Welcome back.
Last time out you’ll have seen we were sitting pretty in a promotion position and I’d made the decision to go all out on recruiting players and go for promotion. We did that and here are the results:
Torquay United Season Review
In this episode of the blog I will talk about the following:
- Summary of the season.
- Aims for next season
- Summary of transfers
- Next steps
Summary of the season:
The start to the season wasn’t great. We lost our first two games before we narrowly won two. That was followed by another four losses. In the first 8 games we won 9 points out of a possible 24. We continued coasting middle to bottom of the table until we hit a 7 game winning streak where we shot up the table and into a playoff position. From there it picked up. We quickly found ourselves in a promotion position which we kept for most of the season.
March and April turned out to be difficult months and we ended up dropping down to 4th position where we finished. We were still in the playoffs though and the money we would receive from a crowed semi-final leg and a final at Wembley in front of 50,000 people would help in the long run.
Aims for next season
Our aims for next season it to survive the drop. I know I said that last time and went on to get promotion but this time I mean it. Finding the right players turned out to be very difficult and I’m not sure if we’ve got a squad ready to compete in League One. I will try and get a few results in the first half of the season and then strengthen the squad in January.
Another aim of mine is to be more financially stable. Given our two promotions through playoffs has brought it quite a bit of money. That will be stopping for a while I feel and I want to be able to have money at the end of each season with which to strengthen the squad and improve. Something that I read on a blog written by ThatFMRegen suggested keeping your wages the same as your gate receipts.
For this reason I worked out that I could only spend a maximum of £25k per week on wages, despite being offered £35k by the board. It did mean I was given about £300k to spend on buying players. If we can average at least 3000 people each home game the amount of money we lose will be covered by the sponsorship each season. But I’ll let you know how well this works. (On a side note, I made a little excel spread sheet that I type in the predicted attendance, season ticket prices, how many are bought and ticket price to work this all out).
Anyway, we’re predicted to finish 23rd in the league so let’s break some more records and finish higher than that.
Summary of transfers:
This transfer window I found very hard to find players. Nevertheless, I signed a fair few players and let even more leave. I did well raising some funds this time too! Have a look below:
The main transfer was selling our young DC Rian Edgar to Brighton for £350k. A lot of money for a club like us. I will be looking to replace him quickly with a quality signing and might wait a little long than I’d like. I was doubtful in being able to keep Rian at the club given his potential but I didn’t think he’d only make 8 appearances for us before being bought by another club.
Next steps:
I hope you enjoyed reading this blog. I will finish with a little thought/dilemma that I’m currently having about managing Torquay United. I feel that I’m getting to the end of the road with them. If I want to keep the finances in order, it means I can’t go over the top buying players. I don’t know how far I’ll be able to take this club and I’m thinking it might only be League One. I’ll be doing this season but I’m afraid that if I get relegated, I will be looking to move to a bigger club I’d really like to know your thoughts on this so let me know by commenting here or on twitter. (@FMStory17)
It’s you’ve got any comments, suggestions or feedback, then leave them below.
My FM Story 