[FM10] Have Coaching Licence, will travel - An English Manager in Europe

[rlipscombe]

Database:10.3.0

Leagues Loaded:

England - Coca Cola Championship and up

France - Ligue 1

Germany - Bundesliga

Holland - Eredivise

Portugal - Liga Sagres

Russia - Premier Division

Scotland - Scottish Premier

So i have decided to create a new career game to run alongside my Venezia save after i lost interest in my first. Having played FM10 as mainly lower league clubs i decided to go for the above selection of leagues in order to play in the top leagues of major european countries (i excluded italy and spain as they are where i have played most recently) in order to see if i can win european silverware. ideally i'd like to maybe manage in each of the countries at some time and if i had to pick a club to manage it would be:

England - Sheffield Wednesday or Arsenal

France - Paris Saint Germain

Germany - Dortmund

Holland - PSV

Portugal - Benfica

Russia - CSKA or Spartak Moscow maybe

Scotland - Rangers

it will be interesting to see if i get to manage any of these clubs during my career.

My manager is professional footballer Chris Waddle. I set professional due to the leagues selected - i want to get a job offer after all!

[rlipscombe]

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[rlipscombe]

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[rlipscombe]

After holidaying through i got the following offers in this order:

Crystal Palace - Being a Sheffield Wednesday fan i laughed when this was my first offer. Had to turn it down...

Reading - Were down in 17th place at the time. tempted but decided to reject - well i say reject i someway inadvertantly accepted the job only to resign on the same day....

NAC Breda - the first offer from abroad. NAC were in the relegation play-off spots and did tempt me. Some reasonable money to spend, i finally decided against doing a Steve Mclaren...

Which led me to the following job offer....

Newcastle United

[rlipscombe]

Newcastle United - Coca Cola Championship - Season 2009/10

I was offered an

18 month contract by Mike Ashley to succeed Chris Hughton. Newcastle were ONLY in 8th place at the time just short of the play-offs after 20 league games. I debated taking the job on as they were in a healthy position at the time and weren't maybe the same challenge as my other offers.

I mulled it over and decided to accept the challenge and i was unveiled as the new manager of Newcastle United

First impressions? Well it is a decent squad but who are crippled by the wage budget. i have a modest 1.6 million to spend but no wage budget to play with. Once January arrives it may be time for a bit of a clear out to shake things up a little. The wage budget has to come down for sure and it is quite an old squad. THe club signed only 1 player in the summer - JLoyd Samuel. Not exactly going to fire us to European Glory! A quick look at the squad and there is an obvious area to improve - Attack. With a 'strikeforce' of Carroll, Ameobi and Best, we're not going to be prolific. Lovenkrands is around too but is currently injured.

Let's see if i can get them back to the Premier League.

[Jenko_EFC]

Good luck with Newcastle, should have been destroying the Championship! Hopefully you can get them to the play-offs .