The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personnel. Episode 5

February 13, 2023

In Episode 4 we left Bangor sitting second in the Championship with 15 games of the season remaining. Only first place are guaranteed promotion. Did we make it? Read on to find out…

Caution! - This post includes a Newgen that will make your heart flutter.

Results

We did virtually no transfer business during the winter window, O’Reilly and McPhillips left but I decided to carry on without replacing them. We did bring in central midfielder Donal Rocks on loan, from Annagh United, towards the end of the season but he only featured a couple of times as a back up.

So let’s get straight into the results. After playing each other three times the Championship splits in half. The top 6 play off against each other once more and the team finishing top gets automatically promoted and the sides finishing second and third play off against each other for the right to play the Premierships eleventh placed side in a do or die promotion/relegation playoff. I was confident going into the final 15 games that we could secure a playoff spot, and I guess anything is possible after that.

We managed to reach the split in first place after a disastrous run by former league leaders Dundela. In the winter transfer window they lost their three most influential players (a similar thing has happened in real life too). Winger Sean Moore joined Larne, striker Rhys Arnett joined Clintonville and full back Ryan McKay joined Coleraine. These outgoings seemed to derail their title charge completely. We were simply the best of a bad bunch coming through after that, as our own form nothing to write home about. I was pleased, but still felt that being up against the top sides in the next five games would show us that we were still a little short overall, ten defeats seems a little too many for a side sitting top of the division.

Simply the “Best”

Just as I was preparing for the split we got our youth intake. Always an exciting time for us FM players, although in this save I am not that concerned with youth development so I wasn’t overly excited by the whole thing. Who needs a load of one star current ability 15 year old’s in a journeyman save anyway.

But then I looked….and saw this….

I have to admit it has been some time since I got a five star current ability player in a youth intake (yes I know stars are relative, but still.), and I was giddy. Especially given the news we got in Episode 4 that our main goalscorer, Jordan Hughes, was retiring at the end of the season.

First things first though ladies and gentleman. It wouldn’t be a newgen in FM23 without a midjourney face! I headed straight over there like a dog with two dicks and got to work. Drawing on the famous Northern Irish surname of Best, I asked Midjourney for George Best’s grandson, footballer, and here he is. He is soooo fine and at this level he is a monster.

Clearly he had to play, so I threw him in and dropped Hughes to the deep lying forward role. It didn’t take long for Best to make an impact scoring on his debut inside 13 minutes against Harland and Wolf Welders (our last game before the split). His fine form continued throughout the final five pivotal games of our season, scoring a further four goals including a hat trick against Annagh United in very important 3-1 win.

Three wins in our first three games, which included four goals from Matty Best, secured automatic promotion to the Premiership with two games to spare. I was amazed at how easy we found it, defensively we looked really strong and with Hughes and Best up front I always felt we would score. For the final two games I moved Hughes back to the advanced forward role as he was in with a chance of winning the gold boot, which he ultimately did with an impressive 26 league goals for the season.

Me - The Manager

As I keep reminding you, this save is about me the manager and my progression. I don’t care about any of the clubs, or players, my only concern is myself.

So how did I perform against the KPIs set out by the board?

A resounding success I am sure you will agree. I am particularly pleased I was able to adapt to the new board cultures so well. I didn’t revamp the whole tactic but made a few tweaks to try and give the board what they wanted and I am content we managed to do that without compromising on results. Playing more direct was a challenge, I don’t think I could have done much more without fundamentally changing my style of play so this is something to watch for next season.

On a personal level I have a contract until the end of next season on £2,000 per month, and I am studying for my Continental C Licence, I do think my stock is as high as it is going to be for a while so I will be looking to move on during the summer. There is a large gulf between the championship and the premiership in my opinion, especially the top six sides. I am expecting a tough season coming up which could see me come under pressure if results really go south, so it might be better to move on now while my destiny is in my own hands - we shall see.

As ever many thanks for reading this far, I’m really enjoying FM23 this year and to be honest I have to be really disciplined to stop playing the game and write a few words for posterity.

In the meantime I will leave you with a little song, inspired by the star of this post, Matty Best.

If you come to CoffehouseFM often you may wish to sign up to our newsletter that will send you an email (not very often - promise) collating all the latest posts into one handy little newsletter. I’ve provided the link below and we promise not to sell your email address to the Russians.

