Football Manager 2007

[King Ellis]

So as I flip flop around my games I found myself on my Villa save. The club was worth some £105m but after signing Kompany (Oh noes~! Named player!) for 10m we were worth £117m. Mmmm, valuable players.

Alarmingly though Man City have snuck up on everyone to become somewhat of a football force. They won the FA cup and are now worth 120m after snapping up half of Chelsea's reserves. They're now after all my good young players. It should be the other way around damnit, I should be the one wasting my time chasing Micah Richards.

[Thomas]

It's a miracle for me to have completed an entire season though I usually drop out in November due to boredom. Besides, I'm now at a relegated Fulham, with a destroyed team, four million in debt, sitting in 20th in the Championship in December. Eesh. They paid 4.2m for Ryan Smith, for some reason beyond my comprehension.

This could be fun.

[Lord Nibbler]

Nearing the end of the first season in a network game with three of my friends. For the first time ever, in my experience, we could see a big club get relegated. Liverpool have been in the bottom three for a long time, briefly moving into 17th when they sacked Rafa Benitez and bringing in Louis van Gaal, but dropped back into the relegation zone after a defeat at Man City (one of my friends' teams).

I imagine everyone's going to raid Liverpool, I'll be interested to see who actually stays there and plays for them in the Championship.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

34 games into Gillingham's second Championship season now, so that's 12 games to go, and the top of the table is horribly tight:

1) Southampton 61

2) Coventry 60

3) Leeds 58

4) Gillingham 58

5) Ipswich 58

6) Sheff Utd 57

7) Birmingham 56

8) Middlesbrough 56

9) Reading 53

10) Watford 52

So I'm gonna have to keep my form for the run in. Thankfully all my strikers are performing well enough. Kanu's got 13 from 38, Torre 8 from 21, Aliadiere 8 from 25 and Dixon 7 from 14. Dixon got injured, came back and scored 7 in 12, got injured again and is starting to play again.

Ballack's got 10 from midfield, Elrich has got 9 from the wing and Gary Neville's got 2

[Hobo]

It is always going to be hard when you come up from the Championship, especially when you bring in ten new faces. You should have stuck with it and played out the challenge, like a real FMer. ¬_¬

I remember as Crewe when I went up from the Championship to Premiership, I had the same problem ended up in 7th! And beating 'Boro 7-0!

Anyone had it happen that when you leave a club where you've had a few great players that the next manager goes ahead and relases/sells them. I looked back at my Bohs team and the following are gone now thanks to new manager Scott Leitch (I think thats his name):

Neale Fenn to Bray (he was my top league goal-scorer, sold to a first division team)

David Bracken released (my super sub who averaged at least a hatrick every 2 games for me)

John Paul Kelly (a rock of my midfield, ok I bought him for Plymouth, but now he's on the reserves there)

Ryan Baldaccino (designated the 'Signing of the Season' in the Season Summary see Kelly)

Stephen Ward released (one of my mainstays again)

And a few more of my squad players have gone yet a 38 year old Phil Babb and a 42 year old Paul Jones remain.

Needless to say I send Scott Leitch a message saying I didn't think he was good enough. This endured me to my new Livorno French wingback Markus Pfetzel for some odd reason...

[The Kraig]

Got AFC Wimbledon promoted from Conference South to the National Conference as champions. Also won the FA Trophy (includes all Conference teams).

Got AFC Wimbledon promoted AGAIN from National Conference to League Two. Won FA Trophy AGAIN.

Beat MK Dons (AFC Wimbledon rivals and my main goal behind taking the job) 3-0 away in my second ever League Two match. Goal accomplished, probably going to move on to a different challenge. Something even harder.

Took Saudi Arabia to the Asian Cup, got drawn with Japan, Iran and Lebanon. Beat Japan, lost players to injury, drew with Lebanon, lost players to injury then got beat by Iran. Came third, and was thus knocked out. Pretty shitty deal there, as I was planning to add the Asian Cup to my trophy cabinet. I immediately resigned from the Saudi post and took up the job with...IRAN! Haha...oh the irony. Iran are the highest ranked Asian team (even though Australia won the Asian Cup).

So my updated list of league titles and cups is:

Clubs:

Shinnik (Russia): Failed to prevent relegation.

Ards (Northern Ireland): Won Northern Irish League (on goals FOR).

AFC Wimbledon (England): Won Conference South. Won FA Trophy. Won promotion via play-offs to League Two. Won FA Trophy second year in a row.

International:

Canada: Won Gold Cup. Qualified for World Cup.

Saudi Arabia: Qualified for Asian Cup.

Iran: Nothing...yet.

I now also speak English, Russian and Arabic. Hopefully I'll learn Persian or something for managing Iran.

Edited February 21, 2007 by The Kraig

[Pesci]

So as I flip flop around my games I found myself on my Villa save. The club was worth some £105m but after signing Kompany (Oh noes~! Named player!) for 10m we were worth £117m.

[Hobo]

I now also speak English, Russian and Arabic. Hopefully I'll learn Persian or something for managing Iran.

Kosmopolitan Kraig!

