Berwick Rangers: An English Club in Scotland

First trophy in the bag! Just need to knock Celtic off their perch now!
 
leckuno said:
Great to see you win the league cup mate. Gutted you could hang on in the Europa league and finish top though but it should make an interesting draw for the next round
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Cheers mate, I'm not sure if the Europa League draw is seeded at the knockout stage I think it's just a free-for-all. Either way we've got an interesting tie..

neavie pops23 said:
Flying high now mate! Was glad to see you win the cup after the previous cup final of red mist! 2nd in the league progress in europe and silverware already! Looking like a great season!
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I'm still waiting for the capitulation but at the moment we're looking good!

Ralph2211 said:
First trophy in the bag! Just need to knock Celtic off their perch now!
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That's going to take some doing! They've won 18 of their 20 league games so far this season.
 
Europa League Draw and League Form

After finishing second in our group we progressed into the Europa League knockout rounds where we’ll play Spartak Moscow.

Europa League 1st​ Knockout Round: FC Spartak Moskva V Berwick Rangers

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My initial reaction to the draw was a positive one but having looked at their squad I’m less optimistic about our chances.

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Elsewhere Celtic will play Man United and Hibs will play a Ukrainian team I’ve never heard of.

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As we head into the January transfer window a number of our players are wanted by other clubs.

Gladbach, Werder Bremen and Real Sociedad are after Sindri Snorrason whereas Burnley are showing interest in Javier Chanduvi.

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Centre back Bence Novothny is linked with Hull and Wolves but most significantly of all George Neil is wanted by Celtic.

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Thankfully telling Neil that he’s an important player in the dressing room is enough to get him to agree to stay. I’d choose Berwick and £9,000 a week over Celtic and £70,000 a week too George...

For the best part of 3 months we’ve played 2 games a week. Taking that into consideration our form has been exceptional.

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It was topped off with a comfortable win at Ibrox. The result was even more significant given that it pretty much establishes us as the second best team in Scotland (despite not actually being from Scotland of course).

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2 of our 3 losses in the league this season have been to Celtic. Despite our best season yet (so far) there’s just no way of catching them.

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We’ve also been drawn against Dumbarton at home in the cup in what is an excellent draw on paper for us. Hopefully we can put up a challenge in the other, more important, domestic cup.
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Just read through the whole thing, congrats on the success! Had a similar save in FM17 but with Edinburgh City and I made it harder on myself by only signing players born in the city. However I can definitely appreciate how tough it is getting up the Scottish lower divisions.
 
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Can't frown at what has been done so far this season, to be fair!
 
Feliks said:
Just read through the whole thing, congrats on the success! Had a similar save in FM17 but with Edinburgh City and I made it harder on myself by only signing players born in the city. However I can definitely appreciate how tough it is getting up the Scottish lower divisions.
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Cheers mate! And that must of made the save extremely difficult… how well did you do with them? It’d be very difficult to make Berwick a competitive team in the Premiership with just Scottish players never mind players from one city.

ScottT said:
Can't frown at what has been done so far this season, to be fair!
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Yeah it’s been a really good season so far, there’s just no way of catching Celtic!
 
Transfers and Progression in the Cup

Thankfully nobody left us in the January window and we also made one transfer, Pavle Zoric from Vojvodina in Serbia.

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He’s good enough to go into our first team but I want to give the players I have now a chance so he’ll join us in the summer.

Elsewhere Celtic sold their star player Leandrinho to Chelsea for £15m.

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It shows just how strong Celtic are. They had a player good enough to be given first team squad status at the club who are top of the Premier League!

In the Scottish Cup we comfortably beat Dumbarton to progress to the 5th​ round.

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In that game we gave two academy graduates a run out. John Cook and Brian McInnes impressed despite both only being 17.

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We got an even kinder draw for the 5th​ round, as we will face League Two side Annan for a place in the quarterfinal.

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In the league we’re stranded in second, not that it’s a bad thing. We’re 14 points from the top and 15 points ahead of third place so it’d take an almighty bottlejob by us to not finish in the top 2.

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We did have the chance to narrow the gap to Celtic to 8 points but once again they beat us.

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3 of our 4 losses in the league this season have been to Celtic. I might have to create a tactic specifically for games against them.

