The Fergie Way - Following In The Footsteps Of A Legend

[DeclanH]

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The Fergie Way



As I'm sure everybody knows, legendary Manchester United manager and Knight of the Real, Sir Alex Ferguson announced his retirement from football last season after 27 years at the helm Old Trafford.

Fergies career started in his homeland of Scotland where he was given his first management job at East Stirlingshire, this is where our story begins.
We will be following the footsteps of what some may call "The Greatest Manager of All Time" as we take over East Strilingshire to try and emulate what Fergie done. We will move onto much bigger teams just like Fergie who went onto St Mirren leading them to promotion and Aberdeen where we brought them European success and finally at Manchester United where he turned them into the biggest known club in world football. Our journey may turn out a little bit different (avoiding the Old Firm of course)


East Stirlingshire
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East Stirlingshire are a side in Scotland who have now spent 20 seasons in the Scottish League 2 but have never won anything other than the Scottish Championship in 1931-32. My aim is to bring some success to The Shire before I move onto a team that will be in the Championship (however long that may take me).

There's not much to East Stirlingshire but I will be doing my best to change that.

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(Next update will be preseason/August)

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[DeclanH]

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PRE-SEASON


After having a look at the squad I was fairly surprised at how decent the team was. Yes they aren't Barcelona but for a team playing in the lowest league in Scotland they had a squad I felt was capable of winning. However, the squad were lacking in a few key positions which needed strengthened and I quickly scouted players to come into this squad.

I was given a fairly poor transfer budget of ?20,000 and an even worse wage budget of ?1.44K. I knew that it would be impossible for me to bring in not just the one player for the transfer budget I was given so I decided to move all my transfer budget over to the wage budget to sign free transfers.

This seasons aim is to achieve a respectable position in the league (try not finish last)
PLAYERS IN

As I said before there was areas of the squad that were needing strengthened and one of those was a striker. Having scouted through a list of possible players I came across Graham Wilson. He was the sort of player I was looking for young and full of potential and beyond better than the other strikers at the club.

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The next player was a bit of recommendation from my scouts. Ryan Finnie caught my eye due to the ability he had at such a young age of 18 and also he has the potential to become a future star for the Championship which is what I love to find in players. This one is definitely for the future of the club

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PLAYERS OUT

I decided it wasn't best to sell any players due to the small squad that they have and the majority of the players in the squad are good anyway.

RESULTS

Friendly One
Keltey Hearts 1
East Stirlingshire 3 (Townsley 15, 70, Glasgow 48)


Friendly Two
East Stirlingshire 0
Doncaster 3 (Sharp 14, Brown 29, Mesca 43)

Friendly Three
Gala Fairydean Rovers 0
East Stirlingshire 0

Freindly Four
Airthurlie 0
East Stirlingshire 2 (Wilson 18, 51)

SUMMARY

Not a bad pre-season for us as we managed to win two our of four with only one defeat. The team seem to be working well with the tactics and I am really looking forward to the season which kicks off in less than a month

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Challenge Cup 1st Round Draw - East Fife v East Stirlingshire
League Cup 1st Round Draw - East Stirlingshire v Partick Thistle

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