Hello and welcome back to the North East of England and my Football Manager 2012 story with the mighty Middlesbrough. After a promising preseason i was eager to get started with the competitive matches and hoped that the impressive for we had shown in friendlies would be carried through.
I am sorry but i will be rushing through the first two seasons to catch up with where i am at the moment so will not be going into a lot of detail (can't get the screens and can't remember properly :p).
nPower Championship:
Our season in the championship went really well. Our opening game of the season saw us draw against a decent Bristol City Side. I wanted to really start opening up a lead at the top of the table as the early season form would do wonders for the morale. After a team meeting and a few tweaks with the tactics and lineup, we really managed to start building form and by the end of the first half of the season, we were looking strong and had build up a small lead at the top of the table; Portsmouth and West Ham were also going well and were keeping us on our toes.
(sorry about the screens, being in the perm i could't filter only the championship matches so i've had to mix and match)
The second half of the season went almost as well as the first half. We continued our good form, and apart from a small blip of losing to Burnley, we dominated the championship building up a considerable lead and winning the title with quite a few games to spare (sorry, can't remember the exact number). However, even thought it may not look it, we had quite a sluggish end to the season, losing at Barnsley and drawing far too many games. We also weren't controlling the games as much as i had hoped; i was slightly concerned but not to worry, plenty of time to bring in new signings in the summer and continue my reboot of the Middlesbrough squad. The final league table:
McDonald was our star striker, netting (i think) 19 goals. Varga and Soukouna on the wings were incredibly effective as their pace tore teams apart. Martin in midfield looked a really good prospect but i've really screwed up wit him and somehow he's joining a L2 French side at the end of next season for free... Thompson was also effective in midfield. Bates was a rock at the back and Steele performed really well between the sticks.
League Cup:
I was hoping for a nice cup run in the league cup as most of the bigger teams let their youngsters or fringe players have the games. I was encouraged after we breezed past Crewe. Then disaster struck, Portsmouth were also pushing hard for promotion in the championship but i thought we should be able to dispatch them. I fielded a full strength team but in the first 3 mins Bates got sent of for what looked like a dive from the pompey player. We battled hard with ten men but couldn't pull through so that ended our cup run :( What's more, i was advised to appeal against Bates' red card and upon doing so, his ban was extended to 5 games... brilliant!
FA Cup:
We drew Derby in the first round who were also going well in the championship. I was really hoping for an easy draw so i could give my youngsters some game time but i never ever seem to get those :( After a really entertaining 1-1 draw, we then convincingly won the replay. The replay added games to my already busy schedule and with quite a few players starting to pick up knocks, it wasn't ideal so i was almost glad that we dropped out of a competition we had no chance of wining (realistically). However, losing to Middlesbrough's rivals Sunderland wasn't ideal but we did give them a really good game.
What can i say? We achieved our aim of promotion with style and had started to invest in youth as was my target. We had only just started a clear out of the ageing players and i need to continue that in the next transfer window. However, our cup successes were non existent so hopefully a nice cup run next season will sort some of the fans complaints out.
Hopefully this was a good enough read for you to be interested in reading my next post (Season 2) which will be coming as soon as i can find enough time to type it up :)
Thanks,
Atokous
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