AFC Telford

Good luck with this.

I've had a go with Telford before and got them all the way up to the Championship before all my players started demanding wages I couldn't afford and they all left.

I'll stick with it, I very rarely play FM these days and I'm well into this game.

I’ve started my first game of FM in a very long time recently with basement club AFC Telford. They’re one of the few clubs still classed as semi-pro playing in the Conference so thought it would be a good challenge. Our main rivals are Shrewsbury and Kidderminster.

As soon as I arrived I insisted on playing a modern 4-2-3-1 instead of the usual 4-4-2 or 4-5-1 that you regularly see this far down in the football pyramid and so far it’s paying dividends. Possession based football this low down with poor quality players can take a while to adapt but for a side predicted to finish in the lower half of the league we have started the season very strongly.

July 2012

I looked at the squad and immediately seen the need for a striker as the current ones were just not good enough for this level bar one. However we needed to strengthen in other areas too, so I could only bring one in. Dalton Harris has the potential to play at a higher level than the Conference so he was a good signing – we must progress as a club to ensure we keep him here. I brought in Graham Lee from Celtic Nation as an experienced old head at centre back on a free transfer to play alongside another freebie Matt Needham. Again he’s got great potential so if we stick around at Conference level for too long he may become unsettled. My other January signings were utility player Charlie Ward and full back Alex Billington. We played several friendlies too, the results as follows:

AFC Telford 3 – 1 AFC Telford Reserves
Market Drayton 1 – 1 AFC Telford
AFC Telford 2 – 0 Fleetwood Town

One poor result away to very poor opposition followed by a magnificent win over League 2 Fleetwood who we have a competitive rivalry with, so a good result for the fans and a morale booster going into our two “glamour” friendlies with Bradford and Wolves.

August 2012

No real transfer activity of note, I sent youngsters out on loan to our feeder club Chasetown where they’ll hopefully develop and come back stronger players to compete for first team roles next season or the season afterwards. I noticed a few injuries on the wings would leave us particularly exposed too, so I broke the budget in order to sign Steven Lozano-Calderon from Columbia. He has an English passport so no work permits were required. He’s very raw, and has the potential to be a league one winger according to my (very poor) scout. Hopefully he can become a key player for us.

We managed to generate some much needed income with a home friendly to Wolves which seen 4,000+ spectators turn up which will help our bank balance going into the season. The results didn’t go our way in our last two friendlies but I felt the squad were suitably prepared for a season of non-league football ahead of us. The results went like this throughout August:




After these two home friendlies our league season began, the results through August looked like this:



Started slowly but cannot really complain with only 1 goal conceded in 5 games along with a massive victory over title tipped Luton. James Spray gets my vote as player of the month with a magnificent 4 goals in 5 games. Our attendance has been hovering around the 1,500 mark which seen us turn a profit in of £77,371 in my first proper month in charge. Hopefully I can keep turning a profit over and eventually at the end of the season we will make the big step to become a professional club.