Berwick Rangers: An English Club in Scotland

[Hampus Silverholt]

It will be interesting to see whether players will want to come after your success in the Champions League or if the SPL will still hold you back.

To be honest I don't think it's a question of whether we can attract the better players because we have a 4 star reputation (the same as teams like Roma, Athletic Bilbao, Ajax and Napoli) we just cannot afford to pay the wages that other clubs do.

Our highest paid player is on £55,000 but you've got English teams spending £200,000+ a week on players that are willing to join us until it gets to negotiating wages. We just cannot compete financially with them!

But having said all that I've still managed to make a really good signing...

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

2031/32 Season Preview

This is our 15th​ season in charge of Berwick and so far every season we’ve improved on our performance in Europe. The only way to keep up that trend this season would be to win the Champions League. No biggie then.

Firstly our run in the Champions League last season means that Scotland will have 6 clubs in Europe next season!

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The same thing was supposed to have happened 4 or 5 seasons ago but didn’t so I thought there was some kind of glitch that meant only 5 clubs from the SPL could go into Europe so we’ll see what happens.


As for transfers once again I’ve attempted to offload players who are not good enough for Berwick but are more than good enough for other Scottish teams for a very cheap price. No less than 13 players went to other Scottish clubs for a dirt-cheap fee this transfer window. 8 are key players and 4 are first team players.

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Dundee United and Hamilton have profited most from my generosity. Dundee United are actually in the Championship and picked up striker Mark Abrahams for free from us. If he doesn’t tear the Championship apart I’ll be very surprised.

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It’s players like Abrahams that I’ve offloaded to other teams in Scotland. Not good enough for us but more than capable for their new teams.

Elsewhere John Cook, who was the first genuine Premiership quality player to come through the Berwick academy, has gone to Celtic.

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But enough about the boring transfers. We’ve broken our transfer record in this window… twice!

Pavle Zoric has joined Chelsea for £9m

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Firstly midfielder Pavle Zoric has joined Chelsea. It’s sad to see him go as he’s been at the club for 5 seasons but he was in the last year of his contract and would’ve been back up.

Piero Artega has joined Arsenal for £39m

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The perpetually injured Piero Artega was our back up inside forward and was not comfortable playing in big games. So when I managed to get Arsenal to cough up £39m I had to take it.

It’s also a record fee for Scottish football.

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It’s strange how I can get nearly £40m for him but for my world class players clubs were coming in with bids of around £15m.

We also received £5m after Javier Chanduvi moved from Leicester to West Ham for £21m. We sold him to Leicester for £20m 5 years ago.

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Transfers In

Juan Carlos has joined Berwick for £27m from Saint-Etienne

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With the Artega money we brought in Spanish striker Juan Carlos and he doesn’t look too bad. I’m also seriously considering training him as an inside forward so he is guaranteed a spot in our strongest XI.

Rayane Ludwig has joined Berwick for £27m rising to £37m from Anderlecht

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Our highest ever fee for the second time this transfer window was forked out on Rayane Ludwig. He is essentially a replacement for Zoric but he is surely going to be world class.

Overall I think we have a good balance to the squad. Our once wonderkid players have now reached their potential, have World Cup and Champions League experience and most importantly have stayed at Berwick.

Despite that, the board still expects us to only get to the first knockout round in the Champions League.

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Hopefully we get further than that! Our Champions League group opponents will be revealed in the next post.
​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Champions League Group Stage Opponents

Our season has started off in similar fashion with us top of the league and winning games comfortably.

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Our dominance over Scottish teams was typified by us beating Dundee 6-0 twice in the space of 4 days. Yet despite that Celtic came close to beating us at Celtic Park.

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I’m not too fussed about an unbeaten season but there’s always a chance it could happen. We’ve lost 4 league games in the past 3 seasons combined!

The Group Stage draw for the 2031/32 Champions League has also been made.

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Champions League Group A 2031
Berwick Rangers
Club Atlético de Madrid,
VfL Wolfsburg
Feyenoord Rotterdam

I’m happy with the draw as firstly we’ve never played any of the three teams before and secondly it’s a group that we should comfortably be winning.

Elsewhere Rangers, Celtic and Hibs are all in the Europa League group stage so I’m hoping one of them goes far in the competition this season.

