On loan from Brighton, Connor Jones walked onto the pitch where Kingstonian was practicing and just knew things would be different.
He had been kept on the bench the entire previous season as Brighton flailed in the Premier League to an 18th place finish and relegation. Figuring he’d get more playing time in the Championship, he was actually pleased to see the club go down. However, his summer was rocked when he discovered he wasn’t going to make the first team.
Jones took a few steps forward in his new red and white striped #10 jersey.
He had called his agent and asked to be sent to a team that needed him. This was a new agent, of course. The $3.5 million transfer from Southampton to Blackburn was supposed to mean he was a young star striker. But Blackburn only played him five times in two years despite finishing 13th and heading towards administration for financial irresponsibility.
More steps forward towards the ball set just on the edge of the box and Roco Rees practicing his goalkeeping; their eyes met and they both knew.
Despite the lack of match experience, Brighton saw talent. And they spent $6.5 million for him. But he sat and sat and sat while the team lost and lost and lost.
Jones strikes the ball and it curls high, seemingly overstruck, before it dips down just out of the reach of the keeper. Nylon shakes and Jones pumps his fist. It was time to show England who he was.
16 finishing, aggression, acceleration, and pace. 18 balance. 14 dribbling and first touch. 12 passing and 13 composure, technique, decisions, and off the ball skills. What a find.
But that’s not all. Kingstonian also signed another Blackburn cast-off, Danny Johnson. Johnson had some solid attributes in the 13’s and 14’s with passing, vision, and off the ball at 15. He wasn’t as fast as I’d like, only at 13, but he still had some room to grow and was highly rated by my scouts. I paid a pretty high $235,000 price for him, but this was an easier decision because I sold Patrick Dawkins for $200,000 due to Connor Jones’ arrival.
I also picked up Simon Ford, another loanee from Aston Villa, to play the left wing. He is natural there as a winger and is a different style option than Kwame Poku who can only play as an inside forward on that side of the pitch.
Roger Howcroft, an aggressive, brave, yet smart left-footed central defender arrived to take over a similar role Mungo Bridge had previously enjoyed.
And that is it. Only four in’s this year. Part of the reason was that we did not get as much of a bump in payroll as I thought we’d get. I worked on re-signing the core of my team and adding only starter-type players rather than building more depth. I felt we needed a year of consolidation in the Championship and to try to get loan players who would eventually be signed on free transfers at the end of their contracts with their parent clubs, like Roco Rees and Liam McCorkell had done.
Season Results
This team is good. Connor Jones is better. 13 goals to start the season. He also scored the only goal in our first ever victory over a Premier League team, Wolves, in the second round of the Carabao Cup. We also progressed to the fourth round after matching up with our lower league rival Aldershot Town, who was back in League Two and would finish the year in 6th, banging on the door of promotion to League One. Good luck, my friends.
The only team I felt we really were out of our element with was Fulham (we went down to 10 men against Brentford so I’m ignoring that result). Fulham had just been relegated from the Premier League and they still had a great deal of talent. I also kind of threw this game, resting Connor Jones and our defenders so they would be ready against Wolves. It ended up working exactly like I wanted!
I was feeling very confident but then we had another one of those games against Reading. My Kingstonian teams have always been young so I suppose it makes sense but wow, I keep giving up late comeback goals! 88th and 96th minute goals took the home win away from us. But we bounced back with a 1-0 victory over Barnsley and then prepared for the big one – away at Tottenham.
It didn’t look good early as Tottenham opened the scoring in the 7th minute with a goal just inside the box when a corner wasn’t cleared. But in the 24th minute, Connor Jones lifted a beautiful cross after stopping the ball dead in its tracks outside the box and found Rajee Isaacs crashing towards the goal post, who one-timed the ball into the net. 10 minutes into the second half and Danny Johnson passed the ball nicely to Connor Jones through the midfield. Jones juked a defender and then struck the ball into the net from about 25 yards out (similar to the one I imagined he scored against Rees described above). Kingstonian 2 – Tottenham 1. Final.
Kingstonian truly had arrived. Or not? Gentian Kuqi had put on several really good performances in the central defense and now demanded to move onto the Premier League. Like now. As in, in the middle of October. I tried to convince him that we were going to zip through the Championship and get him there by next year but he wasn’t having it. Kuqi refused to cooperate and demanded I accept the next transfer offer from a Premier League side. For about $1.5 million, he was gone – to West Brom. A big shame – well, I hope he never develops his marking and tackling.
His unplanned, now planned departure shook the team and we only scored one goal after the Tottenham game in five dismal games.
I don’t know what to say. We just didn’t do well for a long time after that. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the game change so drastically as it did when we beat Tottenham and Kuqi demanded out. It was like the air was let out of a balloon.
But there was one shining light. Connor Jones. He added 10 more goals to his tally, which now totaled 25.
The Middlesbrough result was also a nice surprise. Take a look at our performance here:
We followed that up with another great game against Huddersfield a few days later:
Matt Carney, a bench player, was usually on a yellow card by the end of the game and well, he got sent off this one. He wasn’t nearly the same player as McCorkell, Howcroft, or Kuqi, but with Kuqi gone, he did an admirable job. But the rest of the team was back in good spirits now. Well, until this happened to Connor Jones. . .
My heart dropped. I almost quit the game, to be honest. A 7 month injury. Brutal. Here were his final season stats in the league:
Add four goals, 1 assist, and the exact same rating (7.5) from his five cup appearances and what you have is one of the greatest seasons I’ve seen in Football Manager – cut short before he could set all of my club’s records forever.
The final eight matches after that were just a blur. The team was in a fog. We had done well this season but without Connor Jones, it just wouldn’t have felt right to do any better.
We did have a nice season, after all. But the quality of teams like Birmingham, Swansea, Brentford, as well as the three promoted sides, were just too much to handle for our young team. Maybe if Kuqi hadn’t gone the way he did and we had him stick around to develop, we would have made something of ourselves. But it just wasn’t meant to be, I suppose.
But looking at next year, if we were to advance, it would continue the pattern of mid-table finish, promotion, mid-table finish, promotion that had been going on since entering the National League. Who knows? With Connor Jones and Kuqi gone, though, we’d need another striker and central defender.
Best XI
The Kings of London 