Hello lads, so I have embarked on a new challenge in football manager. To get a small team basically into a footballing giant, I have tried this with lowly English clubs in the championship and even middle of the table premier league teams but lost interest so I decided to go for the best club in my native Irish league, Shamrock Rovers. This will be a long term save and I am currently in the second half of 2014. As a side note to my career I wanted to develop Irish footballers and in turn help the Irish national team which does seem to be working.
So basically if people find this interesting
comment underneath, I will firstly bring you a brief overview of my first years at Shamrock rovers including transfers, team stature and facilities and most importantly European football if any for me.
1
Sounds like a great story!!! I tried to do one with Galway United who had £70 (yes just 70 pounds!) and 0 budget and you only got 16 year olds so you had to get a whole part time team in!!! Gave up cos it was 2 hard
Doing what u are doing is very difficult. but i say am also interested. Go get 'em.
Well in my first year the club went professional which meant I had a great advantage over the league which helped in me winning 5 back to back titles. My first year champions league I won the 2nd qualifying round and 3rd qualifying but came up against Rangers in the Playoff. So that was a loss on aggregate in the bag and me into the Europa League group where I failed to qualify by ONE POINT.
So in 2012, 13 and 14 I qualified for the group stage of the Champions League but came 4th every year with extremely difficult groups, the only positive was 6 million in rewards for getting this far . In 2012 it was Lyon, Shaktar and F.C. København and I came out with 2 points.
In 2013 it didn’t get much easier with Barcelona, PSG and Fiorentina only earned one point this time.
In 2014 they say third time lucky? Only Man City, PSG and Dynamo Kiev with rewarded me with only one point this time also.
In 2015,took my eye off the ball in the league and came second, in Europe I lost in the playoff in the champions league to IFK Göteborg the group they got were Man Utd, Koln and Anderlecht which I would of fancied myself to get at least Europa football out of. So that left me in the Europa league group stage with Malaga, Spartak Moscow and V. Setubal. Came third when I thought I could have qualified. Bring on next year with only Europa league football.
Transfer news
Over my 5 years at Shamrock Rovers I have don’t a lot of wheeling and dealing bringing in some big signing including Stephen Hunt, Stephen Ireland, Leon Best , Gai Assulin*, Marc Wilson, Wes Hoolahan (on loan
)
It’s pretty clear that I have the Irish link thriving within my squad and also my staff. I believe this has helped Rep of Ireland into the top ten in the world and qualifying for every tournament with no real stand out players.
Infrastructure
The stadium has been upgraded from 3,000 all seater to 12,500 which took a lot of money out of my transfer aspirations.
Also Training and Youth facilities have been upgraded.
yes yes yes! will be following this story for sure!
it takes a lot of endurance to do what you're doing!
please take your time updating, will be following this!
Season 2015/16 Review
As I had come second in the league I only had Europa football this year. I had to concentrate on the league again and make sure I come first and get the champions league back at Shamrock Rovers, which I done. So I won all my qualifiers for the Europa league group stage and was seeded second for my group which I think is a pretty decent achievement. The group I was drawn consisted of Ukrainian Dinamo Kiev, Spanish Sporting and Swiss Sion. So Dinamo were practically guaranteed qualification with their superior squad so that left me and Sporting.
I managed to qualify which was my first qualification out of any European competition I was drew against another Eastern Europe giant CSKA Moscow. I played out of my skin in the first leg at home and managed to win 2-1 but I was expecting a battering in Russia. I played a defensive formation which didn’t work but I scraped a 2-2 which meant I qualified. Dinamo Moscow was my next opponents which was a white wash. I believe the stage got to my players and with my best players missing I got beat 2-0 at home and then lost 4-1 in Moscow.
So that was the end of my Europa League adventures but I was really pleased how my team competed in the competition. Also it did give me plenty of money to build my squad for the next year.
Hope I can be lucky in the champions League next year and get an average group.