Wes Houlahan to Livorno? I think I may have just landed my first Irish conscript to Italy. I'm still after Stevie Finnan whose out of contract in the summer, he rejected my offers up till now but will he accept the chance of Serie A football? I'd guess it's just some kind of strange national pride that makes me want to bring Irish players abroad just because I can.

[Steeb]

It's a miracle for me to have completed an entire season though I usually drop out in November due to boredom. Besides, I'm now at a relegated Fulham, with a destroyed team, four million in debt, sitting in 20th in the Championship in December. Eesh. They paid 4.2m for Ryan Smith, for some reason beyond my comprehension.

This could be fun.

lol, if you don't like football and get bored so easily, why play the game?

[King Ellis]

It's a miracle for me to have completed an entire season though I usually drop out in November due to boredom. Besides, I'm now at a relegated Fulham, with a destroyed team, four million in debt, sitting in 20th in the Championship in December. Eesh. They paid 4.2m for Ryan Smith, for some reason beyond my comprehension.

This could be fun.

lol, if you don't like football and get bored so easily, why play the game?

I don't like football? News to me.

And yeah, I get bored easily. I prefer restarting loads of games. Seriously, does it hurt you? Am I cheating? Does it actually affect you at all? No. Occasionally, I do stay with a club for a while. I just have to find an interesting game.

Please do not feed the troll

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

PLAYOFF VICTORY!

Thanks to 14 games unbeaten in the league including the last game, we took third (3 points behind Southampton in second), drawing Birmingham in the play-off semis. We drew 1-1 there, then 1-1 at home and then Gary McSheffrey (perhaps the player who I hate most so far in the game for constantly scoring goals against us) missed his penalty and we won 4-3 on pens with our final pen to take.

We got Ipswich in the final and won 2-1 so I'm a happy bunny right now.

The final table and our scorers for the season:

1) Sheff Utd 89

2) Southampton 85

3) Gillingam 82

4) Coventry 77

5) Ipswich 77

6) Birmingham 74

7) Reading 74

8) Middlesbrough 74

Nwankwo Kanu 14 in 41(1 in 2.9)

Michael Ballack 13 in 56 (1 in 4.3)

Jonny Dixon 12 in 28 (1 in 2.3)

Giovanni Torre 12 in 31 (1 in 2.6)

Jeremie Aliadiere 11 in 31 (1 in 2.8)

Ahmad Elrich 11 in 48 (1 in 4.4)

Andrew Crofts 5 in 56

Various others under 5.

Into the Premiership then and a season of severe struggling ahead of us.

Thanks for the help Kanu, join the ranks of distinguised strikers giving us their last season - Yorke, Cole, Kanu....

In positive news, I managed to get Ballack and Neville to extend their contracts to three years which means I've got them for 2 Prem seasons at least before they retire. Nice.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Ugh....The board are expecting a struggle to avoid relegation and so have given me, in my first Premiership season....£65k transfer budget with a £12k maximum wage.

We're screwed.

[King Ellis]

Ugh....The board are expecting a struggle to avoid relegation and so have given me, in my first Premiership season....£65k transfer budget with a £12k maximum wage.

We're screwed.

Hoorah for Premiership reserves/youth and season long loans with 0% wage contributions.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Ugh....The board are expecting a struggle to avoid relegation and so have given me, in my first Premiership season....£65k transfer budget with a £12k maximum wage.

We're screwed.

Hoorah for Premiership reserves/youth and season long loans with 0% wage contributions.

Reserves? Youth? This is the PSP version - you only get the main squad

Hence the screwage.

Still, cos I got Ben Amos on a season long loan I just paid off Man Utd and signed him up properly. Nice.

[King Ellis]

I temporarily forgot you were stuck on the PSP version. However instead of admitting memory defeat I shall instead take the stance that I was rubbing your non PC version face in it.

[CKN]

Ugh....The board are expecting a struggle to avoid relegation and so have given me, in my first Premiership season....£65k transfer budget with a £12k maximum wage.

We're screwed.

Hoorah for Premiership reserves/youth and season long loans with 0% wage contributions.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

It has a lot less features and it's pretty streamlined so while there are some annoying parts (when players retire you just can't look at their stats at all, they vanish out of the game...No reserve or youth squads...No half time team talks...Only lists of allowed formations rather than exact positioning of players...No pictoral match representation, just text like old Championshop Managers (which is coolios!)...No staff statistics...) it's great fun and extremely quick to play. I like it, especially as the last thing I wanna do while on the bus is work through detailed training plans for my ageing left back.

Also, I can manage in between drying dishes, while brushing my teeth and even in bed

I recommend it, but only the latest version - he first isn't supposed to be so good.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Oh and annoyingly Raul's just retired at 31. Which is annoying as he was a possible free transfer target. For shame.

[Thomas]

It's a miracle for me to have completed an entire season though I usually drop out in November due to boredom. Besides, I'm now at a relegated Fulham, with a destroyed team, four million in debt, sitting in 20th in the Championship in December. Eesh. They paid 4.2m for Ryan Smith, for some reason beyond my comprehension.

This could be fun.

lol, if you don't like football and get bored so easily, why play the game?

[Steeb]

It means I've lost interest in that particular save, yes.