A good start to this first season in the first division capped off by a historic victory over Celtic. The fact that last season was the first time in 56 years since a team other than Rangers or Celtic won the league is quite extraordinary and with the pair seemingly off the pace again this year, it looks like a changing of the guard could be coming.
A strong and steady start to the season. Surprised to see Celtic do so poorly, perhaps you could target a finish above them!
#120 - Still on course
22/01/2042 -- After the solid start our performances over the last few months were more or less the same. We are still following the pattern we need to avoid relegation. After the sensational win against Hamilton we did only lost once in the next eight matches. Only Hibernian smashed us in our own stadium: 0-4. All the other results were pretty decent, with some clean sheets as well. But all went horrible wrong in December. Although we played against a couple of the better teams in the league we are conceding way to many goals. I’m not so certain anymore about my new goalkeeper, who seems really weak all the time with set-pieces. Again set-pieces. It was the main reason for conceding a lot of goals a while ago, but now it starts all over again. It worries me a bit to be honest, I don’t have a clue yet to solve it.
But our terrible run of form came to an end against Airdrieonians. Also a solid team in the league, but striker Mike Williams was brilliant again with a hattrick. He is taking care for at least 50% of all the goals we score, so I think we can say we possibly have faced some big troubles if he wasn’t with us. Thanks to the three points after this win we still have a solid gap of around eight points with the eighteenth position in the league, so if we can carry on like this I’m pretty sure we are going to make it relatively easily! But, we can’t be to relaxed, every position higher up the ladder means a difference in prize money of around £300,000. Serious money which we need pretty hard to strengthen, or at least continuing our squad level for next season.
We also qualified ourselves for the fifth round of the Scotch Cup. That’s equal right now with the best performance from Spartans in history so far. But I think it will end here again. We are facing Hibernian in the next round, who are second in the league currently. Anyway, hopefully their 22,000 seater stadium is entirely sold out, which will bring us some big money! The winter transfer window is almost over. I wish I could add some more squad dept; beside of the starting eleven the rest of the players are not really at Premiership level yet. And most of them are never going to reach it either. But I have already flipped over every available penny twice last summer, so there is simply no money for signing new players. And no, I’m not pumping extra money in the club. They can receive £1,000,000 from me yearly and that’s it. I have to life as well you know!
Note: I'm pretty amazed so far Scott. All the other clubs can spend at least twice as much money on wages in comparison with us but I really have no idea where they spending it for... Sometimes they are buying terrible players I won't even consider for my B-squad... You are probably right TheLFCFan. It's quite remarkable how far off Celtic and Rangers are currently be. Especially Rangers is performing terrible this season... Ha, that would be great for sure Justice, but I think they will recover themselves at some point and I have the feeling we are already putting the maximum out of it currently. Maybe within a few years tough! Coming up next: the weirdest match I have ever played...
A pretty rotten run in December but hopefully the recent win can inject a bit of confidence in the players to revitalise them and put some life back into the fight to remain in the top-flight. The position looks good but it can all change if you don't improve your form.
#121 - I think we are safe
15/03/2042 -- We have won our two important matches against bottom league teams Livingston and Falkirk and because of that I think we could say we have secured ourselves in the league for next year as well. Even more after we handled to win the match against Aberdeen in our own stadium with 2-1! It was only the third home win so far. We are collecting most of the points outside Edinburgh, if we only take the away games into account we are second in the league in comparison with all other teams! After the Aberdeen win we had some kind of a downfall again (with conceding many goals as well) but recovered ourselves in the last game against Dundee. We are on 38 points now and I think that should be enough to survive. Mathematical I think it’s even impossible to relegate anymore, because it’s highly unlikely that all four teams below us are winning nearly every game from now on and with us having a huge drop of form at the same time.
I have also played one of the weirdest matches ever in Football Manager since a very long time (I remember me one game in particular a long time ago - in FM12 or so - when I was bottom league and took an insane 4-0 lead after 45 minutes in an away game against one of the top half teams. I think they have used something white in the pause, because in the second half we lost the game with 5-4…) Well, this Hearts game was pretty much like that. After sixteen minutes we took a 2-0 lead after a marvellous goal from McKinlay and an own goal (although we had scored that one for sure if that Hearts player didn’t), but thereafter the game was almost a never ending streak of highlights. It was just insane. It lasted so long! Never had such like that before. But, I’ll take it, at the end we took a 3-1 lead into the dressing room!
