H Brownlow
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Thanks a lot, it's about balancing building for the future and getting results now. Thanks for reading!
Can Lightening Strike Twice? The Sir Alex Ferguson Challenge.
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Thanks a lot, it's about balancing building for the future and getting results now. Thanks for reading!
H Brownlow
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February Update
Progress hasn't been quite as rapid as i'd hoped, but there's reason to be optimistic! We have a good chance in the FA Cup with some favourable draws so far, no slip ups and some big teams being knocked out early on. However, there are of course one or two reasons to be pessimistic... Our fixture schedule hasn't been kind of late in the league and the next month isn't exactly favourable either, neither Baston or Llorente can get into the goal scoring rhythm, we have a temperamental defence that is near incapable of keeping clean sheets and squad morale is as up and down as a yo-yo thanks to the constant mutinies across the squad who all reckon they can play for bigger clubs (and judging by the offers I've rejected they're right). Definitely reason to be optimistic there, somewhere.
Regardless, first of all we head to the Liberty Stadium to play Arsenal who were unbeaten when I first came to the club in November, they've since lost twice in the league and made it to the EFL Cup final. So it's fair to say they're not in bad form, but they have shown they can be beaten in recent months, albeit rarely. So to try and exploit this I line up with new signing Charlie Taylor at left back, hopeful that his superior tackling and marking stats will solidify our vulnerable flanks. And to help solve our goal scoring issues once more I change striker to Borja Baston who has looked good coming off of the bench to effect in recent games. I'm feeling optimistic, it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new month for us to show that we're actually not that bad.
It might look bad, but actually it isn't a horrible result, don't get me wrong, I was hoping for more but given the context of the game it could've been a **** of a lot more worse. We kept the free scoring Arsenal our until the 67th minute, regrettably not long after I made 3 subs to replace the 3 players who weren't performing. Arsenal scored from a corner 9 minutes later to make it 2-0 and the game was gone, but I pushed the team forward in the hope of salvaging something but unfortunately our best chance fell to Kyle Naughton who looked like a deer in headlights in front of goal. Never mind, at the end of the season these won't be the kinds of games that the season hinged on.
In my earlier troubleshooting of what had been going wrong in the save so far I cited player happiness as a big problem. That suddenly isn't the case, Ben Goodwin the clubs "player liaison officer" informs me that suddenly Jack Cork and Gylfi Sigurdsson are happy with staying at the club, which is fantastic news! That is unless they are plotting some sort of evil sabotage of some upcoming games (no foreshadowing going on here).
Buoyed by the news that the "player liaison officer" delivered to me I head into the next game against Southampton again at home, and since we did pretty well for the majority of the game against Arsenal until I went all Claudio Ranieri "Tinkerman" on the team I gave them all another chance in the hope some consistency would breed good results as the team starts to gel. I feel like we're missing Jordi Amat at centre back though, every time either him or Fernandez is injured we ship in goals, Hoorn and Mawson are proving to be useless back up. But hopefully they'll do better today, it's about time we started picking up some points.
Would you look at that? Apparently Jack Cork is the saboteur in the squad. Sent off at 0-0 and less than 6 minutes later Southampton are 2-0 up. Wishing i'd taken Spurs' £25m for Jack Cork aside that is our 2nd home defeat in as many games, not exactly impressive form. We need to drastically improve in the coming weeks and an injury to Borja Baston isn't going to help things. Regardless, we go again next week against opposition that are more our level.
Next up is a crucial game against 16th placed Middlesbrough, it's away from home but it couldn't be more crucial that we get at least something here, they're above us and we need to gain ground on them because not even a win would take us above them, so we need to involve them in a relegation dog fight. And to do that i've made a few changes. Defensively Charlie Taylor wasn't doing the trick so i've replaced him with Neil Taylor which is a good option to have, it feels good to have this kind of depth at full back at last, before i'd have to have played Joey O'Brien out of position. Going into midfield replacing (now club captain) Jack Cork is 20 year old Marc Roca who is on loan from Inter Milan, he may be young and uncomfortable as an anchor man but he doesn't have bad stats for it and he could do with the game time, so i'm crossing my fingers with this one. I've also changed a lot of personnel and the playing style up top. Emre Mor comes in for Montero and Everton switches to the left flank so that they can both play as inside forwards to get close to target man Llorente who starts up front in the place of the injured and misfiring Borja Baston. Best of luck boys, make me look like a tactical genius.
Excellent. Yes I am indeed a tactical mastermind, or i'll keep telling myself that anyway, maybe once we're above 17th i'll even believe it. But only our 6th win of the season is a hard fought one, again no goals from the strikers but Gylfi Sigurdsson is currently the top scorer in the club with 8 goals and he looks good value for even more. As part of my tactical mastermind i'll just claim that the tactic relies on goals from deep rather than strikers. We draw 4 points ahead of Hull and the relegation zone (with them yet to play). Things are finally coming up Millhouse!
It's that time again. It's the FA Cup and we've already met the boards objective for the competition by making it to the 5th round, but since we are facing Preston i'm expecting us to progress even further. There is however one small hiccup in that Fabianski got injured in training and is out for a week, hopefully he'll only miss this game but nevertheless it makes me glad that I rejected bids for my back up keeper in January Nordfelveltlvl (or something Danish) starts in goal instead. With this glaring weakness in the forefront of my mind I keep the rest of the team the same as the one that beat Middlesbrough, except I give club vice-captain Leon Britton a run out at CDM to see if there's life left in the old legs yet or if he's nothing more than a constant whining in the back of the changing room.
Hallelujah! Although, I must admit after Everton scored a fantastic early goal and we controlled possession I just sat back and waited for something to go wrong, but it didn't not until the game was pretty much done at 2-1 at least. Thankfully the players have more bottle than me and saw the game out fantastically. Sorry to dampen the mood immediately after a good performance but...
Our toughest draw so far by a mile, possibly even the toughest draw we could've got altogether, the only team who even compare to Liverpool left in the competition is Manchester United. I'd sort of hoped that this kind of game would come once i'm already in the final, but I guess if you want to win something then you have to play the best teams, and hey, at least we're at home. Perhaps we can intimidate the Liverpool players with some sort of Welsh man sheep mating tradition.
Neil Taylor peforming unspeakable acts on a sheep aside our attentions turns to our next league game which low and behold is at home against Liverpool. This is by all means a dress rehearsal for the FA Cup 6th round, therefore there's literally no limits to the importance that I place on this one game. We're lucky that we get a game to size up our opposition before we head to war with them. With that in mind I play my best team against them that I have available, which includes the returns to fitness of Jordi Amat, Debuchy and Fabianski. It looks like Liverpool return the favour by playing what looks like a full strength team, this should be interesting.
What a game. In all honesty though, we probably should have won, we went 2-0 up and had them on the ropes for most of the game until they brought it back to 2-2, then we went 3-2 up and then with 10 minutes left Liverpool levelled again. Football Manager is a truly heartless game. But, as far as a dress rehearsal goes I was pleased with what I saw, there was no huge disaster, bar our atrocious defending, but Llorente's return to goal scoring form couldn't come at a better time with the last 10 games in the league coming up and a crucial FA Cup game ahead.
All in all, this was a good way to finish February, with a few good results and climbing yet higher in the league and above Middlesbrough at last. It could've been better but hey, this save is supposed to be for the long haul, so it'd just ruin it if I won everything in the first year right?
Progress hasn't been quite as rapid as i'd hoped, but there's reason to be optimistic! We have a good chance in the FA Cup with some favourable draws so far, no slip ups and some big teams being knocked out early on. However, there are of course one or two reasons to be pessimistic... Our fixture schedule hasn't been kind of late in the league and the next month isn't exactly favourable either, neither Baston or Llorente can get into the goal scoring rhythm, we have a temperamental defence that is near incapable of keeping clean sheets and squad morale is as up and down as a yo-yo thanks to the constant mutinies across the squad who all reckon they can play for bigger clubs (and judging by the offers I've rejected they're right). Definitely reason to be optimistic there, somewhere.
Regardless, first of all we head to the Liberty Stadium to play Arsenal who were unbeaten when I first came to the club in November, they've since lost twice in the league and made it to the EFL Cup final. So it's fair to say they're not in bad form, but they have shown they can be beaten in recent months, albeit rarely. So to try and exploit this I line up with new signing Charlie Taylor at left back, hopeful that his superior tackling and marking stats will solidify our vulnerable flanks. And to help solve our goal scoring issues once more I change striker to Borja Baston who has looked good coming off of the bench to effect in recent games. I'm feeling optimistic, it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new month for us to show that we're actually not that bad.
