[FM14] Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Nation

Making and Breaking History: A Multi-Manager Tale

a(nother) forameuss career

Part 1: Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Nation (INCOMPLETE)

Join erstwhile young manager Stephen Smith as he takes an unlikely post in Gibraltar. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want your money back as Stephen tries to put Gibraltar both on the map, and in the Euros.

(this was incomplete in the end due to issues)

Part 2: A Rock and a Hard Place: The Birth of Lincoln

Max Harvey begins his career at Lincoln of Gibraltar as the country reaches a crossroads. As new UEFA members, the country's club sides are now eligible for the Champions League. Can he achieve the impossible?

Part 3: The Great Escape

Stephen "Steve" McQueen tries to put his famous name to good use, saving clubs that have been written off by all.

Chapter 1: #bantz (Bradford City)

Chapter 2: Calm down, calm down (Liverpool FC)

Part 4: I Dreamed a Dream...of Rocks

TBC

As you'll read, the story below died a death. However,

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

The Story

Stephen Smith, the man of a thousand footballing dreams, is in a rut. His beloved Partick Thistle are due to join the ranks of the big clubs of Scotland in the newly named Scottish Premiership this season, but even that can't get him excited. Because, you see, Stephen Smith has a dream. Not a Martin Luther King type dream, mind, he isn't quite capable of something so profound. No, Stephen Smith of Maryhill has a dream of being a football manager.

His friends all laughed, of course. He had investigated taking a few coaching badges, and even managed to achieve a few, but any attempts to get into the glamorous world of football coaching have been met with firm no's, slammed doors, and, on one occasion, a punch in the face from an irate reserve team coach. The less said about that one the better. Of course, his dream is to manage his beloved Jags, but as time wears on, even his own massive confidence starts to diminish. He was always a pretty good player, but far from good enough to actually make it. But his mind, that is where his talent lies. He has a true footballing brain in his own eyes, one that would be perfectly suited to plotting from the sidelines. Some may disagree, but in his own mind, Stephen Smith is the perfect candidate for any job.

After a disagreement in his current job, Smith resigns and heads off with some friends to catch some sun in the far-flung British outpost of Gibraltar. Most would be unaware that the tiny country of only 30,000 citizens had a football team, but one balmy Friday night, the group decided to go catch a game against the mighty island of Orkney. The football was fairly dire, but Gibraltar thumped their island opponents at the tiny Victoria Stadium. After the game, when drinking at one of the local bars, a rumour began to circulate that current Gibraltar manager Allan Bula had resigned after the game for unknown reasons. Enboldened by the alcohol in his system, Stephen Smith decided to waddle his way outside and on to the Victoria Stadium. He wasn't sure what to expect, and on waking the next morning, wasn't quite sure he remembered what happened, but on checking his e-mails, it turned out that he was now the Gibraltar National Team Manager.

It wasn't quite the start Smith had hoped for, but only weeks later, things...escalated. It was announced that after a length court battle, Gibraltar had been awarded UEFA membership, and would compete in actual qualifying competition for the first time in late 2014. Soon after, FIFA followed suit, granting them full membership*, and with it a place in World Cup Qualifying for 2018, and a spot in the full World rankings. Whatever Smith had said in his interview seemed to have impressed the board, as even with these developments, he was told he would be in charge for those games. As a gesture of good-will, and after talking to the man himself, Allan Bula was invited back into the fold as Smith's assistant. Many journalists saw it as desperation from an inexperienced manager, but only time would tell if they were correct.

Stephen Smith would realise his dream.

* I know, I know, this hasn't happened in real life, but read on...

The Background

This is a challenge that has enticed me since this game has been released. I've followed the news of Gibraltar becoming UEFA members with interest, as I've really got into International Management in FM, and I can think of no greater challenge than this one. I'm well aware of the San Marino challenge, and that's a tough one, but I really like the idea of being present at the birth of a nation. At the time of starting the game, Gibraltar have NEVER played a competitive game, and in FM terms have never actually played a game. They are ranked 207th in the World, so comfortably the worst nation on earth. In their recent real-life games though, they have drawn with Slovakia, so there is definitely potential. I'll be aiming to get above the likes of San Marino in the short term, and will probably consider the entire save a success if I can get out of pot 6. In my previous save, Gibraltar have never won a competitive game, and they had plenty of chances. I'll be aiming to change that.