After the pause they scored 2-3 soon and I felt it already coming. They kept attacking, with us heavily under pressure. But one moment was enough for taking a more comfortable lead again with Williamson scoring 4-2 after a counter-attack! It kept like that until the 80th minute, but only four minutes later it was completely different: 5-4. What the fuck just happened? Some terrible defending, awful goalkeeping and some devastating passing as well. Just as we are always doing in many games, but now in only three minutes time. I’ve couldn’t been more angry… But this ridiculous game wasn’t over yet. However this match felt completely unnatural to me already (which is the case more often) I had some kind of a strange feeling that we could score the equalizer. This match felt so scripted that I almost knew it was going to happen! And yes, I was right. Just before the additional time was starting to begin Williamson scored once more, ending the match at 5-5! At the end Hearts had a total amount of shots of around 35! We only nine, so I think we should be very grateful with this stolen point, although we must have win this game given the 4-2 lead just ten minutes before the end…
Now we have secured ourselves I’m looking carefully into next season already. I have extended one contract already and we succeed to hire Mike Williamson for another season. He is on a big wage now at Brighton, but we don’t have to pay a single penny of his wage! I’m very delighted with this deal, he is probably my most important player. He is even battling for the top goalscorers title in the league! But there are also a bunch of contracts which are expiring after this season and it’s not likely many of them will be extend. So I’m searching for free agents in the first place right now because that’s the easiest way to attract new players. But I’m a bit limited because of we have almost reached our wage budget and because of that I’m not allowed to offer some proper contracts currently… It’s quite frustrating actually, because the wages are dropping heavily anyway because of all the expiring contracts, but the game doesn’t take that into account… So I can only hope all the players I’m interesting in are not signing a new deal yet…
The end of the season is near. We are bottom of a whole stretch of teams who are pretty close to each other all the way up until the seventh place (Celtic has a game in hand). If we are going further like the rest of the season we are probably going to end 13th or 14th, which is much better already then expected, but if we are able to achieve a good run of form it might be possible we are going to end top half of the league! We don’t have the toughest schedule anymore from now on, so there is a tiny chance it can be happening!
Well you mightn't finish above Celtic this season but you're in a good position and could climb higher! Spartans are on the rise!
What a game against Hearts! You've done well to keep your head above the relegation zone this season. Staying up will be brilliant for the club.
I think you are right in saying you are virtually safe. Even to need a playoff it would take Livingston to double their points tally over the entire season and I can't see that happening. A great first season time to finish it off in style.
I think there is a type on the episode title, but I agree, you are save haha, well done!
#122 - Suddenly we are a rich club!
25/05/2042 -- Not the glorious end I was hoping for obvious, but it was just enough to keep at least one club beneath us from the long range of teams I mentioned last time. Hamilton dropped down the ladder further and further throughout the season and has ended just one point below us after we lost the final match of the season against Ross County away. For the umpteenth time this year we screwed a lead in the last few minutes of the game and this 90+1st minute winner saved Ross County from relegation. I think we have lost or drawn a match during the last few minutes of a match at least around ten times this season… Of course the account of matches we have won or drawn in the last minutes is just one or two maybe (which is even a lot in comparison with the seasons before!). But it is how it is, I’m glad anyway we were able to secure ourselves in the Premiership quite easily. We received over £3,000,000 of prize money because our thirteenth spot in the league. It’s for the first time in history we actually have a proper amount of money in the bank! For next season the transfer budget is set at £2,5000,000 and our wage budget around £65,000 which is an increase of only £17,500. I think I have to balance it a little bit myself, we need more wage money for sure if we want to attract better players.
Despite the fact we did a really good job this season we are not rock solid settled down in this highest tier of Scottish football yet. In the first place because our wage budget is probably still one of the lowest in the league next season and secondly because of we have to renew half of the squad once more. A lot of players don’t have the capabilities for playing on this level of football and I need to replace many of them. But, first I’m starting with our squad overview to begin with my goalkeepers.
I’m not really pleased with my new goalkeeper to be honest. I was expecting a little bit more of Kareem Grant. Although he is better then Findlay, who is going to leave us because his contract is expiring and he isn’t good enough either for being a back-up goalkeeper. We concede a lot of goals this season and that isn’t only because our poor defending. The goalkeeper barely made some saves of importancy and so didn’t win points for us. So I will search for an upgrade again which will be very hard. There are no free agents available and at first sight there is barely a solid goalkeeper we could buy either. I had some kind of a talented player from the last March youth intake (the only one actually) but he is only 1,78 m tall… I can’t remember myself I have had a solid goalkeeper in my youth intake over the last series of FM who is both having solid figures and is tall enough (at least 1,85 m) for being a goalkeeper… It’s not given to me apparently.