It might look bad, but actually it isn't a horrible result, don't get me wrong, I was hoping for more but given the context of the game it could've been a **** of a lot more worse. We kept the free scoring Arsenal our until the 67th minute, regrettably not long after I made 3 subs to replace the 3 players who weren't performing. Arsenal scored from a corner 9 minutes later to make it 2-0 and the game was gone, but I pushed the team forward in the hope of salvaging something but unfortunately our best chance fell to Kyle Naughton who looked like a deer in headlights in front of goal. Never mind, at the end of the season these won't be the kinds of games that the season hinged on.
In my earlier troubleshooting of what had been going wrong in the save so far I cited player happiness as a big problem. That suddenly isn't the case, Ben Goodwin the clubs "player liaison officer" informs me that suddenly Jack Cork and Gylfi Sigurdsson are happy with staying at the club, which is fantastic news! That is unless they are plotting some sort of evil sabotage of some upcoming games (no foreshadowing going on here).
Buoyed by the news that the "player liaison officer" delivered to me I head into the next game against Southampton again at home, and since we did pretty well for the majority of the game against Arsenal until I went all Claudio Ranieri "Tinkerman" on the team I gave them all another chance in the hope some consistency would breed good results as the team starts to gel. I feel like we're missing Jordi Amat at centre back though, every time either him or Fernandez is injured we ship in goals, Hoorn and Mawson are proving to be useless back up. But hopefully they'll do better today, it's about time we started picking up some points.
Would you look at that? Apparently Jack Cork is the saboteur in the squad. Sent off at 0-0 and less than 6 minutes later Southampton are 2-0 up. Wishing i'd taken Spurs' £25m for Jack Cork aside that is our 2nd home defeat in as many games, not exactly impressive form. We need to drastically improve in the coming weeks and an injury to Borja Baston isn't going to help things. Regardless, we go again next week against opposition that are more our level.
Next up is a crucial game against 16th placed Middlesbrough, it's away from home but it couldn't be more crucial that we get at least something here, they're above us and we need to gain ground on them because not even a win would take us above them, so we need to involve them in a relegation dog fight. And to do that i've made a few changes. Defensively Charlie Taylor wasn't doing the trick so i've replaced him with Neil Taylor which is a good option to have, it feels good to have this kind of depth at full back at last, before i'd have to have played Joey O'Brien out of position. Going into midfield replacing (now club captain) Jack Cork is 20 year old Marc Roca who is on loan from Inter Milan, he may be young and uncomfortable as an anchor man but he doesn't have bad stats for it and he could do with the game time, so i'm crossing my fingers with this one. I've also changed a lot of personnel and the playing style up top. Emre Mor comes in for Montero and Everton switches to the left flank so that they can both play as inside forwards to get close to target man Llorente who starts up front in the place of the injured and misfiring Borja Baston. Best of luck boys, make me look like a tactical genius.
Excellent. Yes I am indeed a tactical mastermind, or i'll keep telling myself that anyway, maybe once we're above 17th i'll even believe it. But only our 6th win of the season is a hard fought one, again no goals from the strikers but Gylfi Sigurdsson is currently the top scorer in the club with 8 goals and he looks good value for even more. As part of my tactical mastermind i'll just claim that the tactic relies on goals from deep rather than strikers. We draw 4 points ahead of Hull and the relegation zone (with them yet to play). Things are finally coming up Millhouse!
It's that time again. It's the FA Cup and we've already met the boards objective for the competition by making it to the 5th round, but since we are facing Preston i'm expecting us to progress even further. There is however one small hiccup in that Fabianski got injured in training and is out for a week, hopefully he'll only miss this game but nevertheless it makes me glad that I rejected bids for my back up keeper in January Nordfelveltlvl (or something Danish) starts in goal instead. With this glaring weakness in the forefront of my mind I keep the rest of the team the same as the one that beat Middlesbrough, except I give club vice-captain Leon Britton a run out at CDM to see if there's life left in the old legs yet or if he's nothing more than a constant whining in the back of the changing room.
Hallelujah! Although, I must admit after Everton scored a fantastic early goal and we controlled possession I just sat back and waited for something to go wrong, but it didn't not until the game was pretty much done at 2-1 at least. Thankfully the players have more bottle than me and saw the game out fantastically. Sorry to dampen the mood immediately after a good performance but...
Our toughest draw so far by a mile, possibly even the toughest draw we could've got altogether, the only team who even compare to Liverpool left in the competition is Manchester United. I'd sort of hoped that this kind of game would come once i'm already in the final, but I guess if you want to win something then you have to play the best teams, and hey, at least we're at home. Perhaps we can intimidate the Liverpool players with some sort of Welsh man sheep mating tradition.
Neil Taylor peforming unspeakable acts on a sheep aside our attentions turns to our next league game which low and behold is at home against Liverpool. This is by all means a dress rehearsal for the FA Cup 6th round, therefore there's literally no limits to the importance that I place on this one game. We're lucky that we get a game to size up our opposition before we head to war with them. With that in mind I play my best team against them that I have available, which includes the returns to fitness of Jordi Amat, Debuchy and Fabianski. It looks like Liverpool return the favour by playing what looks like a full strength team, this should be interesting.
What a game. In all honesty though, we probably should have won, we went 2-0 up and had them on the ropes for most of the game until they brought it back to 2-2, then we went 3-2 up and then with 10 minutes left Liverpool levelled again. Football Manager is a truly heartless game. But, as far as a dress rehearsal goes I was pleased with what I saw, there was no huge disaster, bar our atrocious defending, but Llorente's return to goal scoring form couldn't come at a better time with the last 10 games in the league coming up and a crucial FA Cup game ahead.
All in all, this was a good way to finish February, with a few good results and climbing yet higher in the league and above Middlesbrough at last. It could've been better but hey, this save is supposed to be for the long haul, so it'd just ruin it if I won everything in the first year right?
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H Brownlow
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March Update
After 4 points from 4 Premier Leagues in February our form is unspectacular but on the way up at least. We have started steadily picking up points and things are looking up despite a few hiccups along the way. We're looking more settled, we have a formation and system that is working for us and the new signings are almost all immediately improving the team. Happy days!
With this momentum in mind I head to the first game of March against Burnley at Turf Moor. They are currently overachieving in the league in 11th position which despite a huge points gap I don't think there's a big difference between the sides, if anything i'd say we're better. Nonetheless Burnley shouldn't be underestimated, Sean Dyche is setting them up in a standard 4-4-2 formation which is going to cause us problems when it comes to breaking it down, especially getting passed Michael Keane (whom i'm keen to sign in the summer) who has terrific stats in the game. So to try and overcome them I keep the same winning formula that we've had recently with new signings Emre Mor and Debuchy occupying the right hand side of the pitch and they both look to be settling in excellently. We mustn't forget that we're away from home against a team higher up in the league than us so anything can happen here.
On reflection this was a fair result but at the time of playing I felt that we got away with it there. After all, we went behind twice, but pegged them back almost immediately. But we did have the majority of the possession away from home which is excellent and we managed to match their shot count. Sigurdsson and Llorente really showed their worth to us here as well, both scoring well taken goals to earn us a point, and at this point although i'd have preferred a win, every point counts in a relegation battle.
10 games of the Premier League season left and we sit 2 points above the relegation zone, far from secure of our place in the league next year. However, that will have to wait. Because now it's time for the 6th round of the FA Cup, and our quest to fulfil the terms of Everton's loan agreement by winning the tournament is well underway. There is also the small matter of winning a domestic cup within 4 seasons as stated as one of the goals at the start of the story. But that really pales in comparison to Everton's loan terms... With these goals in mind I select the strongest team I possibly can except from one change which is Debuchy exiting the team making way for Kyle Naughtons return, this is regrettably thanks to Debuchy being cup-tied in the competition. Liverpool seem to be taking it pretty seriously to as they name a full strength team despite them currently being in the hunt for a top 4 place. We have to hope that the Liberty Stadium advantage will see us through this after the goal fest that was the game that took place only a couple weeks previously between us.
Hardly the goal fest that I expected but i'm without doubt delighted! I honestly didn't think we'd be able to edge it, my guess was that we would draw and then we'd lose the replay at Anfield. A mixture of getting the tactics right and the quality of my players shone through here, either that or Liverpool were just really poor. That being said the winning goal from Everton is just proof he wants to stay here in my books, him and Emre Mor dominated the game for us, carrying us forward. Of recent times the other two attackers - Sigurdsson and Llorente - have been our leading lights but Everton and Emre Mor really took this game by the scruff of the neck in many different highlights. Excellent.
You may remember me saying that there was only Liverpool and Manchester United left in the competition whom you would traditionally consider to be Englands 'big teams'. Well it is with great nervousness that I watched as other results from the other 6th round games poured in and here follows the cherry on top of the cake...
Manchester United are out!! To Championship Newcastle nonetheless! And as my reward who would I get in the Semi Final?
