In my last post we left Bangor top of the Championship 2 at the half way mark of season one.

Can we get promoted or will it all fall apart? Will we get a new contract, will we get the sack, or will we accidently resign? Read on to find out!

Transfer Window

Our last post took us up to the January transfer window, so where better place to start than there.

Having disabled the first window I was excited to start considering some signings. If you remember back in Episode One I outlined that I wanted to keep the save REALISTIC and one way to do this was to utilise staff more. With this in mind I have decided to only search for players that have been scouted by our three person scouting team. I have left the recruitment focuses to my Chief Scout but I have, from time to time, made requests to help direct the searches. Club chairman, Graham Bailie, employed a Director of Football, so I have decided to use him to negotiate any deals we decide to make, can’t wait to see what a negotiating attribute of 4 will produce.

With us sitting so well in the league I was retistent to actually make too many signings. If we got promoted I probably would need to strengthen the team significantly anyway, and if we stayed in the Championship 2 our targets would be very different. So I decided any major moves would wait until the Summer. That didn’t stop other clubs coming in for our players which soon became a cause for concern as the vast majority of them were on Amateur contracts. Let’s start there.

Outs

We lost three players in the window, all were offered contracts by other sides and simply left.

1. Gareth Beattie - decided to drop down a few levels and sign for Belfast Celtic. Beattie was a back up Full Back so no real loss here.

2. Darren Gibbons - Our backup Goalkeeper (aka “the Jockey”) moved to Ballymacash Rangers to become their Number one, we had cover in the reserves so again no real loss here.

3. Reece Neal - Our first choice Left Back, who had been performing pretty well, decided to move up a division and accept a contract from Championship side, Loughgall. This did cause me some concern, and added to the loss of Beattie I wanted to bring a replacement in. We did have Glover who I suppose would do a job for us until the end of the season if necessary.

What then were our targets? As mentioned in the previous episode it was the midfield that worried me the most, and specifically our lack of physicality in there. I was also on the look out for another forward. I was relying heavily on Michael Halliday as a Deep Lying Forward, and at 43 he was struggling to see out 90 minutes and our back ups hadn’t really offered much.

So we wanted;

• A Striker

• A physical Centre Midfielder,

• A Full Back

Let’s see how we got on

Ins

We managed to fulfil only two of our three targets.

A Striker - Jack Sharvin joined us from Intermediate side Crewe United, on an Amatuer contract that was negotiated by our Director of Football - bravo. Sharvin did come through the Sheffield United academy so I am hopeful there is some underlying ability there.

I desperately wanted someone to win aerial duels for us in certain games and Jack’s Jumping Reach of 15 is fantastic for this level. His technical ability is also reasonable, and would be fine for the level above. At 23 we may not see any improvements but I feel he could do a job for us nevertheless, for a couple of seasons at least. There is a slight spoiler in the image above, you can see he has performed well for us since his move, more on that later.

Physical Centre Midfielder - 19 year old Lewis Barr joined us on loan from Premiership side Crusaders. You can see he immediately adds some physicality, and no little quality, to our midfield that I feel will be vital in the run in. Crusaders required no wages be paid by us which was even better.

I wasn’t able to bring in a full back, but around mid January I received the hallowed news item…A preview of our youth intake. According to my Head of Youth Development this was a “Golden Generation” and contained not one elite prospect, but four! Two of which were full backs. I decided to hold off on getting anyone else in, with the hope that our intake may provide the back up full back we needed.

One of them certainly would and here he is, Unambitious Antoni Saxton, Manchester born with Irish heritage apparently. He will certainly provide the cover we need on both flanks. For Newgens I have used faces created by @TheFMU which are available over at the View from the Touchline website. I think you can agree they look pretty cool and installing them is easy enough. I also asked an AI program to create a backstory for Antoni Saxton which you can read here if that interests you.

To be honest the youth intake was pretty good and if I was doing a one club save I’d have been pleased. The reality is though, I intend to be long gone by the time these 15/16 year old’s are ready for first team football. I’m really only interested in those that can help me now, or in the near future. I did end up signing seven of the players but only Saxton and one Romanian winger went into the first team squad. The other five could, however, be used as back ups in the next couple of seasons.

Results

Having reached the half way point of the season top of the league, suffering only one defeat, with a seven point advantage over second place Dollingstown, I was fairly confident we would secure automatic promotion to the Championship. The board were happy too, offering to extend our contract by another season on the same £1,700p/m; which I readily accepted.

Could we keep the form going?

After our imperious first half of the season, results in the second half were mixed. I felt we were starting to lose control of games in defensive transitions but our scoring ability (aka Jordan Hughes) meant we managed to keep going. The defeats against Moyola, Armagh, and Dollingstown could all be excused, in a way, as these are decent sides, but it was the 2-2 draw with Distillery, and the 5-3, 4-3 wins against Banbridge and Tobermore respectively that concerned me more. These were games we should have won easily but conceded poor goals to allow the opposition back into the game. Having played FM for so long I play the game by feeling how it is going more than deep tactical insights, and in these games I just felt we were too open and this was further compounded by a really poor showing against Queen’s when we were simply played off the park by a mid table side.

