The Other Welsh Club






Game set up
Leagues Loaded:- English down to level 8.
Database Size:- Small
Database:- 13.3.3 (with summer promotion update)




So what’s the story?
There are 6 clubs in the English leagues that have one thing in common, they are all Welsh clubs playing in the English League System. The clubs are Swansea & Cardiff in the Premier League, Newport County in League 2, Wrexham in the Blue Square Premier, Colwyn Bay in the Blue Square North and the last one who not many people will be familiar with is recently formed Merthyr Town who play 2 tiers lower than Colwyn Bay.
So after doing a bit of research I decided I would start my management career in charge of Merthyr Town. I plan to stay at Merthyr for the whole of my career and take them as far as I can, hopefully catching the other Welsh teams one by one and then becoming the first Welsh Club to win a European trophy, no matter how long it takes.




Who are they?
In 2010, Merthyr Tydfil F.C. of the Southern Football League Premier Division were liquidated despite finishing the 2009–10 season 17th of 22 clubs. The club was reformed under the name of Merthyr Town and consequently were required to drop three divisions to begin the 2010–11 season in the Western Football League Division One. The club was also forced to switch grounds, and left Penydarren Park to take Rhiw Dda’r as their new home ground. In their first season they won Division One and were promoted to the Western League Premier Division.^[2]




Where do they play?



The newly-promoted club once again called Penydarren Park home, with a 10,000 capacity. Their first match back at their spiritual ground was a 1–9 defeat to Welsh Premier League side Llanelli in a pre-season friendly in July 2011. The club is fully owned by the supporters' trust.



What league do they play in?
They play in the Evo-Stik Southern Football League Division One South & West, which is the 8^th level of English Football and the lowest possible on FM13 (with the EEE update).


Starting Note:- I am actually in my 3^rd season as I start this season so the first 3 updates will be brief seasonal updates, but from there after I will do 3 or 4 updates a season.


Career Summary

Introduction

One of the founder members of the Premier League, Aston Villa are a club steeped in history. However, in recent years, the club hasn't lived up to previous expectations. The last few managers have been unable to turn the fortunes of the club around. The glory days of the 1980s are long gone and where once they were challenging for a European spot in the Premier League era, they are now expected to bravely battle against relegation.

Step forward: me.

The Club

Infrastructure wise, everything is in place to take the club forward. The club is consistently in the top 10 for average attendances in the league and Villa Park has a 42,000+ capacity. The club also boasts a promising youth setup (as seen by their real life NextGen victory).

The first team squad situation isn't as good. The strategy of previous managers has seen the squad bolstered by young rookies. These players aren't at a Premier League standard, but they have the potential to be. The squad also contains a fair few players on huge wages and this will be addressed as soon as possible.

I'm not the type of manager to waltz into a club and completely overhaul the playing staff. I like to give players time, and the opportunity to impress me and stake their claim for a place in my squad. I do like to bring in a few of my own players though, but there was a stumbling block...

As a reward from the board for joining the club, I was given £0 to spend in the transfer market. This led to the decision to let some players go.

Transfers Out

In a potentially shock move, long time talisman of the club, Gabby Agbonlahor, was allowed to leave the club for £9m. Although other players could have left the club, Arsenal showed interest in the player and a suitable price was agreed. Further funds became available with the £2.5m sale of Stephen Ireland to Celtic. His workrate was never going to cut it for me. Young striking prospect, Jordan Bowery, left on loan to gain some first team experience.

These departures gave me £11.5m to play with in the transfer market.

Transfers In

Relative veteran, Owen Hargreaves, was the first arrival under the new manager on a free transfer. He will bolster the midfield, when fit, and provide some much needed experience to a somewhat inexperienced midfield. Young midfield prospects, Will Hughes and Craig Sibbald signed up for £5m and 250k, respectively. Both are hugely promising and will be featured a bit more later on. Danny Batth was purchased for £2.2m from our neighbours and rivals Wolves, he'll provide defensive options with our loan signing from Milan, Matteo di Sciglio. Young Czech forward, Vaclav Kadlec will fill the attacking void left by Agbonlahor's departure. He cost the club £4m.

Prospects

In the past, I haven't really been too involved or interested in developing young players. At Villa, it will be essential to do so to keep the club ticking. So I've chosen three prospects that will receive a special focus, and essentially be the future of the club.

The first of these is...

