Archive for January, 2010

Thurrock-September 2012 results

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January 30, 2010 - By Lye Kuek Hin

Hello friends, we had a good but not perfect start in August with 1 defeat to Cheltenham.  Due to some injuries along the way, we concede 5 goals in the last 2 games. I need to tighten up the defence while Troy Archibad-Henville is out injured for the games in September. It will be a busy schedule with 7 games awaiting us. As i mentioned in the last post, the opposition is not strong except for Crawley but i certainly won’t be underestimating the opponent. I just need my team to gather as many points as possible in the early season to prove our title credentials. Here is the results.

We had a great month. 6 wins and a draw, i think my players are starting to understand each other better after last month.  I was really pleased with the strikers upfront, Izale Mcleod and Marc Richards are scoring goals for fun. Seems like their partnership is working well and i think there are still a lot to come from them.

First game of the month was against Crawley, a team that finish 3rd in the last campaign. It was not an easy game for [...]Read More

Thurrock-August 2012 results

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January 27, 2010 - By Lye Kuek Hin

Hello friends, finally the new season is under going but before we go to the actual games, we have some workout in the friendly games. There are a lot of friendlies to be played, i try to rotate the players to get their match fitness back as they had just returned from holiday.

A few high scoring results there, the only defeat is to championship team Peterborough but the result had been expected as they are few divisions on top of us. The new signings had adapted very well especially the new strikers. They had scored a total of 18 goals between them. It was a nice workout for the team as they need sometime to foster the understandings.

The media predicts us to finish 15th this season, the bet is firmly against us too. We were expected to struggled and fighting a relegation battle. I think thats a joke from them to lessen my pressure on the job. Anyway based from what i saw from the friendly, we definitely have what it takes to challenge for the title.

Finally the actual game arrives, however i received a bad new that Thomas Hitchcock had injured himself [...]Read More

Thurrock-2012/13 Pre-Season

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January 25, 2010 - By Lye Kuek Hin

Hello friends, i am coming into my fourth season with Thurrock. After the disappointment of missing the play-off spot last season, i am determined to strengthen my squad to challenge for the title this season. My board expectations has been pretty average for this year as they only expect us to finish in mid-table position. Thus i don’t have any transfer fee available, i had already expected that since the club is 200k in red. But what i didn’t expect is that they only provide me with a small wage budget of 2.8k/week. It was few hundred lower than last season. Anyway i told the board that we will have a top-half finish and they increase to 2.9k/week. The current wage is well over this amount so definitely i need to release some players for new players to come in.

Even though i was given such a small budget, i had no choice but to accept it. Before the start of the new season, i had already identify my transfer targets and offered them a contract. Most of them agreed to sign for my club so i was pretty delighted about it. The signings were concluded [...]Read More

Thurrock-2011/12 Season Ends

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January 23, 2010 - By Lye Kuek Hin

Hello friends, welcome to my last post on the 2011/12 season. The fight to the play-off place is very tight at the moment with my Thurrock team sitting on 7th place few points off the last play-off spot. 5 games left and we need to gain as many points as we can. Can we reach the play-off place?

Lets take a look on the results..

It was not a great month for us, we managed 2 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss. We had some difficult games in this month mainly against our closest rivals Accrington and Mansfield. My team could not overcome them and can only gain draws against them. It was an easy win against Forest Green and AFC Wimbledon though. The last play-off spot will be going down to the last wire. After 4 games played, this is how we stand…

5) Accrington 78 points

6) Mansfield 78 points

7) Thurrock 77 points

We need to do well in the last game and hope that my rivals slip up in the last game. Our last game was against Stevenage, a difficult opponent that were relegated from league 2. We were determined to get [...]Read More

Thurrock-March 2012 results

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January 20, 2010 - By Lye Kuek Hin

Hello friends, welcome to another month of my Thurrock story updates. Luton will be running away with the BSP title for sure this season. So it s up to the rest of the teams to challenge for the 4 play-off places. The table is very tight at the moments with 7 or 8 teams with a real chance of landing the chance to promote to league 2. We are lying in 6th place but with 1 or few games more than our rivals.

