The Luke Henderson Story

#113 - Do I have the skills yet

17/05/2040 -- Well, as you can see we are a big step ahead in time now. The season has ended, noting strange happened anymore. At the end we finished fifteenth after a horrible last run of the season, but way above the relegation spots. It’s my most worst result in any league this career so far. In the meantime I’m asking myself if I still have the capabilities for being a manager. It isn’t great at all. You should expect an experienced manager like me can add something extra into the squad, but it seems not. Or maybe just a little bit, before the season Spartans was predicted to finish seventeenth and we did slightly better. Until now I would say it’s because of my terrible players and not because of me! Hopefully next season will prove my words.

So yeah, it wasn’t great at all this season. At some point I changed the tactic (with making use of two striker) and in the beginning it seems to be working. We had a period between January and march when we played some really good games actually, even against the better teams in the league. Jim Johnson started to score goals as well! But our last run of four games near the end of the season was awful again. We concede a lot of goals, which kept us away for finishing thirteenth in the league. What does it matter you might be asking. Well, around £80,000 in terms of prize money. Which is a serious amount of cash for this modest club. Although that costs me only two days of work when at Tottenham… Nowadays we can pay the entire squad wages for a full month with that amount of money. To indicate the difference!






Squad performances
We go straight into our yearly judgment of the players. To be very short with you: everyone is replaceable and should be replaced if we want to achieve something in this league. But that isn’t possible to realize within one or two seasons. It will take at least three seasons I think. The main priority for the upcoming transfer window is signing a new goalkeeper. Aaron Fraser costs us at least between ten to fifteen points per season. He is terrible. He isn’t very tall, his goalkeeping skills are way below average and he has one of the higher wages in the squad as well! Although he has an contract for next season as well. I will use him as the back-up goalkeeper next season, Leask is even more worse in comparison with Fraser and will leave Spartans for sure.

Our defensive line is a big concern as well. Actually only Mahood is solid enough for taking part in our next season squad and maybe Duncan Rodgers as a reserve player, but that’s pretty much it. The guys on loan, Ferguson and Glennie are returning to their own clubs and the future for the rest of the defenders is pretty uncertain. It depends on which players we are able to sign for next season to make a decision which guys are leaving us or might be staying as a reserve player.

Our midfielders achieved slightly better. The two signings last season, Matthews and Smith performed quite well, although not really spectacular. But at least they reached an acceptable average rating at the end of the season. Cameron and Lennon are useful as back-up players, also because they can play in multiple positions which is always a benefit, but their future depends heavily on which new players we can attract this summer. We definitely need some more quality into our midfield for sure. I’m searching for some kind of a new Max Ashmore (you might remember him). Someone who can take care for around 200 key passes throughout the season. None of my current players can, they don’t have amazing skills for passing and vision.

The strikers then. Also a bit of a concern as well. If one of your strikers is scoring only eight goals throughout the whole season then you know you have a serious problem. But I don’t blame Johnson. He needs to play in a two-strikers system, that is justifying his qualities way better. In the second half of the season he scored 7 goals out of around eighteen matches (when I used a tactic with two strikers), instead of only one during the first twenty. The conclusion is that I will keep him. I still have faith in him that he can be valueable for us. But that doesn’t count for all of the other strikers. Swankie is a big joke, Reid doesn’t fit in my system although he scored the most goals relatively and McGeouch is a sixteen year old talent from the last youth intake (we have someone again after so many years!) but he doesn’t want to sign a full-prof contract… So there might be a chance a big team is picking him up sadly. Anyway, we need at least one new striker for next season, maybe even two. Although Reid will be hope we can’t find anybody I guess, so he can stay!








Note: It was tough for sure. No fun at all to be honest with you guys! Hopefully next season will be better, otherwise my career is slightly fading away in the dark... Next time I’m back again, hopefully I can present a whole bunch of new players! We definitely need so if we want to compete for ending in the upper half of the league next season. Battling for a play-off spot is to far off yet I think, but who knows, adding three or four quality players into the squad can make a huge difference already!

You're manager getting aged haha, do you have any plans when you'll let him reitre?

Hopefully next season is a little better as you will be able to bring in some of your own players.

A hard first year back but it will take time. Seeing as you are the owner, I imagine you'll be getting as much time in the role as you like!

Not every season can be a memorable one, it’s all a learning curve. You’ll bounce back next term for sure!

