About Me
In this story I will be taking on the role of 35-year-old Richard Miles, who is currently unemployed and living in a small flat in Plymouth. Richard dreams of football management success and hopes to one day fulfil his dream of managing Southampton and taking them all the way to the top. However, with only experience of Sunday League football, will Richard even be able to get a position as manager at all, let alone manage at the top level of football?
It was one in the morning and I was still job hunting. I scrolled through the pages of vacancies, but none caught my eye. I didn’t want to be a coach, or even an assistant manager. Although my days of playing in the Sunday Leagues were over, I still wanted to be involved in football.
My dream was to manage my favourite club in the world, Southampton FC, but I knew that I didn’t have the experience needed to take on the challenge. I would have to start small and work my way up.
I took a sip of my coffee as I searched ‘manager vacancies football England’ into Google. I spent around 15 minutes looking through pages and pages of information about managers that had been sacked and teams looking for a new manager, but soon realised that most of them were far out of my reach.
I altered my search to look for managerial positions in the lowest leagues in English football: The Skrill North and South. After a few seconds of scrolling, I found that Stockport County, a small team in the Skrill North, were looking for a manager. I saved the web page and switched my laptop off, knowing that if I were to apply for the job at Stockport, I’d have to be fully awake to even have a chance of getting an interview. I couldn’t write out an application when I was half asleep!
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I spent the next few days preparing my application for the Stockport County job, and then submitted it on the 9th July. I was notified that they had received my application on the 20th July.
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A day later, I got an email from the Stockport County Board.
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I have to admit, I was very excited about the prospect of finally being able to take my first steps into management, and I accepted the invitation for an interview. They arranged for me to come the day after, and I booked a hotel for the night, along with a train ticket, and made my way to the station.
In the interview, the board asked me if I had any suggestions to make regarding the club. They didn’t seem to agree with my suggestion to set up a link with a parent club so that we could get better players on loan. I decided that if the board weren’t prepared to set up a link, then there were better places that I could manage. After all, if Stockport really wanted to challenge for play off places, they were going to need some talent in the squad!
I went back to my flat in Plymouth a little annoyed about the whole situation, but got straight on with by job search again. I found out that Salisbury City manager Mikey Harris’ future at the club wasn’t looking too good, and decided to keep a close eye on the situation. Salisbury were in the Skrill Premier, and so getting an interview from the board there would obviously be a good thing.
In this story I will be taking on the role of 35-year-old Richard Miles, who is currently unemployed and living in a small flat in Plymouth. Richard dreams of football management success and hopes to one day fulfil his dream of managing Southampton and taking them all the way to the top. However, with only experience of Sunday League football, will Richard even be able to get a position as manager at all, let alone manage at the top level of football?
It was one in the morning and I was still job hunting. I scrolled through the pages of vacancies, but none caught my eye. I didn’t want to be a coach, or even an assistant manager. Although my days of playing in the Sunday Leagues were over, I still wanted to be involved in football.
My dream was to manage my favourite club in the world, Southampton FC, but I knew that I didn’t have the experience needed to take on the challenge. I would have to start small and work my way up.
I took a sip of my coffee as I searched ‘manager vacancies football England’ into Google. I spent around 15 minutes looking through pages and pages of information about managers that had been sacked and teams looking for a new manager, but soon realised that most of them were far out of my reach.
I altered my search to look for managerial positions in the lowest leagues in English football: The Skrill North and South. After a few seconds of scrolling, I found that Stockport County, a small team in the Skrill North, were looking for a manager. I saved the web page and switched my laptop off, knowing that if I were to apply for the job at Stockport, I’d have to be fully awake to even have a chance of getting an interview. I couldn’t write out an application when I was half asleep!
I spent the next few days preparing my application for the Stockport County job, and then submitted it on the 9th July. I was notified that they had received my application on the 20th July.
A day later, I got an email from the Stockport County Board.
I have to admit, I was very excited about the prospect of finally being able to take my first steps into management, and I accepted the invitation for an interview. They arranged for me to come the day after, and I booked a hotel for the night, along with a train ticket, and made my way to the station.
In the interview, the board asked me if I had any suggestions to make regarding the club. They didn’t seem to agree with my suggestion to set up a link with a parent club so that we could get better players on loan. I decided that if the board weren’t prepared to set up a link, then there were better places that I could manage. After all, if Stockport really wanted to challenge for play off places, they were going to need some talent in the squad!
I went back to my flat in Plymouth a little annoyed about the whole situation, but got straight on with by job search again. I found out that Salisbury City manager Mikey Harris’ future at the club wasn’t looking too good, and decided to keep a close eye on the situation. Salisbury were in the Skrill Premier, and so getting an interview from the board there would obviously be a good thing.
