Move aside, Barcelona.

Reial Club Deportiu Espanyol de Barcelona, otherwise known in English as Royal Spanish Sports Club of Barcelona and often just abbreviated to Espanyol, are a Barcelona based sports club currently plying its trade in Liga BBVA.

On the 28th of October 1900, an egineering student from the University of Barcelona would find Sociedad Española de Football. In the subsequent years, the club experienced several name changes starting with Club Español de Fútbol in 1901, Club Deportivo Español in 1910, Real Club Deportivo Español in 1912 after being granted patronage of the Spanish crown, Club Esportiu Espanyol in 1931 after the prohibitation of royal symbols and eventually back to Real Club Deportivo Español after the Spanish civil war which is the name it still uses today... sort of. The spelling was changed in 1995 to Catalan, hence Reial Club Deportiu Espanyol de Barcelona.

Success for Espanyol has been sparse, to say the least. In it's 111 year history, the club have only won the Copa del Rey four times, one as recently as 2006, and their only league title was the Segunda División in 93/94. They almost won the UEFA Cup in the 06/07 season, but lost in the final on penalties to fellow Spanish club Sevilla. During that cup run, they became the only side to go through the whole tournament without losing, but not take the trophy home.

This is where I come in. As a young manager who formally played at a semi-professional level, I have made it my mission to make Espanyol a highly successful club. The challenge probably won't be a particularly difficult one, since Espanyol have an excellent foundation to build upon, but I'm doing this less for the challenge and more for the joy of taking a club that I like, filling its somewhat empty trophy cabnet and breaking up the domination of Spanish football by Real Madrid and Barcelona.

I will update on my progress after pre-season, every in-game month and after the season ends.

The above image is off the recently open Estadi Cornellà-El Prat, built on the outskirts of Cornellà and El Prat de Llobregat. With a capacity of 40,500, it cost approximately €60,000,000 to build. This stadium is a big part of the excellent foundation I mentioned earlier, as with it come top corporate facilities, top training facilities and good youth facilities. With such good facilities already built, I can invest more money into the squad.

Its always a tough task to compete with Real Madrid and Barcelona, so this will be interesting!

Looking forward to this dude!

The Backroom Staff

The bedrock of any successful club is the high quality team of staff that work behind the scenes. As one might expect with a club of Espanyol's stature, the staff here isn't particular good, putting it kindly.

Usually, I would terminate the contracts of all the staff I was unsatisfied with and replace them with higher quality staff. However, on this ocassion I will be doing things differently. Taking into account the club's reputation and limited finances, hiring the best possible staff is not possible at this moment in time and rather than just hire some decent guys and replace them later, I'm going to leave things mostly as they are. Hopefully within the next two to three years the reputation of the club will have improved enough for me to hire some really good staff.

Of course, that doesn't mean I won't sign anyone at all. Upon evaluation, the only two coaches that I'm happy with are the assistant manager and goalkeeping coach. The five other coaches (two of which were youth coaches) have all had their contracts terminated and will eventually be replaced by a decent fitness coach and one jack-of-all-trades coach. This may not allow me to develop this young, talented squad of players to their highest potential, but for now it shall suffice. Squad turnover will most likely be high in two to three years, in any case.

Scouting wise, I've fired three scouts, all of whom had contracts to 2014, in order to make room for better scouts. I've not one good scout at the club, unfortunately, but, again, this will change in two to three years when all their deals expire.

Finally, I have left the physio's be for the time being.

