It's a Grand Old Team To Play For!

[paulallison]

I'm new to this forum as I haven't played football manager in a few years on the PC so this is a fresh approach to management in the series for me. This is my career in the making at Celtic, Starting July 2012.

Paul Allison - Celtic Manager


Pre-Season


I was announced as Celtic manager in July 2012 and promised to help make the team one of the best in the world once again.

I picked up a 4-3-1-2 formation and am going to encourage attacking fast paced football no matter who we are playing.
My managerial career started at home to Slovan Liberec in The Champions League Qualifiers after 5 friendlies in which my assistant manager, Johan Mjallby took charge of all the games.

The games that stood out for me in pre-season were the 7-2 win over SC Cambuur in which Kris Commons picked up the man of the match award and Venezuelan loanee, "Miku" proved why he should be considered for a starting place this season scoring 2 goals.
There was also a 4-0 away win against Wrexham in my final friendly where Anthony Stokes scored a double to take his pre-season tally to 3 in 4 games while "Miku" and Lassad also both scored in this game, taking their pre-season totals to 4 and 2 respectively. Failing to score in all pre-season games. Gary Hooper sprained his ankle badly in the game against Wrexham and was sidelined for 5 to 6 weeks.

In my first competitive game in charge on the 1st of August, Lassad, who was making his debut after signing on a free transfer, scored in 27 seconds to get my managerial career off to a flyer. For the rest of the secong half. My Celtic side dominated Slovan Liberec but failed to score until the 59th minute when Miku who was also making his debut scored just minutes after Lassad was taken off injured with fractured ribs which was a worry for me as I had lost 2 of my main strikers to injury with less than an hour being played in my competitive career at Celtic. Charlie Mulgrew picked up the man of the match award after setting up one of the goals and putting in a shift at the back, stopping the Liberec attack from causing any trouble at all.













I'll keep updating this thread in the next few days (If anyone is bothered with it!) until I've caught up with my game which is in October just now.

 

[paulallison]

The Season Begins

August - September

After a fairly easy pre-season campaign. I was challenged at home on the opening day of the season against Aberdeen. More than 55,000 fans turned out to see the SPL champions kick off the 2012/13 campaign. This could have been a fairly difficult tie considering that I had lost 2 of my main strikers in the previous friendlies however it was clear that my Celtic side was much stronger and sharper than the opposition with Giorgios Samaras scoring a header in the 17th minute before "Miku" doubled the lead 10 minutes later. Scott Vernon pulled a goal back early on in the second half for Aberdeen but that was quickly cancelled out by two goals from James Forrest and Anthony Stokes before Miku grabbed his 2nd of the game in the 90th minute to round off a comfortable 5-1 win on the opening day of the season.
Next came the away leg to Slovan Liberec in the 3rd qualifying round of the Champions League. Liberec surprisingly scored within 15 minutes of the game beginning to pull it back to 2-1 on aggregate. With nothing else happening in the half I made sure the players knew what to do at half time. In the second half we picked up 5 yellow cards and Scott Brown was taken off injured with less than 10 minutes to go. With all my subs used I had to carry on with 10 men and when the defeat looked as if it was becoming more of a reality, Anthony Stokes scored the equaliser in the 92nd minute to solidify our passage into the play-off round of the Champions League.
4 days later came our 2nd league game of the campaign at home against Dundee Utd where my side was stunned by going 2 goals down early on before dominating the second half with Giorgios Samaras scoring twice in the last half hour to secure a draw in what was a nervy tie.
The next game was 1 week later away to Ross County. On the bench was my first signing of my career, Adryan who I managed to buy for £875,000 from Flamengo. It was a dominant performance with the Hoops cracking 21 shots at the Ross County goal throughout the 90 minutes. Giorgios Samaras picked up another 2 goals and managed to set up a goal for Adryan who scored just 10 minutes into his Celtic career after coming off the bench for Kris Commons late in the game. The game finished 5-1.

The end of August saw my Celtic team play twice against Helsinborgs in the play-off round of the Champions league. The first leg was at home and it was a dominant game for Celtic winning 3-0 in which victor Wanyama, Miku and Anthony Stokes all scored to almost guarantee our place in the Champions League Group Stages. The away tie was slightly more challenging but we still managed to win 2-0 with goals from Anthony Stokes and defender, Thomas Rogne.

Transfer Deadline Day

In what I was expecting to be a rather quiet deadline day since I wasn't planning on doing any buying or selling thorughout the day unless anything drastic happened. Something drastic happened.

A bid £11,000,000 came in from Benfica for Victor Wanyama. After some negotiations I managed to get Befica to pay £9,000,000 up front with £3,000,000 to be sent my way over the next 2 years. I also managed to grab the club 50% of all profits made from his next sale. This left me in a worrying position with only 13 hours left in the day and 1 midfielder down for the upcoming Champions League campaign.

I almost went into panic buy mode and signed Owen Hargreaves on a 1 year deal after he impressed in reserve games during his 4 week trial. I also had to hike up the price for 17 year-old Leon Goretzka paying £3,000,000 of my remaining budget. I also signed Florian Marange from Bordeux for £450,000 as backup for Emilio Izaguirre.

With only a few hours remaining in the day I settled for what I managed to bring in. Before finding out that Carlos Fierro decided that he wanted the transfer from Chivas to Celtic to happen after I declared my interest in him a few days before. I accepted the fact that it would be impossible for the deal to go through with the time remaining I confirmed the transfer for the beginning of January and he will sign a £8,000 a week deal until may 2016.