Mission Impossible(s)

Just thought I'd share my current situation with the community as I'm fairly certain that in the whole of my CM/FM career, I have never had such a huge challenge as the one that faces me now.

Let me set the scene. I decided to manage part timers US Luzenac in the French National (3rd division). I took over at the start of the game (11/12 season) when they were predicted a 15th/16th place finish. The main thing that attracted me to this club was the fact that the commune of Luzenac has a total population of just 607 according to the 2008 census. This is around 500 less than the capacity of their stadium.

I felt that it'd take me 2 seasons or so to gradually build a side capable of getting out of the league and standing a change in Ligue 2. With no transfer budget and already over my wage budget of £8k p/w, I bought in a few free transfers (all players happy to accept very cheap wages) and set about building a hard working, determined squad centered on age and experience with a few trailblazing youngsters thrown in.

To my surprise we won the league on the final day of the season ahead of full timers Nimes. I was overjoyed and immediately told myself it was my greatest achievement ever on a PC game. The most satisfying thing about the league win was that we did it the way I wanted to; playing attractive attacking football but maintaining a mean defence at the same time. We played out from the back (my GK Gregori had the 4th highest pass completion rate in the league) and built the play up around our 2 key CM's, the brilliant Malfleury and the club icon Akaza. My signing of the season was probably my diamond man, Edern Guyader. He was my No.10 and the golden boy of the team. He created everything, and what he lacked in work rate of desire, he more than made up in flair and individual moments of brilliance.

After this season I've really built up a close affinity with this group of players. I've been more emotionally involved in this game than I ever have been before in any other previous game. I've had to pay much more attention tactically as virtually every game we went into we were heavy underdogs. This made the season much more satisfying, the fact we worked so hard to achieve something that no one would have ever expected us to.

I made sure I was as shrewd as possible with regards to the clubs finances. Never overpaying on bonuses and wages when that money could be used elsewhere. We only scouted domestically so as to keep costs down.

Now comes the biggest challenge. We've been promoted, as a by-product of that, we have turned professional and our 1,200 seater stadium has had to be increased to 10,000 (8,000 seated, 2,000 standing) This has meant that our positive bank balance of just over £100,000 (that we worked so hard to keep as a positive balance) has been reduced to -£6.5 million.

I've just been handed my budgets for the season and my transfer budget is 0 and wage budget is now lower at £7k p/w. With only a week to go before the contracts of my team are up, I have only renewed the contracts of 5 of my first teamers who I believed were capable of making the step up. I knew the stadium would have to be renovated but I always thought the money we'd receive for playing in Ligue 2 (we got £4m from TV revenue) would offset the cost of the renovation work, leaving us a little cash to sign better players. This isn't the case and as it stands we have a squad of 5 all of whom are still on part time contracts ready to compete in the second tier of French football for the clubs first time in its history. A second tier that includes a recently relegated St.Etienne. I am already £500 over my wage budget and for that reason the board aren't allowing me to offer any sort of decent wage to current players.

The way things stand at the moment this is truly looking like mission impossible for me. But I genuinely can't wait!

I'd be interested to hear of any other stories you guys have of similar mission impossibles for yourselves and your teams.

Hmm, not as good as yours obviously but with Hampton and Richmond, we won the league and FA Trophy by a mile with a few (three/four) half-decent free signings. We lost most of our players through poaching (as they were on non-contracts).

With promotion, the board decided to go and build a new stadium... =/ So um, we were never more than 100k in the black but building a new stadium was something like 6-8million pounds, offest by a 2million grant and loans. We remained 100k in the black with a 13k transfer budget which, evaporated the moment I tried adjusting it (oops) and I think the money for BSP was 5k tv money!

So the season started and we have to pay 14k a month in debt repayments. For a stadium that never really needed upgrading imo... (We averaged 14% capacity I think.)

Its meant I've offloaded the majority of the team, brought in some free signings. We're under the (limited) wage budget but because there's no real finances coming in at that level, I just know that by January we're going to be dead in the water finance wise. I may be wrong, the chairman did sign a 7k kit sponsor, but I think in total we've got 14-15k this year from fees and its vanishing. Under the finance tabs I think it's 40-50k a month on 'stadium maintenance' since we're now paying for two stadiums.

Suicidal. I'd understand it if we were promotion contenders for League 2 but we're relegation canidates (again) so yeesh. O_o