Cheekybananafm

Decided to give this a go, I completed it a good few years ago now and my attempts since have ended quickly! Managed to get a very good job as my first port of call, heading to Canada with Valour FC The 2024 season has just ended and they finished in 8th place, a big job to start with so hopefully my rep will improve quickly

2023/24 Pre-Season A good run of wins there with only a couple of defeat, both against League sides, £27k in matchday income and £30k of gate receipts made as well. It is going to a long, hard season. Lots and lots of players in, the squad was tiny so it was needed. I won't go through them all but here are they key ones. The season is now about to start and we have a busy opening month.

Reserved for history

DOING THE DAFUGE - BARWELL FC I've taken a bit of time to think about what to do after the Gibraltar save and have decided to do a challenge I've never attempted before and that's the Dafuge Challenge. The aim is simple, take control of a previously non-playable team in England and take them to Premier League and Champions League glory, simple, right? The club I have decided to start with is a club I know quite well, a lot of my family live near Barwell and I've also been to the Kirkby Road Sports Ground where they play their games. My manager, as the challenge requests, starts with Sunday League Reputation and no coaching badges As I mentioned Barwell play their games at the Kirkby Road Sports Ground, a 2,600 capacity stadium with 256 seats. This can be expanded to 5,000 if needed. Barwell is located just to the North of Hinckley and to the South-West of Leicester. Could we become deadly rivals to The Foxes in the future? As expected the facilities aren't great, poor training and youth facs with a youth level of zero, alongside basic academy coaching and limited youth recruitment, it will be a long time before we start bringing through our own stars. I'll talk about the playing squad, tactic, etc in the next update, we currently have absolutely no staff so I need spend time building my backroom. The squad is very small so I will need to bring in a whole host of players to get ready for the new season, luckily we have a pretty decent wage budget Just over £2k a week to spend on players. Now it's time to go and get this squad ready for a relegation battle, we are predicted to end dead last but some way as well.

Decided to give this a go and go with a team I know well, quite a large proportion of my family live near Barwell so let's take them all the way to the promised land!

Apologies, this save is over. I'll be back with another save at some point in the future.

Decided to give this a go

August 2024 - Pre-season A new season and a complete squad rebuild! That is everyone that left the club, it left us with around 10 players in the squad but completely eliminated the wage budget. Now we needed to bring in some players to at least give us a decent first-team squad to pick from, I didn't sign loads of players but enough to keep us going. I won't go through them all but here are the key four players. Whether my signings are enough to once again be challenging is one big question! The media aren't convinced though as we're expected to end near the bottom Now to some of the results and in Europe we actually managed to get through a round! A first round win against Maltese opposition, we then faced Steaua Bucharest and somehow beat them in the away leg but got smashed at home. A good run though and that gave us over £700k in prize money, we are back in the black! This meant I managed to persuade the board to improve the youth recruitment and junior coaching. The other Gibraltar teams in Europe also did better than expected but for this season we will have no one in the League Phases. MAGPIES LINCOLN RED IMPS

May 2024 + End of Season Review Well we totally fell apart, losses to both the teams around us and a crap draw at the end That point meant we scraped second spot and qualification for the Europa Conference League next season, a poor drop-off at the end but to end as runners-up in my first season, I have to take that. THE NEW ARRIVALS There were three stand-out players of those that joined throughout the season. Craig Galliano - Central Midfield Fausto Viegas - Central Defender Andre - Right Back Whether we see the latter two again is another story as they're both out of contract at the end of the season. MOMENTS TO REMEMBER FINANCES Lots of green there, although everything says N/A! Financially though we are in a real mess. Nearly £400k in the red and it's dropping rapidly, this needs sorting and quick. HOW YOU LINED UP The 41221 worked well most of the season, the struggle has been finding decent enough homegrown players to add to the ranks. A lot of those players you see above will be leaving in the Summer. THE ACCOLADES Well I won the Manager of the Year! As you can see it was Craig Galliano who dominated the awards, it's nice to see a Gibraltar player beating all those key foreigners in our squad to the awards. SQUAD PLANNING Next season will not be as good as this one I can guarantee it, why? We are losing nearly every contracted player we have in the squad. There are currently 18 players out of contract at the end of the season and with the finances in a massive state I can't offer any of them the deal that they want. This is going to be a big Summer, a tough season ahead but it gives me chance to reset, we have Europe to look forward to which should bring in a bit of money and if I can pretty much eliminate the wage budget I have hopes we can get that bank balance back nearer to the black, it also gives me chance to bring in some Gibraltar players, I want to try and make this squad as homegrown as possible. CO-EFFICIENT UPDATE With Lincoln Red Imps qualifying for the Group Stage of the Europa League (they did only get one point in their six games), this is has helped our co-efficient massively. Our score for the season is 2.500, much higher than everyone around us and it means we jump around three places for next season, no change in our qualification spots though....for now

April 2024 Two games this month, it started well but ends with a poor home loss to Mons Calpe The good news though is Magpies have lost both their games meaning we're back on top. Three games to go, can we do it?! In other news our Under 23's have smashed it this season winning the League and the end of season finals. There really isn't any standout player in the squad who I can talk about, the main man for me was midfielder Evan De Haro, he's in our first-team squad but was sent out to play for the U23s numerous times and performed well. Finally the Nations League draw has happened, that relegation playoff win meant we stayed in Division C and we have a tough task ahead of us. Some really hard games there but I have hope we can do enough to not end bottom

March 2024 We needed a good end to the season to win the title and after winning the first game of the month we fell apart, but was it enough to end top of the pile.... Nope! Magpies won their final match to nab top spot, a gutting way to end but if you'd have told me we'd end second in the first season I'd snap your hands off But then this happened, shows you how much attention I pay to what's going on! The season ISN'T over! We still have five games to play!

2024 Nations League Relegation Playoffs I'm not 100% sure what these games are for, I can't see any league tables but I'm guessing it's a playoff to see who plays in Division C or D. We faced Lithuania and did amazingly, one aim down as we actually won a match! In fact we won twice as we beat them 3-2 away!!! "Relegation" survived....I think, I now wait for the next Nations League draw to place. The good news is those two wins have given us a big jump in our FIFA Ranking. A 5 place jump!

2024 Youth Intake An apparent golden generation The highest rated player in the intake is Mark Burrows, a goalkeeper, not great but better than nothing. Craig Binns is an attacking midfielder, he has some good mental attributes and good natural fitness. Joshua Ashley is a 15-year old defensive midfielder, again not amazing but could do a job as back-up. The rest are crap

February 2024 Another two solid results. This is going to go down to the wire, three clear of Magpies but they have a game in-hand We have three games left to do something rather improbable!

January 2024 Firstly, a new signing, a new central midfielder joins on a non-contract and is homegrown. Welcome 35-year old Tyson Ruiz Three games this month, two fantastic wins in the league but the month ends with an extra time defeat to Manchester 1962 in the Rock Cup. And those two wins put us top of the pile, Magpies do have a game in-hand but with five games left we have a serious shot of winning the league title in season one.