Newport County - Season 1 (2008)

I can't even remember what I told the board when asked how we'd do this season. I think I told them we'd aim for a midtable finish. After looking over the initial roster, midtable sounded like a reasonable accomplishment. Step one was to bring in some much needed depth. With a limited transfer budget and being in a bottom league, I wasn't exactly looking to bring in talent. That lack of talent also led to my decision on a formation. But first, let's look at the incoming transfers:



From the looks of the talent here, you can tell I'm not using a scout program of any kind, lol. I dabbled with FM Genie but I'll look more into that when I have a better understanding of the game. I want to learn, not cheat. Back to the players...

Lewis Hamlin was the headliner who would pair with Craig Hughes as my two strikers. Hughes is more of a tall target-man type, minus the heading ability, with Hamlin to be his setup man.

Carl Smith was brought on to play midfield somewhere and as the season went on, he settled into the DMC spot after playing MC for about 1/3 of the season.

Shawn Came was brought on as depth at DC, although he kept playing good enough to find time on the first team.

Matt Pilkington was to play a supporting role in the midfield and he played it well.

Tony Houghton was brought in to solidify the DL spot and he did just that for us.

Scott Forrester was brought on late to provide competition at the striker position, but just as he was brought on, Hamlin and Hughes found synergy with one another and couldn't be broken up. Forrester did play a critical role on our promotion run to end the season when Hughes went down with an untimely injury.

Tactically, I feel most comfortable playing a defensive brand of football. I figure that by focusing on defense and fundamentals, we can get by with marginal talent. I went with a 4-1-3-2 formation and have four variations that I use during games. I rarely use the attacking variation, which has all three MCs join the attack often . Instead, I rely heavily on my normal and defensive variations.

There's more going on than what's shown on the screenshots, but I'll save that for next time.

Here is the end result:



We rattled off a nice stretch where we went undefeated for 16 games. That helped us skyrocket into the top 4, but at the same time Weston-super-Mare was winninga t the same rate and they pulled away during the final stretch.

In typical fashion, the first leg of our series against Eastleigh ended in a 1-1 draw and we put them away 3-2 when we got in front of our home fans.

After watching Weston-super-Mare for so long toward the end of the season, I was a bit surprised when our finals game was against AFC Wimbledon. We beat them early in the season 2-1 on the road and held them to a 1-1 draw at home later in the season, so I felt confident that we could handle them even though odds makers had us as prohibitive underdogs. No matter, as Lewis Hamlin won the game single-handedly for us. He scored on a penalty in the 57th minute and put the game away for good with another goal in the 81st minute.



A final look at the match stats shows exactly the kind of football we like to play. AFC clearly has a talent advantage over us, and they peppered us with shots and were generally threatening us all game long. Our defense held on, however, and we got just enough offense and luck to walk away victorious in the finals.

It comes as no surprise that Lewis Hamlin was named our player of the year. In 41 appearances last season, he notched 21 goals, 7 assists, 8 Man of Match, and an average rating of 7.11. Here is 2008's Best 11: