Lowland Spartans

[ellzo]

The Spartans

A journey to make Spartans relevant.

I was looking for a long term save to start during this work from home period, started a Bolivian league save but everything broke after 1 season so went for a more tried and tested database and the Scottish adventure began. Choosing a team was easy when I looked and saw one called Spartans, big fan of the races and lock down has had me miss a few events this year. A quick look into their history, based in Edinburgh and never been in the football league. 

First challenge is to get into the league, secondly become the best team in Edinburgh, thirdly best team in Scotland and finally best in Europe and worldwide.

The team selected, game loaded it was time to begin. First things first, new kits.

I have completed 2 season already before deciding to write this so will give a quick run through so everything is caught up.
Season 1
Started poorly, we went with a 4-1-4-1 formation and controlling possession tactics. The possession controlling seemed to work but we struggled at the attacking end of the pitch scoring just 36 goals in 30 games the only reason we finished so high in the league was we conceded just 16 goals. Overall we were involved in quite a few competitions so here is a summary;

Lowland League - 3rd
Scottish Cup - 4th Round
Betfred Cup - Group stage- 5th
IRN-BRU Cup - 1st Round
SFA South Challenge Cup - Runners up
East of Scotland Qualifying Cup - Winners
Lowland League Cup - 1st Round

Biggest takes from this were, Scottish cup was great for income, beat Berwick from league above us in the second round then got a divisional rival in East Kilbride in the third round. Falkirk beat us after an own goal from the halfway line ended our chances and Tolmie’s Spartans career.

The league showed we are a good side but need to be more attacking so that was my mine drive going into the second season. I didn’t see the need for wholesale changes so secured our better players to additional years on contract and brought in 4 new signings during the summer. 

Season 2

This season started a lot better, I have decided to change the tactics and move to a 4-2-3-1 with the extra midfielder going forward hopefully enough to get me the goals I craved. Mix this with my biggest summer signings Lewis Small and Aidan Wilson we would hopefully have a successful season.

The fixtures speak for themselves, just the two losses all season (which I still don't understand) and we set records for most wins, points, wins in a row, games without losing, highest avg rating and most goals by a player. 

In the rest of the competitions we did fairly well in the cups the board does not care about and just about scrapped the results needed in the cups we were judged on. Here are the results in a nice easy to read form.

Lowland League - 1st
Playoff Lowland/Highland - Winners
League 2 Relegation Playoff - Winners
Scottish Cup - 3rd Round
Betfred Cup - Not entered
IRN-BRU Cup - 1st Round
SFA South Challenge Cup - Winners
East of Scotland Qualifying Cup - Winners
Lowland League Cup - Semi Finals

The league itself has issues with competitiveness as most teams let too many players go in the off-season and didn't replace them. A lot also had loanees that would not work now as bigger teams did not want to loan to clubs our size, I tried many times to get a senior affiliate (for money more than players) but failed every time. 

One benefit/bug I found was I could sign players to a youth contract on £5 a week and only give them a real contract if there was interest. This mean 4 or 5 players on top wages close to £100 a week took up half my budget and then the rest was a few youth academy players (can't afford to keep them all), players on youth contracts and rotation players who I had to give part time contracts to so that they stayed. 

This brings us nicely onto finances. On average our wage bill second year was £650-700 a week, rather than the £1200 in the first year so over the season we saved £26,000. This mixed with some good cup runs, in the low paying cups, meant we finish the season with -£11,000. Not great but much better than peak debt of -£62,890. 

I cannot see anything that says stadium sizes in the rules for League 2 so hopefully that's not an issue though last home game of the season I got a notification saying we were leaving Ainsle Park so not sure what's going on there as no building work or anything going on.

Moving forward the squad want to challenge for playoffs next year, I think it might be an issue getting players of the right caliber but its wait and see for now, Scottish clubs have released players on the save so begins a few hours of trawling looking for the right guys, particularly a GK and LW.