The giant killers themselves, Championship opposition in the Semi Final of a domestic cup is in any case a blessing. But they shouldn't be under rated, they were after all the team that knocked out Manchester United, which is even more impressive considering in my last against United I lost 4-1. The only teams left are us, Newcastle, West Brom and Burnley. It's very difficult to call who will win it but at the end of the day we have to really fancy our chances now.
Not caught up in the spirit of the FA Cup because once more he was watching from the bench, Jefferson Montero comes to me telling me that he's not happy with his playing time and to be honest I was planning to replace him at the end of this season anyway. In a way I already have Everton, Harry Wilson and Wayne Routledge in his position so he isn't really needed, and his only impressive stat is his pace, so I give him the Modou Barrow treatment and tell him he's welcome to leave, he humbly agrees it's for the best. I slam the virtual door behind him and paint his name into one of the virtual seats on the bench so he knows his place.
Thankfully there's no more visits from the clubs 'player liaison officer' before our next game against Hull. If I was to describe this game in one word, it would be "crucial". And that's because it is, we're both separated in the table by 2 points, i'm in 16th, they are in 18th. I am though only 4 points from bottom so no pressure. Hull line up in a very defensive formation, with the player they beat me to in January, Nathaniel Chalobah (bought for £2m, what a bargain!) lining up against me, I tell Jack Cork to snap him, no one rejects me like that and gets away with it. However, I line up exactly how I did against Liverpool but tell the team to dominate the ball more than we did against Liverpool. The reason I want to keep the team the same, despite being able to change is for one simple reason, they didn't concede against Liverpool, and i'm desperate for our defense to improve the way our attack has, or at least Sigurdsson has. Needless to say of course Jefferson Montero is plastered to the bench. I'll enjoy watching him suffer.
Finally, conclusive proof of what i've been saying all along, we really shouldn't be involved in a relegation battle, we're a class above this Hull team. Everton scores for the second game in a row and Gylfi Sigurdsson is just at his usual, unbeatable best, scoring twice and getting an assist. I had planned on cashing in on Gylfi in the summer as he's likely to try and force a move but with the way he's playing it's difficult to imagine a way a team like Swansea can replace a player of this kind of class.
Next up is a game against 4th placed Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. There's a pleasant circularity to this fixture. When I first began this challenge my first game was against Chelsea at the Liberty Stadium which I described as a baptism of fire, and given the fact we're still in a relegation battle the fixture again feels like poor timing. However, last time round I beat Chelsea 1-0, and they're lining up largely the same again so in a funny way I feel like i've got the measure of them, they've got no Joey O'Brien to try and exploit this time round so I feel we're largely improved and I think we can give it a good shot.
We're on fire right now! We've gone from not being able to score a goal if our life depended on it to smashing them in for fun. We led for pretty much the whole game and the most pleasing part of the whole win despite the over achievement was the debut of one Liam Cullen. The 17 year old Welsh Striker came on for Llorente - thanks to Borja Baston being injured - because I noticed that John Terry wasn't playing well, so I put on the pacier 17 year old and told him to run at the defence, and several times he got through and despite missing a couple chances he looked sharp. That was until the 82nd minute when he set up Emre Mor for what turned out to be the winning goal. Fantastic. I shouldn't avoid the fact that this was also probably Emre Mor's best game for Swansea since he signed in January with a goal and assist to his name. Positives all around and I couldn't be happier about it!
We end the month in 16th position still, but despite being in the same position as we were at the start of the month the table looks much healthier, we're currently 7 points above Sunderland who are now 18th, our thrashing of Hull pushed them down to 20th in the table showing just how quickly things can change. We're 3 points from 13th place as things stands, it feels good to be looking up the table rather than over my shoulder for once in this save.
As if there wasn't enough to be happy about we pick up 3 different monthly Premier League awards...
This serves as credit to the unbelievable month we've had. To makes things even better the board have even spoke to me for the first time since December when I asked if we could have a new training ground and they told me to get lost to offer me a new year 2 year contract. I try and negotiate it to 4 years, then 3 years, then when i'm rejected again I ask for another £1k a week, they tell me i'm lucky to get a new contract at all, I promptly agree and sign my virtual life away.
Despite a tight board that would put even Daniel Levy to shame i'm feeling a renewed sense of optimism. We're looking good in the FA Cup, performing miracles in both that and the league as we prepare to charge up the table. With 7 crucial games left in the season we've picked up some vital momentum at just the right time and I can only hope it continues for the next 10 years of this save...
After 4 points from 4 Premier Leagues in February our form is unspectacular but on the way up at least. We have started steadily picking up points and things are looking up despite a few hiccups along the way. We're looking more settled, we have a formation and system that is working for us and the new signings are almost all immediately improving the team. Happy days!
With this momentum in mind I head to the first game of March against Burnley at Turf Moor. They are currently overachieving in the league in 11th position which despite a huge points gap I don't think there's a big difference between the sides, if anything i'd say we're better. Nonetheless Burnley shouldn't be underestimated, Sean Dyche is setting them up in a standard 4-4-2 formation which is going to cause us problems when it comes to breaking it down, especially getting passed Michael Keane (whom i'm keen to sign in the summer) who has terrific stats in the game. So to try and overcome them I keep the same winning formula that we've had recently with new signings Emre Mor and Debuchy occupying the right hand side of the pitch and they both look to be settling in excellently. We mustn't forget that we're away from home against a team higher up in the league than us so anything can happen here.
On reflection this was a fair result but at the time of playing I felt that we got away with it there. After all, we went behind twice, but pegged them back almost immediately. But we did have the majority of the possession away from home which is excellent and we managed to match their shot count. Sigurdsson and Llorente really showed their worth to us here as well, both scoring well taken goals to earn us a point, and at this point although i'd have preferred a win, every point counts in a relegation battle.
10 games of the Premier League season left and we sit 2 points above the relegation zone, far from secure of our place in the league next year. However, that will have to wait. Because now it's time for the 6th round of the FA Cup, and our quest to fulfil the terms of Everton's loan agreement by winning the tournament is well underway. There is also the small matter of winning a domestic cup within 4 seasons as stated as one of the goals at the start of the story. But that really pales in comparison to Everton's loan terms... With these goals in mind I select the strongest team I possibly can except from one change which is Debuchy exiting the team making way for Kyle Naughtons return, this is regrettably thanks to Debuchy being cup-tied in the competition. Liverpool seem to be taking it pretty seriously to as they name a full strength team despite them currently being in the hunt for a top 4 place. We have to hope that the Liberty Stadium advantage will see us through this after the goal fest that was the game that took place only a couple weeks previously between us.
Hardly the goal fest that I expected but i'm without doubt delighted! I honestly didn't think we'd be able to edge it, my guess was that we would draw and then we'd lose the replay at Anfield. A mixture of getting the tactics right and the quality of my players shone through here, either that or Liverpool were just really poor. That being said the winning goal from Everton is just proof he wants to stay here in my books, him and Emre Mor dominated the game for us, carrying us forward. Of recent times the other two attackers - Sigurdsson and Llorente - have been our leading lights but Everton and Emre Mor really took this game by the scruff of the neck in many different highlights. Excellent.
You may remember me saying that there was only Liverpool and Manchester United left in the competition whom you would traditionally consider to be Englands 'big teams'. Well it is with great nervousness that I watched as other results from the other 6th round games poured in and here follows the cherry on top of the cake...
Manchester United are out!! To Championship Newcastle nonetheless! And as my reward who would I get in the Semi Final?
The giant killers themselves, Championship opposition in the Semi Final of a domestic cup is in any case a blessing. But they shouldn't be under rated, they were after all the team that knocked out Manchester United, which is even more impressive considering in my last against United I lost 4-1. The only teams left are us, Newcastle, West Brom and Burnley. It's very difficult to call who will win it but at the end of the day we have to really fancy our chances now.
Not caught up in the spirit of the FA Cup because once more he was watching from the bench, Jefferson Montero comes to me telling me that he's not happy with his playing time and to be honest I was planning to replace him at the end of this season anyway. In a way I already have Everton, Harry Wilson and Wayne Routledge in his position so he isn't really needed, and his only impressive stat is his pace, so I give him the Modou Barrow treatment and tell him he's welcome to leave, he humbly agrees it's for the best. I slam the virtual door behind him and paint his name into one of the virtual seats on the bench so he knows his place.
Thankfully there's no more visits from the clubs 'player liaison officer' before our next game against Hull. If I was to describe this game in one word, it would be "crucial". And that's because it is, we're both separated in the table by 2 points, i'm in 16th, they are in 18th. I am though only 4 points from bottom so no pressure. Hull line up in a very defensive formation, with the player they beat me to in January, Nathaniel Chalobah (bought for £2m, what a bargain!) lining up against me, I tell Jack Cork to snap him, no one rejects me like that and gets away with it. However, I line up exactly how I did against Liverpool but tell the team to dominate the ball more than we did against Liverpool. The reason I want to keep the team the same, despite being able to change is for one simple reason, they didn't concede against Liverpool, and i'm desperate for our defense to improve the way our attack has, or at least Sigurdsson has. Needless to say of course Jefferson Montero is plastered to the bench. I'll enjoy watching him suffer.
