Dorchester Town Story — January 2012

Hello dear friends and welcome to the year… 2012! The Dorchester Town story moves into a new year with an optimistic atmosphere at the club as we were top of the League Two table at the end of December, four points clear of the second placed team. A good run in the cup competitions also boosted the club’s finances, our balance is not in red anymore and that surely is a good sign.

Despite all those positive aspects I still was a bit concerned by the amount of depth I had in the squad so I decided to make some moves on the transfer market. As you know from the last post I offloaded two backup players but my transfer budget was still limited to zero pounds, zero pennies. I went on looking for loans and surprisingly got a couple of players from Arsenal on three month deals.

The first one is a Brazilian right/left winger called Anderson, a very talented and determined youngster that could at least provide some backup during those three months. I think that he is the first Brazilian that ever played for Dorchester :)

I mentioned before that veteran striker Leonardo Biagini announced his retirement at the end of the season and he was already showing signs of losing most of his pace and abilities. I thought that paying his wage was unnecessary at that point so I offered him another position in the club, a new job as a scout for a much lower wage than he was getting as a player. He accepted so I had a new scout but needed another striker :) Luckily Arsenal agreed to send Rhys Murphy on loan for three months, a strong striker with decent technique that should cover our attacking department pretty well. Oh, and if you were thinking that Arsenal became our parent club, think again! I asked the board to find a parent club but they failed to comply yet again!

With the signing of Anderson as a winger I decided to offload another one of my Romanian backup players, winger Carol Domondi. I offered him to clubs and asked an unlikely 200,000 pounds for him. There was some interest from his (and my) homeland and eventually he was sold for a staggering 150,000 pounds to a Romanian second division club!

Alright then, let’s move on to the pitch for a while. Our first game of the new year was at home with Port Vale, the team that knocked us out of the FA Cup in December. It was a pretty unjust result, we dominated that game and hit the woodwork no less than three times so I was looking for revenge and so were my players. The first minutes of the game saw us taking the game to our opponents, we were knocking on their door time and again but their defense was not showing signs of cracking. We needed something special to break the deadlock and that came courtesy of new signing Rhys Murphy, he scored on his debut with a powerful shot from the edge of the area, straight under the crossbar! Around the hour mark Omar Koroma doubled our lead after stealing the ball from a defender and sliding it past the keeper. We could have scored a few more but I guess the fans were happy with the display.

The next game was away at 16th placed Yeovil and I was looking forward to another win. The first half was fairly even but entertaining, there were quite a few shots from both sides but most of the attempts were off target. We showed more bite after the break but since my strikers were lacking inspiration centre back Stefan O’Brien stepped up to score a double blow from corner kicks.

We had another away game coming up as we were traveling to meet 21st placed Northampton. It wasn’t a very spectacular game by any means but we settled it during the first half when left winger Rosalia and striker Kazmierowski rounded off good team moves to give us a comfortable lead. The second half was much more quiet but Australian midfielder Chris Herd saved the overall impression with a spectacular last minute goal, he fired the ball in with a vicious strike from 30 yards out, straight into the top corner.

Now let’s get back to the transfer market for a few moments. With Domondi‘s record sale the board slipped around 20,000 pounds through their fingers so I finally had an above zero transfer budget! I was pretty excited so I made several offers for players that I had been monitoring since July but eventually I could sign only one of them. I spent 12,000 pounds, a new record transfer for the club, on Romanian right winger Tiberiu Paduraru. He is a pretty skillful player and I hope that his technique will be appreciated by our fans. He never went past the Romanian second division for some reason, I am counting on his determination to prove that he deserved to play on better stages in his career. Go to the next page to read the rest of the story.

Go to the next page to read the rest of the story.