Our defensive line disappointed me a little bit as well throughout the season. Our starting players are really not bad in terms of their attributes, but none of them performed above or even at an average level. Right full-back Mike Kelly-Evans performed really poor, but a lack of a good back-up player prevents him for sitting on the bench. The same counts for left full-back Jamie Gray. I bought him because he was the best we could get last year, but I’m not truly satisfied. Beckley is capable for playing on this level of football, but he is missing support. Farmer is not really great, it is mainly because he can take penalties that his average rating isn’t that low. The guy I loaned in from Manchester United (Iyrwah Goodwin) wasn’t as good as I was hoping for neither. We don’t have to talk about the reserve players, they are all bad and are all leaving us at the end of the season because they are running out of their contract. All summarized we are going to say goodbye against Potts, Mahood, Rodgers, Goodwin and Farmer. I doubted a little bit about Farmer, but I think we should let him go if we want to grow with this club.
Our midfielders did slightly better, but beside David Griffiths-Trevor nobody is good enough for the long term. But I can’t replace the whole squad in once, so I have to make some choices. Robbie Hamilton isn’t great given his attributes, but most of the time he performed solid enough, so I decide to extend his contract. Toual and Murray are decent players for the time being and are staying as well, but the loan period of Adam Jeffries is over. In the Championship he was amazing, but this level of football seems to high for him. He barely scored a goal or took care for an assist. Ali Watt is our youngster from the academy who is not there yet (and I doubt he will ever be), so most likely he will be send back to our B-squad next season. The contracts of Neil Spence and Christopher McKinlay are ending and we are not seeing them back next season. Last but not least is David Griffiths-Trevor. He did an amazing job last season and I tried to loan him in for next season as well a couple of times. Liverpool rejected it, but my last attempt when the season was already done was more successful! So we are seeing him back next year as well, which I’m very pleased with, he is a brilliant player for us.
Up front Mike Williamson did an amazing job. Because of an injury over the last three weeks he couldn’t compete for the league’s top goalscorers title any longer, but he finished second with 22 league goals, which is an huge amount for a tiny club like Spartans. Actually he is the only player in the squad who can score a goal… All other strikers are more or less just terrible. One of them is Jim Johnson. His contract is expiring and we are not going to extend it so he will leave. Finn Watt isn’t good enough either, but his contract is not expiring yet. He will be used as back-up striker next season. As already said we are loaning in Williamson for another year and Walker-Nightingale is still a young player. His benefit is that Williamson likes to play with him. So despite the fact he isn’t scoring much he will stay for sure.
All summarized we are going further with eleven players for next season, precisely the half of the entire squad. We have only signed one free agent in advance for next season this far and we offered another guy a contract as well who we are following the entire season already, but when I offered him a contract a lot of other teams did so as well. Many teams who are bigger than us, so I think we can written him off. Sadly, because he seems a very good left full-back.
Again their lies a huge task in front of us this summer. Actually we need a new player for every position in the squad! I hope we can sign some proper players but it might be a difficult task. As just said there are not many good free agents available currently so I think we have to smash some cash around. But £2,500,000 for ten new players means an average of around £250,000 each. What can you probably buy for that amount of money? Exactly, rubbish. So I think I’m going to search for players who are really an upgrade. I prefer to sign three guys of around £800,000 instead of ten for £250,000. I can loan in two more guys as well, but still, squad depth will become a major issue next season. Maybe I can add two or three players at most from our youth team (who aren’t great obvious) for some extra squad depth, but at that point we only have around 18 players in the first team. If we are facing some injuries then we are in serious troubles…
So I think next season will getting even harder than this first season. When we were the new team, unknown to all the other teams in the league and the surprising element because of that. That’s falling apart next season. I can only hope the teams who are getting promoted are more terrible then we are. The hunt for new players is starting to begin immediately from now on (although it was already started more or less), but it might be possible we are starting the first matches of next season with only 15 players…
Respectable position to finish the season in! While finances might be tight, you've shown what you can achieve with a strict control over the expenditure. Next season will be tough but you have the nous to use the tools you have well.
Congratulations on surviving your initial season in the Premiership. Next season will be equally as difficult, if not harder, you're right. You've shown you know what to do with the tools you're given before though. I know Spartans are in very safe hands.
