Too Many Cooks

[dynaboyj]

Hello! I've had Football Manager 15 for six months now, and oddly compared to many other players, I suppose, I'm not much a fan of actually playing the game. I prefer to sim for years at a time, stopping in to look at the current association football scene occasionally and making up storylines in my head about great players.

A few days ago, though, I downloaded Sangue Blu's Around the World mod, set a game with only England loaded, and went to simming--and while the league system isn't actually real life accurate, it's actually a lot more fun checking out the game with a bevy of amateur-ish teams/players involved. Most interestingly, Denaby United, a team playing in the Sheffield & Hallamshire County Senior Football League Division Two in real life, has evolved to a top-half Premier League team over the last 20 years. That's the kind of cool thing that can happen.

The whole expanded aspect of the mod inspired me to get a proper save going in this world, as I don't have particularly high expectations for my managerial ability and, having never played a game of association football, don't think I could even be in the running to manage a team in the National League. It seems much more realistic for me to get a job with a totally amateur, or at least very, very low-level team--and that's precisely what I set out to do. I created a manager with my real-life birthdate and applied for every job available in late September 2043, and ended up accepting an offer from Cogenhoe United, an amateur club in the 9th tier--mostly because their expectations this season were only to gamely compete to avoid relegation, which I think I can maybe manage.

At this moment I'm simulating a ride (presumably in an Uber, given it's 2043) from Heathrow Airport (I'm American) to Compton Park, playing annoying radio all the way, ready to begin my quest to make the Cooks (Cogenhoe is pronounced Cook-no, for some reason) pretty alright at association football, I guess. Unfortunately there's no real players anymore, obviously, which robs a bit of personal connection--but I'm sure I'll grow to love these regens. I still have fond memories of my best players in my one continuous save I've played since buying this game, in which I managed a Slovenian semipro team for a year, got sacked, and proceeded to quit.

No idea what the update schedule for this will look like, but I'll try to not quit, I guess. Onward!

[dynaboyj]

I happen to have come into the team during a pretty large gap in the schedule--from September 27th to October 18, no competitive games will be played, which means I can spend some time getting to know the team and hiring important staff. I've already worked on hiring an assistant manager--he doesn't have a regen face and played in Mansfield's system from 2011 to 2013, but I can't find any information about him from beyond the game. If I get him, he'll be able to hopefully support me technically.

In the meantime, I've organized a friendly between Cogenhoe and Penn, a team in the tier below us. I hope my assistant manager can get here before next week so I can actually make a tactic.