Will I ever make it to a tournament though? I have my doubts, but I'll be trying my best.

The Setup

I've used an edited database to make the following changes...

o Activate the National Team

o Make them full FIFA members

o Set qualifying stadium to Estadio Algarve in Portugal

o Activate the Gibraltan league system and make it playable

o "Demote" Allan Bula and his assistant so that Bula becomes my assistant manager, and the other becomes a coach

o Add a few more custom leagues in for later in the save

I toyed with making the Victoria Stadium bigger so that it would comply with the rules and eliminate the need to travel to Portugal for official games, but decided against it in the end. I want things to be as realistic as possible. In adding the league system, I plan on taking over a Gibraltan side at some point to play a kind of San Marino type challenge. My main aim is just to play with the national team though in as much depth as possible.

In terms of leagues loaded, I'll be adding Gibraltar (obviously) along with all UK leagues, and Spain to its lowest level. Not sure if that will have any benefit to regens for my tiny nation, but I hope so.

My Goals

I'll be aiming for the following list of goals, but obviously there are some on there that I have very, very little chance of achieving. This isn't going to be a rigid San Marino style challenge, I'll be making it a lot looser to try and keep my own morale up if anything. I'll add some club goals if I end up managing one at some point. My final achievement is my only real "end-point". I want to be in charge for the long haul, and I think when my in-game manager reaches 80, it'll be time to retire. That will take me to 2067, but I'll probably extend that to 2070, or shrink it to 2066 to tie it in with tournaments. By that time, we may still be languishing without qualification, so it could be a very easy decision. Only time will tell.

o Score our first goal as a full FIFA member

o Get our first win as a full FIFA member

o Get our first points in an official match

o Rise off the bottom of the World Rankings

o Rise out of Pot 6 in qualifying for the European Championships

o Rise out of pot 6 in the World Cup Qualifying groups

o Beat a side ranked 10 places above us

o Beat a side ranked 25 places above us

o Beat a side ranked 50 places above us

o Beat a side ranked 100 places above us

o Qualify for a major tournament

o Win a game at a major tournament

o Win a major tournament

o Become a Gibraltan legend

o Retire at 80 still in charge of the national team, as a legend

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

So here he is, our lord and saviour Stephen Smith. Well, Gibraltar's Lord and saviour at least...OK, maybe not even that. Nothing very controversial in there - I start with a Sunday League rep, which I hope will be enough for Gibraltar, and the same bald, leering face I've used for a while.

And here's the side I'll be managing. The shirts have a certain 80's feel to them, which is nice. We're currently ranked 207th in the World, which, would you believe it, isn't actually bottom. Instead, we're ahead of some nations on alphabetical order, given we all have zero points. Technically though, we are joint bottom. We'll be playing in the tiny Victoria Stadium for friendlies...

...which is in view of the magnificent Rock of Gibraltar. I can't guarantee that the players won't be made to run up it twice daily to keep fit. For qualifying games though, unsurprisingly this stadium does not meet the criteria UEFA set out. So we'll be travelling into Portugal for the games that matter, playing in the much more impressive looking Estadio Algarve.

Staff-wise, we're hardly well stocked. I kept Allan Bula on as assistant, and moved his assistant to being a coach. I may end up bringing more in, but the standard is pretty poor at this level. I'll see how it goes. What I will be doing is trying to hire someone in to manage the younger teams. If all goes well, these will be an important production line into the first team, so I want them to be well managed. I could do it myself, but the thought of picking three squads fills me with dread. I prefer just to let others do it, then steal their players for the main squad if they're good enough.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

According to the nation information, these are our most important players. And if you think they look good, wait until you see the rest of the squad!

