The Gaelic League

[doyce7]

Breaking News!
The Scottish, Welsh, Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland FA's have voted to combine their club league structure. Welsh clubs Swansea City, Cardiff City and Wrexham AFC have decided to leave the English structure and have been placed in the newly minted Gaelic Premiership while Newport County have also left England behind to compete in the Gaelic Championship. Irish clubs Shamrock Rovers, St Pat's Athletic, Dundalk, Derry City and Linfield have also been added to the new top flight. All 12 Scottish top flight teams have remained as such. The 20 team league will begin play in time for the 23/24 season.

 

[doyce7]

The FA's have agreed to establish a joint FA for the venture to control the league structure and have established a 5 tier system for promotion/relegation. The new Gaelic FAwill consist of 2 Scottish representatives and 1 each from Wales, Repulic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The FA agreed to keep all Scottish clubs at their current level and fill in with clubs from the other countries according to the reputation of the clubs and leagues. For the 2023/24 season, the leagues look like this
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In total 112 clubs have been included and a Gaelic Cup has been organised to accompany the new structure. Clubs that had already qualified for Europe will take their usual spots for this season but UEFA has refused to add additional spots for the league going forward. The league, as far as UEFA is concerned, will simply replace Scotland for continental competition in the years to come.

TV Deal announced!​

The Gaelic FA has announced the TV deal that will payout of the clubs. Reported figures are 20M pounds for each Premiership club, 5M for Championship, 2M for League 1, 1M for league 2 and 500K for National league sides.

 

[doyce7]

Breaking News Out of Dublin!
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Long time Shamrock Rovers Manager Stephen Bradley has stepped down following the announcement of the Gaelic League just 9 days before his club is set to take on FK Partizani of Albania in the Champions League first round. The club has announced that taking over will be 31 year old American Doyce Kirkland. Kirkland, having never managed a team will inherit a club in a bit of a precarious position. Despite being in the Champions League, Shamrock are one of the favorites to get relegated in the first season of the Gaelic Premiership. Making matters more difficult, due to the schedule of the former Irish Premier League, many players will be out of contract at the end of November, including some key players.

 

[doyce7]

Now that the setup is out of the way,

This is a database that I have been working on since the editor released but have been dreaming up for some time. I'm useless with logos and honestly not having custom logos doesn't really bother me, so stock scottish logos for the leagues and cups will be the order of the day. I appolgise if this is a turnoff or kills any immersion you might feel. I haven't decided what style this will end up being, just updates on my team or the league as a whole. Or, for that matter, how often this will be updated. I have a bad habbit of getting too far ahead of the updates and creating a backlog that makes me feel like I'm too deep in the hole to continue. Since I work from home and play FM while I work, I can get through seasons at a fairly rapid pace. If anybody wants to use this database in their saves, let me know and if anybody wants to make logos or help me make this something I can post to the workshop, let me know that too.

 

[doyce7]

First actual update, getting to where I am in game at the time of writing.

Transfers​

I like to run a 4-3-3 and Shamrock had exactly zero DM's, so first through the door, Kevin Stewart. He will be the rock upon which I will build my midfield. I will play him as a DM(D) for now but if we are ok defensively then he may play a support role down the road.

Next, There basically no first team level GK's at the club. I had a deal for Jed Steer in place but decided to go for the cheaper option in order to strengthen elseware. Welcome Josh Cohen, I guess I needed a fellow American anyway.

More midfield star power and RB cover in the shape of Brazilian Felipe Araruna. He should mostly slot in at B2B in midfield but will probably play plenty at RB.

Lastly, starting LB Sean Kavanagh will be out of contract in Dec and had no interest in a new deal so Joe Bennett was added. At 33, certainly not a long term solution but I just needed somebody who could fill the spot.

And here is the squad for this season, not a young team, the average age is 28 years old. After the first season we should have some actual money and I'll be able to go shopping for younger players to build around but this season is just about survival.

 

[doyce7]

First matches update. Things started off in Albania for the Champions League first round, no contest as we win 9-2. Following that we play Moldovan side Sheriff Tiraspol and despite a tight battle, we fall out of the Champions League with a 2-3 defeat.

Dropping down to the Europa League, we dispatch Kazakhstan side Astana 6-2. Next we travel to Athens to face AEK and manage a draw, a 1st minute setpiece gives us the lead and we hold that lead for 86 minutes before AEK levels things up. We were dominated but managed a draw away from home. Unfortunately we were once again dominated at home and the 4-2 score over two legs was actually quite flattering to us. With that we drop out of the Europa League just shy of the group stage.

But as a consolation we do get to play in the Conference League group stage against French side Lille, Serbian side Cukaricki and Ukrainian side Zoria. Lille would obviously be favorites for the group but I could see us competing for 2nd.

In the league, we are off to a great start with 4 wins and 2 losses, granted 3 of our wins are against teams in the bottom 4 but you gotta beat the teams around you and I still expect a relegation battle this season.

That's it for now, you are caught up to where I am in the save. Time to play some more

 

[doyce7]

Well, things have not gone great this morning. Following the 4-0 win over Derry City in the last update, we have now gone 10 matches without a win. In Europe, it was 3 tight 1 goal defeats which essentially means our Euopean adventure is over and it'll probably be a few years before we will be able to enbark on another. In the league, well, it's been frustrating. In the two losses, we were outplayed by better teams, no shame in that. The draws however, are another story. We had the lead in all three of the four draws and gave up 85th+ minute goals in two of them.

At the end of the day though, my goal is to not get relegated and that goal is certainly looking achievable as we sit in 11th with 1/3 of the season in the books. The top 3 is getting some separation with the Old Firm joined by Swansea at the top. The bottom 3 of Dundee, Livingston and Linfield are in danger of being cut adrift.

 

[doyce7]

Well that didn't take long. Turns out I messed up when I was setting up the cup competition and I missed it when doing the sim tests. Basically I had teams entering the cup in different rounds, for the 3rd round I had 64 teams needed but only 54 teams actually able to compete. Because of this some teams had nobody to play and couldn't progress but they were still in the draw for the next round even though they had not qualified for it and a game couldn't be played. Every round this would get worse and worse. Gonna have to scrap this save, fix the issues in my database and maybe try again.

 

[andy_14clark]

Good idea with the file setup, shame it hasn't fully worked out but like the idea of combining these leagues together to follow the style of the english leagues.