Notts County Story — November 2015

Hello fellow Football Manager fanatics, welcome back to the Notts County story! The Magpies continued the unbeaten run in October, we were top of the table at the end of the month with a rising gap over the chasing pack. We were right on track in the Champions League too after beating Atletico Madrid 3-2 at Meadow Lane.

We didn’t afford any mishaps though, we had to stay focused in order to continue our march towards glory. The first game of November saw us traveling to Bratislava to meet Slovan in the Champions League group. We beat them 3-0 at home despite employing a few youngsters from the reserves so I expected another win. Strikers Chris Gadi and Rafael Sobis made it easy for us, the Brazilian netted a hat-trick while Gadi scored a goal and made an assist. Slovan played pretty well in the second half though and they deservedly scored the consolation goal. The best news came after the game, Atletico beat Lyon 2-1 so we only needed one more point out of the last two games to qualify.

Back to the Premier League, we had an away game coming up against struggling 17th placed Middlesbrough. I admit that I expected to win the game but what happened on the pitch surpassed any dreams that I might have had. We were all over them right from the start of the game and by half time it was pretty clear that Boro were in for a torrid afternoon. There’s not much to be said, Rafael Sobis netted another hat-trick, Romano got one for himself too and centre backs Cristian Zapata and Simon Kjaer scored freely by taking advantage of the poor aerial ability in Boro‘s defense.

The next game was supposed to against Arsenal but it got postponed due to international fixtures so we moved on to the next match, away at Sheffield United. They were the surprise package of the Premier League, sitting in 7th place after a great run in the first months of the season. I understood why after the first half, they defended extremely well and gave us no clear chances to score. Cristian Zapata came to the rescue once again after the break but maybe we were too confident and our opponents punished us on a counter attack and then parked the bus, we were unable to beat their defense until the final whistle. We should have won this one but I guess Sheffield United deserved the draw, they worked hard and never looked like giving up.

Next up, the most difficult game of the month: at home with Lyon in the Champions League. As I said earlier we only needed one more point to qualify but I certainly wanted to beat Lyon and claim the top spot in the group table. The away game ended 1-1 and it was mostly due to Hugo Lloris‘ fantastic goalkeeping. Things went along the same lines again, Lloris saved two certain goals in the first half. After the interval frustration kicked in, we were trying to shoot from all over the place and we were largely wasteful. Lyon were defending well and even had a good chance of winning the game on a late counter attack. Well, we are through to the next round but we will have to beat Atletico Madrid in the last game to get that first spot.

The last game of the month was at home with 10th placed Wolves, we had to wrap up the month with a good performance in front of our fantastic fans. Ashley Young opened the show with a fine goal eight minutes into the game, he cut inside from the left flank and unleashed a fierce shot from 25 yards out, in off the upright! Jonjo Shelvey might have been a little jealous so a few minutes later he hit the back of the net with a missile shot from distance. Wolves reacted surprisingly well and Igor Akinfeev was forced to show some of his skills to keep a clean sheet. We scored again before the break, Andrea Romano skipped past a couple of defenders and unselfishly set up Rafael Sobis for an easy finish. He did that again just after the interval, Sobis had to thank Romano for his 10th goal of the season. Andrea Romano deserved to score one himself and he did it eventually, a wonder goal after skinning three shocked defenders.

We were still top of the table but the gap remained unchanged, six points.

We’ll be extremely busy in December, no less than 9 games to play. And there will be quite a few difficult tests: Chelsea (twice!), Atletico Madrid away, Tottenham, Manchester United, Liverpool…

If we will manage to stay unbeaten until the end of the year then it would be quite difficult for any team to steal the title from us. December will be a big test for the team’s strength and depth but I can say that I’m fairly confident. Thanks for reading my friends, please share your thoughts in the comments.

P.S.: I will be away on a field trip starting tomorrow morning and I will probably be back on Saturday. So there will be no more posts from me until then, take care, enjoy the other stories and your own FM games!

• If you like the story subscribe to the RSS feed, the future episodes will come to you fast as lightning!
  
• You can also subscribe to the Email Newsletter, the new posts will be sent directly to your inbox!
• Want to stay in touch? Download and install our community toolbar, it works on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari!