Improving Ireland with Sligo Rovers

Season Review 2020

Airtricity Premier League: Winners
FAI Cup: Lost in QF to Bohemian
League of Ireland Cup: Lost in 1st​ Round to Longford
Scottish Challenge Cup: Semi Final (to be played in February 2021)
President’s Cup: Winners
Europa League: Knocked out in 4th Qualifying Round by Genk

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So for the 2nd​ time in 3 seasons we won the league. Our tally of 76 points is our highest point tally to date. Elsewhere Derry and Longford were promoted from the First Division

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Incredibly Cabinteely were relegated but won the cup, so will be playing in the Europa League next year!

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Kelechi Nwakali was unsurprisingly Player of the Year in front of two other Sligo players. He also set the highest average rating.

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But despite that he was not 1 of the 6 Sligo players in the team of the year. Makes perfect sense.

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One of those who was in the team of the year was 17 year old Shane Dunne, who has been at the club for 18 months after signing from Institute in Northern Ireland and is coming on nicely.

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Another was Shayne Lavery, who won the golden boot with 21 goals from 32 games.

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We played 53 games this season, with 5 players scoring 10+ goals

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And again we’ve been given a very healthy budget but we’ll be limited to frees and loans as the board still won’t let us scout outside Ireland!

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Irish Football Summary – 2020

National Team Ranking: 58th (was 51st in 2019)
Nation Coefficient Ranking: 35th (was 35th in 2019)
Irish Teams in Europe: Shamrock Europa Group Stage, Dundalk Europa 3rd​ Round, Bohemian Europa 1st Round.

Next season is all about our European run; we need to get to the Europa League Group Stage at a minimum!​
 
2021 Season Preview

As we aim to progress as a club that means making tough decisions like letting Lee Lynch and Mikey Drennan leave.

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They were our best players in our first season but sadly are no longer good enough so have left after their contracts expired.

A less upsetting departure is that of Jordan McEneff to Hull City for £300,000. We got him for free from Arsenal this time last year and he scored 7 goals in 43 games. Cheers Hull!

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As for the transfers in... it was difficult. Board restrictions mean we can only spend a maximum wage of £2,500 a week on a player so it was difficult to attract real quality.

We have however made some decent free transfers in Ethan Ebanks-Landell, Will Keane, Rory Feely and the loan signing of Samir Carruthers.

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Our most exciting signing is 18 year old Ryan Cassidy from Northern Irish club Larne, who hopefully we’ll be able to keep at the club for a number of years.

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And we’ve managed to extend the loans of our star players from last season.

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We only have Nwakali and Lewis for 5 months as their contracts expire at the end of June. We will try to get both on free transfers but their wage demands will probably be too high.

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Alpha Dionkou and Conor Masterson are with us for the whole year. Masterson is entering his 4th​ year on loan at Sligo!

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That’s enough screenshots of players for one post I think!

As expected we’re predicted to win the league.

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And we have 9 players in the media dream XI.

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Our season starts with the Scottish Challenge Cup semi-final against Welsh side Gap Connah's Quay FC, as you do.

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But this season is all about our Champions League run, which will not be until we’ve played over half of our league games.​
 
Tactic Trouble

In our first game of the season we beat Gap Connah's Quay FC in the semi final of the Scottish Challenge Cup.

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And that put us in the final against Scottish Championship side Ayr United.

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Immediately after that we played in the Irish equivilant of the Community Shield against Cabinteely and won 1-0.

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And we followed up that HUGE trophy with a win against Ayr a month later in the Challenge Cup final, beating them on penalties.

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That secured possibly the most underwhelming double in football history. The Irn-Bru Cup and the Irish President’s Cup

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I’m pretty sure we’re the first non-Scottish side to win the Irn-Bru/Scottish Challenge Cup but in all honesty I have no idea what the point of the competition is.

If anyone could enlighten me that’d be great. It seems like the Scottish version of the Checkatrade Trophy but worse.

Back to the glamour of the SSE Airtricity Premier League where we made a solid start, winning 5 of our first 6 games.

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Then we played Derry.

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This game convinced me to sack off the tactic, there is no way we should be losing 4-1 to anyone in this league never mind recently promoted Derry.

However this isn’t an isolated issue, we’ve had problems since the end of last season. For a team with the best goalkeeper and best defenders in the league, it baffles me just how much we concede. 2 clean sheets in 10 games this season is not acceptable.

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I’ve definitely been naive as we’ve constantly conceded from crosses or from chances created in wide areas and that’s because only our wing backs provide width in a 5-2-1-2 formation.

A new tactic is needed and it’s going to have to be one that’s 4 at the back and contains either wingers or inside forwards… the slight problem is that we don’t have any wide players at the club!​
 
Well done on your double! Interested to see how Keane will get on being an Ipswich fan and him joining us IRL. You could try a 4-3-1-2 formation?
 
NashBigginss said:
Well done on your double! Interested to see how Keane will get on being an Ipswich fan and him joining us IRL. You could try a 4-3-1-2 formation?
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Keane is a weird one as I signed him knowing he was a Championship quality striker, which should mean he'd tear apart Ireland, but he's not rated highly by my scouts or assistants and hasn't started this season well.

And I'm concocting a 4-3-3 which seems to be going well so far. Need to go with full backs and wingers as we were just getting killed in wide areas every game. I've always gone with a 4-3-1-2 or 5-2-1-2 in FM but this year I can't seem to get it to work, so looks like Keane will have to be played as an inside forward for a while!
 
Just caught up on this - thoroughly enjoyable story so far! Hopefully you can break through into the group stages of the Europa League next season.
 
Tactical Genius

So… a new tactic has been created.

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I have some weird thing in FM where I don’t like playing wingers so am training up a lot of players as inside forwards. Hopefully we can sign some naturals in that position when the contracts of players at English clubs expire in a couple of months.

And how is the tactic coping?

Very well actually. We’ve won 9 of our 10 games using it.

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It was a record 8-1 win against Longford that convinced me that a 4-3-3 was the way to go, although I’m still unsure what role my striker should play.

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A 5-2-1-2 was good to me but there was nothing I could do about teams who were strong in wide areas whereas a 4-3-3 covers all bases defensively.

The results mean we are doing well in the league. We’re 2 points clear with a game in hand.

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Our star player this season has been box-to-box midfielder Matty Willock.

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He has 9 goals and 3 assists in 11 league games. That makes him third highest scorer in the league, behind former Sligo man Drennan who joined Cork at the start of the year.

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Also one of our 2 Northern Irish midfield regens, Shane Dunne, has made his senior debut for his nation.

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So it is all looking fine again!

We have 5 more games until the summer break and then we will see how our tactic fares in the qualifying round of the Champions League!​
 
Inspired tactical change mate! That is a fantastic run of results. Even the 'bad' result was an away draw to a fancied opposition. You must be chuffed.
 
Yeti01 said:
Inspired tactical change mate! That is a fantastic run of results. Even the 'bad' result was an away draw to a fancied opposition. You must be chuffed.
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Yeah it's doing very well considering we don't have any natural wide players at the club! I'm hoping it's good enough to get us through the Champions League qualifiers though.
 
Sir Mick McCarthy

It seems we are the best team in Ireland by a mile. We can’t stop winning at the moment and, despite not having any inside forwards, the 4-3-3 is working a treat.

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For the first time in the save we’re keeping regular clean sheets and in Ryan Cassidy we look like we have a real player on our hands.

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In all honesty it’d be a miracle if we don’t win the league, we’re 13 points ahead and have a goal difference of +53

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For some reason in this save Dundalk have been awful. They recently sacked their manager and were linked with the CSKA Sofia manager by the name of NESTOR EL MAESTRO!

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There was only one person that Dundalk could get who would be a better manager than El Maestro… Mick McCarthy is now the boss at Dundalk!

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And as if the news couldn’t get any better we’ve done some great business after the contracts of players at English clubs expired in June, which is halfway through our season.

We’ve managed to get Adam Lewis and Kelechi Nwakali on free transfers for relatively modest wages. Both have been key players since joining on loan last season.

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We’ve also signed Dylan Levitt after his Man United contract expired. He was on loan at Sligo in the 2019 season.

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We’ve also signed 4 players released from the under 18 sides of Premier League clubs. It’s my intention to try and get these players to other teams in Ireland if they are not good enough for us. After all, this save is as much about Ireland as it is Sligo.

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Finally, the draw for the first qualifying round of the Champions League has been made.

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We’ve been given a harsh draw against Azerbaijan champions Qarabag. It’s winnable but there were far worse teams who we could’ve got.

