Non-League Adventures

A warm greeting to you all, to this; my personal quest for greatness within the cut-throat world of football management, starting at the base camp of a mountain, the peak scarcely visible, looming at dizzying heights above me.

I shall be taking my first steps on the trail to immortality with my hometown team, Ashby Ivanhoe FC. Based in the Leicestershire market town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch which recently appeared on a poll of ‘Britain’s hidden gems’ compiled by the National Express coach company. Ivanhoe take their name from the Sir Walter Scott novel of the same name which is partially set within the town and it’s ancient castle ruins which also gave the club it’s nickname ‘The Knights’.


I am using the EEE (England enhanced & expanded) file available from FMUpdates, which enables all divisions down to the fifth step of non-league football to be playable as well as adding numerous regional cup competitions. I highly recommend this expansion to anyone who enjoys non-league footy. I have used the editor in conjunction with this file to swap Ashby from the East Midlands Counties League in step six into the Midlands Premier division at the expense of Continental star who finished last in real life last season. (Ashby only narrowly missed out on promotion, finishing third, so it is not an unrealistic scenario in any case.) I’ve also added various details which hadn’t been filled out fully such as ground information, rival clubs, supporter profiles and sponsorship money, all this I have done accurately to the best of my knowledge, with financial information I have used other clubs at the same level and with similar reputation as a guideline, suffice to say there will be no multi-million pound signings in the heart of the National Forest for some time.

As I said earlier, Ashby is only intended to be the starting point of my soon to be glorious career, I have no illusions of one day winning the Premier league with them or anything like that, though I do hope I can bring at least some success to my hometown. Time will tell.

Here is a little more information about the club;

We play at the NFU sports ground, referred to by locals as Upper Packington Road. build as recently as 2011, It has a small seated stand of around fifty seats and a long terrace running opposite. The ground has multiple pitches for training and reserve team games. The youth team plays at the club's former home, Hood Park leisure centre.


We have a host of local rivals within a couple of league levels of ourselves, arch rivals are Coalville Town as there is only about three miles between the two towns.


Here's our kits, the home one is true to life, I couldn't find a picture of the away kit and I've never followed Ivanhoe away in real life so I just made that one up, using McVities (who are based in the town) as a sponsor.


As of day one my squad only contains four real players, the rest are all newgens, I'll go into detail with my squad in my next post but here's a screenshot of the fab four;

To add some more local flavour to the story, striker Danny Quinn is my barber in real life.

I hope he does your hair better than his own looks!

Looking forward to seeing this progress, best of luck