Vauxhall Motors Story: End Of Season Number Six

Hello folks, it’s time for the last episode of my sixth season at the helm of the mighty Motormen! I know, you were used to monthly updates, but this time I chose to offer you a straight go to the end of the season. Let me explain why. As you might remember we were in 10th place in the Premier League at the end of January 2016, not bad for a newly-promoted team and definitely on track to reach our season goal: a top half finish. You know that usually I’m not very optimistic and this time was no different, I felt that we couldn’t achieve more than a top half finish so I thought that it wouldn’t be good to bore you with a game-by-game report of our mid-table struggle.

So, let’s go straight to the first three league games of February. We started with a creditable away draw at Aston Villa but the result was better than our performance, the home side dominated the game but we stole a point courtesy of a fine goal from Brazilian striker Parana. We did much better in the next game, 2-0 at home against Everton, a game in which Parana and Andrés were lethal upfront. They continued their good form in the next game, a convincing 4-1 win against doomed Newcastle, and we were full of confidence before the most important game of the month: the FA Cup fifth round match.

I was expecting to meet Fulham in the FA Cup battle but they were surprisingly beaten by Championship side Nottingham Forest!

Vauxhall vs Nottingham Forest (FA Cup 5th rnd)

Venue: Halton Stadium

Attendance: 9,000

Starting line up: Tim Howard — Julian Marino, Thiago, Mervin Simon, Jelle Van Damme — David Gonzalez, Radek Vecera, Graham Howson, Andrew Driver — Parana, Andrés

Team Talk: You can win today!

I was quite confident before the game, I was already picturing us in the next round and dreaming of a fairytale run. We started the game well, missed a good chance early on through left winger Andrew Driver and continued to dominate. I had to replace injured Van Damme with Grant Baddeley on 25 minutes but I wasn’t too worried. That was until two minutes later when Forest broke the deadlock on a counter attack. I still wasn’t too worried but what was to follow totally shocked me. Forest doubled their lead on 33 minutes with a fabulous goal and then seemed to do whatever they pleased with my defenders. They created several chances until half time and bagged the third goal just before the break, it was a disaster!

Half time score: 0-3

Half time team talk: I want to see more from you!

Half time substitutions: Kaka for Marino, Stephan El Shaarawy for Gonzalez

I wasn’t hoping for much in the second half as things turned even worse just before the hour mark when Radek Vecera had to be taken off due to an injury. We were down to 10 men and Forest took advantage of that right away and made it 4-0 on 62 minutes. Substitute right winger Stephan El Shaarawy then gave us the illusion of a fightback by scoring a double in just two minutes but then Forest made the numerical advantage count and froze the game at 2-4. It was a big disappointment on a black day for the club: my best midfielder, Radek Vecera, was going to be out between three and four months…

Full time team talk: Disappointing!

Man of the match: Cameron Lindsay

Flop of the match: Andrés

Match Stats

We had something to cheer about after that gloomy game, we were going back to our home ground as the expansion had been finally completed. Not a big improvement but I was happy to play again in Ellesmere Port.

Unfortunately our home fans had every right to be disappointed by our return since we «celebrated» it with a lackluster performance and a narrow defeat against Burnley in what appeared to be our worst performance of the season.

We managed to climb up into ninth place at the end of the month so we were still on track to meet the expectations of a top-half finish. It wasn’t that easy though as the fixtures in March were absolutely terrible: we had to meet Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea, all title contenders!

We lost the opening match against Manchester City, they were vastly superior and Ibrahima MBow‘s goal was just a consolation. But then we managed to pull off a big upset against league leaders Arsenal, we beat them 2-1 at Rivacre Park and we even dominated the game! Arsenal scored a late goal to make it 2-1 but we never looked like losing that game, a pleasing performance after three consecutive defeats. Then were made a quick return to losing ways as we got demolished by Chelsea in a spectacular game at Stamford Bridge.

Unfortunately you don’t get more than three points for beating Arsenal so we slid down into 10th place. The Gunners were worse off than us though, they slipped from the top of the table to fifth!

And now, the final six games of the season. We started with two good back to back wins against relegation candidates West Ham and Middlesbrough, Andrés and Parana were in top form and the whole team seemed to be playing with more confidence. Then we dropped two points at Wolves due to an injury time equaliser but we recovered well to beat West Brom 4-2 at home after coming back from 1-0 and 2-1 down. And then… Well, then we were ripped apart at Anfield Road… Liverpool beat us 7-2, I can’t remember being defeated so heavily in FM 2011. I guess that result deserves an explanation. I could have gotten more points this season and maybe avoided some of the heavy defeats by employing a more defensive tactic than my usual 4-4-2. So why did I choose to stick with the attacking one? It’s quite simple: as you know I am trying to build a team for the future, with many young players, and I want to teach them to play how I want them to play. My goal is to build a team that wins games by playing sexy attacking football and I believe that sticking to that style can produce the results that I want in the long run. Anyway, I think that we would have conceded lots of goals against Liverpool with any tactic, their players were breezing past mine all over the pitch. We ended the season with a defeat against Sunderland but that was quite unlucky as we found ourselves 1-0 down after just 15 seconds and then had a man sent off.

We managed to achieve our goal, we finished 9th and the fans were pleased with that. I was satisfied that we have won more games than we have lost but our goal difference was a bit shameful, -10 is not good by any standards.

Things would surely have gone a lot better for us if we would have had Graham Howson and Parana from the start of the season instead of January. These two players were outstanding in the second half of the season: Howson bagged 2 goals and made no less than 15 assists while Parana scored eight and assisted 7. With these two and a better defense (especially Cameron Lindsay not being sold) we should have been able to compete for an Europa League spot. Some players were already announced that they will be leaving the club at the end of the season but I think that most players over the age of 25 should be worried about their place in our squad. The biggest disappointment was Connor Wickham, I had high hopes for him but he only managed to score five goals while missing several chances throughout the season. I got him for free though and I might make a nice profit on him in July.

I was third in the Manager of the Season race, that was quite surprising to be honest. Well, I guess we did well to finish 9th after being predicted to finish last.

My plan is to keep on bringing in talented youngsters and I have already captured the signatures of two exciting Brazilians. First there is centre back Marcinho, I paid 1.3 million for him and I believe that he can become a top player. He might not fit into the first team right away but I believe in his potential since he seems to be a natural born leader.

Then there is Nikao, a quick and determined left back that will probably take Jelle Van Damme‘s place pretty soon. I paid 2 million for him but unfortunately he picked up a bad injury soon after singing the contract, that might impede his development but I hope that he will recover quickly and prove his talent.

The best thing is that the chairman finally seems to be supporting my plans for the future: we will have a brand new stadium in two years! That’s quite a long time, I can’t understand why it takes so long, but I am satisfied.

I took advantage of the moment and pushed the board into making further investments into the training and youth facilities. Moreover, I finally persuaded them to build a youth academy!

Despite all these investments the club’s bank balance boasts a healthy 15 million pounds! We have made a good profit this season and I am quite confident that they will be giving me a good transfer budget come July.

That’s how it was my friends, our very first Premier League season! I plan to have a pretty active transfer window with the top priority being two new centre backs, we badly need some more quality at the heart of our defense. I already have my eyes set on a few exciting defenders but it will all depend on the transfer budget. I hope to raise around 10 million from player sales and also hope to receive around 30 million from the board so I guess I will be able to bring in at least 3 top quality players, the two centre backs that I was talking about plus a quick dazzling winger. This is all just wishful thinking at this stage, we’ll have to see the money first :) Thanks a lot for reading this update and for supporting me throughout this difficult season.