Motlhen

Fixtures We have been flying! Despite not yet keeping a clean sheet, we won 6 in a row before defeat to Guilsfield. Goals are coming from all over the park, which is a stark contrast to what the stats suggested from last season. Morgan scored the winning penalty on his debut! But Forbes is out for the next month or so. Looking at his stats, it is clear he'll be a huge miss for us. Awards I switched McCaffery to the left-sided inside forward role and he has been on fire!

July 2024 Staff I've started my first coaching badge and signed the staff that held the highest qualifications. With the two scouts, I was pleased to get in Ribeiro for extra nations scouting knowledge as well as Doyle for his Welsh knowledge. Goalkeeping Decisions / Transfer Out Jones was last season's first choice keeper, but after an abysmal record of conceding 30 in 10 apps, I decided to gamble on Probert in the first games. Jones subsequently got upset and left. We do have a backup goalkeeper at the club, but he's primarily a striker, so we are definitely still in the market for someone new. Transfers In We've signed 7 players this month - not everyone was our first choice but I'm pretty happy with our acquisitions. First Choice Dave Forbes (21 goals) got the highest Goals per 90 mins ratio (0.64) in the country last season. Ryan Coney had the 2nd highest Pass Completion Ration (91%) in the country as well as decent Tackles per 90 mins (1.87) and Progressive Passes per 90 mins (4.1). Not quite first choice & then players like Danny Holland were found by looking at all non-strikers who's headers won per 90 > 1 and tackles won per 90 > 1 with a high pass completion rate (top 10) and goal scoring (top 10) to find a well-rounded midfielder. Fixtures Our first game was against rivals. ...and it couldn't have gone better! We followed it up by battling for a second win on the spin and we're off to a much better start than I anticipated. I'll see how we go with the current squad until the halfway point through the season and then reevaluate the current squad stats and look again towards the transfer market for improvements.

This save I will play with all player & staff attributes hidden. Instead I will be using as many of the in-game statistics as I can to make squad-selection and transfer decisions. At first, the analysis won't be perfect, but that's part of what I think I'll enjoy - developing the best ways to find the right players. I'll try to build my own profile for each player to keep track of their development and the only time I will look at a players actual attributes will be when they leave the club. I've taken over Conwy Borough in the Welsh 2nd division North at the start of the 24/25 season after they were promoted from the unplayable leagues below. Without any other staff to make recommendations and no attributes, the squad (and one-man U18 squad) were hard to decipher. Squad U18 Squad Attribute-less Player Profile (just to show what it looks like) Stats With my contract starting the day before the 2nd game of pre-season, I downloaded the players stats from the previous season to gauge their performance and used the following to blunder together a tactic and a team selection: Players by Average Rating We had 20 players in our squad, with Toby Jones (7.29) the only real positive stand-out in terms of average rating. At the bottom of this list was Olly Walters (5.34), who the previous manager released after some abysmal performances. They also released Joseff Sharpe (6.4) who was the same age and plays in the same position as Kaminski-Kurlandt (5.76) which seems like a daft decision. That leaves 18 players in the squad for me to focus on. Let's look at goal-scoring next: Shots per 90mins (y-axis), Percentage of Shots on Target (x-axis) & Goals per 90mins (dot-size) Ray Knight (11) scored the most goals, had the best goals per 90 mins ratio (0.28) and had the best shots on target percentage (49%). Our wingers did not contribute very much to the goals - something I'll be hoping to change. Passes Attempted per 90mins (y-axis), Pass Completion Percentage (x-axis) & Assists per 90mins (dot-size) Centre-mid Ethan Hill (9) has the most assists, whilst centre-back Ant Marshall had the highest passes attempted per 90 mins (28.1) and highest pass completion rate (76%). The only player not to assist at least once was one of our strikers. The defending stats would take some more time to put together (there's some formatting issues). For now I looked at the best Headers & Tacklers in the team to help me choose my first XI. Next I'll be seeing how we perform in the friendlies and trying to find the best players to bring to the club using the data from divisions in Wales.

