Improving Ireland with Sligo Rovers

[Hampus Silverholt]

Europa League Quarter Final

So Valencia were our opponents in the Europa League quarter final and once again we were playing the first leg away from home. I would have taken a draw going into the match.

But we just keep on producing big performances in Europe! The 2-0 win at the Mestalla virtually put us into the semi final!

However, it was a closer game in the second leg…

…but we still managed to win! Sligo Rovers are into the Europa League semi-final!

Simon Pattison scored after 16 seconds in the second leg. He’s gone from a player who I was unsure about whether to extend his loan period to probably the most important player in the team.

Another player that deserves credit is Kadiri Mohammed. He was initially signed as backup on a free but is giving me no choice but to give him a new contract as he is first choice now.

Chelsea, Tottenham and Dynamo Kiev were the 3 teams with us in the semi-final draw. The English teams were obviously the ones we were aiming to avoid…

We are in with a very serious chance of getting into the Europa League final!

In the league we’ve been playing a rotated side because of our European run but that isn’t impacting results.

We also have a real gem on our hands with Jakub Vana.

He was signed for £2m from Sparta Prague in January and is the youngest goalscorer in Sligo history.

He is surely going to develop into a quality player!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Europa League Semi Final

In the Champions League semi-final I couldn’t help but notice that Man City beat Man United 8-0 in the first leg!

And it was beginning to look like the same would be happening in the Europa League when Ukrainian champions Dynamo Kiev went 2-0 up against us after 25 minutes.

However we managed to claw back a result with goals from Meier and Mohammed.

2-2 in the away leg in the Europa League semi-final. I’ll take that.

It seems a bit sudden but we were just one clean sheet away from the Europa League Final heading into the home leg against Dynamo Kiev. So of course we didn’t keep a clean sheet.

But that’s okay, because we’ve got Simon Pattison.

Sligo Rovers are in the Europa League final!

Our opponents in the biggest match in the save so far will be Tottenham Hotspur.

It’s a bit of a mismatch but we’ll get into that in the next post. For now we need to savour that we’re actually in the Europa League final!​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

Good luck for the final mate!! Amazing achievement!!

 

[WeArePalace]

Amazing stuff to reach the final! Best of luck and also that will automatic Champions League qualification next season! Well done!

 

[Yeti01]

Best of luck in the final mate!!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

excellent mate, hopefully the underdog can prevail in the final

Good luck for the final mate!! Amazing achievement!!

Amazing stuff to reach the final! Best of luck and also that will automatic Champions League qualification next season! Well done!

Best of luck in the final mate!!

Cheers everyone. And yes I forgot that winning the Europa League means we get to the Champions League group stage next season as well!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

2025 Europa League Final Preview

I planned on doing a full rundown of our team including screenshots of all the players but FMBase is being weird with images lately.

However it has to be mentioned that Conor Masterson will be leading Sligo out in the Europa League final. He’s been at the club for as long as I have and when he came on loan to us in 2018 I would have never of thought he would be captaining Sligo in the Europa League final 7 years later!

Adam Lewis is in his seventh season at the club whereas Alpha Dionkou is in his sixth and both players are starting in the game too.

Our hopes of getting anything from the game will be pinned on Serbian midfielder Milorad Sveljo and on loan Liverpool striker Simon Pattison.

This is the team we lined up with, which contains 5 regens.

Our opponents had just finished sixth in the Premier League.

But that was about the only positive I could take. They were overwhelming favourites with a far superior team.

Harry Kane is on £200,000 a week when our highest paid player is on £13,000. He also has just the 77 goals for England, no big deal.

And Pep Guardiola is the Spurs manager, no big deal.

And Spurs are evens favourites for the match.

I can’t say I’m expecting much, but anything can happen!
​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

2025 Europa League Final

Normally when I play a final in FM something unexpected happens and/or something goes wrong. But in this case, nothing happened.

And by nothing, I mean there was no highlights in the first half, which is exactly what I wanted.

Spurs were slightly the better side but neither team were having any clear-cut chances. That was until 3 minutes into the second half.

Spurs opened the scoring so the onus was on us to get an equaliser. We tried and we tried to get it but it wasn’t to be.

It was actually quite a strange final. There were hardly any highlights and we hardly had any chances even when I went to all out attack in the last 15 minutes.

I suppose that has something to do with having De Ligt and Davinson Sanchez as a centre back pairing.

Despite the result and the underwhelming final, we can be proud of what we’ve achieved. I didn’t think we’d get this far in the competition and it’ll be interesting to see if we can make the step up into the Champions League knockout rounds now!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Big News For Ireland

Thanks to our Europa League run we’ve moved from 19th​ to 10th​ in the coefficients table in what is a massive step for Irish football.

It means there will be 5 Irish teams competing in Europe going forward and the team that finishes first in the league will go straight into the Champions League group stage.

It also means that all of a sudden the team that finishes third in the league this season will be in the Europa League group stage. It looks like that team will be either Limerick or Cobh as Cork and Shamrock Rovers have had poor seasons.

We’ve surrendered our 100% league record but I don’t think it was ever going to happen whilst we were trying to juggle Europe and the domestic cup games.

This year we entered the Champions League at the second qualifying round stage (rather than the first) and we were paired with Slovakian champions Slovan Bratislava.

It’s weird to be playing European football again just 2 months after the Europa League final. I’ve enjoyed all the qualifying round matches we’ve played over the years but now they’re getting a bit too easy

I don’t want to jinx it (like I did last season) but we should be making the Champions League group stage with ease.

We’ve also been involved in some transfer dealings. After praising him recently I’ve let Kadiri Mohammed go to Saudi Arabia for £1.5m.

The reason for that is because Paul Douglas is back at the club on loan from Arsenal.

His growth has been stunted because of lack of game time so we need him to play some games for the sake of the national team.

We’ve not stopped there with the Irish loanees though. The future of Irish football, Brian Miles, has also joined us on loan for 18 months

Like Douglas, the amount of game time he’ll get at Sligo can only be beneficial for the national team so it’s a win/win situation.

Now let’s get to the Champions League group stage!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Back To Where We Belong

As predicted, we comfortably beat Genk over two legs in the third qualifying round of the Champions League.

5 years ago they stopped us getting into the Europa League group stage so it’s slight revenge for that!

Oliver Batista Meier is proving to be a very good signing and is popping up with a lot of goals as an inside forward on the right.

Next up for us was AEK Larnaka in the Champions League playoff round. Victory over two legs would take us into the group stage after missing out last season.

We achieved it with ease and I forgot just how much money you get for getting to the Champions League group stage!

£10m of that £13m will pay for better training and youth facilities but we still have a healthy balance.

German champions Bayern Munich and AC Milan, who finished second in Serie A last season, will be our opponents in the group stage.

Both Dundalk and Shamrock Rovers got knocked out at the final qualifying round in the Europa League so we are the sole Irish team left in European competition.

And just when I thought all our summer transfers were done, PSG came in for our young winger Vladimir Mitrovic.

We signed him for £500,000 14 months ago so when PSG offered £9.75m for him I decided to accept. We already have quality cover in his position and I can’t imagine he’ll be good enough to get into the PSG team yet.

Whereas club management is going well, the same cannot be said for international management.

I’m really not enjoying it and to be honest if we don’t qualify it’ll be a relief to give up the job. We got a good result against Denmark but threw all that away by losing to Georgia in the next game.

We basically have to win our last 3 games, one of which is away against Austria, to stand any chance of qualifying for the World Cup.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Crazy October Schedule

Our 2025 Champions League group stage started off with a comfortable win over Sparta Prague followed by a disappointing defeat to A.C. Milan

But before our next group stage game we had the small matter of playing 14 games in October... despite there also being an international break with no chance of rescheduling the fixtures.

We’re literally playing every 2 days! I honestly enjoy balancing the amount of games in quick succession on FM but when it gets as unrealistic as it is now then it’s less enjoyable.

Strangely enough one of the games where we had 20 players on international duty confirmed our sixth league win in a row.

And we also managed to get a special result against Bayern.

We’ve got to the Europa League final but this is probably our most impressive result of the save. Batista Meier continued his impressive form by scoring against his old club.

The result leaves the group delicately poised after 3 games each.

At the very worst we’ll be in the last 32 of the Europa League but it will be nice to make the Champions League knockout rounds for the very first time!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Ten Points Not Enough

Our Champions League campaign continued with another remarkable result against Bayern Munich.

