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I didn't sign any players pre-season. There were a variety of reasons for this, but chief amongst them was that, to be honest, I just couldn't be bothered. Sure, it's my job, bla bla yada yada, but I don't like to rush into things and it was nice summer weather so going walking in the highlands of Scotland seemed more appealing than just sitting behind my desk in my pokey little office mulling over whether to sign one useless individual or another. I did, however, appoint a coach or two and a couple of scouts, another reason why I signed no-one - it takes time to find scouts and it takes time for them to find players. There's no point me casting around aimlessly trying to find players who are bad enough that they might wish to come and play for us, but good enough that they are better than what we already have - that is what I pay my scouts £10 per week to do for me.

The final reason for me not signing any players was that my loony bin assistant manager informed me that we had a squad which should be well capable of a mid-table finish and that his only major concern was lack of cover for our goalkeeper. I took very little notice of him, assessed the squad myself and came to completely the opposite conclusion, but still, I wanted to see the players that we did have before rushing into spending the club's money on wasted wages, not least because we were £400,000 in debt. It didn't seem to worry my assistant manager that the club's only left-back was 15 years old and thus ineligible to play for the first team, nor that we had only one left-sided player of any description who was old enough. Neither did it worry him that the squad was made up of just 4 senior players and a bunch of 15 and 16 year olds. Now I like working with people who look on the bright side and have an optimistic outlook, but a bit of realism doesn't go amiss either and the idea that this group of school kids were comfortably amongst the middle echelon of teams in the division was clearly nonsense, even allowing for my very hazy knowledge of any of the other teams in the division.

Eventually the season kicked off and I opted to focus on managing a football team instead of tramping around the mountains of northwest Scotland. An opening day 0-0 draw at home to Kettering left me fairly content. Sure it was a home game, we didn't score and Kettering will probably turn out to be the second worst team in the league when it all shakes out, but you have to start somewhere and, as a newly promoted team, everyone expected us to get relegated so getting off the mark first game was a good result. Despite that I decided to sign some players. The upcoming transfer window, still almost a month away anyway, was of little interest to me since the chances of any player already attached to another club being desparate enough to come and play for Whitley Bay were miniscule. However, games were soon to come thick and fast and it did seem fairly obvious that we could do with a little more depth. Weakness in depth perhaps, but when you start with detritus it's difficult for a new signing not to improve the squad at least a little.

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Thus, with my scouts still buying maps and trying to work out quite where they should be looking for players, I fell back on my own knowledge from my previous spell in charge of Halifax and as a coach of Northampton. Leon Ryan and Ryan Toulson had evidently not made the grade at Halifax and were either sufficiently crap that no other club wanted them or had an agent who was utterly useless. Either way, both were eager to come to Hillheads Park for a trial and both proved themselves worthy of being full members of our squad, i.e. both were able to kick a football in the right direction, give or take a few compass points, without falling over.

Toulson took a while to sign, mostly because his opinion of his own worth was greater than mine, but in the end we came to an agreement which happened to be the same as he asked for right at the start of negotiations. He is a right-back, we already have at least 2 right-backs, but still, I'd worked with him before and I felt he could be useful as well as versatile. Since I was playing a right-back on the left of our back four also it was useful to have a good supply of them until I could find someone with a left foot. Leon Ryan is a striker, he has pace to burn at this level and is also pretty good in the air. His technical ability is no better than your average man in the street, but he'll do and he might even score some goals if we're lucky. The third player to sign was another striker, Marcus Benson, formerly of Northampton, but now also unemployed. Marcus makes Leon look like Ronaldinho technically, but again he was someone I had worked with before so better the devil you know and all that. I'm sure there are worse players down here amongst the dregs of the Blue Square North or whatever this division is called nowadays.

A 2-2 draw, again at home, followed and we were on a roll, we'd scored some goals, we were still unbeaten and the mood was positive, despite the fact that both games had been at home. 3 games later and the mood was a little less positive. We still had 2 points, we still had 2 goals and we were now 21st out of 22 in the division. The 4-0 defeat at Workington would have been highly amusing if I were a neutral observer. Whitley Bay's "defending", if such it could be called, was straight out of the kamikaze book of how to play football as the home side went 3-0 up after just 20 minutes. To be fair to the players they conceded just once more in the remaining 70 minutes. To be unfair to them, Workington probably dropped down 27 gears and trolled their way through the rest of the game before decided they ought to add another. (Margin Note: We must practice defending set pieces - 10 players standing motionless somewhere in their own half would be an improvement). Boston away saw the media, bookies and everyone predict an easy win for the unbeaten home side. They remained unbeaten, but the 0-0 draw injected a fresh wave of enthusiasm into Whitley Bay. True we had scored in just one of our first six games, but that point kept us off the bottom and could be a building block for further 0-0 draws.

sherm

Like the start Glamdring I'll keep my eye on this one

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Author's Note:

All the usual guff - FM 08, all English leagues active plus Scottish leagues on view only (I'd be unable to resist the temptation of a second manager up there if they were active!). I included players from various nations, mostly Scandinavian and Eastern European.

