Football Manager 2013

[Plymouth Gull]

First season up in League One = SUCCESS!

Somehow managed to fly straight through, as we finished 2nd, two points behind winners Wycombe. Certainly very unexpected, we aren't ready for the Championship but I'll give it a shot. A negative is that we've had to leave Plainmoor for a year while they make it all seater (whilst keeping the capacity at 6500), and we've gone down to Home Park for a year. Bit disappointing really, was hoping they'd either expand Plainmoor or start on a new ground.

[Plymouth Gull]

Quick recap of this:

12/13 - League 2 - 13th
13/14 - League 2 - 6th (Lost in playoffs)
14/15 - League 2 - 2nd
15/16 - League 1 - 2nd
16/17 - Championship - 18th
17/18 - Championship - 20th
18/19 - Championship - 5th after 18/19 games.

So yeh, we survived in the Championship. Last season was a struggle though, the board cut my budget because of the building of Torquay Stadium (15000 all seater) which is effectively making the Plainmoor redevelopment pointless. Ah well. But yeah, in our final season at Plainmoor we're flying. 3 points off top, I can't believe how well we're doing. Fully expect the year to tail of in the final months though, but finishing in the top half would be a good return, and a solid platform to build on for next year.

[NA Gull]

Anyone playing the FM14 beta? I think it is a good step up from FM13 and can't wait until it gets released on Thursday. Day off work and starting the dafuge challenge from the forums.

[stevegull]

Dafuge challenge? What is this?

Getting the game on Thursday hopefully and will be reviewing it for WMN. Hopefully it's as good as you say it is as I am a HUGE Football Manager fan.

[NA Gull]

It is where you take a club that are currently unplayable in the game to Champs league and Premiership glory. Basically you holiday for a season and then take over a club newly promoted to the Blue Square South or North. I have tried in the last few versions with Whitby, Ilkeston, Weymouth, Bath, St. Albans with no luck. It has a cult following on the Challenges forum on the SI forums below. You may need to register to access if you haven't already done so.

http://community.sigames.com/index.php

[Plymouth Gull]

Indeed. I tried it on fm13. Chose Welling, finished bottom of the BSS with a GD of about -70 and 30 points. Mad.

I'm going to have two saves to start with on 14, a TUFC save and a game where I try to win every cup in the UK. 36 in total so it should take a while. Only thing is I'm unsure whether to start unemployed and go from there or start at a club. Hmm.

[GazTheGull]

I downloaded an update for fm13 which meant I had down to tier 9 available; easier way to try the challenge.

Started with Bideford and went unbeaten for quite a while (and FA Cup 4th round qualifying) and then lost 12 games in a row and got sacked.

First thing I'm doing when I wake up tomorrow is going on FM14 and starting my Torquay save. Plan is to try to get hammered but still make it feel like we've won.

[stevegull]

Ah, sounds like fun.

I set myself the challenge on FM13 of starting in a European league with one of the lowest reputations and trying to see how quickly I could work my way to Champions League glory. I could swap clubs or just try and build one but I had to do it as quickly as possible.

I started in Northern Ireland Division Two (which is actually like the third division in NI) with Moyola Park. I won promotion in my first season and then mid-table in Div One in my second season. However, as my club was completely amateur - I was unable to even offer part-time contracts, only non-contracts - I couldn't really progress much further than mid-table in Div One. I left with a heavy heart after my second season with the mighty Moyola Park.

I signed up with a newly-promoted BSS team in Carshalton town. My budget was extremely ropey but I managed to nab a striker who JUST scored me enough goals to stay in the league. I left after only one season and signed up with recently-relegated Dartford who were going to be playing in the BSS for the coming season.

I won promotion at a canter and had some amazing goalscorers in the side. Ryan Doble I think was my main man. Also Tom Bradshaw knew where the net was on his season-long loan.

I signed up some French players (a favourite hobby of mine) for my assault on BSP and nipped into the play-offs at the first attempt and won promotion. I was fairly shocked as I had an incredibly porous defence and this was my first EVER FM play-off success.