Next up we have Annan in the cup and then immediately after that we’ll play back-to-back games against Spartak Moscow in the Europa League 1st​ knockout round. Hopefully we can cause an upset against Spartak.
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Europa League First Knockout Round

Europa League 1st​ Knockout Round Leg 1

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What a result! The crowd of 7,773 at St James’ Park witnessed substitute Pape Samb score two late goals to take the tie away from Spartak. Surely we can’t bottle a three goal lead in the away leg?

Europa League 1st​ Knockout Round Leg 2

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Wow, we’re rather good at football. Despite being favourites to progress Spartak were outplayed in both legs and we march into the last 16 of the Europa League.

And we’ve got a rather interesting opponent in the next round.

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Europa League Second Knockout Round: Associazione Calcio Milan v Berwick Rangers

What a draw! Milan’s squad is ridiculous (Donnarumma is still there on £240,000 a week) but we’ve done far more than what was expected of us this season in the Europa League so I don’t mind what happens.

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Hibs are the only other Scottish team left in European football this season after Celtic were knocked out by Man United in the last round. Both of us aren’t doing any harm to the coefficient points for Scotland!

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We’ve only played 2 league games since the last post. We’ll continue what was a tradition of ours back at the start of the save of finishing second in the league.

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After beating Annan 5-0 in the cup we came up against Dundee in the quarter final. We swept them aside as well.

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We also avoided Celtic in the draw for the semi final. Instead we’ll play Dundee United at Hampden Park.

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Recent form has been exceptional and we head into the Milan game with moral at an all time high.

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If we’re going to get a result we’ll have to rely on George Neil. His overall condition is only 80% heading into the first leg, but with 38 goals in 37 games this season he simply has to play.

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If anyone can inspire us to a win at the San Siro then it’s him.
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A.C. Milan Results

We’re no strangers to beating big teams in their own back yard and demonstrated it by beating Ajax 5-1 in the group stage. However in the Ajax game we didn’t concede from a corner after 55 seconds…

Europa League 2nd​ Knockout Round Leg 1

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Aside from conceding in the first minute we didn’t really do much wrong. Milan were just too good for us and took their chances.

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We needed a Berwickstanbul moment in the second leg.

Europa League 2nd​ Knockout Round Leg 2

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Nooooooo so close! A.C. Milan scrape through 3-2 on aggregate.

When we scored the second I thought the impossible could happen. But we can hold our heads high, there’s no shame in being knocked out by A.C. Milan in the last 16 after entering the Europa League at the 3rd​ Qualifying Round stage.

We also broke our attendance record because Milan took 19,000 fans to the game.

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We soon got over the Europa League heartbreak as with 6 games still to go it was confirmed that Berwick will play in the Champions League next season.

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I’m not sure what qualifying round we’ll go into but who cares, Berwick will be playing Champions League football!

This was because Rangers are unable to catch us in second place.

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With that the board decided to set the budgets for next season. I’m sure there’s a lot I can do with a £5,000 wage budget…

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We haven’t even received our prize money yet, they could’ve at least waited until then to set the budgets! We’re going to get £3.1m for finishing second and we’ll get another £2-3m from TV revenue and gate receipts from the Scottish Cup semi final.

Talking of which… our next game is against Dundee United in the semi final at Hampden.

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There’s still a possibility of a domestic double!
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So unlucky against Milan, but shows how far you've come that you're disappointed to have been knocked out by one goal against AC Milan
 
Scottish Cup Semi-Final Result

With us out of the Europa League and guaranteed to finish second, the Scottish Cup was the only competition left to play for. Dundee United were the team aiming to stop us reaching only our second ever Scottish Cup final.

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It was quite a cagey game with few highlights but it doesn’t matter, we got the job done and we’re in the final!

And look how much money we received from gate receipts.

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But you know who we’ll play in the final don’t you?

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Unfortunately we’ll play Celtic. The last time we were in the Scottish Cup final (two years ago) we played Rangers in the last game of the league season before facing them again in the cup final. Exactly the same will happen with Celtic.

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They recently lost their first game in the league against Rangers but have dropped just 9 points, conceded only 15 times and beat us 3 times already this season.

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I think we might be slight underdogs...


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I think i would be tempted to play youth team and very dirty and try and break as many of their 1st team as possible there forsaking the result in the league for a cup win.

Winning is not the important thing,....its the only thing :-)
 
KevQ339 said:
I think i would be tempted to play youth team and very dirty and try and break as many of their 1st team as possible there forsaking the result in the league for a cup win.

