Notts County Story — My Last Month In Charge

Hello folks and welcome back to the Notts County story! The moment has finally arrived, this will be the last post of the long journey that saw me taking Notts County from League Two to Premier League and European glory. It’s been a long and challenging road, now there are only five games left of it. As you know from the previous post we already clinched our fourth consecutive Premier League title so our only remaining challenge was to win the Champions League once again.

The last four league games were not important for the league table anymore but I surely wanted to see some good displays from my players. Unfortunately they showed a somewhat oscillating form: they played an impressive game against Manchester City, then a poor match against Burnley, then a solid display against Arsenal and then ended the Premier League season with a dismal performance and got beaten by Portsmouth, the weakest team in the league. That didn’t affect the team’s morale though, I guess I failed to motivate them properly.

Here’s the final Premier League table, the title was ours and Forest were going down again, our fans were happy about that.

We had to leave everything behind, the last game of the season was coming up and it was the most important one too: the Champions League final. You might remember that we met Juventus in the final last season too and had to fight pretty hard to beat them. This time they had an important absence in the team, their new and big signing Wayne Rooney was injured. We had a few problems ourselves: Joe Barton was suspended, Hinshelwood was injured, Gergely Varga was injured too and Cristian Zapata was not fully fit following a minor injury in training. Anyway, Juventus were considered to be the favourites and I had nothing against that, I like being the underdog.

So, the game was underway. We were looking fairly confident in the initial minutes but none of the teams was determined enough to display serious attacks. The first one came 12 minutes into the game, we were keeping Juventus in their own half for a while and Jonjo Shelvey eventually found the space to shoot from the edge of the area, it went just wide! Two minutes later Juventus came forward, a through pass from Giovinco to Vela and the Mexican tapped it in! It was disallowed though, offside!

21 minutes into the game, corner kick from the left side. Van Dijk took it, Simon Kjaer got his head to it but it went just over the bar. Juventus‘ striker Lucchini got injured and was replaced by Kalou.

Eleven minutes later, the same situation: corner kick from the left taken by van Dijk, Simon Kjaer beat his marker in the air but the ball thundered off the crossbar and went out of play! That was the biggest chance that came around in the first half. As you can see from the half time stats we were in control of the game but Juventus were defending very well, my strikers were not given any inch of space.

I didn’t make any changes at half time, the team played well in the first 45 minutes and there were no fitness problems. We got our first chance immediately after the break, a long shot again but this time from the other central midfielder, Fabian Delph. It didn’t go better though, wide of the post. Juventus tried their luck four minutes later but Carlos Vela‘s shot from distance went sailing over the crossbar.

60 minutes into the game, we were still in control of the game but we were unable to find space in Juventus‘ defense. My Italians invented something though: Andrea Romano received the ball just outside the box and he touched it first time further to Bonetti who came inside from the right flank. Juventus‘ left back was surprised and that gave Nicola Bonetti a few inches of space inside the box. He didn’t think twice about it, he rifled it in with his right foot and it went straight past the keeper! Get in!

I was expecting a fierce reaction from Juventus but that didn’t come, the first time they came forward after the goal was seven minutes later but Marchisio‘s shot from distance went well wide. I decided not to pull back, I wanted to score a second goal and settle the game. My wingers were pretty tired so I decided to replace both of them, Milner came in for Bonetti and Agnaldo for Ashley Young. I was hoping that some fresh pace down the flanks could give us a boost in attack.

In fact, we had a few good runs down the flanks but they all ended by being cleared by the defense. The only emotion came 12 minutes from time when a shot from Fabian Delph was saved by Juventus‘ keeper. We were still dominating the game and Juventus were not seeing much of the ball.

6 minutes from time, I made the third substitution and sent in Steven Defour to replace Fabian Delph. I wanted a bit more strength in the middle of the pitch and Delph had a yellow card, I didn’t want to take any chances with the referee. I also switched the strategy to counter, we just had to keep the ball, move it around and wait for the final whistle.

And that’s what happened, we just moved the ball around until the ref decided to end the game, we won the Champions League for the second time in a row! It was not a spectacular game but we totally deserved to win it, Juventus didn’t get any shots on target during the whole 90 minutes!

That result pushed me to the 18th place of the worldwide hall of fame, a log way behind the top managers in the world but still in great company there :)

Andrea Romano was our player of the season once again, he scored 33 goals and made 17 assists. He could have done even more if he hadn’t been injured for more than a month. New signing Sergio Aguero did very well too, scored 28 goals and made 16 assists. Overall I was satisfied with the whole lot but that doesn’t matter too much anymore, I was going to hand in my resignation…

Just a quick recap of our league history before that, it started in season 2009/2010 when we won the League Two with an impressive 120 points! It all went smoothly from there, now it seems like it was too easy!

The club’s trophy room welcomed quite a bunch of new shiny silverware, we won everything there was to be won from the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy to the Club World Cup!

Here are the manager stats for those of you who are curious enough to see them.

And finally, the resignation. I was quite flattered to see that Guardiola was the favourite to replace me :)

And I was shocked to see that 21 members of the backroom staff left the club following my resignation, I didn’t expect that.

That’s how it ends, I feel a bit sad to leave the club after so many years but I surely need a new challenge. It’s been a great journey and if any of you wants to continue it you can download the last saved game, just before the resignation. Big thanks to all of you for following the Notts County story throughout the eight seasons, your support was very important for my eventual success.

Now I will take a couple of days off, no Football Manager at all, but then I’ll gather my strengths and embark on a new journey with the aim of taking Dorchester Town from Blue Square South to the peak of European Football.

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