Don't think there's anything else anyone needs to know. I have background pictures switched off if that is of any interest and distances in yards. Thought I should dive straight into a story at the start of my game rather than wait so long that I can't remember what happened. As my local club and one with which I had a fantastic experience in FM 05 I should hopefully persevere with this, unlike "one or two" other stories!

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Oh yeah, I forgot the blatantly obvious fact that I used the ditor to move Whitley Bay into the Blue Square North. If anyone is a fan of Sollihull Moor tough because your team were ejected to make space. I also made us a feeder club for Newcastle United - not that that relationship is going to yield anything useful, plus I added them as our fierce rivals ( looking well into the future with big ideas of us one day being in the same league :p )

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A bunch of international matches followed. Some people at the club care about how England do in internationals. I am not one of them. Some at the club, including our 16 year old Scottish goalkeeper case about how Scotland do in internationals and those some include myself also. Predictably England thrashed Russia at Wembley. It was boring, obviously, it always is when England play, but at least it kept the lads happy at the Whitley Bay training ground. Scotland, on the other hand, astonishingly elected to leave James McFadden, Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller out of their 16 entirely for the trip to France. None appeared to be injured, but Birmingham's Garry O'Conor played upfront. He did alright, but France won 2-0 to leave Scotland's qualification hopes for Euro 2008 looking slim when considered alongside Italy's 0-4 demolition of Ukraine in Kiev.

Having not been privileged enough to earn tens of thousand pounds per week during my playing career...(ok so I was a talentless pleb who deserved nothing more, but that's beside the point)...I had to make a living outside of my football management. During my spell at Halifax a few years back I had been on a full time contract, albeit for a risible salary, but Whitley Bay are nowhere near being a full time club and with those aforementioned debts not far short of the half million mark the club don't feel the need to splash the cash around on manager wages, especially not when managers of my "calibre" are two a penny. Fortunately I was never under any illusions during my playing career as to my abilities and so read for a degree in Maths and Computer Science at the same time. Thus I have qualifications and a brain, of some description, so while some rich, but thick footballers need to make enough money during their short career to live on for the rest of their life I did at least have prospects.

So, my days are spent on computer programming and my evenings either in a pokey little office at Hillheads Park or on a muddy field somewhere near Tynemouth. Then of course my Saturdays are spent standing on touchlines watching my incompetent charges do their best to lose as many foootball matches as possible. I may be giving an impression of discontentedness with the whole situation, but that would be a wholly erroneous conclusion. I enjoy my day job and I love the challenge of my night job. Being from Lancashire, however, I have a sense of humour which passes many people by, being as it is based on sarcasm and moaning. Needless to say Jack Dee is a big favourite of mine when it comes to comedy. Publically I back all my players 100%. Privately I do also, except in this most private of diaries which is tucked away in a corner of my flat, never to be read by anyone. So if you are reading this now I demand to know how you got hold of it!

Despite the international circus, life in the Blue Square North goes on pretty much as normal with fixtures clashing quite happily with the international matches. Whitley Bay were back at Hillheads Park for their latest match and our opponents were Vauxhall Motors. Veteran striker Phil Bell got us off to a storming start with his 3rd and Whitley Bay's 3rd goal of the season in the 4th minute. We were looking good, playing well and creating a few chances. Alas, we failed to add to our lead, conceded an equaliser and that was that, another draw, but at least 1-1 is an improvement on 0-0. We have no pretence over being any good at all at defending so the failure to keep a clean sheet is more than offset by us actually scoring a goal. That we can't even beat a car company a football doesn't bode well for the future, but we are at least irritating Nuneaton who, having also drawn their last two matches, keep eagerly checking our result after their match only to find that we are still keeping them nailed to the foot of the table on goal difference. If we could just win a game at some point that would be really useful!