.Darllington FC Vs Darlington Town - A race up the leagues

Latest Editor File:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/o9lsjc9uo8h75o7/DARLINGTON.fmf/file

Extra faces for the graphics folder for the created players:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/8la9z73uyglgs2m/ADDED_FACES.zip/file

Tactics used:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/cgdr6rzo53ipkv4/Attacking_4-2-4_Wide_-_Custom_Control_Possession.fmf/file


Hi Guys,

I'm currently working with the editor to create a new game and have been testing it for several months.

I'm playing Darlington FC who start in the English Northern League Premier Division, while our competition (Darlington Town) start two divisions higher in the Vanarama National League. Due to the way I've set the opposition up they are Managed by Mark Hughes, and have several other Welsh legends like Ian Rush, and Neville Southall in their back room staff and will power up the leagues, while developing at the same time. I've locked their players into Darlington with long contracts and set them to retire at the end of their contracts.

My team will start with 3 star players Ianis Hagi, Nicolas Popescu, and Kelvin Yeboah, and a lot of 14 year players of Gibraltan nationality with a starting stats of:

Current Ability: 1
Potential Ability: 149
Ambition: 1
Determination: 15+.
Professionalism: 10

To make things much moire interesting I've done the following:

1) Created a blood bath in all the leagues, ALL Leagues have 30 teams in them, with the top 10 teams being promoted, the middle 10 staying in the division, and the bottom 10 getting relegated.

30 Teams per league, 10 promoted, 10 relegated, so two thirds of the teams in the division changes each season.



Additionally I also:

Cancelled Brexit
Allow full contracts to be offered to 14 year olds
Allow players from any country to play in England
Remove caps on Loan players
Due to the increase in teams I have given ALL the teams in the leagues full squads so they start out fairly evenly.
Because the games come thick and fast with 58 league games and Cup games on top all teams can select 12 subs each game.

SEASON 1

Off the bat I encounter a weird situation, in a 30 team league, my chairman REQUIRES me to finish bottom. It's quite odd, but I'm not sure I should be Required to finish last.



Season 1 League Table:



Season 1 Results:



Early results were awful, as you'd expect with a team of 14 year olds with a current ability of 1, but they learned throught the season and gradually got better as we went along, certainly by March you can see above losses and draws, turned to wins and draws. We had a decent push towards the end of the season and I'm hopeful we can push into a top 10 place next season for promotion!

Typically I play a Kamikaze style 4-2-4 and throw everything into attacking, sadly this often leaves us exposed at the back. That 6-9 home loss to Bootle was a bit of a disappointment.
Still we finished mid table and scored 200 goals, but sadly conceeded 171!

SEASON 1: DARLINGTON TOWN FC - Mark Hughes


Mark Hughes had a magnificent start in his first season.
Fantasitcally over powered for the division, he crushes all the teams in his league, only dropping 2 points all season.



As well as romping home in the League they had a decent FA Cup run getting knocked out in the Quarter Final by Everton, and winning the FA Trophy.



With past wonderkids such a Maradonna (Diego Maradona's son), Fabio Paim, Freddy Adu. As well of sons from footballing legends such as John Rush (Ian Rush), Maxin Gullit (Rudi Gullit), Liam McClair (Brian McClair), the three Zidane brothers, Christian Maldini, Liam Irwin (Denis Irwin), and several other players such as Alfie Payne and Slavi Spasov, it's no wonder this team will take some stopping!

SEASON 1 RETROSPECT:

Sadly Darlington Town went up as expected, while I only managed mid table, so now I have 3 divisions to make up.

Thankfully with ladies like Chloe Handcock in my backroom staff I'm in very good hands.

Season 2 - Darlington FC (me)

Season 2 is complete, thankfully we were able to build on the ground work done last season and win the league. Despite the lack of Ambition and mediocre professionalism in my team, I'm happy we can push up now and give Darlington Town a run for their money.

Some interesting results this season, I was thrilled we beat City of Liverpool 5-0 away, and was expecting to slaughter them at home, sadly we lost 6-0 only three days later. We conceeded two early goals and simply collapsed.



