Macclesfield Story: Season 2010/2011 Odds and Expectations

The second season in my Macclesfield story is ready to begin and you can imagine just how poor ratings the team gets in the League 1. After all, last season we were expected to fight bravely against relegation, and not to promote. But... the new season draws near - the 2010/2011 season with Macclesfield in League 1:

The Silkmen will therefore get ready to face opponents like Leeds, Doncaster, Crystal Palace and basically every other solid team in the League. By far, we are the weakest and everybody expects us to finish last:

So the Start of season expectations should've been "Battle bravely against relegation", but I wanted to get a little risky and selected the "Avoid relegation" expectation, mainly because the board offered me a few valuable extra Euros to spend on wages (and since I'm breaking transfer records, I'm ready to spend)!

Jokes aside, Macclesfield will most likely have a very difficult season ahead and I really worry that we won't be able to avoid relegation. The team simply is not ready for such a challenge, I will have to sign a ton of players and only keep several of the original squad... I predict some really rough times for Macclesfield in the League One this season...

But I also know that I'll be doing my best to avoid relegation - this way we'll certainly be able to attract some better players and in a couple of season we should aim for promotion. Especially if my dream FM 2010 tactic I'll tell you about soon will still work wonders. Wish me and The Silkmen good luck! We'll certainly need that!

Funny FM2010: I'm such a big spender!

Hello friends - just a quick update on something I found really, really funny for a League One team like Macclesfield: I have finally set a new club record for spending so much on transfers this season. What's the astonishing sum? Click the image and see for yourself!

Yes, I loled for a few minutes after I saw the news and the huge sum - 5 EUROS!!!! I have spent on buying a player. Well... a record is a record and I hope we'll manage to break it ASAP. Again - LOL!

Season 2009/2010 Stats/Facts

Hello friends! As promised, I am going to show you a few fun facts and stats from all over the English world of football after the ending of the successful (for Macclesfield, at least) first season!

We will start with three things that are of a big concern for me. First of all, the Coca Cola League 2 Goal of the season award went to my striker Ibrahima Thiam. It rarely happened for my players to score such a great goal and it's a real achievement:

Next, as many of us would've guessed, I was considered the third best manager in the League 2, after Rotherham's Ronnie Moore and Crewe's Dario Gradi. Again an acomplishment I am really proud of!

And finally, here are the final season ratings of all my players (unfortunately the screenshot was taken after the loaned players departed so four of them are missing :D). As you can see, my great signing Mamadou Seck climbed up to the first spot with an average of 7.09 in 38 matches, followed by Ben Starosta, the season's surprise for me and Lee Bell, another player that was one of the starting players of Macclesfield.

Now, let's get to some general FUN STUFF!

First of all, as you can see in the screenshot below, one of my favorite teams - Newcastle United, managed to promote back to the Premier League, with just 8 games lost over the season. Also West Brom and Nottingham Forrest managed to gain promotion.

The Premier League was won by Chelsea in 2009/2010, after a really close battle against Arsenal and Manchester United, with Blackburn, Wolves and Wigan going down.

The player of the year award went to Chelsea's Frank Lampard, followed by new Arsenal signing Juan Angel Albin (a player I really like, too), and Eduardo, again an Arsenal player.

These were just some of the few facts of the first Football Manager 2010 season I've finished and I'll sure let you know about many other details in the future posts describing my Macclesfield story!

Macclesfield Story: Season 1 Almost Over!

The image you see above represents an unbelievable screenshot of the Coca Cola League 2 standings just 3 games before the final whistle of the first season in my Macclesfield story - The Silkmen were so close of getting promotion that I was able to hear my heart beating loudly and I simply lived intensely every match that followed.

The final attack for promotion started with a blast: a 6-2 win against Burton (funnily enough, one of my past stories that I got promoted and that managed to get promotion in the real life too!). That was a really, really strange game in which Macclesfield had scored 3 goals after just 27 minutes. The score then wend 3-1 and 3-2 in the minutes 29 and 47 and I was afraid for a huge disappointment when Thiam scored once more before getting substituted and allowing my other two strikers to score one goal each:

Following that great win, we've had a really difficult game against Chesterfield (at that time at number three, one spot behind) and with a bit of luck (one penalty for The Silkmen and a red card late in the game for Chesterfield), we managed to win a really intense match.

There were just three games left and all the spots were still open as the fight was really close. Unfortunately for Macclesfield, a disaster happened: Torquay (number 10 at that time) managed to beat us 4-2 following a really ugly game and next we didn't manage to win against Darlington (placed 20).

It was all up for the last game with Lincoln (or some lucky results from the other games). I can't say how intense the game was and how hard it was to get that 1-0 win against them (I ended the game defending madly and probably having a pulse of 300 :) But... Macclesfield WON the match and we're now a League 1 team! UNBELIEVABLE!

I just wanted to share with you all this great success even though the season is not officially over (although it is for The Silkmen) and I want you all to know that I am really happy of what I have managed to achieve. When I started managing Macclesfield I always considered that this year I'll build up the team and prepare for a better division next year. I am happy that things were different and I am sure as hell excited to see if we stand any chance in the Coca Cola League 1 in 2011!

Stay tuned for the final season updates (with fun stuff from across the leagues) and also check back soon as I am preparing to share with you the tactic that brought Macclesfield so high in the charts, as well as some cheap and great players for the League 2 levels!

Macclesfield Story: Still Riding High!

Hello, friends and welcome to the first post on this blog in 2010! I wish you all a great year with tons of success both in the real life as well as in Football Manager!

The new year kicked off quite well in Football Manager 2010 with my Macclesfield story, even though at first my dreams of promotion were kind of blown away by a really poor form:

We continued the season with two boring draws against Northampton and Port Vale and two painful defeats (3-1) with Rotherham and Shrewsbury. Still, I wasn't really mad since The Silkmen were anyways supposed to finish at number 24, so any higher position was a success, right?

Fortunately, the players decided to turn things around once more and after the poor series of results, a great one followed: six games without defeat, with the series started with an amazing 4-0 home win against Accrington. The result, as you can see below, was great: Macclesfield climbed to an unbelievable #2 spot in the Coca Cola League 2 and now I really have high hopes of at least fighting bravely for promotion!

And that's not the only great news - there's also a great financial one two, somehow similar to the one at the beginning at the game when I sold Paul Morgan for over 100,000 Euros. This time, League 1 team Norwich made a great offer for winger Fabio Ferreira, as you can see in the image below. He had just started playing as a sub every now and then after I had retrained him to play as an AMC (since I no longer use wingers). However, he was not a great central midfielder and the deal that will hopefully go through at the end of the season is simply amazing: 75,000 Euros in hand and another 200,000 to be paid monthly for the next 24 months. At least I will have a steady flow of income that will hopefully keep the finances (which are on the red right now) a bit safer...

Until next time (I promise you a new update soon since I have quite some free time now), have fun and good luck in FM2010!