An emphatic way to clinch promotion. Despite doing it the hard way, I'm happy. Sporting Hackney pushed us all season and ultimately were the better team. We lost some key players throughout the season so it's got to be seen as a positive to still be taking the next step up to the 9th tier.

We got our revenge!!!

We're playoff bound. Sporting Hackney won their game and we didn't win ours. With the form we're in, I'm worried we might spurn the chance for promotion altogether. Harpenden's win against us sealed their 5th place spot, so we're up against them again in the semi-final.

Things are a lot calmer at Bush Hill. After Kesgrave dropped points, we managed to clinch not only promotion with a game to go, but we will go up as Champions!

Our turn to unravel - neither club seems to want to win the title!? Leaney got two yellows in 3 minutes and then 5 minutes later we gave away a penalty. To mark a horrendous day out - we'll be without key man Eliot for the final game of the season too. This is how the table stands with a game to go.

Before potentially throwing it away again!!! We play our penultimate game tomorrow & MK Irish have dropped too many points to catch up now. We need to win because of their superior goal difference. It could all come down to the last day.

We immediately handed Sporting Hackney back the advantage by not being able to beat Buckingham. The sending off didn't help (and won't help going forwards) but we had more than enough chances to win this game. ...and they took top spot back emphatically.

& we are back in pole position with L7 too after winning our game and seeing Risborough force a stalemate with Sporting Hackney!

We've just managed to stay top after going 2-0 down early on to 4th-place Stowupland in what feels like a massive moment!

Promotion Run-In Sporting Hackney have to face 4th place Risborough, who just beat us. If they don't drop points there, I don't see them dropping points in their final 3 games and even if they do, we have a tough away game against 5th to round off the season. Could we be playoff bound? We've got two tough away games and they stand in between promotion and another season in this tier. I do feel slightly bad for Stowupland Falcons final 3 games.

Mar 26 Fixtures Sporting Hackney beat us at the start of the month and MK Irish at the end of the month. Jordan scored a hattrick against Eaton Socon just before our other loss of the month against Risborough with a bunch of debutants from our youth intake. Fixtures We are extremely reliant on Bullman and his legendary status across both clubs will be certain if we can maintain this run to finish as Champions.

Youth Intake Day Again, we can see that we only kept the 9 players from Enfield.

Youth Intake Day It couldn't have come at a better time as we were side-swiped by a couple of big Transfers Out Here you can see we only kept the 9 players from Enfield. We've agreed to sign each player on a youth contract apart from James Still who wants a part-time contract straight away - which we can't afford. Hopefully further down the line he will agree to join but for now we cannot use him. Whilst Hassan was rated the lowest from the intake, I actually prefer him to our current starting goalkeeper.

We capitulated in our next game against Sporting Hackney & the GD-swing takes them above us. To make matters even worse, we lost Eliot during the game and he could be out for a couple of games. There's 8 games left to play!

Feb 26 Fixtures Eliot got us back on track and we're now 7 wins on the bounce, but still only 3 points ahead of Sporting Hackney, who we play next. & then shortly after we face off against rivals Welwyn. Two big games coming up! Transfer In He probably won't play, but backup defenders are rare. Fixtures Two wins from two, including an absolute epic against Wenhaston. 5 games to go and we're 5 points ahead of 3rd. But we've lost one of our stars of this season & last. Marques broke his leg and will be out for a year almost. He's going to be hard to replace.

Jan 26 Loans In We've brought in 3 players to help in our push for promotion: Happe joins from Bush Hill Rangers to join Spain at centre-back. I'm delighted to get Eliot back to the club. Hopefully he can get back the same goal-scoring vein we saw from him before he left. We've also loaned Mackaay back. He can play both right back & left back so will provide invaluable support in our shaky defence. Released Player Signing Spain & Happe at centre-back makes the release of Njoya easy. He was only one of 3 centre-backs at the club at the start of the season, so to have not needed him that often is a blessing. Fixtures Eliot has got 4 goals in his first 3 games back! We did lose to MK Irish before that - they've clawed their way up to add another horse to the title race. The whole team looks a lot more assured with the signings we've made, hopefully we can start to push on towards winning the title now & stay ahead of the 2 clubs behind us. Transfer In Fixtures We lost to Kesgrave to allow them to get closer to us and with 7 games to go, there are 4 teams pushing for the two promotion spots now. It will be interesting to see if we can make it over the line after losing our 2 main centre-backs to L7.

