Football Manager 2007

[TheArsenal]

I'd say Vela - great little player.

[Buford Ripley]

I decided to settle on Vucinic and Pazzini, I managed to grab both below £20M which leaves some left over to invest in more coaches and scouts.

[stokeriño]

So, yeah. It's only the middle of January and Klose has already scored 28 goals.

That, if you remember, is 10 more than my top scorer (Shevchenko) got all of last season.

...You SUCK, you-other-strikers-you. ¬_¬

Edited January 17, 2007 by stokeriño

[Steeb]

To be fair....Shevchenko's shit.

Or at least he always is for me >_>

[stokeriño]

Yeah, but last season Drogba, Trezeguet and Inzaghi were even worse.

[ADG]

I'm in 2017 so here's more insight for people interested:

Pandev - moved to Roma then to Newcastle for £7.5m. Has a weak scoring record, one in every three games or so.

Pannini - moved to Lyon then Chelsea for £38m. Has only hit double figures twice in goals, maximum being 14.

Dagoberto - retired

Vucinic - warming the bench at Paris St. Germain. Weak record.

Vela - excellent buy, quick and a good scoring record.

Smith - stay away. Playing for Bristol Rovers, 1 goal in 10 games.

Van Persie - retired

Defoe - Excellent scoring record. Played for Juventus and Valencia (signed by me both times), now at Osasuna.

Just got sacked after three years as manager of Newcastle due to a new consortium taking over and wanting to install Les Ferdinand as manager.

Season One: Not a very good start, qualified for the Euro Cup through the Euro Vase and qualified from the group stages but got knocked out in the last thirty-two. A poor Premiership campaign as well saw us finish ninth. By a stroke of luck we were the highest placed team to apply for the Euro Vase so it was back to that again for the second season. League and FA Cups were atrocious, early exits from both.

Season Two: Offloading Obafemi Martins for £10,000,000 to Milan and the January of season one signing of Dave Nugent for £6,000,000 from Preston finally come good as Nugent and Owen compete for the top goalscorer award and both end the season with 25+. The signing of David Goodwillie in January proves a hit as he hits 15 in 15 games. Euro Cup again a washout, knocked out in last sixteen this time.We run Arsenal and Chelsea to the last day of the season for the title but finish 3rd on 78 points, Chelsea on 80 and Arsenal on 81. First takeover collapses this season but lads still come good to win the League Cup. The Champions League Awaits!

Season Three: Get off to a poor start as more signings cause disruption in the dressing room. One bright spark is the signing of Kim Kállstrom who gets the fans singing my praises. Games are lost or drawn and a tactical rethink is taken. Suddenly we can't lose and start zooming up the table. Finish second in our Champion's League group behind CSKA Moscow and draw Werder Bremen in last 16. Pal Le Guen leaves Rangers at this time to take over at Atletico Madrid and I send along my CV to Ibrox, not making the board or fans happy. A 0-1 loss at home to Bremen puts us seemingly out but we rally and win 2-0 away to go through. Similarly in the quarter finals, a 2-0 loss at home to PSV makes it a difficult job but we travel to Holland and come out 4-1 winners. Semi finals don't go as well, we draw Chelsea. A 0-0 draw at home is good but we lose 3-1 away and the dream is over. It'll be a Chelsea vs. Arsenal final. Second last game of the season and we sit in third, entertaining Arsenal at St. James'. A great start sees us romp home 3-1 winners and we're assured a European spot next season. However with Tottenham a point behind in 4th and Man City 3 behind in 5th we're not safe yet. A poor couple of seasons have seen the Premiership only allocated three Champions League places. Then I'm sacked as the new consortium chooses to select a new manager. The final game sees already relegated Watford take some pride with a 1-0 win against Newcastle but with Tottenham and Man City drawing Champion's League football will be at St. James again. But I won't be there to see it.

Landed on my feet quite spectacularly as Didier Deschamps was sacked from his job as Juventus manager a week after I was released and they were quick to offer me the job with a healthy £45m transfer budget and I snapped it up in an instant.

