Berwick Rangers: An English Club in Scotland

2026/27 League Winners

I didn’t play FM for a couple of days after those two losses; I needed a few days to grieve…

After exiting both the Europa League and Scottish Cup in the space of 5 days our attention turned to wrapping up the league. We recovered well and actually managed not to lose our next 3 games.

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With 6 games left we were 18 points ahead of second placed Celtic so a point against Hamilton was all we needed to confirm us as champions of Scotland.

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It took us a while to break down a stubborn Hamilton side, but we got the breakthrough eventually.

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And so it was confirmed...

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Berwick are the 2026/27 Scottish Premiership winners

We have done it! In 10 seasons we’ve took English club Berwick Rangers from Scottish League Two to the summit of the Scottish Premiership!

We’ve broken Celtic’s 15-year winning streak and are the first non Old Firm team to win the league since 1985.

Mission SPL is complete.

Now it’s time to conquer Europe.
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awesome save. Still no plans from the board to give you a better stadium?
 
brooksey84 said:
Still loving this!
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Cheers mate, I'm still loving playing it!

ratmsm1 said:
awesome save. Still no plans from the board to give you a better stadium?
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Funny you should say that... This season we've sold out every league game apart from one in our 4,099 capacity stadium so I was considering asking the board to either buy our stadium or to build a new one. Turns out I didn't need to ask them in the end...

TheBattman said:
Time to dominate!
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It certainly is! Even though we've dominated the league this year, Celtic are still the better team on paper so hopefully this season wasn't a one off and we can really kick on from here.
 
2026/27 Season Review

Premiership: Winners
Scottish Cup: Quarter Final
League Cup: Runners Up
Champions League: Best Placed 3rd​ Qualifying Round
Europa League: Second Knockout Round

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A strong end to the season saw us break the 100-point mark as we ended with 101 points.

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George Neil was top scorer in the league. And got the most assists. And won the European Golden Shoe.

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Sunderland are after him, I’ve politely told them it’s a no from me.

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He was also one of 7 Berwick players in the SPL Team of the Year.

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Here’s the full view of our squad.

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Considering we will be in the Champions League Group Stage next season the board have gave us a fairly modest transfer budget of £15m.

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Our results in the Europa League over the last few seasons means we are now ranked 48th​ in the club coefficients, 18 places behind Celtic.

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The SPL has now risen to 7th​ in the nations coefficients table, but I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of glitch where only 5 teams from the SPL can go into Europe.

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I think it has something to do with the League Cup because all the Scottish teams not involved in Europe go into the League Cup group stage, so if 6 Scottish teams were in Europe then there would not be enough teams to go into the League Cup group stage.

I think that’s why... We should’ve had 6 teams in Europe last season but it didn’t happen, let me know if you know what’s happening cause I don’t!

Our reputation meanwhile is on the rise and we’re upgrading almost all of our facilities over the summer.

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We’ve also appointed a new Head of Youth Development with amazing attributes as we aim to develop youngsters from within.

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And I’ve saved the best news until last.

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We’re going to get a new stadium! If it’s not called the Silverholt Stadium then I’m retiring.

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If it all goes to plan it’ll be a 14,000 all seater stadium which I can’t complain about, I suppose there’s not many people from Berwick after all.
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Great job with the title, hopefully the new stadium can get you some extra cash to push on in Europe
 
Ten Seasons Summary

As we’ve achieved our first major goal of winning the SPL, and we’re also 10 seasons into the save, I thought I’d show the past winners of club and international competitions and what some of our old players are up to (anyone remember Scott Scott?)

Champions League Past Winners

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Europa League Past Winners

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Every single season of this save an English team has won the Europa League.

World Cup Winners

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Euros Winners

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World Rankings

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Scotland are ranked 37th​ in the world, it’s about time they got to a World Cup considering the SPL is one of top 7 leagues in Europe now.

Here are the non-regen players who play for Celtic and Rangers.

