Cambridge United: An exercise in futility…

Hello friends and welcome back to my Cambridge United story where last time we saw that The «U’s» were totally out of their depth in the Premier League, however were doing remarkably well in Europe which is where I’ll start.

Euro Cup

Having topped the group in November we had two games remaining with a difficult trip to Turkey and then finishing up at home to Inter Milan. Well we lost both games and consequently went out of the competition but we can be proud of the clubs first ever run in European competition.

Table

FA Cup

We had been drawn at home to East Anglian rivals Ipswich Town in the third round and a last minute equalizer by Conor Newton forced a replay in which we dominated and sent us through to the fourth round. There would be no repeat of last seasons 2-0 win over Arsenal this time and we we soundly beaten at the Emirates Stadium.

Premier League

Well, there’s not much to say here other than we didn’t win a single game after November. Following the FA Cup defeat against Arsenal I decided to play out the season in «holiday mode» as I basically couldn’t get anything to work in terms of tactics «in game instructions» or focused training over the previous two months. Morale had hit rock bottom and there was no way back. Rather than show you a sequence of «red dot» losses here’s the final table which eloquently sums up our performance in the top flight.

We now officially hold the title of the worst ever performance in the Premier League with just 8 points and have easily surpassed Derby County’s «goals against» tally in the 2007 — 2008 season.

Transfer News

The January window saw several players leave The Abbey Stadium mainly because they were unwilling to sign new contracts and who could blame them really? On the other hand they had all played terribly so I thought why not sell them now at a low price rather than get nothing come the summer.

Players Out

Players In

In a frantic attempt to salvage something out of the season I brought in most defenders but as you have already seen this was a futile attempt to save a season that was beyond repair.

Other News:

As the season came to a close we did secure a new kit sponsorship deal, our best one yet and the board also announced another stadium expansion.

I’m not going to bother showing you the player ratings, it’s pretty obvious they were all bad.

Well that’s concludes a rather miserable looking report and I now have  the  unwelcome honour of being the first manager to get a team relegated on Football Manager Stories. My players were terrible, my tactical abilities not good enough and therefore I’m not sure at this point where this story is going. Some may say that this has been a «realistic» season though it’s still quite humiliating to share something like this against so many successes both here and on other sites.

I guess I should have taken that Villa job!

Thanks for reading and your support of this story over the last few seasons.

Kevin.