From Scotland With Love

A former Scottish professional footballer has started his managerial career with his old club what will he do with them and can he reach his eventual goal... win the champions league.

The Manager: Ruardhrí Henderson
DOB: 20/4/1975
Place of Birth: Edinburgh (Scotland)
Nationalities: Scottish, English
Former Positions: CM, CDM, CB


The Backstory: *
Ruardhrí Henderson is a name well known to Scottish football fans. He began his professional career in 1991 aged 16 for boyhood club Heart of Midlothian. However during his time with the Jambos he mostly played in the reserves and youth team, making only 31 appearances scoring 2 times and assisting 14 goals in 4 years at the club. However at the end of the 1994/95 season he was released on a free transfer. This hurt at the time as he felt he had more to give to his favourite club.

After a month off football he was signed by Scottish 3rd division side Livingston who were in their first season as Livingston F.C. who were formerly Meadowbank Thistle. During his time with Livi he made 201 appearances over 9 years scoring 52 times and gaining 91 assists an incredible record. Henderson's achievements with the The Amber Machine include Winning the Scottish League 3 in 1995/96, the Scottish 2nd division in 1998/99, in 2000/2001 the team completed the fairy tale winning Scottish First division and getting promoted to the Scottish Premiership, however on what Henderson maintains was his greatest achievement Livingston finished 3rd in their first season in the SPL. However the following season Livingston finished 9th in 2002/3 and Henderson considered leaving however he was convinced to stay by new manager Márcio Máxima. Although Livingston finished 9th once again the club lead by Henderson won their first cup completion winning the League Cup 2-0 over Hibernian. Henderson regards this as his best time in football and is still a fan favourite with Livi today. However with the club in financial trouble a move soon was agreed.

£1.15 million was the transfer fee as Henderson moved to Glasgow Rangers. His time in Glasgow was an interesting one, it was the first time he was playing for a club that he didn't love and the club didn't experience the success they expected however he still enjoyed his time and won the holy grail of Scottish Football. He watched on with sadness as he watched as Livingston's situation went from bad to worse and they dropped to the League 2. During his time at the Ibrox he made 116 appearances scoring 19 goals and assisting 39 goals. Despite not experience as much success Henderson still came runners up in the Euro Cup in 2008, Scottish Premiership in 2009 and 2005, the Scottish Cup in 2008 and 2009 and the Scottish League Cup in 2009. However with Rangers wanting to renew there squad in a bid to retain the title. This unfortunately spelled the end of Hendersons time in Glasgow.

The rumours were that Henderson would go to Asia, USA or Australia but in the end in a surprising turn of events he ended up being signed for a fee of £1 million to...OGC Nice! The reasoning for his move was that it was a beautiful city where his wife, 2 kids and he could live, also he wanted a new challenge and playing for a French team in the Ligue 1 relegation scrap certainly provided that. Henderson played 61 games for Nice scoring 8 times and providing 29 assists in the 3 years he spent in France. In his last season in Nice Le Gym remarkably qualified for the Europa League finishing 4th. After spending 3 years in France he was told it was time to go by the manager Claude Puel which incidentally coincided with his oldest child starting year/grade 3. With all these things considered he moved back to Edinburgh.

After a few months out of the game he loved he became player manager for Edinburgh City a Scottish non-league side. At Edinburgh City he played 39 games scoring 20 times and handing out 43 assists. During this time he also studied for his UEFA Continental Pro License which he received. Then finally in the summer of 2014 he officially retired from Football aged 39.

Statistics:
Heart of Midlothian 31 Apps 2 Goals 14 Assists
Livingston F.C. 201 Apps 52 Goals 91 Assists
Rangers 116 Apps 19 Goals 39 Assists
OGC Nice 61 Apps 8 Goals 29 Assists
Edinburgh City 39 Apps 20 Goals 43 Assists
TOTAL 448 Apps 101 Goals 186 Assists

*This entirely made up. Not based on a real player or anybody else. Any coincidence is just that, a coincidence.

