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The Annual "Give Youth A Chance" Challenge - Can It Ever Be Done?

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colifire

colifire

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Evesham United [bSP] - 2013/2014

Media Prediction - 24th (relegated)

Actual Position - 15th

League Table

League Positions

Transfer History

Season

The season came down to 2 discoveries that kept us firmly midtable and makes me extremely positive moving forward.

As stated at the beginning of the season, we looked to shore up our wing play. This had me fiddling around with varying setups before stumbling upon the concept of moving Luke Cummings back to defense as wingback and moving Lee Halford up to winger. Cummings lacked the strength and speed as a winger and had constantly lost the ball, but now as a wingback, his short time on the ball resulted in accurate crosses and decent defense. Along with the growth of Neagle on the other wing and our central defence of Costello and McGowan, we became an extremely stingy team (got the "Park the Bus" achievement). 24 goals allowed in the first 30 games meant that we had a lot of draws and 1 game wins/losses and kept us firmly midtable.

Luke Powell still had confidence issues and continued to do horribly. He was then injured 15 games in and that caused our second "Eureka" moment to happen. I now firmly believe that I am horrible at recognizing youth potential and the only way for me to succeed in this challenge will be to intentionally injure my first team players :p. Like McGowan last year, Ercan Kuzu (he of the much potential of 2 years ago) stepped up and just blew me and the competition away. Over 26 games he had 4 MotM and scored 12 goals. Very impressive for a 17 year old striker playing deep.

We were able to get to 40 points around the 30 game mark (~45 is where the relegation line is) and it even looked like we could push for playoffs. Obviously that was a bit premature as we stayed midtable and form "slipped" when our defence got porous. We slowly dropped away from the playoff zone as I also gave more time to various youth players. Still, a good building year with a very solid and young spine coming together for the future (Costello/McGowan, Keehan/Cheetham, Powell/Kuzu).

Our form also seemed to have satisfied Cummings and Carrick as I haven't heard a word from them on moving to a better side since November last year.

FA Cup

We made it into the First Round where we met League 1 Notts Co and lost in a close 1-0 game.

FA Trophy

We made the Third Round this year and go pummeled by Blue Square South playoff team Staines. I was a bit unhappy, but the game was in the middle of a busy stretch for us and I was happier when we were able to not lose too many points during league play.

Players of Note

Michael McGowan , Zac Costello - Continue to be rocks in my central defense.

Ercan Kuzu - More proof that I probably have a Judge Player Potential score of 1. Knew about him last year, but never really gave him the chance. Checking his stats, he had a big jump in composure and finishing in the last 2 years. Can't wait to see what he continues to grow into.

Jack Neagle - The other wing that never gets talked about, but that's a good thing. 21 year old who holds down by Left Wing and consistently plays 95% of the games.

Upcoming Players

Michael Cheetham, Brad Keehan - They were injured this year, but when I gave them a chance to play, they did well in spelling Graeme Carrick and Ollie Rowland. I have high hopes for the midfield.

Lee Halford - Split time with Luke Cummings along the right and did well.

Richard Mace - Will eventually take over Keeper duties full time but needs some consistency. 16 games, 9 clean sheets, but 13 conceded in the other 5!

Lewis Watkins - 15 years old and these stats make me really excited for him. Supposed to have a much higher ceiling then Powell who when on form is a great BSP player.

Next Season

Got a great youth intake with Lewis Watkins and John McGoldrick. My plan is to ignore them until somebody is injured :p. I signed all my senior players even though I have a feeling some of them will take less and less games, but injuries are a constant fear for me in the BSP.

The team has 200+k in the bank but that is not sustainable with an average attendance of ~600 and a 2.6k weekly wage bill. I need to hope for a better Cup run this year since that got me about 150k last year.

As far as league performance, I'd love to try and get to 40 points by 25 games and think top 10. I think the team has it in them and just need to perform well. Odds are better this year at 150-1. We'll target getting more games for Mace, solidifying our midfield, and working on Powell's confidence (again).

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Chad Beaulieu

Chad Beaulieu

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I finally downloaded and set up the data file for this challenge, however I seem to have run into a problem.

When I take over one of the newly promoted teams, after holidaying for a year, all the players are 'greyed-out'.

It seems the database may not have taken, but I cant figure out why not.