The final league table, we only needed to finish on the top 10 to get promotion, however we managed to win the league with a three point margin.



My players for the most part are staying under the transfer radar of the other clubs. Season 2 is always wild in my saves as clubs start cleaning out their players I have given them through the editor and a lot of strong players become available for the Sky Bet league level clubs which pushes the strength of the league up.

Season 2 - Darlington Town FC - (Mark Hughes)



After promotion last season it's interesting to see Darlington Town romping up another league. I set Darlington Athletic as their rivals, and it's good to see them keeping pace with DarlingtonTown and sneaking the tenth promotion spot.

Four Welsh teams in this division, 2 got relegated, one more survived by the skin of their teeth, and Newport got promoted.

In Cup terms, Mark Hughes won the Papa John's trophy, and had another good FA Cup run, but eventually lost in the Semi Final to Liverpool.

So there we go Season 2 is over.

Mark Hughes still maintains a three division lead over me, but we'll keep chasing him up the leagues. I'm worried they are bit too over powered though!

Below is a list of our current squad:



Someone give me a better name than Seamus McFly for a goal keeper?
I wish I could say he was a great keeper but sadly in season 1 a grand total of 171 goals Mcflied past him!

How about Primo Chocobar on the wing?
I actually had a regen called that in the game, he was Argentinian and Italian!

That's some database you have set up, very interesting.

2021-01-29 16:06#281255 TheLFCFan : That's some database you have set up, very interesting.

Thank's, I like databases that are quite a brutal chellenge. I think I've made Darlington Town a touch to over powered though!

SEASON 3 Darlington FC (me)

Season Three begins with us (Darlington FC) in the Vanarama North after promotion last season. I was actually very confident going into this season and I often find the gap between the Northern Premier to the Vanarama National is very small, and there really isn't a lot in it in those divisions and you can often coast up them.

The only issue with the Vanarama is it's difficult to get the promotion and relegation correct when editing, where previously 10 teams go up and 10 go down in this database, you have the Vanarama North and South feeding into the Vanarama National so promotion places are drastically reduced from 10 teams to 4 teams.





Thankfully we achieved promotion fairly easily, though we had a few wobbles early on in the league. After the new year we only had one loss which was away to second placed FC United of Manchester. After 3 years of being together you can feel the team starting to gel and be used to working together. What's nice to see is I don't really see the total collapses we had last year. Often we'd go 2 goals down and the team would seem to go into free fall in matches.

Because I've increased the size of the leagues it seems I didn't make the cut for the FA trophy! I was waiting for my first game ofthe competition and fancied us to have a run in it, got the end of the season and realised we'd missed the whole thing!

Season 3 - Darlington Town FC - (Mark Hughes)

I fully expected Mark Hughes to romp up another division, what's concerning me, is Mark Hughes is making drastic changes to the players I initially gave him and seems to be making his team stronger.

I have discovered another alarming trend with Darlington Town thinking little of relocating each season to Middlesborough while their stadium is expanded, that's now twice in 2 seasons they have had a major expansion and upgrade.



He won his second Papa John's trophy in a row, though got knocked out early in the FA Cup. He won the FA trophy in his first season, so that's his third cup in three seasons.





Another romp to the top of the division, I don't see any sign of this slowing down, and the real concern now is they way their building, they will be a fully established and successful Premiership team long before I arrive there. Knowing my luck they'll have the futures equivilent of Messi there and put 10 goals past me at home when / if my motley crew finally make it to the top. I'm going to be a bit like a dog chasing after, and catching a car, I finally caught it yet the best I can do is wee on it's wheel before it squashes me!

The thing that jumps out the most to me here is Darlington Athletic (not to be confused with Darlington FC or Darlington Town), I've done nothing special with them apart from having a third Darlington team in this save, they simply exist yet so far they have matched Darlington Town promotion for promotion, even delving into their transfer activity they seem to be doing very smart things.



I'm begining to wonder if we might have three teams from Darlington in the Premiership at some point in the future!

I did add some random elements into my save just for the fun of it.