Finally, conclusive proof of what i've been saying all along, we really shouldn't be involved in a relegation battle, we're a class above this Hull team. Everton scores for the second game in a row and Gylfi Sigurdsson is just at his usual, unbeatable best, scoring twice and getting an assist. I had planned on cashing in on Gylfi in the summer as he's likely to try and force a move but with the way he's playing it's difficult to imagine a way a team like Swansea can replace a player of this kind of class.
Next up is a game against 4th placed Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. There's a pleasant circularity to this fixture. When I first began this challenge my first game was against Chelsea at the Liberty Stadium which I described as a baptism of fire, and given the fact we're still in a relegation battle the fixture again feels like poor timing. However, last time round I beat Chelsea 1-0, and they're lining up largely the same again so in a funny way I feel like i've got the measure of them, they've got no Joey O'Brien to try and exploit this time round so I feel we're largely improved and I think we can give it a good shot.
We're on fire right now! We've gone from not being able to score a goal if our life depended on it to smashing them in for fun. We led for pretty much the whole game and the most pleasing part of the whole win despite the over achievement was the debut of one Liam Cullen. The 17 year old Welsh Striker came on for Llorente - thanks to Borja Baston being injured - because I noticed that John Terry wasn't playing well, so I put on the pacier 17 year old and told him to run at the defence, and several times he got through and despite missing a couple chances he looked sharp. That was until the 82nd minute when he set up Emre Mor for what turned out to be the winning goal. Fantastic. I shouldn't avoid the fact that this was also probably Emre Mor's best game for Swansea since he signed in January with a goal and assist to his name. Positives all around and I couldn't be happier about it!
We end the month in 16th position still, but despite being in the same position as we were at the start of the month the table looks much healthier, we're currently 7 points above Sunderland who are now 18th, our thrashing of Hull pushed them down to 20th in the table showing just how quickly things can change. We're 3 points from 13th place as things stands, it feels good to be looking up the table rather than over my shoulder for once in this save.
As if there wasn't enough to be happy about we pick up 3 different monthly Premier League awards...
This serves as credit to the unbelievable month we've had. To makes things even better the board have even spoke to me for the first time since December when I asked if we could have a new training ground and they told me to get lost to offer me a new year 2 year contract. I try and negotiate it to 4 years, then 3 years, then when i'm rejected again I ask for another £1k a week, they tell me i'm lucky to get a new contract at all, I promptly agree and sign my virtual life away.
Despite a tight board that would put even Daniel Levy to shame i'm feeling a renewed sense of optimism. We're looking good in the FA Cup, performing miracles in both that and the league as we prepare to charge up the table. With 7 crucial games left in the season we've picked up some vital momentum at just the right time and I can only hope it continues for the next 10 years of this save...
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Brane_Orsou
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Making good strides mate, starting to get the team playing how you want to
H Brownlow
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April Update
7 games unbeaten, 5 of those in the league, have seriously turned around our season. Coming into January about a month after taking over I had only won one of my 7 games in December, so to be in this position now where we're heading towards mid table in the league and have a fantastic chance at a cup to go with it! What could possibly go wrong?
Well the first club to try and break my spirit would be Stoke at home, the only players out of this game were Debuchy through injury and Jack Cork through suspension (again). I'm starting to warm to Kyle Naughton though, he was horrendous at first, made to look appealing by the alternative being playing Joey O'Brien, but now he's building up some form, I hope he stays true to that. Stoke on the other hand have a solid team. I looked at Sobhi before the game and he looks immense, him and Shaqiri could do some damage to any team and Shawcross and Butland are a defensive forced that are not to be messed with, even if they are flanked by an ageing Glen Johnson, the incapable sidekick to them like Spongebob to Squidward.
What a game for the neutral! Unfortunately i'm not a neutral, i'm heavily biased and on the back of beating Chelsea at Stamford Bridge being on the backfoot the whole game at home was horrendous to see. On the positive side of things Llorente finally scored, twice no less! Everton keeps up his tremendous form to. But, then again we didn't control possession as i'd hoped and our defence was poor again, spared only by Geoff Cameron missing a penalty in the 90th minute which took Fabianski's rating from a 6.1 to a 7.1. Saving a penalty made the game forget about how he'd already conceded 3 goals apparently, fair play to him if he's found a way to cheat the system but he won't fool me.
It's started to occur to me that i'm starting to accumulate a number of players within my squad that i've blacklisted, for future reference i'm going to dub this my "Naughty list". So far I've got Joey O'Brien, Angel Rangel and Nathan Dyer on there to fester and wait for the summer to dispose of, a mixture of being poor and playing like and then complaining that they're not playing enough is the reason for my disgust at them. Nathan Dyer even had the nerve to claim he was playing well, it's as if he thought I didn't have access to the stats concerning his recent form. Although, perhaps 6.5 is good for him, it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Nevertheless we move on to our next home game against Bournemouth, secretly this game rattled me early in December when we first played them at their ground so i've been looking forward to this game for a while. I put out exactly the same team that played against Stoke but I set out my defensive instructions to deal with the threat of Callum Wilson and Jack Wilshere. If neither one of them leaves in crutches then I know one out of Britton or Fernandez has disobeyed my orders. But yeah, apart from foaming at the mouth for blood, play good football out there boys...
Make no mistake, that was a let off, we're not playing as well as we were that's for sure. Gylfi Sigurdsson scored twice within the first 15 minutes at which point I thought this was going to be a rout. However, neither one of Wilshere or Wilson was injured come the end of the game and we paid the price as Wilshere cut open our defence with a killer pass and Pugh finished it off. From that point on wards our defence had it's work cut out to keep Bournemouth out having already kept out a Callum Wilson penalty on the 45th minute, right before half time. A good result on paper but complacency is setting in a bit I think.
I can complain as much as I want about complacency but at the end of the day we're now 9 games unbeaten, that's just under a quarter of a Premier League season and I couldn't be any more proud of the team. Since we've finally found our stride I make only one change for our game against Sunderland and that's to bring captain Jack Cork back into the team, fairly straight forward really. As it stands they're inside the relegation zone, only just, but it should still be an easy win for us despite their form picking up recently. Just to add some importance to this game though this is our last game before the FA Cup Semi-Final against Newcastle, so our warm up game on Wearside had better carry on our good form for our most important game of the season.
You may have noticed a bit of foreshadowing in my build up to this game, that's because this game literally couldn't have gone any worse. As far as a practice run could go for an FA Cup semi-final we lost our best player - Gylfi Sigurdsson - to injury in the 22nd minute, straight after they scored to make it 1-0, talk about a double blow. To make matters worse they completely dominated the match, Llorente drew the scores level temporarily but that just angered Sunderland to score more. A win for Sunderland takes them outside of the relegation zone. A loss for us just heightens my anxiety for the FA Cup Semi-Final.
To allow you to understand how much of a key player Gylfi is for my tactic and the team i'll run you through some stats. Gylfi is our top goal scorer, our top assist maker, has our highest average rating, our highest pass completion rate and has the most man of the match awards. He truly is crucial to our team, and an injury for the biggest game of the season is unacceptable. But there was light at the end of the tunnel, I get this message pop up telling me that Gylfi has a thigh strain and he is eligible for injections to get through the Semi-Final, for such a big game in the context of our season you're **** right he's getting injections. ****, i'll do it myself if he's feeling squeamish.
The next email I get is from my player liaison officer Ben Goodwin, whenever he comes around it's never good news. There's not a single way I could hate this man more. He could blow up an orphanage full of underprivileged children and I wouldn't feel less of him. Ben gives me the terrific news that Gylfi Snakerdsson has refused to have pain killing injections on his thigh for the biggest game of the entire season.
After i'm done screaming into a pillow I attend the meeting with Gylfi which Ben has kindly arranged for us and it goes exactly as i'd feared, apparently shouting profanities at your laptop doesn't help matters. I insist that Snakerdsson show some commitment to the club and take the injections, he promptly refuses, offers up no good reason and leaves in a hissy fit with his tampon hanging between his legs and I go outside and bludgeon Ben Goodwins head in for making Snakerdsson think his concerns were valid. Then I wake up, take a deep breath and press continue on my laptop, unsure as to whether i've become to consumed in the virtual world. The lines between the virtual and real world are blurring at least that's for sure.
