2009/2010 season halfway

The half way point is here! The situation is still good for me and my Havant & Waterlooville team but the strain is starting to show on my players as every match is beginning to be a struggle. Here is where Havant stands now:



My biggest disappointment is by far the elimination from all the cups: the FA Cup, FA Trophy and Conference League Cup S mostly by teams inferior to my squad. I've also tasted defeat a number of times against top teams but also realised some encouraging victories. Here are a few matches I've picked to give you a closer look:


Havant&Waterlooville 3-0 Grays ; one of the most important victories to date because Grays was at that time behind me in 2nd place. It was a most surprising one too because I had expected a tough match. We also had a great element of luck when 2 of their best players went off the pitch with injuries and when the ball went twice past my own keeper only to bounce off the posts. Ultimately we managed to secure a win by keeping focused and missing less opportunities than our opponents


Havant&Waterlooville 3-1 Mansfield ; it was a very exciting game in which Havant was the favourite because Mansfield came after a string of bad results. Scoring opportunities were numerous for both sides but despite that, after our early goal I remained confident that a big result was on the way and an extraordinary George Daly didn't disappoint with a superb hattrick. One of the most beautiful games to date


Havant&Waterlooville 1-2 Tamworth; I was deeply ashamed with this result and started yelling at my players. We were coming after a good run in the league and the I considered the match against BSN team Tamworth as easy picking. Unfortunately my players thought so too and after our goal they went back into a game of utter complacency and mediocrity. Nothing could motivate them any further and this lead to this upset. We just never really tried even though the match facts show somehow of a balance


Next up we have some very difficult games and I hope that by my next update I will have something to cheer about.

2009/2010 season start

Well I've played 12 league games so far in the BSP and the results were amazing! I still can't believe them. 8 wins and 4 draws! See for yourself:

I am currently 1st in the BSP with 28 points, pretty cool since I was being touted by the media to finish 20th but the season is long and I try to keep my celebrations to a minimum


Another reason to be happy is that the top 4 of my best and in-form players in this season so far are new signings! They put quite a strain on my wage budget but are worth every cent:

From now on I will be making regular updates in the interval of 10 official games. I will also single out and comment matches that stood out or are defining for my team whether they be good or bad games, so be sure to keep an eye on new posts!

2009/2010 season preparations

I was raring to take on the Blue Square Premier by storm but i knew much improvement was needed. Even though I had a formidable transfer budget of 0 euros, the wage budget increase from around 7.2k euros/week to 8.6k e/week was encouraging. The only player to leave was Shaun Wilkinson, who wasn't in my first team plans anyway. Some clever scouting was in order and after a while I bought these players



Jeffrey Imudia(19) - he was my first choice to a season loan extension; I hope he will be as solid playing as my MR as in my first season and he listed Havant&Waterlooville as his favourite club!

Liam Hogan(18) - a young GK from my parent club Southampton; I just felt that my current GK, Kevin Scriven wasn't ready for a superior league yet and Liam Hogan was a convenient and promising choice.

Matty Mainwaring(19) - this ML was a bit of a gamble from me, the ML position was my weakest in the first season partly due to Lee Holmes' refusal to extend his 3 month loan so with Matty I just hoped for the best.

Thomas Pinault(27) - an experienced 100% AM, a position which was patched with MC during my first season; he has great technical and physical stats for BSP and I am sure he will become my first choice AM

Dale Tonge(24) - this DR/WBR was voted the best player in BSN last season and because I felt my right wing needed strenghtening I jumped right at this player and battled quite a few clubs until he finally signed for Havant

George Daly(18) - a young and promising ST signed to be a match for my other great striker Paul Booth who was the only one to play fairly consistent; I am looking forward to what he can do.

Tactics & Training

TACTICS:

-the tactic I use and plan on using is the Razor 1.0 and 1.1 by Paine although adjusted in some games based on the opponents to make it more offensive or defensive.
-you can download the Razor tactics here :

Razor tactic

TRAINING:

-even though I have experimented heavily with training schedules all my best results are very similar to the schedules devised by DarkStarr so I recomend downloading them directly here:

DarkStarr training

2008/2009 summary

As you can see Havant & Waterlooville was the dominant force in the Blue Square South during the season. A top attack and the best defence in the league ensured a 20 point difference between the top 2 spots. After a satisfying season it's time to prepare for the Blue Square Premier.

First Season

My first season was a complete success. To cut a long story short here is my first season in fixtures

2008/2009 transfers

The first thing I did was to change my parent club because no one at portsmouth wanted to go on loan at my team. Fortunately Southampton stepped up and became my new parent club. From them I loaned 3 players Michael Byrne DC, Jeffrey Imudia DR/MR and Lee Holmes AML. Lee Holmes only spent 3 months at Havant but Imudia and Byrne proved real assets to the club.


The most exciting player was by far Jeffrey Imudia. Even though he might not seem much of a player he was invaluable to me. He performed well in the 20 games he played with an averange perfomance of 7.11

The first gang

So...the first season begins technically because by the time I started this blog I was well involved in season 2, anyway this was my starter team. The line up was pretty solid and my parent club was Portsmouth. Needless to say that my transfer budget was inexistent but my wage budget was 7,6k euros/week which barely covered my needs. Financially I wasn't the best and brightest but the media prediction put my team 1st.

The story begins...

Hello and welcome, today I start managing a small Blue Premier South team (English 6th League team) with the cute name of Havant & Waterlooville FC. My ultimate goal is to climb through the ranks of the English football leagues and reach the Premier League. I will post my progress on this blog starting from the first day of the first season. Wish me luck!