Heartbreak, misery, but hope on the horizon

*Story will commence following full release of the game.

Every year when a new Football Manager game is released, I try to focus on getting one main save/career on here, my main focus throughout the year and I believe this year is the easiest of the lot for me to get stuck into a long term save. Following the quick demise of my beloved Yeovil Town FC, it seems a fitting opportunity to take them back to where we were just a few seasons ago and hopefully, even further.

Back at the end of the 2012/13 season, little old Yeovil Town, from Somerset, won promotion via the playoffs to reach the Championship for the first time ever in club history. But push on six seasons and we've slumped to three relegations, including back to back relegations from the Championship down to League Two and narrowly avoiding relegation three times in a row, before finally dropping out of the football league last season, finishing bottom of League 2. Now we find ourselves playing non league football and you feel its a time where the club have to win promotion first time of asking.

Last season was an extremely tough one to take, for every Yeovil Town fan. Manager at the time, Darren Way, lost the fans quite quickly into the season and despite many asking for the board to get rid of him, they were elft stunned when he was offered a new two year deal. Fans started to boycott games, the form didn't improve and eventually, Darren was sacked from the club. But it wasn't just issues at management level, the board also needed to change. John Fry had lost the support of the clubs fans after a lack of money had been shown, even from the Championship season, and often you could hear chants at the game, asking for John Fry to sell up. A long winded summer and its finally happened as Scott Priestnall and Errol Pope take control of the club.

I'll now take the reigns of the club with the main objective to get Yeovil Town back up to their 'happier' days, playing Championship football and who knows, hopefully even higher as we try and knock on the door to Premier League football, potentially one day, Champions League football may even head to Somerset. But that dream is probably a good decade away yet for me.

Finally you'll be back playing.

This should be great! Sad to see clubs decline so quickly.

Glad my beloved Yeovil Town will be brought back to glory with @Dan at the wheel!

Finally I will @VP., after last years lack of success in the careers area, hopefully it'll be a successive bounce back here.

Thanks @r96Skinner always enjoy LLM saves anyway and what better than my beloved Yeovil!

Thats the plan @DNZY!

So before the story gets going, I thought I'd do a quick summery of the club and where it currently stands in regards to finances, club stature, the squad and the back room staff. This will more than likely be a post I do at the start of each season, so we can gradually see how things improve season to season. But before we get too stuck in to the club, we'll have a quick, sneak peak at the man that has been appointed at the wheel of Yeovil Town.


Here is the club background page, most of which I feel I have already discussed. We've a small trophy cabinet so in years to come it'll definitely need upgrading, should I be successful anyway. As you can see, Yeovil finished rock bottom of League Two last year so its a rebuilding job we come in to. 14 years and counting without actually winning a trophy, surely its time to put that to rest now.


Here is 'Dan', the new Yeovil Town FC manager and its his very first venture into football management. The 27 year old, born 20 miles away in Chard signs an initial 1 year contract on just £775 per week. Being new to the management scene, he currently boasts a 'half star' reputation in the management world. It should be an interesting journey, should things go to plan and we'll come back and look at the management profile as the seasons go by and see how the new manager is developing over the years.


The facilities are also very much unchanged over the years, from our original league two days, to Championship days and now back to non league, they've stayed the same. We play our trade at Huish Park, a 9,565 capacity stadium which includes 5,212 seats and standing terrace either end. Built originally in 1990 and rebuilt in 2000, the stadium is in poor condition and it'll be one thing I look to develop much later on in the save. Our facilities don't really improve from there either. 'Adequate corporate facilities, below average training facilities, poor data analysis facilities and basic youth facilities don't exactly shout out "come sign for us". Average academy coaching, a youth level of '3' and fairly basic youth recruitment means this will be a long journey.


As I stated in the opening post, the club have new chairman from this season, so it should be an exciting time for the club. But we are a little short on the staffing front of things in my opinion. Whilst we have a full set of coaches according to the board, we do find ourselves a little short on the recruitment side of things as well as the medical side. I always like to try and get the best staffing structure in the league, so there is work to do here. You need a good backroom to help the team but I'll also be watching the money we spend on staff.


Onto the finances and I'm not sure how realistic this is compared to what the club actually have. Being a fan you soon learn that there isn't much money in this club. However we do reportedly have just under £1.2million in the balance which is great for a club in the National League. We don't have a transfer budget available and with only £875 left of the wage budget it looks like it could prove to be tough to recruit much this summer. Its important to control finances at this level as it could hit hard later in the seasons to come.


