Surviving in the Scottish Championship as a Semi-Pro Team

[Dartman5]

Hi everyone,

 

I've come to ask for some advice! Me and my friend have been running a campaign from the Scottish League 2 to Europe, with Edinburgh and Stirling our teams of choice. It's taken a while but after five seasons we finally managed to get to a point where we could dominate League 1 and secure promotion to the Championship. Exciting times! 

 

We were expecting our inaugural Championship season to be pretty rough as we're both stuck in Semi Pro for now as we aren't anywhere near being able to afford going Pro just yet, so we weren't expecting to be challenging the top but it has been ROUGH. I think we've played 16 games now and are both sat rock bottom with 13 and 12 points, 4 points from safety. Before the season we were predicted bottom and 3rd bottom but we've had some success performing well above expectations in previous seasons so we were hoping to be able to scrape by and consolidate next season, but at the moment it looks like we're heading straight back down again.

 

We've both been using tactics known to be good for underdogs so far in the save, like a Knap Beowulf inspired 4-4-2 and it's gone really well until now. For whatever reason, we just cannot seem to get a good result from any game except a bizarre and pretty impressive win against 1st place Livingston for both of us, so I suppose they just happen to be particularly susceptible to our tactical style. We've tried a couple of different tactics which look good for a draw or two but then resume normal service of 5 losses in a row lol! It's weird though because we've both been English League 2 teams and got to the Championship and massively over performed there so we're struggling to understand why this is so different - is this really the difference between semi pro and professional? Our players are relatively good for our stature, we at least have half the team classed as "good Scottish Championship level" and we've made an effort to sign players to suit tactical roles rather than basing it on star ratings so not sure where we can improve staff-wise. 

 

I was wondering if any of you good fellows on here have any experience in the Scottish lower leagues or as Semi-Pro teams in tough leagues, and whether you have any tips as to what we can possibly do to turn our fortunes around and keep pushing up through the leagues? It's looking grim if things stay as they are!

 

Cheers!

[kentonizking]

In the past with Montrose, I managed to make great use of the loan system. Got Rangers as a Parent Club, which hugely benefitted me. Pretty obvious advice I suppose. Also, what is the boards appetite for going fully pro? 

[UKFA]

My first 'proper' save was recently, with Airdrie in FM17. it was a massive jump from L1 to Championship, which I didn't expect. It probably needs a complete squad overhaul, more defensive tactic, and basically trying to grind for draws and scrape a lucky win here and there to survive the first season, and build from there to mid table, then top of the table or promotion. I think the equivalent in England is maybe going from the Vanarama to division 2, where clubs go from semi pro to pro (I'm not sure about this cuz I don't follow English football much). I'm ashamed to say I save-scummed myself from a relegation battle, but my first season I really regarded as just learning the basics anyway as opposed to a hardcore playthrough, going for the Champions league. Anyway the point is I'm nobody to be giving any kind of FM advice, but from my mistakes I think I'll try the save again but if I get promoted I'll play as defensively as possible, bring in the best possible defense and ideally one or two fast paced AMs or Poachers that can counterattack. Do your best to get a parent club, even if you are playing to get promoted and it only lasts a season. I ended up with a guy called Tim Chow from Ross County who was amazing. Not really a spoiler because this was FM17 and I don't think he'll still be around.  Some might view this as cheating, but it could be interesting if you had the in game editor that one of you sets up your club as an affiliate of rangers and the other as celtic, or an english prem team, it would mean you got to develop some good players on loan.  I like to do some background experiments in saves, in my Ghana AFCON save where I just failed to qualify for the World cup I have a lot of African league databases loaded, so I set Hearts to be affiliated to a few African clubs with 'heart' in their names. It doesn't really affect my save but it's interesting to check on from time to time.

[UKFA]

Oh also Queens park are great, they are stubbornly Amateur as part of their club culture, so any decent player they find make an offer and poach them. One trick I found accidentally was clubs would make ****** lowball offers for my players, and they'd start moaning I didn't sell them to Aberdeen for £1 or something. So I tried it with some of my rivals, or just looked for unhappy players. I kept bidding £1k for a Hibs midfielder worth 100k, like constantly, every week, or declaring interest then spectating their games. Eventually they gave in and sold me to him. Wasn't too bad either, even though I didn't really need him I was basically just trolling. Just make sure you can afford their wages and bonuses first though.

[Dartman5]

That's an interesting tip with the whole offering teams crazy low amounts thing. Seems to have worked a couple of times, just gotta keep persevering with good players as a lot of them have no interest in joining the club haha! Discovered that playing strikerless seems to work pretty well for some reason so I'll run with that until I can afford to either go pro or keep bringing in much higher quality players... Cheers!

[Yer Maw]

On 09/02/2021 at 14:51, UKFA said:

Oh also Queens park are great, they are stubbornly Amateur as part of their club culture, so any decent player they find make an offer and poach them.

Queens Park are now full time in life and in game so this point is redundant.

[UKFA]

59 minutes ago, Yer Maw said:

Queens Park are now full time in life and in game so this point is redundant.

My bad, I haven't been paying much attention to irl football. Good luck to them, I like Queens Park, they have an amazing history, but they went the wrong way on the amateur question. That would make an interesting alternate history.