Grealish is a tricky winger and I'm really excited about his attributes and the potential he has to be an integral part of the future of the club.

The next two were mentioned previously and are new signings at the club...

If Grealish is the future of the right hand side, Sibbald will be on the left. He is one of the top prospects from my home nation of Scotland, so I'm looking to develop him into an international standard wide player.

Hughes is further along in his development than the previous two players, he'll be involved in the first team this season and in the future, will be the driving force of the side. A huge talent.

Going Forward

The objective for season 1 is to simply stay up. Anything extra will be a bonus, anything less is a massive failure will be not be accepted. It's probably quite a low target, but my previous managerial successes have been at lower levels.

The objectives will increase by season. Depending on season 1, at the moment, the season 2 objective will be to finish in the top half of the Premier League.

The next post will detail our tactic and look at a few players who will be key to what kind of season we have...

Thought this might be interesting to record, just bought FM for the first time. Complete FM novice and, honestly, still learning the game of football as I've only started watching it in the past couple seasons. But I'm going to try jumping in with both feet for my first career. Going with all European leagues playable and all other leagues viewable as I'd like to watch the soccer world evolve. Starting out with Sunday League experience and going to start unemployed, taking whatever job I can find. So, here is my head coach:



Now the question is, who is crazy enough to hire me? And will my computer blow up trying to run this league?

Completely inspired by Cerud's career, I have decided to join him on the continent in looking to build myself a career in football management. With my last long term save being from FM08, where I took American Samoa to the World Cup, I feel it is time to start the venture until FM14 comes out. For various reasons I am using FM 2012.

Beginning Manager Profile

Name:Ade
Nationality:English
Languages:English
Past Experience:Automatic

The bags are packed, lets begin.

Full Name: Blackburn Rovers Football Club
Nickname: Rovers
Founded: 1875
Ground: Ewood Park
Capacity: 31, 367

Owner: Venky's
Managing Director: Derek Shaw
Global Advisor: Shebby Singh

History:
Blackburn Rovers are a founding member of the Football League, established in 1888. Along with Aston Villa and Everton, they are one of three founding members of both the Football League and the Premier League. Most of Blackburn's success came pre-World War II, as the club won the FA Cup 6 times (they are the only existing club to win the FA Cup three years in a row - 1884, 1885 & 1886), the Football League First Division twice (1911-12, 1913-14) and the Lancashire Seniors Cup 11 times (18 times in total).

After the second World War, Rovers mostly competed in the Second and Third Division's of the Football League with little success to boast about, and it wasn't until local businessman and lifelong Rovers fan, Jack Walker, took over the club in 1990 that they began to rise again. In October 1991, Walker hired Kenny Dalglish as manager and Dalglish's appointment returned instant success as the club won the Second Division play-offs to earn promotion to the newly-formed FA Premier League.

Rovers moved quickly to bring in a young Alan Shearer from Southampton for £3,300,000, along with a number of signings to bolster the squad. After finishing fourth and second, respectively, in the first two campaigns of the Premier League, Rovers finally won the FA Carling Black Label Premiership in 1995, despite losing 2-1 at Anfield on a thrilling final day.

After winning the Premiership, manager Kenny Dalglish decided to move into a Director of Football role at Ewood Park, handing the reigns to Ray Harford. Harford could not emulate Dalglish's success, however, and ultimately resigned in October of 1996. The title-winning squad was disbanded quickly and after poor managerial reigns from Harford, Roy Hodgson and Brian Kidd, the club was relegated in 1999.

After a poor first season in Division One, the club was rocked when the club owner, Jack Walker, passed away in August 2000. "Uncle Jack" as he was known by all Rovers supporters, had been a huge figure at the club and his death was felt by everyone at the club. Blackburn dedicated their promotion push to their deceased benefactor and fittingly returned to the Premier League at the end of the 2000-2001 season. In their first season back, Graeme Souness guided the club to 10th place in the Premiership as well as their first ever League Cup triumph; defeating Tottenham 2-1 in the Final.

Despite some successful seasons under Mark Huges in the mid-2000's, the League Cup victory was the last piece of silverware in Rovers' storied history and a disappointing start to the 2010- decade has seen them drop to the Championship.

Goals:
In this save, I'm hoping to get Blackburn back into the Premier League, using British players only. There's no particular reason for it, other than to make it more of a challenge. Once in the Premier League, I will try to get the club back into Europe and ultimately turn them into the dominant force of English football, again only using British players. It won't be easy, but that's kind of the point...