No, really, wait until then. We really are dreadful.

Two friendlies were already scheduled for 2013, so within a month I'll be in action. Albania will be nothing more than a glorified "Meet the Team" session, as I expect them to absolutely ragdoll us. Bonaire is different though, we should be beating them, and comfortably, given they are a non-FIFA nation that are on paper worse than us.

I then added three more friendlies, and for obvious reasons. San Marino are chief diddy in Europe arguably, so it's a good yardstick. If we win there, we're good, if we lose...well we're certainly not good. Andorra are a pot 6 side too, so I'd be hoping for a positive result there. Yemen are in the group above, but still ranked in the 150-190 group. If we could beat them, then that would be fantastic, but it'll be tough.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

We face our first organised match as FIFA members, and it's against Albania away. Bit miffed that it isn't at home given it's such an important match, but you can't have everything. I don't expect to do much in this game, but as long as we put in a decent performance relatively, I'll be happy.

The squad was pretty much picked by Allan Bula, which I thought was fitting given he was manager before me. I've been playing around a bit with Excel to monitor players given I'll be going through a lot of them in many squads. So below is a record of all the players I've called up for our maiden squad.

The main thing to note is that we are very low on quality. We have a few players who are probably Skrill Premier level, maybe League 2 at a push, but the rest are probably Skrill North/South or worse. One thing to note though is that my coaches are projecting them to improve massively. Of course, this is relative, so I've no idea how much they will improve. But we do have a young squad, which will make a difference.

We set up with the following formation. Nothing too exciting for now.

It wasn't the rout I might have expected, but we were never really in the match. We'll look on to the match with Bonaire as a true yardstick for how good or bad we really are.

Youth Team Update

A steady but ultimately losing start to life in the under 21 and under 19 teams. I'm hopeful for the future here - a lot of the first team players could play for these sides, and would probably do much better, so I'll be looking at these results as a barometer for the future.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

We welcome a few new faces into the squad, but I'll be honest, they're hardly going to set the squad on fire. But Bula is clearly trying to bring in as many players as possible, which at this early stage of our adventure is probably a good idea.

We play both Bonaire and Yemen in this international period, so it's a good chance to get the squad together and get to know each other.

A terrible, terrible result, and one I didn't see coming. Even with the squad ability we have, we should have enough to beat the likes of Bonaire. Much work to be done.

But still, you see what we did - first goal in football baby!

Another heavy defeat, but we did score again, another for Liam Walker.

Those two results contributed to us now being ranked at a new record low. It's not really representative, as we haven't really "dropped". Other teams around us picked up points, which trumps our absolute zero. The only way is up!

A winnable friendly scheduled, but if we play anything like we did in this window, we'll struggle.

Youth Teams Update

Our first "point" albeit in a friendly as the U21s tied with Singapore. U19s are yet to have any kind of positive results.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

Youth Team Updates

Another loss for the U21s.

Unfortunately, one draw just isn't enough to trouble anyone in terms of qualification, so the U19s finished bottom of their group.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

The Big One. The New Firm. The Diddy Classico. It's Gibraltar vs San Marino at the Victoria Stadium, in a battle to see who can be called the worst team in Europe.

I stuck with the 4-4-1-1 formation that seemed to be getting a lot out of Liam Walker, up against a solid looking defensive formation for San Marino.

Sickening.

San Marino take a huge step forward with a comfortable win. They've only ever won one game in their history before now, and now they've doubled that. It just shows how much work we have on to become successful with this team.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

A massive, massive result for Gibraltar as we pick up our first draw against Liechtenstein. I know it's only a draw, and I know it's against a fellow pot 6 team, but boy was that a satisfying result. It looked like we were heading for a 1-1 draw for most of the game, but then an 84th minute goal put us behind. I resigned myself to another defeat, but then, who else, Liam Walker broke free, took it to the edge of the box and then slammed a shot past the keeper into the net. I have not celebrated a goal like that since Scotland won the World Cup...

