Hi there peeps!
It’s been a while since I last posted and that’s due to a number of things which I was going to bore you with but have decided to simply say this…
…That company sucks! They lie, overcharge, and generally come across as thought they haven’t got a clue what they’re doing! Anyway, moving on. As you may remember from 6 months ago I started a game as Celtic and my plan was to bring you a Celtic story but not my original since the oddest thing ever happened to that.
This man, Martin O’Neill had something to do with it. I had finished my first season with Celtic, winning the SPL (by a landslide, 2 months before the season ended in fact), and the Scottish League Cup, as well as reaching the final of the FA Cup (which I inexplicably lost to Inverness 1-0), and the EURO Cup. The latter of which broke my heart, we played Athletico Madrid, a vastly superior team and it was 2-2 until the 118th minute when Diego Forlan scored the winner, gutted…
Anyway, my second season started and all was going well, top of the league, still in both domestic cups, but back in the EURO Cup since we got knocked out the Champions League thanks to a rubbish performance over 2 legs against Metalist. I wasn’t too bothered though since my team was more likely to progress in the EURO Cup.
Then it happened. One Sunday afternoon I saved my game, turned off the computer and went to my grandma’s house like I do every Sunday. I ate my Sunday dinner (not sure why I’m telling you that, but it was nice in case you were wondering :) ) and came home. I turned on my computer loaded my game and went to click on my squad, but wait a minute, I don’t have a squad button…wait a minute I’m unemployed…wait a minute the game has progressed to December!!! As if Martin O’Neill hadn’t hurt me enough by turning Sunderland back into a force he had somehow managed to replace me in my game without me even knowing. This has never happened to me before and feeling demoralised I have since spent the last 2 months playing FIFA instead.
But all is well now, my internet is sorted, my computer is working (for once), and I’ve decided to bring you a new story from my home town…Newcastle!
Buoyed by how well we’re doing in the league and happy that Demba Ba and Tim Krul are no longer the two most underrated players in FM thanks to the newest update I’ve chosen to be The Magpies.
I know some people are probably thinking «Aaargh! Darren did this last year!» but I can guarantee my story will be different, for one Darren is a much better player than me so my story is probably going to involve a lot less instant success. Anyway let’s get started…
So I joined my life long team and received my first message from our delightful chairman…
I’ve been given a 2 year contract on more money than I expected but to be honest I don’t care what he says, it says I can rely on the full backing of the clubs board but by that he means he’ll sell our good players at the end of each season and give us a fraction of the money to buy replacements, it’s worked this season but won’t every season. It makes you wonder where the rest of the money goes…
…Oh yeah, that’s where! I mean who wouldn’t want a man like that running their football club!
So onto business. As we all know Newcastle have a pretty good starting 11 this season, the problem comes in depth as my squad report proves:
The first line is not the one to worry about, the second and third backup players see a significant decline in quality. For example, it would only take an injury to David Santon to throw my left back position into chaos since on FM Ryan Taylor cant’t play there.
The squad view also illustrates how tiny my team is:
As you can see we have a number of players below the 3 star mark. Starting from the back they include, Steve Harper, Danny Simpson, Dan Gosling, James Perch, Tamas Kadar, Mike Williamson, Ryan Taylor, Sylvain Marveux, Danny Guthrie, Gabriel Obertan, Peter Lovenkrands, and finally Leon Best. While Simpson, Gosling, and Obertan have decent potential the rest simply don’t make the grade but due to lack of funds I cannot replace them so will have to make do.
As for coaching staff that needed a re-shuffle too since a number of them weren’t good enough:
Original Coaching Staff
Cut Down Coaching Staff
As you can see the coaching staff is now a lot thinner than it was and that may continue as I debate whether or not to get a new assistant manager since Carver’s Judging Ability, Potential, and Tactical Knowledge are not great.
