I took the Shamrock Rovers jobs in early July, which is half way through the Irish League season due to it being out of sync with the rest of Europe. I don't usually do mid season transfers but my team was down, and 15 points of the pace in the league so i had to act.
Transfers
Carlos (free) - a 31 year old goalkeeper, he had solid attributes apart from his handling which was a low 3, but despite the handling problem he was a solid keeper and i was please to get him on a free transfer.
Abraham (loan) - a 27 year old left winger, his stats are solid, and he has an impressive dribbling of 17. The main reason i signed Abraham was because despite the fact Shamrock Rovers squad is very good for the Irish Premier League we don't have the strength in depth to challenge on 4 fronts.
Manuel Carvini (free) - an exciting young 22 year old attacking midfield player. He can pick a pass, hes creative, and has bags of flair (compared to other players in this division). He also has an impressive 17/20 on free-kicks which is what really sealed the deal for me.
Since this was the mid-season transfer window i decided not to make any more changes to prevent upsetting the balance of the team.
Below is my first choice team that i will use to try and close the 15 point gap in are remaining 17 games.
Carlos
C Powell G Gartland K Oman K Gilbert
S O'Donnell S Rice
G McCabe A Greene R Finn
G Twigg
Sorry I'm afraid i don't know how to put screen shots on, any help would be much appreciated.
Ok well i look forward to the challenge of closing the 15 point gap, over the next 17 games.
I just finished are first 10 league games plus a few European and cup games (but il put them in a latter post as i just want to focus on are league challenge for this post.
As you know my team needed a massive effort to overturn the 15 point deficit when i arrived, and we did well winning 9 of are 10 league matches and drawing one.
vs Galway Utd 5-0
vs Sligo Rovers 2-2
vs UCD 2-0
vs Dundalk 4-1
vs Derry city 2-1
vs Bohemians 4-0
vs Drogheda Utd 4-0
vs Galway Utd 6-0
vs Silgo Rovers 4-0
vs St.Pat's Athletic 3-1
The results where pleasing but we where still in second place 6 points behind Sligo Rovers. Despite the impressive results i kind of feel that we have already thrown the league away because of are draw against the leaders, winning that would mean we would only be 2 points behind with 7 games to go instead of 6, this especially annoys me as we where 2-0 at half time and conceded 2 goals in the second half due to individual errors.
On a positive note G Twigg is firing on all cylinders and has racked up 13 goals in the last 10 league matches.
So what do u think, can we still win the league?
Great story
i think you could win it but if not next season
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Yer thanks Partick based on are league form since i took over i reckon we should be able to comfortably win it next season if not this one, but the bad news is if we don't win if this season it would mean that we would miss out on champions league football for a season.
Ok well the domestic season has just drawn to a close, when i last posted we had closed the gap at the top to only 6 points with 7 games left. So could we bridge the 6 points in the last 7 games well lets find out.
Irish League run in
we continued are form for the run in and won all seven games making it 16 wins and a draw in 17 in the league.
the results are as follows
vs UCD 2-0
vs Bohemians 2-0
vs Derry City 3-1
vs Drogheda Utd 2-0
vs St.Pat's Athletic 2-1
vs Dundalk 2-0
vs Bary wanderers 4-1
But was it enough to bridge that 6 point gap... well im afraid not the league finished like this
1st Silgo Rovers - pts 83
2nd Shamrock Rovers pts -79
3rd Derry city - pts 66
4th St.Pat's Athletic - pts 58
5th Bary wanderers - pts 58
6th Bohemians -pts 48
7th Drogheda Utd - pts 39
8th Dundalk - pts 34
9th UCD - pts 33
10th Galway Utd - pts 7
We finished second and i was very disappointed that we would be missing out on Champions league football next season, but the results that we had in the cups made up for that.
Right so onto the domestic cups
Irish League Cup
2nd round vs Cobh Ramblers - 4-1
Qtr Final vs Cork City - p1-1
Semi Final vs Sligo Rovers - e3-1
Final - Limerick Fc - 1-0
Irish Senior Challenge Cup
2nd round vs Avondale - 2-1
3rd round vs Athlone Town - 6-0
4th round vs Mervue Utd - 2-0
Semi Final vs Longford - 1-0
Final vs St. Pat's Athletic - 5-1
Overall i was quite pleases with are domestic season we had won 2 cups and showed real fighting spirit to almost overturn a 15 point lead. In Europe we are also going strong however since are league is out of sync with the rest of Europe the knockout stages of the Champions and Europa league come at the beginning of next domestic season, so i will post the results for Europe as soon as iv been knocked out or won.
