Macclesfield Story: Great Results by Midseason

The first several games in my Macclesfield story were mediocre: the Silkmen were at number 10, which was still a great place for a team tipped for relegation, but not enough for me and the few good players I had managed to pick up.

The biggest problem of the team was the lack of solid wingers: I only had two players for the right side and one for the left side, all three of them of a very low quality and that was reflected on the pitch: the tactics I was using (4-1-2-2-1) seemed to be a pretty solid one, but the lack of quality forward led to very few chances to score and even fewer goals.

So, having this in mind as well as the fact that the pitch at The Moss Rose is quite narrow, I have decided to change the tactics completely and play without wingers (it is the first time in my managing career - of all time! - when I play without wingers). Still, after a few misses that took the team all the way down to the 18th position, the team started to play football and the result was incredible: five wins in a row:

The turnaround was certainly caused by the return of Willy Topp (who got injured for a month during his first game for Macclesfield) and also the return of Mamadou Seck, my best central defender.

As you can see below, we've had a really decent series of results: lost on penalties in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy 2nd round against a better Crewe, won the 1st FA Cup round against Shrewsbury (but lost heavily at Huddersfield), and managed to get some really valuable points in the league from Bournemouth, Bury and Notts Co:

And after this great series of results, Macclesfield are now standing in the top half of the division, at six, with real chances to go up to number 2 in the league! Of course, there are chances to go back down to the middle of the season if things don't work well anymore, but I hope that won't be the chance. Now I'm even starting to dream about promotion!

Players-wise, there were, as it usually happens in Football Manager 2010, quite a few surprises: some of the players I considered at first some really important assets for the club didn't play too well, while other players with lower stats managed to do wonders in the team and became regular first team players.

I am talking here about the pleasant surprises of Algerian defender Hamza Bencheriff, the best player in the squad ratings-wise (with a 7.11 average in 26 games) and Ben Starosta, a Polish fullback that really has some poor stats, but plays incredibly well:

 

On the other hand, I was quite disappointed with Cosmin Marginean who is quite inconsistent, but also full back Joe Edwards played quite bad. Well, that's life!

But overall I can say that I am pretty pleased with how things are going in this first half of the season: The Silkmen are at number 6, after being considered relegation candidates, I am managing to tweak the tactics and create a solid formation and I already have a few players I'll try to keep for the future when I hope of greater things. The final goal is, afterwards, to get Macclesfield in the Champions League! Let's hope that will happen soon!