Season 9 – Kongsvinger IL Toppfotball, 1.Division
Media Prediction: 12th from 16
Board Expectations: Avoid Relegation
In a strange turn of events, the board were realistic and asked me to avoid relegation, yet the media installed us among the favourites for promotion! I agreed with the board and aimed for 12th place.
The financial situation wasn’t improving quickly, but a crumb of comfort was that it wasn’t getting worse, so when the board announced a new wage budget, I decided not to sign any new players and stay within their lines. Another good crop of young players came through, and a couple of them look to have real potential again.
After a brilliant start to the season, which included a 9-0 away win, I was approached by Bohemians of the Irish Premier Division. After a very quick look over their information and squad, I rejected. We continued our good form, and even won a couple of rounds in the cup for the first time!
Somehow our form picked up after the cup exit, and with a new club record of 15 matches unbeaten we managed to secure a shock promotion. \o/\o/
League Position – 1st (16)
P:30 | W:20 | D:7 | L:3 | F:90 | A:46 | Pts:67
As far as I can remember, for the first time ever, I have made it onto a club’s favoured personnel list \o/
Season 10 – Kongsvinger IL Toppfotball, Tier 1
Media Prediction: 16th from 16
Board Expectations: Avoid Relegation
Before the season began the board announced that we were turning professional with immediate effect, so I crossed all the t’s and dotted all the lower cased j’s on all my players and staff contracts for the change. Going professional served one major purpose, and that was that the training meant more injuries to my relatively small squad.
I only managed to bring in 1 MC to improve my first team for this season, and I was concerned that we weren’t going to be good enough to stay up. We had a decent start to the season, when the young ST who had come through our system 2 years ago flourished and established himself as our best striker. He’s just 17 years old, and I tend to refer to him as Luddy.
We seemed to get found out after the good start, and results were very difficult to come by. We drifted towards the bottom, and became reliant on beating the teams around us in the table for our points. Unfortunately this soon became a struggle, and as the season ended, we needed a win from our last 2 games to avoid the relegation/promotion play-offs.
Sadly we didn’t manage this, and slipped into 14th on the final day of the season. First up in the play-offs were Stabaek, which we won 3-0. In the final we faced Moss, and in the first leg we scraped a 2-1 win. I wasn’t 100% confident going into the second leg, but a bit of insurance came through the day before the game, when Ipswich offered me their vacant managers position.
I decided that if we were relegated i would leave, and if we stayed up, I would stay as I wasn’t really ready to go back to England just yet. As it turned out we drew the second leg 2-2, and managed to hang on to our top flight status \o/ Bye-bye Ipswich.
This was a huge step up from the 1. division last season, and I have already made moves in the transfer market to try and push us up the table next year. Luddy was the only player who really proved he had the class to play at this level as he came second in the goalscoring charts with 25 league goals.
League Position – 14th (16)
P:30 | W:7 | D:4 | L:19 | F:49 | A:73 | Pts:25
During the close season there were a number of takeover attempts, all failed and I lost confidence in my board when they cut the budgets so I walked. It took a little while to be offered a job that appealed, and I rejected jobs in South Africa and India before I was approached by Cibalia of Croatia’s top division.
I thought now was a good time to go visit dblooder and packed my bags.
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