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Past Players

Firstly, Lee Farrell and Christian Antoniazzi will be leaving on a free in the summer. Farrell was our longest serving player and Antoniazzi made over 100 appearances for us including some in the Championship.

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Oliver Fleming has been with us since of the start of the save. I gave him a massive contract ages ago out of sentiment when I should’ve probably let him leave and play football.

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After leaving for big money to Premier League teams last year, both Pape Samb and Javier Chanduvi have struggled to break into the first team at both their clubs.

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Scott Scott is back at Inverness, the club who stole him off us when we were in League Two.

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Academy graduate John Wilson is strangely at Maritimo in Portugal, he’d probably still be backup for us if he didn’t decide to ditch us for Dundee United when we were in the Championship.

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Finally the strikers who fired us to League One and the Championship, Connor Scullion and Aaron Murrell, are still at clubs in League One and Two. Sadly their goalscoring hasn’t been as prolific as it was when they were with us.

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That’s it for the throwback; the next post will be the preview for our title defence and first season in the Champions League group stage.
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2027/28 Season Preview

So far we have brought in £11m in sales but have only sold one first choice player from last season.

Transfers Out

Osvaldo Fernandez to Leicester £5m

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Fernandez has been our first choice keeper for the last 2 seasons and joins old Berwick teammate Javier Chanduvi at Leicester. We sold him on the cheap but that was because we have a new first choice number 1.

Rodney Lashley to West Brom for £1.8m

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He was back up, had one year left on his deal and had a release clause of £1.9m… so I sold him for £1.8m with a 50% sell on clause.

The rest of the transfers out were all back up players.

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Transfers In

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We’ve only made 2 major signings, with the cheaper buys being promising youngsters and a backup keeper from Rangers.

Carlos Chavez for £10m from CF America

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Carlos Chavez, probably the best young goalkeeper in the world, has joined us for a joint club record fee of £10m. He is a star player for SPL sides and will only get better so was a no brainer.

Sergio Paulo for £2.6m from Santos

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Hopefully he’s the man to stop us from losing 6-1 in Europe again. 6’6” and 17 strength means he’s a different prospect to all our other centre backs at the club as they’re all 6’0” or under.

With those transfers our first choice XI and subs look like this.

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A 3 and a half star player is a leading one for SPL sides so this season we’re more than likely going to find league games too easy and European games too difficult.

We’re predicted to finish second, which is fair enough because Celtic are still a much better side than us.

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After all, they can afford to pay Philippe Coutinho £86,000 a week.

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We’re buying young because we don’t have the financial muscle to buy star players in their prime, or pay players £86,000 a week. It may be the case that we spend a few years developing our young players into superstars before we can truly tackle the greatest sides in Europe.

As long as there are no late bids for our players, transfer business is done. The Champions League group stage draw will be in the next post.
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Early Form and Champions League Draw

As expected we’ve started the season well… but Celtic have started better.

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Results include a victory over Rangers after being 3-1 down and a 7-0 against Dundee United in the league cup, however we’ve only kept one clean sheet in the league despite winning all 5 games, which is a slight worry.

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More importantly the draw for the Champions League Group Stage has been made.

2027/28 Champions League Group B

Sport Lisboa e Benfica
Bayer 04 Leverkusen
Athletic Club
Berwick Rangers

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No matter who we were drawn against, the group stage was always going to be a struggle. The aim is to finish 3rd​ and to do that it looks like we need to get positive results against Bilbao.

This season our group stage games will be played at Gateshead’s 11,800 capacity stadium.

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Hopefully we can actually outnumber the amount of away fans in our home games this season…
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First Taste of the Champions League Group Stage

Athletic Bilbao at home was our first game of the Champions League Group Stage, meaning that if we wanted to not finish bottom of the group we’d probably have to win that game.

I’ve decided to use a more defensive tactic in the Champions League by playing 5 at the back and going more structured. It worked wonders against Bilbao.

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The clean sheet was more pleasing than the 3 goals in all honesty, so with the next game at Benfica away I was intrigued to see how well we’d do.

