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Well we now appear to be oversubscribed.

Tilla, Cowdenbeath aren't on the list - if you could have another think about the team please.

No more applications at the moment please (although if you're typing one go ahead and post. The Dragon will retire for several hours and consider the best of the remaining applications.

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Glennuk - a quality application, which contains no errors and plenty of much appreciated praise for the Dragon. Just don't get too matey. This is business.

Despite you feeling that running round a public park is sufficient training facilities for your team, such is your enthusiasm that you are now the proud owner of Berwick Rangers. (East Fife are promoted by default).

Yes Sir Whatever you say Sir.

Come on Berwick :)

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Good evening Dragon, I'm Ian and I am looking for your investment and knowledge to help me turn the ideas and enthusiasm I have for Arbroath FC into a reality, to help them become an established and successful club in the higher tiers of Scottish football.

Club info:

Your club: Arbroath

Club reputation: 4,000

Cost: $20million

Town’s attraction level: 15

Cost: $1.5million

I believe that our best approach is to go for immedioate growth, which in turn will pave the way for long-term benefits. Thus, I think it will pay off to make Arbroath a prosperous and attractive location, to encourage and not just new players to join, but also to build up a larger fanbase.

Total - $21.5million

Stadium info

Stadium name: The Battleground

Stadium size: 7,500

Cost: 1,000 per seat: $7.5million

and a further 500 per fan of your average attendance to represent advertising costs: $3.75million

200 per ‘fair weather’ fan included in maximum attendance in excess of average (this is for the 'max attendance' figure; it doesn't have to be more than the average attendance) Zero

The name The Battleground will encourage a fighting spirit amongst the players, and the fans will get behind the players' determination and team mentality.

Total - $32.75million

Training and youth facilities

Training facilities: 14

Cost: $250,000 per point: $3.5million

Youth facilities: 14

Cost: $250,000 per point: $3.5million

Good facilities will be needed for each, and these figures should give us an advantage from the start, and provide a good point to improve on in the future.

Total - $39.75million

Chairman

Chairman name: Ian Bryant

Chairman stats: PA - 120, CA - 120

Cost: $25,000 per CA point: $3million

$10,000 per PA point in excess of CA: Zero

Is he a sugardaddy? Yes

Cost: $5 million

The chairman is decent, and he's also generous with his cash. Not all of his decisions will be perfect, but he has the wealth to back up his choices.

Total - $47.75million

Manager

Manager name: Matt Skiba

Manager PA and CA: PA - 100, CA - 100

Cost: $20,000 per CA point: $2million

$10,000 per PA point in excess of CA: Zero

Does the manager love the club? No

Cost: $250,000 if yes; Zero

Contract length (1-5 years): Two

Cost: $100,000 per year: $200,000

Obviously we hope he'll do well, but his contract is not going to be too long in case of failure, in which case the chairman would like to move in a new candidate.

Total - $49.95million

This leaves just $50,000 in the bank. However, we believe that to win big, you have to spend big. We think our strategy will lead to much success on the pitch and great financial figures in the accounts over the coming years.

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Robbo3d - I like your application. You have some real guts to do something different by building a massive stadium and taking on all that debt. It's going to add something very different to this contest.

Consider yourself the new high heid yin of Dumbarton.

~Ian~ - I don't know why you think it's clever to make the Dragon spend 10 minutes searching for a character in your name on his keyboard? ~~~~~ Time is money.

Despite the lateness of your application, I appreciate the quality of it, and the fact that it all added up first time. As such, you are the new owner of Arbroath.

Tilla and O'Hara Fan - What can the Dragon say? While he would love to finance your ambitious plans, the 3rd division simply isn't big enough to cope. Your plans unfortunately fell down on some baffling errors in your calculations of your business plans. I'm not sure you're ready just yet to own a club. However, best of luck next time. If there's any changes to our plans that create more space, I'll let you know and give you a chance to rectify your errors. Sorry again.

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I know this is only 10 teams, and its first come first serve, but the Dragon really should have considered the potential stability and activity of the current Chairmen. Its all well and good the Dragon giving these men their shot, but when they take his money and don't show up at the board meetings, it could get a little lonely in the Den.

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I would like to thank the Dragon for the opportunity and assure him that I will continue to be actively involved in the project. It was a big risk on both our parts to agree to my proposal and i wish to repay your good faith with my continued presence and active involvement.

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I reckon most of us 10 will be hanging abut for this sign up a long time - there's at least 7 or 8 who are either regulars or semi-regulars on the forum of late so it shouldn't be a problem.

The bonus about the Scots 3rd Div is that no-one can get relegated so there won't be an issue at the end of the season of 1 or 2 of us falling out of the playable leagues, reducing the numbers further.

I suppose the only way around adding more people would have been to put all of us in Div 2 then any extras in Div 3, but then that might affect the way in which people had assigned their money, so leaving as it is is probably the best situation for now.