Good approach to re-building the squad, no point bringing in a lot of players, focus on finding ones that will be in your squad in five years time, or if you get lucky, the first team
#123 - Where are the Scottish?!
20/09/2042 -- Summer transfer window is done now and we are on our way. As expected it was a busy time again for us. Also an exciting one, because we weren’t able to sign many free agents in advance. Because of that we could barely compose a team for the first few League Cup group stage matches! Especially in the first game I couldn’t even fill the bench completely! But there after we were able to present one new player roughly every week, so at the end of the transfer window the squad of 22 players was finally complete. Sadly we weren’t able to attract much Scottish players. We only have four of them left in the squad (even our best youth academy talent isn’t Scottish…), which is very disappointingly to me. I’m not that kind of a manager though. I like to work with non-foreign players for at least half of the squad, but that is impossible currently. There are barely good Scottish players available who are an upgrade, and if so, they are choosing for the teams with a better reputation like Hearts, Motherwell, Aberdeen and clubs like that. So, we have to deal with a lot of Englishman again! I will present them in a minute, first I show you the results this far.
After some solid games in the League Cup group stage, wherefor we qualified ourselves for the second round, we are eliminated already. In the second round we faced Partick Thistle away, but we played terrible, especially in the second half. Not a big deal because we can’t win this cup anyway, but I was hoping for a little bit more obvious. In the league we had a tough start. We had to play against the last seasons number three, four and six within the first four playing rounds. But we did quite well, with gaining four points out of it. Especially the away game against Aberdeen was a brilliant one resulting in a 4-1 victory. Will Walker-Nightingale is on fire this season after I had some doubts about him because of last season. But currently he is doing bits!
I have also spend an hour of time to create some proper set-pieces settings. Most of the goals we concede so far this season are from set-pieces again, just like last season. It’s insane. So after the transfer window was done I created some detailed settings with the available players. I don’t know if it sorts out because I have only played one game after I did the settings, but hopefully we are doing better from now on.
Goalkeepers
Transfer time! I’m starting with my goalkeepers. Last season we signed Kareem Grant, but I wasn’t truly satisfied about him to be honest. Especially with free kicks he was just terrible. So I searched for a new one, which is one of the toughest things to do in Football Manager. Firstly because I don’t really know how the attributes are working (when is eccentricity a good thing and when not for instance) and secondly because proper goalkeepers are extremely hard to find. Actually it’s always some kind of a gamble… But I found a guy which I’m really satisfied with. He asked around £15,500 of wage per week, which I couldn’t of course, but I set all the bonusses, clauses and end of the season rewards to the maximum I could and of course the maximum of wage I possibly could offer (£8,500) as well because I wanted him really much. And he accepted it! I was a bit surprised to be honest. So, if he wants such an amount of money, he must be good right?
Lorenzo Cannella is Italian and played as a reserve goalkeeper for Newcastle United last season who are competing in the Championship. Physically he is an huge upgrade in comparison with Grant and both mentally and technically Cannella is the better one as well. Not really tall (1,87 m) but just enough in my opinion. The first game in the league he concedes four goals immediately, which wasn’t promising at all, but luckily none of the goals wasn’t his fault so I kept faith! Cannella is also the only player in the squad from mainland Europe.
Defenders
We needed some extra quality for sure in our last line. Almost all of the players from last season are written off. But we faced some troubles to sign new players. At the end I had no choice anymore and decided to loan in a couple of guys. Because of this I also discovered a huge mistake myself! I was always thinking that we could only hire four players at the same time, but actually you can only loan in four players from the same league! That’s a huge difference… Silly me. However I prefer to have my own players instead of loanies, but the current reputation of the club isn’t good enough to sign players like the guys we are loaning in right now.
But first I will present you the only defender we could sign in advance on a free. Josh Meekings left the Chelsea youth academy last season and I think he is a decent player for sure. Finally I have someone who can compete with Mike Kelly-Evans, who can do what he wants because there was no proper back-up player last season. Now he has to make sure he is performing way better, otherwise Meekings is replacing him without any doubt.
The other three new guys are all on loan. Two centre backs and a left-back. The new left-back is our only Scottish signing this season. He is also by far the highest valued player in the squad. Adam King is coming over from West Bromwich Albion for the rest of the season. A very solid player who is better then Jamie Gray for sure, so I think he will be my starting player. The two centre backs are Eddie Jamieson and Christian Gibbs. Both very good players, hopefully they are better than Goodwin was last season. I could loan him in again this season, but I wasn’t really convinced about him. So I made the decision to give two fresh players a chance now.