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Ah that’s more like it. Benfica went with 3 strikers in the first half, scored 5 goals, then switched to a 4-2-3-1 in the second half where we managed to grab a couple of goals.

That loss ended our longest ever winning streak of 15 games.

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I was willing to class our defensive mishaps against Benfica as a one off. 3 strikers are overpowered and it’s no bad thing to score 3 goals away at Benfica.

Bayer Leverkusen proved that it was not a one off.

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And there it is! You can’t go too long without a Berwick bottlejob! At this point there’s nothing I can do, the game is just well and truly programmed so that we bottle leads, I’m 100% certain.

I suppose we can take solace in the fact that the guy who got a hattrick against us is probably one of the best strikers in Europe.

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And at the halfway stage we’re third in the group. I’ll be more than happy if we remain there.

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It’s all about looking at the positives... Who cares that for about 5 seasons we’ve constantly bottled leads in Europe?

As for the league it was looking like Celtic were going to achieve a flawless season… but then they lost to Dundee at home so we sit top of the table.

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Our only slip up, if you can call it that, was a 0-0 draw at home to Dundee United.

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We’ve still yet to play Celtic in the league and won’t do so until December. It looks like they’re putting up much more of a fight in the league than they did last season when we easily won the title.

In the meantime we’ve got a League Cup semi final against Rangers for the opportunity to get to the final for the third year running.
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Looking good. Did Celtic change manager after a poor season? How's the attendences at the International Stadium? Still majority away fans or are you starting to attract new "glory hunter" fans?
 
brooksey84 said:
Keeper looks good!
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He definitely is, can see some big clubs coming in for him if he develops well here but thankfully there's no minimum release fee in his contract

neavie pops23 said:
Looking good. Did Celtic change manager after a poor season? How's the attendences at the International Stadium? Still majority away fans or are you starting to attract new "glory hunter" fans?
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Celtic won the League Cup and Scottish Cup so the domestic double was enough for Martinez to keep his job. And it's exactly 50/50 in terms of home and away fans.

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Being in the Champions League rather than Europa League has saw a lot more fans come to games, we got around 2,500 home fans in Europa League games last season in comparison.
 
Too Good for Scotland, Too Poor for Europe

Of course our first game after throwing away a two goal lead against Leverkusen was a 8-1 win against Rangers, that’s just how we role.

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That stunning win sent us through to the League Cup final where we’ll play Celtic, who else, in a repeat of last years final.

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Our next game in the Champions League was the return fixture against Leverkusen. The plan was to get some payback for them overturning our 2-0 lead in the last game.

The message to the players was along the lines of “we’re good at scoring, just make sure you don’t concede in the first minute and make sure their main striker does not score a hattrick.”

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Whether 5 at the back or 4 at the back, structured or flexible, counter or control, we can’t defend.

Bilbao beat Benfica in the other game meaning I’m not even confident of finishing third now.

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Domestically Celtic and us are still dominating.

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And we have two massive games coming up.

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First we’ll play Bilbao to determine who will finish 3rd​ in the Champions League group and then we’ll play Celtic in the League Cup final.

I’m caught in two minds whether to play the reserves that got us to the final or go full strength against Celtic, but with the Bilbao game just 4 days before the final, my decision might have already been made for me.
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This was a rly good 2 day read. From the first page to the last. Its great to see how You went from nothing to CL. Leverkusen seems to be a powerhouse with Odegaard and Lewandowski regen.
I don't know if that relates but I do know that in scouting menu its said that older/experienced players play better at the end of the season when composure is needed. That might be the same for normal matches I guess. Your young players just can't handle the pressure in the last minutes. I know Your budget is tight but maybe consider signing some older defender near retirement like Villa did with Samba and Terry. Also Your players hidden "important matches" skill might affect their performance in big games.

Anyway keep it coming and good luck.

BTW. all major EU trophies are won by English clubs, that is rare I guess. How'd Your Brexit went?
 
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