Dan: I’m Back…Eventually!

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!