Season One

First order of business is to take a substandard Juventus squad and improve it. Juventus finished 7th in Serie A last year and barely scraped European competition. £10,000,000 sees Eddie Johnson brought in from Barcelona to add some much needed pace to my attacking options alongside the slower but more technical Trezeguet and £24,000,000 brings in Cristiano Ronaldo to the midfield. £10,250,000 brings in young Peruvian wonderkid Christian Benavente who I send out to Crotone on loan to learn the Italian game. Benoit Pedretti and Kevin Monnet-Pacquet come in on Bosman transfers as well to shore up the squad.

We get off to a good start in the league as Eddie Johnson proves his worth right away scoring goals left, right and centre. Ronaldo proves a revelation in the midfield creating goals and selling replica shirts with his name on the back bringing in a lot more shirt sales than normal. Our good start doesn't last as we start drawing games we really should win. The squad is still quite small and a few injuries have us losing points. Coupled with angry second string players like Davide Chiumentio who want first team football but don't get it. The Euro Cup campaign ends in the quarter finals to Roma and the Italian Cup also ends in failure. In Serie A we find our feet a little and start picking up points but the charge is too late and we finish the season in 6th. The fans start calling for my head, upset at a second successive unsuccessful season. However the board accept that I need more time to turn the club around and they'll give me a second season.

Season Two

After the 'extravangant' spending of last season I get £19m to improve the squad even more, however I can get more by selling players I have. Morais - £5m signing last year - leaves for Werder Bremen for £5.25m but the big money maker for me is John Obi Mikel. Inter Milan offer £6m for a 50% share of him with two years until he joins one club exclusively but only one month later Man Utd offer me £8.75m for my 50% of Mikel and I accept it. Suddenly I'm £20m richer. I take that £20m and try to strengthen the defence as it was the major problem last year - Eddie Johnson scored 48 goals in 54 games which was the only reason we were as high as we were in the league.

An initial approach for Steven Taylor and Zat Knight - my trustworthy Newcastle defensive duo - fails when Newcastle ask £17m for Taylor and £9m for Knight. Instead I choose to bring in Michael Dawson for £18.5m from Valencia and £4m brings Leon Andreasen from Werder Bremen. Bosman wise it's quite slow, however one major talking point I am responsible for is the signing of Jermain Defoe from Tottenham on a free transfer. Three other notable Bosman signings are three players with big futures - David Button (GK), Raul Castro (DF) and Conor McCormack (MD).

Button is thrown in at the deep end as an injury to Buffon means he deputises and performs his duties very well with 8 conceded in 8 games. Buffon comes back and gets the gloves though but Button isn't angry, instead I ask Buffon to tutor Button and they're both happy for the new relationship. A rotating partnership of Defoe, Johnson and Trezeguet starts banging them in and a 5-4 win at Delle Alpi against Inter is a thoroughly exciting match in mid October. The Euro Cup goes well as I finish with maximum points as well in a group with Dortmund, Dinamo Bucharest, Lens and Braga. Last 32 we beat Club Brugge, last 16 we beta Maccabi Haifa. Quarter Finals see us drawn against Rangers and we beat them. Semi-final is an all-Italian tie as we face Sampdoria. A 0-0 draw at home puts us on the backfoot but a 4-2 win means we're through to the final against the team we beat in the group stage, Dortmund.

However, besides the Euro Cup we're chasing Milan for the Serie A title and are on our way to winning the Italian Cup and again injuries play a big part. We manage to survive a late scare to win Serie A and the Italian Cup 5-1 on aggregate, however the Euro Cup goes to Germany as a squad featuring only 5 first choice players battles bravely but loses 2-1 to Dortmund.

Still, the fans are elated to do the double, my reputation becomes World Class, women want me, men want to be me. In short I rock!

Now onto my third season and Champion's League glory!

Edited January 17, 2007 by ADGray

[Summers]

Pazzini's perhaps one of my favourite strikers in the game, he was part of my killer Valencia squad, back in the day.

[-A-]

My save game corrupted First time it's happened to me on this game and I don't have the heart to go to my back-up save which is more than 6 months behind. Considering starting an Atletico game since I haven't had many CL-quality saves yet.

[Farmer Reil]

Smith - Playing for Bristol Rovers, 1 goal in 10 games.

[FireDoughnut]

Until then, I didn't think half-time team talks were anywhere near worthwhile. (Y)

No subsistute goalkeeper?

[Pesci]

Smith - Playing for Bristol Rovers, 1 goal in 10 games.

Someone scored a goal for us! w00t! We're going up! We're going up!

(Are we actually going up, or are we in the Conference South now?)

