[FM09] The Journeyman - An FM 2009 Career

[SAFC 14]

Think this forum is a great idea and have enjoyed reading up on other peoples careers so far. This is my attempt at creating a journeyman career that hopefully will end in international management and top flight football. I have already completed 2 seasons so some screen shots may be missing of the early stages of my career.

Patch - 9.3.0

Database - 9.2.0

Semi-Professional Reputation

No edits

For this Career I have started out unemployed with the following leagues loaded:

England - All

Scotland - Second Division

France - National

Italy - Serie B

Spain - Liga Adalante

Swesen - Premier Only

Holland - Eerste Divisie

Merthyr 09/10

After holidaying for a full year I finally accepted a job offer from newly promoted Merthyr in the Blue Square South on a 3 year deal. I was given no transfer budget and 3k to spend on wages. Merthyr had no players and no staff so alot of work was need to be done before the start of the season. The media predicted that we would finish 14th and the board wanted us to consolidate our position in the league. My personal target was to try and finish in the top half of the table and be free of relegation troubles. With this in mind i wanted us to finish 11th. I hoped to achieve this by bringing in cheap British players and also bringing in a few players for the future. With no players we had a quite a bit of money to play with on the wage front so I was confident of bringing in some much needed quality.

I scoured the free transfer market and managed to bring in 20 players before the start of the season. I also managed to hire Darren Sheridan as Assistant Manager on a short term deal aswell as bringing in a physio.

Transfers - http://img40.imageshack.us/i/merthyrtransfers.png/

The signings that i was most excited about were David Lee, Neil Ashton, Darren Lough and Roscoe D'sane. We missed out on many targets however including Tomi Ameobi and Will antwi who choose to join bigger clubs which was a huge disappointment. With the signings we had made I was fairly confident that we could fulfil the expectations that were on us and have a good season free of relegation worries. However I was worried about the lack of depth we had in the squad especially upfront as I was not confident in the abilities of some of the players purchased. By this point we were £500 over the wage budget but were still in the black overall.

[SAFC 14]

Pre-season and Early Stages of the League.

Merthyr 4 - 0 Chelmsford - Neil Ashton (45+1) David Lee (55, 68) Wes baynes (81)

Aston Villa reserves 2 - 1 Merthyr - Lee Askham (75)

Merthyr 1 - 2 Blackburn Reserves - Lee Askham (3)

Merthyr 1 - 4 Cardiff - Wes Baynes (66)

Merthyr 2 - 1 Southport - Lee Askham (63) Waide Fairhurst (90+1)

So after an encouraging Pre-season and some decent summer acquisitions we were ready for the big kick off. i was very nervous going into the season with 20 new players in the squad incase they wouldn't gel but my worries proved to be wrong as we started the season excellently and finished August in the play off places just behind top of the table Welling. We had won 3 drawn 1 and lost 1. Our good start to the season was mainly down to the excellent play of my wingers especially Roscoe D'sane and David Lee's excellent work upfront playing as a lone striker. Our best result of August was the 4 - 0 demolition of Team Bath.

[SAFC 14]

Later Stages of the Season.

By March we were hovering around the Play-offs in a tight league. 1st and 2nd were out of touch but we were only 3 points from 4th. There had been some transfer activity during the season as I believed certain areas of the squad needed strengthening those signings were:

Aaron Howe - Back up Keeper

Neil Janczyk - First Choice Central Midfielder

Tom Cleverley - First Choice Central Midfielder

Matt Gray - Right Back

Wayne Phillips - Back up Left Winger

Tome Craddock - Centre Forward

Andy Graham - Commanding Centre Back

Liam Mckenna - A Versatile Defender

Janczyk, Cleverley, Graham and Phillips turned out to be great signings with Janczyk and Cleverley scoring 12 apiece from midfield by the end of the season. Phillips turned out to be a suprisingly good player and contribuited 12 assists in 25 appearences from the wing.

We finished the season strongly and managed to get in the play-offs finishing 4th. Our Semi Final was against 3rd placed Cambridge due to injuries to my star striker David Lee, Tom Cradock started. It was a tight game with most of the possession going to Cambridge but Tom Caddock headed us into the lead after 21 minutes. He could have doubled it but missed a header from close range. We managed to hold on despite heavy pressure late on from Cambridge and I was delighted with the victory but we still had to play the away leg and finish the job. The away leg was a fast paced end to end game with both sides having 3 clear cut chance. Unfortunately for us our chances all fell to Craddock who missed all 3. Luckily our defence stayed strong and we managed to keep the Cambridge strike force at bay. I was very happy with the performance and was pleased to see that we had made the final.

The final was against Weston-Super-Mare who we had beaten at home and lost away to in the league previously. David Lee was back for the final so he came in to replace Tom Cradock at the front. We were one nil down after 25 minutes after dominating the open stages of the match. We kept playing well but went in at half time still behind despite playing at times brilliant football. Just after half time Weston-Super-Mre doubled their lead. But 10 minutes later thanks to a ball over the top by Shaun kelly and a cool finish by Janczyk we pulled one back. Then thanks to some brilliant wing play by Lee Askham we were level as Tom Cleverley headed the ball into the back of the net. We used our momentum to keep attacking for the last 20 minutes but we couldn't find a goal and were nearly punished on the counter when the opposition created a good chance to hit the post. In extra time we really took the game to them and should have finished them off. We had one last attack where Cradock who had came on for the disapointing David Lee, blazed over from outside the box. I was disapointed we had not won in normal time we had 21 shots compared to their 5 and we had 55% of the possesion. Both sides missed 2 of the first 5 penalties and it went to sudden death. Our first spot kick was rifled into the back of the net by the impressive Glen Hand. This was followed by James Palmer converting for Weston-Super-Mare. Then disaster struck as Liam Mckenna screwed his penalty wide. Mark Mckeever stepped up nervously and fired it over the cross bar much to my relief. Lee Askham stepped up and calmly slotted his penalty away. Then it was the turn of Darren Mullings. He hammered his penalty over the bar much to my delight. We had done it promotion in our first season now all we had to do was survive.