I am using a Mac and hope it does not make a difference

Can anyone shed some light as to why the database may not be working.

When I go to Preferences/Extra files, the Dafuge challenge is checked, but why is it not loading?

Please help

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Bantamtim

Bantamtim

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FC Halifax - season 3 (2013/14)

Another struggle for survival really, as the team isn't progressing past being able to survive in the Blue Square Premier. We got off to a dreadful start to the season, one win and eight defeats in the first nine games, and in the last nine games we only picked up six points, but in between we went on a solid run of form which ensured our survival. No cup runs of note really, though I'm getting in plenty of income from my pre-season friendly tournaments. I keep persuading the board to sort out my youth facilities, but then we lose money over the season and the upgrades get cancelled.

Table

Squad Stats, Part 1

Squad Stats, Part 2

Transfers, or lack of

Finances

One of the emerging stars of the season was Yaser Kasim, a DM who used to be in the Spurs Youth team. A couple of tactical switches and possibly the new patch allowed him greater freedom to dictate play and create, and he thrived on it. However, the true star was youth product Ashley Munday. He made the AMC position his own over the second half of the season, finishing as joint top scorer along with right winger Luke Cummings.

Yaser Kasim

Ashley Munday

There are a couple of other decent-ish prospects in my youth team, but nobody really standing out the way Munday did. My main worry at the moment is that I have no young centre backs coming through, and Mark Bower is now 34. I really don't have a long term replacement for him yet, so I'm praying for a decent centre back next time I get some youngsters through.

Summary

FC Halifax, 2013/14

Blue Square Premier - 18th

FA Cup - 4th qualifying round

FA Trophy - 1st round

Top scorer - Ashley Munday, Luke Cummings (8)

Most assists - Luke Cummings (16)

Highest average rating - Ashley Munday (7.03)

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Bantamtim

Bantamtim

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While the challenge is based around England, I'm sure that you would be able to do it somewhere else, as long as it's not somewhere like Scotland or Australia with a closed league system. The same rules will, of course, still apply.

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colifire

colifire

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Evesham United [bSP] - 2014/2015

Media Prediction - 24th (relegated)

Actual Position - 3rd (promoted via playoff)

League Table

League Positions

Transfer History

Season

I don't know what to say other then WOW! We've been showing flashes of being stingy at the back, but this season is where it all came together. As you can see by our table, we allowed 34 goals in 44 games! There was a brief period before christmas where we had allowed 8 goals in 20 games!

As stated at the beginning of the season, we were to just build on what happened in the last season. This season is where Michael McGowan and Zac Costello came into their own. Along with Richard Mace's growth, I ended up with a very stingy team. We weren't the most prolific scorers, but were able to play out 15 draws (mostly 0-0) and more importantly, only 8 losses! Probably not the most entertaining team to watch, but we also only had an average attendance of 600 so not many people were complaining.

One thing to note is we were horrible in non-league games. This inadvertently helped me as it kept my team fresh and probably lead to our run, but was disappointing since I doubt we'll be winning any Cups the next couple of years.

Like last year, we did good up to January and the assortment of close games and a takeover by a business consortium put us into a tailspin. Fortunately, we were able to recover 3-4 games in and hold onto a 3rd place by the end of the season. There was a big gap between 5 and 6 that got closer near the end, but never really threatened to drop anybody in the top 5 out a playoff spot. From there it was just grinding out games in the playoffs (1-1 and then 2-0) and finally a 1-0 win over Gateshead via set piece gave us the promotion win!

The other thing is with the new patch, Powell no longer had issues with confidence. He ended up as my leading scorer with 12 goals as confidence shattering news posts rotated around the team (I hate this feature).

FA Cup

Lost against Cray (non-league) 2-3. Pretty depressing.

FA Trophy

Lost as well in the 1st Round against fellow BSP Histon 1-0. Again, depressing.

Players of Note

Michael McGowan , Zac Costello - Absolute Rocks and my highest ratings. McGowan got MotM 13 times while Costello got it 9 times.

Ercan Kuzu - Much more of a learning year with 10 goals, but proved to do very well in link up play.

Upcoming Players

Michael Cheetham, Brad Keehan - still learning the ropes, but did well in getting the starting spots.