Winning is not the important thing,....its the only thing :-)
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neavie pops23 said:
I agree as my old manager used to say before we went out to every match:

"Winning doesn't really matter as long as you win!"
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I did think about doing something like that but I know that on our day we are capable of beating them even with their strongest team. Just turns out that we don't like to play well in big matches...
 
Celtic Double Header

With our last league game of the season being against Celtic I decided to use it as a trial run for the final. For the first time ever I put on comprehensive highlights and tweaked things during the game depending on what was going on. Maybe I should do it more often.

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Who knew getting your Shadow Striker to man mark Celtic’s right back could prove to be so useful? It was that very Shadow Striker, Ryan Christie, who popped up in the last minute to score the winner at Celtic Park.

So with the season finished this is what final league table looked like

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92 points would have won us the league in any of the past 5 years.

George Neil also finished as top scorer in the Premiership for the 2nd​ season in a row. That was despite being injured for the last 4 league games, something that made him a major doubt for the final.

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However two of our strikers, Benik Afobe and Pape Samb, were already injured so Neil had to be risked for the final.

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I mean what’s the worst that could happen? He’ll give the ball away after 50 seconds that would immediately lead to a Celtic goal?

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Great. The main objective now was to not concede before halftime or else it could become embarrassing.

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Wow. It could be worse I suppose. At least our goalkeeper hadn’t broken his hand by catching the ball… yet.

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This was only after half an hour as well. Thankfully we had a keeper on the bench.

And that was pretty much it. We had hardly any chances in the second half and went attacking in the 80th​ minute to try and get something… it went well.

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We only lost 5-2 in our other Scottish Cup Final two years ago... And we were down to 9 men!

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Why did we have to win the non-important league game and then not turn up in the final?!

It was also good to see our 2 most experienced players, Jason Kerr and Ryan Christie, save their best performances of the season for the final. Especially after both of them scored against Celtic a week before.

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The only positive is we earned £5m from that defeat. Since the board set our transfer budget to £3m we’ve made £13m in gate receipts and prize money.

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At least we’ve learned something this season. Its not ALL cup finals that we’re rubbish in. Just the Scottish Cup final.
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2025/26 Season Summary

Not for the first time in the save an amazing season was somewhat overshadowed by us getting battered in the Scottish Cup final.

Premiership: 2nd
Scottish Cup: Runners Up
League Cup: Winners
Europa League: 2nd​ Knockout Round


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We played 61 games this season so a lot of players played at least 40 games. What’s most notable is that our central midfielders scored a lot of goals and our 4th​ choice striker, Scott Roach, scored 23 goals.

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As mentioned in the last post George Neil was top scorer in the SPL and also broke his own record of most goals in a season for Berwick.

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He basically won every individual award possible and was joined in the SPL Team of the Year by Darren Halpin and Lukas Zak.

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A lot of our players are full internationals but Frank Ndongo will be the only Berwick player at the 2026 World Cup.

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Despite qualifying for the Euros 2 years ago, Scotland will not be going to Mexico 2026.

I don’t have the option to ask for more transfer and wage budget, but with £15m in the bank we should be able to have a lot more funds.

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I still can’t believe we got 92 points but didn’t win the league! Hopefully we can keep our star players and make some signings that will allow us to compete with Celtic next year.

We’ve also got a Champions League campaign to prepare for!
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2026/27 Season Preview

The Exodus is Here

This is going to be a long post. It’s sort of been a crazy transfer window and quite a lot of players have left…

Transfers Out

Martin McCulloch to Falkirk for £120,000

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Martin McCulloch, who we first met as a 16 year old playing for Livingston in the League One Playoff final and captained us in our first season in the SPL, has left to join newly promoted Falkirk. He will always be remembered for getting sent off in the Scottish Cup final for us after we were already down to 10 men.

Benik Afobe to Toronto for £650,000

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He was naturally declining and quite injury prone. After our 2 oldest, most experienced players played awfully in the Scottish Cup final I’ve decided to not bother buying players based on their experience. If they’re good enough they’re old enough.

