A UK Journeyman Story

[Hampus Silverholt]

I do love a summer transfer window!

There have been a lot of incomings as we try to build a Blackburn squad that can actually stay in the Premier League.

Firstly, there were a few departures which got us some decent money for squad players.

The only first-teamer to go was Lewis Travis who wanted to leave after more than 10 years at the club, which did not go down well with the fans!

In terms of incomings, so far we have spent £67m on players.

The defence was an area we needed to improve on and I’ve arguably bought an entirely new back 4!

First up was Jørgen Kampenhoi for £6m from Chelsea - I initially thought he’d be our new first choice right-back, but he’s probably going to be a rotation option.

Fellow Norweigan Trogeir Vinje joins for £9m for Molde - a player who can play centre back or right back

To add more experience I also bought in Jason Denayer for less than £1m.

And the final defender to arrive was Helder Bastos for £10.5m - you just can’t resist a bargain wonderkid but he’s also the only kind of player whose transfer fee and wages we can afford!

And that’s it… in terms of defenders anyway!

A new goalkeeper was also needed, so I decided to go big and splash out £25m on Mile Janjetovic from Dinamo Zagreb

We didn’t end there with Zagreb though, wonderkid Sebastian Frankle also joined for £9.5m. Similar to Bastos from Flamengo, he’s already premier league quality, has lots of room for improvement, was a cheap fee and has affordable wages - the ideal transfer!

Next up was central midfielder Juanjo Tejedor for £10.5m from Atletico Madrid - he’s been on the fringes of their first team for years and hopefully can be one of our key players this season

And finally, to provide us an option on either wing, we have acquired Noni Madueke on loan from Leeds.

I wanted to buy him outright but didn't have the budget, so instead we’ve got him on loan with a mandatory purchase of £10m at the end of the season. It’s just not worked for him since moving back to the Premier League and I’m hoping he can kickstart his career here.

And so what do all of those transfers mean? They mean we’re still predicted to finish bottom anyway…

We also have Man City away in our first game of the season, which will be my first ever match as Premier League manager - great!

These young, new signings are going to have to gel very quickly.​

 

[zacram]

Just caught up with this - Delighted to see you've finally reached the Premier League!

 

[rturnes]

Great save so far!

I've got Noni on my Sunderland save, I think he developed better in it. He's an absolute beast and an England squad regular!

Good luck with the Premier League season, keep it going!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Just caught up with this - Delighted to see you've finally reached the Premier League!

Feels like it's taken ages but I suppose 8 seasons isn't too bad to get to the Premier League - was hoping to manage in Scotland at some point but I suppose Rangers or Celtic would be the only 2 teams that can tempt me now

Great save so far!

I've got Noni on my Sunderland save, I think he developed better in it. He's an absolute beast and an England squad regular!

Good luck with the Premier League season, keep it going!

Cheers mate and yeah I think he could be a huge player for us this season. He's miles better than any other winger we have so am just hoping he stays fit all season!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

With our first game of the season away against Man City - did you expect anything else other than a heavy defeat?

I don’t expect us to get anything in games like that - it’s our home form which will determine if we’ll stay up or not this season.

And a big win against Leeds in our first home match of the season showed that we’re capable of performing at the top level!

Another away loss followed but we were again able to get a victory at Ewood with a huge win over Burnley in our local derby.

We also got smashed by Man United in the Carabao Cup, but I can’t say I’m too bothered about that competition - overall the first 7 games of the season have been a success.

7 points after 5 games and in 10th position, I’ll take that! We’re even ahead of Chelsea in the league!

We’re always going to be underdogs this season, but it was still a shock to see just how low our wage expenditure is. It’s nearly half of Fulham’s, who were promoted alongside us last season.

You’d think that we have loads to spend still but our transfer budget has been depleted after spending £60m in the summer. It just shows you how ridiculous the money involved in the Premier League is!

Having said that, we do actually have £70m in the bank so something doesn’t quite add up…

Elsewhere, one of our summer recruits Sebastian Frankle is not a happy bunny. Apparently, I promised that I’d bring in another Croatian to help him settle.

That’s despite us having signed Mile Janjetovic before him, who was happy that we bought in Frankle because he was another Croatian player - ridiculous!

So aside from the player politics, it’s been a decent start to life in the Premier League. We have some tough fixtures to follow but have proven that we won’t go down without a fight this season.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Six more Premier League games have been and gone and we have acquired six more points - I suppose that’s alright?

One of the wins in that time was a real smash and grab against Chelsea but I couldn’t care less. Results like that really give me confidence that we can stay up this season!

Then on the flip side of that, we got absolutely shafted at home to Brighton - that kind of result makes me think we’re destined for relegation…

We also got a very important win against Villa in our most recent game, which leaves us in 13th place after 11 games in total.

