Football Manager Story — Notts County December 2009

Here we go again my friends, the Notts County Football Manager 2010 story continues… After a very good month of November we had to confirm our status and keep on winning until the end of the year. I didn’t expect an easy month though, we had some very difficult games ahead of us.

The start was an easy one though, we had a home game with the weakest team in League Two, Darlington. We solved the game in the first half but we got a bit lazy in the second, I expected to score more goals this time.

Next up, an away game at 13th placed Hereford, I wanted a good performance from my boys. And they didn’t disappoint me this time, they played a fantastic first half and scored four goals before the break! It was a solid win but it had a bad part too, my best centre back, Shelton Martis, got injured during the game and was going to be out for at least a month!

We had to continue our good form in the next game, at home with 11th placed Accrington. We produced a solid performance and could have scored a lot more goals, I was satisfied. But I had reasons to be upset too… Our best goalscorer, Francois Zoko, picked up a knock and was going to be out for at least 7 weeks, that was a big blow…

With all those injuries our chances against League One side Huddersfield were getting slimmer. Reaching the Jonhnstone’s Paint Trophy semi final was already a good achievement but we surely hoped for more. The lads fought well, they worked hard but the opponent proved to be superior. However, we were pretty close to going for the penalty shootout again but the referee took a harsh decision by awarding Huddersfield a controversial penalty… I congratulated the lads for their hard work and tried to encourage them, it was a painful defeat.

The next game was away at 4th placed Bournemouth, a tough game to play after a disheartening defeat. In fact, we produced the most disappointing performance of the season, we were unrecognizable. The good thing was that our defense worked well again so we came out with a goalless draw.

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Next up, a home game with 18th placed Grimsby. We had to get back on track but it was difficult, Grimsby‘s overcrowded defense was tough to crack. We didn’t play well at all, I was beginning to feel a bit concerned about the way we played.

The last game of the year was away at 11th placed Burton, a team that we defeated 1-0 in September. We had to get a win to come out of the difficult situation and the lads gave everything they had to get the victory. We finally produced a solid performance and got the win that we deserved to finish the year on an optimistic note.

We had 62 points after 24 games and we were still unbeaten, I definitely hope to remain undefeated until the end of the season and maybe get more than 100 points.

Here is how the player stats look like at this point of the season, most of them played very well so far but there are a few that disappointed me and I will most probably let them go in January. And there is another thing that worries me, Brendan Moloney, our right back, will probably leave the team because the loan contract expires at the end of December. His team doesn’t want to renew the agreement so I will have to look for another right back.

Francois Zoko was undoubtedly a great factor for our performances, he scored 18 goals in 21 games for us! He started his career in France’s second division, then moved to Belgium but never had a great season so far. The most league goals scored in a season in his career was… 7, now he scored 11 in 16 league games! I guess that he finally found the place where he can shine.

January will begin with a beautiful game for us, Premier League side Bolton will come to Meadow Lane for the 3rd round of the FA Cup!

That’s how the first part of the season was, so far so good… I have some transfer money to spend in January, around 2 million euro, and I guess that I will use most of that money to bring some youngsters that could be important first team players in the next seasons. I also have to sell some of the players from the current squad, some of them proved that they can not be useful for the club’s future. But there will be more about the transfers in the next post, stay tuned to find out who will come and who will go :)