As I pondered through a list of potential backroom staff I decided to take a look at the clubs facilities which the coaching staff had to work with:
They’re not great but not terrible. While our training and youth facilities are good enough the junior coaching and youth recruitment is simply not. Along with that we’ve also got a couple of feeder clubs…
They’re not the cream of the crop either and I very much doubt Newcastle will benefit from these teams. Carlisle and Gateshead are just there as support really, we play an annual friendly which they earn money from whereas I’m not too sure what benefit the Swedish team has for us, I can’t imagine we get too many world beaters from them since they’re not even listed as one of the nations better teams. Because of this I decided to request another feeder team, hoping for one from China or the USA but the conversation didn’t go too smoothly until I mentioned money:
AS any Newcastle fan knows, money is all that Mike Ashley cares for, why else would he spit on over 100 years of history to gain a few quid in advertising, which I don’t understand either because it’s his company! Surely that’s like me taking money from my own pocket and putting it into the bank account of a business I own, you haven’t gained anything at all! Grrr!!!
With that little gripe out of the way here’s the clubs finances:
From the moment I joined the club had made a loss for the month and although they have £27million in the bank I can’t imagine that’s going to last past January to be honest. This made me think though, how much money are my players earning, so I took a peek at the wage structure…
We have 6 players marked as key players, and another 6 marked as first team, someone’s going to be disappointed because last time I checked I’m only allowed to play 11 players at a time. So with that major fault in Newcastle’s wage structure starring me in the face I turned to my expectations.
I didn’t expect too much so I can’t say I’m disappointed. I only need a couple of players and I’m confident the loan market can supply me with 1 or 2 also so all in all not too bad as long as I don’t suffer large amounts of injuries.
So that’s that. My first post for almost 6 months! Now I’m off to watch Newcastle beat Swansea (hopefully)!
Thanks for reading!
Johnny Karp
6 апреля, 2012 at 18:14
Welcome back pal and best of luck with Newcastle! We really missed you around here :)
Dan
6 апреля, 2012 at 18:20
Thanks Johnny!
I kind of forced myself not to get into a game on FM because I wanted a story I could right about as I went rather than have to catch up on loads of posts, I’ll probably be a little rusty but that just makes it a more interesting read for you guys I guess :)
celticman
6 апреля, 2012 at 19:05
Glad you are back (as I said on my blog). It is a shame you couldn’t tell us more about your Celtic story, it sounded very interesting. However I enjoyed your old Newcastle story on FMCrowd and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it here again.
Good luck.
Dan
7 апреля, 2012 at 20:14
Thanks Celticman,
I would have posted the Celtic story but it would have meant taking weeks or even months of posting old screenshots to catch up. It would mean spending less time on my comeback story too which would have made it less interesting for you guys.
Hopefully you’ll enjoy this story as much as the last Newcastle one!
Darren Smith
6 апреля, 2012 at 21:06
Welcome back mate, I’m looking forward to this as a fellow fan. Great result today by the way…two chances, two goals, gotta love Cisse!!
P.S. I’m about to move house and get everything through Sky, so hearing your bad experience would be appreciated, what happened? I find it better to be ready for the worst so you can see the early warning signs.
Dan
7 апреля, 2012 at 20:22
Hey Darren,
The result was crazy, we only had 35% of the possession but who needs possession when you’ve got an almost perfect defensive line and Papiss Cisse up front. As we chanted, «Papiss Cisse! He scores when he wants!» :)
As for Sky for a start expect really slow download speeds, I’m talking KBs not MBs, my current speed is 230KB and they say that it goes up but you’ll be lucky to get 2MBs. They just messed us around a lot, they overcharged us three fold and cut us off when my dad refused to pay that amount (£200+ is what they wanted for one month)!
The people over the phone are nice enough its just they make promises and don’t keep them, they said they’d ring back in 3 days, never did, then we had to wait 3 weeks because we had ‘issues’ with our account, then they said they weren’t going to charge the £40 fee for the engineer because of the crap we’d been through, which they then did because they ‘forgot’ to put it on the computer! From the moment my dad rang up to get reconnected it took 2 months to get everything sorted and then they said the engineer didn’t need to come out which begs the question why did we have to pay £40?
I’m sure loads of people have good experience with Sky and I can’t complain about the TV packages but the internet is just not worth the price you pay for it.
Darren Smith
7 апреля, 2012 at 21:22
Yeah it was a great solid display indeed.
Thanks for the info on Sky, I am massive on customer service and tend to see these sorts of problems before they come because of my field but its good to hear your experience. Just crap you had to experience it. I just cross my fingers we don’t have to go through the same but I’ll be keeping one eye on the internet speed from day one.
