Hello all, welcome to the end of my 3rd season in charge of Thurrock! In my last update I went on a great unbeaten run in the league and looked set to win the league, provided I didn’t slip up. We did poorly in the FA Trophy, but got all the way to the 3rd Round of the FA Cup before being swept aside by Bristol City. I also set a large goal of staying unbeaten for the whole league campaign, which would not only be a brilliant thing to do, but it’s also a Steam Achievement

Here’s how we did:

A brilliant second half, we won 17 and drew 4 out of the 21 games, meaning we stayed unbeaten throughout the whole season! It didn’t come without some close shaves though, with the Truro game being tough and also on the least day of the season when we went 1-0 down to Farnborough but managed a 4-1 lead by half time! The best game had to be below though:

A 4-0 win away to the 2nd best team in the league (in my opinion, and also they are 2nd in the league) behind us of course . I didn’t do anything to my normal 4-4-2 except start with a ‘Counter’ strategy and shout ‘Retain Possession’ but we were brilliant and fully deserved our win. Ebbsfleet were on a good run themselves, but we made sure it was over and ours continued .

FM has also kindly complimented me on my tactical approach…

I tailor my tactic to try and exploit the opponent, and it worked on these two occasions, which were the only times this type of message came up. For the top one, I normally play 4-4-2 but I switched to 4-2-2-2 against Truro and I guess it didn’t say anything because we drew. The 4-2-3-1 is one of the tactics I have trained my team for (4-4-2 and 4-2-4 are the other 2) and I had never used it until now. We were great but conceded too easily, I used it for the 2 games after the 5-3, which were the last two games of the season and we conceded 3 while scoring 6. I’m going to change my formation to 4-2-3-1 as opposed to keeping it as 4-4-2, because we seem to do well using it and if I can bring in more attacking and stable players it could be a real success. I normally only change it when my team becomes a good Premier League team, but I think my team is currently good enough to finish in mid-table in League 2, so we should do well using a dominating formation for at least another 2 seasons. Would you like me to do a separate post explaining my tactics and my starting XI choices, maybe during the Season 4 transfers?

Obviously we finished top, by going unbeaten for the whole season we were bound to. We scored 100 goals, which I’m very happy about since my first team strikers got a combined total of 42 league goals. We conceded the least too, another Steam Achievement in the bag . Ebbsfleet once again missed out on promotion through the playoffs, Truro head back up though courtesy of a win over Woking in the Playoff Final.

Rushton ended up scoring 25 league goals, we won the league with 5 games to go and he scored 6 in those final 5 games .

A brilliant team, a few that are 1-2* and will be leaving, I’m still undecided on a few though so I will need to do some thinking.

There was also a couple of interesting things regarding jobs for me:

Came at about March, a good offer from a team I could’ve easily saved from relegation but obviously I want to stay at Thurrock so I rejected it.

Incredible! I could’ve made a huge step up to the Championship! I manage in the BSS and I’m already being recognized for my good work . My reputation was Sunday League Football by the way, so it was as low as it could be.

To recap, a fantastic season and a brilliant first promotion! We have a strong squad already, those that are 3.5* or more on my team screen are good BSP players, so I already have a good team! One last very interesting transfer:

Wow! The former Manchester United player was offered to me by his agent straight after I won the BSS and he only wanted £350 per week! My scout reckons he is a good League 1 player, so he should tear apart the Blue Square Premier!

A final question: Should I go into more detail about results by splitting them up into months, then briefly talking about them?

Steam Achievements Completed: 28/90

Thanks for reading

Season 3, I wanted to win the league and try and retain the FA Trophy, while getting at least to the FA Cup 2nd round.

My wage before was 5k, so this was very generous but they did expect promotion.

Most are 3* or more, but some like O’Malley, Jordan and Hurley were signed purely to add strength in depth to the squad, they aren’t that good but at least I have backup for positions, since injuries frequently happen in the lower leagues.