A record high as we picked up our first ranking points. We still await that precious win though.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

There's excitement in the air as Stephen Smith takes his seat for the first qualifying draw Gibraltar will be involved in. Once we're done, we'll have found out the sides we'll face in our very first competitive fixtures as a footballing nation. Unfortunately, I was on holiday in-game, so missed who was in each pot, but to us it doesn't really matter. We are absolutely rock bottom of the coefficient table, so we will be in the bottom pot for sure. The only countries we cannot face are Spain - for political reasons - and any of the other pot 6 diddies.

In all honesty, it probably doesn't matter who we draw. I'll put the team out there in the best possible shape I can, but we very well could end the campaign with ten defeats out of ten. So it's a bit ridiculous listing sides we'd want to avoid. But it's my career, so that's what I'm going to do. I'd love to avoid Germany and Holland, as they have a reputation for being ruthless qualification sides. Apart from that, there aren't any sides I would hate to get. In terms of who I'd like to get, then I'd say any of the home nations. Scotland would be bittersweet, but England or Wales would just be sweet. Imagine getting a result at Wembley...ooft.

Well, well, well.

This is actually a very interesting group. Out of the top seeds (as far as I can tell after the draw) we could have faced Germany, Holland, Italy, Croatia, England, Belgium, Portugal, Greece or Russia. You would probably say Croatia or Greece would be the favourable draw, but Portugal are by no means the toughest. It also means a short away trip given we're already travelling to Portugal for our "home" games. We also managed to get the lowest ranked second seeds in Ukraine, and the second lowest ranked of the third seeds (Scotland were the lowest ranked). Northern Ireland were the home nation I least wanted to get, but for no real reason. On a good day we could maybe get a result against them at home. The Faroe Islands is hands down the best team I could have hoped to have drawn. I expect us to take at least a point off of them, if not a win. Very happy with the draw.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a(nother) forameuss career

Another friendly, this time against Andorra, and I have to say this is a winnable tie, but in the way that San Marino was a winnable game. We got a draw the last time out, so the same again would be fantastic, and set us up for the upcoming qualifiers nicely. This will probably be the final fixture before they begin, so would be great to leave on a high.

As you can see, it's an odd looking formation, and something I've been wanting to try out. It borrows some concepts from Ackter's catenaccio thread in the tactics forum, but only really scratches the surface. I would like to have more games to experiment with things, but that's not going to happen at international level.

Two draws in a row? Let's face it, we're now dead certs to qualify for Euro 2016. Clearly.

San Marino may have beaten us in our friendly, but we're now above them in the rankings. We play the Faroes in the first game of qualifying...a win there would fire us skywards.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a forameuss career

So 2045, eh? Personally, I'm disgusted that hover-cars don't exist yet. In fact, nothing of "tomorrow's world" really exists. And in no industry is that more apparent than in football. Sure some giants of the modern game have regressed slightly, with new pretenders rising up to take their place, but really, not a lot has changed.

Enter Max Harvey.

The man who has starred in a couple of my saves has had a bit of a facelift. Or a face-off really. Somewhere in Germany Franz Schulz (star of my last career) is without a face. Terrible behaviour. So he fled to Gibraltar in Autumn 2013 intending to make his fortune. Who did he choose to start his journey off with?

Yup. He's taken the easy way out. Basically, Lincoln are THE force in Gibraltar, having the best squad and prospects of all the clubs in the country at the start of the game. Max managed them to give me a comfortable start (don't judge him) and he's never looked back.

Now since I'm way into the future, unfortunately all you're going to get for now is a dump of our history (which I've been keeping track of) along with a lot of screens from present day. If you want to know anything else, I'll try and provide it, otherwise I'll move on from there. I'll try and give my memories of my time, but they'll be limited. I'm getting old you see.

As you can see, we're absolutely dominant domestically, apart from a few cup slip-ups. You may be wondering why I'm even starting this thread ,but apart from missing the writing, I'm aiming for the very top, and that's something we're far, far away from. But I will not be leaving Gibraltar until this side are Champions of Europe.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a forameuss career

Before I update on my first season completed under this topic, a quick run-down on the squad strength, and three of my key players.

