Subscriber Dan+ Posted April 12, 2020 Subscriber Posted April 12, 2020 4 hours ago, ...Dan said: I've gone from winning the CL one season to finishing bottom of my group the next being seeded first for the first time didn't help, we were drawn alongside Real Madrid, Lazio and Borussia Monchengladbach. Well there's no way you're coming below bottlejobs Gladbach if my save was anything to go by
Subscriber Dan+ Posted April 12, 2020 Subscriber Posted April 12, 2020 Right then FC Andorra. I recently bought a new laptop and now of course, with that much time on my hands I'm flying through the game (though not quite Brian level), and despite starting only a week ago I'm already in Novembe 2021. The objective of FC Andorra. This is a club that was bought in the summer of 2019 by Gerard Pique and his consortium with the intention of making notable progress, read here for more information. They play their games at Camp d'Esports Prada de Moles - a 1,221 capacity ground in the Andorran village of Encamp. The link will explain a lot of the background of the club. They're a relatively well backed club for this level. They play in the third tier in Spain. Promotion should be the aim. So... a bit of background information on the Spanish league system. We know about La Liga but I did not account for how much of a pig it was to get promoted from the third tier. So La Liga 2 has four teams relegated from it, of course freeing up four spaces to be promoted into it - but this is shared between four leagues of 20 each (which are regionalised) so basically, there are EIGHTY teams going for FOUR places. It's not easy. Even worse is that with the league being split into four, there is no automatic promotion. There are play-offs only which the top four teams in each league qualify for, so sixteen teams will make the play-offs, and it's formatted like this, all played over two legs... Round 1: 1st placed team v 1st placed team 1st placed team v 1st placed team 2nd placed team v 4th placed team 2nd placed team v 4th placed team 2nd placed team v 4th placed team 2nd placed team v 4th placed team 3rd placed team v 3rd placed team 3rd placed team v 3rd placed team The winners of the top two games are promoted. The winners of the bottom six games are through to round 2. The losers of the top two games are also through to round 2 so they get a second bite at the cherry. After another two rounds you are left with your final two teams - who are the other two to become promoted. So whilst the league winners don't automatically go up, they have a pretty good chance in the play-offs. Also, there is actually a play-off final between the two winners of the league winner play-offs - despite both teams already being promoted, to decide an overall third tier champion. Basically it's quite a complex system and it is pretty unforgiving. This takes us to my first season, 2019/20. __________________________ 2019/20 We are likely doomed before the season even gets underway. Barcelona B are in our league with a squad that to me would be pushing for promotion in the next tier up, let alone this one. I'll take 2nd if I can get it. My signings. This is another catch in this league - you are limited to a squad of just 22 players, and of that only 16 of them can be 23 or over. It's harder than it sounds. I really need to start reading these things properly before I make any signings as I realised I had to leave about 8 players out of my squad, although I was expecting an overhaul at the end of the season regardless of what happened anyway. What was good is that we had a lot of room in our wage budget so we should be able to recruit a side that is good enough to really push to go up. Entirely predictably we are given Barcelona B away on the opening day and are 3-1 down within 20 minutes. I make a slight tweak and we end up giving them a great game, but still lost it 4-1 - though I was weirdly quite encouraged by it. We won our next two then disappointingly lost at home to Sabadell, but would then not lose another game in 12, losing to the mammoth... Levante B, of all teams. We continued to float around 2nd/3rd but it was pretty obvious that Barcelona B were going to absolutely piss the league. We were knocked out of the Copa Del Rey by Gimnastic de Tarragona - weirdly a team we sat quite close to in the league standings. We hit a sticky run around February time but we forever seemed to be around the play-offs and I was very confident we were going to make them. But once again we floundered in a game away at a B team, Espanyol this time, and this seemed to totally knock the wind out of our sails, as we would go on to lose 5 of our last 7 games, absolutely smashed by Llagoseta and Castellon in the process, and with an abject 0-1 loss to Valencia Mestalla on the final day, slipped out of the play-off places for the first time since about September. Yet another one of those where you feel like you're just doomed no matter what you do - eerie similarities to what happened at Gladbach, a top 4 place in our hands all year and blown by the skin of our teeth. Truly terrible and worryingly for us, we'd lost £3mil this year as well so I thought we weren't going to get another crack like that. An overhaul was needed. As you can see Barcelona B did go up (much to my relief) and unsurprisingly became the overall third tier champions. All three of the teams in our group who made the play-offs from 2nd-4th were binned out in the first round, largely summing up quite how badly we'd blown it. Simply not enough goals in our team. The defensive record until the final few games had been superb though. 2020/21 coming up shortly.