[SAFC 14]

Season Summary

So our fist season ended with success and I was very happy with our promotion. We had surpassed the boards expectations and the fans were delighted with our performance. However I felt slightly frustrated with the amount of games we had dominated but failed to win or even draw. We scored quite a few goals but defensively we struggled all season at the hands of opposition wingers who tore us apart, so I wanted to try and sort out this problem area in the close season.

We struggled in the cups going out of the Conference League Cup in the first round and getting knocked out of the F.A Trophy in the third round. However we did manage to beat Kidderminster in the F.A Cup and got through to the first round where we were knocked out by Southend after a decent performance.

Player Awards

Neil Janczyk came third in the Blue Square Sounth Player of the Season award.

I was runner up in the Manager of the Season award.

Glenn Hand won finished the season with the most Man of the Matches.

Wayne Phillips finished joint top of the assists chart after arriving midway through the season.

Best 11 - http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/7987/best11.png

Top Goalscorer - David Lee - 19

Most Assists - Glenn Hand 15

Highest Average Rating - Glenn Hand 7.23

Fans Player of The Year - Glenn Hand

My Player of The Year - Tom Cleverley

Aims For New Season -

Survive Relegation

Strengthen Defence

[Welsh Wizard]

Good start I will be following this

[SAFC 14]

2010/2011 Merthyr

After turning down a job offer from Berwick Rangers in the Scottish 2nd division I began trying to build a squad capable of surviving in the Blue Square Premier. The board wanted us to attempt to avoid relegation so the expectations were not too high. We were predicted 2nd bottom but I was hoping we would finish in a safer position.

Transfers.

We found the transfer market a very difficult place to do buisness. The board only increased the wage budget by £500 and a 4k transfer budget, so this made getting rid of players was my first priority. One of the first players out of the door was Roscoe D'sane who had played pretty important part of our promotion push but he was our clubs highest earner on £700 a week almost double the next highest earner.

Transfers - http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/7726/93335077.png

The players I was the happiest with signing were Peter Hartley, Stephen Thompson and Paul Mcdowell. Paul Mcdowell looked like a very good goal scorer although he was pretty slow he was an excellent finisher and had a decent all round game. Also I believed Hartley would bring some much need consistency to the back four but I still felt we could have strengthened more at the back We were rejected again and again by players only for them to join teams who in my opinion were no better than us which was frustrating. All in all though we made some decent signings but I was not convinced by everyone and felt a lack of pace on the wings would be a problem.

Pre-Season and Early League Form.

Pre-season was solid if not spectacular here are the results -

Merthyr 4 - 0 Ilkeston (Luscombe, Mcsorley, Hand, Cleverley)

Merthyr 4 - 0 Braintree (Mcdowell 2, Janczyk, Cleverley)

Merthyr 0 - 2 Cardiff

Merthyr 2 - 2 AFC Hornchurch (Mcdowell, Kalala)

Merthyr 1 - 0 Northwich (O.G)

Merthyr 2 - 3 Southend (Thompson, Mcsorley)

A very good win aginst Braintree good performances aginst Cardiff and Southend were very encouraging but I was a little concerned by our defensive display against AFC Hornchurch who were very average but managed to score two goals.

We started the season very brightly after a narrow 2-1 loss to recently relegated Chester. We won 6 of the next 8 games with only 1 defeat to Salisbury during that run. Our squad had gelled very quickly and Paul Mcdowell was scoring for fun with 8 goals by the end of September despite missing a few games due to injury. We were doing better than I had expected we would be and we looked like we would be in for a good season with us inside the play-off spot. However there was still a long season ahead of us which anything could happen in.

[NepentheZ]

your updates are very detailed but could use a few more screenies

A nice career you've got going here. looks like you could get a lot of success with Merthyr.

[SAFC 14]

End of Season

After realising pretty early that certain players were not good enough for this level I released them and brought in some new players. I wanted to capitalise on our early season success and push up the league and believed this could be achieved with some clever buys in the transfer market.

The new players were -

Jude Stirling - A versatile defender.

Lee Mcevilly - An experienced striker brought in as cover.

Daryl Knights - A quick versatile striker/midfielder who I retrained to play on the left wing.

Shaun Batt - A quick winger brought in to replace the released Will Buckley who had disappointed in his brief spell at Merthyr.

After our great start to the season we started to become incosistent. By January we were safely in mid table but had just came off the back of a 4 match winless streak. We then managed to drag ourselves back to being just outside the play-offs after some vital victories in February and March. Things were looking good, we looked like we could grab a play-off spot as we were only two points off 5th but quite a few clubs were fighting it out for the last 2 realistic play-off spots as the other teams seemed out of reach. But we were hit by terrible form and we only managed to win one of our last seven games and we ended season 9th. Our defense had been a problem for the entire season but in the closing stages we found goals very hard to come by only scoring 7 goals in the last 9 matches failing to score in 6 of them. So we finished the season much higher than expected but still a little disappointed that after starting so well we had fallen away in the later stages.