We're fairly well-served in most positions, with a few stand-out members. The squad is far and away the best in the land, but when you hit Europe, you're up against sides whose ability relative to ours, is all 5*, all of the time. Unfortunate.

A fairly recent signing, but this is a player I'm thrilled to have. Physical specimens are few and far between in this league, so any above average players in terms of strength or pace are going to have a field day. This guy will be huge for us, and should be good enough to make some impact in the Champions League. How much he'll improve is unknown at this stage given the relatively small number of games we play, but hopefully we can keep him onboard for a while.

A ball-playing defender? At this level? Well, believe it, as Metin is an absolute collossus playing in this position. He sits on the right of my central defensive pairing, playing up to the short passing strategy that I use. He's been fantastic really in his time here, and I don't ever want to lose him.

I've had SPFL sides in Scotland sniffing after Connor on loan, but no bites yet for sales. Quite happy at that, as he's a fantastic full-back, and one of my three key players. He's probably too good for this level, but I think winning trophies every season and being in the Champions League guaranteed is quite the sweetener.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a forameuss career

Season 2044/45

Transfers

Our most expensive season yet in terms of transfer outlay, but probably our best in terms of quality. As I've done every year, I've scoured available regions for young talent that can be swayed with the prospect of Champions League football, and have quite a bit of room to grow into. In most cases, the players will be good enough to step right into the side, but as long as they're projected to be a star, I'll take a punt on them.

The main aim this summer was to bring in at least one backup keeper. I had to put a few greyed out players on the bench at times this season, so two keepers arriving will lessen that. Dean Benson may even challenge Stephen Martens for a starting spot at times. The standout purchase for me though was Steve Burfoot. I've got my Andy Carroll type in Steven Taylor, and now I have my Hernandez. With his pace, he should absolutely roast this league, and hopefully form a good partnership with the big Aussie.

Results

We gave it our best shot, but unfortunately Europe was just too good for us this time around. We started with a routine win over two leagues against Montenegro side Sujetska, and then started pretty well in Tel Aviv, only losing by a single goal. However, no away goal in that game meant it would be an uphill battle on our return to the Europa Point Stadium. And so it proved, as Maccabi stuffed us 4-1. The drop into the Europa League play-off is always a tough one - we've never been seeded at this stage, so we have to face a giant. This time it was French side Bordeaux, and they ran out comfortable winners, 6-2 on aggregate. It started well with Steven Taylor scoring in the first minute, but their two away goals pretty much ended our hopes. We now look to next season.

Back on the domestic front, we put behind our problems with Cup football and swept away all before us, winning all three trophies. Only four goals conceded in the ten cup games, and a massive thirty-five scored. I'm proud of the team - of course this is exactly what we should be doing, but it's a whole other thing to actually go out and do it in one-off games.

So very nearly the clean-sweep I've been waiting for in the league. We've had several unbeaten seasons, but we've yet to go truly invincible and win every one of our fourteen games. This is the closest we've come, dropping two points to a late Boca goal. No matter though, as we walked the league, as you can imagine.

A domestic clean-sweep then. An average of 3.8 goals a game, and 0.6 conceded puts our average score at around 4-1. That's amazing, but again, not entirely unexpected. I'll still want more from this squad - with our clout, we should be improving on that, and hopefully us improving can maybe drive the teams below us to improve too, which will help our coefficient massively.

Player Stats

Board Confidence

European Performance

In this section I'll show how every side in Gibraltar managed in European competition. I suspect it's going to be a very short section...

Season 2044/45 Coefficient - 1 CL (2nd Q.) and 3 EL (1st Q.)

Lincoln (GIB)

Champions League 2nd Qualifying Round - vs Sujetska (agg 7-2)

Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round - vs M. Tel-Aviv (agg 1-5)

Europa League Playoff Round - vs Bordeaux (agg 2-6)

Manchester 62

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Rabotnicki (agg 0-5)

Red Imps

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Carmarthen (agg 0-3)

Boca Juniors (GIB)

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Vojvodina (agg 0-3)

Looking to the Future

Immediately following the end of the season, I requested improved training facilities.

