Man City goes English

Haha, you'd be better of playing with the reserves! ;)

I was quite surprised by some signings, some of which would struggle to get into most PL sides' starting XI but good luck. I'd probably think youll maybe get fourth.

Good luck though, very interesting, following
 
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Thanks.

Yeah, if you start with what Man City has at the start of the season you should cruise to victory, but where's the challenge in that? ;)

Which signings would you consider not so good?
 
Gary Gardner, Wayne Routledge, Matthew Lowton, Elliot Bennet, Anton Ferdinand and Nathan Baker maybe! Good luck
 
*Jamess* said:
Gibbs. Walcott, Wilshere, Chamberlain.
Keep up the Man City tradition and buy Arsenal players.
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Although I'm an Arsenal fan, I had to like this because it's the truth. And I wish the OP luck with his challenge.
 
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Wayne Routledge and Matthew Lowton have been great for me, good rotation options for when my first choice is not available. Elliot Bennet is indeed a bit of a disappointment and I may sell him soon, Anton Ferdinand, personality problems aside (bit of a whinger in the game) is a good backup, Nathan Baker and Gary Gardner did well for me on my Aston Villa save and are maturing nicely here as well.
 
October: turn about is fair game

The story so far: August was not the best start to a season Man City has ever had and September continued that trend. No losses, but only one win. At the start of October we're in 13nd and the board is not happy. They will be unhappy for some time yet However, we're doing much better in Europe

Here are the October fixtures:
A three-nil victory over Milan in which we dominated the game and it looked like our tactics finally start to gel. Our form doesn't quite carry over in the League, but we could've won that draw against Spurs, had we attacked more, earlier.

Then we got our first two back to back wins: Wigan 3-0, then the Danish bacon breeders of FC Nordsjælland 2-1 and were brought back down to Earth again by Liverpool, beating us 1-0. But at least the month was closed off positively by knocking Self Pity United out of the League Cup.

League position: Ninth. Will that be enough to keep the board happy?
 
Yeah, I know. I only found out after I bought them:p, but then the Welsh are half English anyway, aren't they? You need to have one token Welshman in the squad.
 
November: Crisis at City! Will Adams survive?

November was the month it could've all gone wrong for my plan to win the title with just English players (and one token Welshman). Ninth after nine games is just too low, the board started grumbling and worse, the players started worrying too that the club was underperforming, starting with Joe Hart:

But was he right to worry? Certainly the month didn't start well, with a 1-1 draw against QPR. But from there on it went much better, with a run of three wins, one in Europe:

Nevertheless, the board was rumoured to sack Adams if he couldn't get a win in Paris, so the match against PSG was quite tense. When it ended in 0-0, I was worried, but we had qualified for the knockout stages in the Champions League, so the board was lenient...

And then we got a very lucky away win at Man U, where they basically battered our goal but failed to score, we got a lucky goal the one time we managed to set up a proper offensive, then Rooney was sent off, then Stephen Warnock was sent off not long after and it was ten v ten for about half an hour...

One more win against Sunderland and after fourteen games we were knocking on the doors of Champions League qualification again -- fifth.
 
I'm pretty sure, being Welsh myself I'm not half English. Were not of Germanic (Saxons) descent, like the English, but from Celtic descent.
 
December: we're number two, why try harder?

At the end of November Man City was finally near where it belongs, in fifth place, behind Aston, Villa, Stoke, Man United and Spurs. Would December continue the rise, as the Citizens continue to battle in Europe, the League Cup and the Premiership? Surely somewhere something should go wrong?

Well:

[video=youtube;FZLk-CTRSM4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZLk-CTRSM4[/video]

Here are the December fixtures:

Two good wins against Chelsea and Milan, followed by a draw against Arsenal (this season's bogeyman), followed by a difficult win against (ugh) Burnley and another draw against Everton, who are actually on the edge of relegation. The three wins against Stoke, Norwich and Swansea however are good enough to put us in second.

We're doing well -- why try harder?
 
Lol at that sweaty Sterling goal. Results getting better though man :)
 
They are indeed. Getting the tactics right has helped a lot, even though I have to fiddle a lot with them.
 
That looks like such an amazing challenge, will try it myself. Good luck and a few good signings could be Caulker, allen, Hoilett(if he counts) and graham(always amazing on my fm save scoreing 20+ a season) Zamora was also good in 2012(won me the euros) dont know about 13.
 
