Football Manager Challenge: Season 1 Over

It's been a lightning fast season for me and my bunch of Burton heroes and, the most important thing of them all is that we've managed to win promotion! It was a very hard job, especially on the defensive end but I am now happy, the first step has just been made :D Now at Burton we're tougher, we're more mature and, yes, fully pro! Good bye, Blue Square Premier!


As you can see in the screenshot above, we were just one point behind the leaders, Rushden. Actually, except for Oxford, all the teams were one point behind the leader. It was a really, really mad season, let me tell you that!

However, in the playoff final my side triumphed against the more powerful Oxford side thanks to a wonderful Clare who scored a hattrick - his first of the season, and what a time he chose to do it! Also, the wonderful defender Tony James has to be mentioned in this post, since he did a great job back there throughout the entire season (and scored a handful of goals since he was my penalty guy).


So... we're off for some greater glory - hopefully we'll be able to promote again if we manage to sign some quality players... and we just might since, at the beginning of the game I randomly chose three more nations to load players from and one of them is Romania - there are lots of cheap players (2-5 thousand dollars) who can handle the Coca Cola League 2. Let's hope I'll be able to find the best.

Go, Go Burton!

Yesterday I played my Football Manager 2008 Challenge like a mad man and I managed to go through three quarters of the really busy Blue Square Premier season. It is quite tougher than what I was anticipating, but at least I'm not losing yet :) With 14 or so matches left 'til the playofs, The Brewers were placed 6th but there's a huge battle for promotion, with the first place having just four points ahead of me.

Strangely, during these games I played with my Burton Albion, my defence failed to rise to the standards, while the attack was top notch (and I was anticipating it to be otherwise :D). So, as you can see in the screenshot below, this Shaun Harrad guy can do some wonders even though his stats are pretty low:
On the other hand, I have managed to snap a BIG loan from a Romanian club, FC Bihor and got a pretty good winger, Jozsef Lorincz, who became my goal creating machine, as you can see in the snapshot below. Of course these two are not the best players in Football Manager 08, but they helped The Brewers and my job quite a lot.
So I had some pretty good matches I totally dominated:
But I was also killed by York in an away game, even though my team didn't play badly. Just looking at the number of corners we had makes me want to apply the "corner cheat" - but this challenge will be done with no cheats, so I'll have to do my best in the future.Burton was always somewhere in the 3rd - 6th place during the matches, with a very tight battle being held for promotion:During my spell at Burton I have signed a total of 10 player (including 3 loans) for the impressive amount of $8,000. I also managed to sell four players for a good sum of $14,000, all of them over-valued, so I am pretty happy. The Brewers were eliminated in the first round of the FA Cup (but I reached the goal! :D) and we also lost to York in the fifth round of the Setanta Shield. On the bright side, we've reached the fourth round in the FA Trophy and we have a relatively game at home against Histon. The board will be pretty happy with this. Wish me luck and check back for more updates.

The Football Manager 2008 Challenge

Well, since waiting for Football Manager 2009 to get released and doing nothing during the wait is not my type of thing, I have decided to start a quick Football Manager 2008 challenge and end it until the next FM gets released :). I'm talking about a really important and difficult challenge, as you will see below in the details (I just hope I have enough time to actually play the whole thing).

So, here's my Football Manager 2008 Challenge: I start by managing Burton Albion FC (aka The Brewers), a semi-pro Blue Square Premier team and I have exactly seven seasons to get Burton qualified in an European Competition (via league placement). Really tough quest, even though the team is pretty highly valued.

According to the media, Burton is slated to finish #7 in the Blue Square Premier. The team, as I said, is highly valued, with only 4!!! full time players in the squad: 1.1 million US dollars (sorry for those used with pounds, you've got to get used with my $ here).

After promising the board promotion, I received a hefty $22k transfer budget and exactly $20k per week per wages. Which is not at all bad. The only problem is that I need to sign basically a full team since the one I have is below par - but I won't do that due to lack of money and players willing to join. Well, at least they do have a pretty good defence. However, I will take up for this challenge and keep you update. Wish me luck and please feel free to ask any questions you might have.

Grab Football Manager on Steam!

If you haven't pre-ordered yet your copy of Football Manager 2009 or you're just waiting for it to be released and see if it really worths your money (and why shouldn't it?), I've got some great news for you: Football Manager 2009 will be available on Steam.

If you pre-order it, you'll be one of the first to get your hands to it, as you'll be allowed to play it as soon as the 14th of November launches. So go ahead and visit Steam for full info on the game. God, I can't wait for it to hit my HDD :D

FM 09 Woderkids

I am so excited about the upcoming release of Football Manager 2009 that today, while I was playing FM 08 as usual, I was unable to focus and do anything right: my mind kept flying and thinking about the wonderkids in FM 2009. So I started to edit some pictures and I came up with the logo above which is only 5% my work but anyway... at least it makes the pain a bit more easy.

So, as you can see, I have created this page and it will feature, as soon as the game gets released, links towards my posts with FM09 wonderkids. But until then I am 100% sure I'll find something else to do - maybe predict a few of them? Feel free to share your thoughts on the matter!

As promised, here is the first small list of Football Manager 09 great youth players:
First Football Manager 2009 Wonderkids
FM09 Good Young Romanian Players

Be sure to check back for more!