Next up is Feyenoord away in what is supposedly the weakest team of the group. We shall see how true that is!
​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

First 3 Champions League Games

In our quest to go one better than last season our Champions League campaign did not get off to a bad start with Juan Carlos scoring after 15 seconds as we ran our 3-0 winners against Feyenoord.

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And we won by a 3-goal margin again in our next group game, this time beating Wolfsburg 4-1.

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In the meantime we picked up a disappointing draw against Raith in which they scored with one of the two shots they had all game

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As you can see immediately after that game we again drew 1-1, this time with Atletico Madrid.

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They again had only two shots but that’s not to say we deserved to win. We had no key highlights and scored from a corner. It’s just two games but if it carries on then I might start to get worried.

We’re also still not safe in our group yet; hopefully we can get the job done and progress to the knockout rounds with a game to spare.

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As for Scotland it’s getting interesting as Celtic are all the way down in 6th​!

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I think a case could be made that they’re not even among the best two or three teams in Scotland now… however they could soon easily end up in second again with a good run of form.

​

 

[Brane_Orsou]

Looking good, fingers crossed for the big un this year

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Looking good, fingers crossed for the big un this year

I hope so!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Formation Change

Our 4th​ game of our Champions League group was a crucial one against Atletico Madrid. We ended up getting an extremely lucky 1-0 win.

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We had one key chance and should be doing better than only having 4 shots all game so I’m a bit worried about the tactic.

Nevertheless it meant that we qualified for the Champions League knockout rounds.

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We then had a lucky escape against Hamilton after going 2-0 down to them in the league.

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The performance was typical of us of late, a bit drab and underwhelming. It seems a bit trivial to complain about these results but aside from beating Hamilton 5-1 (with a rotated sides) we really should be doing much better than scraping wins.

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Subsequently I have changed formation.

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I really didn’t want to use a 3-striker formation but we have 3 world-class strikers so it made sense to play them in their favoured position rather than as inside forwards.

The first game using it didn’t go too badly.

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Time will tell if it’s a one off. To be honest we’ll only see if it works when we come up against proper opposition in the Champions League knockout rounds.

Next up is a League Cup final against Rangers as well finding out who are Champions League opponents will be.


​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Déjà vu

In the 2031 League Cup final we beat Rangers 1-0.

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That’s 6 out of the last 7 League Cups that we’ve won and the past 4 have been with our second string side. I’ve said it before but Scotland is far too easy.

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We also got an exciting tie in the Scottish Cup.

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We’ll play Brechin City in the 4th​ round, which is a welcome change to playing SPL teams in the cup year in year out. The last time we played them was 8 years ago and Sindri Snorrason, who scored in that game, is still club captain today!

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However that was the only draw that was favourable to us….

We comfortably won our group in the Champions League and our Norwegian striker Vebjorn Aure is currently the highest scorer in the competition.

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And because we comfortably won our group these were the teams that we could’ve faced in the Champions League.

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So of course we got Bayern.

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We never get an easy draw! We’ll be playing the same team that we knocked out at the quarterfinal stage last season.

Elsewhere the 3 other Scottish teams in Europe are all into the Europa League knockout round…

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Rangers - Everton
Hibs - AC Milan
Celtic - AS Saint-Etienne

I think the chances of a Scottish team winning both the Champions League and Europa League might be quite slim.
​

 

[Brane_Orsou]

Don't do things the easy way do you! Good luck though, I'm sure you can out gun the german's again

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Hectic Christmas Schedule

I think this is the longest time there’s been between each post since I started this thread (5 whole days!) This Champions League win is happening even if it slows down to one post a week. I also noticed this story has got over 100,000 views so thanks to everyone for reading!

-

So we’re in January 2032 and as explained in the last post we have Bayern Munich in the Champions League Knockout Round at the end of February.

For the first time in the save a Berwick player was named in the World Team of the Year.

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In fact there were two Berwick players; Pedro and Hector De Anda

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Carlos Chavez was also named second in the World Goalkeeper of the Year.

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So he celebrated it by getting injured for 3 months, meaning he’s out for the two knockout games against Bayern at least.

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We’ve also made some record business in January. I was unable to persuade centre back Luka Sevic to stay so sold him for a record £40m to Borussia Dortmund.

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He was our 3/4th​ choice centre back so I immediately signed a wonderkid to replace our wonderkid.