Next Season

Got a decent intake, but nobody to really be happy about especially with promotion. Edward Tarsus got old enough to be hired as my player/assistant man (just as my main ass man decided the team wasn't good enough for him). We've now gone professional and I'll be shifting various players to professional contracts as their current contracts end.

Now we're in the NPower League 2 and I really don't know if we're going to stay up. Being optimistic, I've decided to attempt to avoid relegation, but we'll see. We've previously done well in non-league competitions against L2 teams, but that was with a well rested squad. Now we're playing a 45+ game schedule that could see us wear our very fast. Like before, I'll play stingy and hope to beat up on the bottom dwellers enough to survive relegation. In the previous years, 40 points was enough to stay up and that's what I'll go for.

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Nocuous

Nocuous

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I want to do this challenge in FM10, starting from the 6th tier (BBN/S), rather than going to the 10th tier. So does anyone know what I have to download or edit so that teams from the 7th tier will have their squads loaded?

I've already got a game going with Merthyr Tydfil, however their squad wasn't retained, and I had a team full of regens (or newgens, w/e they're called nowdays), two of whom are immensely good and are generating interest from League 1 and 2 sides, and I'm romping to the league. So I feel the game is corrupted given I didn't comply to the fully to the rules, so I was hoping someone could help me out. I know this might be better directed at the editors highway, but I thought I'd check for a solution here first.

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Chad Beaulieu

Chad Beaulieu

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I started this challenge about 7 weeks ago, but playing on FM '09, thanks to Steboyuk for getting me the db files for 09. I did not want to post until I had some good news and here goes. Sorry no pics to illustrate, I am on a Mac and cannot figure out how to save screenshots as pics.

2009-11: Hired by Oxford City and thought to myself this won't be much of a challenge, we will get promoted either this year or the next and we will cruise from there to League Football. Oh my, was I wrong. Season 09-10 we finished 19th, avoiding relegation on GD (2 goals better) and I figured ok year one, new challenge need some time to improve. Season 10-11 a disaster, finishing 22nd (bottom of the table) in BSN and sacked of course after just 2 seasons.

June 24 rolls around and Horsham have been promoted and are looking for a manager. I apply and get the job. Okay now with a little luck we will get this challenge going. Again I was completely wrong. Had an epic, rather pathetic 11-12 season finishing bottom of the table with 2 wins on the season and a dozen or so draws. WOW! Sacked of course again.

June 24 2012 and the newly promoted & previously unplayable do not hire me. Now I am thinking I really suck. Move along the season waiting for a job to open, that fits the criteria of the challenge and in the middle of March 2013, Hitching Town becomes available and they are 8th in the league (previous manager took a job in BSP). I apply and get the job figuring we are 8th, maybe we can get into the playoffs. Finish the season 9th. 2013-14 Season, my first full year with them and we finish 18th and I am starting to think I am going to be stuck in Blue Square land forever.

However, at the end of 2014, my eldest fullback retires and takes on a coaching role with the team. Turns out he is quite a good coach and our results improve. We finish 4th, qualify for playoffs but go out in the first round on penaltys.

2015-16 season and at the half-way point we are 4 points out of the top spot but could not sustain our play and finish 4th again. However, and here is the good news, we gain promotion thru the playoffs, beating Bath on penalties (8-7). Just finished our BSP pre-season and the club want us to 'try and avoid relegation'. We will see.

This has and continues to be a great challenge. Hoping to stay in BSP our young players are just getting to peak performance ages.

Overall, my reputation has gone to 'Regional' and I have earned 73k since 2009. No Cup wins yet either, as I have decided to play mainly youth in all those competitions (with Hitchin that is) to keep my main players sharp for league play. Likely will do the same in BSP. Here comes the ugly part though, my overall record is 80 wins, 70 draws and 149 losses with a goal difference of -112, ouch!

I have only released one player to date, but my ever improving goalkeeper (a big reason we got promoted) has been catching attention from League 2 and 1 sides, so I have contracted him for as many years as I can right now, hoping to keep him for a few more years (he is only 25 years old). We have 17 players and 2 goalkeepers under fulltime contracts and 22 players and 2 goalkeepers under part-time contracts as well as 12 Under-18s in training.