The Squad

** Player on loan at the club

Goalkeepers

Carlos Kameni, Christian Alvarez, Kiko Casilla

Defeners

Ernesto Galan (DC/R, WBR), Hector Moreno (DC), Raul Rodriguez (DC), Jordi Amat (DC), Juan Forlin (DC, DM), Javi Lopez (DR, WBR, DM, MC/R), Didac** (D/WBL), Felipe Mattioni (D/WB/MR), Wellington (D/WB/ML)

Midfield

Javi Marquez (DM, MC/L), Christian Romaric** (DM, MC/L), Raul Baena (DM, M/AMC), Joan Verdu (M/AMC)

Attacking Midfield/Wingers

Vladimir Weiss** (MC/R/L, AMC/R), Jesus Datolo (AMC/L), Juan Albin (AMC/L, ST), Rui Fonte (AMC, ST)

Strikers

Sergio Garcia (AMC/R/L, ST), Walter Pandiani (ST), Alvaro (ST)

Overall

I pretty happy with the initial squad. I've only identified two or three players that aren't good enough, and their sales should give me enough extra money to sign two or three players to improve the depth of the squad. I have set the season expectations to mid-table finish, giving me a budget of £4.34mil. I think we can do better, but better to be safe than sorry.

The B Team

Playing in Spain presents the unique situation of having a B Team, as opposed to a reserve team. Espanyol's B Team aren't in any of the playable leagues, but has some okay young players in there that could be sold for decent money. I am considering releasing every one in there, since it's pretty much useless to me and will just be unnecessary weight on the wage bill. That, though, depends on how much compensation it'll take to do so.

The Youth Team

Espanyol have a good academy and have produced some fine players. There are one or two in there that could make the step-up, but otherwise it's a pretty average bunch to start off with.

I like the title

All the best

A change from Arsenal I see

Its always a tough task to compete with Real Madrid and Barcelona, so this will be interesting!

It will be tough. I've got to get through the likes of Malaga, Sevilla, Villareal, Atletico, Bilbao and Valencia first, though.

Looking forward to this dude!

I like the title

All the best

Thanks for the comments.

A change from Arsenal I see

Yes. Winning games by four or five goals every time was a good sign that I needed to go onto something new and more challenging.

Transfers

First of all, let's take a look at the staff turnover for this window:

A lot of those names will probably mean very little to you, so I'll explain: all of the outgoing staff members were all deeemd not good enough. By not good enough, I mean not having a single attribute higher than 12. Even for a mid-table club, that's pretty bad.

The staff who have come on are by no means exceptional, but good enough to give each training category at least 2.5 stars (3.5+ in the case of fitness and goalkeeping), as well as detailed scout reports.

Now, onto the players:

Let's start with the outs. All of the players that went on a free were members of the B Team that weren't good enough for the first team or even to fetch some form of profit. Remarkably, it only cost the club £550,000 in compensation to release 20 players.

Getting rid of certain players was near impossible. I had tried selling Raul Rodriguez, but no matter how low I went with my asking price, clubs "didn't see buying him as a viable option". Another player, one of the B Team members, refused to sign a contract with his would-be suitors due to low basic pay, which is incredibly frustrating since the guy has not acheived anything in his career and should be thankful someone is willing to take him in.

So the plan to raise a couple million from selling players didn't come to fruition, and as a result I was a bit restricted with how many I could bring in. Henrique is an experienced central defender that offers much needed height and aggression in my backline, while Lucas Andersen is a 16 year old attacking midfielder with exceptional starting attributes and a whopping 5 star potential for this level. Needless to say, he'll be a pivotal figure in any future success... provided I can keep him for that long. His release clause is only £6,000,000, so I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that nobody activates it within the next couple of years.

I did want to bring in another player, but the board were very tight with how much I could offer players in terms of wages. For example, they wouldn't let me pay the necessary £6.5k p/w wages to take a promising youngster on loan for a season. It's understandable, but irksome all the same.

Continued in next post...

