FM12: Promotion from Blue Square Bet Premier (BSP)

Another season over, and a good one at that. After a rough patch near the end of the regular season, we managed to stay in 5th, enough to get us to the playoffs. Once we got there we eliminated Luton as I mentioned on the previous post, which led us to the final againstal Forest Green at Old Trafford.

The game wasn't as exciting as the Luton one, but we still managed to provide the fans with a bit of a spectacle, they were definitely pleased. We started the game playing a bit defensively, but managed a nice goal in the first 5 minutes from a counter attack. Aaron Brown was the scorer. Tiago Sala from Forest Green managed a comeback at 13min from a header. At 33min we scored again, with Darwin Perez and then once again just before half-time. The second half wasn't as eventful, but the opposition did manage to score a second goal with Erik Opsahl at 83min. That wasn't enough however to get them into the game again.

Overall, I'd say this was a good season. We even managed to get our finances back to a reasonable place. We finished it with 104,726 pounds on the green, which will definitely help next season when we will need to step up the quality of our game.

FM12: good playoff start in 2013

Well, well, well... The end of this season didn't go as smoothly as I predicted. For some reason we ended up losing a lot of easy games towards the last few fixtures, but we still managed 5th place, which was just enough to make it to the playoffs. Unfortunately, that led us to the top team, Luton, which has been a bit of a pain to deal with before, was our first challenged for the second promotion spot. Last season, if you remember, they were the ones that eliminated us.

Well this season was different. After a cagy first game draw 2x2, we went to play away with Luton for the final. We changed to a 4-5-1 for this game and after 90 minutes we were still tied 1x1. I thought we would have to hold and prey for a penalty shoot-out. Hatch had other plans, and he scored a very opportunistic goal in the first period of OT, which put us in a very comfortable position. We just had to hold on to the score after that point. It was a really great game, and we are now off to the final.

FM12: Playing Arsenal at home

This season has been alright for Darlington, however, I thought we would be doing a little bit better than we are. We had a shaky start but thinks got better as we played more games. On the league we are currently in 4th place, which is good for our goal of getting promoted this season. We just need to keep it up for a few more months. Aside from that we unfortunately ended up losing to Grimsby 0x2 on the 2nd round of the FA Trophy, which apparently pissed off the board. However, to make up for that we had some amazing results in the FA cup. We were not supposed to get past Scunthorpe in the 3rd round of the competition, but we ended up tying the first game and winning our home game. We did not expect this great of a result. This led us to a 4th round game against Arsenal, which was crazy. We had no illusions about getting kicked out of the competition by them, however such a big club brough a full house to our game, which luckily was at home. We had 25033 people watching our game, not even counting TV viewers. This brought us a total of 535608 pounds for just one game, which is such an amazing boost for our finances, we even managed to come out of the red. Currently we have 220K in balance, which might even be enough to keep us afloat to the end of the season. If we do well, we might even be able to spend some more money on salaries next season. What a great thing this Arsenal game was.

FM12: no you can't work in this country!

 After a very solid pre-season campaign, for some reason we didn't actually have a good start. On the positive side, at least our attendance has been improving from last season though. We have also made quite a few changes to the roster, with the addition of some great new loans as well as a few contracted players. Of which I would highlight Franco Miranda (WL/ML), who is quite well rounded and should bring something positive to the team. Loris Karius (GK), who was cut from Manchester City, and I had to snatch him. He's a young goalie with a lot of promise, I think he could easily become our new starting goalie in time. I didn't know who else to show here since I actually like most of our new players, so I picked the Brazillian forward with a lot of good physical attributes Edicarlos (ST).

I also learned that I can't just hire a lot of Brazillians if they don't have appropriate work permit, which made it so I couldn't pick up about half of the players I tried out during pre-season. The lesson there, make sure players are allowed to play for you before you invest yourself emotionally to them.

FM12: Summary of season 11-12

 So here is some more info on how season one played out. I posted upper leagues as well so people can check it out, but also since I plan to making my way up to those leagues, it's good to keep track as well.

Furthermore, I just got the best eleven list from my first season and not too many surprises there, except for Greg Taylor, which I didn't expect to make that list over Arnison. I have made quite a few changes for season two though, I'll probably post those after the pre-season.

