Sir Alex Ferguson Challenge (FM23)

[WellyLad1996]

In 1974, Alex Ferguson was a 32 year old retired player, having just completed his career playing for Ayr United in his final season. He spent much of his playing career flitting all around the Scottish leagues, playing for Queen's Park, St Johnstone, Dunfermline Athletic, Rangers, Falkirk and the aforementioned Ayr United. He was looking for a next step. He would go into what would be the most incredible management career in football history.

He started at East Stirlingshire but only stayed for 4 months before moving on to St Mirren where he would win the second tier title in Scotland. After spending 4 seasons there, he would move onto Aberdeen where he broke the top 2 in Scotland and won 3 league titles, 4 Scottish Cups, 1 League Cup and the Cup Winner's Cup back in 1983.

His career at Manchester United may have started in 1986, but he didn't win a trophy until the 1990 FA Cup after he had been on the brink of the sack. He went on to win 13 league titles, 5 FA Cups, 4 League Cups and 2 Champions League titles. But why have I shared the history of Fergie?

 

[WellyLad1996]

SIR ALEX FERGUSON CHALLENGE
I have decided to do the unthinkable. Achieve what the great man achieved in his career. It's going to be a long process, and may even take me until the end of the game cycle, heading into FM 2024. Here are the rules of the save.

Step 1 - Team 1 (Max 2 seasons)
1 - In Scotland, you must start with a club competing in the Scottish Championship and be promoted within 2 seasons. If I don't go up by any means in first season, second season must be champions of the second tier.
2 - With the same team, I must stay in the Scottish Premiership for at least one season. Finishing above the relegation play off place is not needed, but much preferred. Ferguson achieved this with St Mirren between 1974 and 1978.

Step 2 - Team 2 - (Max 5 seasons)
1 - Stay in Scotland and take the reins of a strong team outside of the Old Firm and within 2 seasons, I must win the title. I must put together a title winning team.
2 - With the same team, within the time frame, I must also win a treble whether it is a domestic treble or with a European trophy. This must happen within the first 5 seasons.
3 - I will also end up trying to achieve what he did in his 8 seasons at Aberdeen with this second club. All the achievements at this club must be achieved within the 8 seasons.

Step 3 - Team 3 - (Max 13 seasons)
1 - I must go to England and go on holiday until 6th November.
2 - The team that are in 19th place on November 6th will be my job in England.
3 - The goal is to win a national cup within the first 4 seasons, the Premier League within 7 seasons, The double within the first 8 seasons, and the treble within 13 seasons.
4 - With this final club, I can achieve what he did within his 27 years at Manchester United between 1986 and 2013.

Optional Extra
He also managed Scotland at the 1986 FIFA World Cup so the aim would be to manage the Auld Enemy at some point and get more than what Fergie did in his own World Cup campaign which was only 1 point.
I'll do this to the best of my ability, let's see if I can overtake him.

 

[WellyLad1996]

SIR ALEX FERGUSON CHALLENGE
CLUB 1, PART 1

Introduction
The club I have decided to start at for no apparent reason is Inverness Caledonian Thistle, one of the first teams I think of when it comes to mediocre Premiership clubs from my childhood. They were a team that were made famous by the wonderful headline "Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious". Formed in 1994, they won the 2014 Scottish Cup in their only major honour to date. We are there to see if we can do what needs to be achieved in our first two seasons in this challenge.

The board are also thinking we could do this in our first two seasons with the aim of at least the play offs this season with the media predicting us to be in 3rd place.

I'm going to go for a 4-3-3 formation first of all and see where that gets me. I want to try and get the players playing with a nice passing move every game, but if that doesn't work, I will revert to more direct. Our Premier Sports Cup group looks nice enough, with no Scottish Premiership teams in it at all. I would say the big game for us will be when we have to play Dundee as they are the favourites for the league. A result in that game would be huge for us to not only get further in the League Cup, but to also have a psychological advantage for the rest of the season.

Our one and only game before we kick off our Premier Sports Cup campaign is against Hibernian, managed by another English manager in Lee Johnson. We dominated up until about the 60th minute, but unfortunately we gave away a penalty which they duly converted. A narrow 1-0 defeat against an established Premiership outfit is not the worst result in the world though. I decided that one game wouldn't be enough for me before we started competitive games, so after their recent Scottish Cup exploits in real life, I decided we'd play Darvel in a second friendly away from home, just so we could get the goals in.

Before we played the second friendly, we've managed to sign this guy as our director of football, much needed experience in my back room team.

We've also signed Tommy Wright as a Chief Scout, I really enjoy having a full back room team at my clubs and that will be something that will follow me around for my career.

We hit 29 shots against Darvel, but amazingly were held to a 0-0 draw, rather annoyingly. Our pre-season results haven't been great but as I will be doing the competitive games month by month, I'll stop here. There's loads of time to sign some new players and I will be active during the Premier Sports Cup group. Our first game is at home against Cove Rangers. I'll see you for that update.

 

[HerJoca]

What will you do if you don't meet an expectation? Do you continue or start over*