And finally, this is the squad that I inherit at the start of the game, for my first season in management. Its not the biggest squad in the world but I'm confident we should have enough to work with without having to strengthen too much. I may look to get a parent club in as soon as possible and then utilise them for loan deals. Whilst these will be youngsters from the parent club, it will mean we can get some good quality players in. We are quite attacking heavy so could do with a good rotation tactic.

Ahhh always good to see a @Dan career

Time to get Yeovil punching again!

Good luck

good luck!

Good luck @Dan, should be a fun challenge with Yeovil.

YES! Got to love a classic @Dan career! Best of luck restoring your beloved club! I'll be following along...

Good luck with this one mate

Ahh yeah this is gonna be good!

Thanks a lot @Suffolk Seasider, thats the aim, won't be an easy one though.

Thanks @Indianos.

As always, thanks for the support @Shedender

Thanks @tongey good to have you on board as always!

Cheers @HockeyBhoy

Fingers crossed @bigmattb28

So having finally got the full release after what felt forever playing the 'beta' and then waiting for SI to fix the hidden attributes bug, its time to get this one in full swing. I've loaded a huge range of leagues, most of them on view only so I can keep an eye on whats going on around the world, but the top 5 countries are all playable (England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) with all leagues from those countries loaded in. The game commenced 'early pre season' England time to allow me the longest preperation time possible.


The board expectations are a great place to start. Following my meeting with the board, this iw what has been outlined for the season and seasons ahead. The club want me to develop players using our own youth system which could be difficult early on seeming our facilities aren't all that. This season, we have to finish in the Playoffs of the Vanarama National League, whilst also aiming to reach the First Round of the FA Cup and the Semi Finals of the FA Trophy. With my contract expiring at the end of season one, its going to be very important we hit those objectives. We must clinch promotion to League Two by the end of the secon season and then the next few years is all about re establising ourselves as a football league side.


There were plenty of transfers already done at the club, in and out, before I even took the reigns. Any transfers from the 1st July onwards are ones dealt with by myself or my assistant. Tyrese Francois (will add screenshot later) was first to join as I seeked to raid the loan market to try get some slightly higher quality players into the club. The versatile midfielder should be a great addition here. Islam Feruz was the only other transfer that I dealt with this summer. The man, once of Chelsea, is only 23 years old but looks an absolute steal for this level. It'll be all about trying to hold on to him and get the most out of him. John Mehmet, John Jones and Jamie Payne were all transfers done by my assistant before I turned this feature off due to us already over spending on the wages. They're all younger players but with the right development could be key players in a year or two at this level.


May of went a little "too" over the top for friendlies this summer as I tried to get my tactics implented as early as possible, whilst also trying to play some bigger teams to garner some extra income. 15 friendlies played over my first summer in charge saw us win 7, draw 1 and lose 7. A couple heavy defeats, most noticeable that to West Brom which we lost 6-1, expectedly so though. Man United beat us 3-0 whilst we gave Arsenal a good game, losing out 3-2.

The board have twice failed to find me a parent club thus far in, I always feel its key to get one as soon as possible to generate some good loan deals without having to pay for them. I'll continue to request these as we go through the season. On top of that, they have denied me my first coaching qualification, saying we can't fund it right now despite having over a million pounds in the bank balance.

Next Post: Half Season Round Up - 1st January 2020

Those friendlies are madness, but I get why you do it! Arsenal game seems like a good one

Good luck

Good to see this up and running! I'm always intrigued seeing how other people go with pre-season friendlies, I personally go for one a week up until the start of the season; always worried about getting injuries with too many of them.

Did you make much from the friendlies, I always do a few if a smaller side but never that many!

Doubt I'll be able to download/play the full version until Friday ffs.

Jesus, friendlies galore! Like @VP. said, how much did you make from them?

Sorry guys, unfortunately this has come to a very abrupt end. I was always envisioning a tough task, but not this bad. I just couldn't find any consistency, I survived two board meetings but when they then wanted 11 points from 5 games, I couldn't succeed.

I always said I'd turned this into a journeyman career after I had succeeded with yeovil, however this wont be the case. The aim was to take yeovil to the top first. Maybe I should of spent more time on the beta. I'll go back to the drawing board, play a bit of a new save and then see what I can produce.

OH GOD DAMN IT!

This saddens me, bring on the next one...

Ah, massive shame that! Good to see you are human though!

I knew it was potentially going to be tough @Dan but it didn't think it would've that tough.

Oh Danny Boy, what have you done to my precious club?!

Didn't expect that! Hope to see you back at this with a vengeance at some point?

But what is this .. what a shame too dan ..