With a new manager in the door at Meadowbank, it’s necessary to set some goals and plans for both the long and short term.
With an established club culture to always strive to make progress on and off the pitch and a five-year plan to expand the stadium/build a new stadium – The list is set pretty high for a National League South club. An ambitious club and board is every manager’s dream.
Speaking of the manager, some background on me (Kristian Hoffmann) after the short presentation in the previous post. I was born and raised in Oslo and never became a great football player due to a severe knee injury as a junior. I could have become a professional without the injury, but I think everyone injured early does. I continued to play the Sunday league for fun, but eventually, the ambition to become a manager came. In addition to studies in England and work, I started on my badges. Currently, I hold National A License and have several years as a manager at junior and U16 levels in local clubs. Some have become football players at the national level in Norway, and some have still not made it through. Maybe we’ll see some of them in Dorking on a later occasion.
A challenge like this has been impossible to say no to, and hopefully, I can help change the impression and performance of Norwegian managers in England.
Egil Olsen, Stale Solbakken and Solskjaer have tried their best and more or less failed to meet the expectations at their clubs. However, the jury is still out on Solskjaer, and he’s the most successful one so far.
The club will face high expectations and is predicted at 1st from the media. We will need to get results from the start, and the squad should be good enough to fight for the title. It is by no means the case that short-term success will be at the expense of building the club for the future. Much of the key to the club has always been continuity, and the plan is to continue with it. It is crucial to find the right balance between short-term and long-term success.
Another big goal is to develop and benefit from the academy in the club. The first players developed by the club have started to come up through the ranks, and it would have been fantastic if some of these established themselves on the first team and more coming after in the future. The facilities are by no means impressive yet, but for such a new club and the level taken into account, it is an excellent platform to build on.
If we want to succeed with climbing the divisions, both infrastructure and staff must develop accordingly. With inadequate facilities and short staff, the club will never establish on a higher level over time. With future promotions, there will also be demands from the league for facilities so that the club will have to develop all the time. Fortunately, Marc White (owner) has excellent ambitions, and as previously mentioned, it is an objective with a new stadium / expand Meadowbank further. The latter can, however, be difficult as the club does not own the stadium itself.
Together with the board and the staff, we’ve identified some goals for the short and long term future;
Short term:
- Professional status
- Reach the Football League within three years
- Sell a player to minimum a League Two club
- Reach the first round of the FA cup
- Academy player in the first team
- Improve staffÂ
Long term:
- Reach the Championship within eight years
- Reach the Premier League within ten years
- Sell an academy player to a Premier League club
All our goals for the future will be evaluated and updated after every season so that it will be a continuous work in progress and a dynamic process as we advance. Setting goals is the easy part. Reaching them is quite a lot harder.
The following post is dedicated to an introduction to the squad and tactics. Stay tuned!
FM Veteran 