The Journey begins
Hello and welcome to my FM22 career story. After successful spells with Warrington Town and Southport in FM20 and FM21 respectively, I have once again decided to delve into the lower leagues of the English period. For a long time, I have been undecided on which team to manage in FM22 having already played as a lot of my local clubs. That was until one club, in particular, stood up. By now, everyone has seen the story that Hollywood Superstars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have taken over Wrexham in the National League and in a recent interview, they had this to say:
"You take a deeper dive into Wrexham, and you see how invested the community are in the club,".
"This club can really grow, and I am just anxious to see it grow.
"I don't understand why we can't get to the Premier League. We have the structure here. Why not dream big?"
Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney - Wrexham FC co-owners
Consider the challenge accepted. My goal in FM22 is to take Wrexham, who coincidentally is only 45 minutes away from my house, to domestic and European glory.
The goals
Obviously, the main goal is to take the club to the top as I mentioned previously but I've also set myself a couple of other targets to keep the save fresh and interesting.
Youth Development
One of my main aims is to develop youth as much as I physically can. This doesn't mean I'll have a team of kids but I will use younger players where I can. I also want to have at least 1 youth academy graduate in every matchday squad, much like Sir Alex Ferguson did with Man Utd.
30 or below
Throughout the save, I want to avoid having any player over the age of 30. Obviously, I won't be able to achieve this straight away but I want to be achieving it within 2-3 seasons.
4-2-3-1 is banned
On Football Manager I more often than not opt for a 4-2-3-1 formation because it works in the match engine. This time I've decided to test myself and force myself to not use it.
Club Vision
Now onto the board's goals. The goal for this season is to at least reach the playoffs before achieving promotion next season. I'd like to think that we can do better than that but we'll see over the course of the season. Rob and Ryan also want us to play entertaining football, which is music to my ears. For someone who likes to play attacking football like myself, that's perfect. Our cup goals seem reasonable, though we will need to be lucky in the FA Cup draw to reach round two, we don't want to face a League One team in round one.
The Club
Now for a look at the club itself. Wrexham is a club with a long history having been founded in 1864, however, success hasn't been too easy to come by. The highest the club has ever been is 15th in the Championship, whilst their finishing position in 2019/20 was the lowest they've ever had. The club has also been at National League level for 13 years since relegation in 2007/08.
Stadium + Facilities
The club plays its home games at The Racecourse Ground, a 15,500 capacity stadium with 10,500 seated. That's a really good size and to be honest, is massive compared to some of the other sides in the National League. It'll be interesting to see whether we'll be able to expand the stadium as we move up the leagues or if we'd need a new stadium....but that's getting a bit ahead of ourselves.
Good training and adequate youth facilities are good for this level but given my goals, these are something I will be definitely looking to improve on as we progress. I feel like upgrading our youth recruitment will be the most important though as we'll be able to develop much better youth players as a result of improving that.
Records
Hopefully, we'll see a few of these broken in the future.
1
National League - 1st
FA Cup - R3 vs Brighton
FA Trophy - Winners