Squad and Tactics

This is the squad for the season, along with their assigned squad number:

1. Carlos Kameni

2. Filipe Mattioni

3. Raul Rodriguez

4. Javi Marquez

5. Jordi Amat

6. Rui Fonte

7. Raul Baena

8. Alvaro

11. Joan Verdu

12. Christian Romaric

13. Kiko Casilla

14. Ernesto Galan

15. Hector Moreno

16. Javi Lopez

17. Vladimir Weiss

18. Juan Forlin

19. Sergio Garcia

20. Walter Pandiani

21. Henrique

22. Didac

23. Jesus Datolo

24. Juan Albin

25. Christian Alvarez

26. Lucas Andersen

27. Victor Alvarez

And the formation and likely starting eleven:

The main formation this season will be a 4-3-3. It's a pretty simple tactic which involves a flat back four, a holding player, a water-carrier (so to speak), four creators and three goalscorers. The APs sits in midfield, spreading passes to the players with more creative freedom i.e. the APa, the two Inside Forwards and the Trequartista. I wouldn't call it a free-flowing tactic, but it can be pretty fluid, with quick, more direct passing down the flanks (in contrast to our Catalan buddies Barcelona and their "tika-taka").

On top of this, I have a backup formation, which will be 4-4-2 which works on similar principles. In essence, it'll play out more like a 4-2-3-1 with the wingers being quite offensive and the second striker dropping deeper.

I'm also considering using a 4-2-3-1, but then I've never seemed to get it to work well on this game.

I do not tend to get bobbed down trying to play one way and do like to mix it up from time to time if I have the players to do so. If need be, I can throw on Pandiani and utilise Albin's excellent delivery into the penalty area, as well as the strength and work rate of Romaric and Marquez.

Three at the back is another viable route to go down, with Didac and Mattioni having the right attributes to be effective wing backs and Forlin, Moreno, Amat and Henrique covering everything you'd want in a defence.

So overall, I think my squad is quite tactically versitile, which, in my opinion, is something every decent sqaud needs to be.

Friendlies

We played just the four friendlies. I'm quite picky when it comes to this; I dislike playing friendlies with just a couple of days rest in between, so I cancelled a couple in order to ensure my players got adequate rest.

Anyway, I'm pleased that we didn't concede in any of those matches and scored a decent amount of goals. The standard of opposition wasn't that great, but the team's morale is now high and everybody is match fit and ready to go.

The next update will document the rest of August and the whole of September.

Good luck man

La Liga

20th August 2011

Espanyol 3 - 0 Racing (Vladimir Weiss 13', Hector Moreno 21', Walter Pandiani 29')

The perfect way to kick off our season. We completely outplayed Racing in the first half and with the three points in the bag, we took it easy in the second half. Three new signings - though technically Pandiani isn't new - scoring on their debuts made it all the more pleasing.

28th August 2011

Real Betis 2 - 0 Espanyol (Javier Matilla 8', Roque Santa Cruz 79')

And back down to earth we come. We were really unlucky in this match, I felt. Matilla scored from 30 yards to give Betis a great start (incidentally, he has 10 for Long Shots...) and we never quite recovered, though did manage to carve out some really good chances that we failed to take. Alvaro getting a straight red and forcing us to play with no striker made things even harder for us. Santa Cruz wrapped up a pretty bad day for us by lobbing Kameni. We'll be going into the international break in a bad mood.

11th September 2011

Espanyol 2 - 1 Atletico Madrid (Walter Pandiani 9', Rui Fonte 84'; Falcao 90+1')

Beating one of your rivals is not a bad way to bounce back, I must say. I was apprehensive about this game, since Atleti have so much quality, but we played really well and Atleti seldom threatened. Rui Fonte scoring his first goal for the club ensured the three points in the mini-Classico.

18th September 2011

Osasuna 2 -2 Espanyol (Masoud 9', Patxi Punal pen 72'; Hector Moreno 28', Walter Pandiani 87')

Given that Osasuna had started the season poorly, I was disappointed we didn't pick up all three points here. We dominated the game after we equalised but went behind when Osasuna won a penalty for a blatant dive. Pandiani eventually equalised, but we had to settle for a point. I made my gripes known after the match, and was pleased that the Spanish FA kept silent over my criticism.

