A UK Journeyman Story

[Hampus Silverholt]

What a season it’s been in charge of Villa! We crumbled in the Europa League but more than made up for that with a Carabao Cup win and a surprise Premier League title.

Our Premier League win also ended a 6-year streak of titles for Manchester United, who have dominated English football in this save.

Our squad has done a truly incredible job this season and we played 61 games in total!

9 of our players made it into the Premier League Team of the Year

That included Tammy Abraham, obviously. What more can I say about this guy. 35 goals in 36 games in the Premier League and 41 goals in all competitions.

What. A. Signing.

He forms the spine of this Villa team with Carnevale and Casado, who were our 2 most expensive signings but are both world-class players.

Brazillian left-back Junior also recorded the most Premier League assists this season and has been an absolute bargain costing us just £9m 2 years ago.

Our defensive form was the basis of our Premier League win with 34-year-old Aaron Ramsdale keeping 16 clean sheets and winning the golden glove.

As a team we conceded just 29 goals all season, losing only 5 Premier League games.

I’ve said it before but what a way to end the save!

We’ll do a recap of the journey before we move on to FM23…​

 

[leckuno]

Thanks everyone I couldn't have asked for a better way to end the story! Will do a bit of a recap here before getting stuck into FM23 in December/January time

Don’t make us wait that long haha

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

What a journey it has been.

We started with no badges and no experience and ended on £55,000 with a 4* reputation.

Attributes have improved significantly since we started - but we’re still not keen on goalkeeping though…

In total my managerial career has spanned 510 games, with 321 wins and over 1,000 goals scored - it’s fair to say we’ve been a success at every single club we’ve been at.

We’ve gone from the Cymru North in 2021 with Colwyn Bay and ended at the top of the Premier League with Aston Villa in 2032, via Oldham, Lincoln and Blackburn.

We won 5 domestic titles and 4 domestic cups, the majority of which were actually in our first job at Colwyn Bay.

And we made it to 6th in the Swedish Hall of Fame.

In total we bought 120 players and had a net spend of £129m, which was worth it in the end at Villa.

I still love how Sebastian Frankle was the highest fee ever received - he moved to Villa for £45m when I was at Blackburn and then ended up winning the Premier League with me at Villa!

I also forgot how wild it was at Colwyn Bay back at the start of the save. We won the Welsh treble in our first season back in the top division, achieving everything we could at the club in just 18 months!

The Villa and Colwyn Bay stints are the most memorable but taking Oldham back to the Football League, Lincoln to the 2nd tier for the first time since 1961 and Blackburn back to the Premier League were all memorable moments in the story too.

Colwyn Bay have never won the league since, but remain one of the best teams in Wales and finished 2nd in this most recent season.

Oldham are now back down in the National League, where they finished 6th last season.

And Lincoln were also relegated from the Championship last season! Although Blackburn thankfully bounced back to the Premier League at the first attempt

So it’s been mixed fortunes for our previous clubs but there is no better way to end the save and this story as a Premier League winner and Manager of the Year

Thanks to those of you who have read and followed yet another one of my Football Manager stories!​

 

[Rebuswad]

Thanks for this entertaining read, look forward to the next one.