An old face in a familiar place

As expected, our game vs Lithuania was a one-sided affair. We opened the scoring in the 12th minute and if it weren't for a few offsides calls, we would've put even more goals on the board than just five. Not to be outdone, Russia also demolished Denmark to keep pace with us on points.

In an attempt to increase the growing fanbase of Newport County, I'm proud to introduce the inaugural J3K Invitational League! This will be a simple four team preseason league that will take place at Newport County Stadium on an annual basis. We weren't lacking in interest for league slots, with the invited participants for the 2025 Invitational being Real Madrid, Inter, and Porto. How seriously could I possibly take this preseason league? Seriously enough to bring a full compliment of 12 bench players!

Really enjoy this story. Its mind-blowing how you can stick to this for so long.

I'm proud to announce the the inaugural winner of the J3K Invitational is... Newport County.

The only complaint I have with the League option is that you have to play three consecutive games. Had I known that, I would have at least waited until a litter later in the preseason so my poor guys had their legs back from holiday. As it was, my guys were dealing with stamina issues until the final game. It showed with the pitch results because we got stronger as the games went on.

For the future, I think I'm going to do a rotating invitational league; dropping the 4th place team and rotating in another big name foreign team to take their place.

In major news today, Wayne Rooney is coming to Newport County! As a youth coach.



I don't have any youth coaches and the only reason I signed him away from United is because of the name recognition.

lol, call me unsesitive but I'm kind of glad you didn't win too many trophies last year, just to show that you can't "finish" the game!

# l3nnart : lol, call me unsesitive but I'm kind of glad you didn't win too many trophies last year, just to show that you can't "finish" the game!

I'm also glad that I didn't win too much last year, to be honest. It keeps me motivated. If I ever win every trophy in any given season, I'm going to step away from Newport.

that makes sense, sooner or later we all need a new challange... lol, I just brought my Droylsden side to PL (started in BSN) and I already feel a little complacent, can't even begin to understand how you stay on it!

Silverware count - 1



It's always nice to start the season off with a big win, and the Community Shield gives us the chance to do so against a quality team. We have now met Chelsea for the past four seasons and we have been on the winning end three of those times. In fact, it was Chelsea that stopped our consecutive streak at 5 Shields two seasons ago. We got the best of them this year, despite losing Kenny Gage early to a straight red card, and hopefully we can start another winning streak.

We had another solid outing in our WC Qualifying game, but once again Russia holds serve with a win of their own. With 7 games now in the books we are deadlocked at the top of the table with 19 points each. We have yet to give up a goal, however, and that gives us a commanding +24 goal differential.

What more can I say that the scoreline doesn't? Poor Andorra didn't stand a chance. We finally gained some narrow breathing room against Russia, too, as they were held to a scoreless draw against Slovakia.

It's fitting that our closest group rival would net the first goal against us. And while Russia broke our streak of clean sheets, they could not break our stride toward the World Cup. We were down a goal going into the final 10 minutes but had a trademark double salvo from my trusty tactics. Barry Spring poached two goals in the span of 5 minutes to break Russia's heart and to qualify us out of our group.

First of all, I want to thank you for sharing such an outstanding FM display, with this you only proved that, not ONLY you are able to go from the bottom to the top, but ALSO you dont need to cheat for it.

To the point, I really found it amusing, this story is just pure epicness and I just went all out and read 17 pages in 2 hours.

I want to give you an advice, not sure if you can classify such as an advice but, from what I have seen, your atacking duo (Cacá and Hasselbaink) are pretty much doing ur team, I think you might need to get up on that..
I have also checked Cacá's age, which hitted the 30's already.
So my question is, are you going to keep relying on Cacá's ability into it starts decreasing due to age and buy a player to substitute him on that time? Or you have already in ur hands some Wonderkid, or at least checked for a youngster to be the next Newport poacher?

Also from what I have seen, you basicly win every Premier Division Championship with ease, but you strugle to win the Cups.
So I guess ur job isn't done in Newport, since you didn't won all of them in a row.

Nonetheless, I want to congratulate ur effort you put on this and I hope you get along well with the England Nacional Team

# Systole : First of all, I want to thank you for sharing such an outstanding FM display, with this you only proved that, not ONLY you are able to go from the bottom to the top, but ALSO you dont need to cheat for it.

To the point, I really found it amusing, this story is just pure epicness and I just went all out and read 17 pages in 2 hours.

I want to give you an advice, not sure if you can classify such as an advice but, from what I have seen, your atacking duo (Cacá and Hasselbaink) are pretty much doing ur team, I think you might need to get up on that..
I have also checked Cacá's age, which hitted the 30's already.
So my question is, are you going to keep relying on Cacá's ability into it starts decreasing due to age and buy a player to substitute him on that time? Or you have already in ur hands some Wonderkid, or at least checked for a youngster to be the next Newport poacher?

Also from what I have seen, you basicly win every Premier Division Championship with ease, but you strugle to win the Cups.
So I guess ur job isn't done in Newport, since you didn't won all of them in a row.

Nonetheless, I want to congratulate ur effort you put on this and I hope you get along well with the England Nacional Team

The thanks goes to you and all the readers of the story. As long as someone is interested in my Newport story, I'm inclined to keep going! So really, you guys get a lot of credit for keeping me motivated to write.

Regarding Caca, his age is definitely something I've been thinking about lately. Last season was the first where he wasn't the overwhelming cream of the crop. In fact, Hasselbaink was voted the fans player of the year where Caca had a stranglehold on that honor for years. Caca is still brilliant and he isn't showing signs of physical decline yet, but his play on the pitch seems to be coming back down to earth a bit.

I thought about pressing for his fellow countryman, Renato Gaucho from Chelsea, but he is the same age.


I also have this youngster that we brought in from Argentina. His playing style is going to be quite different, however, unless his pace really develops. What I will likely do is integrate Bressan more into the first team and see how he gets along. If he isn't too slow to play my style of offense then we're set. Otherwise, I'll sell him and find a pacier option.


The final option is a 4 star prospect that's coming through our youth network. I think he's still a few years away from even getting a bit role on the first team, however. I'll try to post a screenshot of him later.

In terms of competitions, the job is far from done at Newport. As you mentioned, we have yet to bring home every domestic trophy in one season. And while I'm not trying to downplay the amount of success we've had with the number of times we've won the Premier League in a row, I think it's definitely more difficult to win a trophy when it comes down to single elimination. The league is a marathon and we have the depth to compete for it every year. But on any given day we can lose, and that tends to happen more often during cup finals for us.