Bence Novothny to Hibernian for £1.6m

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Back up centre back and not really needed. I don’t mind selling players to other teams in the SPL as long as they’re not Celtic. Although I might regret that if Hibs finish ahead of us this season. At the time it was our record sale. At the time…

Pape Samb to Burnley for £10.5m

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Pape Samb is a good player and could come to be a really good player… but 5 goals in 22 league games last season? I’ll take the £10.5m. Not a bad profit considering we signed him for £5,000.

That was enough sales for me.

Then Leicester came in with £20m for Javier Chanduvi.

Javier Chanduvi to Leicester for £20m

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We got him for free and I remember selling players for £200,000 and being happy with it so I just had to. It’s £20m!

After bringing in £33.5m and with £41m in the bank I really was done with transfers out this time.

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And so to the transfers in.

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Firstly we have a new right back and left back. We didn’t need them but they were cheap and better than our current first choice full backs. Here’s Danny Stringer and Lebogang Mokoena.

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Bryan Illanes was brought in to be our new first choice attacking midfielder.

Bryan Illanes - £2.3m from Colo Colo

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And to replace Pape Samb and Benik Afobe we bought in teenagers Carlos Cordoba and Vebjorn Aure. Cordoba was on the cheap from Colombia and will go straight into the first team but it is Aure who is our main signing of the summer.

Carlos Cordoba - £575,000 from Santa Fe

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Vebjorn Aure - £10m from Stromsgodset

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Aure was linked with PSG and Juventus but chose to come to Berwick, obviously. He’s our record signing (£10m!!!) and is on a lot of money but should hopefully form a deadly partnership with George Neil to help us topple Celtic this season.

Almost all of our signings are youngsters, the main reason being that it’s more likely that we’ll develop players rather than buy ones who are the finished article, as they’d just cost too much. Even though we sold £30m worth of players we still are nowhere near to matching the financial power of Celtic or even Rangers and could only offer a maximum of £38,000 a week to players, meaning that the top quality ones were still out of our price range.

Despite that we’re still predicted to finish second in the league this year.

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We also entered the Champions League at the Best Placed Third Qualifying Phase and were unseeded in the draw in which we were paired with CSKA Moscow.

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I think we play them and then a playoff to get into the group stage but I’m fairly certain that no matter what happens we’ll be in the Europa League group stage at a minimum.
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European Football Returns to Highbury

Our first ever game in the Champions League didn’t go too badly.

Champions League Best Placed Third Qualifying Phase – Leg One

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New signing Carlos Cordoba got two goals and was man of the match whilst centre back Jason Kerr scored the winner after coming on late in the game to see out a draw.

The return leg was played at Highbury. Fleetwood’s stadium that is.

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It seems it’s a ground where we don’t like to defend.

Champions League Best Placed Third Qualifying Phase – Leg Two

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Absolute bottlejobs. We can’t defend and can’t find any better defenders. But if we’re conceding 4 goals at home to CSKA Moscow we’d probably concede about 10 to the best teams in Europe.

Ethan Aldana came in as back up in the summer but from now on will be first choice centre back. Richard Nemec will also arrive in January, hopefully they both can actually defend.

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The CSKA result meant that we went straight into the Europa League Group Stage so the outcome of the result wasn’t a travesty; it was the conceding two goals in the last 5 minutes to stop us from progressing that was the main problem.

Nevertheless, after two seasons of being seeded 4th​ for the group stage draw, this season we were seeded 2nd​,

2026/27 Europa League Group Stage Draw

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Olympique Lyonnais
Berwick Rangers
Torino
Slavia Praha

Not the easiest draw we could of had. Torino knocked out Hibs on their way to the group so it won’t be easy making it to the knockout stage. Rangers and Dundee United are the other Scottish sides in the group stage whilst Celtic are the sole Scottish representative in the Champions League.

After playing our Champions League game at Fleetwood, we will be playing our Europa League games at Tranmere’s recently built 9,000 capacity stadium.

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And after deciding that both were not good enough to be long term first choice centre backs, Jason Kerr and Aidan Wilson gained their first call ups to the national side…

We’ve only played 3 games in the league but have already won 2 games 4-0 and are ahead of Celtic on goal difference.

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Also Sean Dyche is the manager of Real Madrid.

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Me neither.​
 
I was going to say i don't know what's more shocking, your collapse against CSKA or Sean Dyche in charge at Real, but given the historic nature of the team conceeding late goals and the fact it's Sean Dyche, the biggest heads gone has to be Real's gaffer!
 
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