Dec 25 Transfer Out After losing our 3rd choice keeper last month, we've lost our 2nd choice this month. Having one keeper at the club is not ideal. I really need to sort out a new contract with the club so that I can start offering contracts out myself again. Released Player Our top-rated player from our first intake, Rogerson, departs the club having played in 3 different tiers. Youth Intake Preview Great to see 2 defenders. But more strikers AND wingers!? Fixtures Another couple of games where we've dropped points as we are definitely off the boil. We need to get back to dominating as Sporting Hackney have crept above us. Youth Intake Preview A lot of centre-backs and -mids. Happy with that! Fixtures We lost to Benhall in a drab game and then couldn't hang on against Somersham, conceding in the 89th minute to stay below them (despite a game in hand). A familiar position in tier 12: we are too reliant on Bullman's goal. They've dried up recently and we've suffered.

Nov 25 Loan In Shane Spain came through the youth intake at Bush Hill Rangers and has played well so far in the 12th tier. He's been brought in just after his 17th birthday to play at centre-back for L7 who are lacking in quality in this position. Transfers Out We've lost Goodacre who was featuring from the bench still the season, as well as our 3rd choice keeper. Fixtures We dropped points twice this month and allowed Sporting Hackney to get back on level terms. Loan In After departing L7 to Rugby Town, Goodacre has come back on loan but to Bush Hill Rangers. Fixtures We weakened our defence by sending Spain on loan to L7 and immediately saw the difference. We're still top, but not by much. There's 3 teams broken away from the rest of the pack and we can't fall outside of the top 2.

Oct 25 Injury We've lost Adams for the rest of the season. He'd been in and around the first team so will be missed. An injury for one season is a quarter of the time we're able to keep a player. He'll be 18 by the time he plays again and will become ineligible to play on his 19th birthday in April next year, so he has less than a full season left with us now. Transfer Out Wright is another huge loss. He provides goals and assists consistently and is going to be hard to replace. Released Player Stafford turned 19 this month. Fixtures After 44 games without a draw, we were matched by joint-top Sporting Hackney. They dropped points later in the month and our month included a good win against our rivals Welwyn to push us into pole position with a 3-point gap. Transfers In The floodgates opened this month. A lot of players who we couldn't agree terms with previously must have seen our form and want to be part of the squad now! No one is jumping straight into the first team, but they are stronger backups. Fixtures We're storming ahead!

Sep 25 After the loss in the cup, we had a repeat. We gave away an early penalty, but this time even with 11 men still on the pitch we couldn't find a way back into the game. We've been great since, but we're already seeing a 2-horse race for the title developing and we play Sporting Hackney next. Huge game! A very solid start. Marques has been key! Don't ask for what you don't really want. The board have agreed to push our training facility's to the next level, but it's cost us 90% of the club's overall balance to do it!

Aug 25 Cup Draw £900 prize money up for grabs, but it's a tough draw against tier 9 Stanway Pegasus. Fixtures We had a near-perfect pre-season and continued our form into the league. Disaster in the cup though. Burke got sent off in the 21st minute, they converted the resulting penalty and we couldn't get back into the game from then on. We have longer to wait for the season to kick off in tier 12. Our pre-season results have been all over the place.

We've lost my favourite player from our the 2024 intake. 38 goals in 36 appearances, Eliot leaves with the highest Average Rating of any player at the club. We tried to re-sign Makaay on loan, but he had no intention of coming back sadly. Where L7 have lost out, Bush Hill have benefited. Although we didn't get both of the centre-backs we wanted to.