League Two was a tad more challenging as much of my squad had started with me in BSS and simply couldn't step up. Ryan Doble 'did a Tim Sills' and just couldn't score in the Football League to save his life so I was scraping the barrel a bit looking for decent loan strikers and aging free agents. Finished solidly mid-table in League Two, I was fairly pleased.

My next season in League Two got off to a flyer for some unknown reason. My patented brand of Hoof Ball was working wonders and even a loan spell for former Torquay man Mamadou Sow couldn't stop my men from scoring. I eventually sneaked into the third promotion slot but was seriously worried about my prospects for League One.

I shouldn't have been. With a bit more ruthless chopping of the squad and saying goodbye to the sentimental value of many of my BSS 'heroes' I found room in my budget for a few really decent loanees and defenders. Goal were never a problem I just needed to find some defender who didn't fancy tripping over the ball. I got promoted in the first season via the playoffs and was really quite shocked.

My board (for the first time in this game!) actually gave me a transfer budget in my first season in the Championship. The princely sum of £20k. Naturally, I slammed all that over to wages and tried to sign me an aging Bobby Zamora. Zam didn't fancy the challenge and my low reputation was hurting my prospects of signing anyone who could kick a ball. So I decided I would be the kind of manager who stuck by the men that got him promoted (not my first option!) and really struggled. Loan spells helped me out a lot and a fortunate link up with Arsenal helped me get some great loan players to help lift me off the foot of the table and onto the ankle of the table. I survived. But Tom Bradshaw didn't. He was the last stake of my BSS days and waved goodbye without really notching from League One upwards.

I started the next season better, with the board giving me about £500k to spend. I nabbed a few Czech youngsters and some other released youth players and started to build a nice little team. I was about 10th in the table in mid-November when recently relegated Reading came calling. At first I didn't want to entertain the idea of leaving my Dartford men in white. But with the promise of £50million to spend in the Championship with a team that was already higher than my beloved Dartford I had to go. I did my best to destroy the Dartford team I had built by taking some wonderkids with me for tiny fees because Dartford are a small club. I got promoted in this season with Reading and kind of stopped playing after that.

So yeah. That was quite fun writing, even if nobody reads it!

[WestLondonYellow]

I downloaded an update for fm13 which meant I had down to tier 9 available; easier way to try the challenge.

Started with Bideford and went unbeaten for quite a while (and FA Cup 4th round qualifying) and then lost 12 games in a row and got sacked.

First thing I'm doing when I wake up tomorrow is going on FM14 and starting my Torquay save. Plan is to try to get hammered but still make it feel like we've won.

[WestLondonYellow]

Ah, sounds like fun.

I set myself the challenge on FM13 of starting in a European league with one of the lowest reputations and trying to see how quickly I could work my way to Champions League glory. I could swap clubs or just try and build one but I had to do it as quickly as possible.

I started in Northern Ireland Division Two (which is actually like the third division in NI) with Moyola Park. I won promotion in my first season and then mid-table in Div One in my second season. However, as my club was completely amateur - I was unable to even offer part-time contracts, only non-contracts - I couldn't really progress much further than mid-table in Div One. I left with a heavy heart after my second season with the mighty Moyola Park.

I signed up with a newly-promoted BSS team in Carshalton town. My budget was extremely ropey but I managed to nab a striker who JUST scored me enough goals to stay in the league. I left after only one season and signed up with recently-relegated Dartford who were going to be playing in the BSS for the coming season.

I won promotion at a canter and had some amazing goalscorers in the side. Ryan Doble I think was my main man. Also Tom Bradshaw knew where the net was on his season-long loan.

I signed up some French players (a favourite hobby of mine) for my assault on BSP and nipped into the play-offs at the first attempt and won promotion. I was fairly shocked as I had an incredibly porous defence and this was my first EVER FM play-off success.

League Two was a tad more challenging as much of my squad had started with me in BSS and simply couldn't step up. Ryan Doble 'did a Tim Sills' and just couldn't score in the Football League to save his life so I was scraping the barrel a bit looking for decent loan strikers and aging free agents. Finished solidly mid-table in League Two, I was fairly pleased.