Our finances are in good order even with such a large team. Salaries are at 8.2K with 9k permitted. What has helped is we keep making a couple hundred grand with preseason cup and league competitions. Despite healthy finances the board still refuses to upgrade our youth facilities. They are getting pretty annoyed with my re-occuring request to improve them. Hopefully they will agree to it this season.

Well enough about Hitchin Town, time to face the BSP.

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Nocuous

Nocuous

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I want to do this challenge in FM10, starting from the 6th tier (BBN/S), rather than going to the 10th tier. So does anyone know what I have to download or edit so that teams from the 7th tier will have their squads loaded?

I've already got a game going with Merthyr Tydfil, however their squad wasn't retained, and I had a team full of regens (or newgens, w/e they're called nowdays), two of whom are immensely good and are generating interest from League 1 and 2 sides, and I'm romping to the league. So I feel the game is corrupted given I didn't comply to the fully to the rules, so I was hoping someone could help me out. I know this might be better directed at the editors highway, but I thought I'd check for a solution here first.

I've sorted it out. I ended up making my own DDT files using notepad, and finding out all the Unique IDs for all 64 clubs in the 7th tier. Finally done though, and I'm ready to start. I probably won't be putting updates here though, as I'm using FM10, and I don't suspect my achievements will be worth bragging for anyway, haha.

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colifire

colifire

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Evesham United [L2] - 2015/2016

Media Prediction - 24th (relegated)

Actual Position - 21st (10W, 14D, 22L, -20GD, 44 points). 23rd (relegation) ended with 42 points.

Season

This was going to be a painful season with trying to keep a mid-level BSP team up in League 2. It was purely a learning season with a goal of keeping the team out of relegation.

The offense sputtered quite a bit during the season. The odd thing is we had better chances and shots on goal then in the BSP, but the finishing was definitely subpar. Most teams played much more often against us which actually helped our play. The team moved between a 4-4-2, 4-5-1, and 4-2-1-3 DM formations depending on the competition. We ended up with only 27 goals scored.

Defense kept us in the competition. McGowan and Costello obviously weren't as big as before, but they were able to keep us going. We ended up allowing only 47 goals, which was 6th best in the league.

The constant fight for relegation meant the same starting XI was used in most of the games. Some youth were given chances as subs, but most are too young to effect the games in any meaningful way.

League Cup

Horrible first draw against Coventry (Championship) saw us getting kicked out of the park 4-0.

JPT

Just a bad showing against Northamptom (L2) with a 4-1 beating.

FA Cup

We actually had success here as we breezed past easy competition until meeting Portsmouth in the 3rd round and losing.

Players of Note

McGowan, Costello, Neagle, Halford - My back 4, did just enough to get us draws and scored a little bit on set pieces.

Ercan Kuzu, Luke Powell - Came crashing back to earth with only 9 goals between the 2 of them.

Michael Cheetham, Brad Keehan - Firmly entrenched in the midfield now, tho they still have a lot to learn and grow.

Next Season

The intake from the previous years finally hit 18, but unfortunately is still not there to help us. I think we'll definitely struggle again, but hopefully stay up anyways. I hope to send out 5 or more youths to get them playing time on loan.

On the other side, most of my player/coaches have now decided to retire, freeing up playing time in the XI for some other players. Also, with the addition of league payments and a decent amount of cash in the bank, the board is now planning to improve both our youth and senior training facilities.

We definitely were promoted too early as much of the team needs seasoning. It'll definitely be a couple more seasons (assuming we stay up) before we finally get a core that is able to compete in L2. Like last year, the goal is 40 points to try and avoid relegation.

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PFG

PFG

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Good work Colifire and good luck for next season! I am going to have another crack at this. I'll load up a new game tonight. Fingers crossed I can escape the BSN/BSS at the first attempt. I did half a season as Carshalton a while ago but it was a bit of a disaster.

It's been a bit quiet in here recently - is anyone else out there still active....?

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DeadPanda

DeadPanda

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I tell you what, I'm going to try this. I'll use Cambridge, since they came up and hopefully, will have an ok squad to begin with. I was originally doing Dafuges, but I prefer this idea more. So yes PFG, Im in.

In 12th after 21 games - 27 points, just 6 from the play-offs. But we're perhaps struggling for fitness lately, and its taking its toll on results. The last game throwing away three points when Bath equalised in the 91st minute.