A fantastixc period, we only unluckily lost to Lewes in the FA Trophy (defence = over ) and expectedly to Bristol City. We managed to stay unbeaten in the league! I’ve played 21, exactly half of the league games (told you it would be two halves ) and the only thing I’m disappointed about is drawing 3 games at home out of the 7, we should be winning those.

My favourite game? This:

Very difficult game against a League 1 side, and I chose this over the win against Leyton Orient (the 4-4 draw was amazing though) because we were away from home, which made it even harder. But a great game from new signing Guy somehow put us through, even though we were second-best. Very happy about this game, maybe we deserve to be in League 1 after beating them and Orient .

Easily top, unless we stop our incredible form we will get promoted automatically, picking up our 2nd piece of silverware since I took over. My main target is to try and stay unbeaten this whole season, but away games to Bath and Ebbsfleet will make that very hard.

The team, I haven’t shown you them until now! Proudlock is doing very well, but academy product Steve Rushton is my favourite player. Interestingly, I already have 3 regens in my team (Winters, Rushton, Proudlock) and all are very talented .

The great man (boy is more appropriate ) himself. Very good for a club like Thurrock and still only 17, he has potential to be a decet Championship player and my assistant constantly tells me that Rushton is developing well under me and the first team experience is really helping him become better.

A nice fact to end the post: This season was the first season we started our campaign away from home, and the first time we won this opening fixture.

Steam Achievements Completed: 21/90

The second season was one where I had high hopes for, I signed many players onto part-time contracts (we’re semi-pro so full-time contracts aren’t available) so they were bound to the club, and made about 6 signings on top of that to strengthen the team.

Board Expectations (League): Top Half Finish

Personal Expectations (League): Playoffs, possible title challenge too.

Board Expectations (FA Trophy): 1st Round

Personal Expectations (FA Trophy): 3rd Round, I think the team is good enough, as long as we didn’t get really difficult draws early on from teams in the BSP.

Board Expectations (FA Cup): 4th Qualifying Round

Personal Expectations (FA Cup): Match last year (2nd Round) because I have a stronger team now so I should be able to match it.

Even after we finished 9th last season, the media still predicted us to go down in 20th place, what do they know?

Another fairly good start, a shock loss to newly-promoted Billericay at home was worrying though and we lost the game after that too. But a win over recently relegated Bath put us back on track, or so I thought. We were 3-0 up against Tonbridge, but somehow only came away with a draw . After that our form was wobbly; we won a few but then went on a 6 winless streak (yes, I did check to see if it was last season’s results after noticing that ) but then went on a ‘win or lose’ run were we didn’t draw in 9 league games, unfortunately I lost 5 of those. Meanwhile, we were doing well in the cups and especially in the FA Trophy, you’ll see in a moment about the FA Cup. The end of the season was the best, we were brilliant and beat teams better than us in a hope to improve our league position, which worked very well as we climbed 5 places in those last 7 league games.

The most exciting game of the year, and one that lead to my exit from the FA Cup:

2-0 down very early, my players weren’t going to dow down so easily and scored 4 goals in the first half to give us an enexpected 4-2 lead by half time. I predicted the to put up a fight, especially at home but it looked like we were going through with a 4-2 win until my rigt back goes “I want to concede a penalty late on do I can get abused by my manager” and then proceeded to do exactly that. In the replay my lads couldn’t put up the same sort of fight, even in our own ground, and we stumbled out of the cup. That defender who conceded the penalty never played another game for the club, he was released at the end of the season.

Another great match below, at the time of the match Ebbsfleet were top of the BSS and looking good for the title and promotion.

Amazing from us, we managed to go into the break 3-2 up, and my 16 year old youth academy product Rushton scores a hattrick! He was my best striker when he came to the club at 15, and it definitely living up to this title

But where did we finish in the league, especially after our late surge?