Initial Thoughts:
The Blackburn squad is good enough to go stragiht back up, but once you take away the non-British players, you're left with a very thin squad. The club only has £500k in the transfer kitty, so any incomings will be dependent on who I can move on, and for how much. It looks like I'm going to have to rely on youth this season, so a top-half finish, which is what the board are asking for, is probably about right.

The senior staff at Rovers are terrible. I'm not going to touch the youth setup at the moment, because it appears to be in good shape, but the First Team Coaches are almost entirely going to be wiped out.

Relying on youth is going to be an issue, but there are some candidates that look strong. Raheem Hanley, Robbie Cotton, Ryan Edwards, Josh Morris and Anton Forrester should really be learning their trade on loan somewhere for the next couple of seasons, but lack of funds will mean a lot of game time for them. Hopefully, it will just boost their development in time for a big promotion push next season.

David Dunn will be my captain this season, with Scott Dann as his deputy. Dunn is also a coach at the club and I have no desire to change that - his coaching abilities are as good as anything we can get at the moment. Unfortunately, Dunny is prone to injury and his stamina isn't what it used to be. When he's fit and able, he will be the playmaker in my midfield, but he will be sharing those duties with Callum Harris, who has been called up to the First Team from the Under 18's. Ideally, I'll be able to bring someone in so that Harris can continue to develop in the academy.

In other First Team news, Paul Robinson will provide backup for Jake Kean in goal. Robbo's contract is up at the end of the season and I have no plans to renew it - his £20,000 a week wages aren't worth it and I plan to develop Kean into a very good keeper. Matt Urwin in the reserves is being lined up for a spot on the bench next season, unless I pick up a decent backup on a free in the summer. Danny Murphy has also been placed in the reserves, though I'll reassess him once he has recovered from injury.

First Actions:
I have gutted the coaching staff. Only David Dunn, Gary Bowyer & John Keelsey remain from the senior staff, and Shebby Singh has been politely told to go and "Globally Advise" someone else. I appointed Gwyn Williams as Director of Football and tasked him with finding me a new backroom staff. I would do it myself, but given the lack of funds available for coaching staff and the board's reluctance to increase the number of coaches allowed, it would only end in frustration. He appointed Tord Grip as my assistant manager, and I'm happy with this. With my new*backroom staff in place, we have a minimum of 3-star coaching in all areas, with one coach reaching 4-stars and the rest somewhere in between.

Selling off the foreign players has had mixed results. Pedersen moved on for £4m, which enabled us to pick up Jamie Mackie for £3.3m, and Martin Olsson moved on for £4.7m. Unfortunately, the board decided not to give much of that transfer money to invest in new players and what little I was given was swallowed up by the appointment of new coaches. I sent Colin Kazim-Richards and Grzegorz Sandomierski back to their clubs, terminating their loan deals, as neither are British and wouldn't get a game. With limited funds available, I moved for Clint Hill, Craig Gardner, Andrew Surman and David Bentley on loan, bringing them in for the season. All four will feature heavily in the first team and, hopefully, aid with the development of the younger players. Dickson Etuhu and Gael Givet have been hard to shift.

With little to offer upfront other than Jordan Rhodes and a lack of faith in David Goodwillie, I brought in a young striker by the name of JJ Hooper, previously at Newcastle, on a free transfer after he impressed the scouts at a Trial Day. Speaking of the trial day, there were a few young foreign players that impressed. I think I'm going to allow myself to develop foreign youth players and sell them on for a profit - as long as they don't play in the first team, it's fine. Ben Sayer was also picked up on a freebie, hopefully to provide some options in midfield.

Pre-Season:
Tord Grip was in charge for all the friendlies, while I set about sorting out the playing staff at the club. Match Preparation Training was at maximum and General Training was set to Tactics Only, to help my players learn the 4-2-3-1 formation that I have adapted a little bit from Raikan007's wonderful Dortmund tactic. Speaking of Raikan007, I've also learned a lot from his Team Talk Guide, which I hope to put to good use to help the players along.


Approaching the beginning of the Championship season, my squad looks very thin. There's not much I can do about it, though, so I'll have to manage it as best I can and hope to bring in some more loan players in January.

