etc to bring up a list of foreign players....

- look for the ones who are unattached and try to sign them for free, some will work, some will reject.....also try to offer trials to players to scout their stats if your actual scouts are not allowed outside the UK....

- this takes a while to complete but thats how i find gem of lower league players with poor scouting knowledge...