This is me. Well, usually. My successes in Football Manager are few, but they follow a pattern.
New Game > Load 4 or 5 big leagues > Select [Big Team] > Take them to Success!
That may be simplifying it somewhat, my choices of teams over the years have varied massively, and they haven’t always been a huge club and at the top of the tree in their country, but my biggest successes have always been at the biggest clubs.
I love Football Manager for a lot of reasons, but the main one for me is its ability to tell a story. Some of my saves over the years have been great, truly memorable to me, and I now have affinities for clubs, players, and regens that don’t even exist – all because of ‘a bunch of spreadsheets and 22 animated dots’ as my friends describe the game that they can’t understand my attraction and addiction to.
My saves have been great, but they haven’t told a story. This is what I want to change about how I play the game, I have read other people’s adventures for years, and they have been an inspiration the entire time, but never have I really acted on that inspiration. So I’m making changes, but not radical changes. Starting in the bottom division in one of the smaller European nations is a great challenge, but it’s not a save I can commit to right now. So I’m sticking to the familiar, in England, the most realistic starting point for a long-term save.
Another aspect of a long-term save that I have never really addressed is moving clubs. My saves are usually started when a team spark my interest, and therefore I tend to play the save out until another team grab that attention, usually resulting in a new save. This is an aspect I’m keen to improve on, looking for bigger, better, or even just more interesting opportunities within the same save, as that will allow me to develop relationships with players, staff and clubs, providing the story based element that love to see so much in others saves.
So that is the premise of the save that this blog will cover, a lower league English save, with plenty of club to club movement if opportunities present themselves. I don’t like to set rules for my saves, other than the obvious of no editor and no rage quitting, so if I really enjoy my first club I won’t be looking to leave unless it suits, and moving forward I will look at foreign jobs once I reach a certain standing within the game. In terms of the actual blog, it will be more on the informative side, as much as I enjoy storyline aspects I don’t want anything to come across as forced, as I feel the writing will be better this way.
On Twitter earlier today I posted about a change of heart for the team for this save. I had my plans for this yet set from a very early stage, and picked a team that I thought of as a very interesting prospect.
Blyth Spartans – My First Club?
Blyth Spartans are newly promoted into the Vanarama National North, having just won the Northern Premier League. They have a history of great FA Cup ties, with plenty of shocks and a few cruel defeats, and they are an exciting club with a chance to really grow. However, I have no ties to Blyth, they are at the other end of the country to me, I only have a very limited knowledge of one of their players, Jarrett Rivers, and no attachment to the club means that I may struggle to get into the save at a club that I may not enjoy.
So as mentioned, Blyth are a National North side at the opposite end of the country to me, so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I’m a southern boy. More specifically, a very Cornish Cornishman! Therefore, Football Manager does include a club far closer to home, a club I know, a ground I drive past, a side I have seen play.
Truro City – My Local Side
Honestly, managing Truro City has never interested me on Football Manager. I don’t claim to follow non-league football, but I always associate them as a struggling club, possibly down to the financial troubles that plagued the club in 2012-13 causing relegation from the National South, which they actually reached at that point after five promotions in six seasons. However, in real life they actually sit a place outside the playoffs, with games in hand, and look well placed to make a push for promotion, which would mean National League football for the first time in the clubs history.
Truro would offer a closer to home starting point to a semi-realistic save, and therefore would be a more logical choice. My save is loosely based on the premise set out by King Kev (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTAdC3L4oSqEVrqTtZb_xkg) in his incredible Non-League to Legend YouTube series’, where he makes all of his decisions based on the most realistic real life factors, such as where he would live were he to take a new job further from home. I want to incorporate some of these decisions into my save for the year, and therefore starting at a club that play in the city I work in seems like a no-brainer.
Blyth stuck out at me for a reason though, a plucky non league side that have given many a Football League club a right good kicking. They seem like a side that many people will enjoy to manage of this edition of the game, heightened by the fact that I know of saves with Blyth started by Captain Goodspeed (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw2EkHbY5WEGGvtqbCOihJA) on YouTube and a stream save by FM Scout (https://twitter.com/fmscout) who have been announced as Blyth’s official Football Manager Manager.
As I start to wrap up, I guess a summary may not be a bad idea, as at the point of writing this the game officially releases in less than 3 hours and I still don’t know who to manage.
Blyth Spartans
The Pros for Blyth are that they are the club I found to be the most interesting when I had a look through the Vanarama North and South, they have a history that may not be the most successful but definitely full of shocks and underdog tales, and honestly, from a gameplay sense, I’m not sure what else they bring to the table. They’re a newly promoted side, which surely makes the save more of a challenge, but they have nothing more to offer than any other club in their division.
Truro City
Truro offer an obvious pro in that they fit the profile of my starting club under Non-League to Legend rules, in Kev’s words ‘Start with the club closest to your front door.’ Truro’s stadium is just over half an hour from my house, I work in the city of Truro, and therefore they should be my first club. The main con, the reason this post isn’t announcing Truro City as the starting point of my Climbing the Ladder journey, is a point I raised earlier: Interest. My interest in managing Truro City has been existent for about 2 days, since I was chatting through my options with a friend. My worry is that with this save idea being so fresh, I may find that it’s a whim that comes and goes, and I’ll be starting my save grinding through the first couple of seasons, getting bogged down and making no real progress. However, if I enjoy it, this could be a save I replicate year on year.
Honestly, I guess I’ll find out tomorrow who I manage. My next blog will be a ‘My First Day’ kind of post, going through my save set up, my manager, and my first steps before going through pre-season.
Thanks for reading.
Comments