This was approved thankfully, so once again we're improving the facilities in an attempt to compete with the best in Europe. I think this might have to be the last improvement for a while though, at least until we get to the Champions League groups again. With our wage bill, we need European football to stay in the black, so certainly can't afford to go spending millions on facility upgrades. After this one of course.

For next year, as every year, we have only one aim - to get to the Champions League Group Stages. We've done it before, and I think we can do it again, but we're still a long way off making it there regularly. All it'll take is a generous draw though, and I think with two more group stage appearances, we might be able to make that financial jump to start doing it more often.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a forameuss career

Season 2045/46

Transfers

Only two arrivals, and one is already a familiar face. Chris O'Shea joins on a permanent deal following a very successful loan spell last season. He should be a big player for us. Wright should provide good backup to the Aussie Andy Carroll Steven Taylor.

Results

Twice in a row now we have fallen at the final step, failing to make the Europa League group stages after being eliminated from the Champions League. It could have been much worse though - the result against Zestaponi in the first leg was absolutely dreadful, and I tell you, it's lucky they thumped them in the second leg, otherwise they would all be getting tossed across the Spanish border and left to fend for themselves. Our first leg defeat to BATE meant we faced a daunting task in the second, and we failed to turn it around. 0-0 was a very creditable result in my book, just not good enough.

When we fell into the Europa League, we were already up against it. As a non-seeded team, we usually have to face a giant, and this year it was Anderlecht. A 2-1 home defeat meant going to Belgium needing a miracle, and we didn't even manage a BATE-style draw. We crashed out, and that's another year with a lack of European appearance money.

Better news in the cups. Not a single slip up all season, grabbing all three trophies, conceding only two goals in the process. We really were majestic at times, and it's good to see that we've put our occasional cup-wobblies behind us. 30 goals in ten games is very good going.

Once again the clean-sweep falls just out of our grasp. This time it was crushed in the penultimate game with an uninspiring draw against Red Imps. Still though, it's another utterly dominant display in the league, and we now make it thirty-three title wins in a row. I would say unbelievable, but is it really? It's par, but a very good par.

League stats-wise, we didn't have quite as good a season as last year. It was good enough though domestically, and just as bad on the continent.

Player Stats

Board Confidence

European Performance

In this section I'll show how every side in Gibraltar managed in European competition. I suspect it's going to be a very short section...

Season 2045/46 Coefficient - 1 CL (2nd Q.) and 3 EL (1st Q.)

Lincoln (GIB)

Champions League 2nd Qualifying Round - vs Zestaponi (agg 5-1)

Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round - vs BATE (agg 0-3)

Europa League Playoff Round - vs Anderlecht (agg 1-5)

Sporting (GIB)

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs CSKA Sofia (agg 1-5)

Lions Gibraltar

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Belenenses (agg 0-7)

Manchester 62

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Cliftonville (agg 0-5)

Gibraltar once again shows how absolutely abject we are. The only reason we're putting three teams into the Europa League each year, is because Lincoln are holding up the co-efficient manfully. If it wasn't for us, we'd be in much worse shape, and probably back to 1 and 1 in terms of qualifiers, instead of 1 and 3.

Youth Intake

It's really hard to get excited by this.

Looking to the Future

So you're a tiny club, looking to fight it out with the big dogs, and you have too much money...what do you do? Youth upgrade!

And what a monster update it is. £4 million will be spent on it, to take us into the top echelon of facilities. I'm not actually convinced it'll do much good, as my youth prospects have been getting worse and worse. Well, not really, they're probably still getting marginally better, but now we're a higher rep club, we can afford to bring in youngsters from elsewhere who absolutely wipe the floor with anyone produced in-house. We'll see how this upgrade treats us.

But then, a few months later (I requested at the start of the season)...