21st September 2011

Athletic Bilbao 1 - 1 Espanyol (Gaizka Torquero 15'; Jesus Datolo 70')

I'm definitely pleased with this result. Bilbao only really threatened through set-pieces and for long periods we were pretty comfortable.

26th September 2011

Espanyol 1 - 0 Levante (Juan Albin 38')

We absolutely battered Levante and should have scored at least five. Still, I can't complain about the three points. We're now four games unbeaten.

It's probably a bit pointless to show the league table, but here:

Eleven points from our opening six games is a very good start, especially since four of them came against two of the leagues bigger sides in Atleti and Bilbao. Of course, there is still a very long way to go and our next game away to Malaga will be another stern test for us.

Player of the Month

My own personal player of the month is undoubtedly...

The loanee has been excellent on the flanks and is responsible for the majority of our goals. He should have more goals, since he's missed some guild-edged chances, but as far as creating chances goes, he's been superb. Hopefully he can keep this up, since my other wide men have yet to join the party.

La Liga

2nd October 2011

Malaga 0 - 3 Espanyol (Juan Forlin 31', Vladimir Weiss 34', Walter Pandiani 71')

A great win against a Malaga side full of talent, but lacking in cohesion and confidence. Amusingly enough, Pellegrini said before the game that "Ein-Dawkins would be dreaming if he thought Espanyol could win", so that gave us some extra incentive to win the game.

16th October 2011

Rayo Vallecano 2 - 2 Espanyol (Jose Maria Movilla 11', Raul Tamudo 42'; Juan Albin 45+1', Alvaro 67')

Well, this is familiar. Movilla, who's pretty rubbish from distance, banged one in from 25 yards, and then Espanyol legend Tamudo doubled their lead. Shades of the Betis game earlier in the season, definitely. We managed to get two back, though, through a bit of luck. Rayo are one of those teams we should be beating, but I guess at this point it's not a bad point, especially since we came from behind.

22nd October 2011

Espanyol 1 - 0 Mallorca (Juan Albin 45+2')

Like the Levante game, I thought we could've won this by more goals. Nonetheless, we were pretty comfortable in this game and got the win.

30th October 2011

Villareal 0 - 1 Espanyol (Vladimir Weiss 2')

An excellent win. We scored early and was under pressure for a lot of the game, but some tactical changes and stout defending got us the good result against another rival for a European spot.

The league table stands as thus:

The top two seem to be doing just as they do in real life: kicking the crap out of everybody they come across. Beyond that, things are much more interesting with us in third, and some of the better sides like Atletico, Atheltic, Villareal, Valencia and Malaga loitering lower down the table. Things will probably level out as the season goes on, but for now, we'll enjoy being the top four.

Copa del Rey

26th October 2011 - Copa del Rey 1st Leg

Osasuna 1 - 1 (Javad Nekounam pen 29'; Joan Verdu 64')

Not a bad result, since I played a changed side and we didn't perform all that well. We should be able to win in the home leg and progress in the tournament.

Player of the Month

The previous winner of this award, Vladimir Weiss, has had another great month, but I've got to give it to Juan Albin. The winger has either scored or assisted in every match this month, and is finally sharing the creative burden with Weiss.

The next month will certainly prove interesting, with games against the big two in consecutive weeks and games against teams currently in the top six. If we can get through this month with some good results, I'll be confident we can overachieve and claim a spot in the top four.

A great start to the season, with some nice wins under your belt.

It sounds like its going to be an interesting next month for you and your team. With games against the big two and other teams around you.

I have had Albin in one of my previous saves and he was outstanding, scoring and assisting from everywhere.

La Liga

2nd November 2011

Espanyol 2 - 0 Sporting Gijon (Juan Albin 60', Alvaro 66')

A good, even game that we just about edged. Our home form has been impressive thus far and will be key to our final league placing.

6th November 2011

Espanyol 0 - 0 Sevilla

We should have won this game. Sevilla were dogged but not threatening, and when they went down to ten men we dominated the play. Unfortunately, we couldn't get that breakthrough and had to settle for a point.

