So, here we go again! After the unexpected triumph in League Two last season the Blyth Spartans prepare for a brand new challenge: surviving in League One! My Football Manager 2009 story has been entirely successful until now, we won consecutive promotions from Blue Square North, Blue Square Premier and League Two. Could we be in for another surprise next season? Honestly I don’t really now what to expect, we shall see…
Anyway, the board offered me a new three year contract and they were delighted that I accepted the offer, there were several rumors linking my name to dozens of League One teams. I’m a true Spartan now, there’s no way I could leave the club!
I told them that we could achieve a top half place at the end of the season but that didn’t increase my transfer budget, a lousy 16,000 euro! The annual wage budget that the board offered wasn’t too rich either, only 1.3 million euro. Well, I guess I have to find cheap or free players again, I’m beginning to get used to that :(
First of all I tried to clear some of the wage budget, so I sold 8 players for a total amount of 140,000 euro. Unfortunately only 15% of that went back into my transfer budget but I felt that the wages were more important.
I sold my goalkeeper, Martin Hansen, because I found a couple of better keepers for free. His sale was a new record for the club, beating the previous all time record set back in 1980 when striker Les Mutrie was sold to Hull for 35,000 euro!
I brought in 13 players instead, most of them on free transfers. Only 9 of these players will play for the first team next season, the rest of them are promising youngsters that I’ll probably send out on loan to get some experience.
The most important transfer was Sandor Vaida, a Hungarian left winger. He wasn’t found by my scouts, I knew him from my previous game, the Chester game, when I brought him back when we were playing in League One and I kept him in my squad until the biggest success in my career, the Champions League Final against Barcelona. He’s a good hard working winger and he will be one of the best players in my team, I’m sure about that.
The goalkeeper that will replace Martin Hansen is Slovakian Under 21 international Filip Mentel. I’ve been following him for a couple of years and now his contract with Swindon finally ended, so I signed him for free. He grew up with Manchester City and I have faith in his ability, he can be one of the best keepers in League One at the end of the season.
I needed a good centre back for the better strikers in League One and my scout in Spain provided a good target: Daniel Sanchez Ayala from Real Sociedad «B». He was a Liverpool player at the beginning of his career, now he has the chance to prove that he has what it takes to make it in England.
And now the cherry on top of the cake, a regen Japanese player! I can’t send my scouts out of Europe and that’s why I’m constantly browsing through the national teams in Asia, Africa or South America for cheap good players. When I saw that this player is already playing in the Japanese senior team at the age of 18 I began following his progress. He has played 15 games for the national team and scored three goals so far! His contract with a Japanese club was expiring in December 2011, so I contacted the player and he signed a contract with us! He will join the club on the 1st of January 2012, I really hope he’ll be a big hit with the fans. And I also hope that he can make a big progress as his abilities are quite high for an 18 year old.
But there’s a lot to do until January. First, the friendly games before the season. With all the new players in my squad I had quite bad results in the friendly games, 3 wins and 2 defeats, and we generally played modestly. I guess we’ll get better once the new players will adapt.
As always, everybody is predicting that we will have a long painful season. And, as always, the media predict that we will finish… 24th out of 24 teams! Yea, I heard that before ;)
I have 23 players in my first team squad for the new season and my assistant manager thinks that we have enough squad depth to face the challenges in League One.
I was just preparing to wrap up the pre season, all the friendly games were played, I bought the players I needed, sold the ones I didn’t need anymore… We were again about 200K above the annual wage budget, I couldn’t do anything about that. I didn’t want to make any more signings but when one of my scouts told me about this Irish regen striker I just couldn’t say no. His name is Christian Short, he’s 19, and I believe that he’s a very, very, promising youngster. I couldn’t resist the temptation and I signed him, I hope that he will prove that I was right :)
That’s about it, my fourth season is beginning. What do you say, will we be capable of another miracle?
Ahmed Shah
13 июля, 2009 at 19:11
Ok, start to the season, mate. Found any parent club ? Best of luck for the start of the season !