Over and Out

FMEadster!

The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personnel Episode 2. #FM23

January 3, 2023

In the last episode I introduced you to the first club of a journey person save, my hometown club, Bangor. In this episode we will go through the first team squad, take a look at my starting tactic and discuss my thoughts behind it. We will finish with a look over the first half of the season as we begin our quest for the top.

First Team Squad

Goalkeepers

At the outset I should say only seven players in my first team squad actually have a contract, the rest are on Amateur deals so could be taken on a free at anytime, so don’t get too attached to anyone. Looking first at the goalkeepers, Taylor and Gibbons, and to be honest I’m not too keen on either of them. My coaches love Taylor, rating him as one of the best players at the club which is a worry in itself. He is better than Gibbons mentally and has decent distribution but Gibbons out scores him in the goalkeeping fundamentals of Handling and Reflexes. I’ll probably trust my coaches on this one and start with Taylor, but at 38 who knows how long he will be around.

Defenders

We only have three recognised Centre Backs at the club and one of those is Ryley D’Sena who is on loan from Premiership rich boys Larne. I’m happy with Ryan Arthur, I can see him being very dominant at this level, with his aerial prowess and decent mental ability, he is also one of the players who holds a contract at the club earning £220p/m. Boyle and D’Sena will battle it out for the other spot which will probably be as a no nonsense centre back. Given their lack of technical ability I think it would be best for them to concentrate on defending our box and clearing the ball downfield. At Right Back we have another loanee, Seanna Foster from Clitonville who I rate as the best player at the club. One thing Iike to do is to play the best couple of players in their preferred positions or roles when I first join a club, to me there is less chance of mucking the whole thing up when I do that. So, although, at this level, Foster might do a lot of damage on the right wing, I will start him in his favoured position as an attacking wing back. On the left side our coaches love Reece Neale who is technically poor but mentally and physically strong, so I will be less adventurous with him, so will probably start him as a Full Back on support. Beattie can provide cover on the right or left, while Hume could play on the left or potentially as a fourth centre back looking at his jumping reach. I’m reasonably content with the defence although I can some concerns regarding pace, and first team cover could become an issue if we suffer from a lot of injuries or suspensions.

Midfielders

It is the midfield that concerns me the most, and having disabled the first transfer window there is very little I can do about it. Only three recognised Centre Midfielders are at the club and one of them is Lewis Harrison who is unbelievably listed as the club captain and has a proper contract, stealing £110p/m from the club. I can see absolutely no use for him at all apart from some aggression. Strength 2, Bravery 5, Tackling 4, there is no way I’m trusting this fella in my midfield. That leaves us with just Aaron Harris and Dylan O’Kane, both of who are ok at best. O’Kane is decent in the tackle and Harris has some technical quality so perhaps a simple CM(d) and CM(s/a) combo is the way to go. Tom Mathieson could maybe work as a CM(a) with his pace and reasonable first touch and finishing, but strength 2 really makes me soft in central positions. On the wings we have Scott McArthur on the left who I like the look of as an old fashioned winger, good pace, dribbling, and touch means he should be able to beat a man and get the ball into the danger zone for us on a regular basis. Glover is still young and looks good as a back up winger or full back on that side. On the right, we have Mathieson who my coaches like and while he is quick he lacks the technical quality of McArthur on the left. Conor Sullivan is interesting, a 6 Foot 4” winger who also has good pace but very little else at this point of his career. As mentioned, I don’t like the midfield at all and when you look at them collectively you can see we really lack strength, bravery, composure and concentration across the whole unit. They are also really small, Sullivan and Glover aside, none of them are taller than 5 Foot 10, I will need to watch all this in our early games.

Forwards

I’m more encouraged with our attacking options than I was for our midfield. We have six forwards on our books but two of them will be reserves at best so I haven’t included them. Jordan Hughes looks like he could be a great advanced forward, Finishing 13 and Composure 11 are more or less elite at this level. He also has good pace which I love for at least one of my strikers. After that things are a little less clear. In real life I have watched a bit of Bangor and have been impressed with Ben Arthurs’ hold up play so I was hoping for more physically in game than I got. I still think he could do a good job as a Target Forward linking up with Hughes. My other option is veteran Michael Halliday, who at 43 is older than me and that’s saying something. I remember him at his peak playing for Northern Ireland’s greatest team, GLENTORAN. He still has great technical ability 15 first touch, 11 Finishing and 10 Technique are all encouraging, add this to decent vision and passing I can see Halliday operating as Deep Lying Forward and linking up with Hughes, or perhaps a static role in AM strata such as an Enganche or simple Attacking Midfielder support depending how I finally set up the team. Adam Neale, brother of FB Reece Neale, will be my back up advanced forward. Once again, Arthurs aside I am concerned about a real lack of strength and jumping reach in the front line.