Dan
7 апреля, 2012 at 23:37
I’m pretty sure you won’t have any problems, just check then double check your bills just in case they overcharge you!
Laxeyman
7 апреля, 2012 at 10:47
Good to see you back Dan! Looks like an interesting story on your hands, Newcastle have some good players, so I reckon you’ll be in for some success :) Good luck!
Dan
7 апреля, 2012 at 20:25
Thanks Laxeyman,
Hopefully I can gain some success since the team is quite strong and even though I don’t get a great amount of money I don’t really think that many positions need strengthened. The loan market will be my friend in this first season. :)
vaibhavc
7 апреля, 2012 at 16:18
Glad to see you back Dan, but I still don’t understand your story…
Dan
7 апреля, 2012 at 20:29
Hey vaibhavc,
I’m just guessing (so correct me if I’m wrong) that it’s what happened with the Celtic story that you don’t understand?
Basically I turned my game on to find that for some bizarre reason I had been sacked and replaced by Martin O’Neill even though when I saved and turned off I was still Celtic. I can only think it was some kind of stupid glitch in the game but who knows…
As for the Sky thing just read the comment I left Darren since that explains everything about why I didn’t blog for ages. But like I said if I’ve explained the wrong thing just leave me another comment :)
vaibhavc
9 апреля, 2012 at 08:03
Yeah the Celtic thing. Now that I understand it, it seems incredibly weird.
Dan
9 апреля, 2012 at 12:37
It is weird. It’s by far the weirdest thing to ever happen to me on any game ever in my life.
Sears
7 апреля, 2012 at 19:26
Good to see you back bud, and good luck with the story! :)
Dan
7 апреля, 2012 at 20:31
Thanks Sears,
I could be slow going to begin with though since I’ve not played FM for a while, I’m a little rusty at the moment! :)
Ana Garcia
7 апреля, 2012 at 19:33
Welcome back!
All I know about Newcastle is what I remember from Darren when he played them last year I think!?
Good luck!! :)
Dan
7 апреля, 2012 at 20:35
Thanks Ana,
Hopefully I’ll be able to create some new memories of Newcastle for you, but basically we have a chairman we all hate, a horrible orange away kit, great strikers, an amazing 52,000 seater stadium, and a bunch of supporters who bleed black and white (including me)! Everything else you’ll pick up on the way :)
Mohammad Sadek
7 апреля, 2012 at 22:12
Welcome Back Dan , you stories are really among the funniest stories posted in this site ..
Dan
7 апреля, 2012 at 22:26
Thanks Mohammad,
I’m glad you liked my story, hopefully I’ll continue to amuse you and everyone else as I write :)
Martin - F.M.J.S
8 апреля, 2012 at 00:40
Welcome back Dan I look forward to your story :D
Dan
8 апреля, 2012 at 13:00
Thanks Martin,
Glad to be back! :)
Bence Répási
8 апреля, 2012 at 21:25
Hi Dan!
It’s good to see that you writing again. I really enjoyed your Celtic story and i believe this will be at least so great. Good luck for your first season!
Dan
8 апреля, 2012 at 21:27
Thanks Bence,
Hopefully this story will be even better than any of my others, I find it easier to put that extra effort in when I’m playing as the club I support!
saltwater
9 апреля, 2012 at 01:35
This should be an interesting story, so good luck (although you may not need it)
Some of the players in that squad seem incredibly underated, so hopefully the loan market can bring what you need. And shame about your Celtic story, seemed very bizzare as to what happened and as a Newcastle fan I’m sure you hate Martin O’Neill even more now as he turned around the Black Cats!
Dan
9 апреля, 2012 at 12:40
I think Danny Simpson is the most underrated player in the squad now since Ba has been updated. I don’t really mind Sunderland doing well as long as we’re doing better :) so as far as I’m concerned they can have Martin O’Neill, we’re the ones going to Europe! It makes for more interesting derbies too and makes it even more satisfying if we destroy them when they’re not doing crap.
saltwater
9 апреля, 2012 at 20:59
Sorry mate, I just don’t think this is the Toon Army’s season, Tottenham or Chelsea for forth. Understand what you’re saying about the derbies, if both teams are on a high than the match is normally much more interesting, not to mention the atmostphere of the game. I would love to go to a tyne-wear derby!