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Good luck with this challenge! I tried to get an app in but I just wasn't quick enough. Lots of interest though so bodes well for the challenge!

If you do decide to have a reserve list please pop me on it, i'll be monitoring the thread anyway :)

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Another TV show based sign-up :rolleyes:

Seriously though fantastic idea, gutted I slept through the whole of the signing up process ( curse living on the other side of the world :mad: )

I'll be following despite not being involved to see how this turns out, should be good :thup:

Hello people. I'm not a regular on here and so I'm a bit miffed about how you're going to go about this. Does bermybhoy sim on his pc or what?

I would have fancied a go of this myself but obviously can't now. Great idea though.

Yes he holidays through the game and updates the participants as to how the game goes, its what we refer to as a sign-up, there are plenty of them around the forum. So now when you stumble across another one, no confusion :thup:

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Hello people. I'm not a regular on here and so I'm a bit miffed about how you're going to go about this. Does bermybhoy sim on his pc or what?

I would have fancied a go of this myself but obviously can't now. Great idea though.

he sims it, gives us 'updates' including analysis, screen-shots etc, then we give feedback on how our player/manager/club is getting along.

Welcome to the Challenges/Sign-Ups and Experiments Forum :thup:

(we don't have a welcome back, so I suggest you go into the social group part of the website, and you'll find ours is the one with the most members and comments, join up and become a part of the community ;))

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I know this is only 10 teams, and its first come first serve, but the Dragon really should have considered the potential stability and activity of the current Chairmen. Its all well and good the Dragon giving these men their shot, but when they take his money and don't show up at the board meetings, it could get a little lonely in the Den.

Indeed, but quite what more I could have done though short of inviting people through PM's, I'm not sure. Theres no SIGN-UP!!!!! in the title and it required at least 5-10 minutes work and the use of a calculaor (probably) from everyone to get their application in, so hopefully it means everyone here is in it for the long haul. In the end I've unfortunately had to use an entirely arbitrary method of cutting people out as there's inevitably too many. And to be fair, the majority are regulars anyway.

If this works well perhaps we can try it another time with more people in a bigger league.

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I suppose the only way around adding more people would have been to put all of us in Div 2 then any extras in Div 3' date=' but then that might affect the way in which people had assigned their money, so leaving as it is is probably the best situation for now.[/quote']

Almost exactly what I was thinking. There's not an obvious way to 'treat' the other division, and it would make the results less clear with so many edited teams flying around.

I agree with WW, if people do drop-out, then you could have a reserve list going for anyone else wishing to join.

I'll keep a note of them, but TBH I can't think immedately of a way to adding other people in. I don't want to go down the route of editing this once it's set up. In any case, I've never ever used an in-game editor.

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You're almost certainly right, and you wouldn't want to go re-setting team reps and so on mid season.

If there's a strong call from the Dragon's apprentices to assign stats to their manager and/or chairman I guess it could be done. What's the concensus? Otherwise it'll be random.

Oh, and I'll post my team's choices tomorrow.

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The Dragon is of course curious as to how he'd compare to the young upstarts and as such is willing to play with a further 50million of his vast fortune at Stenhousemuir.

Club info

Our reputation will be 3,200. This is hopefully comparable to bigger teams and eclipses most of out peers in the division. There's only so attractive you can make Stenny, so that's been stuck at 12, hopefully not a decision that comes back to haunt me. That's costing $17.2m.

Stadium info

We're going to be paying at a purpose built stadium called El Paradiso. The capacity is 11,000 and we have 10,000 from the local area who will be sure to show up every week. I'm banking on our success leading to it filling each week soon enough and eventual expansion. Cost: $16m

Training

Something's gotta give, and it's here. Youth of 1 and training of 8. Hopefully they'll be upgraded on the back of our stunning on-field success. Cost: $2.25m

Chairman

Bermy Bhoy is going to look after the club. He has CA and PA of 200. He'll improve the club no end. Oh, and he's a sugar daddy of course. Cost: $10m

Manager

A Swedish guy know only as Henke. He'll end his playing career to join us on a two year deal, with a PA and CA of 150. Hopefully he'll extend it, if not, hopefully the chairman can appoint someone even better. Cost: $3.2m

Total overall: $48.65m. Cash in the bank: $1.35m

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How do we reckon this is all going to pan out? I have a feeling the club(s) promoted the first season will do well, maybe those from the second as well. After that any team not promoted might become mired down there. It probably depends on getting a manager who actually recognises that he needs to sign a whole team of players, pronto. If anyone goes in with a load of greys or youth players, they'll be in bother.

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Obviously, the first season will depend on who each of the clubs sign. Each of the clubs are in a position where almost any signings will improve the quality of their starting eleven so it could be a case where quantity of signings is better than quality. A team that signs a full squad of average players will probably do better than one that signs 3/4 quality players and then uses the youth team/greys.

