DaneBramage

March 2023 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 3, Group B: We did well to get a point from St Kitts & Nevis. We were trailing at half-time, but the team-talk sorted things out and we were pretty good after the break, the equaliser was well deserved. We couldn't do anything against Azerbaijan though, they were just much, much, much better than us. We briefly rose to 9th, but now we're bottom of the table again. Team Milestones: Seven games without a win, largest loss of my reign. Player Milestones: A debut for Jaylan Hankins (Magpies, GK, 22 y.o.) ---------------------------------------

February 2023 - Europa Point We now have more players registered, so that makes life a lot easier. There are still issues with not having many homegrown players while needing five on the pitch at all times, but we're getting by. Albeit with limited options when we can make substitutions. The first full month of fixtures has gone by perfectly. There was a rocky start against Hound Dogs when they scored the opener, but a strong second-half turned the tie around. Mons Calpe didn't back down easily but a goal in the 84th minute killed the game off, and we coasted past Glacis United and Gibraltar Lions. Couldn't really ask for a better month. Our strike partnership has been deadly with Keegan Cauli and Diego Diaz grabbing nine goals between them. --------------------------------------- I said in my last post that I hoped we could avoid finishing last, but after those last few games I'm now looking higher. With only a few points separating us I don't think it's unreasonable to think we could come top of this group. ---------------------------------------

February 2023 - Gibraltar The groups have been drawn for 2023, and we're by far the lowest ranked team. We're going to lose a lot this year. The team that finishes bottom is automatically relegated, 6th to 9th go into a play-off. --------------------------------------- FIFA Nations League, Group B: The Ethiopia game was a lot closer than it looks. If our strikers had their shooting boots with them we could easily have snatched a draw. Instead, we were goalless and Ethiopia were much better in that regard. We dominated the possession and passing stats against Lesotho, but did nothing with it. Lesotho didn't outplay us, but they fashioned more chances, and scored twice from three efforts on target. We've already hit the foot of the table. Team Milestones: Consecutive losses for the first time, five games without a win. Player Milestones: Julian Del Rio (Magpies, ST, 20 y.o.) made his debut. Louie Annesley has hit a half-century of caps at the age of 22. ---------------------------------------

November + December 2022 - Europa Point I'd been keeping an eye out for jobs becoming available, and after just eight games of the season it happened. Europa Point had started the season with six consecutive losses, and though they'd drawn the last two, it was enough for the manager to be given the boot. The squad is a mess. Who knows what the previous incumbent did, but somehow there were only seven players registered to play in the league. There's only two more games until the winter break, so luckily we'll be able to sort that out soon. In the meantime, we muddled by with just the few players we had available. We had the U23 squad as well for the first game, but they were on holiday for the second so it was a bit of a struggle. We emerged with one point from these ties, but it really should have been more. We led St Joseph's twice, but the grey goalie let shots go straight through him in the 86th, 91st, and 94th minutes to throw away the points. We've finished bottom of the first stage, and the league now splits. The top six are playing for European qualification, whereas I don't think there's any target for the bottom five. As far as I can tell there's no relegation, so just not finishing last is my only aim.

2022 Cup of Nations Round-Up Double success for one, double despair for the other. The final saw Uruguay take on England. And Uruguay made it a very successful year, adding cup gold to their play-off promotion triumph. Meanwhile England saw themselves finish as runner-up for a second time his season. Spare a though for Kiribati who lost 15-0 to Azerbaijan in the first round. Erling Haaland top scored with 10 goals.

2022 Nations League Round-Up - Part Three If my geography is correct (and my counting), Africa and North America made good progress this year. Both had a six team swing towards teams in higher divisions, after Africa managed 12 promotions (and 6 relegations), and North America had 8 promotions (and 2 relegations). Europe (9 promotions and 4 relegations) and South America (3 promotions and 2 relegations) also had positive swings, though obviously both were skewed higher in the first place. And Europe won overall courtesy of Portugal winning the Gold League. Oceania slipped a bit (1 promotion and 3 relegations), while Asia had an absolute 'mare (18 relegations and just 1 promotion).

