Poll: The Rise of York City

I have always been a big fan of non-league football and this continued when I moved to York for uni. York is an amazing town and the team deserve to be higher up in the football pyramid. My aim is to get them back into the Football Leaue within 3 seasons and hopefully to the Premier League in 12 seasons!

I have not been a manager of a lower league team since 2008 and now seems a good time to see if I still have what it takes in the world of Football Manager to get York City back to their rightful place in the Football League and seeing how that goes maybe one day the Premier League.

To try and add a realistic element, I start as a manager with no qualifications and only Sunday League Experience. I doubt the players will have much faith in my ability to get them promoted.

Turns out the expectations are quite high. The board are expecting the team to get promoted this season and go up as Champions! The rest of the expectations seem realistic. Although I reckon sticking to budget will be tricky.

I have a look at my coaching badges and I easily have the worst coaching attributes of all staff. The board don’t seem too keen either with my contract only lasting a season. I need to get myself on courses ASAP.

To start with I need to look at: The Squad, Potential Loans, Getting an affiliate club and trying to arrange friendless for a cash boost.

The Squad

On first look, this is good, really good. Each position has a player rated at least 3 stars with many of them higher. Most back ups in each position are rated at least 2.5 which is also decent. However, there is a lot of joy to behold in Under 18’s. I have a potential 4.5 star CB, 2 other 4 star potential defenders and 3 potential 3.5 players. The future is bright!

Incoming players

Due to the decent level of my squad, I don’t need to make a raft of transfers to improve my squad so will only bring in players who are carefully chosen as 4 stars or better. A striker is needed but hopefully will be able to bring in 2. A central midfielder and a centre back would also be good to deal with the large amount of games to be played. Scouting players has involved me having to pay a monthly fee. My scouting budget is 19.5k and just to scout England costs £12.8k per month. I will have to scout everyone in 1 month!

Getting players in on trial has been a good way to see if a player is quality without having to wait for a scout first. Looking at my scouting list, I have over 100 players waiting to be looked at and only a month to do it in!

Affiliates

Trying to get an affiliate has been deflating, with my only option Peterborough. I have applied for some loans but the players don’t seem to want to join. I will have to wait and see how if this changes as the season begins.

Friendlies

I cancelled all the arranged friendlies and re-arranged for more lucrative matches against Celtic, Rangers and Bury etc. My first match is against the under 18’s. A resounding 7-4 win tells me that I need more defenders than I do strikers, maybe my transfer options need to change.

Having 10 friendlies (7 at home) should be a good way to raise some cash. I’ll let you know how we do, although it’s going to be a tricky start….

To see a clearer version follow @FMYorkCityFC on twitter.

Good luck mate. A city like York should have a club in the Football League. It's sad to see their demise since being relegated from it. They really should be aiming for promotion this season though. Hopefully you can achieve it.

Best of luck on your journey mate!

Good luck mate!

Good luck with this! Will be interested with how it goes!

2020-05-24 23:54#272103 ScottT : Good luck mate. A city like York should have a club in the Football League. It's sad to see their demise since being relegated from it. They really should be aiming for promotion this season though. Hopefully you can achieve it.

Thanks mate! Yeh, they should in the EFL and it is helpful that the squad in the first season are pretty good.

2020-05-25 20:11#272178 Justice : Good luck with this! Will be interested with how it goes!

Thanks! The second episode will be coming out later on.

Players coming in

During the friendlies, we have had 27 players come to the club on trial. Of those 27, we have signed 2: Rai Simmons and Callum Nicell. Both players have been rated as 4 stars and performing at a Vanarama National League level. Simmons is a striker and Nicell is a central midfielder.



I have also signed David Vaughan of previous Welsh fame so he should be a big name to entice the fans onside. Although, these three have increased my wage bill by £3,900. This is steep but could make the difference by the end of the season.

In order to cover this financially, I have tried to loan out some youth players but as of yet, no takers.

Most of my friendlies have been purely to raise funds. We start with a game against Celtic. Nothing expected here and we bravely lose 2-0. It could have been much worse and the best players were the keepers in either half. Although a special mention should go to Adriano Moke who looked decent.

Second Friendly was against Villa, a great performance with Villa on getting the winner in the 89th minute. Villa had several key players in their team so overall very pleasing. Simmons on trial scored our goal and looked great throughout a great start to his York career.

Third friendly is yet another money spinner, this time against Stoke. Amazingly, we edge out a 1-0 win. We have seemed to settle on the classic 4-4-2 formation.