[ADG]

Both Bristol City and Bristol Rovers are in League Two.

Now for a dilemma, I've got a superteam capable of winning everything and anything, but I can't decide on which eleven should start the games. Curse my belief of "oh he's good, I must have him!"

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Well it's autumn 2010 and I've just signed 21 year old Vitor Sousa from San Paulo after a glowing report from my scouts. He better be good. He looks good but he better be.

[The Future]

PSP version Hamster? Try to get Milos Stojic from Partizan Belgrade, decent young striker he's all sorts of awesome for me in my Crystal Palace game.

[stokeriño]

Whooping Man Utd 4-0 one week and losing 2-1 to West Ham the next is rather annoying.

But then, it's February 2008 and West Ham appear to have solidly taken up 3rd place in the Premiership table, beating the likes of Man Utd and Liverpool in the process. Actually, after having failed to win the title on on the last day of the 06/07 season, Liverpool now seem to be mired around the 10th-12th region. That's what you get for being unbeatable bastards before. ¬_¬

In other news, my ability to accurately predict what team I'll be drawn against is improving.

"So, first Champion's Cup knockout stage...I can't get Man Utd, so I bet I'll get Real Madrid."

*click*

--Real Madrid--

*click*

--Chelsea--

[ADG]

Left Milan after my quadruple title/cup win because there was nothing else to do there. Frank Rikjaard took over at Milan and that left the Arsenal job open and they offered me it. I took it. Not wanting to go into too long a detail I won the league but lost in the League Cup 3rd round, the FA Cup 5th round and Champion's League semi finals. Resigned as Arsenal boss after the first year because the board refused to back me financially after my 'indulgent' spending. The same indulgent spending that saw us win the league.

Anyway, the Scotland job came up and I got it. But very curiously, Hampden Park only has a capacity of 2,520. Has anyone else ever noticed stadium capacities dropping like that? Hampden has gone from a 52,000 all seater stadium to a 2,500 all seater stadium. On a good note though, I arranged friendlies against Chile (a 1-0 win) and Brazil (a 2-0 win). Scotland and Wales are joint hosts of Euro 2020 so I don't need to qualify - just as well because the last competition Scotland qualified for in this game reality was the 1998 World Cup.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Ahh a happy day. I have nine players in the England squad thanks to my approach of buying good young English talent at vaguely reasonable prices.

They are:

GOALIE:

Paul Robinson, David Button

DEFENCE:

Phil Ifil, Billy Jones, Ledley King, Scott Golbourne

MIDFIELD:

Tom Huddlestone, Aaron Lennon

ATTACK:

Jermain Defoe

Also my new reserve keeper Salvatore Bianchi is in the Italian (world cup 2010 winning) squad making all of my goalies full internationals. Nice.

EDIT: Got Ryan Giggs in for about 900k to finish his career with us. He's signed for two seasons and he's still great. Really dangerous on the left.

Also just schooled Rapid Vienna in the Champions League 5-0 at home (probably my best result so far sadly) with a Keane-o hattrick! The lad's back on form! Huzzah!

Edited January 19, 2007 by ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Oooh I just beat Chelsea away as well for the first time in about 7 attempts. That's 10 goals in three games, with none conceeded. Excellence.

[TheArsenal]

Well in an attempt to bring more English players to Arsenal and generally strengthen the squad I made the following signings in the summer before the second season...

Julio Baptista - 13million (deal set up before the start of the game)

Curtis Davies - 450k (cheap price due to Pat Rice taking over at West Brom and loving me)

Edwin van der Sar - Free (United released him)

Micah Richards - 14.5million (City only accepted an offer after he said he wanted to sign for me)

David Hillerby 500k - (young midfielder from 'Boro - should turn good ina few years)

Now the window has closed and Aarron Lennon is fed up with his contract at Tottenham and after declaring my interest he said he wants to move across North London. I need to sell a few players now to raise the 14million needed to sign him....

[stokeriño]

Micah Richards - 14.5million (City only accepted an offer after he said he wanted to sign for me)

Yeah, that's pretty much what happened to me. Man City absolutely refused any offer I put down until Richards was half-spasming to every outlet of the media with all the excitement of possibly going to Chelsea, and they finally accepted an offer of £10m (which they had rejected before, but I thought I'd try a lower price again since they seemed to be relenting).