2022 - Nations League Round-Up - Part Two League 1 Ivory Coast and Norway won promotion, but Ivory Coast were crowned champions due to their superior points tally. Burkino Faso were heavily out of their depth, and the Republic of Ireland were a big letdown. Alexander Sorloth (Norway) top scored with 15 goals. League 2 North Macedonia were crowned champions of the fifth tier, earning more points than fellow league winners Georgia, Israel, and Ghana. Of the eight teams relegated seven were from Asia, China in particular a surprising casualty. Kyrgyzstan were the worst of the bunch, not winning a single game, though Cape Verde will be wondering how they made such a mess of the play-offs to get relegated from 7th place. Michail Antonio was top scorer with 18 goals. League 3 The Gambia were champions of the sixth tier, ahead of Congo, Thailand, the undefeated Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Angola, and New Zealand. Four teams didn't manage a single win, but Chinese Taipei surpassed that by not even picking up a point. M'Bala Nzola (Angola) was top scorer with 22 goals. League 4 The mighty Liechtenstein won the seventh (and final) tier, ahead of Chad, Guadeloupe, Sao Tome & Principe, and French Guiana. A few teams didn't manage a single win, but Wallis & Futuna were the whipping points with just one point on the board. Ibrahim Ahmada (Zanzibar) was the top scorer with 32 goals.

2022 Nations League Round-Up - Part One Gold League Three nations went into the final day with a chance of bringing home the first ever FIFA Gold League trophy. All of them nearly bottled it, with none of the three winning. But while England lost to Spain and France lost to Italy, a draw against Argentina was enough for Portugal to stumble over the line. At the other end of the table Morocco were routed to the bottom almost all year, so relegation was no surprise. The other spot went down to a battle between the neighbours of Belgium and the Netherlands, and the Dutch downed their opponents 3-0 on aggregate in the play-offs. Karim Benzema top scored with 13 goals. Silver League Peru were the surprise winners of the second tier, clinching top spot on the final day with a win over Poland. Uruguay would have been disappointed to miss out on going up as champions, but winning the play-offs was the next best option. Germany underperformed and will be hoping for better next year. Iran started strong but lost momentum as the season went on, hitting last place for the first time after gameweek 21 and they couldn't recover. Denmark had been in this spot for most of the year, and while they pulled away a bit, it wasn't enough as they still found themselves in the play-offs, and were dispatched by the USA. Robert Lewandowski top scored with 19 goals. Bronze League Cameroon ran them close, but Serbia ran out champions of the third tier. Despite finishing seven point behind Cameroon, Austria took advantage of the play-offs to steal the second promotion spot. Chile's form saw them divebomb in the second half of the season, and they were joined by Australia in waving goodbye to the big leagues. Heung Min-Son top scored with 14 goals.

2022 Squad - Gibraltar This was the final squad of the campaign, and there's no one major missing from it. Kelvin Morgan was obviously the main man, with 18 goals from 19 games, while Tjay De Barr and Reece Styche also offered decent contributions up front. Louis Annesley ended up with the highest average rating, and a few other defenders also scored highly in this regard, perhaps unsurprisingly as we had the best defensive record in the division. The midfield looks to be the problem area, with only Liam Walker posting any good numbers. ---------------------------------------

November 2022 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: This run-in has been absolutely miserable. Just two points from the final three games, a really poor time to forget how to play football. We were making the opposition look like prime era Barcelona. We gave Mauritius 71% of the possession, and they completed 695 passes compared to our 222. With a change of tactic we were a bit better against Anguilla, but still had to rely on a late equaliser. Had we screwed it up badly enough to miss out on promotion? Team Milestones: Three games without a win. --------------------------------------- Luckily, we had enough points already in the bank that we remained in the top three. Promotion was sealed, though only as runners-up. It was probably unrealistic to expect to win every game, but dropping points on seven occasions was too much. Losing to St Martin twice was obviously the biggest disappointment, but drawing twice with Mauritius was up there too. ---------------------------------------

October 2022 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: Amateur hour. Nobody was even trying to do anything. If you ignore the goal, which is pretty pointless when you're already 4-0 down, I don't think we touched the ball outside of kick-offs. Not happy at all. That's allowed them to overhaul us, we now sit one point behind in 2nd. Team Milestones: Largest loss in my time here (overall record loss is 0-9 v Belgium).