Mpache Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 Nice one @Dan. Very interesting club to use similar to San Marino FC and Vaduz. Difficult first season though!
Mpache Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 First season in the 2. Bundesliga has been rough to say the least. However we recently got a new left winger who is coming to try and save our season. Next game is key, which is up against Heidenheim, who have a 30+ year old Gnabry and Volland
Dave Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 On my AFC Wimbledon save "The new Sexy Crazy Gang", they have just published the yearly wage expenditure. Ours is just over 80k. The second bottom team is Charlton at 165k Weve had a terrific January to be fair. Three wins from five, club legend and gunman Joe Pigott is back on loan, managed to loan a CB from Chelsea whose 18 and has all the attributes of a future captain. It's almost beneficial if we get relegated at the minute. If we survive I anticipate we could do with 13 players to have a chance of progressing. If we get relegated I'll probably only sign about 6/7 players.
Mpache Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 Heidenheim didn't go to plan, but thankfully we didn't lose. Eckel came to the rescue in the dying minutes of the game. On the other hand, remember how I made a signing in January to save my season? The absolute cuntmuppet sprains his ankle ligaments and is out for 4-5 weeks. FFS.
DeadLinesman Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 Trying to ease my way in. Chose United. Sold Pogba for £167million to Barsa. Cunt. Currently languishing in 6th after 3 wins and 3 draws. Can’t seem to score in brothel. So basically, it’s very realistic. Signed Tonali from Inter for around £30mill and he’s looking a bargain.
LFCMike Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 So this is how things have gone since Boxing Day and the league table going into the final nine games. Went out of the cup in a replay to Championship Ayr. I did rest a lot of players in the replay because we had the game against promotion rivals Queen of the South coming up. We've still got to go away to the rest of the top five so this is far from over yet
Bluewolf Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 48 minutes ago, DeadLinesman said: Currently languishing in 6th after 3 wins and 3 draws. Can’t seem to score in brothel. So basically, it’s very realistic.
LFCMike Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 One game to go and we find ourselves needing Queen of the South to drop points on the last day v Raith. We have Dumbarton at home. The game vs Queen of the South was so annoying. We battered them. They scored with four of their five shots.
Mpache Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 3 games left and we need all 9 points. Unfortunately the dream is about to end. Thankfully I won't get sacked because the board are satisfied we have tried our best, but some really frustrating stuff happened recently. Got 3 red cards in a row this month in 3 games.
LFCMike Posted April 12, 2020 Posted April 12, 2020 Both won in the last day. Lost 4-2 on aggregate in the play off semi final, FFS.
Subscriber Dan+ Posted April 13, 2020 Subscriber Posted April 13, 2020 2020/21 - FC Andorra So things had to change a bit for me. We had shown some serious mentality deficiency in the final stretch of that season and the fact it happened both here and Gladbach has made me wonder if it's something I'm doing wrong. I play a quite basic style of play - 4-2-3-1 with wing play, I want a more functional midfield but I don't really have the players for it currently, so that was going to form a basis for a lot of my transfer business. What I want to turn Andorra into in both the short and long term, being totally honest, is a shithouse team. I want us to be aggressive, I want us to bend the rules, I want us to rub teams up the wrong way and wind them up. That's what I think can carry us to new heights and how I think we can over-achieve. I want a team that is organised at the back but still creates a lot of chances of our own. I want us to have this type of identity and I want to stick with that. How that will go down with Gerard Pique, I have no idea. I've taken a bit of inspiration from Jose Bordalas' Getafe team - they very much fit this type of criteria as a team and it has seen them become in my opinion the biggest over-achievers in European football today, barring possibly Atalanta. With that all in mind, I based my recruitment on this for this season. The club owner loaned £3mil to the club to fix the mess made last season (which I'm not taking the blame for, I was still well under my wage budget) and to his huge credit, our wage budget actually went up to £70k a week. With over half the squad set to be released, I had a sizeable amount to play with and my scouts had identified, for me, the ideal players. What you see there is a group of players who have a strong mentality. They don't dread the big games - they relish them. That's what is key for me. That's the way you don't bottle it. The most notable signings for me were Hernan Santana, Andre Green, Michael Folorunsho and Manu Appeh. Hernan Santana is a player I wanted last year but I just couldn't quite afford the loan fee, however this time around it was reduced and we had our man - an experienced midfielder in Spanish football, a leader, a ball winning midfielder, absolutely perfect for us. Folorunsho was a BBM that for me is comfortably too good for this level and even better, was out of contract at the end of the season so I wanted to get him permanently too as I was certain he'd deliver. Andre Green and Manu Appeh - again, just far too good for this level. What they decided they would do for some reason is move us into group 2, from 3, and our teams were more Basque based now rather than Catalonia - no good for us logistically, and what's even more annoying is that we ended up in a league