Plymouth Argyle: Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen!

Hello everyone and welcome back to the South West coast of England and the beginning of my Plymouth Argyle story. In the first post of this FM2012 story I did a brief introduction to the team so let’s take a closer look at what happened from day one through to the beginning of the season.

Game Time: July 5th 2011

The first thing I looked at was my backroom staff and to be honest I didn’t have much faith in the (regen) Assistant Manager and a couple of the coaches. To that effect Waistle, Backhouse and James all left the club.

For those of you who remember from the opening post Plymouth basically have no money so after firing my AM I looked over the list of players available for loan and made some early offers. Setting out the season expectations was easy and I went with mid table finish as all the choices offered the same package.

To start off I’ll be using my old Wrexham “left flank tactic” which is now being called Plymouth 1.0 and actually did pretty good in the demo. It’s a basic 4-4-2 with obviously the attacking focus down the left flank and using the default player roles. . Additionally I set up the training (using the default Conditioning for now) and introduced players and staff to my tactic.

Finally I changed some of the friendlies that had been organized in hopes of raising some capital by bringing in foreign sides and I quickly found out (which Stromson reported) you can’t do that anymore though I did manage to get Falkirk and Scunthorpe!

Game Time: July 6th 2011

Day two saw the arrival of new Assistant Manager Paul Groves whose DMM attributes are all very good and as I have a fairly young team he’s an ideal choice for working with them.

The Team Report which was provided quickly identified that we needed some help up front as well as a couple of defenders and a winger too. I already have a player on loan at the club which leaves just three season long spots to utilize.

Game Time: July 8th to 11th

None of my “day one” loan offers came to fruition as they simply didn’t want to drop down several leagues even with the chance to play first team football. However I did sign the following players during the first week.

To begin with is John Meades who can play on either wing and deputise as left back if needed so quite a versatile player.

In the middle of the park I picked up young midfielder Kaby from Chelsea who I imagine will play in the box to box role.

Up front I was very happy that Birmingham reserve striker Akwasi Assante agreed to join us and we will definitely make the most of his pace and good finishing attributes.

**** I did use the Team Meeting feature – forgetting of course to take screen shots but it did move morale from abysmal to poor for a lot of the players. Nice! ****

Game Time: July 12th to 14th

Our opening pre-season game saw a confident performance as we beat Truro City 3-0 away from home and then the following day news broke about take-over talks and the board quickly initiated a transfer embargo.

Two days later Plymouth ended up with a new Chairman – the embargo lifted but no additional money. Boo!

The end of the second week in charge saw us earn a respectable 1-1 draw at home to Falkirk but the following Wednesday revealed a weakness in the back four as we crashed at home to Oxford by a result of 4-3.

Game Time: July 17th to 19th 2011

Midweek saw the arrival of 33 year old central defender Rui Marques to Home Park on a free and although he doesn’t have the pace anymore he certainly makes up for that in experience and should be a commanding presence at the back. We also signed striker Mark Leech as well and I was surprised that the board would even approve either of their salaries but I’m happy they did.

Several Youth Team players signed full time contracts as “hot prospects” and will be most likely needed at some point during the season and performed reasonably well in a 0-0 draw with Scunthorpe in our penultimate pre-season game.

Game Time: August 1st 2011

With the opening game of the season just 5 days away The Board cynically reminded me what financial trouble we were in with a note about monthly loan payments that were due to start.

Thankfully that didn’t affect my pre-season plans as the following day we hammered Bath City 3-0 at home to complete our pre-season friendlies.

Pre-Season Results:

Transfer Summary (as of August 5th)

This represents probably my quietest transfer window ever!

Here then is my squad for the season divided up in roughly defensive and attacking duties. Most of the team at least according to my assistant has bags of potential.

Defending:

Attacking:

We will start off the new season away to Dagenham followed by a trip to Orient in the League Cup. Our home opener will see Aldershot visit Home Park.

Well that’s it ship-mates for this update and I’m looking forward to getting the regular season started and seeing how we progress with limited resources. I’m not sure if I’ll keep up the nautical references in my update titles but as Plymouth has major Royal Navy links I couldn’t resist this time around.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to your feedback.