The Manager's Office: A Football Manager Blog

Hello and welcome one and all once again to Non-League To Big League where we've reached the end of our second season at the helm of Grimsby Borough. Considering we spent the first half of the season massively overachieving and finding ourselves on the fringes of the play-off spots, can we continue our good form into the business end of the campaign?  If you have missed any of the action so far, click here to catch up with anything you may have missed. League Form In terms of league action, we embarked on a superb run of just one defeat between the turn of the year and early April, even going on to break a club record for games unbeaten with a fine nine match undefeated streak. The only downside to the unbeaten run was that five of them ended in a draw, which we can probably attribute as one of the deciding factors on our final league position.  The highlight of the run undoubtedly has to what I've christened the 'Demolition Derby' as we trounced local rivals Cleethorpe...

Non-League To Big League: Grimsby Borough  Welcome to Non-League To Big League and the Grimsby Borough portion of the save all condensed into one handy post in which you can click though my adventure with Borough without having to follow loads of links.  Grimsby Borough are a non-league football club based in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire. They were formed in 2003 and have the nickname 'The Wilderness Boys' by virtue of the fact they spent a large period of their short history playing outside of their home town due to complications with not having a ground of their own suitable to meet the standards of the Central Midlands League and latterly the Northern Counties East League. This came to an end in 2012 when the Bradley Football Development Centre opened, a local authority owned venue and this has been Borough's home ever since (the ground is known in Borough circles as Jason Threadgold's Home Of Grimsby Borough for sponsorship purposes).  In real life, Borough find...

Hello and welcome back one and all to the final instalment of Non-League To Big League of 2024. It's been quite a journey so far with Grimsby Borough and we're now firmly entrenched in our second season as we aim to establish ourselves in the Northern Premier League Division One (East). If you haven't seen our pre-season preparations then you can check out that post  here. League Form Considering we were one of the favourites for the drop once again, we've performed far beyond anyone's expectations (my own included if I'm being truthful) to find ourselves starting the new year on the fringe of the play-off places, four points behind our nearest contenders Brighouse Town. At one point, we even scaled the dizzying heights of fourth but if you had offered me this position at the start of the season. I'd have snapped your hand off.  Undoubtedly the highlight of the season was our eight-match unbeaten run (which also became a club record) which saw us turn out wi...

Hello and welcome one and all to part six of Non-League To Big League in Football Manager 2024 (with the 2024-25 season database). It's time for us to take a quick look at what's been happening in pre-season as we await the start of my second season in charge of Grimsby Borough in Northern Premier League Division One (East). If you haven't seen any of last season or you'd just like a refresher then click  here. Tactics I've decided to go for something a little different in terms of tactics for the early part of the new season. The 4-4-2 diamond with fluid counter-attacking has been abandoned in favour of utlilisng a back five (with wing-backs), a holding midfielder with someone on the periphery of the striker and two wide men. We're trying a different mentality as well this season, hopefully by playing with a vertical tiki-taka, we can punch some holes in opposition defences as well as playing some (hopefully) easy on the eye football.  Pre-Season Results It...

Hello and welcome one and all to the final part of our first season of Non-League To Big League in Football Manager 2024 (using the 2024-25 season extended database). If you haven't seen any of my adventures with Grimsby Borough then check them out by clicking the links below. For now though, let's see how the remainder of the season panned out in Northern Premier League Division One (East).  League Form Despite beginning the new year with two consecutive league wins (after a morale-boosting win over local county league side Immingham Town), things took a turn for the worst as we embarked on a dismal run that saw us fail to win any of our next seven matches, picking up just one point and going winless from late January through to mid-March. The barren spell had us nervously looking over our shoulders for a time as our lead over the chasing pack at the bottom of the table looked set to evaporate.  Thankfully, we managed to arrest the decline with a fine 5-3 win over eventually ...

Hello all and welcome back to Non-League To Big League, our FM24 quest to become a legend in the world of football management. This instalment is going to be the first one to follow the new format as we'll take a look at an overview of what's been happening in our virtual world.  If you're new here then welcome, you can catch up on the action you've missed  here ,  here  and  here .  With that in mind, let's see how we're getting on in our adventure with Grimsby Borough.  League Form & Tactics It's been somewhat tough since our heady early season days of knocking on the door of the play-off zone and I'm willing to admit that it was probably something of a false position. Having one of the smaller budgets and playing squads in the division has been challenging although when we've been at our best we have played some fantastic football. This can possibly be attributed to our switch from playing 4-2-1-3 and aiming to lump the ball forward by playing...

Hello everyone and welcome back to Non-League To Big League, your regular slice of action as we aim to go from the grassroots game all the way to the upper echelons of football management. If you missed part two then you can catch up  here. Instalment number three begins with us welcoming Dunston UTS to The FDC for a midweek league clash. For large parts of the game we're the better of the two sides and are good value for our 1-0 lead which comes through Callum Lovett just shy of the half-hour mark (especially after we'd had a goal disallowed for offside). Sadly, our advantage evaporates not even ten minutes later when the visitors make the most of their only shot on target by equalising. Despite going on to have plenty of shots on goal in the remainder of the first half and for the majority of the second, we're only able to muster another two shots on target and fail to create any other chances which leaves us with only a point to show for our efforts .  After our exit fro...

Hello one and all and welcome back to Non-League To Big League, our FM24 road to becoming a legend in the world of football management. If you're new here then I'm managing one of my local grassroots teams, Grimsby Borough in the Northern Premier League Division One (East) and you can catch up with part one  here .  Our first assignment of this part sees us host Liversedge at the Bradley FDC for a midweek clash under the lights. Despite our decent early season form (spoiler alert if you haven't seen part one), we're sluggish from the start and the visitors punish this by taking an early lead. We manage to equalise through a Tyler Edwards penalty but this is a short stay of execution as Liversedge strike quickly with two goals in the space of four minutes to put them into a comfortable 3-0 lead.  After the teacups are thrown at half-time, there's a marked improvement in our performance as we begin to create a string of chances in the second period but we're guilt...

Hello and welcome to Non-League To Big League, an adventure in Football Manager 2024 in which I'll endeavour to become a legend in the world of football management while going from the grassroots game (hopefully) all the way to the upper echelons of the sport.  If you want to get a gist of the rules that I'll be adhering to then check out Lollujo's Non-League To Legend, Kevin is a massive inspiration to myself and many other FM players both on and off social media and I probably wouldn't be doing this now if it wasn't for his videos.  The only difference comes in the shape of the fact I'll be using an extended database which goes down all the way to county league football. My first club on the road to glory will be Grimsby Borough. If you're unfamiliar with The Wilderness Boys, they play their home games at the Bradley Football Development Centre in Grimsby and compete in the Northern Premier League Division One (East) which is step four of the non-league py...