They might be rock bottom, but they are still a step up from the skrill:P good luck mate!:)

Not really a bad offer

Pauker: I was quite surprised too. It is going to be a very difficult challenge but I am determined for this to be third time lucky.

AaronHJFT96:I was quite glad I managed to avoid the Skrill leagues again but if we don't get our act together that is where we will end up.

TK69:It was a great offer that I just couldn't turn down! Finally a club higher than the Skrill Leagues!

I have not had the best of times recently on FM14; you have seen me resign from Grimsby Town (maybe a bit prematurely) and then be shown the door by the over ambitious Stockport County. It just seemed to be bad result after bad result and to be honest, it was disheartening to witness game after game, goal conceded after goal conceded.

Notts County came knocking and offered me the job with the club at the foot of the Sky Bet League 1 table with very little hope of retaining their league position for the rest of the season. However, despite my previous managerial disappointment, I am more driven and determined to really make this third time lucky and start to taste some success. It is not going to be an easy feat keeping Notts County up and it is something I am not experienced in; relegation battles. Instead I am use to managing clubs that win competitions and I am use to bringing success to a club so this is a whole new dimension to being a football manager for me.

I feel that this month was a positive one. I have brought my own tactics to the club and the players have already started to adapt well to them by putting into great performances against two teams who are much higher than us in the league. Both Preston and Chesterfield will have gone away from those games very disappointed that they didn’t just walk over us. What they came up against instead was a team willing to put a foot into a tackle and a team that can string flowing passing moves together and create chances at the end of it all. What we do lack is a clinical finisher despite being lucky to have loanee Grant Holt (from Wigan) to lead the frontline; he is getting to the end of his career so cannot put in a stint like he use to. If we were fortunate to get a goal scorer on loan then I really would feel more positive about our chances of outscoring our opponents no matter where they sat in the league. We are even more fortunate to have Jak Alnwick on loan and despite having conceded three goals in two matches, he really has kept us in the games pulling off brilliant saves at crucial points in the game.

All in all I am positive about our chances but I will also be spending time planning for a season in league two...that’s if the board keep me in the job for long enough.

Player of the Month – Jak Alnwick

Some good results, even if they were both draws

great job so far. hoping to see you pushing for a club in the BPL soon

Walter:They could obviously have been better but it was great to get at least two points on the board. Unbeaten start!

Inquisition:Thank you. I do hope to get myself the job at a Premier League club but it has been a very difficult start.

My start at Notts County had been fairly positive with us managing to achieve two points from a possible six. That doesn’t sound all that positive but for any club that is rooted to the bottom of the league, any points are a good sign of a change in fortunes. This month should have been filled with more disappointment for everyone with the club and it should have signalled our relegation fate. However, what I witnessed, game after game, was truly inspirational. We came up against clubs that were vying to gain promotion and we beat them and beat them well! At times I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Middlesborough use to be a club plying their trade in European football so for us to come away with a one nil win against them really got us off to a great start.

The next handful of matches was plain sailing with the players’ morale getting higher and higher with every match. We comfortably dispatched Oldham and Cheltenham with great displays from Grant Holt who at times showed the ability that he once had in his time at Norwich City. The match against Gillingham was a great one to watch but not for the nervous type. It was an end to end battle and it really could have gone either way so maybe a draw was a fair result.

I had enjoyed success with Rotherham United back on FM13, where I helped guide the club to the league title before ending the save to concentrate on this new challenge. Rotherham were doing me proud and challenging at the top of the league, and despite us beating them one nil, I did feel a bit guilty that I may have damaged their league title chances. We headed into the relegation dog fight against Bradford with our heads held high knowing that if we could come away with a positive result, it could go a long way to retain our league position. You can imagine my delight when we got the win that we so craved.

We don’t have to talk about the defeat against Bristol City as it really didn’t surprise me as we never got into the game. Also with Grant Holt being injured for the remainder of the season, we never posed a goal threat. My only hope is that our guiding light (Holt) and this end of the month loss doesn’t damage morale and instead we head into the final four games and get the results we need to stay in the Sky Bet League One.

New Parent Club

This partnership could become a pivotal moment in the history of Notts County Football Club. After this last month I have become very confident that we will retain our league position. Having a partnership with former Premier League champions, Manchester City and having the opportunity to have some of their rising stars at our club next season will be of a great benefit to us in ensuring that we retain our position for the second season in a row. I do have to admit that we did have the opportunity to form a partnership with another club, City’s rivals, Manchester United. Being an devoted Liverpool fan I couldn’t bring myself to form a parent club partnership with them. However, if I had thought about it more, a partnership with United would have brought in an annual fee of £80k, whereas the deal with City will bring in no extra income. I will be hoping that City send us some quality players who can add some Premier League flair to our side next season in order to make up for the lack of extra cash.

New Staff Member – David Beckham

I may have refused to sign a parent club partnership with Manchester United but I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to sign up this footballing icon and have him become my first addition to my backroom staff. Beckham will join as a coach and bring very little in terms of ability ratings but it is quite exciting to have David Beckham, one of the best known faces in the world, at Notts County. He will be immediately put in charge of the attacking side and shooting of our training sessions and I wouldn’t complain if some of his free kick taking ability rubbed off on our players.