The Tactic

It is time to look at a formation and style of play for Bangor. Usually I start with one of the presets and adjust from there but this year I am going alone. In real life there wouldn’t be a handy preset to get a new manager started.

After reviewing the squad we learned / decided the following;

We have only 3 CBs at the club so this probably rules out playing any variation of a back 3.
Our CBs aren’t quick or that great positionally so a high line is out of the question.
Seanna Foster will start as a Wing Back on attack.
We only have three CMs who are actually very weak so we probably can’t play with any variation of a midfield 3 either. Given the state of the CMs should we bypass midfield altogether?
Scott McArthur will start as a Winger on the left.
Jordan Hughes will start up front as an Advanced Forward alongside either Ben Arthurs as a Target Forward or Michael Halliday as a Deep Lying Forward.
Our best Forwards can’t jump

With the seven points above in mind, the most obvious starting formation for me is a flat 4-4-2.

Roles

We’ve already discussed the player roles in the squad review so none of them should be a surprise. The one role I didn’t mention was the use of a Wide Midfielder on the right. As discussed, Foster is one of the best players at the club and I am using him as wing back on attack on the right side. I want Foster to be our main attacking outlet on the right, and to give him the required space I have opted to use a wide midfielder ahead of him who I have also instructed to sit narrower. I feel there are two advantages to this, first it gives the flank to Foster, and second, it will hopefully help bolster our central midfield where I think we are particularly weak physically and technically. The only other player instruction I am using is on Reece Neale at Left Back, who we noticed, in the squad preview, was poor technically so I have told him to take fewer risks with his passing. I want him to just give the ball to McArthur who I will rely on to break the defensive lines through his dribbling and crossing ability.

Team Instructions

If you remember the season preview from episode one Bangor are joint favourites with Moyola Park to win the Championship 2 this season. This influenced my decision to start games on a positive mentality, although I am open to drop this back to balanced if I need to get better control of the game. In possession I considered increasing the passing directness to slightly more direct but in the pre season friendlies I felt we were going long too often and without any physical presence upfront we rarely managed to build any meaningful attacks this way. I also considered focusing our play to the flanks but again I didn’t feel the need to “force” this to happen. I hoped it would happen naturally anyway, but if not I would turn it on. In the end the only in possession instruction I went for was low crosses as neither Halliday or Hughes were good in the air but both had relatively good off the ball movement.

In transition I haven’t gone for the ever popular counter press as I just don’t feel we have the physicality across the side to adequatley pull this off. It would also upset the defensive structure of the 4-4-2 and leave us open to counter attacks. Given we are going to start most games as favourites we may be playing into our oppositions hands by offering easy counter attacking opportunities. Counter is definitely an option and I have had it on sometimes but it is not something I want to start with in games, if we find ourselves pushed back or ahead early in a game I will certainly tell my players to counter more often but otherwise we will be sensible upon winning the ball. Once again I have only ticked distribute to Full Backs for our Goalkeepers. The reason for this is I really hate just spaffing the ball forward aimlessly especially to small forwards. I feel our attacks are best built through our full backs, If Neale gets it he won’t take risks and we should be able to get the ball to the talented McArthur fairly easily. If the Goalkeeper opts to use Foster, he is very attack minded and has the quality to carry us up the pitch with the help of the wide midfielder on that side.

Out of possession we have already decided we don’t want to play with a high line and this effects our line of engagement as I want the team to remain fairly compact so a mid block is perfectly fine although I do want us to press “More Often” once the opposition reach our block. A new instruction this year is the ability to ask your defensive line to step up or drop back. Initially I left this on default but after a few games I noticed we were conceding a lot of chances to balls over the top. This “issue” was later addressed by SI in a recent update but prior to that I decided to ask my defenders to “drop back” once the press was beaten. I found this largely solved the issue and didn’t impact on the rest of our tactic too much, even before the patch, so I have left it as is since. I certainly think it has helped hide the limitations of my centre backs pretty well. If you are interested in what exactly this new instruction means I recommend checking out the Cult of FM Athletico Madrid save on Youtube where Jack explains it very well. Jack’s stuff is very informative and there are no histrionics that we see from other, more popular, visual content creators, he also works for SI so knows what he is talking about. I’ve enjoyed discovering his channel this year.

