Berwick Rangers: An English Club in Scotland

pvtsilver said:
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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Cheers mate! And yeah think you're spot on with the young players being unable to handle big matches. I like to play the game by signing young players and developing them but am suffering the consequences of that in big, high pressure games I think. Never really look for the trait of 'enjoys big matches' when I'm signing a player but think I'll have to now.

And the dominance of English teams in Europe has been crazy, Bayern Munich and PSG are the only non-English teams to win either the Champions League or Europa League throughout the whole save.

As for Brexit we were lucky as it was a soft one so we're able to easily sign players from pretty much anywhere... I've had no issues with work permits at any point so can't complain!
 
Bilbao Showdown and League Cup Final

Athletic Club were our opponents in what was essentially a game that would decide who would finish bottom of our Champions League group.

We were level on points and had beaten them in the reverse fixture, so there was a big chance to make 3rd​ place our own.

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Barring a miracle, there goes all hope of finishing third.


Next up was the League Cup final against Celtic.

We won the League Cup 2 years ago and lost to Celtic in the final last year and knowing that we were basically knocked out of the Champions League, I really wanted a win.

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Berwick are the 2027 Scottish League Cup Winners

That was actually a surprise. Celtic are still a better team than us even though we won the league last year. It’s rare for us to keep a clean sheet and show a bit of fight and resilience after crumbling in many a big game before this one.

I didn’t even realise that we had Celtic in the league 3 days after the final. This game was arguably just as big, as only one point separated us in the league.

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Make that 4 points. The only negative from that game was that our best player for the last couple of seasons, George Neil, picked up a nasty injury.

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The win means that the invincible season is still on… although just winning the league is still the aim.

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Approaching our final game against Benfica there was still a very slim chance of finishing third in our Champions League group but it depended upon other results going our way.

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We managed to beat them but unfortunately the damage had been done in our other games and we finished bottom of the group.

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At least our under 20s are doing well in Europe.

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They’re near the bottom of the Scottish Development League so I have no idea how they’ve doing so well in Europe.

Finally, the League Cup win saw a long overdue name added to the list of Berwick legends.

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It was about time.
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Treble Please

For the first time in 3 seasons we have no European football after Christmas. Both Celtic and Rangers are through to the Europa League Knockout Rounds so our attention turns to the domestic treble.

Despite three 1-1 draws, our form across December and January was excellent (mainly because of a 4-0 win against Celtic).

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We’re still on for an unbeaten season but more importantly we’re still top of the league.

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We also beat Falkirk in the Scottish cup and have got a tricky tie away at Dundee United in the next round.

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The January transfer window is almost at an end and we’ve already been involved in one significant transfer involving Real Madrid… I’ll post all the transfers in the next update as anything could happen from now until the end of the window.
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have your attendance still been rising season ticket holders with your success? Is their a limit for certain clubs? Im interested to know someone else perspective on if their is a ceiling to how far you can take a small club
 
The GallantPioneer1872 said:
Not been on in a good while, Glad to see this still going mate and still a success!
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Cheers mate good to see you back, 2 League Cups and one league title so far... hopefully we can also get into the further stages of the Champions League soon.

coolmcool said:
have your attendance still been rising season ticket holders with your success? Is their a limit for certain clubs? Im interested to know someone else perspective on if their is a ceiling to how far you can take a small club
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Yeah attendances have slowly increased every season, we've got 1,500 season ticket holders but we're selling out our 4,099 capacity every league game. For European games, where we're playing at Gateshead's ground this season, we're getting on average 6,000 fans per game.

I've wondered as well if there's a limit on how many fans you can get but don't really have a clue. This thread might answer some of your questions although I'm not sure how accurate it is

https://community.sigames.com/topic/387048-max-attendance/
 
Eventful January Transfer Window

So, as mentioned in the last post, we’ve been involved in a transfer with Real Madrid.

Carlos Cordoba has gone to Real Madrid for £23.5m

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Wonderkid striker Carlos Cordoba has got his wish by going to Real Madrid. It’s our record sale and he will probably be one of the top strikers in Europe soon, but it’s Real Madrid and we’re Berwick so it’s quite hard to persuade someone to stay.

We did make a hefty profit on him too.

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And yes Sean Dyche is still manager of Real Madrid.

Danny Stringer has gone to Manchester City for £11m

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The other transfer out was first choice right back Danny Stringer to Man City. He doesn’t feel comfortable in big matches, which is the exact opposite of the kind of player I want, and we also got him for free. So if he wants to sit on the bench for more money then so be it, we’ve got capable back ups.