My next season in League Two got off to a flyer for some unknown reason. My patented brand of Hoof Ball was working wonders and even a loan spell for former Torquay man Mamadou Sow couldn't stop my men from scoring. I eventually sneaked into the third promotion slot but was seriously worried about my prospects for League One.

I shouldn't have been. With a bit more ruthless chopping of the squad and saying goodbye to the sentimental value of many of my BSS 'heroes' I found room in my budget for a few really decent loanees and defenders. Goal were never a problem I just needed to find some defender who didn't fancy tripping over the ball. I got promoted in the first season via the playoffs and was really quite shocked.

My board (for the first time in this game!) actually gave me a transfer budget in my first season in the Championship. The princely sum of £20k. Naturally, I slammed all that over to wages and tried to sign me an aging Bobby Zamora. Zam didn't fancy the challenge and my low reputation was hurting my prospects of signing anyone who could kick a ball. So I decided I would be the kind of manager who stuck by the men that got him promoted (not my first option!) and really struggled. Loan spells helped me out a lot and a fortunate link up with Arsenal helped me get some great loan players to help lift me off the foot of the table and onto the ankle of the table. I survived. But Tom Bradshaw didn't. He was the last stake of my BSS days and waved goodbye without really notching from League One upwards.

I started the next season better, with the board giving me about £500k to spend. I nabbed a few Czech youngsters and some other released youth players and started to build a nice little team. I was about 10th in the table in mid-November when recently relegated Reading came calling. At first I didn't want to entertain the idea of leaving my Dartford men in white. But with the promise of £50million to spend in the Championship with a team that was already higher than my beloved Dartford I had to go. I did my best to destroy the Dartford team I had built by taking some wonderkids with me for tiny fees because Dartford are a small club. I got promoted in this season with Reading and kind of stopped playing after that.

So yeah. That was quite fun writing, even if nobody reads it!

Great story.

My best was getting Lechia Gdansk into the Champions League and qualifying for the knockout stage.

Other best game was on a much older version, Brighton from League 1 to Premier League, winning Champions League then going to St Etienne, losing there and taking a job at Lyon, winning Champions league with Lyon 4 times.

I like the idea of waiting a year and managing a newly promoted BSS team into the league

[NA Gull]

That is a good story Steve. I love reading FM stories. Due to 2 young kids and full time work I rarely get to play but like hearing about others success/failure! There are so many good blogs/twitter pages I am pretty much an FM junkie!!

My favourite save of recent years was as follows:
Start unemployed with Amateur reputation
Monza in Serie C1 - kept them up then promotion to Serie B, kept them up
Joined Reggiana in Serie B. Much bigger club and promoted to Serie A and then left after consolidation season
Left to join Bordeaux - Won French Cup and Ligue 1
Left to join Sevilla - only lasted 6 months and wrong to leave Bordeaux. Resigned
Joined Arsenal and won the Premiership before leaving to join...
AC Milan winning Serie A and the Champions League 5-3 v Man Utd after being 3-0 down at one point.
I loved that save and it lasted about 25 years to get that done . Will be trying a Euro career again on Friday having taken the day off to play!!

Will also be doing the dafuge thing and a TUFC save.

[AustrianAndyGull]

I downloaded an update for fm13 which meant I had down to tier 9 available; easier way to try the challenge.

Started with Bideford and went unbeaten for quite a while (and FA Cup 4th round qualifying) and then lost 12 games in a row and got sacked.

First thing I'm doing when I wake up tomorrow is going on FM14 and starting my Torquay save. Plan is to try to get hammered but still make it feel like we've won.

[stevegull]

Cheers for the comments guys. Some decent efforts by you lot as well!

What's the best any of you have ever managed with Torquay? Unfortunately my best is only taking us to the Championship and surviving. I did it on FM 06 and took quite a few seasons if I remember correctly...

[Plymouth Gull]

Anyone got this then? I bought a digital copy from cdkeys.com for £23.90, seems a bargain.

[Scott Brehaut]

I've got it - although it seems that my PC doesn't like it (well, graphically anyway).

I'm hoping uncle Dave will be able to have a look at it "remotely" later