There will be a lot games to play for this month, 7 in total. Here is the results..

I am pleased with what we achieved for this month considering the strong opposition that we faced. We were unbeaten for the whole month and have 3 wins and 4 draws. But at this stage of the time, the draws is definitely going to affect our chances of claiming the play-off place this season. We were without our most influential player Kevin Macdonald for this whole month. I forgot to mention that he was injured in the last game of February and will be out for few weeks. With him around, i believe we can [...]Read More

Thurrock-February 2012 results

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January 18, 2010 - By Lye Kuek Hin

Hello friends, we are lying near the play-off place now but with a few games played more than our rivals. If they win all their games in hand, my team will be dropping few places down the table. I need to ensure that we consolidate our position by trying to win all the games in this month. We have a pretty relax schedule in February only 4 games to be played.

Here is the results..

It was pretty even, 2 wins and 2 losses. We had a bad start losing the first 2 games and then recover to win the next 2 games. In this crucial month, i must admit that the 6 points lost definitely going to have a say whether we can achieve the play-off spot when the season ends. I was very disappointed as i thought Hereford and Barnet are teams that we  are on par with.

First game of the month was against Hereford who is few places below us. We performed better than them in the first half and deservedly took the lead through Paul Hakim in the 32 minute. They came back strongly in the second half and scored [...]Read More

Thurrock-January 2012 results

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January 16, 2010 - By Lye Kuek Hin

Hello friends, it was a brand new year and while most of the people are celebrating, my Thurrock team had to prepare a visit to The Abbey stadium of Cambridge Utd on the 2nd day of January. Half the season gone and we are lying in 9th place 10 points off the last play-off spot. We had already exceed the expectations of the board and fans but personally i wanted more. I need to rally my players for the rest of the season to grab a play-off place and a chance to promote to league 2.

I had mentioned in my last post i need to released some players in order to sign new players. But there was no takers and i don’t want to deepen the financial problems by releasing them on a free. However Lewis Walker was loaned to Corby town. I wanted to keep 2 loan signings out of 4 that i had signed but Andrew Isaac decided not to extend the loan with us. In the end, Kiernan Hughes-Mason is the only one who extends his loan with us for another 6 months. I loaned another player from Millwall. His name is Jonathan Hutcheon a 17 [...]Read More

Thurrock-December 2011 results

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January 13, 2010 - By Lye Kuek Hin

Hello friends, i am satisfied with the performance of my players for the last 3 months. My players had been performing quite well and we are now lying in mid-table. Last month saw us facing some difficult games against the top teams in the Blue Square Premier, i am glad that we only suffered 1 defeat and that was against the leader Luton. The last month of 2011 before we welcome 2012, we will playing 5 league games and some strong opposition too.

Here is the results..

It was an inconsistent month for us, we have 2 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses. The 2 losses was against teams that are lower place than us, we seem to face trouble playing with weaker teams, i don’t know whether it was my tactics that is giving me the problem. I think i should be more aggressive playing with weaker teams even away from home.

First game of the month was against Mansfield a team currently chasing for a play-off spot. I always employ counter strategy against teams that were potentially stronger than us and it seems to work well for us. My players were magnificent [...]Read More

Credit to Johnny Karp

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January 11, 2010 - By Lye Kuek Hin

Hello friends, before i update my next post of Thurrock story, i would like to do a special post. The title of the post is “Credit to Johnny Karp”.

I have been playing football manager for years including the times when they were championship manager. I just concentrating playing and never think of anyone will write a blog regarding his football manager story. Somewhere in June/July 2009, i came across “truefootballmanager” written by Vitaliy Mokosiy by some FM forum(i think so) and i was ‘wow’ somebody has written a blog about football manager.

But i am hungry for more, so i search around using some keywords and one day i saw Johnny ‘s “footballmanagerstory”. I was hooked to it immediately and will always came up to look for his new updates. At that time, Johnny’s website has been around for several months and because of his Chester game unable to load up, he started a new story which he chosen “Blyth Spartans”. I was even more interested to find out as i always started playing from the lowest league. Neverthless i still follow his Chester story and started reading from the beginning. It was well written and very interesting and in fact i [...]Read More