I wanted to ask another thing. I’ve tried LOTS of times to download or install Football Manager 2009 and I’ve always failed. I bought it from my local CD store but it didnt have the Serial Key with it. I tried downloading it from a torrent a guy suggested to me and almost succeeded too but had some problem with the Crack file or something. Can you help me, mate ? Give me links, if you can, give me instructions, I want to play this game, bro….
JohnnyKarp
13 июля, 2009 at 19:47
Damn, I forgot to write about the parent club thing again… My board didn’t find any suitable parent club, so I was stuck with Middlesbrough. And after I tried to get on loan every single player in their reserve team and didn’t succeed I got angry and I terminated the link with Boro. I’ll ask the board to find a new parent club in January.
I bought my copy of the game through Steam and paid for it through PayPal but I guess you can pay by credit card. I see that the price is still around what I paid for it, 45 euro. Here’s the link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/10540/
After you pay for it the game will be downloaded, installed with the latest updates and then you can finally play.
If you bought a legal copy you should contact SiGames support, they must give you an activation key or something.
Lye Kuek Hin
14 июля, 2009 at 03:40
Think you have made some fantastic signings there, I had signed 2 players in my Vauxhall game whom i think they can perform very well in league 1. One is Sean Morrison, a central defender and the other is David Obua, attacking midfielder wondering where they are in your game?
I also bought my game through steam, are we able to play the game offline?
Ahmed Shah
14 июля, 2009 at 08:34
The guy who told me to download FM from a Torrent is the owner of Soccerlens and he didnt say anything about having to pay, though. I was very close to installing it too, just had some problem in Crack and then didnt know what to do. Game was close to being successfully downloaded, and without paying too, through Torrents.
JohnnyKarp
14 июля, 2009 at 08:50
Sean Morrisson is playing for Swindon in my game but I don’t think he’s better than the centre backs I currently have. Obua is an impressive player indeed, he plays for Cardiff in my game, they just bought him for 130K from Angers. Obviously, my Blyth club don’t have that kind of money, but I added him to my shortlist. About Steam, I’m playing my game offline, after completing the activation I only played offline. I just run the file that is located on my PC on the following path: G:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\football manager 2009\fm.exe
Ahmed, torrents and cracks are a whole different thing. I prefer buying the games I like and not having problems with cracks and all that.
andrei_v enom
15 июля, 2009 at 21:21
hey mate, remember me? i was trying the same thing you are with Havant & Waterlooville FC, I made it to league one also but i haven’t been able to post in a while because i had exams…you know..BAC and now i am on vacation until the end of the summer…check out George Daly, i’m not sure if he is any good in your game but i bought him since Blue Square South and he developed into my top goalscorer..give Mikkel Jensen from Charlton Reserves (?) he is the top AM in my squad.
P.S. good to see another Romanian so passionate about this game
P.P.S. just to refresh your memory http://footballmanagerstory.blogspot.com/ and sorry for the long post
andrei_venom
15 июля, 2009 at 21:22
i will update the info as soon because it is very old, i am now in League One ;)
JohnnyKarp
15 июля, 2009 at 21:34
Hey mate, hope your exams went well. Good to see you back, good luck with the game and keep us posted.
Dave
16 июля, 2009 at 01:43
Hey Johnny
Another nice result mate on promotion. Looking good for the spartans however i think the board are gonna have to dish out a bit of cash if they want to succeed. Problem you will face will be if you start getting big bids for players and the board become greedy and take the cash.
@Ahmed Shah: This game is a bitch with the crack mate so your best getting it from a store as you can get all updates plus the copy bouncing around the net has some features restricted. Give the DL from Steam a miss though, they are way overpriced (try Ebay but only get brand new and sealed, no seconds)and there are alot of people that experience problems with the Activation when going through Steam.
JohnnyKarp
16 июля, 2009 at 09:53
Hello Dave, thanks for the comment. So far the board didn’t interfere with the transfer bids for my players but I think that the danger you are describing is quite possible. We’ll see in the January transfer window…
curt-koz
18 июля, 2009 at 15:58
cud u post it up for download please so i can look at it ?
JohnnyKarp
18 июля, 2009 at 16:31
Curt, what exactly do you want to download?