One of those was a new right back.

Camilo Nunez from Tolima for £550,000

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I just can’t resist a bargain.

His main competition for the right back spot will be Kyle Campbell who I’ve not mentioned before but has been with us since the start of the season.

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We signed him for peanuts from East Fife in League Two and feeling sorry for them, I sent him on loan there for 2 seasons. Fast-forward two years and despite playing in League Two last season he’s now probably first choice right back at Berwick and a Scotland cap beckons.

Another player joining us is David Herrera.

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We loaned him back to his parent club in Colombia after signing him in the summer and he will slot straight into the first team. He adds to the growing list of wonderkids at Berwick.

Finally, to replace Carlos Cordoba, striker Iain Kelly has joined us from Hearts for £2m

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He’s only 17 but I need to have more Scottish players in my squad for league registration purposes and he’s probably the most promising Scottish player at his age.


He made 1 appearance for Championship side Hearts but because of our injuries he went straight into the starting XI for the Champions of Scotland in our game against Hamilton.

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And scored.

I’ve gone a bit overkill with the young players but with no European football I’m almost treating the remainder of this season as a trial for certain players to see if they truly deserve a place in the first team before we assemble a squad in the summer good enough for progression in the Champions League.
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The stadium capacity seems off on this one. I've have 2 Rangers saves. One I got a new stadium built 98,000 seats. Now however, it's been expanded to 65,000 which always sells out, yet the board won't expand cos they say there's no more fans.

And the name thing is weird for regens, I've currently got Hassan Hassan, Andrew Andrews, Archibald Archibald (then 3 other with same surname) David David, and Glen Glenn.
 
ratmsm1 said:
The stadium capacity seems off on this one. I've have 2 Rangers saves. One I got a new stadium built 98,000 seats. Now however, it's been expanded to 65,000 which always sells out, yet the board won't expand cos they say there's no more fans.

And the name thing is weird for regens, I've currently got Hassan Hassan, Andrew Andrews, Archibald Archibald (then 3 other with same surname) David David, and Glen Glenn.
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johnstrac said:
No Duran Duran then ?
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Do you mean for Berwick or just for FM18 in general? When it was announced we’d get a new stadium with 14,000 capacity I was happy, but we took 14,500 fans to Hampden for the League Cup final so I imagine we’ll need to upgrade the capacity as soon as the new stadium is built anyway.

And I don’t remember the regens names being this weird before FM18, that and the fact that regens from FM13-14 were more realistic looking than the ones now is actually quite annoying haha. You also reminded that Aberdeen had a Stewart Stewart come through the youth system ages ago and he’s now plying his trade at East Fife. So just in Scotland there’s a Scott Scott and Stewart Stewart, unfortunately there's no Duran Duran... yet.
 
Scottish Cup Hoodoo

The invincible season isn’t happening as we slumped to defeat away against Dundee.

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It ended a run of 28 unbeaten games in the league.

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That loss was merely a blip; we were still winning all our other games…

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…until we played Dundee United in the cup

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We were truly FM’d in this game. We had 6 injuries to players who would normally start and dominated most of the game. Dundee United’s goals came from a penalty and last minute free kick meaning that once again the Scottish Cup eludes us.

Still, I don’t think we can ignore the fact we’ve started losing more games since we sold two of our best players… what could possibly be the reason for that?!

With 12 games left this is what the table looks like.

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We’ve still got to play Celtic twice so the league is far from wrapped up. In all honesty we need to win the league to salvage what looks like being a poor season overall.
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That Scottish cup is proving more elusive than finding a leprechaun riding a unicorn in Brigadoon!
 
neavie pops23 said:
That Scottish cup is proving more elusive than finding a leprechaun riding a unicorn in Brigadoon!
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I think we had some sort of curse put on us as soon as we lost in the final for the first time. We've just never looked like coming close since then.
 
Strange Results

We’re going through some really weird form.

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I don’t really know what’s going on, but we should not be losing to both Falkirk and Ross County even if the stats say we played better than them.

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Our next game is against Celtic. Lose that and we’re in real trouble. They have games in hand but still have to play us twice and with the form we’re in there is a real possibility that we’re going to bottle the league.

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I don’t know if it’s bad luck or if the tactic has had it. It’s so annoying that we’re suddenly losing games even though we’ve not changed from the tactic that has destroyed teams in Europe and at home.