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I just missed one key detail.

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He’s not joining until next year! I think I’m just going to have to go with 3 centre backs for the rest of the season and hope we’re not plagued with injuries in defence.

In other transfer news we received £2.6m from a player we sold 6 years ago.

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It seems a long time ago since we had Pape Samb but at least we’re getting some money from the clauses I added to the transfer deals.

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Meanwhile we’re dominating the league (surprise surprise) and remain on course for an unbeaten league campaign.

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We’ve also won our last 19 games.

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Only 2 teams have scored more than once in a game against us this season. They are Hearts… and Brechin City!

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They admirably fought back against us in the Scottish Cup. Hopefully the defence isn’t that leaky against a slightly better team in Bayern Munich!
​

 

[coolmcool]

Brilliant going as per usual, what sort of level are the team and Scotland now considered amongst over parts of Europe, Im assuming still not too high as your best players are still only valued around £15Million despite being among some of the best players in the World! KIU

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Brilliant going as per usual, what sort of level are the team and Scotland now considered amongst over parts of Europe, Im assuming still not too high as your best players are still only valued around £15Million despite being among some of the best players in the World! KIU

We have a 4 star reputation, which makes us the 63rd most reputable club in the world. Hibs, Celtic and Rangers are all 3 and a half star.

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And Scotland has been the 7th​ highest ranked league in Europe for a couple of seasons.

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Because of our run in the Champions League last season the coefficient increased meaning that next season, for the first time, they’ll be two teams from the SPL in the Champions League group stage.

So Scottish football is making progress but as for the prices of my players I’m not sure if that’s some sort of glitch because I’ve got some genuinely world class players that are being linked with massive clubs for £13-14 million when they could easily fetch £60-£70m​

 

[coolmcool]

I do feel that FM does like to try to undercut us human players, i will have a striker smash in 30 goals in a season, valued at £20Million with 4 years left on his contract and some team will offer £17Million in installments!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

I do feel that FM does like to try to undercut us human players, i will have a striker smash in 30 goals in a season, valued at £20Million with 4 years left on his contract and some team will offer £17Million in installments!

Yeah there was a thread on the general discussion page about the value of players on Scottish teams being inaccurate but it might just be a wider thing on FM or something to do with the reputation of teams. Either way it's quite annoying!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

First Leg V Bayern Munich

So… finally we arrive at our first knockout round game against Bayern Munich in the Champions League First Knockout Round... a game which our best player, and one of the best midfielders in the world, David Herrera was injured for.

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As was our left back Lebogang Mokoena, arguably another world class player.

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And as mentioned in the last post our first choice goalkeeper Carlos Chavez was out for the first leg at least so back up Barry Brown will deputise for him.

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Throughout the save we’ve had about 4 or 5 different Scottish keepers that have all been on the edge of making it to the national team and Brown is one of them (earning his 3 caps whilst at Reith Rovers in the Championship 6 years ago). Brown is adequate for the SPL but may be slightly out of his depth in the knockout rounds of the Champions League…

Preparation for the first leg at the Allianz Arena has been fine in the sense that we’ve won our last 23 games…. However we’ve only kept one clean sheet in the last 5 games against inferior opposition.

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We beat Bayern 6-0 on aggregate in the quarter final stage last season so I’m sure they were out for revenge…

…So I suppose scoring after 2 minutes wasn’t the worst of starts we could’ve had!

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But that lead only lasted 5 minutes…

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But then again it only took 2 minutes for us to go in front again!

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Then Juan Carlos capped off a dominant first half from us.

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Or so I thought. Bayern scored in first half stoppage time to cap off a crazy first half and make the second half interesting.

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There was, however, only one goal in the second half and that too came from Berwick striker Juan Carlos.

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So 4-2 was the final score in the away leg against Bayern Munich. Not the worst result we could’ve got!

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Juan Carlos proved he was worth his £27m price tag with that performance but we still have work to do in the second leg.

That was also our 24th​ win a row which is a Berwick record!

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Meanwhile Celtic beat Saint-Etienne 4-0 on aggregate and will play Napoli, Rangers beat Everton 6-2 and will play Schalke whereas Hibs lost 3-1 to A.C. Milan in the Europa League.

It’s looking good for Scottish teams in Europe… so far!
​

 

[Brane_Orsou]

Great result against Bayern, fingers crossed this is finally the year!!!

