FC United: Red Rebel Rising

Before we begin, I’d like to make an advance apology. Updates to this story are most likely going to be fairly scarce over the next month, on account of me wasting my life away playing Skyrim. I’ll be sure to try and squeeze in some quality Football Manager time, but I’d be lying if I said it was my focus. Hopefully you’ll all understand, and I promise to be back in earnest once the dragons are beaten into submission. Now let us continue with the customary «in character disclaimer»…

When last we left, FC United had just pulled off a miracle survival campaign, in no small part to the Bear’s excellent leadership. Winning a few games is the easy part though, and now came the challenge of building a more stable foundation for the club (doubly challenging when you factor in that bears can’t read). Unfortunately the club may have overstepped its means with the new stadium, and with £3.5 million in loan debt weighing us down, the board pulled a cool £1000 off our wage budget. This left us with only £1600 per week in wages to work with, and we were already well over that. Some serious wheeling and dealing was in our future.

Was I successful? Probably not. We had to dump some pretty decent players for this level, simple due to my predecessor signing them to ridiculous wages (650 a week in one case). I managed to replace most of our outgoings with some similar to slightly lower quality players, and I had to kick a few contracted players onto pay-as-you-play non-contracts. Hopefully that won’t come back to bite us in the arse, but I have a pretty good feeling that it will.

So without further soliloquy, allow me to introduce you to some of the key players that will be suiting up in Rebel red this year:

Kevin Walker, Space Ranger: 

Doesn’t he look like he should be a space ranger? I think he does. Regardless, he’s young, has solid sweeper keeper attributes, and a fabulous faux hawk. What other reason do I need to sign him?

Ghandy «The Enlightened» Hammond:

Did you really think I’d pass on a Gandhi reference? Just like his namesake, this man is an absolute beast. Our defense is easily the strongest part of the squad, and they’re lead by this young Ghanaian.

Jack «The Black» Taylor:

Given our complete lack of funding, you knew there would be a few loanees involved this year. Jack is one of three that participates in the first team on a regular basis, and he’s been pretty useful thus far.

Ben «Little Blondie» Sayer: 

Despite his feminine look, Ben is no pushover. He’s our rock in the midfield, and for that he could look like a turtle and I wouldn’t care.

Tobi «I don’t need a nickname» Sho-Silva

Seriously…when your name is «Sho-Silva», you’re pretty set. He isn’t getting a huge amount of playing time just yet, but he’s a key bench player for us, and I have grand plans for him in the future.

Akwasi «I forgot to take a screenshot» Asanti:

Yeah, I really did forget to take a screenshot of him, so I’ll be sure to post it up in the next update. I actually didn’t realize this was the same guy as in Kevin’s story until a little while ago, but sure enough, it is. Unfortunately he’s not nearly as good for me down in the BSN as he has been for Kevin up in League 2, but he’s still our best striker, and thus gets the starting nod more often than not.

Frankie Raymond:

Dude’s name is Frankie, ’nuff said.

Someone I didn’t sign, but who’s name was too hilarious not to share:

So where did this squad strengthening leave the mighty Rebels? Surely we’d be favorites for promotion after such a wildly successful offseason:

Why you little…

With that lie behind us, let’s take a look at how the preseason friendlies panned out:

Not bad, three solid wins bookended by two losses. The Macclesfield loss was easy to swallow, but being pounded 5-0 by non-playable Farsley hurt a little. Hopefully this wasn’t a prelude to our first set of «real» fixtures…

Ehhh…kinda? I can take going 2-1-1 in the opening month, and we looked fairly good in doing so. Both the Hinckley win and Solihull Moors draw were come-from-behind efforts, so I’m pretty pleased we managed to snag 7 points out of the month. Still, I couldn’t let the squad know that, and was sure to give them a properly bashing after the draw. Did they respond?

Ehh…more or less. They responded with two clean wins before suffering defeat to a far superior Chester side (seriously, we probably should’ve lost that game 20-0). The Corby draw was a bit of a letdown, and Bradford PA actually gave us a far bigger test than the final 2-0 scoreline would suggest.

The October fixtures…I evidently forgot to upload those, but I know I took the screenshot. I’ll be sure to post those in the next update too (I’m writing this at work, by the way, so thus have no access to my save game or the computer on which it is played). Regardless, they looked a lot like September’s results, just without the loss.

So where did this leave us after three full months of play?

Evidently I forgot to take a more current screenshot of the table (damn Skyrim, I really need to pay more attention next update), but this isn’t all that far from accurate. FC Halifax has moved up to second, and we’re sitting third. Stalybridge are still the runaway leaders, and it’ll be tough for anyone to unseat them to be honest. I also noticed this little tidbit:

Clearly Manchester United are already feeling the heat from below, and it’s obviously begun to effect their performances. They’re quaking in their boots in Old Trafford, as they can sense their final hour draw near…

Finally, our finances, for those who have requested it:

Despite the game being convinced we’re heading for financial insolvency, we’re actually doing fairly well for ourselves. We draw in a rather large sum of money from tickets alone, and we can easily afford our 18k per month loan repayments. Still, this hasn’t stopped the board from injecting cash every few weeks, which is certainly further enhancing our bottom line. I guess it has something to do with having a club value of 250k, and a loan debt of 3.5 million?

Anywho, that’s all for this time folks. Apologize for the comparatively poor quality of this update, but you know, Skyrim.