Birmingham City
Goals –
Avoid relegation (Again!)
Sell Zigic (Need him off wage budget.)
Re Shape squad for future (Rome wasn’t built in a day...)
Story So far
So as a Sunderland fan from birth I always start as them on a new FM just to get the hang of things. This year’s FM seems to be particularly hard especially in a season as Sunderland and needless to say 'after a good start' I ended up being sacked in January. All set to quit the save I thought what the hell let’s see if any jobs are available that I would be interested in. I was willing to drop down to League 2 if need be just to see what could happen. Then I saw it, an opportunity I could not refuse. The Birmingham City job was available and they were just off the championship relegation zone. So I applied, I had only been out of a job 2 days and failed horrifically so I wasn’t expecting for them to get back to me never mind get the job. To my surprise they took a punt! At first thought I was thinking great, this should be simple, half a season to get enough points to avoid relegation and then wait for the funds to come in from the boardroom to buy some decent quality players next season. The squad was horrendous bar the gems that are Nathan Redmond and Jack Butland. What I was not expecting from this once great club was to find the below par squad and financial mess they are in. It proved a big task but I managed to keep them up. The main problem to this financial mess is one man, one extremely tall man... Nikola Zigic. He had 3 years left to run on his £50k per week contract. It’s not that he is a bad player on FM. He finished as my second top scorer last season and was pivotal in keeping us up along with Marlon King but there is literally no money available even for free transfers whilst he is draining club. Start of the second season and I tried my hardest to get this lad off the books. I received not one offer though so stuck with him and had to go about selling the likes of Chris Burke, David Murphy and Curtis Davies who were good players but I had to think about improving the squad which was looking extremely thin. Pablo Ibanez (who was tremendous for me last season) left on a free transfer to Malaga. These out going transfers freed up some money so I set about trying to find some bargains. First thing I did was set the search engine to cap wages at 5K per week and set about trying to bring players in on a shoe string. First replacement was David Murphy, I managed to get Kevin Theophile-Catherine on loan from Stade Reims who was a French quickish left back with well rounded stats. As I didn’t have any other left backs in the squad I also brought in Giannis Zaradoukas on a free. He was a more aggressive type but could also play in midfield so proved handy. Next was the CB problem as I didn’t have any. I managed to get 2 on loan that were class. David Wheater on loan from Bolton and also Marcus Nilsson on loan from Utrecht. Midfield wise I was left with Morgaro Gomis a tough tackler and Keith Fahey who is a creative player. I brought in Mehdi Courgnaud who is a French winger who can play either flank and Paddy McCourt a Northern Irish winger who has grit as well as flair. This left me with the last and toughest area, I needed striker to provide goals as Zigic will be playing as a target man. I found a player who I brought in for Sunderland when I was there who hit the ground running much like he did for my last club, to my surprise he wasn’t rated by current Sunderland manager Gerard Houllier and found himself languishing in the reserves. His name was David Lafata... Striking God. Currently 32 year old he wasn’t getting any younger but I gave him one last chance to play regularly and score goals, I managed to get him on loan. Over the 1st half of this second season he did just that. He and Zigic struck up a partnership and both weighed in with goals. I was still short in the striking department however so I set about the free agent list knowing that I only had 3k wage budget left I picked up Josh King ex Man United. He was quick and would provide good back up as well as competitions for place. So I began my second season and doing quite well, I’m up to the 1st of January 2014. I’ll just post current stats and league positions rather than go in depth over what’s happened and start from where I’m up to now.
AS OF JANUARY 1ST 2014 (SEASON 2)
16th in the Championship Played 26 - Won 8, Drawn 6 and lost 8
Goal Difference -6
Points - 30
League Cup Quarter – Final (beat Aston Villa in the 4th round 4-2, best result so far, love beating the bitter rivals!)
Top goal scorers - David Lafata (10) Nikola Zigic (9) Peter Lovenkrands (6)
Most assists – Nikola Zigic ( 7) Keith Fahey (7) Mehdi Courgnaud (4)
I’m new to the forums and mainly doing this to talk about this save and share with other peoples experiences, I was originally going to put this in general discussion because I want to hear about peoples stories (especially Birmingham ones) and feel free to pop in with help on tactics and players, are there any saves that have captured your heart this year? Hopefully I’ll be in for the long haul with this and I aim to build a young British based team and watch them grow over the seasons hopefully into a decent Premier league side eventually. I’m not trying to win any awards with this story and I’m rubbish at taking screen shots and going into big detail like what other people have... Some of their stories are immense! This will be more casual! Cheers lads, Jon!