with recently relegated Alcorcon who were yet again probably the toughest team we could have come up against. After a fairly disappointing pre-season we came back to win our first game with two late goals against L'Hospitalet, and ended up on a superb 30 points from our first 12 games, still unbeaten - and Alcorcon were STILL above us. We continued our habit of turning to shit away at B teams as we suffered our first loss to Real Sociedad B, but won our next four then faced the big one, Alcorcon away - it predictably turned into the most drab of 0-0 draws, two teams happy to avoid defeat. We stumbled big time around January and kept drawing games before winning three on the bounce ahead of our return game with Alcorcon, who were 3 ahead of us, but with a significantly worse goal difference (which was irrelevant if we lost as it's on head to head). We went behind in the first half and we had no answer. Alcorcon sat six points ahead of us in the table with 10 games left and while that sounds a lot, the rate both teams were going didn't fill me with much confidence as we were so far clear of the others. I couldn't even slaughter us, we had largely done well, we had conceded something like 10 goals in 24 games and scored the most in the league too, but Alcorcon just seemed to have that ever so slight edge over us and I was heading for the dreaded play-offs. But then... We won seven games in a row and Alcorcon picked up just nine points in this time - losing twice in the process but even more astoundingly drawing 0-0 at home to the bottom two, and believe me when I say that the bottom sides in this league are horrendous, we smashed them both home and away. We now sat six points ahead of Alcorcon, we were truly in the ascendency. In entirely predictable circumstances we lost to Ath Bilbao B, maintaining this seeming forever stretched run of losing away to reserve sides, but we picked up 4 points from our final 3 games to win the league, in the end by 7 points. Maybe my transfer policy was bearing fruit - we blew the sprint (Alcorcon H) but won the marathon, but we weren't up yet. 9 hours ago, Dan said: Round 1: 1st placed team v 1st placed team 1st placed team v 1st placed team 2nd placed team v 4th placed team 2nd placed team v 4th placed team 2nd placed team v 4th placed team 2nd placed team v 4th placed team 3rd placed team v 3rd placed team 3rd placed team v 3rd placed team The winners of the top two games are promoted. The winners of the bottom six games are through to round 2. The losers of the top two games are also through to round 2 so they get a second bite at the cherry. After another two rounds you are left with your final two teams - who are the other two to become promoted. So whilst the league winners don't automatically go up, they have a pretty good chance in the play-offs. Also, there is actually a play-off final between the two winners of the league winner play-offs - despite both teams already being promoted, to decide an overall third tier champion. So there we have the play-off system. We landed in my opinion, the hardest possible draw, in Cultural Leonesa who had won group 1. They won group 2 last year but were unfortunate enough to run into Barcelona B, and then bottled the next round too. They were probably back for more. They had also pissed their league with the same 86 point haul we had managed. The home tie was a pretty good game, but ultimately delivered no goals. 0-0 it was. Predictable. I was happy with it though as away goals count in these play-offs, and we were missing a couple of key players for this leg too so I was relatively forgiving. So we went away to Leon - 13,000 sold out with just 4 away fans, quite a different scene to the little shit tip that we call home. We were behind in no time. They came at us like a steam train and had the lead after just six minutes. It was looking like we could be belted at one stage - something had to change. Relish big matches. That's what I look for. Step forward Ilyes Chaibi. The Algerian forward picked up last summer, not the most talented, but quite obviously quite ballsy, scores a magnificent solo effort to equalise and we're now ahead in the tie. We have something to work with. I allow Leonesa to do the pressing but ultimately, if we add a second, we are surely going to go through - we do, Chaibi is sent through by Folorunsho and he dinks over the onrushing keeper to give us a 1-2 lead on the hour. Within five minutes, he's got his hat-trick. 1-3, and this is surely it for us now. We cannot blow this. Even a 3-3 draw puts us through. Leonesa do add one late on but we largely see the tie through without any major worries. The game finishes Cultural Leonesa 2-3 FC Andorra and for the very first time in our history we will play in the second tier of Spanish football. This was exactly what I wanted. The crowd almost entirely against us and we were happy to be the party poopers. That's what we need to be going forward. We were not done yet however. There is a play-off final to complete. I don't know how importantly the game treats this but ultimately, this is to be champions, and we have to go all out for that too. We land Gimnastic de Tarragona, of course who are already promoted alongside us - a club who gave me a lot of grief last season. Absolutely easy pickings. We win 0-3 away and 2-0 at home. It's a hammering. We've not only been promoted, but we've done it in style. The club is taken over by a new owner (it doesn't seem to register Pique as being involved) but the finances are improved, and immediately we have plans for a new 6,800 stadium in Andorra la Vella, the capital of Andorra, moving location from Encamp - ready by the end of next season as our ground isn't big enough for this league, though we would still be allowed to use it for two more years. We did it. I feel like we developed our identity this season and from now, simply, it's about adding and enhancing it. This one goes on, and it gets interesting now.