Player of the Month – Grant Holt

Oh wow! James pulls it out of the bag once again!:D let's hold onto this shall we? David beckham looks like a great signing for your ballroom staff!:D

2013-11-24 14:53#145802 AaronHJFT96 : Oh wow! James pulls it out of the bag once again!:D let's hold onto this shall we? David beckham looks like a great signing for your ballroom staff!:D

It was such an important month! I really do hope that this form continues with the season not quite over yet.

Wow. An unbelievable month! Now every single point matters, when it all looked gone a while ago! The decision to choose City over United imo a bit of a silly one, but hopefully City can do good things for you

2013-11-25 05:03#145949 Walter : Wow. An unbelievable month! Now every single point matters, when it all looked gone a while ago! The decision to choose City over United imo a bit of a silly one, but hopefully City can do good things for you

At times I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing, especially against Middlesborough and Rotherham United. I just couldn't bring myself to choose United, even though we would have got some extra income! My loyalty to the other reds is too strong, even in-game!

Great set of results, hopefully you can keep the momentum and push away from the relegation zone. David Beckham on a £375 a week contract is an absolute bargain as well lol.

2013-11-28 12:02#146480 Hibee1875 : Great set of results, hopefully you can keep the momentum and push away from the relegation zone. David Beckham on a £375 a week contract is an absolute bargain as well lol.

I couldn't believe that I managed to get him to sign, nevermind for such a cheap wage...

When I headed into this job I went in with the mind set of making sure that we were prepared for life in League 2 and started to decide what changes I would make when the inevitable happened and we were relegated. More fool me really; our final league position shows that I should have had a lot more faith in the players as they have pulled off a minor miracle.

When I joined we were rooted to the bottom of the league, and despite me not knowing anything about Notts County (apart from the Sven-Goran Eriksson saga), I knew that the club was severely underachieving for its stature in the game. The club simply had had an awful start to the season and just didn’t seem to be able to change their fortunes under their previous manager. It is going to be very difficult to explain how I did it but it is sometimes a question I get asked...just how did you manage to do that? Therefore, I will try to explain as best as possible.

Stop Conceding!

The club were leaking goal after goal and it has meant we have ended on a negative goal difference of minus 17. However, I felt that part of this was due to the chopping and changing of the back four, which meant that the players didn’t have time to gel with each other and form an understanding as they were out of the team before they knew it. My first task was to settle on a reliable, experienced and good back four to be in front of my number one choice goalkeeper, Jak Alnwick. I did try out a few variations in personnel but eventually settled on a back four that I felt would plug the goals. The only way that I was going to change that back four was due to fatigue or if we changed to our 5-4-1 formation, where I would simply add one player to the preferred first choice back four in the 4-4-2 formation. This resulted in us conceding 14 goals in 14 games, which to say we had a defensive with shattered morale, I think that is pretty good going.

Keep the Opposition Thinking!

I may have said above that I preferred to stick with the same back four or back five in order to preserve an understanding when out on the pitch, but I also did like to change what formation I used. This caused a few issues at first, mainly my own making, as I wasn’t sure which one to choose. The 4-4-2 formation allowed for us to control the ball and attack the opposition but left us prone to the counter attack, which did happen on a few too many occasions. Whereas, the 5-4-1 formation did stop us conceding but meant we hardly ever had the ball (as a result of taking on the counter attacking mentality) and got very few shots on target. However, with Grant Holt putting in an end of season surge to become our player of the season winner, I knew that one of these 3 or 4 shots we had in a game, that one of them would be converted and give us the win. Swapping between these two formations really did work and it is an approach I would recommend others to use.

Rely on Experience!

I was pleasantly surprised when I joined the club to see Grant Holt, Damien Duff and Jak Alnwick in the ranks. Despite Jak being only 22 years old, he brought experience from the game time he had been given at his current club, Newcastle United. He has fantastic ability ratings, well above the ones other keeper’s posses in our league. With the solid back four in him, in some games he rarely had anything to do but we knew we could rely on him if the opposition broke through.
Grant Holt is an old fashioned English centre forward who likes to put himself out a bit and is not afraid to get his head on the ball; this is something he did with ease and regularly in games. He is not blessed with pace in the real world, never mind in-game. However, due to us allowing the opposition to attack and us trying to break on the counter, it meant that Grant did not have too many defenders to try and beat before getting a shot on goal. His finishing, despite only being ranked as 12, is pretty decent with him scoring 17 goals over the course of the season. I am sure that if he hadn’t been injured for the last few games that it would have been more.

I have always been disappointed with Damien Duff’s career and think that his time at Chelsea stalled his potential. However, it was a blessing when he returned from injury in-game and added a bit of pace to the wings. I would have been playing the 4-4-2 formation; with a focus on attacking via the wings a lot less if Duff had not been at the club. He is a player that is getting on (aged 37) but I feel that he brings a lot of experience to the club, hence me extending his contract for one more season. He won’t be a regular starter but he can definitely be relied upon when it comes to the ends of matches and us needing to push on for a winner.

Summary

Overall I am very pleased with my time so far at Notts County and I feel that prior rushed decisions (leaving Grimsby Town) have now been justified. I will be looking to make several changes to the playing and coaching staff but nothing too drastic that the club returns to the old ways of the beginning of this current season. The club is not blessed with money, and this is a situation I am not accustom to so I am sure it will be another learning curve, just like the last few months of this season were...