League 2, League 1, Championship and Resignation

My 9th and 10th seasons in charge have been good, achieving promotion from League 2 and finishing strong in League 1. My few weeks in the Championship were not.

Season 9: 2025/2026 - League 2 6th - Promotion via Playoffs

I was a bit surprised by this season. We got off to a bad start and never really improved, only stringing together 3 or 4 wins at a time followed by a mixture of losses and draws, for our first 5 fixtures we won our first game 3 - 2, then crashed out of the Carabao Cup first round, 3 - 1 to Sheffield United. Our next game was a scoreless draw, we then lost 3 - 2 and drew 4 - 4. So this start hadn't filled me with confidence and given that I had been considering stepping down for the last 2 seasons I felt I missed my opportunity to jump before I was pushed. Somehow an inconsistent season resulted with us finishing 6th in the league and eventually going on to earn promotion through the playoffs and finishing the season as we started, putting 3 past Hartlepool, this time stopping them scoring anymore than 1. This time I'm done I'm stepping down and moving on before I overstay my welcome. Or so I thought.

Final standings in League 2 for the season

Season 10: 2026/2027 - League 1 3rd - Promotion via Playoffs

Here we go again, another season and more wondering should I have left a hero or am I going to stay until I become a villain. We got off to an alright start, again we went out of the Carabao Cup first round this time against Leeds. Our league results weren't bad though and that was the important thing, we started to pick up wins and win consistently, however I was very aware of how, in the past, we started strong only to trail off later in the season. We lost and drew a few but the victories were there too. We did hit a patch where we couldn't buy a win for five or six matches but we bounced back from that and despite losing those matches we never fell out of the playoffs. The only thing that really bugged me about those losses is that they came at a time when we could've moved into 1st and probably pulled away. We finished strong though, winning our final 7 matches to take 3rd and going on to smash Wigan 7 - 0 in the Playoff final.

Final standings in League 1

Season 11: 2027/2028 - Championship - Resigned

Despite making my mind up to resign at the end of the last campaign, here I am as FC United manager for an 11th season. I had turned down several extension offers but in the last couple of days of my contract we finally reached an agreement. They wanted to extend my contract until the end of the 2029/2030 season but if I was going to stay I only wanted a 1 year extension because this was going to be my last year at the helm of FC United. Before the season started I was having doubts about my choice to stay on because where the players' respect for me was 'Excellent' due to my time at the club, it had now dropped to 'Very Good'. Was I turning into Arsene Wenger? Probably. We lost 2 - 0 to Burnley, Lost the first round of the Carabao Cup 2 - 0 to Doncaster who are in League 2 and then Sheffield United hammered us 4 - 0. I decided it was time to leave and I will now be searching for a new club. I will be looking outside England because I don't want to face FC United as an opposition. After 20 league games had passed I checked in on them and they had dropped to the bottom of the Championship with 17 losses and 3 draws.

FC United - Conclusion

I really enjoyed my time at FC United, I had originally planned to only stay for 5 years if I felt we were progressing, if not it would be 3 years and move on. Instead it turned into a decade in which we were crowned champions of the Vanarama National League North and the Vanarama National League and back to back promotions from League 2 to League 1 and on to the Championship and I think it was the attachment I felt for the club that stopped me leaving. The only regrets I have from my time at the club is that we were were promoted though winning the playoffs, I would have preferred a clean sweep of silverware on my way up the leagues. Also I would have liked another 2 or 3 seasons in League 1 to develop the team and have them ready for the challenge of the Championship. 

Honours

2026/2027

League 1 Promotion Playoff Winners

Manager of the Month (x2)

2024/2025

League 2 Promotion Playoff Winners

Manager of the Month (x1)

2023/2024

Manager of the Month (x1)

2022/2023

Vanarama National League Champions

Manager of the Year

Manager of the Month (x1)

2021/2022

Manager of the Month (x1)

2019/2020

Vanarama National League North Champions

Manager of the Year

Manager of the Month (x2)

2017/2018

Manager of the Year

Manager of the Month (x1)

Life in the VNL and Surviving League 2

I fell behind on the blog and I've covered a bit of ground since my last post so there are going to be several short paragraphs covering the last 5 seasons, from our survival, establishment and eventual success in the Vanarama National League to 2 years of League 2 football after upgrading the club status to professional.