Financially, the team did mediocre last year, with a total turnover of £1,597,780, Spending £1,937,828. Our wages alone cost £1,099,926 resulting in a net loss of £340,048. Not great, but it is a hole we can definitely come out of.

FM12: One season in the pocket

Season one has concluded, and here are the stats for my players this season. Now the challenge is to look at who I am going to keep, as there are a lot of contracts comming to an end. I am not being given a whole lot of new funds to keep my team doing well so I will need to make some cuts to keep things moving along. I ended up reaching my boards requirement of making to the playoffs and that was my personal goal as well. To be honest I did not want to get promoted as I feel that next season will be the season we really try to push for a stronger squad and better results. Therefore, I am counting on a promotion next season, and ideally a nice boost in ticket sales.

Overall, I can't say our results look too bad. We had a strong run at the end there, with no losses for quite a while, and close to the playoff we beat some of the top teams of the league without too much effort. Looking at the stats a bit closer I noticed our team had the best record of the league in terms of goals conceded, so I'm pleased with that, only 45 goals agains, with Stockport at 46 and Luton in third with 48. We were 7th in attendance with 2228 on average, but Luton was much higher with 6244 in first place. The biggest stats were probably in the goals scored. We scored 66 goals getting 10th place, where the top team was Fleetwood, with a wooping 117 goals, which is nuts. Luton came second with 90, Lincoln with 89 and York with 85. Fleetwood really stands out in terms of individuals too, with Magno Vieira being the MVP of the league and scoring 42 goals, which was just spectacular, no wonder they won the season. Second came Luton's Stuart Fleetwood with 34 and Jason Walker (York) with 24. Quite a range just at the top 3. Our best players were Liam Hatch with 10 and Ryan Brooke / Adam Rundle with 8. Kris Taylor, one of my favorite players scored 7.

Chandler was the 3rd best passed in the season, which was nice, with 83% completion, where Akwasi Asante had 84% and Matty Blair 83%. So really was a close competition here. Ratings were dominated by Fleetwood, with six players in the top ten. Magno Vieira of course led with 7.46, having Sean Clancy second with 7.26. Our top players were Ian Miller (7.05) in 36th and Liam Hatch (6.94) in 66th place.

FM12: season 0.5 results and transfers

Since I joined the team I got a couple of players on loan, such as Jordan Clark (ST - Barnsley), Ryan Brooke (ST - Oldham) and Callum Morris (MR - Wigam). For the most part they have been OK. Morris is probably the only one I'm not too sure about. The board is "okay" with both Clark and Morris, but they have been pleased with Ryan Brooke, who I also think has been useful to the squad. I also brought three players to the team as free transfers, and out of those I still have high hopes for Elebert and Thompson. Elebert has been injured a lot, so I haven't seen him much. Thompson is new, but he's versatile and promising.

The results so far can be found below. I don't think we're doing too well on BSP, as we are on 7th place with 46 pts in 27 games. However, we've been doing well in the FA Cup and the FA Trophy, probably better than expected. So, I think as long as we pick up our game for the next few months we should be able to meet our goals for the season, which are just to reach the playoffs.
 

 

FM12: Half a season with the Quackers

I've played a good half a season with this new game and I'm enjoying it despite the transition period. Darlington is a lower league team (BSP) which I picked because I figured it would be a nice challenging game. Because of their large stadium I thought the room for growth was already there, making this a good candidate for me. On the negative side, this team is pretty lacking on funds, and our facilities are nothing to brag about.

We started off the season with no debt, which at this level I think is actually quite nice. I wasn't given much for buying players, but I don't think this would have been different anywhere else in BSP. Salary wise, I am allowed £14821 but my team was almost maxed out when I got it. I didn't really play smart and ended up keeping the majority of my players (by that I mean everyone), which isn't great for my financial situation. I guess season 1 I'm hoping to just make it to the playoff, and get better for season 2, when I should be able to have more money and ideally better players to get ready for a promotion.

Darlington Arena, as I mentioned is quite big, seating 25k people. The corporate facilities are "good", training facilities are "fairly basic" and I have a "basic youth facility". To compliment that, I have "adequate junior coaching" and "fairly basic youth recruitment". As I said, not great, but I'm hoping this will get better with time.