Around the World. 

Scotland 

England

Rest of Europe

If anyone wants info on anything let me know, playing on FM19 with Scotland as only playable but big European leagues viewable

Planning to post a pre, mid and post season update from here on out.

[ellzo]

Pre Season 20/21

So the dust has settled and we are looking ahead to our season within the Scottish league structure. What's happened in the off-season, not much really.

Transfers
I said to the squad that with the right additions we could do midtable, they were disappointed with my ambition, so we settled on aiming for play-offs. This in mind I looked for some signings to make and see how we could improve the squad.

Scott Costello came in from Brechin, he had been on loan here the last 2 years and hasn't performed amazingly but at a decent level. He wanted a £5 a week youth contract and would remain first choice keeper until we found a replacement later in the window, spoiler alert, we didn't. 
Akers and Rodgers are RW and LW in that order, Akers would be a first choice player if Wilson, our current RW did not sign a new deal (looked unlikely) and Rodgerswould become first choice LW. 
Walker is a player who I admired from afar when Queen of the South loaned him to our divisional rivals last year. 16 when they got him, he finished the season on 11 goals and 11 assists so I got him in as backup striker, hopefully he develops and then I loan him again till end of contract and sign on a free. This is a tactic I like to use regularly on FM lower leagues, loan a player, ideally for free and then take him for free, example 1 - Scott Costello.

Squad
So with the transfers above I have pretty much the same team as last year. 

Players of note;
McKendry - Young CB with high potential, keen to play him as much as possible but slightly worse than both current CBs. Will probably play more games as part time training means he needs gametime to develop close to his potential.
McDowell - Young LB high potential but no direct rival, just a backup in the squad meaning he gets plenty of playtime. 
Thomas and Dishingon - Both good attacking minded CMs, will play 2 in the easier games and at home with Whelan stepping in when we have a fixture I want some more steel in the midfield. 
Small - Top scorer last year, came in to give me goals and he delivered, 20 league goals and 29 in all competitions isn't setting the world on fire but was a vast improvement on the first season where Smith got 14 in all.  

Loads of youth players out, most will probably never play for us but Jack Mutch might.

Top Player
Currently this is Wilson. He refused to sign a contract last year, and all summer but after no one came in for him he is now my top earner, taking home £180 a week, twice anyone else in the squad. In order to sign we had a few promises so we need to get promoted in a few years and sign a new attacker, he wanted a new coach and I was looking for a fitness coach anyway so that has already been done. 
Hopefully as we progress we will see him continue to perform, 12 goals and 9 assists last year are hopefully his numbers to push on from. 

Pre-Season
I’ve included the Betfred Cup in the preseason as we were expected to advance and I rotated a lot. We beat St Mirren in convincing fashion so that was great and helped the bank balance. One win in Betfred vs divisional rivals Albion Rovers was good indicator we are ready to start.
The media had us as favourites at one point and 2nd place in the season preview so hopefully we perform.

He is also our best chance at an award.

Finances
We finished the year 10k in the red and went into the black over the course of pre season, the projection is minus £170k in a year's time but we didn't go that far last year with similar wages and probably less attendance so I’m hopeful that is incorrect. The finances are a big factor behind the lack of signings and I am hoping to keep the books in a decent shape so as we climb the leagues we don't fall back down in a state of financial insecurity.  
We have kept our stadium, we received an email last season saying the last game at Ainslie park but we are still going strong. Odd.
Not sure the board know how to use the word soared. 

[Nobby_McDonald]

Good start Ellzo.

[ellzo]

Mid Season Update 20/21
18 games into the league season, how are we faring?

We have done spectacularly so far, I thought the media might be hyping us up a bit and when we didn't make too many wholesale changes to the squad I was a bit worried we wouldn't be as competitive as everyone said. 

We are currently 12 points clear having just lost our first game against second placed East Fife. We dominated but couldn't score, missed a penalty and the only consolation is its making me tweak tactics a bit rather than just coast through the year.

