December 2011

Telford were in 18th place when I took over, after 16 games, with 2 wins, 8 draws and 6 losses. Surprisingly, they'd won the previous match against Braintree 2-1, but I believe they had a caretaker manager in place at the time. I didn't have a match for ten days, which gave me a bit of time to look at the squad I had been given, and potentially bring in some new faces.

Wolverhampton Wanderers were our parent club, but the link between the two purely consisted of an annual pre-season friendly. To get a bit more money, and perhaps some loanees, I asked the board to look for a new parent club, and they came up with West Brom. Unfortunately, they didn't send any players on loan though.

My first signing as Telford manager was Alex Cairns, an 18-year-old goalkeeper who quickly established himself as the number one ahead of Ryan Young. Several failed loan attempts for various players followed, and it wasn't until the day of our match against Vauxhall Motors that two signings were completed. 21-year-old right midfielder Jake Simpson was brought in for £4,000 from Shrewsbury, and 22-year-old pacey attacker Lewis Alessandra was signed for a club record £10,00 from Oldham Athletic. Both went straight into the starting line up for the game, despite having only officially been at the club for a matter of hours.

Vauxhall were, when we played them, in 16th place, two above us, and it was them who opened the scoring on 18 minutes through midfielder James Holden. However, we managed to grab an equaliser 10 minutes before half time when centre back Matthew Duffy got on the end of Jon Adams' corner. That was the way it stayed, and apart from an injury to Steve Torpey in second half stoppage time, it was a fairly uneventful second half. However, it was my first game, and we didn't lose, so all's ok.

The next fixture against Stalybridge saw three more new faces in the squad. Ryan Charles (£1,500) and Netan Sansara (£1,000) were signed from Luton and Walsall respectively, and 37-year-old Graham Coughlan joined us from our rivals Shrewsbury for £1,000 to add experience, reliability and perhaps more importantly, a bit of competition to the existing centre back pairing of Matthew Duffy and Adrian Nevins. The game saw all six new players starting in a 4-4-2 formation. We took the lead after 41 minutes; Ryan Charles was brought down in the area and the penalty was converted by Jake Simpson for his first Telford goal, and we went into break in front.

Carl Laurie, the Stalybridge player who gave away the penalty and was booked for the offence, received his marching orders on 78 minutes to send the home team down to 10-men. We made them pay just two minutes later when Graham Coughlan, on his debut, headed in from Jon Adams' corner. It then all got a bit scrappy. At this point there had already been one red card as I mentioned, but as well as this, there'd been no less than eight yellow cards. With five minutes to go, Stalybridge's Paul Ennis caught Jake Simpson with his elbow and was given a straight red to reduce them to 9-men. Then, in the 91st minute, Matthew Duffy got his second yellow for a foul and he too had to leave the field. The game finished with only 19 players on the pitch, after a total of 11 bookings and 3 red cards.

6th in the table Tamworth were the next team to travel to New Bucks Head, and with the exception of Adrian Nevins replacing the suspended Matthew Duffy, I stuck with the same team that beat Stalybridge. Lewis Alessandra grabbed both our goals, as well as man of the match, in a 2-0 victory; his first coming on 11 minutes in a swift counter attack, and the 2nd on 82 minutes from a Jake Simpson cross. 3 points and a pretty convincing victory, if I do say so myself.

Our final game in December, and indeed 2011, was away to Eastwood on New Year's Eve. The game finished 1-1, although judging by the stats, we should've won. Adrian Nevins got the goal for us, and ex-Harrogate striker Danny Maw came back to haunt be by equalising for Eastwood.

The draw left us in 15th place, 3 above where we were when I took over. I couldn't have asked for a better start as Telford manager to be quite honest. Things look promising, but as I know from my time at Harrogate, things can easily change month-to-month, so I'm not predicting anything for January... not yet anyway.