Career Poole Town: An Attempt at the Big Time

iankoe7 · February 20, 2018

Hi all, after the debacle that happened during my first save attempt on the Vibe, I have decided to embark on another save game on Vibe.

This time, the club that I have chosen is: Poole Town, also known as The Dolphins

Image result for poole town

I decided to go with a club in the lowest division in the English pyramid, and who also had the poorest set of training and youth facilities, and something about Poole just attracted me to manage them more than the others.

As with my previous attempt, several goals for the first season would be

Win the Vanarama South and FA Trophy league/cup double
Get a few upset wins in the FA Cup; and
Build a young core that will form the backbone of the team for the next few years

Before this post, I have already completed the pre-season and the month of August, so this post will serve as an introduction as well as the first update.

First Update

After being announced as Poole manager, and having a look at the players/staff and facilities, it was discovered that a big change was needed for the club to make the next step forward.

Therefore, a wide-scale transformation was made - However, before these changes are shown, let's first look at how pre-season went.

Pre-season Results:

Pre-season went exceptionally well for the club. With sufficient time to prepare for the first game, the desired philosophy was implemented and the results showed.

What a first game, couldn't have gone any better!

A good win in the second game, although a slight blip as Jacob Blyth (Spoiler: One of our many new signings) goes down with an injury. Thankfully the injury was only a minor one.

A good win in our third match, but more bad news as another player goes down, this time for 3 weeks - considered an extended time in my eyes. Hopefully he returns soon!

To round off our pre-season, we manage to pull off an upset win against League One team Peterborough United, although our defensive fratilities are absolutely exposed in this game. Credit to the team though, for coming back from 3-2 down against the odds to claim the victory! Onwards march The Dolphins!

Now comes the time to show the changes. What was done to create the foundation for such a strong pre-season?

Staff Changes:

Out went the initial staff, who had poor aptitudes (not good enough for the future), and in came staff members who have the potential to improve in the future. The staff members hired include former league-winning assistant manager for Leicester City Craig Shakespeare, former Manchester United scout and physio Derek Langley and David Fevre (also a former Blackburn Rovers physio who won multiple awards).

Transfers:

A wide-scale transformation was made, all the dead wood was sold on - as well as some young signings sent out on loan to gain experience and game time- and a new fresh team to replace them.

Out:

In:

Since it is the first month of the first ever season, I will give a game-by-game update. However, I think I will just give an overall update for the rest of the career.

August:

Almost a disastrous start to the season, as our team came into the first 36 minutes of the game sleeping and fell down 2-0. However, the team managed to claw one back before half-time, and completed the comeback to take a 4-2 lead. However, the game swung towards Weston-Super-Mare again (probably due to the team's complacency), and got it back to 4-4. At this point, I went for broke and moved from Attacking to Overload, and it paid off as we managed to force the opposition into an own goal from a corner.

Overall, it was a game which probably deserved to end in a draw, as many of our team's problems were exposed. I would give my team a 6/10 on this one, since we eventually pulled out the win (I would have given it a 4-5/10 if it had been a draw).

The second game went much better, but our team's defence is still worrying, as we managed to concede two to a Bognor Regis team who had two shots on target all game. A 6/10 for our team for this one.

Our defence somehow managed to shut up shop in this one, as we cruised to an easy win. However, our starting striker Corie Andrews suffered an injury, although back-up striker Jordan Brown did well to get a goal after coming on. 8/10 for the team.

The defensive fratilities are back for our team - more often than not due to complacency (as we usually go up by huge margins e.g. 3-0 or 4-0 before conceding a couple), although we still demonstrate an ability to score at will. 7/10 for the team for this game.

Limiting the opposition to 3 off-target shots are also pleasing, and nice to see the team creating multiple chances to score from. Another 8/10 for the team.

Another solid win in the bag for the team. 8/10, as improvements can still be made in the defence.