Uh-oh...money's too tight to mention at the moment, so not surprising it's been canned. Actually happy about it - I think an upgrade of this size would have sent us into a spiral of debt.

It's a must to get into some kind of European group stage next year. The Champions League would be amazing, but the Europa League would swell the coffers enough. If we can start qualifying for, say, 1 in every 2, I think we'd end up with enough money to really improve.

Historic Stats

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a forameuss career

And as a bonus, here's a historical record of the nation coefficient, and the club facilities from the time I started the save. I'll start including these in the main posts from now on.

As you can see, we've been on quite a journey with our facilities. Training is the worry still though - we've only just reached average, having already had four upgrades. Youth facilities are far more promising though, up at great, with junior coaching at excellent.

I said in the last post that we were holding up the coefficient, and I meant it. What you see above is pretty much our contribution to the coefficient, as the other clubs have been knocked out at the first stage every single time. We've never been higher than 41st, but to be honest it doesn't really matter that much whether we go higher. 46th is the lowest, as 47th puts you down into the first qualifying round. However, you need to reach up into the high twenties to start earlier in the Europa League, and the high teens to get further in the Champions League (I think 12th gets a spot in the 3rd round). All we can do is keep performing - this table is really ancillary to our needs - we'll just need to grind on regardless.

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a forameuss career

Season 2046/47

Transfers

Check us, signing players from the Barcelona B team. We're pure big time now. Pure box office.

In other news, I bit the bullet and handed out a bumper contract to Tom Scott. The Scotsman arrives with bags of potential, but I'm wary of the amount of money I'm handing him. When you combine him with Balcells, the two alone are on more than my entire wage budget was for a large chunk of my early Lincoln career. It's a risk, but with short 1 year contracts, we can always let them go if things don't work out. Mark Gregory is less of a risk, and can fill in in a few positions. Should be important.

Results

Well, well, well...I demanded a group stage appearance at the close of last season, and that's exactly what the team managed after getting a measure of revenge on Anderlecht. It was a glorious second leg peformance to overturn the 2-1 defeat we suffered in Belgium. They matched our away goal early in the tie, but we scored three to go clear of them on aggregate, and managed to just about hold on. A fantastic result.

The Champions League was less inspiring, with a mini Irish tour ending in a familiar beating. Linfield of Northern Ireland fell following a fantastic 5-1 win, but unfortunately, Steven Taylor was injured late on, and ruled out of the rest of the qualifying campaign. A dull 0-0 draw in the second leg put us up against Derry in the next round. We put up a good fight, but in the end they were just too good.

As you can see, the group stages were just about making up the numbers. Five resounding defeats, with only one (own) goal to show for ourselves, before we stunned Sparta Prague in the final dead rubber. A good way to end the campaign, but we were pretty terrible throughout. It's clear we're nowhere near good enough to challenge anyone we'll meet in the group stages.

Another dominant set of results in the domestic cups culminated in a ridiculous 9-0 battering of Magpies in the Rock Cup Final. Even by our standards, that was pretty good.

We did it. We finally did it.

A clean sweep season is upon us, and domestically, we have won every single game we played (unless you count the extra time win in the Pepe Reyes Cup. I don't.). A fantastic achievement, and to be honest it's about time.

Player Stats

European Performance

Season 2045/46 Coefficient - 1 CL (2nd Q.) and 3 EL (1st Q.)

Lincoln (GIB)

Champions League 2nd Qualifying Round - vs Linfield (agg 5-1)

Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round - vs Derry (agg 3-7)

Europa League Playoff Round - vs Anderlecht (agg 4-3)

Europa League Group Stages - 4th (W1-D0-L5)

Manchester 62

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs TNS (agg 1-4)

Red Imps

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Hibernians (agg 1-3)

Sporting (GIB)

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Zestaponi (agg 0-8)

Youth Intake

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh...

Looking to the Future

We just need to build on this season and make sure we do well in Europe next season. Europa League would do, but given that the Champions League brings in around £10 million even if we get beat 10-0 in every group game, that is the holy grail.