And so I exact my revenge. My naughty list has a new addition to it. Sigurdsson's name will forever be blacklisted in my mind. I can't accept his poor attitude and his bigger than the club mentality, I don't care if he's as good as Joey O'Brien or our best player, no one is better than the club and he clearly thinks he is. Whilst i've been here he's caused more trouble for me than anyone else, no matter how much anyone else has tried. So he leaves me with no choice but to place him in the Under 23's where he'll rot with Jefferson Montero and Joey O'Brien until the end of the season. Ben Goodwin is kind enough to send me an email telling me that Sigurdsson is having some "personal" problems and wants to discuss them, so I tell him to shove his politically correct **** and decline to talk to him or Sigurdsson. Sigurdsson is dead to me, Ben Goodwin is just a shadow of a man to me.
Thanks to the cowardice and lack of professionalism displayed by Gylfi Sigurdsson i'm forced to rotate my team but I refuse to completely change the system that has served me so well in the last 10 games. Taking Sigurdsson's place at the focal point of the team is Everton who is replaced on left wing by Harry Wilson. For our first game at Wembley in this save i'm decidedly unhappy and pessimistic considering the circumstances. We're playing a Championship team here after all. Actually, this is a Championship team who knocked out Manchester United in the last round and who knocked our Manchester City in the round before, by contrast the best teams I've knocked out have been Liverpool and Cardiff. Newcastle have proved themselves to be giant killers and i'm just the latest to be offered up to be embarrassed by 'the spirit of the FA Cup'. Despite this aura of pessimism it's the Semi-Final of a domestic tournament and our first appearance at Wembley in this save and we've got to make the most of it.
Isn't Football Manager fun? This is what having fun feels like right? Right?! Llorente scored an own goal from a corner after 15 minutes and after that the game stalled. We hadn't had a single highlight until Jonjo Shelvey got sent off in the 39th minute giving me a flurry of hope, we had an hour to play against a Championship side. It seemed possible. It wasn't. My front four couldn't produce the goods, Llorente, Wilson and Everton all got hauled off for truly abysmal displays. But really I saw this coming. It's because our tactic has been built around Sigurdsson, that's why Llorente plays, so that he can support Sigurdsson and get him the ball around the box, and Everton just wasn't familiar enough with the position to be able to be a straight replacement for him. That was more than reflected in his 6.5 rating. What if's cross through my mind of what could have been in alternate realities but in truth this is just a harsh reflection of where this team is at. This result will have ramifications for the rest of this season and for the summer transfer window when I look to ship out all of these 'players' that i've inherited that have let me down when put on the greatest stage of all in the footballing world, Wembley. The dream is dead.
Still weeping openly to the sound of Fergie - Big Girls Don't Cry in the background I advance to our next game, against West Brom. Now our big problem this season has been our defence, since January our goalscoring has improved drastically, unfortunately though that is largely thanks to the efforts of he who shall not be named (and i'm not talking about Voldemort). So in order to adjust our system I go defensive, I give Alfie Mawson one last chance to prove himself before the end of the season, he's English and relatively young, I want him to do well. But my coaches inform me that he's playing close to his max potential and truth be told he's currently playing appallingly so I give him one more chance to prove his worth to the team. Apart from that we play 3 at the back and push the full backs up into wing backs. Since there's now no attacking midfielder to support I give Borja Baston another chance up front who like Mawson has been hot and cold this season. But being the merciful God, sorry, I mean manager, that I am I hand him another chance, largely being seduced by his stats again. West Brom field a strong team that includes Martin Odegaard and a couple of my transfer targets for the summer (i'll leave you guessing who). The FM lords know we need a result here, a result will see us likely survive relegation and bounce back from the FA Cup upset.
I'm not Mourinho, i'm not going to try and convince you that there's some sort of conspiracy out there that's working against me, instead i'm just going to be blunt and say we simply weren't good enough. For the 2nd Premier League game in a row we lose against a team in the relegation zone, far from ideal. Only 3 games ago we were 9 games unbeaten, now we've lost 3 in a row, with one of those being at Wembley. I've gone from jubilant to distraught, my mood is worse than that of a bipolar, angsty teenager. And it's all Gylfi Sigurdsson's fault. This is quite a come down.
So, it's now the end of April and for a month that started off with such rife positivity it's ended with infuriating negativity, nevertheless our earlier good form has seen us move to within reach of the mathematical security of avoiding relegation. 5 points clear of West Brom with 3 games left means I only need one more win to get away from the relegation zone, and given the sucker punch that they just gave me nothing would sit better with me than to get them relegated. With 3 games left of the season I look forward to trying out some new systems and line-ups to start preparing my squad for next season with the faults of the squad being so brutally exposed in the last few games.
7 games unbeaten, 5 of those in the league, have seriously turned around our season. Coming into January about a month after taking over I had only won one of my 7 games in December, so to be in this position now where we're heading towards mid table in the league and have a fantastic chance at a cup to go with it! What could possibly go wrong?
Well the first club to try and break my spirit would be Stoke at home, the only players out of this game were Debuchy through injury and Jack Cork through suspension (again). I'm starting to warm to Kyle Naughton though, he was horrendous at first, made to look appealing by the alternative being playing Joey O'Brien, but now he's building up some form, I hope he stays true to that. Stoke on the other hand have a solid team. I looked at Sobhi before the game and he looks immense, him and Shaqiri could do some damage to any team and Shawcross and Butland are a defensive forced that are not to be messed with, even if they are flanked by an ageing Glen Johnson, the incapable sidekick to them like Spongebob to Squidward.
What a game for the neutral! Unfortunately i'm not a neutral, i'm heavily biased and on the back of beating Chelsea at Stamford Bridge being on the backfoot the whole game at home was horrendous to see. On the positive side of things Llorente finally scored, twice no less! Everton keeps up his tremendous form to. But, then again we didn't control possession as i'd hoped and our defence was poor again, spared only by Geoff Cameron missing a penalty in the 90th minute which took Fabianski's rating from a 6.1 to a 7.1. Saving a penalty made the game forget about how he'd already conceded 3 goals apparently, fair play to him if he's found a way to cheat the system but he won't fool me.
It's started to occur to me that i'm starting to accumulate a number of players within my squad that i've blacklisted, for future reference i'm going to dub this my "Naughty list". So far I've got Joey O'Brien, Angel Rangel and Nathan Dyer on there to fester and wait for the summer to dispose of, a mixture of being poor and playing like and then complaining that they're not playing enough is the reason for my disgust at them. Nathan Dyer even had the nerve to claim he was playing well, it's as if he thought I didn't have access to the stats concerning his recent form. Although, perhaps 6.5 is good for him, it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Nevertheless we move on to our next home game against Bournemouth, secretly this game rattled me early in December when we first played them at their ground so i've been looking forward to this game for a while. I put out exactly the same team that played against Stoke but I set out my defensive instructions to deal with the threat of Callum Wilson and Jack Wilshere. If neither one of them leaves in crutches then I know one out of Britton or Fernandez has disobeyed my orders. But yeah, apart from foaming at the mouth for blood, play good football out there boys...
Make no mistake, that was a let off, we're not playing as well as we were that's for sure. Gylfi Sigurdsson scored twice within the first 15 minutes at which point I thought this was going to be a rout. However, neither one of Wilshere or Wilson was injured come the end of the game and we paid the price as Wilshere cut open our defence with a killer pass and Pugh finished it off. From that point on wards our defence had it's work cut out to keep Bournemouth out having already kept out a Callum Wilson penalty on the 45th minute, right before half time. A good result on paper but complacency is setting in a bit I think.
I can complain as much as I want about complacency but at the end of the day we're now 9 games unbeaten, that's just under a quarter of a Premier League season and I couldn't be any more proud of the team. Since we've finally found our stride I make only one change for our game against Sunderland and that's to bring captain Jack Cork back into the team, fairly straight forward really. As it stands they're inside the relegation zone, only just, but it should still be an easy win for us despite their form picking up recently. Just to add some importance to this game though this is our last game before the FA Cup Semi-Final against Newcastle, so our warm up game on Wearside had better carry on our good form for our most important game of the season.
You may have noticed a bit of foreshadowing in my build up to this game, that's because this game literally couldn't have gone any worse. As far as a practice run could go for an FA Cup semi-final we lost our best player - Gylfi Sigurdsson - to injury in the 22nd minute, straight after they scored to make it 1-0, talk about a double blow. To make matters worse they completely dominated the match, Llorente drew the scores level temporarily but that just angered Sunderland to score more. A win for Sunderland takes them outside of the relegation zone. A loss for us just heightens my anxiety for the FA Cup Semi-Final.
