25th June - 18th December
One of the best parts of video games is being able to share the stories that you create. People love hearing about crazy adventures, weird bugs and ridiculous purchases. When given freedom it is amazing to see what people choose to do. How about my friend who tries to sign as many West Ham players to whatever his FM team is. Andy Carroll at Barcelona anyone?! Or how about another friend who aims to make 50 consultants on each Theme Hospital level?
With that in mind, I wanted to create a series that charts my gaming stories, as I would normally tell my friends. The best place to start? Football Manager 2019. I like to sign many players and tend to change clubs semi regularly so it should keep things interesting. Well that’s the plan anyway!
And who to start with? A team not so small so that no one recognises it. Nor one too big that there is zero room for growth and change. I took a lead from my parents and picked their club, Burnley FC. Hence ´Conquer The Turf (Moor)´. Last winning the English League in the 1960 (the year after was Tottenham's last league win...) and having just made a European spot last season it seemed the perfect side to take over. Plenty of room to improve them and a very tricky challenge, what did I have to lose? Apart from my dignity.... which has been AWOL since Reading Festival in 2009.
(Side note, obviously in this game you can start as manager of any club, which is unrealistic in real life. So let us just pretend I won the job at a tombola. I have mad raffle skills.)
Little did I know what I was getting myself into, one of the wildest and most interesting playthroughs I have done in years. 11 months is a long time in football....
Burnley
For a team that came 7th last season I am shocked at how badly the squad has been rated in this years game. From the looks of the stats they are massively underrated which is peculiar. This is compounded by the fact the chairman wants mid table AND the knockout stages of the Europa League. Fucking insane expectations. I don’t know if the stats were nerfed in v19.2 but they are nowhere near good enough to make either of these. Sean Dyche, the actual Burnley manager is a genius for getting the team to punch massively above their weight.
Still I am game for the challenge and there is a lot to like in this team. Also I am pretty sure he doesn’t play matches while drunk. Still from the outside it seems like an extremely well run club so I am sure something good can happen.
From a first glance, they have a great defence, backed up with three English keepers! Must be a record at this level? Sadly the front line consists of some slow target men. I could get some family members advice on the players but I am a lone wolf! Got to my own way. A sensible start would be to use their actual real life tactics of keeping games low scoring and hoping to nick a winner. Not the easiest on the eye but intelligent and solid enough tactics that get results. Why break what is already fixed?
You start with some really shitty injuries to Defour, Heaton and Pope who are all first team. Well they would be if it were legal to play two goalkeepers. Great start! Still it’s like any other FM game you could play. Burney signed the calamitous Joe Hart prior to my arrival to flap around the goal much to my dismay. Remember when he was good 7 years ago? Ugh. So painful to pick him but needs must. The rest of the squad is full of solid English players, it feels like a proper team from the 1970s. Maybe a little on the slow side but there is plenty to get pumped about. Guðmundsson is the most exciting foreign player, a tricky winger who I would come to depend upon. The team is not totally balanced for my tactics but I can remedy that. They even have Aaron Lennon! I didn’t realise I was managing a Lancashire retirement home.
Transfers were key and having 15 mill to spend left me with few options. I doubt any of the top 6 would spend that little on a single player. Therefore, I went with some bargains from South America. Well-travelled winger Javier Aquino for £1.9mill was basically theft on my part. Pace up front was required so £6mill on Josef Martinez was a calculated gamble. Finally, the most exciting signing was Jonathon dos Santos for a mere £5.5mil. He should hopefully change my midfield from hard workers to artists.
With a fourth striker on the books, I needed to get rid of one. Sam Vokes was the sacrifice for 9 mill with Anders Lingaard joining him at Torino for 150k. As they loved my players so much I begged them to take Hart back to no avail. They are obviously not that stupid. As for Burnley's squad, more changes are needed but I don't have the funds to do much else. Best to wait until Christmas, see what change I can find down the back of the sofa and take a few more punts!
To the tactics. Favouring a 451 with wingers trying to convert Aquino to RW and Guðmundsson to LW, aiming for quick low crosses to Martinez. Cautious play with hitting fairly long balls wide, the main aim was to keep the structure and basically not lose. I hate losing. Let's avoid that please. The tactics are not very interesting or even desirable but this is not the biggest club so expectations are setting accordingly. Evolution will come soon enough.
