Mr Ashman
14 years ago
3 years ago
3
Having found myself with an abundance of time during lockdown I've finally managed to keep a career going for longer than the first few games of a season before losing interest which is a first since about 2013. Because of this the story starts in my 4th season in-game as I never expected to be enjoying it this much or to want to share it with anyone. I'll provide a brief background of previous seasons before bringing everything round to the current day.

Background

In real life Altrincham FC are a semi-pro club based just south of Manchester, founded in 1891 with games played at Moss Lane (6085 Capacity). They were relegated to the English Premier in 16/17 before coming straight back up again to the Vanarama North in 17/18. The following season saw them finish 5th, giving me a good base to push for promotion in my first season with a predicted finish of 7th.

19/20

My first season with the club saw us finish second to a rampant Kidderminster before finally losing the playoff final to Chester on penalties. I can't pretend this wasn't a disappointment but in hindsight it was probably for the best as it gave me another season to overhaul a squad I'd made very few changes to.

https://sortitoutsi.net/uploads/mirrored_images/h6whGgkD9QnlNbd7GY1PnEBdR7O9nOFUlQMEgmMX.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/akaPTy1.jpg

20/21

Our second season saw us bring in 15 new players, 7 of them went straight into the first team to help us in our search for promotion and we shifted a couple of the older more expensive players off our books as they weren't playing due to a change in formation. A strong start to the season saw us pull ahead from the pack before a run of 3 losses in our final 6 games made things much closer than they needed to be, we still had enough in us to clinch the title though whilst scoring 110 goals.

https://sortitoutsi.net/uploads/mirrored_images/dSJSlk024B9ONgbsara0OFC4eCJmh5LDIIRzsHod.jpg

21/22

Promotion to the National League saw the board asking me to fight valiantly against relegation which is broadly what I expected. I brought in a number of new faces, mostly CB's and Midfielders to shore up my leaky defence as well as a new first team GK.

A shaky start saw us win 1 in 4 before a 9 game unbeaten streak (8 wins, 1 draw) gave me more confidence in our game plan and hope that we might actually be able to do well at this level. Come the end of the season it was never in doubt as we finished top of the league with 107 points and 33 wins, both new records for the VNL.

https://sortitoutsi.net/uploads/mirrored_images/k43FbcLiIEbeuQmK1sKP3AlhfwwJXCS4GcERk9NI.jpg

Hopefully this gives a broad overview of what's happened so far. I'll follow up with a current day situation in the next post as I've only played one game of the season so far which was in the Carabao Cup and there have been a number of changes at the club since promotion to League 2.
Mr Ashman
14 years ago
3 years ago
3
As I mentioned at the end of first post there have been a number of changes at the club over the summer following our promotion to League 2, the major one being that we turned pro in the summer. The board approached me and asked my opinion on the matter and of course I said yes, so for the first time in Altrincham's history we are now a professional club. I still have some players on part time contracts and as they expire/funds allow I'll start converting them to full time.

Because of the promotion to league 2 we had to make some changes to our stadium as well and install some more seating at a cost of around £100k, this reduced the capacity of the stadium by roughly 1000 down to a max of 5,225 but we never get close to filling it so it's not something I'm too concerned about at the moment and with £600k still in the bank it didn't affect our finances too much.

Onto the personnel changes at the club now, I said goodbye to my longstanding assistant manager when his contract expired and brought in Danny Wright of Cheltenham and Solihull fame, I bring in a lot of people on trial and my assistant managers reports are key in helping decide whether to sign them or not. Along with a new assistant manager I brought in a new scout, coach and some youth staff.

Finally onto the team

https://sortitoutsi.net/uploads/mirrored_images/SZGq3NtpqTxxgYWE5Ex32JlolKcbC5T2J4bGDZw8.jpg

It's a fairly small group of players leaving me with a reasonably strong first team but little to no cover at all in some places. I have some serious concerns about the wingback positions as I'm not sure either player will be good enough at this level despite my LB being player of the year for the past two seasons, I'll be looking to bring in backup/replacements for these areas in the coming weeks. Another striker is probably on the list as well although I'll likely look to the loan market for this.

In terms of transfers we've had a quiet summer so far, I've brought in a new 18 year old CB who's going to be back up but has good potential and a new first choice GK as mine last season was on loan from West Brom. I also sold a young CB who wasn't good enough last season only making 5 appearances, I'm desperately trying to shift Jordan Hulme and Josh Hancock and bring in younger replacements on lower wages but so far they've both refused all contract offers from other clubs, they're contracts expire at the end of the season so it's not the end of the world but it would free up some space in my relatively small wage budget.

Next time I'll aim to get the season rolling and finally get some games played, I'm finding that I get quite word heavy while writing these so any feedback on the structure would be greatly appreciated.



HockeyBhoy
8 years ago
11 months ago
1,134
Premium
Have a look at the Hall of Fame stories and some of the long running stories in this section.

Always find myself that a few screenshots (not too many) breaks up the writing well. Maybe do a month's update per post?
bigmattb28
10 years ago
3 days ago
1,474
Premium
Good intro. Following.

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