I had just one more transfer in mind before wrapping up the winter window, I felt I needed another backup striker since Rhys Murphy‘s loan was going to expire somewhere at the end of March. I had an offer accepted for a Brazilian forward, a very exciting prospect I might add, but he was not granted a work permit. Under those circumstances I went for I player that I also tried to grab in July, Spanish forward Pedro. He was available on a free transfer and I guess he should make a decent backup striker although he seems to be quite lazy on the pitch. His finishing might get us out of trouble on a few occasions though.

That wraps up our transfer activity, let’s get back to the matches. Our next game was the very important Johnstone’s Trophy South final first leg away at League One side Gillingham. We already met them once this season, in the FA Cup, and we managed to beat them back in November. We were playing against the odds again but I was hoping to pull off another upset. The upset looked quite unlikely three minutes into the game though, we had a nightmare start as Gillingham took the early lead. The team reacted very well to that early blow and the reward came seven minutes before half time, a quick exchange between Kazmierowski and Koroma set the Gambian/British striker clean through and he powered it straight into the top corner. That was a confidence boost and the team continued to play very well after the interval, we were dominating the game. We missed a couple of chances and then it happened, Gillingham scored their second after a corner kick scuffle. It was quite frustrating but the bitter taste of defeat was washed off during injury time by Rhys Murphy, his shot from inside the area hit the crossbar, bounced right back into his path and Arsenal‘s striker finished it off with a diving header. I was pleased that we scored two goals away from home, it’s a good advantage to take into the second leg.

Back to the league, our next game was away at 18th placed Brentford. We had a decent first half but not nearly good enough to pose any problems to our opponents. My lads started the second half looking more lively and things were looking up after a few minutes when Brentford‘s right back got sent off for a two-footed tackle. We failed to capitalize on that advantage though and Brentford took the lead thanks to a superb free kick shot from the edge of our area. Revy Rosalia got us back on level terms nine minutes from time with a fine volley from inside the box and then we went all out attack to clinch the victory. That was not going to happen though, the referee awarded them a pretty bizarre penalty kick and we were one goal down again. A desperate push forward during injury time saw us creating another clear cut chance but it went to waste so we lost the game…

We had a good chance to recover though as our next game was at home against 19th placed Accrington. We got off to a flyer as Bulgarian winger Aleksandar Mladenov rounded off a lowing team move and the game was all easy from that point on. Brazilian winger Anderson netted his first goal for Dorchester, then Kazmierowski added another goal to his name and last but not least new signing Tiberiu Paduraru came off the bench to slot in his first goal for the club from a penalty kick. Accrington were worthy opponents only during the last half hour, they were desperately chasing a consolation goal but my defense was not in a forgiving mood that day.

The last game of the month was at home with relegation threatened Tranmere, they were sitting 22nd. Rhys Murphy banged in two goals by half time, I surely regret not having him until the end of the season. Revy Rosalia scored too and we were 3-0 up at half time. We were totally dominating the game but left back Fabio Daprela wanted to make the game more interesting: he was under no pressure at all but he headed one past our own keeper! Our win was not in danger though, we continued to control the game and midfielder Mimoun El Kadi settled it with a late header.

We were still top of the table and the gap widened significantly: we were 12 points clear of the second placed and 18 points clear of the fourth! Promotion is ours to lose…

Omar Koroma was elected League Two player of the month, he surely deserved the award. The Gambian striker recovered well from an injury that sidelined him for most of December and added a few more goals to bring his total to 14 this season. He is also a very good tactical player in my set up, he always tracks back to win balls in midfield and he played 9 assists, mostly for his attacking partner Kazmierowski. His good displays didn’t go unnoticed though, a few League One clubs are monitoring him but there were no offers made until now.

I want to secure promotion as soon as possible so I would like to get five wins out of the five games next month. We will have to focus on the Johnstone’s Trophy game though, we have a good chance of going to Wembley for the final if we manage to defend the 2-2 away result.

That’s how we started our new year, 2012 seems to be pretty good for us until now. Thanks a lot for reading and don’t forget to join our brand new Premier League Predictions Contest, we’ll have a long season and lots of fun!