Undoubtedly the highlight of the month, as our team shot to a 6-0 lead before halftime. After the break, I tried to switch up the tactic (in the 55th minute) to an even more attacking outlook (Fast tempo initially, before going into Overload in the 60th-ish minute). However, our team could not add any more pomp into attack, and we even let Hungerford pull one back, before we nabbed another goal from a corner. A 9/10 for the team for this game, could have been the perfect game, but it wasn't to be.

So at the end of the month, the league standings are as follows:

Sitting pretty at the top of the table after August, and a good number of players leading the charts as well.

Hopefully, as another side goal, I can get my 4 strikers (the first choice currently injured, hence not among the leaders) to lead the scoring charts and achieve a 1-2-3-4.

So that's it for the first update, hopefully you guys enjoy, and cheers!

~Ian

Edited February 21, 2018 by iankoe7

Nucleus · February 20, 2018

Great start mate! All the best. KIU!

iankoe7 · February 20, 2018

12 minutes ago, NucleusNT said:

Great start mate! All the best. KIU!

Thank you @NucleusNT!

billy2shots · February 21, 2018

Good luck mate. I live halfway between Bournemouth and Poole (10 minutes away from each ground) and have seen Poole play a fair few times over the years. I will be following this with interest.

mcandrew003 · February 21, 2018

Best of luck! Love the tactic, it seems to be really good.

Just a note, you may want to change the tag for this career from Chat to Career.

Seth Anacondas · February 21, 2018

Another team of dolphinz, with a more interesting palette than Pescara. It will be amazing to see them rise.

BatiGoal · February 21, 2018

Great start. Goodluck!

iankoe7 · February 21, 2018

8 hours ago, billy2shots said:

Good luck mate. I live halfway between Bournemouth and Poole (10 minutes away from each ground) and have seen Poole play a fair few times over the years. I will be following this with interest.

Thank you @billy2shots!

7 hours ago, mcandrew003 said:

Best of luck! Love the tactic, it seems to be really good.

Just a note, you may want to change the tag for this career from Chat to Career.

Thank you for the kind words @mcandrew003! I have changed the tag, an oversight on my part! TBH, my tactic is pretty simple really, nothing compared to the great tactics that have been released on the vibe.

7 hours ago, Seth Anacondas said:

Another team of dolphinz, with a more interesting palette than Pescara. It will be amazing to see them rise.

Thank you @Seth Anacondas, I will do my best to ensure they rise up the ranks and achieve success soon!

6 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Great start. Goodluck!

Thank you @BatiGoal!

iankoe7 · February 22, 2018

Update

I was supposed to do an update just before January, but I managed to play out the entire season, so here's an update for the end of the first season.

After the beautiful start to the season, did Poole manage to keep up the intensity over the course of the whole season, or eventually falter? To be honest, the team did not do exceptionally well by my standards, but let's see how it went!

League Table:

After that insane start where we won the first 7 league games, we suffered a disappointing loss to Oxford City and a draw with Havant and Waterlooville in the span of two weeks, in games where we arguably should have won, and another loss to Braintree Town, where our defence simply went missing. Overall, while I am pleased with winning the league with ease, there were several worrying games where our team's defence and complacency were questionable.

League Stats (Players):

I set out to achieve a 1-2-3-4 on the scoring charts, but that failed due (only managed a 2-3-4-5-6-9) to a final day hat-trick by Joe Healy (Can't control these things sometimes! Tsk...). However, on the bright side, we managed to secure a 1-2-3-4-5 for the assists leaders, and managed to get 18 out of the top 20 performers in the league!

FA Cup:

At the beginning of the career, I set myself a target of getting a few upset wins along the way, and boy did Poole achieve that. After holding Carlisle Town to a 2-2 draw away, we absolutely destroyed them 8-0 in the replay (could have been more, but our right-back got foolishly sent-off for violent conduct...), before beating Southend United 6-1, Brentford 4-2, and Derby 4-3, before valiantly going down to Manchester City 5-2, after battling from a 2-0 deficit to level it at 2-2.