There is a London based team called Punjab United, as I needed teams to increase my league sizes to 30, and Punjab is in India so I did the logical thing and gave Punjab United the entire Indian National team to see how they'd do in the lower English leagues.

So what happened?
We'll judging by the transfer activity below, the player were so hopeless they shipped them back to India on free transfers!



Another bit of fun I had was going back to FM2011 to FM2013 there was rumours of St Helens rugby league team building a new stadium and sharing it with the local football club. The stadium was built and is actually in FM2021 (though not correctly named). I decided to move St Helens to the stadium and give them a Sugar Daddy.



They had 2 promotions, followed by a relegation. We'll keep our eyes out for St Helens on our travels!

Season 4 - Darlington FC (me)

Season 4 begins with us in the Vanarama National, I was hoping another straight forward promotion by finishing in the top 10 placings. This is my only chance of competing in the FA Trophy, as Mark Hughes won it once, it would be nice to equal his achievement.

I've tried to keep some perspective in this game as I have only now reached the point that Mark Hughes started the game at. Four seasons into this save, and my players are around the 17 / 18 age group so in theory could still be regens in the game, while many have racked up 150 first team games already.

There are some interesting teams with us this time around, I mentioned the St Helens experiment in a previous post, having got relegated last season they are now in the division with us.
Several Welsh clubs are also with us, both Merthyrs, and Wrexham, as well as FC United of Manchester who were promoted with us last season.







This one is probably my favorite season I have played so far.

Notice the top game, we lost 1-8 at home to Wealdstone who ended up finishing 29th out of 30 teams. Thankfully that was the only major blip in the entire season.
FC United of Manchester again got promoted along side us which is nice to see, they are becoming something of a rival team for us, though the game does actually list them as a rival with a competitive rivalry for Darlington anyway.

I also enjoyed playing Welsh teams in the Semi final and Final on my way to winning the FA trophy. I fancied my chances of winning the Cup as I was keeping my best players in cotton wool ahead of those games.

We even had a dream match away to West Ham in the FA Cup, sadly they beat us 6-0. Though considering some of the scores we have lost by to teams on our level in the league, I wasn't too concerned with this. Hopefully we will meet them again at some point when we are a bit stronger!

I have been nagging for upgrades whenever the game allows me to, and was awarded an upgrade to my academy this season.



So there we have it, another promotion and the FA Trophy, not a bad seasons work, onwards and upwards!

Season 4 - Darlington Town FC - (Mark Hughes)

Sparky hughes has made is all the way to the Skybet championship and stands on the brink of the Premiership.

Most worryingly Darlington Town are really starting to splash the cash in the transfer market this season, this is the first time they have got serious when spending money. This is a big spend for a team that just got promoted from Skybet Division One.







Considering the Premiership normally has 20 teams, and it has been increased to 30 teams there is a lot of top clubs in the Championship this season.

Hughes also managed a third straight Papa John's trophy.

Darlington Athletic failed to go up to the Premiership this season, they were 2 points off promotion which is a pity, though in retrospect I have no idea how they'd manage in the Premiership, I would expect them to get crucified.



What the hell is it with Darlington Town and moving to Middlesborough?
They spend a fortune renovating their stadium, move back into it for 11 whole days, then move back to Middlesborough again?

Season 5 - Darlington FC (me)

We're into league football now in the Skybet Division 2. Looking around this league we have our main real life rivals Hartlepool, game rivals St Helens, another series of matches with FC United of Manchester, Wrexham and one of my favorite teams to play in this game in Swindon Town.





A bit of a shocker this time around, we left Merthyr behind us last season after beating them 4 times and knocking them out of the FA Trophy in the Semi final, they had some pay back by knocking us out in the Quarter final, annoying considering how far they should be behind us now!

We beat Hartlepool home and away which was fantastic.

Sadly FC United of Manchester have been left behind they finished mid table so won't be joining us for another prmotion. Though St Helens scraped into 10th spot so we'll see them next season.

Still another successful season, and we've closed the gap on Darlington Town to 2 leagues.



Two parts of bad news, firstly for some odd reason the club decided to scale down the academy after I've been nagging for improvements, and our benefactor is scaling back his investment in the club.