In further years, teams will have a chance to assemble a squad of players and the ability of the manager/chairman will come into play along with reputation and finances available.

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I think Berwick will have the ability to do well in this challenge during the first season and with a decent youth setup i think they will bring some quality regens into the game.

Also i think that the next best team would be Albion Rovers with a very sturdy business plan.

Looking forward to the first update.

Do you know how often they will be? Every season? Half season? Month?

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I think every half season or so, maybe after the transfer windows would make sense, then probably more often for the run in as things get tense. The interest for me here is in the long term outcomes, so I don't see the point in slowing it down by doing too many updates.

After reading Neji's thread I've realised I didn't even think about making youth academies an option :(

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I think every half season or so, maybe after the transfer windows would make sense, then probably more often for the run in as things get tense. The interest for me here is in the long term outcomes, so I don't see the point in slowing it down by doing too many updates.

After reading Neji's thread I've realised I didn't even think about making youth academies an option :(

Oh yeah, was thinking about that when designing my youth centre team.

If it is possible and the others wouldn't mind, as my club is the only one that is specificially designed around youth players and bringing them through, I would be willing to pay upto £5m of my remaining balance to have the youth academy box ticked.

(Think about it more as an aid to the experiment). :):thup:

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I think the teams with the best reputation and attractiveness will probably do the best first season. They'll be able to get the best players to join, and while the clubs with good youth facilities will get some talented youngsters, they won't have their experience or development.

Also, I think the clubs with really talented managers may not do as well as expected. By January or February, when other leagues start seeing managers getting fired, as top class managers at small clubs they'll be prime targets to get poached, and who knows how good or bad their replacements may be?

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Oh yeah' date=' was thinking about that when designing my youth centre team.

If it is possible and the others wouldn't mind, as my club is the only one that is specificially designed around youth players and bringing them through, I would be willing to pay upto £5m of my remaining balance to have the youth academy box ticked.

(Think about it more as an aid to the experiment). :):thup:[/quote']

Oh tricky one. It's moving the goalposts, so I think it's only fair to throw it out there to everyone else. The issue is that people with less money left over don't really have it as an option without going into debt, and they might have changed things around had it been an option at the start.

Any opinions on WW's suggestion?

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Actually to be fair' date=' it wouldn't be right to change the stuff now anyway - other people may have gone for different approaches if it had been an option.

So don't worry about it, hopefully my chairman will get Stranraer one anyay! :D[/quote']

Yeah I think you're right. Besides I've edited a couple of these already so it saves me going back ;)

I'm trying to think of ways to involve more people in this. I came up with an interesting 'share trading' theme but it would get horribly, horribly complex. :D

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Right; have set this up but there's a couple of obvious problems.

First, Nep: it doesn't like you having quite so much cash. I tried reducing it to £10m and that worked. As such I can leave it as is (with original decisions but £10m cash), or you can make some minor amendments if you want.

Secondly, the 'sugar daddy' option appears to REALLY take mick...everyone who selected it is given a massive opening balance. It really wouldn't be fair on the others. Thus, could everyone who selected it please go back and take it out. Again, make other amendments if you wish, or just leave an extra £5m cash, up to you. This applies to me, ~Ian~, Robbo3d, gleenuk and paulhartman71.

Finally, Robbo3d, it doesn't like your level of debt - it wasn't being picked up. This might just be the effect of the sugar daddy that you can't have massive debt. Either way, could you reduce this please by cutting something else as well. Maybe to about £5m debt, and I'll see if that works.

Sorry chaps - there was bound to be teething problems ;)

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Right; have set this up but there's a couple of obvious problems.

First, Nep: it doesn't like you having quite so much cash. I tried reducing it to £10m and that worked. As such I can leave it as is (with original decisions but £10m cash), or you can make some minor amendments if you want.

Secondly, the 'sugar daddy' option appears to REALLY take mick...everyone who selected it is given a massive opening balance. It really wouldn't be fair on the others. Thus, could everyone who selected it please go back and take it out. Again, make other amendments if you wish, or just leave an extra £5m cash, up to you. This applies to me, ~Ian~, Robbo3d, gleenuk and paulhartman71.

Finally, Robbo3d, it doesn't like your level of debt - it wasn't being picked up. This might just be the effect of the sugar daddy that you can't have massive debt. Either way, could you reduce this please by cutting something else as well. Maybe to about £5m debt, and I'll see if that works.

Sorry chaps - there was bound to be teething problems ;)

Well, I can't speak for the others but being one of the ones without a sugardaddy, it doesn't bother me that the others have a huge bank balance - surely we all knew what the effect that that was going to have on those clubs.

I say let them keep the sugardaddy status. :thup:

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