Notts County Football Manager 2010 Story — The Last Episode of the First Season

Welcome back my friends, things were looking great for my Notts County in my first Football Manager 2010 season. We had 88 points out of 34 games at the end of February, so we were very close to achieving promotion from League Two with a lot of games to spare, we just had to keep the good form and not become complacent.

The first game in March was away at 9th placed Accrington, a team that we defeated 2-0 in December. It looked like a difficult game before the first whistle but Zoko and Andreev made it very easy for us, they produced a great display of talent and cool finishing. Promotion was just one step away…

The next game was at home with 10th placed Bournemouth, we only drew 0-0 with them in December. The game was fairly even this time too, Bournemouth played pretty well but Zoko made the difference again, he scored with a powerful shot from inside the penalty area.

… and with that win promotion was ours with 10 games to spare!

We had to keep the good form a bit longer to secure the League Two title and we had a difficult game ahead of us, away at 3rd placed Crewe. We defeated them 2-0 in October and I certainly hoped that we could do that again. We had a very good first half, we were 2-0 up at the break but we could have scored even more goals. We tried to defend the lead in the second half and despite a good performance from Crewe we managed to win it.

And guess what, with those three points the League Two title was ours with 9 games to spare!

The last game of the month, at home with Rotherham, was just a formality but Zoko didn’t care much about that, he scored again to give us yet another win.

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

We had 100 points at the end of March and still had to play another 8 games, I never experienced such a landslide margin in any Football Manager game I’ve played so far, and I’ve been playing it since… 1997 or 1998 if I remember correctly. :)

The last 8 games of the season count only «for the record», so I won’t get into too many details about them. I tried to give more chances to play to those players who didn’t have too many of them during the season but we still managed to maintain our unbeaten record right till the end with another six wins and two draws.

So here’s the final League Two table, 120 points! I don’t know what to say, I never had that many points ever…

If you want to take a look at the player stats for the entire season, here you go.

Our most important player was undoubtedly Francois Zoko, he scored 30 goals in 35 games and he was injured for a bit more than two months! He will be staying with us next season too, no doubt about that.

Romanian striker Sabrin Sburlea had a great contribution too, 15 goals and 13 assists and also the most appearances in the first team, 51 games! He is still young and I hope that he will become a star player soon. I already extended his contract for the next five years, I don’t want to lose him to another club very soon.

I am already thinking about the next season, my goal is to win promotion from League One, the 120 points that we grabbed in League Two certainly gives me the right to aim for that goal. I am pretty satisfied with most of my players, I believe that many of them can do very well in League One too. I will try to buy a good pacey centre back, a solid right midfielder and maybe another goalkeeper, one with more pace and more willing to come out of the box and intercept. I will also try to invest in the future, I will try to sign a few youngsters that could be very good players in a season or two.

But we’ll talk more about the transfers in the next post, now I’ll take another look at the league table, it certainly is pleasing :)