So far I've had four players step up from the youth squad, a couple highly rated by my ass man as potentially great players for BSS teams. Ok, so not anything special, but big in the sense that we are in the BSS :p Looking to get a decent finish this year for a little extra cash and hopefully we'll be able to expand on the youth side, maybe.

edit; just threw three points away again with a last minute goal for Woking. Really starting to annoy me now.

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Chad Beaulieu

Chad Beaulieu

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Moving on in this challenge with Hitchin Town and have more good news to post. We have finally moved up to L2 and the club is now fulltime professional (as is normal for teams moving up to L2). Here is a breakdown on how the years went:

2016-17First season in BSP finished 11th and I thought it would not be long before we get to L2...No significant cup runs as I continued to make league play the priority

2017-18Honeymoon is over and we survive with a 20th place finish (5 pts above relegation)...again no cup runs but one of our aging midfielders retires and accepts a roll as a coach. This makes a big difference the following year...

2018-19I start using a first team rotation as some of our young prospects are excelling after the Board upped our senior/youth training facilities. I retool our tactics accordingly and we have a very good season in BSP finishing 14th but also enjoy two cup runs. Losing in the semi-final in the Conf. L. Cup and in the third Round of FA Cup against West Ham (premiership) at home and set a new attendance and gate record. I finish third in Manager of the Year for BSP.

2019-2020Moving along really quite well in the league fighting for a playoff spot with ten games to go and our first choice keeper goes down with an injury and we can only muster a few draws and finish out of the playoffs. No cup run of significance.

2020-21A breakthru season as we achieve promotion thru the playoffs and our young players (22-25) made all the difference in combination with our seasoned veterans. Played a very young CB, he was 20, but he put in consistent performances that we so lacked. No cup runs to mention and I finish runner up for Manager of the Year for BSP.

My reputation is still at Regional, I have no problem with that...maybe a few solid years in L2 will change that.

Finances We are in very good shape here, training facilities are being upgraded again as we have a Balance of 4.6M going into our first L2 season. We have achieved this by running three League type pre-season competitions each pre-season against primarily Championship or L1 teams. They were all very interested in playing, so I kept it going. Combine that with tight wage control, Salary allocation is 26.6K and our actual is 14.8K, that helps tremendously when asking the board for upgrades. However, they are still not up for increasing the size of the stadium from the 3000 (500 seated) that we currently have.

PlayersThis is where I think we might soon run into trouble. We currently have 45 players (incl. 4 gks). From that, we have 18 players (incl. 1 gk) that are 29 years old or older. That leaves 27 players but only 6 of those (according to ass-man) are/will be good enough for L2 or higher. That means 21 of my players are basically deadwood. Checking in with the current U18's we have 3 that have the potential to perform at L2/L1 but they are still young. My hope is that some of the older players will stay on as staff and we can really ramp up the youth training and improvements. Luckily, I have been able to keep L2/L1 teams away from my GK as I continue to contract him out as long as possible and got him to agree to a 750k minimum release fee.

Objective this 2021-22 season is to stay in the L2 and get the up and coming youth some opportunity to develop. Aiming for 45 points. Still trying to get a Feeder in BSN/S but still has not happened.

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colifire

colifire

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PFG, thanks a lot for the encouragement.

This is definitely a fun challenge, but can get extremely frustrating. The lack of transfer options really means that you'll need to stay a couple of years at each level (I think I got exceedingly lucky in the BSP with both a soft year and a good youth intake for 2 years). Now I'm really struggling quite a bit as wins are very hard to come by. Having a 200k transfer fund doesn't make things any easier... almost want to switch to Dafuges at times :)

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DeadPanda

DeadPanda

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Currently sitting 10th after 26 games - 6 points from the playoffs and 6 points from a relegation spot. It's tight, but we're playing well at the moment. The players that have come up from the youth team seem to be doing fairly well. They have their good games, then they have their awful games.

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Drchaos69

Drchaos69

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I think you can add. a rule to this challenge...

You can do daily friendlys with you-re sub-18 team and win 20K each game, against foreigner clubs (travel € offer). You should restrict it, or you'll be rich real fast.

BTW, in this challenge can i offer contracts to gray players in reserves\sub-18 teams?

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Stephanie McMahon's Secret Lover

Stephanie McMahon's Secret Lover

Posted
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I think you can add. a rule to this challenge...

