After a promising first year, I felt we only needed a few additions to the defense and some sustained development from our young first team players. Surely the league would be easier without the Merthyr juggernaut this year, right? Let’s kick on.
Transfers
After noticing that the best defenses in the National League South had central defenders with good pace/acceleration and tackling/marking skills, I sought out the best at this position with these qualities. I know I haven’t linked any player profiles yet – the main reason is that I’m writing these recaps while I’m managing a few years ahead in time and the other reason is that every starting player at these lower league levels looks pretty much the same. They are all pacey with strong physicals like natural fitness, good work rate, passing and teamwork, and decent technicals to match their position. The goal is to find players with attributes over 10 and any with a 13 or 14 is a star.
As for my central defender search, early results were lacking because none of the best wanted to join my club. However, on a random day in June, I suddenly noticed two names added to the list of players interested in a transfer to our club: Jason Sraha and Levi Laing. Sraha and Laing were two Arsenal academy drop-outs and miraculously signed for Kingstonian on free transfers. Sraha and Laing have acceleration/pace at 15/16 and 14/13, respectively, and both have 13 tackling. Also, both are 6 feet, 2 inches, providing some needed height to the defense. These guys are perfect fits and I entered the preseason with a team I thought had no holes.
That said, I did add a backup goalkeeper, Joe Young from Wolves, so we wouldn’t have to play Joshua Bradley-Hurst every single match. And finally, considering that Fábio Saraiva did so well on the left wing, I wanted to try to find a better option on the right to balance our attack and also serve as a sub for our Enock Asante–Josh Andrews combination up front. I came up with Kai Corbett, a blonde-haired teenager from West Ham, who had good speed but not enough finishing to serve as a striker sub. Corbett’s signing stretched my wages past my budget so signing another striker would not be a good idea. Regardless, I couldn’t find another striker on the same level as Asante or Andrews so I decided to drop the idea and carry on with the season.
Results
I think I made a mistake. My players were still asleep following the dreadful playoff exit from last year and maybe the lack of a new striker made Asante and Andrews complacent. A meager two goals were scored in our first six games, both in the same game. Although the results above show we had improved our defense, our attacking shape failed miserably to connect. Also, Saraiva suddenly looked old and slow on the pitch.
An attempt to inspire passion in the players with a team meeting before the match against Poole Town backfired and I was left pondering how to fix this lackluster spell. A tactic change? Bring in an inferior striker on a free transfer and go over budget on wages, hoping for a different result?
Sometimes, the best strategy is just to make due with what you’ve got. I moved right winger Jayden Reid, who was in a time-share role with Corbett the blondie, to take over as an advanced forward up front to receive passes from balls headed down by one of our target men, Asante or Andrews. Reid wasn’t a great finisher but he was fast and had good dribbling and teamwork. We saw immediate dividends as Asante scored 10 goals from September 1 to October 2, and Josh Andrews had 4 goals in a match at home against Dover. That same match with Dover saw Reid also complete a hat-trick. Then, to seal the new Reid-Asante and Reid-Andrews partnerships, Reid led the team in goals for the month of October. It seemed like whenever one of Asante, Andrews, or Reid would struggle, I could sub in the one from the bench and get the winning goal.
A pretty easy cup run in the FA Cup brought us to the second round in a match away at League 1 side, Peterborough. After a long match of good defensive interceptions by Sraha and Laing, Reid remarkably slotted home the winner in the 87th minute. Now we were off to the third round of the FA Cup in just my second year on the job, where we could potentially play one of the Premier League sides like Arsenal or Chelsea and really change our financial fortunes. Instead, we were drawn away against another League One side, Coventry City.
Okay, so the match against Coventry City went about as well as matches against League One sides should go. But I was also convinced that this poor result was merely the result of a string of poor performances leading up to the match. Andrews had completely disappeared by this point and I could only trust Asante and Reid to have good days. Unfortunately, they both struggled in December.
Desperate to get the team back on track after the FA Cup loss, I called another team meeting to refocus the boys. They responded well but my desire for a straightforward win would prove foolish as a heart-attack-inducing game against Dorking ignited. Five of the goals scored were in the second half, including a late game and hat-trick clinching goal for Asante. We then won three of the next four games, relying on our defense.
And then suddenly our form dropped completely. Every single Kingstonian goal scored in February and March was by Reid, all six of them. Asante and Andrews were now both completely ineffective. A mad search through free agents provided no hope of finding another striker so I had to simply rely on Reid, who single-handedly pulled us out of the Winter doldrums.
