Notts County FM 2010 Story — January 2010

Hello my friends, the story continues in 2010! At the end of 2009 my Notts County were doing great, 1st placed in League Two and undefeated in 24 league games. It seemed that promotion was in our hands, with a bit of luck and minimum consistency we couldn’t lose what we earned in the first half of the season. As you remember my board gave me some more cash for transfers and I decided to spend it right away. I bought six players, let’s see who they are.

I needed a new right back after Brendan Moloney‘s loan deal expired and Nottingham Forest didn’t want to extend it. I went for a player which I know from real life football, Romanian international Ovidiu Dananae. He is an athletic and reliable right back that could even play in a decent Premier League team. I paid 350K for his and I was delighted when he agreed to sign the contract.

I also needed a pair of centre backs to provide competition for the current first team regulars. I chose to sign a youngster and an experienced player. The youngster is Sean Morrison from League One side Swindon, he is strong and could become a first team regular in the future.

The other centre back, the experienced one, is Lithuanian Andrius Skerla. He wasn’t my first option for this role but after some other players refused to sign I had to get him. He could be a decent solution until the end of the season.

I also needed a new left midfielder to compete with Mitea for a place in the first team and I chose another Romanian, under 21 international Paul Parvulescu. He has good pace and technique, he might become a first team regular sooner than expected.

And now, the biggest signing, 1.5 million euro, with 1 million upfront and another 500K if we get promoted. He’s Brazilian, his name is Tinga, and he is a hard working central midfielder, only 19 years old! He was granted a work permit after we appealed the initial decision and I can see him becoming a leader of the team.

The last signing is a new striker, Russian under 21 international Nikita Andreev. I paid 325K for him to Spanish side Almeria and took advantage of the fact that he didn’t need a work permit, he also has Estonian citizenship. He is an ambitious youngster with good technical qualities. I hope his mental attributes will improve to match his technical abilities soon.

OK, enough about the signings, let’s get to the matches.

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The first game of the year was the FA Cup 3rd round clash with Premier League side Bolton, a game that nobody expected us to win. 14000 fans came to see my boys battling against a far superior opponent and the lads fought well. But it wasn’t enough, Bolton kept the game under control and scored just one goal, enough to get through the next round. We put on a decent display and maybe with a bit of luck we could have hoped for more.

We were out of all cup competitions, now we could focus on the remaining part of the League Two season. The first league game of the year was away at 12th placed Dag & Red, a team that we defeated 2-1 in August. It was even easier this time, we controlled the game with ease and won it without any trouble at all.

The next game was at home with 23rd placed Macclesfield, one of the weakest teams in the league. We defeated them 5-1 in August and I expected a similar outcome again. The team played well and showed solid finishing, new signings Andreev and Tinga scored their first goals for the club with well placed shots.

After that comforting win we had a more difficult game coming up, away at 16th placed Bradford. We won the home game against them 2-1 back in August but this time luck wasn’t on our side. A wild cross hit the woodwork in the 11th minute and bounced into the back of the net after hitting Skerla in the back… We created a few chances to score after that unfortunate event but we missed too many of them, quite frustrating. We scored just one goal eventually and we kept our unbeaten record.

The next game was at home with 19th placed Chesterfield, a team that we managed to beat 5-2 away from home in August. We didn’t play as well this time though, we allowed Chesterfield to create a few chances to score and only Schmeichel‘s ability gave us a 0-0 draw at the break. We played a bit better in the second half but we wasted most of the attacks due to a terrible lack of precision upfront.

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The last game of the month was at home with 22nd placed Barnet, we had to win the game and finish the month with another three points in the bag. The players were a bit nervy after the last results and we had a poor first half that ended 1-1 with a bit of luck on our side. We played much better in the second half and went 3-1 up after a great spell of domination. We suffered a bit in the last 15 minutes, Luke Rodgers (a former player of ours, I sold him at the beginning of the season) was determined to cause us some trouble. The final whistle was a blessing, I was very happy that we won the game, it will be a good boost for the morale.

We were 12 points ahead of 2nd placed Shrewsbury and 19 points ahead 4th placed Crewe, with a good run in February we could see promotion getting very close :)

We won’t have any very difficult games in February, so I guess we could get 15 points out of the 5 games…

That’s how January was, a full month with transfers and tough matches. If we’ll manage to get those 15 points in February things will look almost done for us, we could take a break in March :) See you tomorrow with the February update, don’t miss it! :)