Tactics wise, I had to play around a bit initially to get a good thing going. I'm embarrassed to say, this too much longer than I'd like but now my formation is the one from the top picture. A simple 4-4-2 with "rigid" philosophy and "attacking" strategy. A few modifications I made to the default 4-4-2 is the Limited Defender I employ at the back, and the use of "defensive" full backs a lot of the time. I'm wondering if this is a wise idea though. In the center nothing unusual, just your average wide midfielders and central mids (one on D and one on Auto). Up front I have a Target man set for support, where usually I keep my favorite striker, Liam Hatch. The other forward is usually a poacher set to attack, in general I try to put less versatile strikers here. I haven't been scoring as much as I would like, so I am still tweaking my attack. My biggest strategic issue for the first few months is the fact I had my team passing more on the short side, and turns out poor sides do better with longer passing options.

Starting anew - Darlington (Blue Square Bet Premier)

So here I go again, with a new series that will likely not have an ending. I'm thinking maybe this will be the one where I take the team a bit further, we'll see. Anyway, I picked a BSP Premier team this time around, I've played lower than that before and it was quite a bit of fun, but I want a team that maybe already have a bit more of a foundation. For that reason I picked "The Quakers", here is the intro I got:

This is my first game in FM12, so I'm hoping to do a bit of a review as I go along. The game looks a bit more polished but I'm hoping thye haven't messed too much with the engine.

AC Zoah 1x1 Barrow

The game started with an early injury of Dennis Young, making our job a little bit more difficult. I was forced to play Creeper Johnson on an odd position. At 30 minutes Barrow scored a goal with Josh Langley. I tried to play our team more defensively after the goal, but the team really wasn't able to create much during this game. At 90 minutes we were still losing by a goal which produced an overtime situation. I subbed out Billy McKay and Levi Reid due to they condition at that stage and brough in Bowerman at the front and Adam Wright to take over the right midfield.

At 119 Bowerman was able to create an opportunity that started with Patrick Ada Stealing the ball from Jarvis, The passing the ball to Robinson and Slokhon, who sent a through ball aimed towards Bowerman. A trully great opportunity for AC Zoah to take the lead and try to hold it.

at 120 the whistle was blown and we had moved into the final. Great result for our side.

And all this was from Barrow's lack of trying, we just managed to play well under their pressure.

Well executed plan.

This game went fairly well for us. Seem like our tactics were right for the job. The team didn't play good looking football, but we were very effective at making them take poor chances and capitalizing from the few shots we actually managed to get. This is how it all went down ->

Just as things were looking good

Just as things were looking good this season I had a few bad games. As you can see from the graph below I was keeping AC Zoah up in the top 7 of the league, and for a while I was in the top 5. Well just as the year was ending I lost two games in a row, one against Eastwood and one against Corby. Overall the season has been very good so far, and aside from this final stretch, I have to say we look like promotion contenders. I'm a bit scared about how I would do in the next tier but, I probably just need to get some new players if that actually happens.

Part of the reason for this good run so far are a few players including our new Billy McKay who has been great, scoring 14 goals so far and making 4 assists in total, as well as a lot of great collaborations to other goals. We also have a new goalie who has been incredible too, his name is Callum Barratt, and after 21 appearances his average rating is 6.78.

let's see what I have to work with...

GK	Quality (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)	Season Wage (K)
Danny Simon	44.6	19	0	4.5
Tom Harrison	40.8	21	0	8.1
J Wood	40.6	17	4	2.16
DC	Fast DC (0-100%)	Tall DC (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Patrick Ada	49.2	49.6	19.0	6
Creeper J	46.9	45.2	18.0	8
C McAughtrie	48.2	47.7	31.0	6
Sam Griffiths	50.4	46.3	19.0	40
Rob Pyle	49.5	45.3	18.0	28
Rob Terrace	41.2	38.4	17.0	8
FB	FB-d (0-100%)	FB-a (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Alex Forde	38.5	35.4	21.0	0
J Lomax	47.8	43.4	18.0	70
Jon Patrick	45.8	40.4	21.0	8
D Young	43.7	36.8	18.0	12
A Francis	35.7	36.3	27.0	0
A Bentley	41.2	34.7	16.0	4.5
MC	MC-d (0-100%)	MC-a (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Adam Johnson	42.4	42.0	19.0	22
D Wrack	46.8	47.3	36.0	1
R Davidson	43.4	42.8	22.0	8
P Bolland	53.6	45.9	32.0	3.5
Brett Solkhon	52.1	44.0	29.0	3.5
J Robinson	47.1	43.8	20.0	75
Simon Lewis	31.9	29.6	17.0	4.5
MR/ML	Winger (0-100%)	MC-a (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Matthew Hull	37.9	36.7	18.0	0
F Kasiama	40.8	40.7	21.0	9
Levi Reid	40.3	39.7	28.0	10
Markus Person	43.3	35.6	19.0	9
Simon Colbeck	41.4	36.2	16.0	7
AMC	AMCC (0-100%)	R & L (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
A Wright	40.3	40.3	18.0	14
T Clarke	37.6	36.8	20.0	1.5
FC	FC fast (0-100%)	Target Man	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Ben Mills	37.9	40.5	23.0	9
R Heywood	36.9	37.7	19.0	4
N Wellecomme	40.2	44.8	28.0	14
G Bowerman	44.8	43.6	20.0	60
H Curr	36.9	33.6	18.0	24
B Pollock	32.9	30.8	15.0	6
Danny Green	37.3	41.3	18.0	0