Pre-season has a mixed bag of matches with a win, loss and a draw against rubbish opposition. Much too quickly do the Europa League matches start, though they should be a great way to get match fit. I needed to beat 'real life Burnley' and qualify for the ´Euro Cup´ which, weirdly, I did with ease. #specialone A shaky 3-1 aggregate win over Shamrock Rovers followed by two routs of 6-1 over Ventspils and Brøndby. 5 goals in both home matches led me to believe we were going to score a fuck load in the league. How wrong I would turn out to be. Still we qualified and the reward? Bayer Leverkusen, Braga and Vidi. Ugh. That is going to be as hard as fuck.
The opening game is a drab 1-0 victory over the hapless Huddersfield, none of my new signings settling in very well. A draw at Southampton was sandwich by two hammerings from Man United (2-0) and Liverpool (4-1). The top six were not going to be kind this season, though these first set of league matches were with the second string as I prioritised Europe. Once we made the group stage we beat Watford 1-0 to put us back on track. 10th at this stage was perfect though the Goals For column only had 5 in it, just a goal a game. The flaws were obvious but not the way to solve them. Firing blanks as always...
Finally entering Europe for real was a great feeling for about 15 seconds and then we played some matches. Shit about describes it. The first three group games had us sitting on 3rd with only 2 points. We barely drew with bloody Vidi! A team that cost about as much as a packet of crisps and a rusty spoon! It looked beyond hopeless, requiring results against all of the teams to scrape through. We don't score so how was it even going to happen?
You could argue that it was correcting a mistake but I see it as a moment of ingenious thinking. Ashley ‘Barnsey’ Barnes was reintroduced to the first team as the main Striker and he actually started scoring. Vidi were knocked aside 2-0 as we should have done in the previous encounter. Then two 1-0 wins against Bayer and Braga sent Burnley through top of the group! A ridiculous turnaround, completely against the odds. We only had one shot on target against Braga who hammered us yet it went our way. Also shout out to the defence which is turning out to be amazing. Bring on the knockout stage!
The League Cup journey was pretty depressing, an away 0-0 win on penalties against Bolton followed up with a 2-2 penalties win against Wigan. Even lower league teams were a match for the second string 11. Weirdly my rating was still high with the board and fans. Not quite sure how, though no pubs have yet been named after me....
Next up? Nottingham Forest, continuing the run against Championship teams. So I fancied a nice win on pens again....
As for the League results were all over the place. We managed to convincingly beat Arsenal away 2-0, which would have major repercussions later in the season only to follow it up and lose to Wolves 2-0 at home. It's not like we could regularly beat the big boys, we shipped 5 against Chelsea and 4 against Manchester City without reply. I have no idea how football fans put up with this in real life, fair play to them all. At least the club is locally owned and people of all walks can still attend. Not some overpriced despot owned super club...
Still 6 points from safety there wasn’t a worry of relegation but 15th was a sackable position. Thankfully the result of the season so far was a 6-2 demolishing of Everton with a Barnesy hat trick. Even Lennony scored!! Considering we went 1-0 down, four second half goals killed the game. Actual attacking play that made us look dangerous on every attack! Nice change of pace but let's not delude ourselves. It's a one off.
(On a side note it seems all the real life nicknames of players just end with a Y. Popey, Corky… Just call me hospy!)
After 17 league games I had only won 5, drawing 4 and lost 8. A -14 goal difference was bad but only scoring 18 was ridiculous! Luckily Cardiff, Fulham and Huddersfield were performing are even worse than us, keeping those bottom three slots busy. As I assume they will do in real life. So far it's not been pretty but there has been excitement and handily we are turning into a bit of a cup team. Knowing we wouldn't win the Europa a glamour team opponent was wanted and received in the shape of 2009 winners, Shakhtar Donetsk. Bring it on!
January is fast approaching, I begin to panic about how to turn this team around. Little money for signings (only 13 million and 27k on wages). Very few decent players are available, the wages being the hardest thing to get round. Sales could work but most are financially out of reach for teams lower down the leagues who my players would compliment. It’s so much harder to sell in winter. On top of that my first 3 signings had hardy set the world alight, could I be trusted this time around?
There were 14 days to work out what the fuck I should be doing. I was still in four competitions, actually fancied my chances winning one of them. But then there is an email and I find myself borrowing my brothers suit to head south down to London for an interview that really wasn't expected.....
Comments