#114 - The Tottenham job is really helping me now

22/09/2040 -- We have signed a star. A 19-year old beast who could easily play for any Premiership club beside Rangers and Celtic I would say. He could choose from twelve other contracts all over Europe (and even Brazil) but he wants to join Spartans. Or more likely, me! Who don’t wants to work with the world famous Luke Henderson huh?! Beside of this guy, who I will present to you within a minute, we have signed nine(!) other players, although four of them are on loan. We’ll kick-off with my new goalkeeper.

This was the biggest must have for sure. Fraser was jus terrible last season. I think we succeed to sign a better goalkeeper for sure. He was the best we could get, so I hope it sorts out! Scott Findlay is a free agent from Saint Mirren who will join us for the next two seasons. His key attributes are quite impressive I would say and on top of that he is tall! I expect much more clean sheets this season or at least some fine saves! I think Fraser made only one good save throughout the whole season… He will functioning as my backup goalkeeper now.



Defensively there was also some work to do. But we did a hell of a job I think. First we signed Englishman Oliver Farmer. He is a centre back who played for Reading last year. Farmer is a big upgrade in comparison with the guys we had to play last year. He is tall, left-footed (we hadn’t any of them) and his attributes are very decent both physical, mental and technical. There is only one minor downside, he is on a pretty high wage. But, we want to make some steps ahead and the board allowed me to offer this kind of contracts so it’s not a big deal I guess. For the full-back positions, both left and right we are hiring two guys. Our new right full-back is called Mario Forde. He is on loan from Crystal Palace. He is a really good catch I think. Hopefully he performs way better then Ferguson did last year. Scott Munro will stay as my back-up player for this position, just like last year. On the left hand side we hired Jamie Gray from our affiliated club Hearts. Also a huge upgrade in comparison with last season. His physicals and mental skills are pretty good already, only technically he must develop himself a little bit more I think. But, he’s only twenty years old yet, so who knows he will be a future starting player at Hearts (or us!) someday.







Fasten your seatbelts. It’s time to meet our new superstar. A 19-year old centre back who left the Arsenal youth academy last year and has settled down in the outskirts of Edinburgh now. Ian Beckley is the best player ever at this club for sure. Although, in terms of his attributes! Look at him. He is just amazing. I never thought we could sign a player like him already. We had to pay the maximum amount of wage money we could possibly offer, but he accepted it! I am really really pleased with this signing. I don’t understand at all why he is valued at only £12,000. He is a very good player for almost every Scottish Premiership side I would say! Basically he has the right figures I was searching for all the time when at Spurs! I think we are going to have a lot of fun with this guy and maybe we can even generate some serious money if he will ever be transferred in the nearby future.



From Beckley to our new midfielders, just a tiny step. Ha-ha! Last year we signed two new central midfielders already, but this year we did again. The other two will become my reserve players now. The first one is called Robbie Hamilton. He is coming over from Livingston, on a free again (just as all my signings this summer). Not as great as I was hoping for, but at least he has more pace than the guys we already have, so at the end it’s an upgrade for sure. But I’m more pleased with the signing of Neil Spence who joined Partick Thistle last season. Physically and mentally he is pretty good and his main skills are not spectacular, but decent enough for this level of football. I’m hoping he can become the new Max Ashmore!





Up front we signed three new players, from which two of them on loan, therefor we already reached the maximum amount of four this season now. The first guy we signed wasn’t offered a new contract at Hearts, so I decided to pick him up. I wanted him last year already, but Hearts didn’t want to loan him out. Now he joined us for free. Finn Watt is a 21-year old striker with some really good key attributes. Finally I found a player with some good finishing. I hope it sorts out and maybe he can become just as good as club legend Bryan Griffiths did in my first years at Spartans. He is still the clubs all-time top goalscorer by the way. The other striker we signed on loan is from Hearts as well (now they want to cooperate apparently). Adam Gielty is a slightly better version of Watt I think. So I can rotate them as much as possible, which will definitely happen given the amount of matches we have to play. Our very last signing is Adam Jeffries from Stoke city. I needed a new left winger because we don’t have any of them who can play there naturally. Jeffries is a solid player with some good pace and crossing. I hope he will do better then the guy I played over there last year (Loy), who can’t even play football I would say… He will now become a back-up player.







I think we could say we did a great job. Since Spartans is fully professional we can sign better players for sure. Otherwise I had been struggling again at some point I guess. As long as I have to deal with the players who were already here, every new signing is an upgrade for sure. Oh dear, much of those players are just awful! The manager before me did a really good job to avoid relegation over the last two seasons before I joined Spartans again. Respect! Underneath I have shown the transfers overview and the complete squad for next season.