To allow you to understand how much of a key player Gylfi is for my tactic and the team i'll run you through some stats. Gylfi is our top goal scorer, our top assist maker, has our highest average rating, our highest pass completion rate and has the most man of the match awards. He truly is crucial to our team, and an injury for the biggest game of the season is unacceptable. But there was light at the end of the tunnel, I get this message pop up telling me that Gylfi has a thigh strain and he is eligible for injections to get through the Semi-Final, for such a big game in the context of our season you're **** right he's getting injections. ****, i'll do it myself if he's feeling squeamish.
The next email I get is from my player liaison officer Ben Goodwin, whenever he comes around it's never good news. There's not a single way I could hate this man more. He could blow up an orphanage full of underprivileged children and I wouldn't feel less of him. Ben gives me the terrific news that Gylfi Snakerdsson has refused to have pain killing injections on his thigh for the biggest game of the entire season.
After i'm done screaming into a pillow I attend the meeting with Gylfi which Ben has kindly arranged for us and it goes exactly as i'd feared, apparently shouting profanities at your laptop doesn't help matters. I insist that Snakerdsson show some commitment to the club and take the injections, he promptly refuses, offers up no good reason and leaves in a hissy fit with his tampon hanging between his legs and I go outside and bludgeon Ben Goodwins head in for making Snakerdsson think his concerns were valid. Then I wake up, take a deep breath and press continue on my laptop, unsure as to whether i've become to consumed in the virtual world. The lines between the virtual and real world are blurring at least that's for sure.
And so I exact my revenge. My naughty list has a new addition to it. Sigurdsson's name will forever be blacklisted in my mind. I can't accept his poor attitude and his bigger than the club mentality, I don't care if he's as good as Joey O'Brien or our best player, no one is better than the club and he clearly thinks he is. Whilst i've been here he's caused more trouble for me than anyone else, no matter how much anyone else has tried. So he leaves me with no choice but to place him in the Under 23's where he'll rot with Jefferson Montero and Joey O'Brien until the end of the season. Ben Goodwin is kind enough to send me an email telling me that Sigurdsson is having some "personal" problems and wants to discuss them, so I tell him to shove his politically correct **** and decline to talk to him or Sigurdsson. Sigurdsson is dead to me, Ben Goodwin is just a shadow of a man to me.
Thanks to the cowardice and lack of professionalism displayed by Gylfi Sigurdsson i'm forced to rotate my team but I refuse to completely change the system that has served me so well in the last 10 games. Taking Sigurdsson's place at the focal point of the team is Everton who is replaced on left wing by Harry Wilson. For our first game at Wembley in this save i'm decidedly unhappy and pessimistic considering the circumstances. We're playing a Championship team here after all. Actually, this is a Championship team who knocked out Manchester United in the last round and who knocked our Manchester City in the round before, by contrast the best teams I've knocked out have been Liverpool and Cardiff. Newcastle have proved themselves to be giant killers and i'm just the latest to be offered up to be embarrassed by 'the spirit of the FA Cup'. Despite this aura of pessimism it's the Semi-Final of a domestic tournament and our first appearance at Wembley in this save and we've got to make the most of it.
Isn't Football Manager fun? This is what having fun feels like right? Right?! Llorente scored an own goal from a corner after 15 minutes and after that the game stalled. We hadn't had a single highlight until Jonjo Shelvey got sent off in the 39th minute giving me a flurry of hope, we had an hour to play against a Championship side. It seemed possible. It wasn't. My front four couldn't produce the goods, Llorente, Wilson and Everton all got hauled off for truly abysmal displays. But really I saw this coming. It's because our tactic has been built around Sigurdsson, that's why Llorente plays, so that he can support Sigurdsson and get him the ball around the box, and Everton just wasn't familiar enough with the position to be able to be a straight replacement for him. That was more than reflected in his 6.5 rating. What if's cross through my mind of what could have been in alternate realities but in truth this is just a harsh reflection of where this team is at. This result will have ramifications for the rest of this season and for the summer transfer window when I look to ship out all of these 'players' that i've inherited that have let me down when put on the greatest stage of all in the footballing world, Wembley. The dream is dead.
Still weeping openly to the sound of Fergie - Big Girls Don't Cry in the background I advance to our next game, against West Brom. Now our big problem this season has been our defence, since January our goalscoring has improved drastically, unfortunately though that is largely thanks to the efforts of he who shall not be named (and i'm not talking about Voldemort). So in order to adjust our system I go defensive, I give Alfie Mawson one last chance to prove himself before the end of the season, he's English and relatively young, I want him to do well. But my coaches inform me that he's playing close to his max potential and truth be told he's currently playing appallingly so I give him one more chance to prove his worth to the team. Apart from that we play 3 at the back and push the full backs up into wing backs. Since there's now no attacking midfielder to support I give Borja Baston another chance up front who like Mawson has been hot and cold this season. But being the merciful God, sorry, I mean manager, that I am I hand him another chance, largely being seduced by his stats again. West Brom field a strong team that includes Martin Odegaard and a couple of my transfer targets for the summer (i'll leave you guessing who). The FM lords know we need a result here, a result will see us likely survive relegation and bounce back from the FA Cup upset.
I'm not Mourinho, i'm not going to try and convince you that there's some sort of conspiracy out there that's working against me, instead i'm just going to be blunt and say we simply weren't good enough. For the 2nd Premier League game in a row we lose against a team in the relegation zone, far from ideal. Only 3 games ago we were 9 games unbeaten, now we've lost 3 in a row, with one of those being at Wembley. I've gone from jubilant to distraught, my mood is worse than that of a bipolar, angsty teenager. And it's all Gylfi Sigurdsson's fault. This is quite a come down.
So, it's now the end of April and for a month that started off with such rife positivity it's ended with infuriating negativity, nevertheless our earlier good form has seen us move to within reach of the mathematical security of avoiding relegation. 5 points clear of West Brom with 3 games left means I only need one more win to get away from the relegation zone, and given the sucker punch that they just gave me nothing would sit better with me than to get them relegated. With 3 games left of the season I look forward to trying out some new systems and line-ups to start preparing my squad for next season with the faults of the squad being so brutally exposed in the last few games.
Brane_Orsou
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Whilst I'm glad to see Newcastle in the final it's been a hard month for you. Can't believe your key player wouldn't take the injections and then queried why he was in the U23's.
Anyway back for him or will he be sold to the highest bidder in the summer?
Anyway back for him or will he be sold to the highest bidder in the summer?
H Brownlow
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Absolutely not! He's ostracised now, I don't want to hear about him now until PSG come back for him in the summer, i'll take anything £30m+ for him. He may be my best player but I don't have time for a player that you just can't rely on when you need them most..
H Brownlow
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May Update
Our season is pretty much done, we're all but safe in the Premier League and the FA Cup dream is dead. All we can do now is mathematically secure our safety and experiment with systems in the next couple league games to find out how best to play next season. The first experiment will be against Manchester City, and as things stand they sit 6th in the league behind Liverpool in 5th and WATFORD in 4th, Watford?! Naturally i'm not kind to Guardiola for his failure...
Calling for a fellow managers sacking is probably a little bit taboo among the football management community in real life or in game but with my team in dire form I need to look for any sort of advantage I can get over the opposition. We've got a mixed record against teams that are considered the 'elite' in the league so I look to set up defensively, keeping the same system that I used last game, but since Alfie Mawson was cast to the bottomless pit that is my U23's Van der Hoorn comes in to cover for him before he suffers a similar fate at the end of the season. Apart from that the team remains largely the same apart from Llorente comes back in to fight for his place and his 75k a week salary.
One for the fans this, we went 1-0 down in the 11th minute to a scrappy Nolito goal after Van der Hoorn gave the ball away (another one for my naughty list) and I feared for the worst. However, Everton scored 20 minutes later to level it up and I must say of all of the players i'm about to let go this summer Everton's loan deal coming to an end is one I feel that I am going to regret, he's been fantastic recently. After Emre Mor assisted Everton's goal he went off and scored his own, he too has come into form recently and at the age of just 19 I hope this is a sign of things to come from him, the minimum fee release clause in his contract of just £20m worries me though. Regardless we win 2-1 against Manchester City in their own back yard.
So there we have it, with an unlikely win against Manchester City away from home we have fulfilled our mission objective of avoiding relegation. However, if i'm to do well i'm going to need to overhaul this squad because i've been consistently underwhelmed with what i've seen from them. Nevertheless, the first of our last 2 games of the season is against Leicester, the reigning champions, again away from home. I line up with exactly the same team because again we're playing away against a good team. I tell my players I have low expectations for them, and this could well prove to be Everton's last game for the club before his loan runs out so I wave a goodbye to him.
Well, there's not usually much shame in losing to the reigning champions and I don't feel any here either. They may not be tearing the league up this year but they're still good and we ran them close. Llorente looked like he might even have been worth a fraction of his wages this week as he scored early on and did nothing for the rest of the game. We struggled to keep hold of the ball though and we didn't have the bite to capitalise on Leicester being down to 10 men late on, so i'll be trying a different system next game that promotes the passing game that I want to get this team passing so next season I can build a team around the 'Swansea way'.