Season 4: 2020/2021 - Vanarama National League 16th
Our first season in the VNL was a success in my opinion, we were tasked with fighting relegation and that's what we did. We got off to a decent start and picked up a few early results using a 4-1-4-1 tactic but it gradually fizzled out and we dropped down the table. Throughout the middle of the season we couldn't buy a win which saw us yo-yo in and out of the relegation zone for a time thanks to the occasional draw. Towards the business end of the season we started to gain 3 points for a few matches and this helped us to finish 16th in what was a nervy end to our first year in the VNL.

Final standings for 2020/2021 season.

Season 5: 2021/2022 - Vanarama National League 6th

Our second season got off to an inconsistent start, struggling to string together any number of wins. I thought this was the season we were going to to go down because our inconsistency became consistent losing but towards the halfway mark in the football calendar we reversed our fortunes and started to win most of our matches, drawing occasionally and only losing a few. In our final 10 matches we won 7, drew 4 and lost 1. The form we found in the second half of the season left us sitting 6th. In the first round of the promotional playoff we beat Sutton 5-2 but in the semi final Shrewsbury beat us 3-1, leaving us in the VNL for a third season. We got knocked out of the FA Trophy Semi Final on penalties by Carlisle. They beat us in the first leg 2-1, we won the second leg 4-3 and this was what made it so sickening, we were 4-1 up nearing the end of the match and they just fired in 2 quick goals to push it to penalties. This is the last of our cup action as the next few seasons saw us crash out in the first round of all cup competitions.

Standings for Season 2021/2022

Season 6: 2022/2023 - Vanarama National League Champions

We kicked off our third season in good form winning 7 of our first 10 matches, drawing 2 and losing 1. The defeat was a heavy one, 5-1 to Bromley but Stevenage were on the end of a backlash in the following match where we won 6-1. We maintained good momentum throughout the season except for one pocket of games where we went of the boil losing 4 out of 5, but we got back on track. Unfortunately this bad patch gave the other teams a chance to catch up meaning it was only 3 points keeping us on top for the final 5 matches. Our second last match was particularly worrying because Carlisle had been in good form and were after charging to second place like a train. We had a vastly superior goal difference going into the final match of the season so I felt comfortable enough and it was just as well too because we lost 3-1 leaving both us and Carlisle on 90 points but our goal difference was the deciding factor in who moved to League 2 as VNL Champions.

Standings for Season 2022/2023

Season 7: 2023/2024 - League 2 18th

Going into my 7th season I was a little undecided about whether I wanted to continue as manager at FC United because of how close things were at the end of the previous season. If we had won the league by a bigger margin there wouldn't have been any question , I would've felt we had what it took to stay out of the VNL. Anyway I stayed on even though I had a strong feeling we were going to be relegated and during the summer break the board announced that the club was turning professional. There wasn't a lot to report on for my first year in League 2, we had an inconsistent run, we didn't go on any great winning streaks but more importantly we didn't hit any long losing streaks and despite my relegation fears in the summer we finished 18th.

Standings for Season 2023/2024

Season 8: 2024/2025 - League 2 16th

This season saw us improve our final position by 2 places over the previous year  but much the same as the 2023/2024 season it was a fairly mundane campaign. Again it was an inconsistent performance throughout. During this season we leaking some ridiculous goals so this was something I knew we had to address, I tied down a few players who were previously on loan with us and brought some of our academy players into the first team. I felt a bit happier to stay on as manager at this point due to the fact that we were showing signs of improvement and growing into the league plus the board had offered me a contract extension until the end of 2026.

Standings for Season 2024/2025

So that's it, the blog is back up to speed, I think I might post like this more often and accumulate a few seasons together rather than trying to dissect each individual season. Hopefully it won't be as long before the next one