The real test
Of course it’s fun to find all those new players together with my scouts, but the real work has to be done on the pitch! Well, I think we could say it sorts out perfectly until now. We had a brilliant start with gaining ten points out of the first four matches in the League Cup group stage, with qualifying ourselves for the next round as a result after we finished first in the group! And in the second round we beat Alloa Athletic already, which means that Spartans is qualified for the third round of the League Cup for the very first time in history! A remarkable achievement I would say. In the next round we are facing Hearts in our stadium. If they show up with their B-squad maybe there is a tiny chance for reaching into the quarters, but normally spoken it will end here.

In the league we did a good job as well. Although we were even quite unlucky a few times. Stirling Albion for instance scored the winner in the 90+2nd minute after we outplayed them completely, Edinburgh City did exactly the same in the game thereafter and during the tough match against Dundee we missed two absolute sitters in the last ten minutes… I even played my full reserve squad against Dundee, because they are far above everybody else in the league. It’s a big club, who will end on top for sure (it’s quite surprising they did relegated last year). I rested my players for the following match against Dumbarton, which sorts out perfectly. Currently we are fifth in the league, just like last season. But now I’m far more convinced we can battle for a better position in the league and maybe even for a play-off spot. Stay tuned!








Note: I don't know yet Wolf. Most likely I will end my career at Spartans, but not as long as I'm enjoying it! I did for sure Scott. The squad feels more 'me' nowadays, so hopefully this quality boost will lead to something at the end. You are entirely right TheLFCFan, ha-ha! But the in-game board is happy with me untl now, so no worries at all! I hope we do Justice. I flipped every available coin twice to get the maximum out of this transfer window and I think I succeed. Coming up next: all our results until the end of the December.

The Spartans are beginning to look the goods, keep working!

It's amazing what can happen when you're able to assemble your own squad!

The previous season is now firmly in the past as you look forward to a proper promotion hunt!

#115 - Everything is going perfectly well

22/12/2040 -- I knew already we did a great job with our transfers last summer, but I wasn’t expecting it was this good actually! Currently we are seriously battling for the second place in the league which means direct promotion straight into the Premiership (although that might be to early)! As expected Dundee is way to good for this level of football, so we could already say they are the champions for this season. But the fight for the second spot is really interesting right now. I think our play-off spot is pretty much secured if nothing strange is going to happen in the second half of the season, but why should you be satisfied with a play-off ticket if you can finish second?

Our results over the last few months are very decent I would say. We lost a couple of times, but that was against the better teams in the league most of the time (and our loss against Hearts in the third round of the League Cup as well), so it doesn’t worry me to much. But the one thing that bothers me is the amount of goals we concede. I don’t know exactly what is going on all the time, but we concede a huge amount of goals from set-pieces or penalties. It’s just insane. I think we had at least 10 penalties given against us until now. All of them scored as well. Maybe I should create some detailed instructions for the set-piece situations, which I don’t like to do (I prefer to use the pre-set standard instructions). But, the positive thing is that we barely concede goals because of some proper field play from our opponents, so I think the new defenders are definitely an upgrade. And on top of that, the new goalkeeper isn’t making stupid mistakes all the time, although he isn’t saving points for us neither. But that wasn’t expected at all.

Another issue is our squad depth. The main squad contains 23 players, which should be enough I think, but most of the players are not as fit as my players at Athletic Bilbao or Spurs were. So I have to rotate more than I like (also because of some injuries) and sometimes I have strongly the feeling it’s affecting our level of football to heavily. The quality difference between my starting players and the reserves is still too big. Maybe I have to consider to buy another player this winter transfer-window, but the problem is that we are running out of money. Our balance is already in debt currently, although it will be solved at the end of the season when we receive our prize money, which can be as big as over £1,000,000 if we finish within the first three. Anyway, I’m really happy how things are sorting out currently, hopefully we can go on like this!

Things are looking so much better this season compared to last. Sitting nicely in second and quite comfortably in the playoff spots. Not sure anyone was really expecting such an impressive season and if you can stop those set-piece goals from happening so frequently, surely promotion is likely!

Hopefully you can hold onto second-place. The prize money will be as welcome as promotion!

You are all over this, great performances all round!

It’s all looking very rosy at the halfway mark! Promotion is definitely on the cards.

Sad that Dundee is no competition for everyone, hope you can stay at that 2nd spot!