Our player of the season so far has been Noni Madueke, who has 4 goals in 10 Premier League matches which could prove to be vital for us.

Another player that has been brilliant for us is one I didn’t even expect to be in the first team this season. Jørgen Kampenhoi has firmly cemented himself as first choice right back with 2 assists and an average rating over 7!

On the other hand, £10m summer signing Juanjo Tejedor has very poor so far. He did actually score his first goal of the season in our last game, so I’m hoping that kick starts his season.

Finally, our starting striker Shakur Omar has not played badly this season but only has 2 goals in 11 games. If he continues to average a goal every 5 matches and Noni stops scoring then we could really be struggling.

We have games against Sheffield United and Southampton up next, both of whom are below us in the table, so it’s a chance for us to pick up more points.

But after that we have a really tricky run playing 4 teams in the top 6 including high-flying Wolves, so we need to get some points on the board before then!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Our tough run of fixtures started with an insane game away to Newcastle. We were drifting towards a defeat, only to score 2 late goals in the game to salvage a draw.

£25m goalkeeper Mile Janjetovic even saved a last-minute penalty to gain us a point in a match where he made 16 saves and got a perfect 10 rating!

That result gave us some momentum and we followed that with 2 more huge wins against Sheffield United and Southampton.

33 year old Alex Mowatt came on as a sub in both of the games… and scored in both too!

And those wins saw us move up to 9th position in the Premier League at one point.

But then we had the dreaded run against teams in the top 6. It started away to Spurs…

The bizarre thing about the 6-0 loss was that we weren’t even that bad - we just couldn’t cope with 6’7” Lorenzo Lucca who scored 5 goals!

So after that battering, I was expecting a very long December against some of the better teams in the league. But the results have actually been ok.

That run included a very impressive 2-2 draw at Anfield and an even more impressive 2-0 win over Arsenal on Boxing Day.

And those results mean that we are comfortably in midtable despite being predicted to go down at the start of the season.

We’ve really made Ewood Park a fortress this season and out of the 28 points we have so far, 25 of those have come at home! Incredibly, that means we have the best home form in the whole division!

The 4-3-3 formation that we adopted at the start of the season is working wonders, we just need to find a way to get results away from home.

We’ve also been quite lucky with injuries this season, using just 20 players in total which is the lowest amount of players used in the Premier League.

And after criticising him slightly in the last post, Shakur Omar has shown his quality with 6 goals and 2 assists in his last 10 matches.

We have a tiny bit of money to spend in January, so could make some further improvements to the squad if the right players are available.

But we’re just over halfway through the season and unless we have a catastrophic drop in form, it looks like we should keep Blackburn up!​

 

[sahajpal97]

Love this series.

Feel free to check out mine.
1. Journeyman save (FM 2021): https://fm-base.co.uk/threads/the-journey-of-a-lifetime.178165/
2. The Big Rebuild (FM 2021): https://fm-base.co.uk/threads/the-big-rebuild-club-1-manchester-united.178171/

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Despite the relative success we’ve had so far this season, I decided that a new left-back was needed in January due to the form of current starter Harry Pickering, who was constantly dropping 6.1 performances.

So when Luke Shaw was loan listed by Atletico Madrid, I had no hesitation in getting him in even though he’s now the highest wage earner at the club.

The only other bit of January business was a transfer I made many months ago. Ecuadorian Eddy Ortiz joins for £1m after being highlighted as one of the 50 wonderkids in the world and it looks like he can become a special player in the future.

So that was it in terms of transfers…

Then Shakur Omar got injured.

That gave backup striker Daniel March the opportunity to shine.

He got injured a day later…

Suddenly we were in desperate need of a striker - the transfer window was not over for us yet!

Funnily enough, those two injuries didn’t matter in our next game away at West Ham. The irony of picking up our first away win of the season without a fit striker was not lost on me!

Despite that result, we still needed a forward player so Matt Robertson came in for £5.5m from Derby. The fact he can play on the left was a big factor in signing him too, as it’s also a position we’re short on numbers in

Robertson has only played two games so far but it’s fair to say that he needs to hit the ground running. We’ve struggled for form lately and in our last 6 games, we’ve scored just 2 goals.

Yet we’re still 13 points clear of the relegation zone after 25 Premier League games. I’m already counting down the matches and have my sights set on getting 40 points.

Our upcoming games do not look promising though and it’s only the Sheffield United game which I expect to get something from with the form we’re in.

We desperately need our strikers back fit and need to find some wins from somewhere or else this could be an uncomfortable end to what has been a very successful season so far.