 

[salopsi]

Loving this story, and read it from the start these past two days.

Can I just ask - Lets see Scott Scott one more time please?

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Great result against Bayern, fingers crossed this is finally the year!!!

Not a bad result considering we haven't played any team that's half decent in months!

Loving this story, and read it from the start these past two days.

Can I just ask - Lets see Scott Scott one more time please?

Cheers mate glad you've enjoyed it! And here you go, the man the myth the legend... currently back up at Championship side Forfar!

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[Hampus Silverholt]

Bayern Second Leg

Despite former Berwick right back Juan Grecco scoring in extra time for them, Man City were knocked out of the Champions League by Porto in the 1st​ knockout round. Serves them right for beating us in the final!

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That result mattered little if we were to not go through after beating Bayern 4-2 in the first leg.

The first half was very uneventful so I changed the passing to mixed from direct and it made an instant impact.

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And in the second half Juan Carlos proved again that he was a big game player by breezing through the Bayern defence to grab us a second.

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And that was that.

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6-2 against Bayern Munich over two legs with a backup goalkeeper isn’t bad going.

The only negatives from that was that centre back Luiz will be injured for the first and maybe the second leg of the quarter final and we picked up 6 bookings in that game, so potential suspensions might be a problem in the long run.

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But who cares? We’ve knocked Bayern Munich out of the Champions League for the second season in a row. Our prize for doing that?

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We get Chelsea in the Champions League Quarter final. They knocked us out at the 1st​ Knockout Stage 2 seasons ago so we’re treating this one as revenge.

Elsewhere Celtic are the first Scottish team to reach the Europa League quarter finals for a long while after beating Napoli over two legs.

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They’ll play Schalke in the next round, the team who have just knocked out Rangers.

It also goes without saying that we’re close to winning the league and are in the Scottish Cup semi final where we’ll play Dundee.

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There’s still a possibility of an unbeaten season in the league. But my main focus is obviously getting to the semi finals of the Champions League.

Finally, Richard Carter has been called up to the England squad.

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He came through the Berwick academy and is used as a back up central midfielder. I would have never of thought he’d be anywhere near the England set up but Roberto Mancini has gave him a call up!

So, naturally, I gave him a start in the game before the international break so he could show everyone that he was worthy of the call up.

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There’s no chance he’ll ever be near the England squad again. I’m so sorry Richard…
​

 

[Basel93]

Despite former Berwick right back Juan Grecco scoring in extra time for them, Man City were knocked out of the Champions League by Porto in the 1st​ knockout round. Serves them right for beating us in the final!

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That result mattered little if we were to not go through after beating Bayern 4-2 in the first leg.

The first half was very uneventful so I changed the passing to mixed from direct and it made an instant impact.

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And in the second half Juan Carlos proved again that he was a big game player by breezing through the Bayern defence to grab us a second.

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And that was that.

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6-2 against Bayern Munich over two legs with a backup goalkeeper isn’t bad going.

The only negatives from that was that centre back Luiz will be injured for the first and maybe the second leg of the quarter final and we picked up 6 bookings in that game, so potential suspensions might be a problem in the long run.

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But who cares? We’ve knocked Bayern Munich out of the Champions League for the second season in a row. Our prize for doing that?

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We get Chelsea in the Champions League Quarter final. They knocked us out at the 1st​ Knockout Stage 2 seasons ago so we’re treating this one as revenge.

Elsewhere Celtic are the first Scottish team to reach the Europa League quarter finals for a long while after beating Napoli over two legs.

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They’ll play Schalke in the next round, the team who have just knocked out Rangers.

It also goes without saying that we’re close to winning the league and are in the Scottish Cup semi final where we’ll play Dundee.

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There’s still a possibility of an unbeaten season in the league. But my main focus is obviously getting to the semi finals of the Champions League.

Finally, Richard Carter has been called up to the England squad.

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He came through the Berwick academy and is used as a back up central midfielder. I would have never of thought he’d be anywhere near the England set up but Roberto Mancini has gave him a call up!

So, naturally, I gave him a start in the game before the international break so he could show everyone that he was worthy of the call up.

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There’s no chance he’ll ever be near the England squad again. I’m so sorry Richard…
​

Mate, Richard must be so disappointed. So close to international duty...