Time to see what the new formation is made of in Europe!​
 
Champions League Qualifiers

Our European exploits for 2021 began with a trip to Azerbaijan to face Qarabag.

Nothing less than the Europa League group stage will do this year, so a 3-0 win was a good way to start things off.

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Somehow we lost the home leg, but we did enough in the away game to see ourselves through to the next round.

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It’s also worth noting that poor old Cabinteely got knocked out of the Europa League at the first stage.

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They’re currently 8th​ in the Airtricity First Division and got into the Europa League by winning the FAI Cup last season.

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And in the Champions League Second Qualifying Round we were drawn against Macedonian champions KF Shkëndija.

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It was an easier opponent for us than Qarabag and we proved that in the first leg.

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And even our back up side beat them in the away leg.

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So that puts us into the 3rd​ qualifying round of the Champions League. PSV knocked us out at this stage 2 years ago and the draw has not been kind to us this time round.

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We will play FC Basel, who got to the group stage last season. This is the kind of opponent we need to beat at some stage or else we’re forever going to be missing out on the group stages of European competition.

Also the summer Irish transfer window has come to a close and we finally have a natural wide player at the club.

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Alan Judge has joined after his Brentford contract expired meaning a player from the Airtricity Premier League is firmly part of the Ireland squad.

He came in after Rotherham put a £350,000 bid in for Will Keane. Considering he was backup and we signed him for free 6 months ago, I decided to accept.

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Now for a huge 2 games against Basel!​
 
Going great mate - Judge looks like he will open up even more tactical options for you. Not that you would want to change from this 4-3-3 given how good it is going!!!
 
Yeti01 said:
Going great mate - Judge looks like he will open up even more tactical options for you. Not that you would want to change from this 4-3-3 given how good it is going!!!
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The fact he's a natural in centre mid and both wide areas means he could prove to be a very good signing for us... Just need him to stay away from the injuries!
 
Basel in the Champions League

So, for the second time in the save we were in the Champions League third qualifying round. The first leg against Basel was a very even 1-0 loss, which I think I would’ve just about taken before kick off.

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It left us still in it for the second leg.

I’d like to show you the match stats of the second leg before I’ll show you the result.

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And now the result.

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Not to be dramatic or anything but that result made me feel sick. I cannot believe how we did not score.

Moving on.

That ridiculously one-sided 0-0 meant we lost on aggregate and were put into the Europa League 4th​ Qualifying Round. We were drawn against Romanian champions Steaua Bucharest.

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Before that we will play amateur side Cherry Orchard in the FAI Cup. A bit of a contrast to the teams we’ll play before and after them.

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So we have 2 games against Steaua Bucharest to get into the Europa League Group Stage. If we don’t win, I will cry.​
 
Absolutely gutting that result against Basel!!!
 
**** - I am frustrated by the Basel result and this isn't even my save!! Here's hoping you can do the business against Steaua.
 
TheNotSoSpecialOne said:
Absolutely gutting that result against Basel!!!
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Yeti01 said:
**** - I am frustrated by the Basel result and this isn't even my save!! Here's hoping you can do the business against Steaua.
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It was a hard result to take, still can't find out the best role for the striker in the tactic or else I'm sure we would've won that comfortably!
 
Europa League Group Stage Quest

Two games against Steaua Bucharest were between the Europa League Group Stage and us. The first leg was away from home and a goal 7 minutes into injury time put us in the driving seat.

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And in the second leg, we actually took our chances!

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Which means finally, after 4 seasons, we have got the group stages of a European competition!

It’s done no harm to the bank balance and the board have finally agreed to upgrade the scouting range!

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It means we can scout amazing prospects from South America but they won’t join us because of our reputation. Great.

For the Europa League Group Stage draw we were seeded 4th ​and we have an interesting group.

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Ludogorets are a team I think we can overcome, the other two I’m not so sure about but we’ll have to wait and see.

As for the league, we can't stop winning matches and it’s only a matter of time until we’ll be champions.

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However we’ve not prepared in the best way for our first Europa League group stage match, which is away against Ludogorets. We somehow lost to Cork in the FAI Cup.

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We had 45 shots and 2 goals compared to Cork scoring 4 times from 5 shots!

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We’re the best team in Ireland but still haven’t won the cup yet! Hopefully we’re better at converting chances in the Europa League.​
 
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