First friendly against a lower league team and it was a local(ish) game against Whitby. In order to rest players, I mainly use players on trial to give them a chance of getting a contract. Simmons plays well again and Chris Eagles does well, unfortunately as a winger, we already have tons of them already. If he’s cheap, he will make it, if not, he won’t!

Another money spinner and it is a positive start against Brentford. However, its all undone when our midfielder gets sent off on the 28th minute, changing the focus to fitness rather than performance. A 2-0 loss against a good Championship team with 10 men is uplifting.

Friendly against Buxton, very frustrating 1-1 result. First time, I was harsh to players and hopefully that will improve performances.

Looking at the finances, I organise another friendly, this time with Burnley, mainly focused on giving the trialists a game. Burnley managed to win with an 87th minute winner which is frustrating but Burnley were full strength and a positive performance.



A friendly against Rushall gave the players more experience of 4-4-2 and a solid 2-0 win is uplifting friendly before the season begins.

Once again to boost finances, I arranged a friendly against Rangers, they scrapped a 1-0 win with a full strength team. A morale boosting performance before the start of the season.

Just around the corner, the start of the season, all these positive performances and some good results will count for nothing if we don’t get some wins on the board.

Hopefully the team are ready and raring to go for the season.

Two superb signings for the club, let's hope they do the business!

Two good results in there against some bigger sides. Despite losing to Burnley to concede just one is good going.

2020-05-27 21:48#272448 ScottT : Hopefully the team are ready and raring to go for the season.

I hope so! All the positives from the friendlies will be pointless otherwise!
Thanks for following!

2020-05-28 17:51#272512 Justice : Two superb signings for the club, let's hope they do the business!

I hope so, I'm slowly bringing the club into debt with their wages! Thanks for following!

2020-05-28 20:58#272528 TheLFCFan : Two good results in there against some bigger sides. Despite losing to Burnley to concede just one is good going.

Yeah I was happy with the friendlies. It was frustrating that they got the goal SO late! Thanks for following!

And so the league begins!

Just before the season starts, I decide to have a staff meeting to boost morale. However, the start of a season is not a good enough reason to have one. Also, due to the signings, all the money is gone. In order to rectify this, if there are any gaps in fixtures, friendlies are going to be important. Finally, as would be predicted by any people playing Lower League FM, my best signing David Vaughan gets injured for 6 weeks.

A tricky start to the season against Southport, due to all the friendlies we have a good level of fitness and can play our preferred formation of 4-4-2. The game starts off tricky but a fortunate free kick is enough to give us the 1-0 win. Our right back Griffiths slots it home. Lots of players made their debuts which leads to a rather disjointed performance. Although, starting the season with a win is the best way to start!



A nice way to start the season.
The second game is against Telford and we are made overwhelming favourites. We take the lead on the 24th minute and look comfortable all the way into the 91st minute when Telford have their first shot on target, surprisingly they don’t score and we go to take 3 points. A good game and now everyone in the squad has got minutes under their belt in the first 2 games.



Third game in against Gloucester and they are bottom of the league, so a disappointing loss is likely on the horizon. Any negativity, is quickly quashed. A great ball over the top from Bond and a neat 1 on 1 finish from Burrow give us the lead in the 8th minute. We double our lead in the 38th minute, when Moke crosses in for Simons to slot home. We go in at half time 2-0 up and due to my ability to rotate, most of their players start the second half on 70% ish fitness whereas we are all at least 80%, hopefully that should get us through. Despite this, we get two minor injuries but luckily I have back up on the bench to deal with it. Gloucester pull 1 back on the 75th minute in order to cause me to worry. Luckily we make it to the end with a solid win despite the 2 light injuries to key players. Thankfully the injuries are only for 2 days each.



There is a week off until the next match so in order to raise funds, I’ve arranged a friendly with Bury making 9k. I wont use first team players but I will use players who didn’t get any minutes in the last game and some under 18s. A solid 3-2 win with no injuries and the youngsters got some vital minutes.

Next come Kettering. We take the lead from Captian McNulty heading home from a set piece. We then double our lead after a well-played build up. Simons gets his goal from a good cross from Langstaff. We go in at half time 2-0 up. I tell the team to “not be complacent”, we’ll see if they take it on board. Do they bollocks. They get their first goal on th 64th minute. We don’t create any more quality chances in this half. The inevitable equaliser comes in the first minute of injury time.



A disappointing result.
A note to take from the game is that 4-3-2-1 is not the formation for us. We should have won this game and I will be going back to 4 4 bloody 2.

After 4 competitive games, we have 10 points. I would definitely have taken that at the beginning of the season. We have scored 6 goals with the signing of Rai Simons being really effective. Although, surely this good streak can only last so long…cant it…