Surely we’re not going to get dragged into a relegation battle now?​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Just as our key attacking players were returning to full fitness, we were met with the news that Noni Madueke was out for a month as well as main centre back Helder Bastos.

It was not good news at all as Noni has been our player of the season so far with 5 goals and 6 assists, whereas Bastos was part of a reasonably successful and settled back four.

With the run of fixtures that we had, it was no surprise that we picked up 2 points from our next 5 games.

And the poor form saw fans question the very same tactics that had got the club up to 13th in the table!

The team that was predicted to finish bottom at the start of the season had gone 6 games without a win in the toughest league in the world, who would have thought it?!

There were obviously many factors that contributed to that run, one of which I have named the “Luke Shaw curse”

Since arriving on loan in January, earning £83,000 a week, he has constantly underperformed and we have won just one match.

His one last chance came against Wolves at Molineux - the uninspiring run of form from both him and the team meant that we desperately needed a win

And that’s exactly what we got, with centre midfielder Tejedor getting 3 assists (which doubled his entire tally for the season)

We’ve been poor lately but when the pressure is on, we seem to deliver! That win means we’re still in 13th place in the Premier League - a position we seem to have been in for months.

So there are 8 games remaining and we’re 10 points above the bottom three - we just need one final push in order to keep Blackburn in the Premier League.​

 

[MidKnightDreary]

Great work so far!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Great work so far!

cheers mate, slowly getting there! The champions league will be won at some point in this save... (I hope!)

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

A last-minute winner away to Southampton gave us a very lucky win but took us to 39 points, which all but secured our Premier League status for next season.

It also left Southampton languishing in the relegation zone despite being predicted to finish 7th at the start of the season!

And with that win our players were already on the beach, so we ended the season scoring just once in our final 5 league matches.

But that really didn’t matter in the end - our first season in the Premier League was a massive success as we finished in 14th and a whole 12 points above the relegation zone! Southampton also ended up getting relegated which was a big shock considering the quality of their squad.

The high turnover of players in the summer was justified, as our young squad that was quickly assembled together has defied all expectations by finishing in 14th.

Very few players that were with us last season in the Championship played a big part in this campaign but one exception was Carney Chukwuemeka. The £3.8m signing started every single Premier League game for us this season.

New signings Torgeir Vinje and Mile Janjetovic also played every single minute of the Premier League campaign.

And because of their form, they were considered to be some of the signings of the season!

Shakur Omar ended up with 12 Premier League goals in the end - that’s actually a great return for the main striker of a team predicted to finish bottom of the table.

And Noni Madueke provided some magic throughout the season with 7 goals and 7 assists - again a vital contribution for a team lower in the table.

Having said that, a big reason for our success has actually been the defensive contribution - we conceded 51 goals in 38 games, which is pretty decent for a team recently promoted from the Championship.

Next season we have been given a £52m budget, which can go a long way but it’s annoying that the number is so low when we have £95m in the bank already.

The question is - are we going to be able to attract the calibre of players to the club that can take us to the top half of the Premier League? Or is another relegation scrap on the cards?

In which case, do we start looking at what other jobs are available…​

 

[MidKnightDreary]

If you stay, better raid Soton's pockets!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

If you stay, better raid Soton's pockets!

That is very much the plan, but a lot of other teams are trying to do the same so could be difficult!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

We’re now in June 2029, nearly 8 full years into the save, so I thought I’d take a look back at some of the clubs I’ve managed so far to see how they were getting on

The long story cut short is that none of them are faring any better since I left…

Ever since winning the Welsh treble with them in 2024, Colwyn Bay have not been able to hit those heights since. They finished 4th in the league last year and seem to be in a never-ending pattern of finishing in 3rd one season then 4th the next season.

They still have quite a lot of players at the club who were there when I was in charge, including Tra Lucas who was top scorer in the Welsh Premier League last season - the very same guy who scored 2 hattricks in the Champions League preliminary qualifying rounds before we left to take the Oldham job.

Speaking of which…

Since winning the National League with them 4 seasons ago, Oldham have established themselves as a middtable League Two side and finished in a solid but unspectacular 14th last season.

Last of all, Lincoln narrowly avoided relegation to League One by finishing 20th in the Championship last season.

That’s actually a decent finish considering they sold 3 of their best players for £17m, all of whom I bought to the club for under £500k. It’ll be interesting to see if they can stay in the division next season though!

The only player I’ve had at multiple clubs so far is Gary Griffiths, who has most recently had a loan spell at Championship side Reading.

He’s not even played for Sheffield United since signing for them for £4.5m, but with them being in the Championship next season he may get some game time.

Thinking ahead, I was considering just how far I can take Blackburn and how quickly I can do that as we still have a squad that’s low on Premier League quality. So I had a quick peek at the job market.