George Neil seems a shadow of the player he was before his injury. He played a 6.1 in the last game against Ross County and has never, ever played that bad before.

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His star rating has dropped massively as well, I would never have thought that at some point he’d be considered a squad player.

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It's been quite a strange season. We're on course to win a domestic double but it still feels like we've underperformed... We better not bottle the league or else laptops will be smashed.
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Two big games against Celtic, hopefully Neil can find some form for them
 
ninjaskill said:
Two big games against Celtic, hopefully Neil can find some form for them
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I was dreading both games to be honest, I was more and more convinced a bottle job was on the cards. Turns out Neil didn't need to find form as Celtic decided to lose as many games as they could
 
Celtic Season Definers

Our big, possibly season defining, game against Celtic turned out to be an anti climax.

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A boring 0-0, that’ll do. We may have been in bad form but so were they. The draw means they’ve only won 1 in 5 league games and tilts the league in our direction.

After 33 games this is what the table looked like. We were 5 points ahead of them but still had to play Celtic one more time in the league.

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But then they lost their next two games.

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And with that the league was pretty much decided.

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All of a sudden we had the chance to confirm our second title in a row at Ibrox with 3 games remaining still remaining.

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Eugh maybe not then.

However in the next game against Dundee United we finally got the job done.

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Berwick are the 2027/28 SPL Winners

We’re 2 times SPL winners now, job done.

We didn’t cruise to the title like we did last season, it was more of a limp… and we celebrated in true Berwick style in our next game against Celtic (which until a couple of games ago I thought would be a title decider).

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“2-0, and we fu…”

I genuinely can’t find a way to stop us from throwing away leads.

Celtic’s run in the Europa League saved us from bottling the title this season and if we carry on with the form we’ve ended the season with then we’ll finish midtable next year.

In the end Celtic were only 5 points away from us and we finished with 12 points fewer than last season.

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Not to be ungrateful about winning both the League Cup and SPL… but we seem to have stagnated a bit this season. I think a tactic change and summer reinforcements are needed, starting with increasing the average age of the squad, which is currently 22.
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2027/28 Season Review

Premiership: Winners
Scottish Cup: 5th​ Round
League Cup: Winners
Champions League: 4th​ in Group Stage

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Scottish teams in Europa League 2027/28

Motherwell: 2nd​ Qualifying Round
Dundee: 3rd​ Qualifying Round
Rangers: 1st​ Knockout Round
Celtic: 2nd​ Knockout Round

Here’s what the final Premiership table looks like. Hearts are promoted back to the SPL next season.

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And here’s the stats of the whole squad

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With two goals in the last game of the season, George Neil confirmed himself as Berwick’s all time top scorer.

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For the first time in 3 seasons he wasn’t top scorer in the league but still came 3rd​ even though he was out for 3 months.

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Midfielder Stanislav Dimitrov was Player of the Year in SPL

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He was one of 5 Berwick players in the SPL Team of the Year.

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Ryan Christie will be leaving on a free in the summer after 4 years at the club.

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Finally, we have £17m to spend in the transfer window and a new bumper kit deal.

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Hopefully we're able to hold onto our best players in this transfer window after making sales to Real Madrid and Man City this season.
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New Stadium Confirmed

This will probably be the last post for a week or so; I hope to get new updates up by next weekend at the latest


We had some big news in the summer with confirmation of our new stadium being built.

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A capacity of 16,400 is quadruple that of our current ground, although they’ve surely missed a trick in it not being named the Silverholt Stadium…

It’ll be completed in 2 years time and I’m hoping by then that we’re a team that can compete with the best in Europe.

Also our training facilities were used by Italy during EURO 2028 as the tournament was hosted by England.

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10 Berwick players were called up for the tournament including 4 for Scotland.

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Scotland came second in their group and managed to get to the quarter final where they were knocked out on penalties by Spain.

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And who missed the decisive penalty for Scotland? Berwick’s record goalscorer George Neil

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In fairness he’s been one of the best players of the tournament.

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And Spain are now favourites to go on and win the competition.

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As I said the season preview for 2028/29 season will be posted hopefully in no more than a weeks time.
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Hampus, great story and nice layout mate. Been trying to get back into FM for a while now but I just dont have the time anymore XD and If I do get a spare few hours for myself I usually just jump on the PS4.

Reading these stories is the closest I get these days.

Hope you keep it up until Berwick are Champions of Europe
 
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