Starting Line-Up:
GK: Jake Kean
DR: Adam Henley
DC: Grant Hanley
DC: Scott Dann
DL: Josh Morris
BWM: Jason Lowe
DLP: Craig Gardner
IFR: David Bentley
APC: David Dunn
IFL: Jamie Mackie
AF: Jordan Rhodes

Now, onto the first match - away to Huddersfield...

"He caressed her ever so gently, almost stroking her between both his feet. As he neared the end, his pulse increased and he could feel the power rising within him. All of a sudden, there was an almighty roar and men all over the world knew the joy he was experiencing as she hit the back of the net. HE SCORED!"

- an extract from Fifty Shades of Grey*

Welcome to my shiny new career! In this thread I will document the footballing life and times of Dominick Grey as he begins his quest for glory. This is basically a fun spoof of that other famous Grey chap whom all the ladies love... one for the Careers forum to know and love. Or so I hope.

The reason for this is that I've struggled to get into FM lately. I don't have that much free time to play as freely as I'd like, so playing little bits at a time and documenting it in here will hopefully keep my interest flowing. :)

Onto the good stuff then.

Meet Dominick Grey. This is the man whose career we shall be tracking in this thread, all the successes and all the failures (if any... ;)) The setup of the game looks like this:

There are no real aims to this thread other than to have a successful journeyman career and hopefully picking up some trophies on the road too. All Dom wants is to be remembered as a footballing genius, who blessed the world with his managerial abilities. Here's hoping!

*this is not true.

Apologies for the ugliness of this, I'd rather type this up on a tablet and use the pc for FM, so no pictures, not much typefacing and tables may be an issue too...

Leagues loaded: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia

...the story so far
I started unemployed and holidayed, taking the first job that became available. I resigned after two days. It was an accident that it got accepted. So I holidayed again with different options and then I took charge at Sencur in Slovenia.

When I joined them it was 13 games into a 27 game season and they were rock bottom of the second division in Slovenia. We started with three draws, which somehow scraped us out of the relegation zone, but then started winning and pulled away to safety. However, safety soon became an outside shot at a promotion push. With four games to go a loss against Zavrc seemed to have us out of it, with Smartno 1928 being 4 points clear, and despite us winning the next game they won too. We had two games left, away to the top of the league and then a home tie against none other than Smartno themselves.

We smashed Bela krajina 3-0 at their place, and Smartno failed to beat relegation threatened Krsko at home, which set up the dream finale to the season. We went a goal behind early on, but two goals from midfielders saw us turn it around and clinch the second place playoff spot against a team from the division above. An amazing turnaround from when I joined the club, we'd lost one match with me in charge.

1. Bela krajina +7 50
2. Sencur +8 42
3. Smartno 1928 +8 41
4. Dob +2 40

The playoff was against Celje, who had a far superior line up, and the first leg at home we fell 2 goals down before half time, before we grabbed what could have been a crucial late consolation. In the second leg I went attacking from the off and the results were beyond belief. Within 20 minutes we were 3-0 up, a quick early goal sparking Celje to panic and leave themselves exposed at the back, just after half time it was 5-0 and we ended up winning 6-1 in the most devastating spell of counter attacking play I'd ever seen. Clearly something had clicked.

The First Division season started with similar aplomb, our first game was away to former champions and last season's third place finishers Koper. We slaughtered them 6-1 and my young striker Zalaznik scored five of the goals. The rest of this half the season was going similarly, we beat champions Domzale 5-3 in a spectacular, we dumped Olimpia Ljubljana out of the cup and by the tenth game of the season we had won 6, drawn 2 and lost 2 and were flying at the top of the division.

Then it hit the skids, we lost 7 in a row, including going out of the cup to Dob from the league below, and it looked like teams had finally worked out our 3-4-3 formation. However we didn't fall away positionally and maintained a strong position in the league, as only heavyweights Maribor and Domzale pushed away from the division. We eventually turned our form around and with four wins out of five going into the winter break, we found ourselves third in the league and in serious contention of making Europe.

1. Maribor +24 49
2. Domzale +16 36
3. Sencur +6 33
4. Rudar Velenje -3 28
5. Bela krajina -3 27
6. Aluminij -8 25
7. Triglav -3 23
8. Mura 05 -3 23
9. Olimpija -8 21
10. Koper -18 18

...and this is where you join us, in the winter break with 16 games left in the season.