Variations

I also set up a variation of the base tactic which I intended to use in games when I believed we were the underdogs or during games when I wanted to hit the opposition on the counter attack. The first big change is the introduction of Ben Arthurs as a Target Forward instead of Deep Lying Forward, Michael Halliday. Consequently I removed the low crosses and now told the team to hit early crosses, if this didn’t produce enough balls in behind I would turn on pass into space. We now also counter upon winning possession, everything else remains the same apart from mentality which I have dropped back to Balanced in this variation.

Results

So how have we done? Well things have been going really well, but to be honest I’m unsure how much is down to me and how much is down to the fact we are one of the favourites for the league anyway.

Those of you still paying attention will have noticed that the vast majority of our goals have come from Jordan Hughes. He has been absolutely fantastic for us, his relative pace in behind defences has caused problems for our opposition in almost every game. A large number of his goals have come from balls over the top of the opposition defence so it may be the case that his effectiveness will be reduced post patch but I haven’t seen any evidence of that so far. My other concern is the fact he is responsible for around 68% of our goals in the league and he could be snapped up by any other club at any time as he only holds an amateur contract with us. Behold his four goals below against Banbridge that included a perfect hat-trick (HEART EMOJI).

At the halfway point of the season Hughes has 32 Goals from 22 starts in all competitions (there are a load of them) outscoring his XG by 12 clear goals which is a fantastic return. Checking out the @FMStag benchmark stats we can see that his chance conversion of 29% is Elite level along with his shots on target per 90. Put these metrics together and you can see why his goal return is so high. My only concern is whether my tactic is capable of producing goals from elsewhere in the side should Hughes move on or get injured, I’m not so sure it does, but for now I will enjoy it while it lasts.

That’s all for now, in the next episode we will see how the season finished and discuss any transfers I manage to make during the January window. It certainly would be nice to get promotion in my first season as a manager!

In the meantime you can catch me on Twitter

Over and Out

FMEadster!

The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personnel. #FM23

November 19, 2022

Welcome to Part One of my new Football Manager 23 save, “The Journey Person; From Field to Favoured Personnel”.

I started blogging back in FM19 as a way to record my saves for posterity, and over the last few iterations of the game I have had a lot of fun with my alternate reality built around former KGB agent Ruslan Chepiga. This year, however, I wanted to do something different.

It has been a long time since I did an actual long term journeyman save (*or Journey Person, don’t assume gender) so this year I am going to try and work my way up from the depths of the third tier in my home country of Northern Ireland to, hopefully, the very top of world football.

Aims of the Save

The journeyman save is nothing new to the FM content creation scene, so I won’t be breaking new ground here, but I have a few aims and rules that I would like to outline at the start. As mentioned above this won’t be a #CreativeFM series but I do require you to use your imagination a little bit now. I want to take you back to Summer 2013, a simper time before, Brexit, global pandemics, economic crashes, and war in Europe. Blurred Lines and Get Lucky were in the charts, what a time to be alive. I am having a walk close to my new house in the outskirts of East Belfast with my wife of almost 5 years. She turns to me, her green Irish eyes glistening in the street lights, and asks, “Is this the time to have kids?” For some unknown reason, I said, “Yes”. Fast forward to 2022 and I am knackered, I’ve aged about 20 years, and I no longer know what the point of it all is. Nobody told me it was this hard.

In a sliding doors moment - for the purposes of this save we are going to pretend I turned around and said, “No chance love, kids aren’t for me.” I have no doubt this would have inevitably led to a divorce but at least I’d have been free to pursue this fictional career in football management. The new me wants to become the greatest football manager in the world but having never played the game, nor studied for any badges, the road will be a long one.