Thank You for reading such a long post :) :)

Settings:
I will alternate between first person and third person in my updates, the updates are going to be about the last month IG. It is highly UNLIKELY that you will see many graphics as I am useless with most kinds of editing. The leagues I have available are England down to the Conference Premier, Scotland down to Highland Lowland Leagues, Ireland, France Ligue 1+2, Germany Division 1+2, Italy Serie A+B, Spain Liga BBVA+Adelante, Portugal, Holland and Russia. I should probably mention I will be using the FM15 Transfer & Data Update Packs by pr0.

http://www.fmscout.com/a-fm15-transfer-data-update-packs-by-pr0.html

First Team Squad:

My first movement was to release Burton O'Brien on a free, he was 33 and I would rather the wage space.

Nice start of the story, good luck mate.

Youth Squad



Obviously I need squad depth so signing free agents for low wage is the first priority. These players will generally be young with low risk, so low wages with decent albeit lowish potential that will just fill a role. This is preferable to older players who will want large wages.

Thanks.

First Team Squad Evaluation

As I was examining my assistants' notes about the squad while watching them train I soon realised that that the squad needed some work. So I began making some transfer notes.

"First of all we don't have any LB in the squad. So signing a left back is a must. We have a young squad which is good, I like young squads as it means I can mould them to fit roles in the tactic better, also they can grow to become better footballers. We need more central midfielders as we have 1 legitimate CM. The squad has an overload of wingers so some will probably leave. Finally we could do with another CB. A lot of work to do given the transfer budget of 80k," I thought.


Individual Players

Jordan White is by far our best player, our wingers are comparatively really good, it will be hard to decide how to sell. Our lack of depth in CM and CB is desperately exposed when you see that our only CM is a 19 year old worth 7k (Kieron Gibbons) and 1/2 of our CB pairing is 8.25k (Craig Sives). This is going to be hard.

Preseason*



Our first 2 friendlies were against Scottish Premiership opposition and I let my assistant handle them and see what he did with them. The results were good and our team seemed to take to my tactic well so I was pleased. Our next friendly was against non league Nairn County and I experimented with the squad. I started what was pretty much a reserve side however I was still fuming when we went 1-0 down. At half time I gave my players and almighty spray and made some changes. To their credit they responded well and cut open Nairn County many times only to fail at the last hurdle. We eventually scored through Ibra Sekajja and the game finished 1-1. English championship side Rotterham was our next and last friendly, this was a match I was expecting to lose. Nether the less I fielded a strong side and was pleasantly surprised as we fought hard and went into to half time at 0-0.The 2nd half was not nearly as good and we ended up losing 2-0. Overall an okay result considering the opposition. After that result we had 2 cup matches against lesser opposition. I fielded mixed sides in both and we played well in both without being able to finish. Overall an okay preseason some disappointing results but finished strong in the cup matches.

Player Performance

The standout performer was Ibra Sekajja who scored 3 goals in total the preseason. Poor performance from Craig Sives who gifted 2 goals to the opposition. Another good performer was Spas Georgiev who got 3 assists and a goal and it turns out he can play RB which is helpful.


*I essentially used the cup matches as preseason as I didn't particularly care about them.

Thanks for reading

Good start to the season by winning in both the cup competitions!

Thanks for reading, glad to get those wins on the board!

Transfers up until 10th August 2014




I brought in depth with the 4 free transfers (with the exception of Jaime Peters) as most of them will be backup players and Jack Blake and Esteban Lopez will spend most of their time in the U20's. They have large potential but aren't ready yet though they will play cup matches. Jaime Peters was a steal former Ipswich and Bournemouth starter but has been without a club since 2012 but still plays international football for Canada strangely enough. Can play all round the right side and is rated 4 stars by my assistant. A bargain for 1.2k a week. Lenihan is a good loan instantly my best player well rounded and adds quality to the midfield. Parry is for depth can play CB, CDM and CM and is decent for 14k. Same with Braham-Barret except he plays along the left hand side. I sold Mullen because even though he has good potential not a starter and probably never will be and to get 60k for him is good. Buchanan...LOL couldn't believe it when Celtic made a bid, not even starter for us let alone Celtic.