Once everyone has played each other twice the league splits in half with the top six sides playing each other once more to determine the final league placings. The side who finishes top are automatically promoted, while second place enter a playoff against the 11th placed Championship team. Our final day defeat to Queen’s meant Dollingstown passed us and moved into top stop just as the league split.

All was not lost, we had five games left to retake our rightful position at the top of the league, Armagh surely wouldn’t catch us, would they…

Our first game after the split was against Queen’s once again. Having lost twice to them already, the most recent of which was less than a week prior, I felt I had to change something. I noticed on the change list of the latest ME patch that there had been a change to how often/when the AI manager used a Segundo Volante so I thought why not give that a go and drop the two CMs back to the DM line and play a Volante alongside a standard DM. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to use 2DMs in a 4-4-2 as this is generally how modern teams line up in the defensive phase of play. Remember that the positions you see on the tactics screen show how your team will line up in the defensive phase of play.

I also dropped our mentality down from positive to balanced in the hope we could control things better rather than get involved in a basketball game. I had also enjoyed using Foster as an attacking wing back on the right but I had noticed, in games we struggled in, we were being countered on our right side constantly. To avoid this I have gone for two standard full backs, on support, to ensure we always have defensive cover. I removed the wide midfielder, who was sitting narrow on the right and replaced him with a winger on support. I feel this change allows us to play on the counter attack more as we don’t need to retain the ball whilst Foster gets forward to provide width. We could now hit either flank in transition or go through the middle with our Segundo Volante. Add to this I was still using new signing Sharvin up front who’s stats were showing a high level of aerial prowess, I felt we had more routes to goal now and also became more defensively solid at the same time.

That was the theory anyway. With this tactic being mainly built to deal with Queen’s I decided to play a higher defensive line as they had very little threat in behind. I will probably toggle this up and down depending on the opposition forward players.

So how did we fare? We had a point to make up on Dollingstown in five matches.

A lovely turn of results, I was particularly pleased with our control of the games. No 4-3 or 5-3 results here, and more importantly no defeats, as well as two very enjoyable 1-0 wins. Those of you paying attention will notice only four results here, instead of the promised five. Up until this point Dollingstown had won all their games so it looked like we would be remaining one point behind them going into our last game, who would be against…Dollingstown!

However Armagh City did us a little favour.

So we would play Dollingstown last in the knowledge that a draw would see us Champions and automatically promoted. I was confident we could do it, given our recent form. That was until Jordan Hughes picked up a yellow card in the 48th minute against PSNI meaning he would be suspended for our pivotal last game. By this time Hughes had scored 49 goals in all competitions.

We simply couldn’t fill this gap and we lost the title decider 2-1, which meant if we were to gain promotion it would be through a playoff against the Championship’s 11th placed team, Knockbreda.

Playoff

Going into a playoff was a bit of an unknown really, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Knockbreda but I didn’t think the gap would be too big between the top of Championship 2 and The Championship. I was glad to bring back 49 goal hit man Jordan Hughes to the line up and hoped he could fire us through this two legged affair, achieving a promotion in season one of my Journey would be fantastic.

A first half hattrick from Jordan Hughes took his tally to 52 for the season and put us in a commanding 4-0 lead at half time. The first half goals are below, please note the following, Low Cross, Long ball from the back to Sharvin to flick on, and pace in behind all are evident in these goals. The recipe for success for a 4-4-2 like this in my opinion.

I was very confident going into the second leg, to be honest 5-2 flattered Knockbreda, and I felt we would beat them away from home too.

So it proved to be a 3-2 victory at Breda Park (where I snogged a girl once back in my school days) again flattered Knockbreda and did give me food for thought regarding our defence once we move up a division. That’s for another day, today we celebrate our 8-4 triumph, get ready for the Championship boys!

Me - The Manager

All this is lovely but it is not what this save is about. This save is all about ME (not Match Engine), and my progression through the game. If you remember back in Episode one I said that my aim will be simply to please my employers and improve my reputation. So if my employer wants boring defensive football, that’s what I’ll try and deliver. If they care about the cups, that will be my focus. In this case back in Episode one my Chairman stated they required me to work within the wage budget and finish the top half - TICK. In the cups they only asked that we be competitive, which we were -TICK.

What about my own personal progression, we managed to convince the board to send us on a coaching course and we got our National ‘C’ Licence, which led to a decent improvement in our attributes, 10 for discipline - NICE. We also now earn £2,000p/m having been promoted which makes us the highest paid manager in the Championship so I can see us staying here for a little while yet.

As ever many thanks for reading this far, I’m really enjoying FM23 this year and can’t wait to see where this save ends up.

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Over and Out

FMEadster!