[FMC15] If Wins Were (Danish) Dynamite We Wouldn't Be Able To Blow Our Hats Off

I decided to take on a career with a Danish theme after reading Danish Dynamite. Obviously, I would love to potentially manage the national side one day during my career but otherwise it will be a case of working my way to the top, by the most realistic means without any set objectives. Although I am English I will add Danish as a second nationality to add a bit of fun.

I am from the LLM school of playing (hence my late arrival in to the world of Career Updates) so apologies if I spend a lot of time fumbling around in the lower leagues. I decided to load all of the leagues from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England, Germany and Austria and look at some second division clubs. Realism dictated that an amateur club would be more likely to offer an ex semi-pro like me a chance and I fancied living in Copenhagen so we lcome to Avarta BK.

Preseaon went ok as we exerimented with personal that might fit my dream of a 5-3-2 with wing-backs.

Early season form was immensely frustrating as we threw away five points by losing 3-1 leads with twenty minutes to go in consecutive games against Avedøre and Herlev. We still looked like we might challenge for the top spot but mid-table safety will do for an amateur team in a mainly semi-pro division. The cup defeat was a bit limp as we conceded very early from a set piece and never got going but the board had asked for a second round tie so my expectations have been met.

Damn game crash! Lost the last of these games and decided to instant result. Now the Nykøbing defeat is a victory. Mental note...always save after taking a screenshot!

Always love to see FMC careers, plus careers in countries I am not familiar with. Good luck and I hope no more crash dumps plague your progress.....

I am from the LLM school of playing (hence my late arrival in to the world of Career Updates) so apologies if I spend a lot of time fumbling around in the lower leagues.

Absolutely no need for apologies, a lot on this forum, myself included, play as realistically as possible. I will follow your career with interest.

Welcome to this part of the forum.

Always love to see FMC careers, plus careers in countries I am not familiar with. Good luck and I hope no more crash dumps plague your progress.....

Thanks. I have not had a crash for years. ..literally.

Never played there before. Very interesting.

I'm "fumbling around" at the same league level in Norway so I absolutely agree with DazRTaylor, no need to apologize.Looking forward to your progress.

I'm "fumbling around" at the same league level in Norway so I absolutely agree with DazRTaylor, no need to apologize.Looking forward to your progress.

Thanks. I'll have a full update tomorrow but it's looking fairly unspectacular thus far.

The second quarter of the season saw us revert to the sort of results and performances I'd expected from an amateur outfit.

We weren't bad during the winless run but we just struggled against more clinical opponents.

I'd consider a top six finish to be a great achievement but to do so we need to tighten our defence. The problems are that one of our three centre backs is a one star teenager who has potential and a goalkeeper (Matthias Djarnaes) who is awful. The bright spots are that we have a great creative playmaker in Ihsan Cimen and our main striker Morten Nielsen (who started off as a teenager at Chelsea) is scoring a goal a game on average. God help us if anyone poaches him for free during the Winter break.

Realistically, I won't be at Avarta long. The amateur status is a challenge and when we draw a crowd of a hundred it is considered a big gate. I think I might start to look for a salaried position sooner or later now I have some experience in league football.

The transfer window was very quiet in the main. We couldn't find anybody better than what we had so we stuck with our small squad. However Ihsan Cimen was poached on the final day of the transfer window. What disappointed me was that he went to B1908, who were below us in the table.

After that our form just slid terribly. The Svebolle game was a disaster. We had even possession and conceded 7 to long shots and silly penalties before grabbing a late consolation. Even worse was the follow-up was when we conceded a late win to Holbaek and an even later equaliser to B1908.

Our dangerous form has led to a worrying slide down the table and we need to fix it sooner or later.

Well...the run of poor form continued. Our hapless goalkeeper Djernaes seemed to object to saving shots whilst, without Ihsan Cimen, our strikers failed to worry the backside of a cow with any kind of stringed instrument. We ended up with three games to play needing three wins to have any chance of avoiding relegation.

