Pre-Season 2009

The very first thing I have noticed, is that the coaching staff and scouts seem to be rather poor. The one scout does not have good attributes for either current or potential ability. I started by sorting out the training programs, and bringing in new and better staff. The limitation of only six coaches means a compromise will be necassary, and mutually terminating the employment of a couple of the existing coaches, namely David Rouse and Marc Bircham.

Given the stature of the club, with so many excellent coaches showing no interest in joining the club, I feel the above appointments are pretty good, with the goalkeeping coach giving a 4 star rating out of 5. There are two categories with a 2.5 star rating, which is not ideal, but about the best I can do for now. Bernard Guignedoux is actually trained as an assistant coach, so I may look in the future to giving him that role, depending on how John Gorman performs.

The assistant's report gives me some concerns, especially in the left back position, and even the right back position is lacking some depth. The first team only one player in each of those positions, and you'll see that Gary Borrowdale isn't of the best quality.

Given I'm playing safe with the expectations of securing a top half finish, I have a transfer budget of £6 million and a wage budget of £180k, with £171k already accounted for, prudence is needed. I will trade some of the transfer budget to give me more leeway with the wages.

After much scouting of the different players recommended by the staff, and failed attempts at trying to sign them, I decide to undertake my own search, and eventually secure some new signings.

Cédric Varrault and Laure are definite improvements over the existing full backs, and secured without spending a vast quantity of cash. Clément Grenier is an 18 year old attacking midfielder, I was lucky enough to sign on a free transfer in FM09, who turned out to be a real star. I've therefore signed him on a loan, with a £1.8 million option to buy, as he has the potential to be a quality player.

Down to the friendlies, and quite frankly it didn't quite go as well as I hoped.

We started well with three solid displays, conceding only one goal. Against Barnet we made very heavy weather of claiming a result, conceding a penalty in the process. I was happy with the number of shots and clear cut chances we made, but the finishing was plain awful. But for two wonderful long shots that flew in, our wasteful finishing could have sunk us, and would come back to bite us later.

Somehow even though we dominated the match the match against East Stirlingshire, with 25 shots to 4, we never managed to get the ball in the net, only to concede a very soft goal from a corner after failing to clear properly. To be fair the match with Hibernian was always going to be a test, but again we had the better of the match, but a couple of horrendous errors from the centre backs, allowed Hibs to score two goals they shouldn't have. Real schoolboy stuff, and gives me some concerns ahead of the season.

The last friendly against Altrincham went well, with a much better display of football, but again the score line does not reflect our total superioty. Looking back through the stats for these games we are good at dominating, but our finishing needs to be better if we're going to keep making some of the most awful defensive errors.

A great plus heading into the season is that I picked up no new injuries during the pre-season, so only have one player injured, that being Lee Cook, although he won't be fit again until October at the earliest.