20th November 2011

Real Madrid 3 - 0 Espanyol (Cristiano Ronaldo 45', Gonzalo Higuain 63', Kaka 77')

If we ever needed a reminder of the gulf in class between us and Madrid, this was it. We managed to hang on until the end of the half, but Ronaldo got in behind and scored. After that, he gave us a torrid time. We couldn't get out our own half and fell victim to Madrid's vastly surperior quality.

26th November 2011

Espanyol 0 - 2 Barcelona (Lionel Messi pen 22', 28')

We played better in the derby, but two mistakes cost us the game. Romaric gave away a penalty - he's been thoroughly useless so far this season - and the second came from an awful error where we gave Messi the ball on the halfway line from a free-kick. Pretty disappoiting, really.

Madrid's and Barcelona's goal difference is just ridiculous. Anyway, no win in three means we've suffered a bit in our league placing and our morale. It's absolutely vital we get on track as soon as possible, otherwise morale will plummet.

Copa del Rey

9th November 2011 - Copa del Rey 4th Round 2nd Leg

Espanyol 2 - 0 Osasuna (Romaric 1', Henrique 80')

Job done, really. We got the goals and defended well. Levante are our 5th round opponents.

Player of the Month

It's not been a great month, really, with just two wins and four goals. There has been one consistent performer, though: Juan Daniel Forlin.

A great start - Espanyol ended up being the best team in the world in my FM11 save, thanks mainly to Iceland star Sigurdsson turning into the best midfielder in the world. Hopefully, you will achieve the same!

Your presentation is very good and i like particularly the player of the month detail, good luck!

A great start - Espanyol ended up being the best team in the world in my FM11 save, thanks mainly to Iceland star Sigurdsson turning into the best midfielder in the world. Hopefully, you will achieve the same!

Well, so far so good. I've managed Sigurdsson before and he is indeed an excellent player. I probably won't be working with him on this save, though, so we'll have to become the best team in the world a different way.

Your presentation is very good and i like particularly the player of the month detail, good luck!

Thanks for the compliment. Are there any areas about my presentation that you think I can improve?

Maybe changing the colour of the "Espanyol" on the text result to blue or even changing the colour of the text to red or green depending if you won or lost, it's just that part looks too much black if you know what i mean, it still looks very good though and it's just a minor thing.

La Liga

4th December 2011

Real Sociedad 0 - 1 Espanyol (Sergio Garcia 83')

A game with plenty of endeavour but not a lot of quality. Socieded were above us in the table and were having a season similar to ours and since we were both playing 4-3-3, we cancelled each other out. With the game just dragging on, I decided to go for it, threw on Garcia to play up front with Alvaro and he grabbed the winner with a nice tap-in, curtosy of Marquez' excellent ball into the box. Some much needed points after the recent defeats.

11th December 2011

Espanyol 3 - 0 Valencia (Juan Forlin 18', 22', Juan Albin 61')

A great result, helped by Valencia having a man sent off in the first half. Forlin scored from a free-kick and corner in just four minutes (both provided by Weiss) and from then on we never looked like losing the game. Albin put the cherry atop a great performance against a resurgant Valencia who had won five consecutive matches.

18th December 2011

Espanyol 3 - 2 Real Zaragoza (Vladimir Weiss 34', Sergio Garcia 79', 90'; Heider Postiga 25', Luis Garcia 77')

We almost screwed this up. Lowly Zaragoza played well and managed to get two goals out of nothing, while we weren't exactly setting the Cornella alight with our performance. Still, super-sub Sergio Garcia won us the game by being in the right place at the right time.

Is a finish in the top four looking realistic now? I'm starting to think that is. I said earlier that things would eventually level out and that the struggling sides such as Atletico, Bilbao, Valencia and Villareal would eventually start showing their true quality. I'm standing by that prediction, and with trips to the Vicente Calderon, Mestalla, Ramon Sanchez Pizuan and Camp Nou still to come, a top four finish might be a stretch too far. I suppose we can draw hope from our good performance at San Mames, El Madrigal and La Roseleda, but I'm still not too confident.