The rest of the competitions are fairly boring. League is the main focus so that's good, Scottish Cup should give us a financial boost playing Celtic but the IRN-BRU Cup we were a round short of board expectations.

Players and Tactics

Our stand out performer is Shaun Rodgers, on loan from Morton. I reckon he could do a decent job for them but for now he is doing really well for us, contract up in 6 months so might be able to sign him permanently. 11 goals, 2 assists and 7.40 Avg Rating.

Akers has done really well, 4 goals and 6 assists to make the battle fr AMR quite competitive, Aidan Wilson the first teamer who agreed to a new contract at the 11th hour is doing well also (6 goals and 2 assists) but has had an injury layoff. 

Our final attacking midfield slot, the AMC, had been rotated between Dishington and Watson. The attacking midfielders in the team are carrying us with the strikers struggling to perform.

*Small scored 4 goals in 1 game so even his 7 is slightly inflated

I have not made many tactical changes as with the midfielders scoring it seems it would be a bit odd to stop this, however I am keeping an eye on it as the scoring rate seems to have dropped and will see how we do over the coming weeks.

None of the strikers are rated above 3 stars with Walker at 2 and the others on 3. I am tempted to start tinkering as we are hitting the second half of the season and this is usually where results start to go downhill.

Matches 
The only team we haven't beat this year is Albion Rovers, we beat them in pre-season but 2 draws since are the only things really annoying me.

*Computer crashed, just holidayed the last game as needed to be redone, lost 4-0.

Finances

It isn’t great reading on the financial front, we are not as far into the red as last year but we are getting close. If the Celtic match is a sellout we might make enough to get into the black, if we somehow get a draw we will definitely be in the black. Going professional is still quite a way away I think/hope. It would be good to get the younger players into more training but the increased salary would mean we would have to sell to stay in business I imagine.

Looking at the leagues above
Premiership - All Professional
Championship - All bar one (Montrose - Semi Pro)
League 1 - Greenock Morton, Airdrieonians, Clyde are Professional rest Semi Pro
League 2 - All Semi Pro barring Queens Park 

There is a chance we could go Pro if promoted but doubt it, getting into the black for the Championship might be a better aim as we might struggle to compete against professional teams. 
 

Edited May 5, 2020 by ellzo

[ellzo]

16 hours ago, Nobby_McDonald said:

Good start Ellzo.

Thanks @Nobby_McDonald hopefully the success continues, not expecting a rapid rise as I hate spending but 2 seasons in each league 1 and 2 then as long as it takes in the Championship is the timeline have in my head.

Edited May 5, 2020 by ellzo
Spelling

[ellzo]

Post Season Review

 

We have completed our first season in the Ladbrokes League 2, did we manage to hold on and win promotion at the first attempt?

Well it was a bumpy ride but we did it. Despite the teams best effort to throw it away, myself included, we just about managed to hold on to a top place finish and avoid the playoffs.
We started to unravel when, as mentioned in my previous post, I holidayed a game as we had already played it and won before my computer crashed. The rerun of the game saw us come away as 0-4 losers, a quite shocking result compared to the season so far. I then overcompensated and tinkering went to full on tactical rebuilding, as I went further and further I eventually thought I should return to the winning formula but it was too late and didn't want to click.

 

What was at times a 15 point lead came down to 6 with 4 games to go. We were in this against East fife and they were certainly in better form than us. The run in had us playing one match, then each other followed by 2 bottom half teams for both of us. The first game gave me some confidence when we managed a late draw but East Fife lost, this meant regardless of our result against them we would be top of at least one more week. Fortunate as they beat us 2-0.

Our penultimate game against bottom placed Queen’s Park was now a deciding fixture and sure enough we continued our perfect record against them. This meant our final game at Annan, the team who caused the implosion, was of no relevance and an own goal in the first minute and a conceded goal in the last minute of injury time meant we ended on a draw. 
The rest of the competitions were not great, under par in IRN-BRU cup, poor in the Betfred Cup and well beaten by Celtic in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup.

