Football Manager 2012 Scarborough AFC season 5 report, all about the money

Hey guys and welcome to my Football Manager 2012 Scarborough AFC season 5 report. During my last update the Seadogs won promotion to the Blue Square Premier in style, we also won the FA Trophy and reached the fourth round of the FA Cup. Among all this the board also invested in our facilities, but that wasn’t what put a smile on my face…that came with the news that Scarborough Athletic would be building their own stadium and moving back to the City of Scarborough where we truly belong. That won’t happen for a fair few years yet, but I am counting down the days! Anyway, lets get kicking with the present as I have another promotion push to organize and this time we could really be up against it. The Blue Square Premier has some quality sides and if Scarborough are to compete, I’ll need to strengthen most of my squad.

Despite my optimism the board seemed overly pessimistic, requesting us to just avoid relegation. But this certainly didn’t effect their generous budget, while I have earned the club a sizable bank balance, I wouldn’t have expected the board to offer a transfer budget of almost £100K.

As ever the media were a lot closer to home suggesting my boys may be able to mount an outside promotion push…

Talking of a step up and promotion chances, if Scarborough were to stand any chance in this league I needed to offload the deadwood. Most of which were players that featured regularly last season, while they worked wonders I looked through almost every BSP side to see how my squad compared…and the theory is that if any of my players couldn’t play for the best team in my division then they’d be offloaded. This has been my minimum requirement from day one and seems to be working.

Now looking at the transfers in I’d like to draw your attention to some outstanding talent. The names Josh Ross (MC) and Jonathan Southern (ST) should remain in your frontal lobe for a long time as they will feature for Scarborough for many years to come. Both are just 16 years old and have mega talent. All the other players are good signings that could have an effect in L2 which is another one of my requirements…any signing must be able to hold his own in at least the division above mine. Obviously this won’t be possible forever but has again worked wonders so far. As for those two youngsters, you’ll have to wait to see their profiles till later in the post. :)

I was happy with the new signings and my assistant managers squad depth report suggested we could seriously challenge at this level. Our attacking options seemed very extensive again as they have for the last few seasons. But the big question is could my defense cope with the step up in class? Well lets move onto the results and find out.

Results — August to October

New league, new season, same old results. :) Scarborough managed 13 wins, 2 draws and just one loss during the first three months of the season. We also beat Dover in the FA Cup to reach the first round. You may also notice Bob Shepherd’s name popping up a lot, this kid was doing the business for us again after an incredible season in the Blue Square North. Needless to say he had attracted some attention from big, big clubs.

Results — November to December

The fantastic form continued into winter as Scarborough won their next 8 league games and drew just once. We also walked through the first and second round of the FA Cup against fairly easy opposition. December also saw the start of our FA Trophy campaign as we thrashed Kettering in the first round. Now look very closely at the goal scorers, where as the first three months saw Shepherd’s name pop up, the winter months saw Southern (my second striker) score a handful of goals. Why do you think this is? And remember I only ever use one forward in my tactics. ;)

We’ll move onto the shift in goal scoring next, but first lets check the Blue Square Premier league table. After 25 games Scarborough sit top of the pack, a staggering 17 points clear of second. The season seems over already bar those all important cup competitions, and this helped me make a very, very big decision…

January transfers

I have brought your attention to Bob Shepherd time and time again during this post, this is of coarse for a very important reason. My star striker and wonderkid was subject to interest from Blackburn, Stoke, Peterborough and the list goes on. With so many high profile clubs showing an interest I couldn’t get Shepherd to sign a new contract and with just 18 months remaining on his current deal I had to role the dice. So, I plucked up some courage and offered him out to clubs for £4 million, I know the amount is ludicrous but I wanted to get a minimum of £1.5 million so thought I’d start high. A few offers came in including one from Hull of £900K and Blackburn at around £1.2 million, but the offer I accepted was that of Belgian side, Genk, which came in at £2.3 million. Such a staggering sum took me back a little, but once composed again I quickly clicked accept and after long contract negotiations Shepherd was on his way (click the players name to see profile.)

You will also notice that I have mentioned Southern’s name a bit recently, this is because the 16 year old is Shepherd’s direct replacement and seems almost as talented. In fact, if it weren’t for Southern, I would never had sold Shepherd but I still wanted to spend a little cash. So I brought in Jimmy Wolfe for £75K who will act as backup to Southern. I also took the opportunity to strengthen my left wing, signing Hagan for £3K and my defense with Bowen who cost £4.5K. All these players were bought with a view to playing well in the league above.

Results — January to February

So with Shepherd gone, Southern had some big boots to fill and I was excited to see how he coped with the burden. January and February saw 9 league matches played and 9 league matches won. Not to mention Scarborough’s narrow 3-2 loss to Premier League side Bolton in the FA Cup. The only negative was losing to Lewes in the FA Trophy which shocked me somewhat. But Southern scored 10 goals which equated to a goal for every appearance.

Results — March to April

Scarborough finished the season off with 10 wins, one draw and as many losses from 12 games. This domination just summed up the last five years and it was also nice to see the entire squad chipping in with some goals.

The Seadogs finished top of the table by 41 points, this was probably the most ridiculous margin we have won a division by since my reign began.  But more to the point, Scarborough are back in the Football League where we belong after being screwed over all those years ago…I as a fan feel a small piece of justice even though this is just a virtual game, but the journey still has many chapters to go.

Squad stats, facts and finances

Such a brilliant season is always going to leave you with some outstanding performers, so rather than go through them all I’ll leave you to examine the squad stats. But below that is my favorite three players of the season and they are all by far the best wonderkids Scarborough have to offer.

Top performers

3. Josh Ross (MC, 17 years old)

2. Nikos Nikolaou (AMR, 18 years old)

1. Jonathan Southern (ST, 17 years old)

After selling my ex-best striker, Shepherd, for £2.3 million I asked the board to invest in almost every area possible and while some were turned down like making us professional and extending the scouting range, many others were accepted. I managed to upgrade the youth recruitment which was none existent, training facilities were extremely poor and youth facilities which seemed more like a play ground than a football pitch…

All these upgrades came to a cost of £1.4 million plus the January transfers I made meant a total of £1.48 million was spent from the £2.3 million received from Shepherds’s transfer. Not bad at all and this left Scarborough with a £1.5 million bank balance, a very nice sum to take into League Two.

Well that about does it for today, thank you all for reading and I hope you are enjoying the ride. Scarborough have made it to the Football League after 5 seasons of battling in the depths of English football and I feel like part of my challenge is already complete. Some amazing talent is to thank for what we have achieved to date, but what we can achieve from here on out could hang on my chances of keeping this crop of youth together. Either way I am delighted with the squad I have built and can’t wait to challenge them in League Two, I hope you’ll follow me there as the Seadogs continue their journey. Until next time please feel free to comment below or just check out the illustrated journey to date…the two stars represent my two main goals, one of which has been completed and the other I have just added. ;)