How far can a guy who’s never played FM before take a fifth division Welsh club?
I guess I still don’t know! I love the fact that I’m still green enough about FM — and have taught myself how to get better at it in such an offline manner — that I don’t even know if taking Wrexham from the bottom half of the Vanarama into the Championship in seven seasons is any sort of special accomplishment. I suspect that it isn’t, if a newb like me could do it, so this isn’t going to be a brag story. But it is going to be a story about how much pleasure FM has given me during a very dark winter.
Before I do any more backstory or narrative appetite-whetting, here’s the results of our first seven seasons, soon to be broken down at the rate of one post per season if people are into it:
1: 19th in Vanarama
2: 5th in Vanarama (L to Barnet 1-2 in semis)
3: 1st in Vanarama (115 points, +81 goal differential)
4: 6th in League Two (L to Fleetwood 0-1 in semis)
5: 1st in League Two (99 points, +49 goal differential)
6: 9th in League One
7: 1st in League One (91 points, +20 goal differential, 375-1 preseason odds)
When I decided I was going to get myself through this pandemic winter by climbing the last and greatest mountain in the sports sim world, I settled on the goal of taking Wrexham to the Premier League. Pretty cheeky, in retrospect! Coming from a background of American sports sims (mostly OOTP, but also multiple years of FHM and the Wolverine Studios pro and college basketball games), I was unprepared for the crushing financial disparities of European club football. (You mean there’s no salary cap AND no draft?!) Once I got to League One and saw how pessimistic both the oddsmakers and even my own players were about even just staying up, I amended my goal. I would simply try to reach the pinnacle of Welsh club soccer. I would never leave Wrexham for a managing job in England, but I could move on to Swansea or Cardiff if my success at Wrexham plateaued.
So far, it hasn’t! And it would be so sweet to go all the way with Wrexham. It’s fun to win League One with the lowest salary in the league while Hull shells out 4x as many pounds to miss the playoffs. Anyhow, thanks for reading! Advice on the future of this story is welcome. In our next post we’ll go back to the very first season, when I cracked open the game with nothing but two million pounds of Ryan Reynolds’s imaginary money and two Michael Cox books to transform me into a tactical genius.
I guess I still don’t know! I love the fact that I’m still green enough about FM — and have taught myself how to get better at it in such an offline manner — that I don’t even know if taking Wrexham from the bottom half of the Vanarama into the Championship in seven seasons is any sort of special accomplishment. I suspect that it isn’t, if a newb like me could do it, so this isn’t going to be a brag story. But it is going to be a story about how much pleasure FM has given me during a very dark winter.
Before I do any more backstory or narrative appetite-whetting, here’s the results of our first seven seasons, soon to be broken down at the rate of one post per season if people are into it:
1: 19th in Vanarama
2: 5th in Vanarama (L to Barnet 1-2 in semis)
3: 1st in Vanarama (115 points, +81 goal differential)
4: 6th in League Two (L to Fleetwood 0-1 in semis)
5: 1st in League Two (99 points, +49 goal differential)
6: 9th in League One
7: 1st in League One (91 points, +20 goal differential, 375-1 preseason odds)
When I decided I was going to get myself through this pandemic winter by climbing the last and greatest mountain in the sports sim world, I settled on the goal of taking Wrexham to the Premier League. Pretty cheeky, in retrospect! Coming from a background of American sports sims (mostly OOTP, but also multiple years of FHM and the Wolverine Studios pro and college basketball games), I was unprepared for the crushing financial disparities of European club football. (You mean there’s no salary cap AND no draft?!) Once I got to League One and saw how pessimistic both the oddsmakers and even my own players were about even just staying up, I amended my goal. I would simply try to reach the pinnacle of Welsh club soccer. I would never leave Wrexham for a managing job in England, but I could move on to Swansea or Cardiff if my success at Wrexham plateaued.
So far, it hasn’t! And it would be so sweet to go all the way with Wrexham. It’s fun to win League One with the lowest salary in the league while Hull shells out 4x as many pounds to miss the playoffs. Anyhow, thanks for reading! Advice on the future of this story is welcome. In our next post we’ll go back to the very first season, when I cracked open the game with nothing but two million pounds of Ryan Reynolds’s imaginary money and two Michael Cox books to transform me into a tactical genius.