You can do daily friendlys with you-re sub-18 team and win 20K each game, against foreigner clubs (travel € offer). You should restrict it, or you'll be rich real fast.

BTW, in this challenge can i offer contracts to gray players in reserves\sub-18 teams?

Yes you can mate.

Its not a rule for this season about friendlies and I hate changing the rules whilst the challenge is on. If people want to do that this season then let them however, for FM12 we could introduce the rule "Your friendlies must be organised by your assman"?

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Stephanie McMahon's Secret Lover

Stephanie McMahon's Secret Lover

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I have also been racing through the seasons with these rules in Northern Ireland (just to test). Havent posted anything so far because I started with a Div 2 side rather than a newly promoted one. I'll save that for the real effort.

So far it hasn't been too bad. In 4 seasons finished 9th, 11th, 13th and 10th. Shockingly in season 3 (13th) we lost 2-0 to Carrick in the Intermediate Cup Final but still needed to win away to PSNI in our last game to maintain our Div 2 status. We won 7-0!!!

4th season we started well and were 2nd in November but slipped down to 10th. We did however achieve our best ever result a 2-1 win at home to the mighty Linfield in the Irish Cup :)

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Chad Beaulieu

Chad Beaulieu

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Two months have past and have another update on Hitchin Town's progress. It took nine seasons, but we have finally moved up to League 1 in the year 2030. Last post was during 2021 season and I was worried about the lack of depth our club had and the lack of upcoming talent. Well we survived each year, by basically emphasizing league play and sacrificing any cup runs. From 2021 to 2027 we were anywhere between 17th to 22nd, managing to stay in League 2 the whole time. It was near the 24-25 season where many of the original players started to take retirement and I was able to keep many of them on as coaching, physio and ass-man roles. In 2030 I am happy to report that all my staff are former players and we have 16 of them on the payroll. Quite happy with that, although we still do not have a GK Coach. However, that might change in the next couple of seasons as my wonderful gk is now 38 years old and splitting time with our other gk. Hoping the older one retires and will take a gk coaching position with us. At the start of 2030, he has 800 appearances for our club, was hoping to get him to 1000 before retirement, but i don't think it will happen.

In 2026 I survived a change in the board of directors, barely, but the new director has continued to help invest in the training and youth facilities. We now have top training facilities and state-of-art youth facilities. These facilities made all the difference as our team is now predominantly in mid to yearly twenties, except for a few players in late twenties and our old gk. But after 2026 we steadily moved up the table, going 17th to 13th and finally cracking promotion after finishing 4th in 2029 and winning promotion in the playoff. I am still regional reputation.

Finances: Club is worth 2.8M and has 2.25 in the bank. I am 10k under the payroll and the board is delighted with that.

Facilities: already mentioned the training ones, and the stadia is still in very good condition albeit only has a capacity of 3800. I am hoping the board will go for increased seating as long as we stay in L1 or higher, but they keep telling me finances are too short.

Affiliates: have 2 feeder teams. One in BSP the other in BSS. Helps to send the real young ones out on loan.

Hoping to steer clear of relegation this 2030-31 season and aiming to do so. Have a couple of real gems just up from youth. My best CB is 19 years old and I am gonna give him all the games he can handle and hopefully he can get the job done. We will see.

My 24 year old striker is a great finisher and as he approaches his prime I am hoping he will set a new club record for goal scoring.

Hopefully it will not take 9 season to get to the Championship, but we will see.

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Chad Beaulieu

Chad Beaulieu

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Great progress mate! Would you show us your best players?

Thanks Proto, fatski.

I will try to post best players, but playing on a Mac, I have not yet mastered the 'save image as' option just yet.

Cant figure out how to save the player profiles to my Mac so I can post them here. will start searching the forum in hopes to figure it out.

Year 2030-31 update, made it to the quarter-finals of FA Cup (got past one Championship side, Hull, and one Premier side, Portsmouth) before losing to Chelsea. Otherwise I was fortunate to get L1 or L2 home games to get this far.

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colifire

colifire

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Quick update as well. Made it into League 1 at the end of the 2021 season. Much like Chad, a lot of it relied on waiting for my new players to get better and fight for a spot in the starting XI. Unfortunately, I'm not nearly as proficient in keeping my staff with only 2 joining and the rest leaving. I just couldn't give them enough games to keep them happy and they wouldn't retire!! As an example, Graeme Carrick finally joined my staff at 36! Missing a physio (still using the one from the start of the game) and more coaching.

