Season 2: An Inconsistent Overachievment

My second season in charge of FC United got off to a shaky start, winning 3 and losing 2 in our first 5 games. I think subconsciously I was comparing it to the 20 game unbeaten run of the previous season which was always going to be difficult to match.

From the beginning I had a bad feeling about this year's campaign because the matches that we won we were only scraping them by a goal and having to absorb constant pressure for the last 10 minutes. The matches that we lost we were getting peppered with shots and shouldn't have even been in them. Match number 5 was the one that felt like an omen. We lost 5-3 to Stockport and first off conceding so many goals so early in the season was a worry and second it was our former winger who they signed during the summer that scored their first goal. A cheap in-swinging free kick that he latched onto at the near post.

Our next 20 results were a little more positive across league and cup competitions. We lost 4 but we were starting to play a little better on the pitch. It could have been at some stage during this period that I changed the roles of the back 4. to Defensive Full Backs (Defend) a Defensive Centre Back (Cover) and a Centre Back (Defend) because a lot of the goals we were defending were coming from passes going over the backs. I found they had been rushing forward and a big looping ball from deep was just asking to be put in the net.

After that little adjustment at the backs we seemed to be conceding less and we started putting together a couple of winning runs. We did have one horrendous result though when Salford hammered us 5-1 but I think that was down to the tactic that I had picked. We finished 4th in the league which wasn't bad considering we were only 4 points off of top spot and with an equal goal difference. We also had a few big results of our own against Tamworth, Darlington and Gainsborough, beating them 5-0, 7-2 and 5-1 respectively. Salford would go on to beat us in the playoff 1st Round thanks to a late goal ending our hopes of promotion.

Our board expectations and goals for the season across all competitions

The cups were fairly successful. We reached the first round of the FA Cup holding Wrexham to a 3-3 draw but going down 2-1 to them in the replay and reaching the fourth round of the FA Trophy after defeating Accrington and Leyton Orient but eventually going down 1-0 to Barrow.

Player statistics for the season

Bradley Bauress won Player of the season who we signed as a replacement for Tom Walker. I just missed out on a consecutive Manager of the Season Award. Jason Gilchrist was the league's 3rd top goalscorer with 26, he scored 32 goals across all competitions. We were the top scoring team in the league with 91 goals, 17 more than FC Halifax who won competition. 

Team statistics

In 2018 I signed a new contract keeping me at the club until 2020 so I'll be posting about my third season with FC United soon.

Final league standings at the end of the season

A Season of Highs and Lows

I finished my first season with FC United and overall it was a solid start to FM18. We finished in second place, 4 points behind Kidderminster, we overachieved but the season also ended in real disappointment. Kidderminster, for a large portion of the season were ahead by 10 points and we managed to get within 3 points of them with only an few matches to go but a draw and a loss meant we lost ground again and going into the second last match we were 4 points behind and that is how it stayed. Below are the fixtures that I had to play after the first blog post and how they finished up.

The next disappointment was against Harrogate. Towards the end of the season we beat them 4-0 and then we met again in a promotional play-off match in which we made a terrible start. We missed sitters and they got 3 goals unanswered. Normally when a competition is described as "not a fair reflection" it tends to mean that one team was better than the score shows. The opposite was true for this match because we had no right being as close to the opposition as we were on the scoreboard. We pulled one back after the break immediately answered by another goal for Harrogate. At 4-1 I set them to an attacking mentality, told them to play wide, exploiting the flanks and pump the ball into the box in the hopes that we could stretch them and possibly drop the ball in behind the backs. It worked, sort of, we got 2 more goals and with the score 4-3 we were the better team, we were creating chances but we lacked the finishing of earlier fixtures. The last 15 minutes saw Harrogate score their fifth goal effectively killing the game off before we score a consolation goal in the dying seconds for a 5-4 finish. As I said we were lucky to be in it at 90 minutes as 2 of our goals came from huge mistakes by the Harrogate defenders, although if our strikers had taken advantage of the opportunities presented to them we may have been out of sight in the early stages of this match.

Kidderminster won the league with us in second and York, who we also beat by sizable margin went on to earn promotion through the playoffs.

There were plenty of positives on individual levels though. Kanye Diedrick-Roberts was the league's top scorer with 26 goals (34 across all competitions), player of the season was Tom Walker with an average rating of 7.61 and I was awarded Manager of the Season with a win rate of 58% across 43 matches. We bagged the most goals too, scoring 86 in the league. We had 8 more from the two cup competitions.

Top Goalscorer - Kanye Diedrick-Roberts

Player of the Season - Tom Walker

Manager of the Season - Me

Tom Walker has left leaving a gap to fill on the left wing, so I'll be searching for a replacement or as close as I can get to one. I'll also be looking for a few defenders and striker and as Allinson is out of sorts in goal that will be another position that needs addressing. That's the end of my first season, I'll be blogging about my second season in charge of FC United in the next few days. Hope you enjoy the read.

Football Manager 2018 Main Save

I started playing Football Manager with the release of FM14 and every year I start unemployed and go through the job application process. This year having got the FM18 Beta was no different but for one thing. I normally start in the bowels of the Irish first division dragging a broke, not so great team kicking and screaming to the the top of the table and into the top flight. On this occasion though I started in the Vanarama National League North because that's where the work was at a level I enjoy playing at.

However this is where there was a slight inner conflict and I was also called out on my appointment during my first encounter with the media. I'm a Liverpool supporter. I was appointed the manager of FC United. The reason for taking the job was simple, I didn't want to start FM18 spending ages waiting or looking for work so I applied because there was a vacancy, got an interview, got the job. The media asked if I thought there would be an issue among fans because I'm a Liverpool supporter but 20 games unbeaten helped me out there a little bit.

This brings me to the tale of the tape to date. Below are images of the league table, results and my tactics.

Fixtures and Results:

We've had a solid season, one of the surprises of the season was the Oldham fixture in the FA Cup 2nd round. What annoyed me was we took an early lead in both matched only to give it away 2 minutes later. To be honest we were lucky to stay in the replay, they gave away 2 or 3 penalties but still came out winners.

Tactics:

 Simple 4-4-2

Team Instructions

Objectives set out by the board and our performances in all competitions

So that's where we are at the moment. As of this post we are sitting in 2nd place closing in on a Kidderminster team that have spent the majority of this season sitting on a 10 point cushion at the top of the table. We have the top goal scorer in Kanye Diedrick-Roberts with 21 goals in the league, 29 across all competitions. We have the highest number of goals scored in the league with 64.

It's a bit of a long post as it's my first and kind of playing catch-up, hopefully they'll be a little shorter in the future, I'll post again soon to show how my first season ends up and the inevitable battle to hold onto some of my best players. Hope you enjoyed it and I'll post soon.