You’ll notice the Aldershot Town result. A 0-4 defeat. We were 8 points behind them before that game and Aldershot Town was on a two-game losing streak. Had we won that game, we would have been 5 points away from the lead with 8 matches to go and Aldershot Town on a 3-game losing streak. Instead, we ended up down 11 points and the lost confidence surely impacted the draws that followed.
By the start of April, there were several teams hovering around the same point total fighting for playoff seeding. We were comfortably in the playoffs thanks to our midseason form but our race for the league title had dwindled into a futile effort to hold onto home-field advantage.
An underwhelming end to our season and a surprising loss of composure from our defense led to a thud against Billericay Town. Our two wingbacks, Reece Hannam and Ethen Vaughan struggled in this second half of the season, to the point that it was better to sit Vaughan and play a clearly inferior player who would put in a decent shift. Even Zach Dronfield, our captain for this season and a rock in the defensive midfield, began to struggle. It seemed like our poor form would lead to disaster in the playoffs as we now would probably have to win two games on the road to advance to the final.
For whatever reason, my team shook themselves awake for the playoffs and had a tremendous performance against Dorking. Dronfield, TJ Bramble, Saraiva, Reid, Asante, and Hannam all had several key plays and the collective team effort rose their match ratings above a 7.0 even though the game was tied 1-1 going into the 60th minute. Normally, you only see these ratings for the whole team rise to this level after a series of goals are scored! An own goal by Dorking after a nicely worked team attack by the K’s in the 61st minute gave us confidence and we sealed the game with a Dronfield strike in the 90th minute.
As for the Woking game, well . . . it was the Enock Asante show. Four goals for the lad and we were soaring to the playoff final 5-0 by the 70th minute. However, just a few minutes later, Saraiva fell to the pitch with a serious thigh injury. I now was in a panic. Saraiva had not performed as well as he had last season but he was still a dynamic force and could change the game with his crosses and swift dribbling skills on the left wing. Plus, we didn’t really have a replacement for him. The game ended and luckily, the thigh injury would be healed a day or two before the playoff final. A sigh of relief!
Our focus turned to our final opponent: Hungerford Town.
Hungerford Town had finished second in the league, with 89 points – just one point behind the winners, Aldershot Town. But Hungerford was another one of those solid defensive lower league teams like the two promoted clubs last season. Aldershot had allowed only 37 goals all season and Hungerford, with the best defensive record in the league, allowed only 35. My earlier matches against Hungerford were a 1-0 victory and a 1-1 draw. So I planned for this to be a low-scoring affair and focused training on set pieces to get that one goal.
The final started and I was surprised I didn’t remember that the NLS does not play their playoff finals at Wembley Stadium. Apparently, this only happens for playoff finals in tier 5 and above. So it would be another road game, our third in a row.
It was admittedly an underwhelming final until the 67th minute, when Jayden Reid, our hero of the season, broke his foot. He had given so much – and now he could only watch from the bench. Josh Andrews stepped in to the advanced forward role but couldn’t connect with Asante, who was quiet after his 4-goal performance the game before.
The teams stayed deadlocked at nil-nil and honestly, there wasn’t much action on the pitch to write about, with our first yellow card coming in the 116th minute. Both teams seemed resigned to taking penalties.
As soon as we got there, I was convinced we were going to lose. If there’s one thing about Football Manager I know, it’s that penalties are a crapshoot – and you usually lose them. After two successful strikes for both sides, the keepers played big and saved two shots in a row each. A surprising third save in a row for Bradley-Hurst who, remember, was our first signing, seemed to write the headlines before our fifth attempt. TJ Bramble, the diligent and less heralded defensive midfielder next to the star Dronfield, stepped up to the mark and saw an opportunity. And he nailed it, coolly placing the shot in the top left corner and sending Kingstonian to the National League.
Best XI
Despite the promotion, I saw the season overall as a disappointment. Primarily, this was due to our lackluster attack as our total goals dropped from 80 to 67. Sure, we had a better central defense, but our wingbacks went way backwards this year. Until TJ’s penalty, I was convinced we were going to be stuck in the NLS for another season. Had we done so, I may have changing gears and focused on building up our youth academy instead of relying on transfers. That would have probably meant 1 to 2 more years of mid-table finishes. But that’s all in the past now, and it was time to figure out how much money I could spend after barely surviving the season with overdrawn wage expenses.
Well, shortly after the season ended, it was announced that we’d be moving . . . a nearly two hour drive or metro trip away northeast across London to Brisbane Road. I can’t imagine any fans making that trip on a regular basis, which meant that we would not be getting an increase in fans anytime soon and this would further hamstring us financially for the foreseeable future. This challenge was only going to get harder to become the Kings of London . . .
Title Image Credit: Jon Hayes
The Kings of London 