Of course, the fact we're in this position is fantastic; way above what I thought I could actually acheive with this squad of players. I'd be content with a top half finish, but given how well we've done, I'd be disappointed if we didn't get into the Europa League at least.

Copa del Rey

21st December 2011 - Copa del Rey 5th Round 1st Leg

Espanyol 2 - 0 Levante (Sergio Garcia 12', Jordi Amat 75')

A nice easy win in the last game of the year. Levante are in poor form, so it was a good chance to rotate the team about and give some other players some much needed playing time. The away leg will be the first game after the winter break.

January Plans

With the winter break now in full swing, I've got some time to consider what to do ahead of the January transfer window. The first priority will be to keep the likes of Juan Forlin and Javi Marquez at the club, as the fear of someone activating their release clauses is still a prominent one. On top of that, I'd like to add a couple of extra bodies to the squad, especially since I've lost Hector Moreno for two months, Jesus Datolo for five months and Alvaro for four months. A couple more injuries and suspensions and we'll be struggling.

I've already tied up a more long term deal of Carlos Fierro, a young Mexican striker, joining at the end of the season for £725,000. I've got about a £1mil left to spend, and not a lot of spare wages, so loan deals are going to be my best bet for squad reinforcement.

Player of the Month

Finally, it's time to crown this months best player. With five assists and one goal, Vladimir Weiss is my choice for best player for the second time.

The next update will be after January and will contrain a brief summary of how things have gone so far, details of our transfer business and an update of how the rest of the world is doing.

Fantastic start JEinchy , really enjoyed reading your monthly updates in the Arsenal thread and think these are even better. Good luck with breaking into that top two, you seem to have made a good start and I'm sure you'll close that gap in the coming seasons.

Expectations, injuries and transfers

Due to how the season was going, the board came to me offering to change the seasonabl expectations. Feeling confident that we were on course to finish higher than the mid-table expectation I had initially set, I changed it to Euro Qualification. With that came a very handy extra £4mil for the transfer kitty and an added £100k p/w to the wage budget. Very, very convenient.

Especially since my squad has been hit hard with injuries this month. On top of long-term injuries to Moreno, Datolo and Alvaro, the following players have picked up injuries: Didac (two weeks), Baena (five weeks), Weiss (seven weeks), Sergio Garcia (five weeks) and Pandiani (three weeks). So this has left me woefully lacking in the offensive department.

Thankfully, I had some extra cash to spend to bolster the squad. The following deals were made in January:

Maurice Edu - £0 (furhter £900k over 48 months) from Rangers.

Josip Ilicic - £3mil (further £6mil over 48 months) from Palermo.

Raheem Sterling - Loan from Liverpool.

Sandro Wagner - Loan from Werder Bremen.

Ilicic is the only decent siging out of that lot, to be frank, but needs must. Edu is decent enough and is earning little, so I can offload him in a year or so with no major issues. Sterling is useful for both wing positins, while Wagner was last resort after the injury to Garcia.

As an added bonus, we managed to hold on to our key players. The likes of City, United, Madrid, Milan, Napoli and other big clubs were interested in Kameni, Forlin, Marquez and Albin and when I rejected the offers, they all asked for improved deals. Fortunately, they only wanted minor wage increases which, with my now biggers wage budget, I was happy to give. This also rectifies some of the small release clauses, as an added bonus.

La Liga

8th January 2012

Granada 0 - 0 Espanyol

The team in 16th absolutely battered us. I'm genuinely puzzled as to how we escaped with a point.

15th January 2012

Getafe 1 - 0 Espanyol (Diego Castro 38')

I'm genuinely puzzled as to how we lost to the team bottom of the table. Seriously, we played badly and deservedly lost the game.

