|conrad|

Hello all,

Well this is my first proper go at LLM management; I ended up going Salisbury city here’s how I got on;

Season 1 – Conference South | Media Prediction 22nd | End of Season – 4th
Pl – 42 Won -20 Drn – 11 Lst – 9 For – 72 Ag – 46 G.D. - +26 Pts 73
Promoted Via Playoffs (1-0 win vs Eastbourne Boro)

With a transfer budget of £0 but a slightly generous wage budget, I went about building a bigger squad, I signed a few people on free transfers hoping to fill some gaps and have some degree of depth. The season started slowly but quickly picked up pace, I managed to reach 1st place with about 10 games to go, but it quickly came apart and I finished in 4th 6 points behind the league winners.

Some of the players I signed became important starters, particularly a 22 y.o. AML signed on a free and a 28 y.o. ST from Grays Ath who helped me gain promotion in a late season push towards promotion. For the most part though most of the players from the first season I signed are now elsewhere. I also signed a feeder club agreement with Southampton.

Conference South Summary
Winners – Newport Co.
Play offs – Salisbury
Relegated – Hayes, Histon, Bedford

Season 2 – Conference National | Media Prediction 23rd | Position 16th
Pl - 46 Won – 17 Drn – 11 Lst – 18 For – 46 Ag – 45 G.D. +1 Pts – 62

A madly frustrating season, where everything came fairly easily in the first season my first season was pretty horrible. Defense-wise the team was excellent with the 5th best defensive record; unfortunately my free scoring attack of the previous season wasn’t up to the task. Always hovering around the lower reaches of the table a glimmer of hope appeared at the end of the season as I signed a couple of new young players and eventually I managed to reach a positive goal difference by the end of the season.

This season was important in that I signed a couple of decent young players that I hope to build the team around.

Season summary
Winners – Halifax
Play off – Grays
Relegated – Kidderminster, Newport Co, Burton, Moor Green

Season 3 – Conference National | Media Prediction 24th | Position 9th
Pl – 46 Won – 18 Drn – 14 Lst 14 For 67 Ag – 55 G.D. - +12 Pts 68

Disappointingly even after keeping Salisbury in the Conference at the first attempt the board decided to keep the team part-time. I was however given a transfer budget of 11k and a bigger wage budget. This season promised initially to a textbook example of the ‘difficult second season’. The first 3-4 games went well. However for the first half of the season results where extremely difficult to come by; my standard formation that served me well the two seasons before just wasn’t working. A relegation dog fight seemed on the cards.

A massive injury crisis around November forced me to reshuffle the team completely. I changed the formation to *formation and instructions*. A young AMC/R I picked up from Bristol City filled this role perfectly and was earning the plaudits from everyone, and was valued at 160k at the end of the season (!)

This didn’t bring about immediate results, I was half way through a 13 match period without winning a match, however the team started scoring more goals and generally playing much better football. A 4-3 win over Stafford in the last match of December turned the season around; climbing steadily from 19th to end the season 9th. The team really began to gel together and has been playing fantastic football and getting great results. With any luck a promotion push may be on the cards next season if we can avoid the horrendous start we had this season.

Winners - Woking
Play off -
Relegated - Southport, Tamworth, Northich, Gravesend

Cheers

|conrad|

Looks like I messed up with the Bold Tags, if someone could fix that for us that would be great.

Cheers

Breen

Woo good job on the reshuffling~

My team never could play out of *formation*.....

freek_teek

Conrad, the naming of formations in an update thread, or any other thread in this part of the forum, is generally frowned upon. I think it comes awfully close to tipping (as forbidden by the guidelines), even if unintentionally.

Apart from that, looks like an interesting save. Looking forward to more.

mkus

Aye, other than the formation stuff, decent update.

emgergo

Let me be the first: KUTGW!

scottn72

WHS ^. Except the bit about being first.

Kriss

Yeh, good stuff apart from the feeder club agreement.

I also wonder if you're using player search as you seem to have come by new talent a bit easily, correct me if I'm wrong.

|conrad|

The two young players I signed where previous loan targets who where released from their clubs. The other players where signed on scout recommendations. (Scouts where sent to scout England initially, later on the Conference national and the reserve leagues). I have two fairly decent scouts for the level of team I am with stats around the 7-12 mark for judging ability and potential if I can remember correctly.

I did however use the player search in my first pre-season before I started reading these forums. None of the players made an impact on the team and pretty much all of them are gone now (a fairly big waste of time/money really). Players such as the striker at the end of the first season where scouting recommendations. (Isn't the new scouting system excellent btw).

Apologies for the Formation talk, was seriously early in the morning at the end of the third season and I was pretty eager to get it up on here to see what you guys think!

Thanks

UELLfan

conrad:

You'll soon enough find that we don't consider parent-feeder agreements to be completely kosher, as they aren't allowed by the FA IRL.

Other than that, KUTGW!