Absolutely nothing worthwhile is available, so it looks like we’ll be staying at Blackburn for now!

A busy summer transfer window awaits…​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

It’s our second season in the Premier League with Blackburn and after spending £80m last summer, we’ve spent another £60m this time around as we look to build a competitive Premier League squad.

Along with the pre-arranged transfer of Noni Madueke, we’ve also splashed the cash on Hannibal Mejbri from Championship side Norwich. £25m is a lot of money but he adds real quality to the squad and also counts as homegrown from his time at Man United.

Next in was Dani Vivian for £8.5m from recently relegated Southampton - so many quality players for Southampton were available after their shock relegation, but he was the only one who we could afford.

After Luke Shaw returned to Atletico after a less than impressive loan spell, another area we needed to improve was left-back.

I nearly spent £20m on 30-year-old Josh Tymon, but instead opted to go with youth and signed İbrahim Uysal for £17m from Galatasaray.

Last in was another youngster, Jesús Aguilera, for just £8m. He’ll be behind Shakur Omar in the pecking order at the club, so might become a bit unhappy as we promised him a lot of game time despite only being 18 years old.

With no significant outgoings, I’m pretty pleased with how the squad is looking all things considered.

The only worrying thing is that our best player and goalkeeper Janjetovic is being linked with Bayer Leverkusen because of a £44m release clause.

If he leaves before the transfer window shuts then we could be in trouble!

I did actually have the opportunity to manage him at international level after being offered the Croatia job in the summer.

I’m not really interested in international management though as my focus is firmly on progressing with Blackburn. However, if the pre-season prediction is anything to go by then we’re in for another relegation scrap!

Our first game of the Premier League season is at home to Spurs - they beat us 6-0 and 4-0 last season with 6’7” striker Lorenzo Lucca scoring 7 goals against us, so I am not looking forward to it one bit!

The season will be tough, it always is in the Premier League, but we have a better squad than last year so I do expect to stay up.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The first game of our second season as a Premier League manager was a pretty successful one, as we twice came from behind to draw with Spurs 2-2.

Two goals from Shakur Omar vindicated my decision to stick with him as our main striker this season whereas Lucca’s 2 goals for Spurs mean he’s now scored 9 in 3 matches against us…

Our next game was a far more easier one on paper but we were lucky to get the win against recently promoted West Brom. A goal and two assists from new signing Hannibal was enough for the win despite a very nervy ending.

We then followed that up with 2 away losses, in the League Cup to Leicester and in the league to West Ham.

So that’s us 3 games in and on 4 points - it feels like it’s going to be a very midtable campaign for us again but that remains to be seen.

There was also no late transfer business either, with goalkeeper Janjetovic signing a new contract after Bayer Leverkusen’s interest in him fizzled out. It was a big increase in wages for him, but importantly his contract has no release clause.

And to celebrate his new deal he got injured straight away!

Despite his increase in wages, we are still spending the lowest amount on player wages in the Premier League.

So it could get interesting further into the campaign with various managers leaving and getting sacked.

If a more lucrative job becomes available, I might be tempted away from Blackburn…​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

September started with 2 wins in a row against Chelsea and Brentford. With those results, I was beginning to think that we were capable of pushing for the European places this season

So of course we then got smashed 6-0 by Arsenal!

Losing so heavily against Arsenal at home also began to ring a few bells…

It turns out that 3 and a half years ago we lost 7-1 to them as Oldham manager in the FA Cup 3rd Round - Martinelli must love facing me!

Then it got worse.

After 5 goals in the opening 8 games, Shakur Omar was ruled out with injury for a month.

Soon after, Juanjo Tejedor was ruled out for 2 months meaning that both our top scorer and top assister were on the sidelines!

Luckily we didn’t go on a losing spree after that, but we didn’t go on a winning spree either. It turns out that we love a draw!

4 draws in a row made it 5 games without a victory although one of those matches was a 2-2 draw at Anfield (for the second season in a row) where only a last-minute penalty stopped us from winning.

So what happens when we’re under a bit of pressure? We go and get a huge win!

I have no idea how it ended 4-0 but another away win at Wolves saw us go into the international break in the top half of the table

A big reason for that is because of the form of 18 year old Eddy Ortiz. The Ecuadorian has 4 goals and 3 assists already and is surely going to become one of the best in the world.

Our win at Wolves actually got their manager the sack and we were immediately linked with the vacant position

Gennaro Gattuso was also sacked by West Ham on the same day… the managerial merry-go-round has started!

Do I start looking elsewhere? Or is patience needed with this young Blackburn squad?​

 

[MidKnightDreary]

I love the name Tony Moxon (Arsenal player)