Best game of FM I've ever had!

[bbuullddoogg]

The Nottingham Forest game I'm playing right now is some of the most fun I've ever had on any FM/CM game on any platform. I have never been much of a one for lower league management but I thought I'd try to restore Forest to their former glory. I took over with sugar daddy enabled (but without using the well known cheat where you can keep getting more money as I think it makes the whole game a waste of time). So obviously not as hard as taking over Torquay with no sugar daddy I know, but hey I've never succeeded at LLM so to me it was quite a big challenge.

I spent about 6M initially on players like Billy Jones & Hugo Viana. That turned out to be the most money I would spend for quite a few seasons. At christmas 2006 Forest sat top of the table equal on points. A phenominal second half of the season saw us win League One by 25 points! At the end that season about 12 players joined on Bosmans.

Next season I had no money to spend so nearly all the Bosmans became my starting line-up. Despite my chairman wanting us to just stay up we ran out champions of the Championship at the first attempt. The city of Nottingham rejoiced and I felt like a hero.

Again we had virtually no money to spend - the reason being that I was over wage budget and had a pretty full squad. So…15 Bosmans came in and again, most of them went straight into the starting line-up. Everyone expected us to fail in the Premiership. I surprised everyone by claiming that a UEFA/Intertoto cup spot was the aim. We also wanted to go deep in a domestic up as we hadn't had much success in this area yet. Well our lack of quality showed at times but through hard work and a never-give-up attitude we finished 7th and scraped into an automatic UEFA cup place as a result. Still no cup success but a great season for us nonetheless. Nottingham Forest finally back in Europe after all these years!

So the beginning of the 4th season and still no money but 8 more players join on Bosmans and a large number of players given free transfers to reduce the wage bill and make way for new blood. More consistency in the league saw us hang around between 4th & 6th for most of the season. We went with a 2nd XI for the majority of UEFA cup games but this was not a problem thanks to good strength in depth. Excellent FA cup wins against Man Utd in the quarters and Arsenal in the semis found us headed to Wembley for the first time in a long time!! In the UEFA cup we hadn't really been tested until we came up against a strong Lazio side in the semi-finals but a narrow aggregate victory carried us through to the final!!! We felt confident about our finals against (championship side) Fulham and St Etienne as we felt we had overcome superior opposition to reach the finals. So…3 games to go in the season, the 2 cup finals, and a league game away to West Ham. We sit in 5th and only a win will take us above Liverpool to 4th. 3 massive games for the club or what??? Unfortunately we could only draw at West Ham which meant we missed out on the Champions League by 1 point. We had the same number of points as Liverpool but they had a superior GD. In the final 2 games we totally outplayed our opponents and brought 2 huge trophies back to Nottingham to complete an amazing season.

Season 5 saw another 7 Bosmans come in but this time it included some quality players like Micah Richards & Yakubu. Also, the big difference was that our wage budget went through the roof meaning we finally had a transfer budget again. We also sold about 6 players for about 15M which all resulted in a transfer fund of 25M to spend!!! The manager immediately targeted Anderson from Porto and captured him for 8.25M. After looking lower and lower down the list of interested players, I found Jermain Defoe available with a value of 1.6M! Tottenham didn’t really want to sell to another premiership team but agreed to let him go for 4.5M. With the majority of the transfer money unspent, the manager announced the squad for the coming season was complete and he felt good about the 32 players at his disposal. The manager also announced that the aim for the season was a top 4 finish and therefore champions league football in 2012. First game of the season was the Community Shield against league winners Chelsea. A showcase day out for the Forest fans to enjoy. Soon they would also be heading to Monaco to play Milan in the Super Cup. What a change from a few seasons ago playing against teams like Cheltenham and Rotherham every week!!

[bbuullddoogg]

The Nottingham Forest game I'm playing right now is some of the most fun I've ever had on any FM/CM game on any platform. I have never been much of a one for lower league management but I thought I'd try to restore Forest to their former glory. I took over with sugar daddy enabled (but without using the well known cheat where you can keep getting more money as I think it makes the whole game a waste of time). So obviously not as hard as taking over Torquay with no sugar daddy I know, but hey I've never succeeded at LLM so to me it was quite a big challenge.

I spent about 6M initially on players like Billy Jones & Hugo Viana. That turned out to be the most money I would spend for quite a few seasons. At christmas 2006 Forest sat top of the table equal on points. A phenominal second half of the season saw us win League One by 25 points! At the end that season about 12 players joined on Bosmans.

Next season I had no money to spend so nearly all the Bosmans became my starting line-up. Despite my chairman wanting us to just stay up we ran out champions of the Championship at the first attempt. The city of Nottingham rejoiced and I felt like a hero.

Again we had virtually no money to spend - the reason being that I was over wage budget and had a pretty full squad. So…15 Bosmans came in and again, most of them went straight into the starting line-up. Everyone expected us to fail in the Premiership. I surprised everyone by claiming that a UEFA/Intertoto cup spot was the aim. We also wanted to go deep in a domestic up as we hadn't had much success in this area yet. Well our lack of quality showed at times but through hard work and a never-give-up attitude we finished 7th and scraped into an automatic UEFA cup place as a result. Still no cup success but a great season for us nonetheless. Nottingham Forest finally back in Europe after all these years!

So the beginning of the 4th season and still no money but 8 more players join on Bosmans and a large number of players given free transfers to reduce the wage bill and make way for new blood. More consistency in the league saw us hang around between 4th & 6th for most of the season. We went with a 2nd XI for the majority of UEFA cup games but this was not a problem thanks to good strength in depth. Excellent FA cup wins against Man Utd in the quarters and Arsenal in the semis found us headed to Wembley for the first time in a long time!! In the UEFA cup we hadn't really been tested until we came up against a strong Lazio side in the semi-finals but a narrow aggregate victory carried us through to the final!!! We felt confident about our finals against (championship side) Fulham and St Etienne as we felt we had overcome superior opposition to reach the finals. So…3 games to go in the season, the 2 cup finals, and a league game away to West Ham. We sit in 5th and only a win will take us above Liverpool to 4th. 3 massive games for the club or what??? Unfortunately we could only draw at West Ham which meant we missed out on the Champions League by 1 point. We had the same number of points as Liverpool but they had a superior GD. In the final 2 games we totally outplayed our opponents and brought 2 huge trophies back to Nottingham to complete an amazing season.

Season 5 saw another 7 Bosmans come in but this time it included some quality players like Micah Richards & Yakubu. Also, the big difference was that our wage budget went through the roof meaning we finally had a transfer budget again. We also sold about 6 players for about 15M which all resulted in a transfer fund of 25M to spend!!! The manager immediately targeted Anderson from Porto and captured him for 8.25M. After looking lower and lower down the list of interested players, I found Jermain Defoe available with a value of 1.6M! Tottenham didn’t really want to sell to another premiership team but agreed to let him go for 4.5M. With the majority of the transfer money unspent, the manager announced the squad for the coming season was complete and he felt good about the 32 players at his disposal. The manager also announced that the aim for the season was a top 4 finish and therefore champions league football in 2012. First game of the season was the Community Shield against league winners Chelsea. A showcase day out for the Forest fans to enjoy. Soon they would also be heading to Monaco to play Milan in the Super Cup. What a change from a few seasons ago playing against teams like Cheltenham and Rotherham every week!!

[Guest]

nice write up

[ridley99]

felt like i was reading a professional sports writers review there. I like it, keep us updated.

Brian Clough would be proud of you!

[Martin_F_1981]

Good read and well written