Going into the last game of the season i'm making a few big changes which include playing a 4-3-3 formation reminiscent of that used by Guardiola's Barca in their glory days. My David Villa on the left wing will be 20 year old Harry Wilson, pretty much the same player really... Liam Cullen also gets his first start for me because, well, he can't be any more inconsistent than Borja Baston or Llorente. Roca also comes in at centre midfield because i'd rather give a game to him than Leon Britton who's consistently poor, old and moody. In case you haven't guessed already he's currently training with the U23's too. I just hope we can lay down some ground work for next season here by getting something against a full strength Everton team.
Ecstatic with this, 61% possession 17 shots, Harry Wilson with the winning goal it truly is the perfect end to the season. The only blemish on the game was the fact that Liam Cullen played a 6.3 after missing a host of chances, but I refuse to lose faith in youth. Even if I do have to send him out on loan next season, but i'll see if I sell Baston or Llorente to make space for him or any other signings.
And it's over, we finish 16th in the league on 42 points, comfortably avoiding relegation in the process. Despite not playing the last 6 games of the season Gylfi Sigurdsson remains the top scorer on 14 goals, top assister on 9 assists and most of the match awards with 5. He was by all accounts our top player, which makes his betrayal all the more detrimental and disappointing to our season, but I won't make that mistake next year. He'll be shipped out ASAP and i'll build the team around our possession philosophy.
The personal highlight from this season was doing the double over Chelsea in the league, that was a mighty accomplishment. Taking over Swansea when they were 19th made this season difficult, but that's just part and parcel of the challenge. I've seen enough from certain players in the team to be optimistic looking forward. I've told the team I expect a mid-table finish, but really i'm hoping for the top half and a cup run again, hoping that this time we can go one more and get to a final. That's the dream at least.
Our season is pretty much done, we're all but safe in the Premier League and the FA Cup dream is dead. All we can do now is mathematically secure our safety and experiment with systems in the next couple league games to find out how best to play next season. The first experiment will be against Manchester City, and as things stand they sit 6th in the league behind Liverpool in 5th and WATFORD in 4th, Watford?! Naturally i'm not kind to Guardiola for his failure...
Calling for a fellow managers sacking is probably a little bit taboo among the football management community in real life or in game but with my team in dire form I need to look for any sort of advantage I can get over the opposition. We've got a mixed record against teams that are considered the 'elite' in the league so I look to set up defensively, keeping the same system that I used last game, but since Alfie Mawson was cast to the bottomless pit that is my U23's Van der Hoorn comes in to cover for him before he suffers a similar fate at the end of the season. Apart from that the team remains largely the same apart from Llorente comes back in to fight for his place and his 75k a week salary.
One for the fans this, we went 1-0 down in the 11th minute to a scrappy Nolito goal after Van der Hoorn gave the ball away (another one for my naughty list) and I feared for the worst. However, Everton scored 20 minutes later to level it up and I must say of all of the players i'm about to let go this summer Everton's loan deal coming to an end is one I feel that I am going to regret, he's been fantastic recently. After Emre Mor assisted Everton's goal he went off and scored his own, he too has come into form recently and at the age of just 19 I hope this is a sign of things to come from him, the minimum fee release clause in his contract of just £20m worries me though. Regardless we win 2-1 against Manchester City in their own back yard.
So there we have it, with an unlikely win against Manchester City away from home we have fulfilled our mission objective of avoiding relegation. However, if i'm to do well i'm going to need to overhaul this squad because i've been consistently underwhelmed with what i've seen from them. Nevertheless, the first of our last 2 games of the season is against Leicester, the reigning champions, again away from home. I line up with exactly the same team because again we're playing away against a good team. I tell my players I have low expectations for them, and this could well prove to be Everton's last game for the club before his loan runs out so I wave a goodbye to him.
Well, there's not usually much shame in losing to the reigning champions and I don't feel any here either. They may not be tearing the league up this year but they're still good and we ran them close. Llorente looked like he might even have been worth a fraction of his wages this week as he scored early on and did nothing for the rest of the game. We struggled to keep hold of the ball though and we didn't have the bite to capitalise on Leicester being down to 10 men late on, so i'll be trying a different system next game that promotes the passing game that I want to get this team passing so next season I can build a team around the 'Swansea way'.
Going into the last game of the season i'm making a few big changes which include playing a 4-3-3 formation reminiscent of that used by Guardiola's Barca in their glory days. My David Villa on the left wing will be 20 year old Harry Wilson, pretty much the same player really... Liam Cullen also gets his first start for me because, well, he can't be any more inconsistent than Borja Baston or Llorente. Roca also comes in at centre midfield because i'd rather give a game to him than Leon Britton who's consistently poor, old and moody. In case you haven't guessed already he's currently training with the U23's too. I just hope we can lay down some ground work for next season here by getting something against a full strength Everton team.
Ecstatic with this, 61% possession 17 shots, Harry Wilson with the winning goal it truly is the perfect end to the season. The only blemish on the game was the fact that Liam Cullen played a 6.3 after missing a host of chances, but I refuse to lose faith in youth. Even if I do have to send him out on loan next season, but i'll see if I sell Baston or Llorente to make space for him or any other signings.
And it's over, we finish 16th in the league on 42 points, comfortably avoiding relegation in the process. Despite not playing the last 6 games of the season Gylfi Sigurdsson remains the top scorer on 14 goals, top assister on 9 assists and most of the match awards with 5. He was by all accounts our top player, which makes his betrayal all the more detrimental and disappointing to our season, but I won't make that mistake next year. He'll be shipped out ASAP and i'll build the team around our possession philosophy.
The personal highlight from this season was doing the double over Chelsea in the league, that was a mighty accomplishment. Taking over Swansea when they were 19th made this season difficult, but that's just part and parcel of the challenge. I've seen enough from certain players in the team to be optimistic looking forward. I've told the team I expect a mid-table finish, but really i'm hoping for the top half and a cup run again, hoping that this time we can go one more and get to a final. That's the dream at least.
Brane_Orsou
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Warford in 4th is just crazy! Survived with ease in the end though and looking forward to seeing who comes in during the summer and how much you can raise from those you ship out? Which team got promoted?
Cbarber871
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i have just started mine an i got middlebrough
H Brownlow
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Yeah that'll be an interesting one because a lot of the players i'm aiming to get rid of are just worthless dead wood so apart from Sigurdsson I don't anticipate many other big money departures unless they force my hand.. And that's an interesting question because Newcastle nearly lost it on the last day of the season when they dropped points but won on GD anyway!
View attachment 99485
H Brownlow
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That's awesome, let me know how you do with them! They're a good team, you should be able to do better with them than how they're doing in real life! Negredo will do the business for you by himself I think haha. I have to admit I was kind of hoping for them in this challenge simply because they have such amazing facilities, you're granted a top player in the youth intakes! The best I got at Swansea was a "defensive striker" with 6 finishing...
Cbarber871
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aye but with time you may get a decent player
H Brownlow
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That's the hope! I just need to get some money in the club so the board thinks we can afford to upgrade the facilities!
H Brownlow
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Summer Transfer Update
It's a new dawn, it's a new day and i'm feeling... Well, i'm feeling good. I'm currently sat on the 5th August 2017 the day before the first game of the season against Bournemouth and I feel confident. But first, I must take you through my summer activity. You'll notice there's some sizeable departures in the picture below.
Sigurdsson went almost immediately, perhaps the only player in history to go from the Swansea reserves to PSG and at £34m I was happy to see the back of him. Unfortunately though the board is so tight that they only give me half of that to spend, despite me asking to receive more. The board seems intent on making this challenge even harder. If i'm to work with the tight budget i've been sent I needed to sell more players and get the really big earners who don't contribute enough off my wage bill. As my biggest earner and even more inconsistent Llorente went to Everton for £3.4m, presumably as their replacement for Lukaku who moved to Chelsea for £35m. Other noticeable outs include Dyer, Tabanou, Montero, Bartley, Der Hoorn, Mawson, Gomis, Britton and Routledge. All dead wood who were on sizeable wages and make room for the following players to come in...
For an original £9m rising to £12m Forsberg is the ruby jewel to my crown, I have 2 young promising left wingers already so I needed a top winger to play on the left for the next couple years and Forsberg is definitely that, with any luck he'll play well and he'll triple in value by the time I have some replacements lined up for him. But for now the hope is he can carry us through games, creating chances and scoring goals as an inside forward cutting inside. I'm surprised he wanted to sign for us but delighted he did.
