Well I’m back to being addicted to Football Manager, the 2010 version in this case.  Of course not long after starting a game I hope to be long-term, I find out that it’s got the same horrible bugs as Football Manager 2008, where the regens suck and it makes long-term games unplayable.  Sigh.  Hopefully it will be fixed in a patch.

Anyway I know a lot of FM fans read this blog, so thought I would start writing season summaries:

End of Season 1:

I started as an unemployed Graeme Souness to start the game, with leagues from the USA, England, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Scotland and Spain running.  I ended up getting a job with Hibs in the Scottish Premier League.  They were 2nd bottom and doing very badly, including a 6-0 HOME defeat against St Johnstone.

We had a decent team, but were broke.  I took over on January 1st 2010, and my first game was on January 2nd against rivals Hearts.  I went with a very defensive formation with a flat back four, 2 DMCs, 1 ball winning midfielder, 2 wide midfielders and 1 striker.  We managed to win 1-0 in a huge result.

We continued to do well in January, although in front of goal we seemed to be weak, missing a lot of easy chances.  With no funds, I sold  Kevin McBride, Colin Nish and Patrick Cregg, bringing in my only signing of the season, Leigh Griffiths from Dundee.  Griffiths is a 19 year old striker with 16 in finishing, 15 in Acc/Pace, 12 in composure and a few other decent attributes.  He forced his way into the first team immediately with a double against Motherwell when I dropped Derek “I skipped training” Riordan, and proceeded to score a 90th minute equalizer against Aberdeen in the next game.  He would go on to score 8 goals in 14 games.

Despite some solid performances, we were unable to get in the top 6, although it was always a lofty goal.  We did manage to pip Hearts on the last day of the season to go above them, which I was rather proud of.  Final league table:

Summer signings I have made are Jamie Ness and Nacho Novo from Rangers, and Jay Emmanuel-Thomas from Arsenal.

My current team:

That is minus Joao Pereira, a right back we had on loan, who ended up being the pick of the players for best 11.

For next season, the board have given me a nice gift.  With expectations of just mid-table, they’ve given me £1.3m to spend, and added £10k a week onto wages.

Looking at my team, if I stick with that formation I’m solid for DMCs, for AMCs, for strikers, for CDs and for LBs.  I COULD do with a better keeper although Stack did a solid job last year, and I 100% need an RB.  Although I notice Kenny Miller would be interested in coming to us, so don’t be surprised if I blow the whole budget on him.

Finally I got the youth team through - and I got a pretty decent regen in 6′3″ striker Scott Moffat:

Hopefully he will be leading the line within the next few years.

My buddy Vin over at Miller Park Drunk linked me today and lots of people are coming to visit so I thought I would say hi!  Stick around, subscribe to the RSS Feed, or enter your e-mail addy to the right so you can get on my mailing list.  Who knows I may write something that entertains you on occasion.  I’m not really a fan of baseball, but I do enjoy going around hitting 5 year olds over the head with a baseball bat - does that count?

Also if you are looking for funny/cool forums to visit come visit the No Pants Provided ones - click this link:  No Pants Provided Forums.

It is a goddamn miracle, because all the server upgrades and moves that I was doing for the sites WENT OFF WITHOUT A HITCH!  There was not one problem whatsoever - something I really didn’t expect.  I was expecting tons of shit to break down, and have me at this all fucking day.  But nope - for once everything worked as it was meant to, and I can now chalk that off my to do list!

I’m going to push back the content writing to a little later.  I’ve got to clean up the server and have a bunch of shit on my to do list that I really want to do.  I’ll try and get to content writing around 6pm.

And if someone in the UK could pick up Fighting Spirit Magazine issue #33 and scan my article it would be mucho appreciated - more info here.

I’m Scotsman, and I probably need no introduction, so I’m not going to give one.

I was talking to my good friend Vin earlier today, and he sent me a link to his blog which I wasn’t aware even existed.  I’ve written on the internet for many, many years yet I’ve never really had a blog.  When I started Scotsmanality etc that’s what I was aiming for, but along the way it changed from a blog into an entertainment site.  That meant that the level of writing was a lot different, and while I loved it I’ve still always just wanted to have a fucking diary, where I can post random shit, discuss sports or vent my frustration without “caring” about how the readers will view an article, if you get my drift.

So that is what this blog is all about!  I will talk about my life, the work I do, the bets I have on etc and it shall be quite fun!