Unfortunately, the news I come with for the end of the 2013/2014 season in my Kettering story are not that great: we didn’t manage to win promotion and, to be honest, I think we didn’t deserve it either because there were moments when I was simply wondering what the hell is happening with the team. Anyway, let’s check out how things went and what plans I have for the next season.

Let’s start with the two new signings I got in my attempt to add some extra muscle to the squad:

Koen Persoons – DMC

Adrian Stoian – AMC

Regarding the final fixtures, we’ve had a really solid run in the end, after a really crappy run of form that managed to take The Poppies down from the first position (yes, we were there too) all the way to number 8! Fortunately, with the last results we managed to climb to 4 and promotion hopes were still on:

For the first round of the playoffs, we’ve met Barnsley and things didn’t go very well:

Unfortunately, Barnsley is our killer and Kettering still hasn’t won a single match we’ve played against them:

Barnsley went up this season, together with Huddersfield and Colchester:

Regarding the players, things are pretty obvious: Abdellaoui kept scoring and was the only person that kept driving the team forward (those bad results you can see were all recorded when Abdellaoui was injured). He was the team’s and division’s top scorer (36 total goals in 37 games – AMAZING!):

However, the player of the year was a Kettering-signed player, striker Ricardo Musetti, who also had a really nice season and scored 21 goals:

Check out the player ratings and stats below:

Even though things seem to be nice for the 2013/2014 season, I must admit that I am not pleased with the team: we weren’t able to win without Abdellaoui who was a loaned player so chances are we won’t see him next year and overall I must admit that I am not satisfied with the tactics and how the team plays.

So for the next season I have some major plans: a complete reconstruction of the team and a change of approach. I plan to stop using the 4-3-1-2 tactic and switch to one that’s using wingers: either the 4-2-4 formation I’ve used with Universitatea Craiova, or a new 4-2-3-1 tactic (depending on the strikers I’ll have next season). Either way, I feel the need for a change because we can’t continue like this!

See you soon – there should be a lot of players brought in and hopefully quality ones too!