AFC Telford: Pre-Season Transfers and Start of Season

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Hey everybody! After AFC Telfords miraculous victory in the play-off final, We were going to be playing in the much tougher Blue Square Premier league. The team needed to have some serious changes if we were to compete and go for back-to-back promotions, despite the bookies predicting us to come dead last! I’d decided to implement an older tactic from FM2009 into my game in a 4-3-1-2 formation and for that to work their needed to be an overhaul in midfield, possibly a new striker and a new centre back. Here’s what I managed to find with the 8k budget the board had given me.

As you can see I didn’t really want to max out the spending and looked mainly to free players. I suceeded in finding a new CB with the aquisition of Carl Martin and also managed to sign two young and upcoming centre midfielders, ollie hotchkiss and Rhys Mccabe. Our new main striker would be loanee Craig King from Championship team Leicster City. Heres some stats and information on the signings I find most exciting.

Rhys McCabe is certainly a hot prospect for the future. He is already playing at an internationl level for Scotland U21′s and is very talented. He is overall a strong midfielder with the ability to pass and dribble through the centre of the park, he will be playing an anchorman role in my team and i have high hopes for him.

Next up is my new centre-back.

Carl is the only signing in the sumemr who i spent any money on, and i think he is well worth that £1000 I payed to Crewe. He’ll be partnering Ryan Austin at centre back and will dominate the game in the air with his strong aerial abilities. I’m  hoping he’ll be a rock at the heart of my defence.

Now heres my other young midfielder.

Ollie is a pretty versitile midfielder, he is able to play both an attacking role and a defensive role, But for my team he’ll be a CM with Rhys Mccabe and Simon Heslop. Another young gem at the age of 21, i’m sure over the season he’ll become a great player for us with his ability to pass a ball and his excellent creativity.

Those 3 are who i consider to be the best signings at the moment. However the other players may prove me wrong, we’ll just have to see how the season goes.

Pre-season was very poor 1 win 5 losses and 1 draw, but i’m not bothered about pre-season it’s just a time where new players are trying to gel with eachother.  Heres the reuslts:

With the friendlies out the way it was time to start the season and first up was a home game against last years 3rd place Luton Town. Prehaps one of the most difficult teams to play at the start of a season, oh well I guess it’s best to get it out of the way.

Well, I was pretty impressed with our first performance, we challenged them in every department and looked every inch as able to score as they did. A goal would of been brilliant but not everything goes your way, overall it was a pretty boring match with no player able to outshine any other.  Still i’m very happy with our first perfomance in the Blue Square premier.

Next up was a tricky away trip to Hayes and Yeading, this is a ideal time to see whether our new away formation will perform better than last seasons.

Not the best start to our away form. We were outplayed on every area of the pitch, especially up-front, where our strikers only managed a measly 4 shots compared to their 10. it’s a shame we let goals in so early, Marvin Homand managed to find space too easily both in the 4th and 12th minute and probably could of added more to his tally if not for some great saves by young keeper Robert Ambrusics. It’s also a problem that we haven’t scored a goal yet, but i’m sure we can change that.

After a bad performance in the last game there was a chance for the lads to redeem themselves, as we were to play relegation candidates Forest Green at home so I was expecting us to pick up our first 3 points in the Blue Square Premier.

Yes! a good solid performance by the lads to give ourselves a much needed confidence boost! We completely outclassed Forest Green aswell, especially up front totalling 20 shots on goal! New Attacking Midfielder Danillo Rinaldi powered one in from the edge of the area to give us the lead, i’ll be hoping for more of the same from him! Top scorer last season Aaron-Moses Garvey doubled our advantage with an easy header which flew past the keeper to start his goal talley this season. After the break we kept our cool and kept pressing for more goals while not letting the opposition challenge our keeper. Chris Nurse netted inside the penaty area to secure the victory. They managed to gain a consolation with a penalty which I have no arguements about, but it didn’t matter in the end.

We had another tough game to go to again, away to play-off hopefuls Cambridge, I have to say that im really not expecting us to win it as we dont look as good as  the stronger teams in the division right now.

Exactly what i expected to be honest, a bit of a hammering in terms of the statistics. It’s a bit annoying to see we manage to let one player score a hat-trick in the space of 20 minutes, because up until the 70th minute we defended brilliantly and somehow Robert Ambrusics managed to keep out 17 shots! To lose it all so stupidly is just a bit annoying really, but oh well we’ll keep going.

I was hoping to pick up another 3 points against strugglers Newport County next, as were at home and they possess a weaker team than we do.

Finally were bagging some goals, a great performance to go with a comfortable scoreline. However, now that I look at the statistics the game was actually very even. It just seems we were able to convert our chances. It was good to see new loanee Craig King bagging his first 2 goals for the club and Moses Ademola getting his first. Chris Nurse, although not expected to make the first team at the start of the season has been playing well and scoring goals so  I may have to reconsider his involvement in the team. We never really looked like losing this game and its good to see us getting the right results at home.

The final game of the month was a trip to Kettering, a mid table to team who we possibly may be able to pick up some away points against.

So Unlucky! Once again weve failed to take our chances away from home and we’ve payed the price once more. A very even game where we really should of atleast got a point. Kettering were just as good as us, but it’s games like theses that we should be winning if we want to claim a respectable position in the league this season. Not the best result to end the first month on.

7 points out of our first 6 games is not too bad at all, but I think we can get better. This is where i’d normally insert the league table but I forgot to take a screenshot of it XD.

My player of the month is going to go to backup player Chris Nurse. Mainly due to the fact hes managed to convert his few chances and given his team mates opportunities to score.

Thanks for reading everybody and stay tuned for next month!

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