2012/2013 LLM - Perhaps this will be our year

A new season begins and I have spoken to the board regarding our expectations, I really would like to aim for a top 5 finish and maybe even a promotion this season. So the board has agreed to increase the salary cap to 31,581 and 1,300 for youth players which should allow us some new players in our squad. I really would like to revamp our squad this year and get them ready for a possible promotion. The team is still struggling financially but I really think increasing our performance as well as the reputation of players coming in will help us in that front as well.

-> apparently according to Sky Bet our odds this season are 40-1, and they say we are contenders for relegation (we'll show them), and Southport and Gainsborough are the favorites for promotion this season.

I was also made aware that our team is now one of the older teams in the league, as well as slowest, however we have an edge when it comes to strength as well as passing ability. In terms of our new youth players, ones to keep an eye on are Terry Naismith (CM), left midfielder Simon Colbeck and Striker Ben Pollock.

Best of season 2

Here are the best players of season two, my personal favorites were Kasiama (ML), Wellecomme (ST), Lomax (DR) and Patrick (DL). Dennis Young and Bowerman also had important roles, but just were not as consistent over the course of the year.

Season 2 concluded - 10th Place

So I'm done season 2 and unfortunately I don't feel that Zoah FC actually made enough progress this season. Somehow the board is happy with the outcome but I definitely had higher hopes. Finishing in 10th place is worst than last season and as the figure below indicates we were actually performing well in the first half of the season. For a while there it looked like we could have been in the top 5.

I wish I could explain why there was such a drop in performance but I'm determined to do better next season. But as an effort to improve the team I have signed three new players for next season, I do believe I need to have better quality players in order to jump up in quality. I figured my main areas where improvement is necessary are the center midfield and my center back. I would appreciate on people's opinions on these signings.







Just for kicks, here are the season summaries from Blue Square as well as higher tiers.

New signing, Griffiths

Griffiths is our new addition to the team, I decided to play him on his very first opportunity and he did not disappoint. He not only kept the opposition out of our side but also scored a goal and had another great chance from a set piece. What a great free signing, apparently he was let go from the Wolves, lucky for us.

I've also been looking at 2 other players Patrick Ada from Cameroon and Shane Huke from Australia, they seem like solid signings but I'm thinking I may not be able to get them, we'll see.

Beginning of 2012 = slump

Things have started to go a bit downhill in 2012, I'm not exactly sure why, We're playing a bit less games and I haven't really changed anything major in the team. I supposed we've had a few big injuries but I really don't understand how a few players being injured for a while could all of a sudden make the rest of the team drop in performance. So I've started to look at the game analysis and noticed that my CDs and my goalie have horrendous passing percentages, I'm now wondering if that's just part of the life of a lower league defender or if I should be changing my tactics a bit to make it so they don't try direct passes every time. I'm starting to tinker with that.

New hot prospect from Sveeeden

So I just bought myself a new hot prospect, Markus Person who's a score 44.6 winger using my formula. Not too bad for an 18 year old.

A great run so far in season 2

Things are definitely going well this season for AC Zoah, we're currently 8th in our league but our performance is good enough to get us in the top 4 I believe. Here are our games so far.



Our last game was particularly excited as we made it into the 2nd round of the FA Cup.



Finances are still a bit of an issue but this win got us around 30k and we also had an infusion of cash last month as well.