January: New Year, New Challenges

We started the New Year well, winning all our Premier League fixtures in January, but since Spurs did just as well, we kept being stuck on second.To be fair, the opponents this month weren't the strongest, all struggling in the lower end of the table.


View attachment 283519

Much more worrying is our cup performance: a draw and replay needed against Norwich to progress to the 4th round of the FA Cup is bad enough, but worse was losing quite badly from Arsenal in the League Cup Semi Final. Losing 1-3 in the first leg at Arsenal's I though we'd stand a chance if we could keep them from scoring at home in the second leg, but not only did they socre, they won the second leg as well. Frustrating as nothing that I tried, worked and the players were just not responding. At least the FA Cup's fourth round against Torquay went as well as you'd expect against a League Two club.

In January the transfer window of course opened again and I made use of it to shift some more foreigners:

View attachment 283523

I also managed to get Samir Nasri on loan to Tottenham, for no less than 1.7 million pounds per month, which was nice. The only star players remaining now are Javi Garcia and Edin Dzeko.

Incoming are the following players:

View attachment 283524

Most of which are hot prospects for the next few years, but Ross Barkley I got for the main team as a central attacking midfielder, who would turn out to be quite good in that role. Also going into the first team is Ryan Bertrand, as backup to Leighton Baines at the left side of the defence, as Stephen Warnock did relatively well there, but just in the end wasn't good enough. I'll be getting rid of him at the end of the season.

I hadn't gotten Jack Butland in the first transfer period as he had been too expensive and I needed too many other players, wheras Blackman was cheap and good enough as backup. However, when Joe Hart twisted an ankle at the beginning of the month and Blackman had to replace him, it became clear he wasn't quite up to standard. He did well considering, but it still cost us in the League Cup.

We ended the month as we began, second in the league, behind Spurs, with a good chance at overtaking them in February as well as the first knockout round of the Champions League looming...
 
Just one question. Why all English and not all Britain?

You could get Bale and other alike. im' saying this because, former to the Bosman rule, Brittan players, even Irish, weren't consider foreign. Even Rooney is half Irish, right?

I'm with city too, and i will go Britain and Messis (PA more than 190 foreign players), but going smooth, starting by the under 18's to reserves and then main team, which i think i can achieve in 4 years
 
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apvmoreira said:
Just one question. Why all English and not all Britain?
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For fun and because going British rather than English would be too easy.

apvmoreira said:
I'm with city too, and i will go Britain and Messis (PA more than 190 foreign players), but going smooth, starting by the under 18's to reserves and then main team, which i think i can achieve in 4 years
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That's of course a much more realistic approach, but would take too long for me. I just wanted to do a season and see where I got to.
 
February: the Red Queen's race.

At the end of January Man City managed to just slip in front of Spurs as we were on a winning streak and they slipped. Barely ahead of them, our first game in February would be against them. A good time to solidify our lead. Did we manage to?

Sadly, no:

View attachment 283743

Spurs leapfrogged us again, but we kept the pressure on them, winning at home 2-0 from Liverpool. More success that month also in the Champions League (1-3 in the first away leg against Malaga) and the FA Cup (2-0 against Wycombe). Only four games in an already short month, but they leave us in a good position.
 
March: Who's your daddy?

So here is how March went for us:

View attachment 283744

Not too bad. Six games, four in League, all of which we won while keeping a clean sheet against QPR, Southampton, Wigan and Aston Villa. Villa btw was doing very very well early in the season, being in the number one spot for four weeks.

We also managed to win again from Malaga, 1-0 as well as from Chelsea, 4-3 in the FA Cup 6th Round. Which was a mad, mad game:

[video=youtube;33_wnmRhiys]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33_wnmRhiys[/video]

We were brilliant in the first half, absolutely dominating them, 3-0 up at half time. I said to the players that, hey, great score, but don't think the battle is won, they all responded reasonably, then before I knew it they had equalised and the rest of the game was a desperate search for the winning goal. I'd resigned myself to losing or a replay, but we managed to scrape out a win.

I wasn't happy though. We were doing well, but started to look fragile. We'd already been knocked out the League Cup, will the stress of multiple competitions hurt us elsewhere as well?

Stay tuned...
 
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