Football Manager Story — Notts Co February 2010

Here we go dear friends, the finishing line is getting closer. My Notts County were in control in League Two at the end of January and we only needed to keep up the good form and earn promotion with a few games to spare. That was just theory though, we still had to earn the points and score the goals on the pitch.

I wanted 5 wins out of 5 games in February and we definitely needed a good start to achieve that. The first game was away at 21st placed Grimsby, a team held us to a 0-0 draw in December. We had a poor first half and this time too and Grimsby were leading 1-0 at the break. Things got better in the last 45 minutes and striker Francois Zoko stepped up again, he was back after a nasty injury and wanted to prove that he still deserved a place in the first team. Unfortunately he picked up a knock again, another two weeks out for him…

The next game was at home with 6th placed Rochdale, a tough opponent that we managed to beat 2-0 in November. The game didn’t begin well for us, Rochdale scored with a fabulous shot from 30 yards out. We reacted very well though and Tinga blasted in one of his trademark shots only two minutes later. We took the lead just before the break and dominated the game quite clearly.

Next up, we had an away game at 21st placed Aldershot, a team that we defeated 2-0 in November. We didn’t have to try very hard to win again, veteran striker Ade Akinbiyi headed in his 10th goal of the season in the 54th minute and then we played around waiting for the final whistle.

We had another away game coming up, at 20th placed Darlington. We won the previous game 2-0 in December and I expected another confident win. We played very well indeed, controlled the ball but scored only once. Anyway, it was our 4th win out of the 5 games that we had to play in February.

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Four down, one to go. The last game of the month was at home with 16th placed Hereford, a team that we demolished back in December, it ended 5-0 then. We did very well this time too and young Russian striker Nikita Andreev was beginning to show his lethal touch. A confident win to finish a solid run of form in February.

With that win we had a playoff place already in the bag but who wants playoffs, we were only a few games away from earning promotion!

We’ll have only four games in March and I hope we will get promoted before the end of the month…

That’s how it was, I had the feeling that the team is beginning to work even without me, the squad is beginning to gel and the passing game is improving a lot.  League Two is almost over for us, we just have to win two or three more games to get promoted and I will do my best to make sure that we won’t fail.