Just imagine if we pick up 4 points against them and still don’t qualify for the next round…

A routine win over Sparta Prague meant that a draw in our last group stage game against AC Milan would take us into the Champions League knockout rounds because of our better head to head record against Bayern.

However, all of our good work was undone in one game against Milan.

It was a cruel defeat for us. There’s no way we deserved to lose 4-0 but it highlights a problem for us that we are just not a Champions League last 16 side yet.

Having said that, it’s still a bit of a sickener that we got 10 points, beat Bayern 3-0 and still couldn’t make the knockout stage.

Our 2026 World Cup Qualifying campaign has also concluded with Ireland finishing in third place.

18 points were needed to qualify as the best second placed team so it turns out losing to Georgia wasn’t that catastrophic.

I think I’ve decided to stay on as Ireland manager purely because it’s pretty evident that Ireland just don’t have good enough players to qualify for the World Cup.

However, there’s some decent young players coming through and I did state in my very first post of this story that one of the aims was to lead Ireland into a World Cup. So 2030 here we come!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

2025 Season Review

We used a stupid amount of players this season, which had a lot to do with domestic and international fixtures overlapping as well as playing 14 of our 68 games in October.

We also equalled our highest points total in the league with 103.

I still want to have control of Cobh but Dundalk are now clearly the second best team in Ireland (because of the transfers and tactics I’ve implemented) so I think it may be best if I try and build up another team.

In other news, the board have announced a stadium expansion without any prompt from me.

1,300 seats for £1.5m really doesn’t seem worth it..

Our first game next season will be in the Europa League knockout round against RB Salzburg, a team we played in our 2022 Champions League group that was ruined by the Qatar World Cup.

Whereas we finished third with 10 points in our Champions League group, they finished third with 2 points. Typical.

It also looks like we’re going to have a tough time trying to keep Serbian duo Milorad Sveljo and Filip Cvjeticanin.

Both are wanted by big clubs and will not sign new contracts because of the interest.

Irish Football Summary – 2025

National Team Ranking: 60th​ (was 61st in 2024)
Nation Coefficient Ranking: 10th (was 19th​ in 2024)
Airtricity Premier League Players in Ireland Squad: 9

Irish Teams in Europe:

Dundalk and Shamrock: Europa League 4th​ Qualifying Round
Cork: Europa League 2nd​ Qualifying Round
​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

2026 Season Preview

So, it’s 2026 and we’re into our 9th​ season as Sligo manager. It’s been a tough January transfer window mainly because of this.

The players we need to sign to improve the team simply do not want to join us!

The only piece of business we’ve been able to do is to sign Simon Pattison permanently for £1.5m from Liverpool. He’s spent the last 3 seasons on loan at Sligo and his contract was expiring in the summer.

The major news from the transfer window though is that star midfielder Milorad Sveljo has been sold to Barcelona.

He is undoubtedly going to be world class but £37m and loaned back to us for 2 years? That’s surely got to be the greatest bit of business ever.

Meanwhile, on the pitch the season could not have started any better for us.

Ignacio Lagos scored a hattrick to virtually send us through to the Europa League second knockout round.

The second leg was solid yet unspectacular.

The Europa League journey is happening again!

Is what I thought until I saw the draw.

They’re only 5th​ in Serie A but Inter Milan are the favourites to progress. The board only expect us to get to the second round anyway so we have nothing to lose.​

 

[Emirali]

Been reading this on and off for a couple of weeks at work and finally caught up. Loving the journey so far, hopefully can make the leap soon into the last 16 of the Champo League- think of the money! First time i've ever commented on a post so i hope i've done this right lol

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Been reading this on and off for a couple of weeks at work and finally caught up. Loving the journey so far, hopefully can make the leap soon into the last 16 of the Champo League- think of the money! First time i've ever commented on a post so i hope i've done this right lol

Cheers mate. I don't think we're far away from making the last 16 of the Champions League so hopefully we can do it this time next year!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

No Final This Time

Our Europa League Second Knockout round tie against Inter Milan could not have started any better.

One nil up at the San Siro after 2 minutes, what could go wrong?

Brilliant. Inter were lethal and we could not handle them all match.

Unfortunately there were no miracles in the second leg. We will not be making the Europa League final like we did last season.

