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.