So i think my season went pretty well
feel free to say how u think it went, and if you want suggest any signing for the domestic transfer window.
Great Story
really enjoyable, never managed in any of the irish leagues but do fancy giving it ago and your season has made me even more interested.
how much Transfer money and wage budget do you get when you took over at Shamrock Rovers? and whats the value of G. Twigg?
gooner4eva - err we had no money to spend on transfers when i first arrived but there are a lot of free transfers out there so that doesn't really matter, and the wage budget was around £28k per week. Although iv just started my second season and they gave me a high transfer budget of £3.8 million.
And about G. Twigg im not sure how much hes worth at the beginning of the game but hes worth 200k atm, and will easily score 20-30 goals a season in this league, he scored a goal a game for me in the domestic competitions.
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johnsmith123- thankyou for the information, how far are you into your 2nd Season with Shamrock Rovers?
gooner4eva - about 5 games into it and the European competitions are coming to an end pretty soon so il have are results in Europe posted soon, and then il do transfers and pre season posts etc.
johnsmith123- thankyou and good luck for rest of the season, will keep up to date with your postings
Gooner4eva - thanks, and im glad your enjoying the story
The Champions League
Despite having a good domestic season Shamrock Rovers aren't one of the best teams in Europe (we're not even a professional club, were still semi-pro). But weirder thing have happened in football than a team like Shamrock Rovers progressing through the qualifying stages of the Champions League and turning a few heads in the group stages.
Lets get the first two stages out of the way quickly.
2nd Qualifying round vs Shkenidjia (h) 5-3
2nd Qualifying round vs Shkenidjia (a) 0-1 (5-4)
3rd qualifying round vs M.Haifa (h) 0-1
3rd qualifying round vs M.Haifa (a) 3-1 (3-2)
We negotiated the the 2nd and third qualifying rounds without too much trouble despite the media having use down as underdogs for both matches. And you guessed it the main reason that we manged to qualify was because of two fantastic hat-tricks from G. Twigg.
We where now only 180 minutes away from the champions league group stage and a chance to test are selves against the likes of Chelsea, Barcelona, and Real Madrid. We where handed a tricky draw against Rosenborg and the media had us once again pinned as underdogs.
Champions league playoff vs Rosenborg (h) 0-0
Champions league playoff vs Rosenborg (a) 3-3
So we where through on away goals and as a reward we where faced with a really tough group containing Chelsea, Valencia, and FC Kobenhavn. I was aiming for a 3rd place finish to see us into the Europa league a competition i viewed we would have a realistic chance of winning if we played at are best throughout. So lets see how the group matches went.
vs Fc Kobenhavn 2-0
vs Chelsea 0-1
vs Valencia 0-1
vs Valencia 0-3
vs Fc Kobenhavn 0-0
vs Chelsea 1-4
so a mixed bag of results we managed we get the scores against Valencia and Chelsea that where respectable enough, and grab 4 points against Fc Kobenhavn, but was that enough to get a 3rd place in the group?
1st Valencia - pts 15
2nd Chelsea - pts 13
3rd Shamrock Rovers - pts 4
4th Fc Kobenhavn -pts 2
So we manged to qualify for the Europa League, a competition that i was really looking forward to, and hoping to go all the way.
Well lets get the first few rounds out of the way first.
Euro cup 1st knock-out round vs Basel (h) 0-0
Euro cup 1st knock-out round vs Basel (a) 2-2 (a2-2)
Euro cup 2nd knock-out round vs Birmingham (h) 4-1
Euro cup 2nd knock-out round vs Birmingham (a) 2-4 (6-5)
So we where once again underdogs in the eyes of the media, but we pulled through and managed to get good results in both rounds. Next we faced stoke in the quarter final.
Euro cup qtr final vs stoke (h) 4-2
Euro cup qtr final vs stoke (2) 0-2 (a4-4)
So we where through we fought well and battled hard to get an away goal win over stoke and set up a semi-final against Bayer Munich the one team left in this competition that i didn't think we could beat, and it turns out i was right.
Euro cup Semi-Final vs Bayer Munich (h) 1-2
Euro cup Semi-Final vs Bayer Munich (a) 2-2 (3-4)
So we where out in the Semi-Finals but we should real fighting spirit once more we push Bayer Munich all the way, and i was delighted with out form in Europe throughout the season, i mean who would have thought a Semi-pro club from Ireland would be batteling it out with the likes of Bayer Munich in a major European Semi-Final.
So what did u think?
