FM2010: Bromley, Seasons 1-3 recap

I did this a long time ago with a FM2008 LLM save (that saw me go from Bishop's Stortford to Elvesberg (sp?), to Newry to some Scottish team. Blogger erased the entire blog because they felt I was plagiarizing someone. I have no idea how that happened.) But just tonight, I thought I should do it again. Back in 2008, I'd make an update post every 2 or 3 matches until it got to the point where I was almost blogging about the save more than playing it. So, this time, I'll be doing a recap at the end of each season. One season usually takes me about 5 days of intensive playing, but I have a job starting on Monday. I _think_ I might be able to finish season 4 off by Sunday night but am not positive. I have no idea how long a season will take once I'm working. I'd imagine at least 2 weeks. I seem to remember a season taking about 2 - 2 1/2 weeks when I was last working, but am not sure. If this season isn't done by Sunday night, I'm imagining it'll be done by Tuesday at the latest. (Because it'll be really close to being done if it isn't and it should only take a few hours to finish up.) So, anyway, here's recaps for the first 3 seasons as best I can remember:

SEASON 1, 2009/2010 aka "We suck!"

Media Prediction: 16

Actual Finish: 11

FA Cup: Eliminated Immediately

FA Trophy: 4th Qualifying Round

I started off immediately looking to bolster my defensive line. I found a nice Irish DC, who we'll name Awesome DC. Awesome DC was awesome and just him alone made us a better team. But I felt most the players on my existing defense were of 2nd string quality. They'd make fine backups for good players, but couldn't handle it on their own. I then found a Polish DL, another Irish DC (who we'll name Godly DC), and an Irish DR. Yes, I have a lot of Irishmen on my team. Originally, I was hoping Godly DC would perform about on the level of Awesome DC, but he turned out to be on a whole different level from the rest of the team. I cannot believe his original Irish team cut him, I really can't. I acquired an Adequate Striker, and that's about it for the first season. We did poorly at first and, after 6 weeks, found ourselves rock bottom at 22. My team started gelling and my Star Striker emerged. He had no goals at all for almost the first half of the season and went insane and managed to set a single season record for my club (in both league and overall goals scored) in just half a season. He also broke the all time scoring record for my team as well as most goals scored in a single game. This guy's name is all over my team's record book now. We recovered and made it as high as 6th place before ending the season in 11th place.

Season 2, 2010/2011 aka, "Getting there"

Media Prediction: 14th

Actual Finish: 5th

FA Cup: 1st Round proper

FA Trophy: 2nd Round

I knew my team was good, but knew I needed more players. I brought in two strikers who looked promising, but cut one of them by the middle of the season because he was 34 and really wasn't good, though it looked like I may have been able to get one final good season out of him. I couldn't. He's in my record book, but not for a good reason. (Oldest player used in a game) In other areas, I felt like my team was lacking a good GK. The one I had was adequate, but we needed better to get to the next level. By a pure dumb lucky stroke (I noticed his name in a news report), I managed to snag an International GK. He got called up a lot, but he was awesome when he could play for me. I got a great MC as well. I still wasn't content that we had a good second MC, but I rotated a few MCs around and it seemed to work well enough. Not a lot of acquisitions this season, but Star Striker started off HOT and we were sitting in first 5 weeks into the season and never fell below 6th. In Round 1 of the FA Cup we had the great luck of drawing League 1 team Brentford at home and it packed our stadium and, by even greater luck, drew them thanks to Star Striker scoring a goal in the 87th minute and an equalizer in injury time. In the replay, they throttled us 2-0... but hey, holding a League 1 team to a draw is pretty damn impressive for a BSS team. Godly DC continued to completely dominate and he and Star Striker were going neck and neck for highest average rating for a season. Star Striker edged him in the end, 7.23 to 7.17. Godly DC decided to show Star Striker he wasn't the only one who could score and even managed to score 3 goals throughout the course of the season, mainly during corners.

We finished 5th and lost to Ebbsfleet in the Semi Final playoff.

Season 3, 2011/2012 aka "Now we're cooking!"

Media Prediction: 12th

Actual Finish: 4th

FA Cup: I forget, honestly. Probably eliminated immediately.

FA Trophy: Eliminated Immediately

In continuing to bolster my midfield, I snagged a great DL/ML player who I played mainly in ML, but he did play in DL for a few games when my Irish DL was injured. On the off season between 2 and 3, I released the other striker who I got at the start of 2. He just couldn't compare to Adequate Striker. I also picked up an older French striker who was very, very solid. Also, I was alerted we had a potential star youth player, an African ML. I moved him to the reserves and he certainly looked like he'd be fearsome some day. I also took notice of a 21 year old striker who had been sitting unnoticed in my reserves this entire time. The guy was DEADLY. I brought him into the main team about halfway through the season and he made Adequate Striker (who had made the Season 1 Best Eleven) absolutely redundant, and I ended up transfer listing Adequate Striker near the end of the season and he went to a team in Wales. Godly DC and my International GK continued to basically make my team awesome, but disaster struck. Both of them demanded I transfer list them so they could fulfill their ambitions. I begged and pleaded and eventually realized there was no way I could get them to resign contracts with me. I finally agreed to sell them at the end of the season. Both of them combined netted me about 40k. Godly DC went to a League 2 team (Mansfield), International GK went to some team in Spain. I think they're one tier above the lowest, not sure what that is.