Midfielders
As already announced we are loaning in Griffiths-Trevor again (although he missed out the first few matches in the league due to some injury problems) but he can’t do it on his one of course. So we also need some new midfielders. A lot of interesting players came by and at the some point I was offering six or seven contracts at the same time! By the way, it’s quite annoying that you can’t offer proper contracts anymore at some point because you have reached the wage limit virtually. Really stupid to be honest. If you do so the game should letting you know that you have to chose a player out of three at the end for instance, rather than that you can’t offer contracts anymore at some point. Which is heavily annoying, because other clubs can. Anyway, out of the total amount of nine contracts we offered I had to choose five of them. Two attacking wingers for both sides and three central midfielders.
The first guy we signed is Marc Thomas. A free agent from Wolves who can play as a right winger. He can compete with Murray now for this position, although I think Thomas is the better one. Technically and Mentally not really good, but at least he has some good pace. It was the best we could get, but until now he is not performing that bad. On the left hand side of the pitch we signed Lee Hinchcliffe. More or less the same player as Thomas is. He can compete with Toual for the spot as a left-midfielder.
We had to pay for all our new central midfielders, but I had some transfer money in the bank so I think it’s better spending it! Steve Kerr is our first signing. He is coming over from Manchester United for only £53,500. He is some kind of gamble. He is still very young, decent figures, and my scouts are predicting some great potential. Not one of my starting players obvious, but a proper reserve player for sure. If it doesn’t sort out we are not losing that much money. We spend a little bit more for Terry Craddock from Ipswich Town. A solid central midfielder without any great qualities, but neither any big weaknesses. A decent all-round player who can fit into the squad easily. He is a good free-kick taker as well and able to shoot from distance. The last signing is from Ireland. We broke our transfer record for him, paying nearly £450,000 for a 27-year old reliable central midfielder. Physically and mentally a very good player and his key technical attributes aren’t bad either. He is supposed to be my starting player together with Griffiths-Trevor who is still beyond everybody else obvious!
Strikers
We were close to sign another Scottish striker from the Welsh Premier League where he is performing absolutely amazing. Although it’s tough to weight that performance, because the Welsh Premier League isn’t the greatest of course… But he was only needed if Finn Watt was getting sold, but at the end no club wasn’t prepared to pay some decent money for him. He is running out of his contract at the end of the season and is probably leaving anyway. So, no new strikers this year, but to have enough squad depth I promoted my best youth talent into the squad (who is a striker again and not even Scottish… This entire career I had just three or four decent youth talents, and all of them were a striker). The couple of big Scottish clubs beside Celtic and Rangers were already offering more than a million for him, but we reached a point we don’t need to sell our youngsters anymore to generate enough money to keep the club afloat. So I rejected all offers and decide to make use of Adam Murdoch myself. Of course he has to develop a lot more if he wants to become a starting player someday, but he is looking promising so far. If possible I will make use of him as much as I can.
Overviews and season prediction
So, again a huge improvement I would say. Last season at least half of the squad wasn’t good enough for Premiership level, I think we can say now only two or three players aren’t. Saying that we can conclude we are definitely making progress, although it bothers me a bit we can’t do it with more Scottish players. I hope we are steadily growing further in the next few years to take part of the seven or eight big clubs in Scotland, fighting for European football occasionally and reaching a point we can buy the best Scottish players from other clubs as well. Now they are all choosing for Aberdeen, Kilmarnock and Rangers and such like that. Underneath I have shown the transfers overview, the current squad, financial situation and our wage spending in comparison with all other clubs in the league. Still the lowest, but we are far more less away now.
So far we doing alright in the league. Last season we finished thirteenth, as always I want to make at least some progress. And I think we are definitely capable for it. I would say we can end within the first ten this season. Ambitious, but given the quality improvement in comparison with last season it should be doable. At least it would be great if we are conceding not as many goals anymore and maybe turn our negative goal difference from last season into a positive one. Well, we shall see how it all sort out, next time I’m back short before the winter break I guess.
Note: A huge update, I'm aware of that! You are right Justice, I'm not the best with tactics, but searching for cheap players is my main speciality. And I like it pretty much. Sometimes I find a player myself and sometimes one of my scouts has found a rough gem. I hope so Scott! I think we did a really good job on the transfer market over the last few weeks, so it should be possible to at least secure ourselves again. No much choice either Griffo because of the finances, but I get your point. Again I have flipped every available penny twice this summer, now we have to see if it sorts out!
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