The Mansfiels Town FC story

[marcogoalo]

A few months ago I started a football manager career as Mansfield and wasn't taking it too seriously but I think our tale is one the football fans of SI forums could appreciate.

I chose Mansfield because I have done Derby County (the team I support) for many years in a row and not only are they one of the better teams in the league now, the team hasn't changed too much so I wanted a new challenge. Pretty much all of my family are from Mansfield and I wanted to pick a team from the lower divisions and go Fergy style at the club. Mansfield is a small, miners town near Derby and Nottingham in the East Midlands with a stadium capacity of 9000, they have never won silverware.

First season We were given 50K and 5K in wages, this is when the task of turning this team into a top premier league team looked like a long shot, I pretty much had to build the club it's economy before buying any youngsters... The team There was not a lot to shout about in this time at all, there's Liam Marsden a local lad who plays RB, he had good work rates, stamina, tackling and most of all 20 Thrown ins!! This was definitely going to be useful. Adam Chapman, a decent playmaker who'd been at Mansfield a while. Adam westcarr their biggest player upfront and did very well for us and lastly, Jack Thomas an energetic box to box a bit like Steven Gerrard (14 long shots). I made a few signings very cheap: Adam Lawless (playmaker), Will Atkinsons (CM, great passer of the ball for this div), Juanjo Muko (bit pacey, good finisher) and Giorgio Rasulo (decent AM on loan). We did very well in league 2 and reached a 5th place finish mainly playing a 4-3-3, we got through both play off games and got promoted!

Second season 2016-17 Now that our long term goal was to get promoted in the championship I hunted for 1 signing that would help us achieve this over the years, I picked as I always do a great a CB. I signed Raphael Calvet from Swindon for 400K (spread out over a few years). I also signed Milan Lalkovic on a loan for the season, some of you might recognise him from Fifa, very pacey and he did very well for us scoring 5 and assisting 6 in 12 games. We brought Rasulo back for another season as well as Derby County's Timi Elsink who played 30 games scoring 11 and assisting in 6. These loan players and some of the original team managed to get us another 5th place finish and again, we went up into the championship in dramatic style!

2017-18 Season Now as we went into the championship a big decision was to be made, a 2.4 million pound offer came in from Wigan for Jack Thomas who had been crucial to our midfield in 2 seasons, but as our bank had about 1 million in it, I had to take the money to improve the team. We signed: Nikolai Brock Marsden (A giant Danish target man), Dean Cox (an experienced winger with a great cross, see where this is going?), Nouha Dicko (A rapid striker), Jamie Paterson, Jay Fulton (to replace Jack Thomas) and a load of players on a free. We did nowhere as well as I expected and only won 15 games in the highest division Mansfield have played in and finished 18th place, all the while the threat of relegation hanging above our heads that season.

2018-19 season We signed about 12 players on a free including: Jordan Turnbull, Glen Kamara, Carl 'the crippler' McHugh (20 agression, great tackling and work rate, he was too cripple anyone who gets the ball in our half). So all I can say about this season is, individual players got more red cards than some teams got all season, the table of cards was covered in Mansfield players, we got fined for the amount of yellows in games and most have spent most of the season playing with 10 men.. I tried fining them 2 weeks wages which just seemed to tempt them more, I tried telling them to stay on their feet, again nothing worked. We red-carded our way to another 18th place finish, however converting our 22 losses last year into 14; we were improving.

2019-20 Season After the last few years of getting so many red cards and not being able to stop them, I told them this season to get stuck in every game. Sure enough, we got red cards but a lot less and whether it was experience, we seemed to cope counter attacking with 10 men very well and often picked up results. We signed a bunch of players from previous seasons on loan again: Callum Cooke, Timi Elsink, Callum Harriott as well as some fantastic generated wonderkids: Maximiliano Escobar (Argentenian box to box who won young player of the year), Ayite (a French pace striker). We also signed Steven Davis from Southampton on a free, and for the first 15 games of the season he seemed to keep our midfield so composed and helped us seal out wins as the advanced playmaker in a 4-2-3-1. Our season was going great by January we had been in a playoff position all season and still fighting. Farrend Rawson had been fantastic at CB for us, Dicko was banging in goals, Jay Fulton in CM was a revelation in assisting and work rate. So January time I looked at who was transfer listed, I couldn't believe it, Assombolonga was their for 400K asking price, I didn't think twice and snapped him up. He went on to score in every single game he played after January scoring 20 goals in 20 games whilst setting up 5 in the process. There was also a Croatian target man I bought in after selling the Danish one for 400k, when I bought him the press told me he was a failed wonderkid and I was more determined than ever to put his career back on track, and sure enough he scored whenever we needed a goal from the bench, hence me naming him 'The Crotian Phoenix'. Now this season we got very lucky with our FA cup draws and only had to beat teams like: Swansea (4-1), Newcastle (2-0) and Crystal palace (3-1) and then getting Reading in the final. During this time we had secured a 6th spot place in the play offs and beat the first team in both legs to come up against QPR in the finals. They smashed us 4-1 and I saw our dream of reaching the premier league dissappear, but we still had 1 more game to play: the FA cup final against reading. I selected all the Mansfiel lads and players like Calvet who had been with us a number of years who I could rely on and there it begun. 1-0 down, 2-0 down in 20 minutes, I was devastated after our collapse in the play off final. I made some changes and went to a 4-2-3-1 and sure enough it took until the 70th minute, 2-1, 2-2 we were back in it! 10 minutes to go.. Reading score in the 87th minute, it's all over.. until the Crotian Phoenix scores a 90+1 equaliser and we take it to extra time, every single player was on about 60% energy at this point and it was squeeky bum time whilst I watched chances for each team. 120 minute.. Time for penalties. We miss our first, they score. We miss our second, they missed! we eventually won it 5-4 on penalties after they missed more than us and we brought our first FA cup trophy to Mansfield Town, the 9,000 Capacity stadium and ready to play in Europe next year.

I hope you enjoyed what I thought was a pretty interesting time managing one of Englands forgotten teams, thank you for reading! And if requested I could update this thread with some photos and updates on how we're doing. We're currely in the knockout stage in Europe, have been first in the Championship table from the first week and still in the FA cup to defend it as champions.

I have also started a Youtube Channel to run through the rest of this career in anticipation for FM17!!

 

[CFuller]

Welcome to FM Stories, Marco. The success you've been having at Mansfield seems incredible.

Please give the FMS rules a read. I'm afraid YouTube videos and screenshots aren't allowed in this area of the forum. I'm sure one of our kind mods will be on here soon to elaborate further. 

[mark wilson27]

Welcome to FMS Marco as CFuller has stated we dont allow the use of pictures or YouTube videos on this side of the forum. If you want to continue your story in just text form that is fine. If your happier doing it via videos and pictures it would be better suited to the FM Careers Update side of the forum. I would sy look at the house rules but since the forum migration half of our rules have been wiped out and were in the process of redoing them