Notts County Story — Premier League September 2012

Hello my friends, welcome to a new episode of my Football Manager 2010 story! My Notts County had a decent start in the Premier League, we played only three games and got one result from each category: a win, a draw and a loss. Those three games were quite special though, we won the Nottingham Derby, drew with Liverpool and lost at Chelsea. Now we had to show some consistency in September and get some more points in the bag.

Just before the end of the transfer window our chairman refilled the club’s coffers again, a 47 million pounds cash injection from him! He seems to have a lot of money but also a lot of love for the club.

Peter Trembling, Notts County chairman

That money made me look at the club’s finances again and I noticed that I was way under the wage budget limit, I could have adjusted that and get around 13 million pounds for transfers! I did that and spent almost the entire sum on a youngster… Thinking of my choice now it seems a bit crazy, spending 12.5 million pounds on a 17 year old player but I couldn’t resist. His name is Nicola Bonetti, an Italian hot prospect, a winger that might have an impact in the first team squad right away.

Let’s get to the matches now, the first one in September was at home with Hull City, the team that finished 16th in the Premier League last season. Guilherme started the game beautifully, he sent in a cannonball shot from 30 yards out, a real beauty! Then Sam Hinshelwood doubled our lead with a fine header, we were 2-0 up at the break. Hull created some pressure in the second half and finally managed to score one from a corner kick. We kept things under control easily though and we could have won it by a bigger margin.

The next game was a more difficult one, away at Wigan. The first half was fairly even, both teams showed a rather mediocre football. I wanted more from my lads in the second half but it was Wigan that played better, they put two goals past us easily. Fortunately my boys woke up just in time for a comeback but too late for a win. Pekhart was the one who drove the team forward and scored his 50th goal for the club.

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

The next game was at home with Burnley, a solid Premier League team that finished 12th last season. We had a poor first half again, we went 1-0 down right away and we had to thank Guilherme and goalkeeper Romero for going to the dressing room with the 1-1 scoreline. We looked a bit better in the second half, Agnaldo and Pekhart scored to make it 3-1. A corner kick marking error gave Burnley another goal but we won the game. I wasn’t very happy though, we allowed our opponents to create way too many chances and that was because we lost a lot of balls in midfield due to passing errors. You could well say that we stole this win thanks to great goalkeeping and cool finishing.

We had a chance to relax a bit in the next game, the Carling Cup third round with League One side Rotherham. I gave the backup players a chance to shine and they did well, expensive young Italian Nicola Bonetti scored his first goal for the club and Adam Szalai did his job again in a professional manner. The next round will be a lot more difficult, we’ll have to face West Ham…

The last game of the month was a tough battle at Meadow Lane, Premier League leaders Arsenal were coming to get all the three points. The first half was even, my boys played pretty well and even had a few chances to score. We were a bit under pressure in the second half but Romero saved us again, he’s a fantastic keeper. There were 5 more minutes to be played and the pressure on our defense was lighter, it seemed that we were going to walk away with one point. Denilson had other plans though, he rifled in a fantastic shot from 30 yards out, a shot out of nowhere that gave Arsenal the win! I wasn’t very happy about that but…

Our league position is quite good at this point but I still feel it’s too early to draw any conclusions. I am concerned that we concede quite a lot of goals and allow the opponents to create too many chances to score, I might have to restructure the defensive system a little bit.

October will begin with a long break for the squad due to international call ups, we will only have three games to play. I will have one more though, I have to go to Uruguay for the last game of the season (I’ll tell you more about that in a future post)

That’s about it, not too bad so far. What do you think?

• 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!