2016/2017

16th - 14W, 13D, 19L, -6GD

2017/2018

15th - 15W, 12D, 19L, +8GD

2018/2019

8th - 18W, 17D, 11L, +21GD - Ercan Kuzu wins league goalscorer

2019/2020

7th - 19W, 13D, 14L, +8GD

Lost in Playoffs

2020/2021

1st - 26W, 13D, 7L, +34GD

Milestones

Luke Cummings (MR, AMR, WBR) and Zac Costello (DC) both broke 400 games in 2020. They have 440 and 4401 respectively

Ercan Kuzu now leads the team's scoring charts with 106 goals. The next closest, Luke Powell (81) is getting long in the tooth, so we'll have to wait for a new contender.

The main change was the maturing of my Cheetham and Keehan into a pair of holding midfielders and an influx of young talent in the midfield and attacking areas. The team is still weak along the wings so we changed to a more attacking 4-3-3 (rather then the 4-4-2 and 4-5-1 that was used before). It meant we had to keep in front of the opposition and as can be seen in 2020, we suffered due to injuries to my attacking players. In the end the youth movement kept us going as the older players left for greener pastures(?). The last season was a surprise (expected us to contend and maybe grab an automatic promotion spot, but not win the division).

The team is doing well financially with about 1.4M in the bank and has adequate facilities that the board upgraded a couple years back. Most of the current balance came from the sale of a young AMC (James Wallace) to Petersborough that the board stepped in. Teams are sniffing around my other young players as well so we'll see how we fare trying to stay up in League 1. 4 relegation spots will be tough to escape especially since my defence is still anchored by some BSP players and getting very long in the tooth.

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MisterX

MisterX

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Posted
Just like last year, to make sure that the eligible teams have the correct squads, we will be using a .ddt file to retain the players for those teams: Download Link, Download Link 2 Download Link 3. If for any reason this doesn't work, let me know, I'll fix it.

No download link?

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Thebaker

Thebaker

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Decided to give this a go and went with Truro.

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Squad is quite small so may have to give contracts to a few grey players. My best player is a 18 yo winger rated at 5 stars potential. This youth player is rated 4 stars potential, shame i'm well covered at GK with a 3 star one and a 20yo with 3.5 star potential. LB is another matter, after the first league game my first choice is out for 4 months and my only other LB is out for 5 weeks!

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  • 3 weeks later...
Thebaker

Thebaker

Posted
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Decided to give this a go and went with Truro.

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Squad is quite small so may have to give contracts to a few grey players. My best player is a 18 yo winger rated at 5 stars potential. This youth player is rated 4 stars potential, shame i'm well covered at GK with a 3 star one and a 20yo with 3.5 star potential. LB is another matter, after the first league game my first choice is out for 4 months and my only other LB is out for 5 weeks!

The truro squad was too weak and went down after spending most of the season dead last.

Restarted with a stronger team in Halifax. Profile

They have already turned pro, the only decent rated youth is this one with 4 stars potential.

Have already played 2 seasons finishing midtable in the first year after a late surge and just avoiding relegation in the second. Made no impact in the cups at all and the finances are deep in the red as a result. Have dumped a lot of the players i started with as they were mostly 1 or 2 stars earning a lot and started introducing some youth players in the third season

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Dees-Blake

Dees-Blake

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I'm going to start this challenge for something different. Hopefully I'll be the first person to ever complete it... that's highly unlikely, though. :p

Going on holiday now, let's see where I end up.

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Dees-Blake

Dees-Blake

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hastings_united_fc_2010_-_.gif

Hastings United

Dees-Blake

Status: Semi-Professional

Estimated Value: £55K

Stadium: The Pilot Field (4050 capacity, 800 seated)

Training Facilities: Basic training facilities

Youth Facilities: Adequate youth facilities

Media Prediction: 22nd

Signed up with Hastings United in the Blue Square South. Looking forward to hopefully a long reign at the club. We have adequate youth facilities which is nice for this challenge - but it looks like it might be a long hard slog just surviving in the BSS this season. Off we go. :D

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