Dan
10 апреля, 2012 at 12:25
Tyne-Wear derbies are epic, even if you’re not in the stadium you just need to find a bar somewhere to soak up the atmosphere. As for Europe I think we’ve got a much better chance than people are giving us credit for, and maybe not 4th but 5th place Europa League (or 6th depending on the outcome of the FA Cup) would do nicely too.
CsAtlantis
9 апреля, 2012 at 04:52
Oh well Dan at least there is the goal machine that is Papiss Cisse, and the rest of the first eleven looks sturdy with Coloccini, S.Taylor, Tiote, Cabaye, Gutierrez and the upgraded Ba
Simpson feels a bit underrated though, on the other hand at least Obertan has some potential and once Ben Arfa comes back he should do well
How is Adam Campbell rated in the game?
Nice win at Swansea by the way
Dan
9 апреля, 2012 at 12:44
Hey CsAtlantis,
The first eleven is pretty good and Simpson is way underrated, I don’t understand why they’ve taken the potential he had in earlier patches away from him?
As for Obertan I can’t really look past his real life performances and let’s just say I find it difficult to trust him out there on the wing. I’ll post Campbell’s report and profile on my next post either today or tomorrow and the win at Swansea was great even though it was probably one of the most boring games ever!
TheZiggy
9 апреля, 2012 at 18:36
Good to see you back, and really bizarre that Martin O’Neill replaced you totally out of the blue. That’s one hell of a kick in the teeth.
Will be interesting to see how Newcastle play in-game compared to real life. After all the complaints everyone was hearing about fat Ashley before the season started, I don’t think anyone was expecting this to happen.
With any company where you suffer problems like you’ve had with Sky, the best idea is to contact the CEO’s office. I did that a couple of years back with BT, and a problem I’d been suffering for a year was finally fixed properly. Until I did that, I’d had lots of mysteriously cancelled or no-show appointments, or when they did appear, they didn’t test the properly. My parents also sorted out a properly with Virgin by writing to Richard Branson. Amazing what can be achieved by taking things to the top. ;)
Dan
9 апреля, 2012 at 18:44
I’m not expecting to do as well as Newcastle are doing in real life (be great if I did though) but yeah it’s been a great achievement on Pardew’s part but until fat Mike stops defecating all over the history of our club by using our stadium as a shop window he’ll still be hated up here. Changing the name of St. James’ Park is unforgivable…
As for the Sky thing it’s completely sorted now so hopefully it never happens again, and next time I’ll remember that, «just go straight to the top!» :)
George Liley
10 апреля, 2012 at 13:41
Doesen’t Forlan play for Inter? So how did he score against you for Atlético?
Dan
10 апреля, 2012 at 13:45
Hmm, good point, I’m sure it was him. Might not have been though, 6 months is a long time to remember something like that. The important thing was I lost though, I definitely remember getting beat and I know it was the 118th minute when they scored because I was gutted…
George Liley
10 апреля, 2012 at 13:51
Fair enough. I’ve had it happen to me before when I played Swansea in the FA Cup Final. Rory Delap ruined my Quadruple with Liverpool in the 119th minute! Gut wrenching
John
11 апреля, 2012 at 09:48
Great post Dan can’t wait to see how this one goes. Big arsenal fan but really enjoy watching Newcastle this season! What are you expecting from the first season?
Dan
11 апреля, 2012 at 16:34
Glad you liked it John!
I’m going to outline my goals at the end of my next post which I’m actually writing right now, who says men can’t multi-task! But yeah, Newcastle have been a revelation this season and hopefully we’ll keep it going. :)
Dan
11 апреля, 2012 at 17:10
Me again John. Just finished my post and forgot to outline my plans so I may as well give you a personal audience :)
Basically my first season I’m aiming for my media expectation, 7th or above.
Season 2-3 I want Europe, whether that be Europa or Champions League depends on whether or not Mike Ashley puts his hand in his pocket.
Season 4 I haven’t even thought about yet but I’m going to promote my youth system as much as possible to create as many home grown talents as possible.
That’s as much thought as I’ve given it really…