Non-League To Big League. Part Four: The Half-Term Report

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 route one in favour of a 4-4-2 diamond formation and playing a more positive fluid counter-attack style of play utilising an defensive midfielder as an anchor and an attacking midfielder playing on the periphery of the front two. Moving the wingers from an advanced role down to a more traditional midfield position has also paid off. 

Highlight

There have been some decent results, a 6-2 thumping of relegation threatened Emley stands out but for me, the one I've chosen is a 5-2 hammering of Pontefract Collieries. Striker Andy Taylor (more of him later) helped himself to a hat-trick to add to further goals from defender Dean Winnard and Callum Robinson. Despite conceding twice to slightly take the shine off the result, this win was probably our most complete showing of the campaign so far. 

Lowlight

While losing to local rivals Cleethorpes Town was an obvious downer, I managed to take some solace from the fact that we managed to perform something of a fightback to come back from 4-1 down to bring some respectability to the scoreline and only lose 4-3. Instead, I've chosen our away defeat to Consett (at the time battling against the drop). It seemed somewhat inevitable that we would lose this one when you take into consideration that the home side had appointed a new manager in the days leading up to the game. Aside from the obvious 'new manager bounce', we were deservedly beaten as we turned out one of our worst performances of the season and were lucky to only lose by the odd goal. 

Cup Competitions

Move on, we're already out of the FA Cup and FA Trophy. Not necessarily a bad thing I suppose as we have more time to focus on reinforcing our league position. 

Transfer Activity

(Broken record alert) Having a non-existent transfer budget and a miniscule allowance for wages has made bringing in new players something of an uphill struggle but since hiring my trusty Director of Football, David Stephens, I've at least been able to delegate the business of signing players to him. Over the course of his short time at the club we've brought in a handful of players. Former Stoke City winger Charlie Edwards was the first to be brought in and he was quickly followed by attacking midfielder Tom Jones (no jokes please, mainly because I've made them all), veteran goalkeeper Karl Dryden decided he'd had enough of warming the bench at high-flying Ashington and came to the FDC to challenge incumbent stopper Liam Higton for the number one jersey before my prayers for a new striker were answered in the leadup to Christmas when ex-Huddersfield Town forward Andre Edionhon joins us. In addition to the permanent transfers, defenders Ben Campbell and Aidan Heywood join us on loan from South Shields and Hebburn Town respectively. 

In terms of departures, Daventry Town plucked our young striker Kyle Radford from our under-18s (annoyingly just before I was going to hand him a senior debut) while midfielder Tom Sawyer left to join Vauxhall Motors (probably got offered a company car) and defender Tom Hipwell ends a protracted saga by eventually moving to Hebburn. 

Star Man

Undoubtedly, our main man has been striker Andy Taylor. Despite being 35 years of age, the former Grimsby Town striker has weighed in with 14 goals from 25 appearances (including two hat-tricks) and being named man of the match on no less than seven occasions. Impressively his average rating for the season has been 7.10, clearly ahead of any of his team-mates. 

And so as we tick into 2025 in our season, this is how the land lies. We find ourselves in 15th place in the NPLD1 (East) table, now some distance from the play-off zone but a comfortable(ish) six points off the relegation places. 

Key Targets For The Second Half Of The Season

Put A Run Of Results Together: Our longest unbeaten run of the season has been four games which took place in September, since then we haven't been able to string anything resembling a sequence since and everytime we follow up a victory with a defeat it always feels like one step forward, two steps back. In order for us to really consolidate our position in mid-table and fully avoid being dragged into a relegation battle, we need to start putting some runs together. 

Share The Scoring Responsibility: While Andy Taylor's goals have been fantastic, he has very much been carrying the team. With only Callum Robinson and Luis Adlard available as other striking options, it's no surprise that we've been short of goals coming from other sources. Hopefully after the acquisition of Andre Edionhon will go some way to lightening the load for Taylor. It would be nice if some of the midfielders could chip in with one or two as well. 

Beat Cleethorpes Town: They dumped us out of the FA Cup rather unceremoniously and in our first league meeting, the damage had already been done before our belated fightback. Since they're aiming for automatic promotion and are one of the favourites for the play-offs, I'm aiming to bloody their noses a little bit when we meet again in the league and hopefully show them that we're more than just the 'noisy neighbours'. 

That's your lot for this one. Part five (our final part of the first season) will be up before Christmas and as this is going up on the morning of Borough's away game against Bishop Auckland, good luck to the boys, hopefully you can bring the points home and I look forward to coming to the New Year's Day derby clash. 

Thanks for reading, see you in the next one! 

Follow me on Twitter/X: @DanBarkerGray or Bluesky: @danbarkergray.bsky.social