Squad

Stand Out Performer.
Shaun Rodgers
Best player this season, no question. Fans player and young player of the year winner Rodgers scored 15 league goals from the inside forward position on the left and also got 4 assists. I was looking to sign him on a free but another young winger I had looked at also was available so unfortunately his wage demands (reachable but more than I wanted) meant that we went another direction. I was tempted to sign both but I like to work with a small squad.
Here is the comparison between him and Ross Gunn who is joining us this summer.

Other good players were Dishington who might well edge out Thomas for the starting CM slot if we decide what tactic to go with, more on that later. 

Underperformer of the year.
Ben Armour
So much promise, I had hoped he would step up and become the first choice striker but it wasn’t to be. 4 goals in 21 starts and 10 sub appearances is not good enough and hopefully we can move him on this summer, but I have doubts over who might take him.

Tactics
As seen from the schedule above we imploded a bit in the second half of the year. So it is time for a bit of a tactical review to see what went wrong.
Looking at the overviews of the teams in the league, with a focus on defensive side we find some issues.

Second most goals conceded from corners
Least tackles won - 272 is less than 10 a game, we also have the worst tackling % at 88% so even when we do try we are not great. We do however have some of the best discipline in the league.
Least headers won - particularly we won 404 less than the 9th placed team who themselves only won 248 less than the top team. On avg we won 24 a game, Albion Rovers above us 35 a game and the top team Cowdenbeath won 42 a game. Woeful.
Clean sheets - We had joint second most clean sheets, but for champions 13 is still way under what I would like. Particularly as overall we shipped 43 goals, more than 1 a game on avg.

The tactic we have used mainly is 4-2-3-1, this I don't think will work moving forward, I tried it year 2 when we struggled to score in the first season and we scored for fun. I think against better opposition we just became easy picking so have reverted back to the following.

 

I am hoping the DM position will make us more secure as we now face mor professional teams on a regular basis in league 1. The aim is survival so secure and safe is good. I tried this with short passing before but made very few chances so have tried to go for a more counter attacking quik style of play. Friendlies will dictate the finer points. With regards to players for this formation;

I have a good level LB and am signing a RM who I am going to convert to RB so the fullbacks are covered, along with Farrell who has really developed into a solid GK. 
The CBs need work, being cheap 1 quality CB is the priority and potentially a second if we can stretch but there are other areas to fix, plus some more solid backups to recruit.

In midfield Whelan is declining much quicker than I anticipated in the DM slot so youth academy product McGuigan (only good one so far) will get more game time moving forward. In the center of the park we have Dishington and Thomas who play well together, with Thomas going to be trained to stay back more as lacks the pace.

The wings are solid with Wilson and incoming Gunn both looking good options but there is a lack of depth. Up top we have committed Small to a new deal as rotation as we look to make a big ST signing in the free transfer market.

First team wise then the wishlist is
ST
CB
2nd LB
2nd RB
3rd CB
3rd & 4th CMs
2nd RW
2nd LW

A fair few, might keep a few more of the current team if needs be but for now its a good starting point.

Finances

For the first time I actually put the players league bonus as low, maybe why they tried to throw it. This together with the 75K for winning the league has left us with £13,215 in the bank, hopefully an increase in season tickets, attendance and sponsorship can help us stay in the black.

 

Around the world

Queens Park are relegated to non league, but Celtic were once again stopped from domestic dominance, this time by Hibernian, no real surprises elsewhere. 

In England Man City continued with a treble, Arsenal winning the Carabao Cup. Again nothing too out of the ordinary here.

Bit more excitement around Europe. Man Utd beat Arsenal in Champs League final, Spain had the third winner in 3 years, Dortmund beat Bayern, Napoli retianed their title and PSV beat Ajax.

[Nobby_McDonald]

Very well done.