22nd January 2012

Racing 0 - 0 Espanyol

Well, this draw is a bit more respectable since Racing are actually doing okay in the league. This is the game we lost both Weiss and Sergio Garcia in, and had to play 4-5-0 for a good 60 minutes (Mattioni went off injured earlier). We actually forged some good opportunities, but I suppose I have to content with the point.

29th January 2012

Espanyol 3 - 1 Real Betis (Juan Forlin 19', Sandro Wagner 69', Joan Verdu pen 84'; Jefferson Montero 90+1')

Hey, a win! After a very difficult month, we gave the fans something to cheer about with a decent win over Betis. It wasn't a pretty win, but getting the three points was all that mattered.

We're still in the top four despite our recent poor form, but it's beginning to get a bit tight. Champions League might be a bit much to ask, all things considering, but the Europa League is pretty likely at this stage, barring a spectacular implosion.

Copa del Rey

4th January 2012 - Copa del Rey 5th Round 2nd Leg

Levante 2 - 2 Espanyol (Sergio Ballesteros 29', Carlos Aranda 90+1'; Raul Baena 40', Walter Pandiani 55')

With a 2-0 lead from the first leg, this tie was pretty much over when we scored.

11th January 2012 - Copa del Rey Quarter-Final 1st Leg

Espanyol 0 - 0 Malaga

A tight game where either side could've won. Going to their ground without a lead wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing.

18th January 2012 - Copa del Rey Quarter-Final 2nd Leg

Malaga 2 - 2 Espanyol (Alex Serrano 3', Bressan 33'; Walter Pandiani 20', Josip Ilicic 90+3')

Talk about dramatic. New signing Ilicic, playing in just his second game, scored the goals that sent us to the semi-finals in the last minute of the game. Our reward?

25th January 2012 - Copa del Rey Semi-Final 1st Leg

Espanyol 0 - 2 Barcelona (Messi pen 38, Villa 87')

A Catalan derby, of course. And natutally, we were outclassed. It doesn't matter too much, since we've surpassed all expectation is this tournament. The goal now will be to keep the scoreline respectable in the second leg. That'll be fun...

Player of the Month

It's been a rough month, but Christian Alvarez has proved himself reliable in the absence of Kameni.

Progress so far...

So at the midway point in the season, things have definitely gone much better than orginally expected - both in the league and the cup. Of course, not everything is perfect right now; the squad is lacking in some areas, and some injuries and suspensions will be potentially devastating. Since the club is not swimming in cash at the moment, there's not a lot I can do about it. The plan was to get Champions League football in two to three seasons. If we get that sooner, then fantastic. If not, the plan will remain in place.

Meanwhile, in not so far away lands...

Premier League

Manchester United are leading the way at the top, with Chelsea right behind them. In third - get this - is Stoke City and they aren't far off the top themselves. City, Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool are all duking it out for that fourth spot.

Bobboy Zamora (Fulham) is the top goalscorer with 14 goals, while Frank Lampard (Chelsea) is the top assistant with 10 assists.

Serie A

Napoli are currently top, four points ahead of Milan. Some way behind them in third is Cagliari (another mid-table side defying the odds. Seems we've started a trend.) Inter, Parma, Roma and Juventus are all tightly bunched together, fighting for a top four spot.

Zlatan Ibrahmovic (Milan) leads the goalscoring charts with 11 goals, while Andrea Pirlo (Juventus), has 7 assists.

Bundesliga

FC Koln currently top the table, closely trailed by Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. Stuttgart, Wolfsburg, Schalke and Hamburg are all contending fourth.

Lukas Podolski is the top goalscorer with 12, while Mato Jajalo has 8 assists. Both play for Koln.

Ligue 1

Finally, in France, Lyon lead the way with PSG and Marseille their closest challengers.

Well this sucks.

Unfortunately, I've gotten the dreaded "save game cannot be loaded message". I've tried getting rid of the graphics I used, deleted my cache and settings files, verified the game cache... nothing. So I can't continue on with this career.

Restart?