I decided to start looking for another job and approached Naesby in teh bootom Swedish division as they were looking for a new manager and offering a wage. I applied and got asked by the Avarta board to resign. Sensing an unhapy ending I applied for every salaried poition going. Naesby offered me teh job but I delayed for a week, during which time FC Umea offered me a better paid post in the Swedish First Division North.

The table upon my arrival looked like this.

The good news is that I have £50k to spend and £1500 spare in the wage budget in a division where most transfers are cheap and the average wage in my squad is around £200. With any look we should meet our board's target of a topf five finish.

Our first game with me in charge was the highlighted one against division leaders Forward. We were comfortably the better side and followed it up with late winners in the Hudiksvall and Sleipner games. The Huddinge performance was appalling but we rectified that with a comfortable win over promotion chasing Sirius.

To be two points of the top when we were 11th upon my appointment is a great start. We rely heavily on two good young loanee centre backs from AIK but to boost our chances I added a young striker on loan from the same source (Alan Naib) to boost our goal threat slightly. Our only other incomer as the window opened was a youngster with five gold stars potential from a lower league side (Christopher Myrestam).

I'm feeling very optimistic.

NO, I'm not feeling very optimistic. The cup game against Norrby (who are a division below us) was awful; They just outplayed us in every area of the pitch. Poacher Simon Martensson managed to have a goal ruled out for offside in each of the next three games. By this stage any hope of an unlikely title charge had gone but there was still second place and the play-off spot to aim at. An unlucky defeat and a bore draw put us on teh back foot but we were up for hosting second placed Forward. A win would have put us just a point behind them. We didn't.

With five games to go we won't make up a seven point difference so the focus now is on hunting for recruits for next year.

Good luck

Good luck

Thanks.

After tweaking my formation to include a sweeper in stead of a flat back three, we instantly looked a better side and went on a great run to end the season. Sadly Forward kept winning and our late form was not enough to push us into a play-off spot. Still a 4th place finish is not toobad considering we were 11th when I arrived.

In terms of building for next season we have three basic areas of weakness that I need to address.

1. Two of our three centre backs were on loan from AIK. We only have two senior centre backs left at the club. I know Christopher Poppler-Isherwood will come back for another year but I need to find at least one more player.

2. An improvement in goal given our keeper is now 34. This is easy to solve as the Skeleftea goalkeeper pulled off a couple of wonder stops when we beat them 3-0 and so I agreed a fee of 180k Krone for him (£15k) out of our transfer budget of 900k Krone (£75k).

3. A goal threat. Simon Martensson ( he who lives in the back pocket of centre backs) has an expiring contract and won't sign a new one due to his dislike of me apparently. I don't know why he is upset with me but he wont stay so we need a new poacher who will get us 10 or more goals next term.

We began the season by loaning five players from AIK (including Poppler-Isherwood) and last season's loanee Alan Naib.

We had a decent pre-season then it all went wrong. I can't say why we started so poorly as we were using the same tactics as the end of the previous season. To cut a long story short we were appalling. I was contemplating resigning after just four games but we had a game against fellow strugglers Tegs so I decided to give it one more chance to turn it around. We conceded in teh first minute and barely had a kick for the next 89 minutes. I wasn't able to resign before I was sacked.

Ouch

This isn't going too well at the moment.

Ouch

This isn't going too well at the moment.

Hmmn. I think the next club could be my last in this career if it doesn't go well.

So the next lucky team in my sacking oddyssey were Stockholm side Karlberg. The minnows, who consider a crowd of 60 a good turnout, have a small squad and I struggled to fill teh bench for my debut They were in the Second Division relegation spaces when I arrived, which is lucky as that is were my clubs seem to end up anyway. I promptly lost my two opening games with a combined score of 9-3.

Now very tempted to retire and start a new save.