On a less competition related note, we really need to start planning our signings better. We've gone from having an all home-grown team back in the day to struggling to fill our European squad quota. We have young players being brought in, but they'll take a few years to start counting towards being home grown. If we can start producing players from our youth academy that are good enough to not embarrass us, we should be alright, but otherwise we'll need to start planning to make sure we don't drive ourselves into a corner.

Historic Stats

Can't Stop the Rock: The Birth of a Football Nation

a forameuss career

Season 2047/48

Transfers

Absolutely no transfers into the club. None. Nada.

Results

As the first leg of our second qualifying round drew to a close, we were sitting at 1-1 at home, facing a nightmare away trip to Eastern Europe needing to score. Then Steven Taylor popped up and got the winner. I like to think that was the catalyst for what came next.

We awkwardly made it past Botev with a 92nd minute goal sealing it, and then scraped a 1-1 draw with a good Zurich side. I prepared myself for another Europa League chance going into the second leg, but we absolutely blitzed them in the end, scoring 4 at home and moving into the lucrative play-off stage. When you reach here, you're guaranteed a Europa League group stage spot, and have the chance to go for the big time. We were fantastic at the Europa Point Stadium, keeping Rapid to a 0-0 draw. That meant that any sort of goal in Austria would give us a massive advantage. Two would give us an even bigger one, and that's just what we managed. An unbelievable 2-0 win gave us the spot in the group stages we craved. Amazing.

Of course, come the draw, we were just begging not to get pumped. the draw was academic really, but to manage visits to Moscow, Manchester and Madrid made it a gang of M's, and six extremely difficult games. I actually got some hope after the first game, as we frustrated Madrid into just the two. Then in Moscow, we almost, almost managed to get something. In the 87th minute, they popped up with the winner, and broke our hearts. City absolutely monstered us in both games, and then so did Madrid in the return. But then came our chance. Moscow back in Gibraltar, and, somehow, a 2-0 lead. We looked like we were heading for our first Champions League win, which would net us a hefty sum as a win bonus. Unfortunately, the arse fell out of our attempt late on, and we conceded three late goals, the last coming in stoppage time. Absolutely gutting, but it was a dead rubber anyway. We will pocket the TV and appearance money happily and hope to be back next year.

That'll do nicely. Another three trophies, achieved with not too much bother.

It wasn't the all-conquering performance of last season, but it was still enough to win the league by a considerable gap.

Well, I say considerable, but Red Imps really pushed us this year. We managed four points against them this year, so if they had turned a defeat into a draw, the gap would've been two points. If they had won that game, they would have won the league. That's an absolutely amazing performance from Red Imps, considering we were unbeaten. I would love for them to regularly challenge, as we need other sides to step up if we're going to improve our coefficient as a nation.

Player Stats

European Performance

Season 2047/48 Coefficient - 1 CL (2nd Q.) and 3 EL (1st Q.)

Lincoln (GIB)

Champions League 2nd Qualifying Round - vs Botev (Plovdiv) (agg 3-1)

Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round - vs FC Zurich (agg 5-1)

Champions League Playoff Round - vs SK Rapid Wien (agg 2-0)

Champions League Group Stages - 4th (W0-D0-L6)

Red Imps

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Bohemians (agg 0-5)

Boca Juniors (GIB)

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Ekranas (agg 0-9)

Lynx FC

Europa League 1st Qualifying Round - vs Qarabag Agdam (agg 1-4)

Another absolutely awful season for Gibraltar as a whole, only held up by our appearance in the Champions League. I have hopes for Red Imps next season though.

Youth Intake

Once again, I'm finding it hard to raise even the smallest amount of interest for the youth intake.

Looking to the Future

Well, we can't have that, can we?

This is an odd one - last year we had our £5 million revamp of the youth facilities canned. Now we have another upgrade, but for considerably less. Not sure how that works, but I won't complain. This should push our youth facilities even higher, and hopefully bring in a player that can actually challenge for a place.

Historic Stats