Life in Football Manager

The town of St Helens is situated between the major cities Liverpool and Manchester and has never been famous for it’s talents on a football field. Instead the town has been more popular due to their glass making skills, fat and loud comedian Johnny Vegas and hogging the sporting success has been St Helen Rugby League FC who in their history have proven the best in the world playing with the odd shaped ball.

But one man is here to change all that, Roman Abramovich the Russian with a short attention span recently left Chelsea leaving them with a massive debt, getting bored by the football they were constantly playing as the team started become scared of losing. Instead Roman has gone out in search of a new challenge, one that will see him with full control of a club having the opportunity to start a club from scratch and propelling them to greatness. This side that he has bought up will be St Helens Football Club, why the Billionaire choose this large town in Merseyside is anyone’s guess.

The first purchase that Roman made was to buy up Knowsley Road, a ground in a poor state considering it has one of the best rugby teams at home there. Bit of random trivia about Knowsley Road: Former Liverpool star Danny Murphy was the first footballer to ever score a goal at the ground. Buying up the ground gave St Helens RLFC to move on to a new better home while Roman knocked the stadium down rebuilding it into a state of the art 40,000 seater stadium ready for his new side.

Now we have a club and a ground for these guys to play, it is now time to get them in a league. Abramovich hasn’t got time to spend watching his new side rise through the leagues, instead he wants instant top level football. Using his Russian Mafia connections who were enforced to put pressure on the Premier League bosses, he was able to debunk Derby County back to the Championship allowing room for his newly formed side.

Now I have been given the job to put together a club from nothing, no players, no coaches, scouts or physios nothing. Roman has been cautious though in his venture and only laid down £80,000,000 to bring in a whole host of players. In the short term it will be about putting together a young squad that will be able to play together for years to come but ensure survival in the Premiership. Once the players are in and we have something to play football with on the pitch it will be about bringing in a team of coaches to take the club forward and forming links with other clubs across the world to ensure the long term safety of the newest club in England.

Finding the players for the club was a tough task, with such a lower reputation the majority of my targets all refused to talk about contracts. So it was a lot of frustrated bids going in to find out that the players really don’t want to arrive in our town. But with the transfer window is now over I am glad to say that I have been able to put a small squad of players together ready for the new Premiership season.

Goalkeepers

Asmir Begovic (20) - Nationality: Canadian - Transferred from: Portsmouth (£1.8 million)
Preston Edwards (17) - English - Millwall (£800k)
Sebastian Saja (28) - Argentinian - San Lorenzo (£7.25 million)

Defenders

Gonzalo Pineda (24) - Mexian - Chivas (£2.5 million)
Jay DeMerit (27) - American - Watford (£4.4 million)
Simon Kjaer (18) - Danish - FC Midtjylland (£1.2 million)
Jeremy Mathieu (23) - French - Toulouse FC (£7.5 million)
Darijo Srna (25) - Croatian - Shakhtar (£7.5 million)
Joe Mattock (17) - English - Leicester (£2.4 million)

Midfielders

Sebastian Larsson (22) - Swedish - Birmingham (£3.3 million)
Adrian Ropotan (21) - Romanian - Dinamo Bucharest (£750k)
Giles Barnes (19) - English - Derby County (£7 million)
Lubos Kalouda (20) - Czech Republican - Brno (£4 million)
Renato Augusto (19) - Brazilian - Flamengo (£9.5 million)
Arouca (21) - Brazilian - Fluminense (£7.75 million)
Diego Buonanotte (19) - Argentinan - River (£1.2 million)
Nikas Barkoth (15) - Swedish - IFK Goteborg (£350k compenstation)
Marko Marin (18) - German - Gladbach (£800k)

Forwards

Andrey Arshavin (26) - Russian - Zenit Petersburg (£9 million)
Bogdan Stancu (20) - Romanian - Unirea Urziceni (£2.5 million)
Vagner Love (23) - Brazilian - CSKA Moscow (£9 million)
Andrea Russotto (19) - Italian - Treviso (£2.2 million)
Billy Sharp (21) - English - Sheffield United (Loan)

Spending in total reached £93 million after messing around with the wage budget.

Average age of the squad is 21 and the wage bill comes to £306, 251 per week.

It looks a decent squad and one that should be able to see out a Premiership season, what is most needed though is more depth in the defence the only area of the field that really troubles me at the moment, it has plenty of youth and many of the players should see a long career at St Helens FC, in my first year it will be all about gelling these players together that won’t happen overnight, usually around 12 games before they are used to playing on the pitch together, so I am not expecting instant results with ever player new to each other. Alot of these players as well are young and inexperienced and not all ready for the big time, hopefully raw talent will show through ensuring Premiership saftey, the great thing of having such a low reputations means we also have low expectations.

The first few games of the season were played with Preston Edwards as the search for a decent goalkeeper to start of the season proved futile until I managed to capture Saja. Wigan were the first to arrive at Knowlsey Road and in a close game Vagnar Love proved the difference grabbing the winner in a 2-1 win. Arshavin becoming the first player to score at Knowsley Road’s new stadium. But in the freaky way that FM works, next up was Liverpool, Chelsea and United all grabbed large victories before the final game of the month which came at home to Sunderland in the League Cup. A game dominated by St Helens and most notably hatrick hero Andrey Arshavin who is quickly becoming a hero. Sebastian Larsson finished the game with a goal as St Helens reached the 3rd round 4-1.