Taking that as a starting point I want to try as far as possible to make decisions throughout the save how I would actually make them in real life. For example, I have a decent job so I wouldn’t be in a position to manage full time until the wages offered at least matched what I am earning now. Also, I wouldn’t upsticks and move to China or England for a few extra quid a week, it would have to be a really good offer. This decision making REALISM will also form part of the player interactions and press conferences I have. We all know the right answers, we all know how to get lovely green responses in team talks, but this year I am going to say and act how I really would in real life.

I am going to make more use of staff than I normally do. We have seen across content creation in recent years the increased use of the Director of Football as one example. I will fully utilise my staff and take on board much of their advice, if I find us contantly disagreeing I may look to replace them, but if they are there to do a job I will use them. I think this will keep the save fresh as I hopefully move up the divisions, and the backroom staff grow. It is unlikely that I will have a Director of Football or a Technical Director in the third tier of Northern Ireland so I will be far more hands on with the day to day running of the club early on in the save than I would be later on at a club like PSG for example.

Finally, I will only really be interested in furthering my own career and keeping my current employers happy. If they want Route One defensive football then that is what they will get, if a certain trophy or rivalry is important to them then they are the ones I will be focusing on. This won’t be a save where I find a pressing tactic that works and I just keep using it at different clubs. The jobs I take and the state I find the clubs in will determine how I approach things with that team, I hope this will keep the save interesting for the next 8 or 9 months.

What do I want to achieve? I want to become the best manager in the game. How you measure this is open for debate, but as a starting point I want to attain a 5 star reputation and I want to be the world’s highest paid manager. I have thought about how long this could take as I am a fairly slow player and I may decide to make this a two year FM journey and start FM24 where I finish in FM23 but we shall see.

My next aim is in the title, I am going to keep a count of how many teams I become at least favoured personnel for, I’m not ambitious enough to try and have stadia named after me, or become a legend; favoured personnel will do fine. I did once get a business studies school report that said, “Chris set very low standards last year and so far this year he has failed to meet them.”

The image below is my profile, looking happy, as the game stands on day one. Not much to write home about but I will return to this screen as the save progresses to see how I develop. I’m the highest paid manager in the division and I would be among the highest paid in the division above, £1,700p/m is not a bad wage, so it could be that I stay here for a while yet - providing I don’t get sacked. We start with half a star reputation so only another four and half to go - easy.

I should point out that I have French and German as fluent, I am going with A-Level French and GCSE German as qualifying as fluent (sue me). Favoured clubs are also true, having so many may seem odd to English readers but here in Northern Ireland it is not uncommon for people to follow a team from NI, Scotland and England. Dundela are there as my grandfather used to be on the committee, my family are social members there, and I went to Dundela Primary school which shares a fence with the football club. I’ve spent many a happy Saturday at the “Hen Run” when the Glens were playing away from home. Interestingly, the ground was also used in filming for the brilliant film “The Keeper” which was based on the life of Manchester City’s German goalkeeper from the 1950s, Bert Trautmann. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it.

Game Set up

For any journeyman save it is important to carefully consider what active leagues you set up with. Fully playable leagues are processed by the AI in much more detail and should mean these leagues remain competitive for longer especially if/when we start to play in European competition, or want to move to a job abroad. With this in mind I have selected the “big five” leagues (England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy) as fully playable. In England I have made all the available divisions fully playable as it is more likely for me to move to the lower reaches of England and Scotland than those farther afield. I have also added the leagues of neighbouring countries, I have already mentioned Scotland, but I have also added Republic of Ireland and Wales. This will make recruitment more realistic and hopefully give me the option of making realistic career choices by potentially making the small move to Ireland or Scotland for example.

I also selected the advanced set up and loaded all Northern Ireland players, all Scottish players, all European Internationals, as well as players of a national reputation in Argentina and Brazil. This has given me a player pool of around 70,000 and represents a balance I am happy with. I may change this as the save progresses, we shall see where the adventure takes us!

Finally I have selected to disable the first transfer window, in my opinion this should always be ticked as in real life the transfer window has already happened and is reflected in the game anyways. My love / hate relationship with attribute masking continues, this year I have decided to keep attribute masking on. Attributes are not realistic, we all know Pep isn’t sitting at home checking Foden’s passing attribute but I do think they are a necessary evil. By masking them I think this adds to the realism somewhat without going full Dan Gear attributless.

Why Start at Bangor?

Last summer I moved from my beloved East Belfast out to the newly awarded City of Bangor, on the North Down coast . The slim chances of ever returning to the office full time meant I was no longer constrained by the prospect of a long commute everyday and the idea of living farther from Belfast was more palatable.