. We were soooooooo close to the playoff spot, but Bath got it in the end. You have to take into consideration that we were 12th with 7 games to go, so our current finish is actually pretty good. They got into the playoff final but lost to Eastbourne Boro, very surprising since I think they aren’t that good. We managed to lose to Basingstoke at home, and they got relegated . On the plus side, we got a trophy to our name!!!! We beat Luton, who were also in the playoffs in the BSP at the time, looking to win the FA Trophy and get promotion to the Football League, but they ended up doing neither! We won the FA Trophy, and we aren’t even in the top league of those that compete in it!!!

We even deserved to win it, we were the better team and thoroughly deserve our success. My 16 year old superstar finished as top scorer, what a player I have in him. In my next update I post a picture of him, I’ve already done half of Season 3 so an update wil be coming tomorrow too?

Question for you: Rather than doing 2 updates wth brief mentions of the transfers, should I do a separate post for them? Especially now since I am looking for definite promotion next season, moving up would see more players be willing to join me (I’ve seen so many players that wouldn’t join me but would join the likes of Luton or Crewe in the league above me) and more transfers are likely to happen, since it seems keeping mostly the same team with only about 6 transfers doesn’t get you far, as these first 2 seasons have shown.

Steam Achievements Completed: 18/90

Thanks for reading

Board Expectations (League): Avoid Relegation (finish 16th-19th)

Personal Expectations (League): Top Half, maybe snatch a playoff place

Board Expectations (FA Trophy and FA Cup): Get into the round after the one we started in, e.g we start in the FA Cup 2nd round qualifiers, get into the 3rd round.

Personal Expectations (FA Trophy and FA Cup): Not that important, but get as far as we can to get the prize money.

Thurrock were predicted to finish 22nd – last place. I could only make a single signing due to the tight wage budget, this was Nikki Ahmed (Right Back) on a free. This is how the season panned out:

After a fantastic start we underwent a 6 game winless streak, and lost to team we should’ve beaten (Basingstoke, Chelmsford, Maidenhead twice and Welling) while getting 1 point when we should’ve gotten 3 (Farnborough, Hampton & Richmond, Eastleigh and Boreham Wood, who aren’t that good even though they finished 5th) which cost us quite a few places in the league. We ended up finishing…

9th, after the first 15 games of the season we were 2nd, so it is a disappointing position to finish in. However, we were predicted last so this position is very good and the board were extremely happy. If I had gotten the results I expected from at least half of the games I mentioned we would’ve won the league.

A good season considering who we are and the fact that I only brought in one player (none went, most were on free contracts anyway) meant that I basically worked with a team that was predicted last, but finished 9th. We were 2nd and doing very well at the start though, so I am personally disappointed that we couldn’t keep up our form and instead had some poor form. Cups were good too, we progressed all the way to the 2nd round of the FA Cup, beaten by a side 3 divisions above us, and the FA Trophy was alright, we were unlucky to lose on penalties but did well to hold eventual BSS winners Chelmsford to a draw twice in the cup. The main problem was scoring goals; we struggled to do so and score the least amount of goals in the top half.

Steam Achievements Completed in Season 1: 16/90

FM12 came out just over a week ago, and I decided that my first venture in FM12 wouldn’t be based around the club – it would be based around Steam Achievements. With the Add/Remove Leagues feature and the fact that this is the first time I’ve used Steam for FM makes it a good challenge for me personally. Some of them are ridiculously difficult, like not conceding a goal in 30 games! I’ll try my best though, I think with a lot of time, especially if I build a club to become incredible, I can complete them. I’ll be doing 2 updates per season (1 for each half if you didn’t work it out ), but I’ve already played 2 seasons so I’ll be recapping them over the next couple of days. I started as Thurrock, the worst team in the Blue Square South to make it more of a challenge, my wage budget restrictions have been tight so it has been hard to get good players. You’ll see how I got on soon

Also, what are your thoughts on the new theme? It’s the best one available in my opinion, simply because of the level of control this theme gives you, you can customise almost everything