September 2022 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: After the St Martin shambles I rotated the entire starting XI for the Northern Mariana Islands game. Reece Styche took his chance to be the main man in style, grabbing himself a hat-trick and also providing an assist. The defence let themselves down though, conceding twice in the final ten minutes. Reece Styche continued to stake his claim for a more regular starting spot with another goal against Sint Maarten, a match we should have won by a much larger margin. We've regained top spot, now with a two point lead over Sao Tome & Principe. Player Milestones: Louie Annesley scored his first goal for his country. ---------------------------------------

August 2022 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: Truly pathetic. We dominated the first half-hour without scoring, then decided to part like the Red Sea for their midfielder to waltz through our defence and chip the keeper, without anyone even trying to stop him. From that point it was pretty much game over, a gutless performance which was capped off by our keeper dropping a run-of-the-mill cross, allowing them to score the easiest second goal possible. Jamie Robba (St. Joseph's, GK, 30 y.o.) will not be playing for me again. We've dropped to 2nd, behind St Martin on head-to-head record. ---------------------------------------

July 2022 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: After sitting out the last game due to suspension (accumulated yellows), Kelvin Morgan had something to prove against St Pierre & Miquelon. And he did just that with his second hat-trick of the campaign, while also managing an assist. There wasn't too much to shout about against Bangladesh, it was a bit of a tepid affair, but the two sides were split by a couple of moments of quality from Liam Walker. Just before the break he scored with a cracking curling effort, then in the dying seconds of the game he planted a corner perfectly on the head of Reece Styche (Stourbridge, ST, 33 y.o.) to double the lead. We stay top of the group, now with a three point lead. Team Milestones: Six games unbeaten, four wins in a row, four clean sheets in a row. Equalled our record win. ---------------------------------------

June 2022 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: Dominant. It took a little while to get the first goal, but the result never looked in doubt. If anything it should have been more. Tjay De Barr took the plaudits for his brace, but Kyle Casciaro (Magpies, AML, 34 y.o.) also deserves a lot of credit for a goal and an assist. We stay top of the table. Team Milestones: 4 games unbeaten. ---------------------------------------

May + June 2022 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: Sao Tome & Principe were top of the table, so beating them was about as big a scalp as we could pick up at this stage. They had much more of the ball than us, 68%, but couldn't make it count and we punished them on the break in the final ten minutes. Mauritius had even more possession, 77%, but had next to no ambition. They just camped in their own half all game and we couldn't break them down. They somehow managed to take the lead and I was expecting a second loss, but luckily Liam Walker bailed us out with a nice free-kick. The Anguilla match was very even, but Kelvin Morgan was on form and took both of his chances Player Milestones: Brad Power (College Europa, DC, 29 y.o.) made his debut. Jamie Coombes (Magpies, AMR/ST, 26 y.o.) scored his first international goal. --------------------------------------- It's very close at the halfway stage, but we sit in pole position at the moment. Sao Tome & Principe lie just behind us on goal difference - they've scored six more than us, but our superior defensive record (only three conceded so far) keeps us ahead. St Martin are the only side we've lost to, so gaining revenge in the return fixture is a priority. ---------------------------------------

April 2022 - Gibraltar Slovakia beat Hong Kong to reach this round, but they've been struggling in the FIFA Nations League 1 (the fourth tier, three levels above us). With five losses from six games they sit 9th in the table (out of 10). Even with their dodgy form though they'll still be much too strong for us. FIFA Cup of Nations: Well, we weren't embarrassed. We lost as expected, but kept it respectable. Even managed to score, a great half-volley from Kelvin Morgan after a long ball from our goalie. Player Milestones: A bittersweet occasion for Jayce Olivero (College Europa, DL/ML, 23 y.o.) and Jack Sergeant (Lincoln Red Imps, DR, 27 y.o.) as they both won their 50th caps. ---------------------------------------

April 2022 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: After the poor league displays in March we needed a big improvement here, and facing Northern Mariana Islands after they'd lost five in a row suited us perfectly. We smashed them in an easy victory. When we reached half-time against Sint Maarten and the game was still goalless it looked like we'd used up all our goals in the earlier match, but Kelvin Morgan was on a one-man mission and grabbed a hat-trick to make the difference. Team Milestones: Largest victory, three wins in a row. Player Milestones: Following his brilliant month, Kelvin Morgan is our new all-time top scorer, with nine goals in just eight games. ---------------------------------------