The settlement of Bangor dates back to the 6th Century and the formation of Bangor Abbey, the grounds of which are still in use today, at this time Bangor was one of only four recognised settlements in Ireland. Similar to other monasteries at the time, the settlement came under sustained Viking attacks and was eventually completely destroyed in 824. It took another three centuries for the monastery to be rebuilt.

Bangor awarded City Status.

In 1605, during the plantation of Ulster, King James I granted lands in North Down to a Scotsman, James Hamilton, and he began to develop the area as a town. New homes were built and Scottish migrants brought over to live in them. Hamilton’s descendants, the Ward’s, continued to develop the land, building a park and a castle, and even tried to introduce Cotton Mills to the area during the industrial revolution (this never really took hold and after a series of fires the mills were closed down in the 1850s.).

Bangor’s role in the region changed with the coming of railway in 1865. A direct rail link to Belfast meant Bangor became a place of leisure and entertainment for wealthy Belfast professionals to take a vacation from their busy city life, or in some cases move permanently, which led to the building of a number of Victorian Villas that overlook the harbour to this day. This expansion slowed during World War I but picked up again during the 1920s and 30s and the creation of many art deco buildings in the region which have since been demolished, although Pickie Fun Park remains and is still a firm favourite for children in the area - my own included.

In the years following the Second World War, Bangor continued to grow as a tourist resort and a commuter town, this did begin to change in the late 1960s as foreign travel became affordable and many families started to holiday in Europe rather than visit the seaside at home. Many B&Bs closed as a result but at the same time the population grew quickly as people moved from Belfast to escape the troubles there. The latest census reported the population of Bangor to be 61,000

Having followed East Belfast giants Glentoran my whole life, I have recently taken a closer interest in my new local side, Bangor, even attending a couple of games with my eldest son.

The Northern Ireland leagues are fully licensed on Football Manager and playable right down to the Premier Intermediate League (third tier) where Bangor currently play, so it is surely one of the lowest rep leagues in the vanilla version of the game.

Bangor was formed at the outbreak of World War I as an amalgamation of a number of smaller clubs in the area that had to fold because they lost so many players to battle. For most of their history Bangor occupied the lower reaches in the various leagues they were in, but I can actually remember Bangor being relatively good when I first started watching football in the early 1990s. They won the Irish Cup in 1993 and qualified for Europe three times between 1990 and 1995. You can obviously read more about them on their Wikipedia page, but in short since their heyday in the 1990s various financial and administrative blunders has seen them plummet down the leagues in Northern Ireland. Culminating in them being relegated to the Ballymena and Provincial Intermediate League (4th Tier) at the end of the 2016/17 season. Promotion back to the Premier Intermediate was secured just before the Covid-19 pandemic, and last season Bangor finished 2nd in the Premier Intermediate narrowly missing out on promotion in a playoff with Knockbreda.

What’s next?

To be honest the club doesn’t matter in this save, my only priority will be to further my own career and line my own pockets. With that in mind I will be paying particular attention to the board vision and supporter expectations. At Bangor on day one, the only requirements from the board are a top half finish and to keep within wage budget. I am hopeful I can manage both fairly easily. The supporters only requirement is to be competitive against local rivals Ards should we play them (Ards currently share a ground with Bangor and play in NIs second tier.). Supporters would also like us to make the playoffs, so this would require us to finish at least second in the league. The ever unreliable season preview provided by FM has us as joint favourites for the title with Moyola Park. I will be interested to see how newly promoted Ballymacash Rangers get on as in real life they have received heavy investment and have started the season very well, remaining unbeaten after seven games and sitting top of the league.

One other thing about Northern Ireland football is the sheer amount of cups, it must rival Brazil in this regard. I actually see this as a good thing as success in one of these minor cups might give us a little rep boost.

Final words

I hope you enjoyed this little introduction to my main series this year. In the next episode I will take you through our first team squad, my thoughts on a tactic, and review our first few games in charge. I’m really looking forward to see where my journey takes me and I hope some of you will join me as well.

If you are still looking for more to read can I recommend you head back to the CoffeehouseFM homepage, the quality of blogging coming out of “the house” over the last few days has been fantastic.

As ever thanks for making it this far.

Over and Out

@FMEadster!