I’m slightly worried that the tactic is faltering. Apparently we’re having too many long shots but taking too many touches in the opposition area…

Unless they score, whoever plays as the striker averages 6.4 or less so we need to work out how to get them most out of them using this system.

The Inter result means that we’ll have nothing but domestic football to concentrate on for the next 6 months, as we’ll go straight into the Champions League group stage next season.

For now we’re playing catch up as we play our games that were rescheduled because of our Europa League run.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Unbeaten Season?

After the disappointment of the Europa League we've played a lot of domestic games and we’re into the summer of 2026, which is the halfway mark of our season.

We could be on for an unbeaten season in the league for the first time in the save especially because we won’t have Champions League qualifiers to contend with.

Talking of which, Adam Lewis was the highest rated player in the 2025/26 Champions League and picked up 11 assists!

Annoyingly we beat Bayern Munich 3-0 on our way to finishing third in the group and they went on all the way to the semi finals of the competition!

They were eventually knocked out by Spurs, who then lost to Manchester United in the final. Ireland keeper John O’Neil started for Spurs in that match.

That brings us to Ireland and our Nations League group. I forgot we won our last group so have to contend with 2 games against France and Croatia this time round. Great.

But I won’t worry about getting smashed by them for now.

Ever since selling Sveljo to Barcelona we’ve had a fat chunk of money lying in our bank.

If we can find the right players who can improve the team in the upcoming summer transfer window, then that money will be spent.

Finally, Ireland has risen to 8th​ in the coefficient rankings despite us not having the best season in Europe.

There are only 10 teams in the league and next season 6 of them will be in Europe!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

2026 Summer Transfers

The summer transfer window has been and gone and we’ve been quite busy.

Firstly we’ve let Ignacio Lagos join Borussia Dortmund for £6.5m in what might not be the best decision I’ve made.

He wanted to leave, had a match highest earner clause in his contract that was doing my head in and I want to give a chance to a younger player in his position so I let him go on the cheap.

Another player to leave is Irish international Sean Travers. He joins Bournemouth for £2m.

It’s again not the best deal but we have Brad McGregor coming through the ranks and I’d rather give him the game time. We signed him for £200,000 from Hearts in January.

Our first signing was a player we didn’t really need, but was too good to turn down. Centre back Renato joins us on loan from PSG.

I never thought I’d see a player valued at £52m at Sligo.

Finally, the culmination of our transfer window is the signing of Leandro Machado from Nacional in Uruguay.

He was just £3m and looks like he’ll be something special. All we have to do now is get a tactic that gets him more involved in the game.

In the league, we are still unbeaten with just 9 games remaining.

It’s so strange not playing any Champions League qualifiers and actually playing one game a week!

But the unbeaten record might be under threat because we have our Champions League group stage games coming up.

We were seeded third and will face current holders Man United as well as Bayer Leverkusen. Again, qualifying for the last 16 is going to be incredibly difficult.

Elsewhere Cobh Ramblers (yes I’ve still got a manager in charge of them) are the only other Irish team left in Europe.

They automatically qualified for the Europa League group stage and will face Benfica, Legia Warsaw and Maccabi Tel Aviv!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Europa League Bound

Our Nations League campaign has got underway and suddenly I love international management.

Somehow we beat France, the third best team in the world, 5-2! The result and performance came out of nowhere and was thanks to Ryan Cassidy and Sligo produced Steve Keady.

We needed a performance like that for Sligo when we took on Champions League holders Manchester United in our first group stage game.

They’re a class apart and I struggle to see how one day we’ll overtake teams like them.

As expected we beat 4th​ seeds Besiktas thanks to a hattrick from left back Adam Lewis.

I cannot emphasise how much love I have for Adam Lewis. He’s been at Sligo since 2019, gained Irish citizenship and never puts in a bad performance.

However our Champions League campaign will be defined by two games against Bayer Leverkusen.

Despite a good performance we lost to them and it’s already looking like we’ll go into the Europa League knockout rounds for the third season in a row.

It’s annoying because we played well, there’s just not much you can do when you are paired with two teams who are better than you.

In the league, we’ve still maintained our unbeaten record even with a game against Derry in the middle of an international break, which forced us to play 4 players who had just come through the youth intake.

All we need to do now is beat Man United and Bayer Leverkusen…​