Background


This journeyman game looks to achieve the crazy and start off in the tiny Cook Islands and progress all the way to the top. Inspired by others I have set myself as Cook Islander as I want to see how far I can help the national team by bringing through Cook Islanders at teams I manage and I will also look to land the national job as well (may not be permanent though). I opted for the Cook Islands as it's the lowest ranked OFC nation in the game at the start (ranked 201st) and it's also the 3rd smallest FIFA member (17k population - only Anguilla and Montseratt are smaller). It also offers a realistic progression route to New Zealand as The Cook Islands are a territory of New Zealand thus Cook Islanders are classed as New Zealand citizens.

Game setup

Large database
Players from top clubs and current international players loaded
Variety of leagues loaded (at least two per continent*)

* - The Cook Islands and New Zealand edits are my own work, anyone who would like these files can pm me)


The Manager

Profile I
Profile II

Sir Alex Ferguson career as Manchester United manager is nearly over - and I want to repeat his succes. All I have to do is to win the following:

13 Premier League
2 Champions League
5 FA Cup
4 League Cup

Quite a challenge, especially when I have to do it with Aston Villa. I wanted a team which hadn't won the league for a while. United hadn't won it for 20 years when Fergie arrived and Villa hasn't won it since 1981. Fergie has always been fond of younger players and I want to copy that. Therefore Villa is a great club because of the young potentiel within the squad. 16 of my first team players are 23 years old or younger. In addition, the club has a few prospects in the reserve squad as well as in the U18 squad. Graham Burke, Jack Grealish, Jordan Graham, Joshua Webb, Callum Robinson are all players that I have hopes of developing.

Let a (hopefully) long and glorious career with Aston Villa begin!

I've attempted to start a career thread before, but soon lost all interest in the save and ended up abandoning the thread. This time around I'm going to really take it slow, focus on every little detail and chart all my progress on this thread. The basics of my save is that I must focus on the youth academy and therefore develop my own players. However this does not necessarily mean I can't sign anybody. All my signings must be under the age of 21 so I can develop and mold them into the exact type of player I need.

The Philosophy



This is my playing style I like to have quite a free flowing force, with creative midfielders such as Josh McEachran linking up with the fast and skillful inside forwards of either Ledesma, Emnes or the slowly emerging Carayol. At the moment my fullbacks are going to stay quite defensive as I don't have the pacey, technical players that I need to be able to craft chances straight from the defence.

With that.. Let's go. First update after pre-season.

Hi. After a long break from the game I'm back.

I had a successful thread at the beginning of FM13 with Kettering town, I have had enough of that save at 2050 and decided I would like to start something a bit different to what I usually do. So here we go...

The Save + Rules

I've decided to start a one club youth only challenge in Turkey. I will not be able to sign any players, I will rely entirely on players who come through my own youth academy. I can bring in my own staff but once a youth player retires I must find a space for him in my backroom staff.

The Aim

The aim of the save is to have some fun and hopefully win some trophies with my youth only side. I will attempt to run this save up to FM14.

AN FM13 JOURNEYMAN CAREER

Hi, this is my first attempt at a story on the forums, and I've been inspired to do a journeyman save. Go easy on me, guys.

The Setup

One of the reasons I've never been able to go forward with the Pentagon Challenge is because it is impossible for me to manage in Asia.

So, I have made it a point to manage in only what I consider the top 5 nations available.

ENGLAND
SPAIN
GERMANY
ITALY
FRANCE

I have other leagues loaded on view-only.

So wish me luck, guys!!

Information & Kits | Stadium Details

There is a ridiculous amount of local teams on Football Manager for me, so I took a look through them all and after evaluating the general look of each club, including the badge, kits and squads I have finally chosen Colliers Wood United! Based in Wimbledon in the London Borough of Merton, CWU are an English semi-professional football club, currently enrolled in the Combined Counties League Premier Division with their games being played at the Wibbandune Sports Ground.

The challenge is simple. No signings. I'll outline some of my regulations further on but as you can guess, this is a youth project and therefore I will be growing my own players from the club and hoping they develop into great players down the line, whether at my club or somewhere else.

Fundamentals


Now, onto the players...



Team Instructions (keeping it simple, players aren't good enough)

I'm struggling in terms of covering of positions, so I'm having to retrain certain players and place them slightly out of position temporarily. The majority of my squad are young so I'm hoping I can still mold them into the style of players I want.