March 2022 - Gibraltar A bit of cup action to hopefully distract from our league woes. 196 teams enter in the first round, with 30 more to come in the second round. So the real big boys aren't in play yet, but there are still some heavy hitters that could do real damage a possibility. Luckily, the draw has been kind to us with a home tie against fellow League 4 side, Fiji. FIFA Cup of Nations, First Round: If I was the Fiji manager I'd be very annoyed with this. As it is, I'm pleased we got away with it, but not happy about the performance. We stole the only goal of the game, but Fiji should have been out of sight by then. A late offside flag also came to our rescue, as we somehow scraped through to the second round. Our reward is a trip to Slovakia. ---------------------------------------

March 2022 - Gibraltar FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: What an absolutely awful month. I thought we were flying after February but this was dreadful. We were terrible against Bangladesh, the only consolation was that they were just as bad. Even so we should have won it late on, but substitute Jamie Coombes (Magpies, AMR/ST, 25 y.o.) put a sitter wide. I made a number of changes for the visit of St Martin, and we looked bright early on. But when they scored against the run of play all momentum was lost, and we never looked like getting back into it. We've fallen to 4th in the table. Team Milestones: First loss, two games without a win. Player Milestones: Lee Coombes (Magpies, DLC, 25 y.o.) and Jaron Vinet (College Europa, MLC, 24 y.o.) made their debuts. ---------------------------------------

February 2022 - Gibraltar --------------------------------------- The initial squad was made up nearly entirely of domestic based players, with all but two of the squad coming from College Europa, Lincoln Red Imps, Magpies, and St. Joseph's. The two exceptions were Tjay De Barr (Wycombe, ST, 21 y.o.) and Louie Annesley (Blackburn, DC, 21 y.o.) who ply their trade in England. They're both 21 and already have plenty of caps, so I have to think they'll be around the team for years to come. Speaking of having plenty of caps, the highest rated player in the squad is Liam Walker (Lincoln Red Imps, MC, 33 y.o.). He holds the record for both most caps and most goals, so while he may not have many years left, I'm sure he'll be important in the short-term. --------------------------------------- FIFA Nations League 4, Group C: We survived an early scare against Mongolia, but then thrashed them with both of the strike pairing grabbing a brace. After a long journey back home, we repeated the scoreline four days later with just as easy a win over St Pierre & Miquelon. After two games we're top of the table, and we're already the only side with a 100% win record. Team Milestones: First win, first clean sheet. Player Milestones: Tjay De Barr is now on 6 goals, and has become the all-time leading scorer. Kelvin Morgan (St. Joseph's, ST, 24 y.o.) and Bernardo Lopes (Lincoln Red Imps, DC, 28 y.o.) both scored their first goals. Kevagn Ronco (Magpies, MRC, 23 y.o.) made his debut. ---------------------------------------

I've been on a break from FM for a few weeks, lost interest in my ongoing games and couldn't get started on any others. The amount of times I l began a new save then quit without even playing a game was ridiculous. But a bit of time in the Skinning forum to find a layout I like, and the Editors forum to look for some outside the box ideas have lit the spark again. --------------------------------------- --------------------------------------- Tiny nation careers are pretty common here, and for good reason. But I don't think I've ever done one before, so it's time to give it a go. I'm using @DaveTheEditor's Gibraltar database from the Around The Globe Megapack. And for a bit of a twist, I'm using @krlenjushka's FIFA Nations League. This replaces all other international competitions. --------------------------------------- Gibraltar start in Group C of the inaugural FIFA League 4 (the seventh, and lowest, tier). The FA expect us to earn promotion, and with the top three going up, I'd like to think I should be able to manage this. --------------------------------------- The FIFA Nations League runs from January to November, whereas the Gibraltan Premier Division doesn't start until October. So for now I'm just managing the national team, but will be looking out for a club side as well in future. In addition to the Gibraltan leagues I also have the English and Spanish leagues playable, plus the top tier from France, Germany, and Italy. I'd like to have more countries turned on (Brazil, USA, Australia, South Africa), but game speed took priority for now. More might be added later. The Chinese league was just activated for the earlier start date, and is now being switched off. ---------------------------------------

Double post.

Righto, thanks. I have a few European leagues active, so should be fine to turn off then.

I've started a save with this now, looks fun. Does China need to stay active for the tournament to work, or was this just for the early start date?