Southampton story: 3rd season: Unexpected start!

Hello and welcome to the second post of my final season with Southampton. A reminder again to vote in the poll for who I should be in FM10, and now straight to business. After a very successful transfer window, bringing in a host of Premier League standard players, hopes were high for this season. Unfortunately, the media didn’t seem to agree with me:



This didn’t deter me, or the team, as our results show:

An absolutely fantastic start to the season, one that no man could have ever imagined. Amazingly, we have won 8 out of 15 (7 out of 13 in the League) with 5 losses (4 in the League) and 2 draws. This is European football form, as you can see by the table:

5th in the league, with 23 points. Wow. If we had better goal difference we would even be in 4th place (which we were at one point)! I think it’s fairly certain that we are going to be safe this season, but I am getting so excited about our realistic prospects for the season. How far can we actually go in my last season in charge? We shall soon find out. Meanwhile, here are the ratings for the season so far:



For our first Premier League season, the ratings are very good, but what surprises me most is the goal scoring statistic. Top goalscorer is our back-up striker Miku with 4 goals in 8 starts, with second place going to midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin (3 in 13) and new defender Mark Beevers (3 in 13). 4th place goes to Adam Lallana (2 in 4), Ferrie Bodde (2 in 9), Jake Thompson (2 in 4), Ched Evans (2 in 8), Stephen Appiah (2 in 9) and Paul Huntington (2 in 2), with almost all of our players at least on 1 goal. This is heartening; because that means that we are getting goals from all over the pitch, not just from midfield as we were before. Best assister is new left winger Adam Johnson, getting 8 assists in 10 starts. Second place goes to Franco Zuculini (4 in 7) and Lee Holmes (4 in 2). Lee Holmes has done brilliantly, and is definitely pushing Johnson all the way. 4th place goes to Daniel Sturridge, with 3 assists in 6 starts. Best rated player is Morgan Schneiderlin, getting a rating of 7.18. Second place goes to Oliver Lancashire, getting 7.15 from 2 starts. Third place goes to Adam Johnson, getting 7.14. And finally, top passer goes to Daniel Sturridge, an amazing 82% of his passes finding their mark. Second place goes to Schneiderlin, Johnson, Lallana and Bodde, all getting 75%. 6th place goes to Lee Naylor, with 74%.

Before I go, I would like to let you guys in on the secret to my success. A coach for everything. If you don’t understand me, take a look at this:

I discovered that if a coach covers too many categories at once, he doesn’t perform any of them adequately. So what I did was I brought in a few more coaches, and assigned each of them to a maximum of 2 categories, and now the stars for each of them are quite high. Plus the coaches do not get overworked, which allows me to pay them less. An all round good option that I recommend to any Football Manager players. (If you’re wondering why Rui Barros doesn’t have any assignments, it’s because he’s my assistant manager)

And on that note, I bid you farewell. I hope you’ll be back for the next instalment of my 3rd season. With form like this, you can’t miss it!