£8m for a 29 year old may not look like a good deal on the face of it, but he is one of two West Brom players that I signed after they got relegated. And let's face it, his stats are incredible, he's a definite upgrade on what I had already, I just need my full backs to develop and i'll have a solid defence. Evans is certainly good enough to remain in the team for about another 3 years, and in that time we can progress up the table and he'll be brilliant for tutoring youngsters.
Rajkovic is a name you might recognise. He's 21 and already as good as Fabianski despite being 10 years younger than him, his talent is phenomenal. £7m for a goalkeeper may have taken a chunk out of my budget now but if he spends the next 5-10 years here getting better then it will look like a bargain, and on 40k per week wages for a first team player he fits within my wage structure to.
It occurred to me that i'm light on options in midfield now i've let some loan signings and Leon Britton go, so to back up Jack Cork I signed Besic from Everton for £5.75m. My assistant doesn't seem to think much to him but his stats look brilliant for the role he'll play in the team and his wages aren't excessive at 30k a week. He'll make fantastic back-up and might even get promoted to the first team if he plays well.
I'll admit, I was struggling to find a good full back, and I wasn't entirely happy with just having Kyle Naughton at right back. But I am still happy with what I found, not a regular starter at United but he's still amassed some impressive stats and I think I can get the best out of him. For just £3.5m and £17.5k a week he's a bargain.
That's right, we signed a Real Madrid player, he's even played for them and everything. However, he will likely be back up for Ki Sung-Yeung and since he's already doubled in value i'm sure he'll progress and represent a good deal for us by the time he leaves.
It took a lot of negotiating, a lot of rejections. But I finally got my man. Berahino has the potential to be a fantastic striker for Swansea and England, and at just 24 it's an opportunity to sign him for as little as £3m that I could not turn down. We signed him despite competition from Chelsea and Tottenham, so for that reason i'm delighted. There was goals that needed replacing in the team after the departure of Sigurdsson and i'm confident that Berahino, Forsberg and Mor can be the front line to do it.
This signing will be simply for backup, with this I expect to send Liam Cullen out on loan to get some first team experience and Bamford will back up Berahino and Baston, he has some good stats and if a couple more go up one or two he'll be a great striker, and since he cost £2m and is on £15k a week he makes for a bargain to add depth to the team.
These two signings were made simply to fill out my squad, I needed some more depth at central midfield thanks to an incident with another new signing which i'll deal with next.. But Joe Gomez also comes in as my 4th choice centre back behind, Fernandez, Amat and Evans and he can also play either right back or left back, making him ideal.
What a player. What a deal. I got the guy on a free! He has some fantastic stats to, I was so keen to sign him on a free in fact that I signed him up on a pre-contract in March. Smart right? Wrong. Turns out no less than a couple weeks before he was due to come and sign for me he damaged cruciate ligaments whilst he was training with France. Typical. Now he misses the next 7-9 months and forced me to sign Ruben Loftus Cheek on loan because my budget was already depleted. So now i'm paying 58k a week to him for him to use my physios for the bulk of his first season with the club. He went from being an ideal signing with experience in the Premier League to being a shadow over an otherwise brilliant summer transfer window.
That concludes my transfer business. Now the only other component of pre-season that needs to be dealt with is a quick briefing of our pre-season tour to China where we played the following teams...
The standout performers from these games were Berahino who scored 3, Emre Mor who scored 3 and Jack Cork who scored twice. To win 4 out of 5 games is fantastic, and we've built up the fitness and tactical knowledge to go into the Premier League season quietly confident of building on our 16th place finish last year, I feel like the team is better now so i'm hoping to see progress on the field. Roll on Bournemouth.
It's a new dawn, it's a new day and i'm feeling... Well, i'm feeling good. I'm currently sat on the 5th August 2017 the day before the first game of the season against Bournemouth and I feel confident. But first, I must take you through my summer activity. You'll notice there's some sizeable departures in the picture below.
Sigurdsson went almost immediately, perhaps the only player in history to go from the Swansea reserves to PSG and at £34m I was happy to see the back of him. Unfortunately though the board is so tight that they only give me half of that to spend, despite me asking to receive more. The board seems intent on making this challenge even harder. If i'm to work with the tight budget i've been sent I needed to sell more players and get the really big earners who don't contribute enough off my wage bill. As my biggest earner and even more inconsistent Llorente went to Everton for £3.4m, presumably as their replacement for Lukaku who moved to Chelsea for £35m. Other noticeable outs include Dyer, Tabanou, Montero, Bartley, Der Hoorn, Mawson, Gomis, Britton and Routledge. All dead wood who were on sizeable wages and make room for the following players to come in...
For an original £9m rising to £12m Forsberg is the ruby jewel to my crown, I have 2 young promising left wingers already so I needed a top winger to play on the left for the next couple years and Forsberg is definitely that, with any luck he'll play well and he'll triple in value by the time I have some replacements lined up for him. But for now the hope is he can carry us through games, creating chances and scoring goals as an inside forward cutting inside. I'm surprised he wanted to sign for us but delighted he did.
£8m for a 29 year old may not look like a good deal on the face of it, but he is one of two West Brom players that I signed after they got relegated. And let's face it, his stats are incredible, he's a definite upgrade on what I had already, I just need my full backs to develop and i'll have a solid defence. Evans is certainly good enough to remain in the team for about another 3 years, and in that time we can progress up the table and he'll be brilliant for tutoring youngsters.
Rajkovic is a name you might recognise. He's 21 and already as good as Fabianski despite being 10 years younger than him, his talent is phenomenal. £7m for a goalkeeper may have taken a chunk out of my budget now but if he spends the next 5-10 years here getting better then it will look like a bargain, and on 40k per week wages for a first team player he fits within my wage structure to.
It occurred to me that i'm light on options in midfield now i've let some loan signings and Leon Britton go, so to back up Jack Cork I signed Besic from Everton for £5.75m. My assistant doesn't seem to think much to him but his stats look brilliant for the role he'll play in the team and his wages aren't excessive at 30k a week. He'll make fantastic back-up and might even get promoted to the first team if he plays well.
I'll admit, I was struggling to find a good full back, and I wasn't entirely happy with just having Kyle Naughton at right back. But I am still happy with what I found, not a regular starter at United but he's still amassed some impressive stats and I think I can get the best out of him. For just £3.5m and £17.5k a week he's a bargain.
That's right, we signed a Real Madrid player, he's even played for them and everything. However, he will likely be back up for Ki Sung-Yeung and since he's already doubled in value i'm sure he'll progress and represent a good deal for us by the time he leaves.
It took a lot of negotiating, a lot of rejections. But I finally got my man. Berahino has the potential to be a fantastic striker for Swansea and England, and at just 24 it's an opportunity to sign him for as little as £3m that I could not turn down. We signed him despite competition from Chelsea and Tottenham, so for that reason i'm delighted. There was goals that needed replacing in the team after the departure of Sigurdsson and i'm confident that Berahino, Forsberg and Mor can be the front line to do it.
This signing will be simply for backup, with this I expect to send Liam Cullen out on loan to get some first team experience and Bamford will back up Berahino and Baston, he has some good stats and if a couple more go up one or two he'll be a great striker, and since he cost £2m and is on £15k a week he makes for a bargain to add depth to the team.
These two signings were made simply to fill out my squad, I needed some more depth at central midfield thanks to an incident with another new signing which i'll deal with next.. But Joe Gomez also comes in as my 4th choice centre back behind, Fernandez, Amat and Evans and he can also play either right back or left back, making him ideal.
What a player. What a deal. I got the guy on a free! He has some fantastic stats to, I was so keen to sign him on a free in fact that I signed him up on a pre-contract in March. Smart right? Wrong. Turns out no less than a couple weeks before he was due to come and sign for me he damaged cruciate ligaments whilst he was training with France. Typical. Now he misses the next 7-9 months and forced me to sign Ruben Loftus Cheek on loan because my budget was already depleted. So now i'm paying 58k a week to him for him to use my physios for the bulk of his first season with the club. He went from being an ideal signing with experience in the Premier League to being a shadow over an otherwise brilliant summer transfer window.
That concludes my transfer business. Now the only other component of pre-season that needs to be dealt with is a quick briefing of our pre-season tour to China where we played the following teams...
The standout performers from these games were Berahino who scored 3, Emre Mor who scored 3 and Jack Cork who scored twice. To win 4 out of 5 games is fantastic, and we've built up the fitness and tactical knowledge to go into the Premier League season quietly confident of building on our 16th place finish last year, I feel like the team is better now so i'm hoping to see progress on the field. Roll on Bournemouth.
Cbarber871
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Some very good signings there
Brane_Orsou
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Some decent players there, fingers crossed for the coming season!
H Brownlow
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Thanks guys, hopefully it will be building towards something!
foreveryyoung
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Forsberg Varela and Rajkovic have all cost over £30m at some point in my save so good buys imo
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