We also went into a budget crisis which saw the Board cut my available wages by 1k/week. In addition to the DC and GK, I got rid of a few utility players I felt just couldn't cut it. A Scottish Striker I haven't mentioned before now, a Central American Midfielder who I played as a backup to a backup and the GK I used before International GK. Had I known International GK would demand a transfer, I would have never sold the other GK. I figured I could use a 18 year old GK as backup and save a lot of money. As it turns out, Youth GK sucks. Badly. The number of on target shots my opponents made was the same number as the goals they scored when Youth GK was playing. He was that bad. He let EVERY ON TARGET SHOT THROUGH. Thanks to my strikers going into overdrive, we actually managed to win some of these games. I told my defense (who still included Godly DC) to stop them no matter what, and they did, and the strikers scored enough to outpace the opponents. It was practically like playing with no GK, to be honest with you.

It was overall a good season, but we again lost in the Playoff Semi Finals; this time to Woking, who went on to be promoted. But I knew a 1k/week wage budget cut combined with losing my two best players was going to hurt, a lot. Also, the board didn't give me any transfer funds out of that 40k, so I couldn't buy any players. I pleaded with them to increase either wage budget or transfer budget, but they declined both. And they expected me to make it into the Playoffs again. This looked bad.

Season 4 recap coming soon!

Introduction

I'm an LLM Manager. LLM is Lower League Management. It's a style of playing the Football Manager series of games, though, really, you should be able to do it in any football management simulation. A lot of people will pick their favorite team. The "Big Four" from the English Premier league are extremely popular choices, as are Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, etc, etc, etc. I could spend the next half hour listing teams.

My favorite team is Arsenal. However, when I first started playing Championship Manager 03/04, I felt like I shouldn't manage a team like Arsenal right away as I didn't have the skill to do so well. Surely, Arsenal would never hire a no one like me. So I went to League 2 and played as Southend United. I had a good run. I found a really nice Jamaican GK, found an incredible youth player who became a midfield fixture, I challenged for a promotion to League 1 but didn't quite make it. I had the spirit of LLM, but didn't quite adhere to the rules, mainly because I'd never heard of LLM at that point in time.

Here's what LLM is: You go to the lowest league that exists in a given country. (It could be Blue Square South in England, Serie C in Italy, etc. Something like MLS also counts since the United States only has one league in the entire game, though it's not a popular choice since MLS is actually top tier in the US, it only counts as LLM due to a technicality.) You then play as realistically as possible. By this, I mean you don't look at player stats (as much as can be avoided, on some screens they're going to be right in your face but you certainly wouldn't study them), you certainly don't use player comparison, you rely on your scouts for EVERYTHING. Player Search is generally not used, but there are people out there (I'm one of them) who will advocate it in very specific circumstances. Basically, before you do anything, take a second and think, "Can this be done in real life?"

Head over to SI forums for more on LLM.

Anyway, I've been doing LLM almost exclusively for the entire time I've played CM/FM. In FM 2008 I played one season as Arsenal and actually found it boring. They're already in the Top 5 for the world, do I really want to put time and effort into making them just slightly better so they can move to the number 1 spot? I know some people really love making sure their favorite top tier team wins every competition available to them every year, but that's not my style. If I'm going to manage Arsenal, it's going to be because I've proven myself to be the best manager in the world by taking a team from Blue Square to the Premiership. Maybe, probably not, but that's my goal.

Right now, I'm in the middle of an FM2010 save with Blue Square South (BSS) team Bromley. I'm in my 4th season and, after making the playoffs two years in a row and losing in the semi finals, we're predicted to promote to Blue Square Premier (BSP) this season. I've never successfully promoted a team in any way, shape or form, so doing that will be a giant achievement for me. Should I promote from Conference Football to League Football at some point int he future, it'd be like a dream to me.

FM2011 comes out next week, but I intend to not play it until I'm satisfied with my Bromley save and that I've taken it as far as I want. I have, however, preordered it. I will have it the day it's available, but it's unlikely to be played. It's funny that the exact same thing happened with FM2009. I was too into my FM2009 LLM save to play FM2010 until it had been out for 3 or 4 months.

That's it for now, season recaps will be in their own posts!