Subscriber Dan+ Posted April 13, 2020 Subscriber Posted April 13, 2020 If you could sum up what a shambles the Spanish system is then it's this. So the four teams to win the leagues were Cultural Leonesa, Andorra, Gimnastic & Extremadura. Andorra & Gimnastic went up. Cultural Leonsa went up via the play-offs in their second bite at the cherry. Extremadura lost and didn't go up. The other spot went to Sporting Gijon B - they won three rounds of play-offs and were to be promoted. They weren't. They got denied by the fact Sporing Gijon's first team lost the 2nd tier play-off final, so Sporting Gijon B cannot be promoted into the league alongside their first team, meaning that their promotion spot went by default to the team they beat in the play-offs - Ponferradina. So Extremadura win a league but don't go up. Ponferradina come 3rd, win one round of play-offs, lose another, and are promoted by default. How is that possibly fair
Mpache Posted April 13, 2020 Posted April 13, 2020 Right, before I give it a full read Dan, I've got a rant of my own quickly. We got relegated from the Bundesliga 2. Not really shocking, but we got 7M for participating and are back in the white. We had -600 in wages before the end of the season. Despite having 3.5M in the white, about a day after the last game we suddenly have -6000 in wages. I sold my Africans since I can't use them in the 3. Liga. Didn't make a fucking difference. I asked for a budget in the window twice, even leaked it to press and they still don't want to listen. It's actually pathetic, I can't sign anyone and don't have backups. My backups are 6th/7th tier quality. My finances are fine, and they just don't want to spend. If this owner gets AIDS and dies from it I'll celebrate. Utter cuntmuppet.
Mpache Posted April 13, 2020 Posted April 13, 2020 In some good news though, I knocked out Hoffenheim in the DFB Pokal
Subscriber Dan+ Posted April 13, 2020 Subscriber Posted April 13, 2020 I found my board at Bochum to be tight like that. They sabotaged my season despite being relatively financially healthy. They were very much of the mindset to bank the money and then go from there, rather than try and make a proper attempt to survive. I think the same is happening to you and you'll be relegated. Excellent win in the cup though.
Mpache Posted April 13, 2020 Posted April 13, 2020 1 minute ago, Dan said: I found my board at Bochum to be tight like that. They sabotaged my season despite being relatively financially healthy. They were very much of the mindset to bank the money and then go from there, rather than try and make a proper attempt to survive. I think the same is happening to you and you'll be relegated. Excellent win in the cup though. I won't be relegated, but I definitely don't think I will go back up like I originally had planned. I've started the season promising enough, so I think I'll finish mid table to bottom half. Thank fuck the board is asking me to only fight relegation. I have lots of attacking depth but none in defence. I have 3 good defenders (both my CB's and my LB) and that's it.
LFCMike Posted April 13, 2020 Posted April 13, 2020 Had a few offers last season from League 2 clubs in England. They were all in shit positions in the league and financially though so wasn't tempted. Had one from Leyton Orient just a few games into the new season and have to say I was tempted. They offered a rather large transfer budget for that level but I want to see this season out with Cowdenbeath at least. Managed to convince the board to upgrade the training facilities which made my mind up. Lost our best midfielder in the summer for £180k. Also sold our second choice striker for £200k so we're in a good position financially and able to offer slightly better wages than we were previously. Pleased with the business we've done in this summer window. Managed to get Jamie McGrath back on loan from St Mirren too. He scored 22 goals last season so that was important. Not a bad start to the season, although the loss at home to Airdrie was annoying as we dominated and they scored late on
Mpache Posted April 13, 2020 Posted April 13, 2020 I've just made a very tactical signing. Just a spoiler, I couldn't get promoted back to the 2nd tier but luckily I finished bang mid table and then was able to reinforce in depth, so I think we should go back up this year.
Mpache Posted April 13, 2020 Posted April 13, 2020 This season hasn't gone to plan so far. Update soon.
Bluebird Hewitt Posted April 13, 2020 Posted April 13, 2020 Well.... this was entertaining. Shame I couldn't quite pull it off.
DeadLinesman Posted April 14, 2020 Posted April 14, 2020 Here’s my issue........ Great defensively, can’t score more than 1/2 a game whilst those around me score for fun. So frustrating.
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