It has been a while since I've posted an update.Last time you saw me, I was flitting between a save in Auckland, my hexagon challenge and a new style of save with Red Bull Salzburg. Well in brief, I was away for the week of May 31st till June 6th (which also included a birthday (rolls eyes, another year older)). I returned from my week following a popular music icon around the country to find that my laptop, which was old, crap and slowly starting to Fade Away (well done to anyone who gets that reference), had suddenly died and there was little hope of reviving it. So followed a traumatic week with no Football Manager (sudder) and the prospect of having to watch Eastenders with the missus (a twitch is beginning to occur). Fortunately I was spared that experience (party poppers sound off) and was able to buy myself a new laptop. I used the first day and a bit downloaded some essentials to the game (facepack, hairstyles, tactics etc) and then about looking for a new challenge....
My first port of call for a new challenge was https://sortitoutsi.net/forums/topic/26186/jacobs-ladder-uefa-edition to read something I had heard about on a Football Manager podcast, The Centre CirclePodcast. One of the panellists, @DNZYOfficial or David Nealon for those not on Twitter, had a challenge called the Jacob's Ladder challenge. The idea was for the manager to work their way through the European leagues in stages of three,starting at the bottom. So you start with the leagues, Gibraltar, San Marino and Andorra and have to win the league or domestic cup before moving to the next league. I didn't realise until I started writing this that David is actually attempting the challenge himself. You can check out his progress on https://sortitoutsi.net/careers/view/25891/climbing-jacobs-ladder-formerly-magnifying-glacis or https://www.facebook.com/DBSC16 on Facebook.
Anyway in my game, I took over at Tre Penne in San Marino as my first part of the challenge. I managed to pull off a huge shock in my first proper game as manager by beating Lincoln Imps (Gibraltar) to reach the second qualifying round for the Champions League. It went sour after that as I lost 7-0 on aggregate to Dinamo. However for some reason, I just couldn't motivate myself to play that prticular save. But then it turned out to be not just that save. I tried Benfica, Red Bull Salzburg (who I had fallen in love with on a previous save) and even FC Leipzig. But no motivation. Then on a wim, I started a save with Aston Villa in the championship. It started ok, with no money and virtually the same player they got relegated with. I managed t0 become a god amoungst Villa fans by selling Libor Kozak and getting £3.5million for him. It enabled me to bring in a few players. Jonny Williams (CPFC), Paddy McNair, Will Keane (both Man U), Andre Martins (Sporting CP), Sheyi Ojo (Liverpool) and Adam Armstrong (Newcastle) all arrived in on loan. Liverpool also paid £2.3million for a reserve/youth prospect called Easah Suliman. I didn't really want to sell, but wasn't going to turn down that amount of money. They agreed to loan him back for the season. Nick Powell and Ryan Taylor also joined the club as backup. Joshua Webb and Jack Barmby also joined as posible youth prespects.
The season started well enough with a 2-0 win at Preston and a 3-1 win against Newcastle. Will Keane was looking like a good purchase as he scored a couple. All of a sudden we lost 3-0 at Rotherham. No warning nothing. The season has carried on ok and we're currently 5th after 8 games with 16 points. There is a worrying lack of consistency, but we're working on it.
And that's just about where we are. Thank you all for joining me once again. As previously stated, please check out David's work on sortitoutsi and on Facebook at David's FM16 adventures. You can find me on Twitter @TheFmNewbie and on Facebook at The FM Newbie. Please as always retweet and share the new posts whenever they may occur. I'm thinking of doing a question of the week for every blog post so if you think it's a good idea or you have some suggestions, plese tweet me! And lastly if there a) any spelling mistakes, please let me know as I am dyslexic and b) apologies is there are any words without spaces inbetween, then I do apologise as this new spacebar isn't very sensitive! Thank you once again for joining me and I'll see you again soon. Take it easy