A new guest blogger! Matthew Cooper doesn’t have Twitter but he tracked us down to tell his story. He’s taken on the always tricky challenge of being the first club to get promoted to the football league. With no players, can a club be built from scratch?

Hello, and welcome to my very first blog series for Championship Manager. For this save, I am going to be taking control of the first non-league team to be promoted to division 3 at the conclusion of the initial season and (hopefully) transforming them, over time, into a team capable of challenging for honours in the premier league. I’ve always been fascinated by these teams – given just a few weeks to cobble together an entire squad and usually (when AI-controlled, anyway) scrapping it out at the foot of the table in a desperate fight to stay up. Things won’t be that dire in this save I hope, but it will definitely take time to turn my ragtag bunch of lower division misfits into one of England’s top sides.

First thing’s first – I need to get to the end of the first season in order to take charge of my new team. I don’t really want to play out the first season as someone else, so I take charge of Scarborough and immediately resign (I chose Scarborough as they’re usually rubbish anyway so they won’t be too disrupted by searching for a new manager). Then it’s simply a case of waiting it out as the season plods along to its conclusion. I’ve loaded the English, Italian and Spanish leagues so if things get dull eventually with my new team (or I get fired), I may decide to move abroad and try the same sort of challenge over there too.

The advantage of not managing any team is that the screens will actually click through automatically, so I only need to give it the odd cursory glance to ensure that it’s still motoring on. The exception for the automatic progression is, unfortunately, job offers. Presumably as an attempt to keep the player engaged, I am offered pretty much every job that comes up in the lower two leagues, meaning that I have to remain strong and not be tempted by amazing job offers such as these:

Somehow I managed to resist the tempting offers, so on we go. I need to start paying attention once March/April rolls along as usually that’s when the bottom club’s relegation is confirmed and the job at the new club becomes available. Until then, I browse youtube videos with the game running in the background, occasionally glancing over to make sure I haven’t been offered yet another crap job. In case you’re wondering why I don’t just retire to avoid all the offers – I’d love to, but without at least one active manager the game refuses to go any further, so I’m stuck with this situation unfortunately.

Towards the end of March I check the table to see if we’re any nearer to getting into the hot seat. It’s pretty close down at the bottom, and it looks like a dogfight between Rochdale and Scarborough in the struggle to stay up. It may well go down to the wire:

By the time it gets to the final 2 games however, it seems like Scarborough have done just about enough to avoid the drop, and I’m ready to pounce as soon as Rochdale’s relegation is confirmed…

A week later, the inevitable happens and Rochdale manager Mick Docherty is given his marching orders. I hustle my way to the job news screen to see which team has fought its way out of the conference, only to see their manager unceremoniously dumped and replaced with me. It turns out to be Altrincham.

In my experience, the first team to come up is usually either Kidderminster, Kettering, Altrincham or Runcorn. It doesn’t really matter in terms of challenge, however the nice bonus of Altrincham is that their Moss Lane stadium has a 10,000 capacity from the off, which means potentially slightly higher gate receipts for cup games compared to the other choices and probably no need to spend money to increase capacity at least until promotion to Division 1.

Now that’s out of the way, it’s time to roll the sleeves up and get to work, particularly with regards to recruitment – we have barely 3 months to sign an entire squad! I can’t actually sign players until the transfer window re-opens after the play-off finals, but I have to be ready to go as soon as I’m able. My general strategy in this situation is to try to snap up any lower league players with a reasonable average rating and are out of, or coming to the end of, their contracts, or have been released by the relegation/non-promotion clauses in their contract. I have a transfer budget of around £550k, however I’m only really looking to spend big money if I need a player for a crucial role in the team.

I’ve decided to play a standard 5-3-2, Direct style, as I’ve had reasonable success with it in the past, particularly in the lower divisions. I’ve found that the key player in this formation is the playmaker in the middle of the 3 midfielders, so if I find the right player for that position I’m happy to spend most (or all) of my budget on him. I’d never noticed it before, but in an earlier blog David had pointed out that this player should have a high heading stat for some unknown reason, and in my recent testing this does appear to be the case, so I will bear that in mind when I look for the perfect candidate. Whilst I’m waiting, Coventry pull off a shock in the FA cup final after a replay:

They finished in a creditable 8th place in the league so it’s been a pretty good season all round for Mr Strachan’s lads, but Man Utd romped to the title as they do in every first season so I’m sure Sir Alex won’t be too downhearted. They’ll still need to buy a new hairdryer though.

May draws to a close and finally the transfer window is opened. I’m going to be concentrating my efforts on getting a reliable goalkeeper, the aforementioned playmaker in the middle of the park and hopefully a decent quality goalscorer initially. The other positions aren’t as important and I can fill them with free transfers in the close season if needs be. Rather remarkably, the first player that catches my eye is none other than Mr calamity himself, David James:

A £1 million move to Reading evidently had come with a non-promotion release clause, and as they failed to achieve that he appears to have chosen to bugger off. Normally I’d think we had no chance of landing him, but with the calibre of teams interested in him, there’s a chance we can pull it off if we offer him big bucks.

Ah, bollocks. He’s happy to slum it down at Brighton, or sodding Mansfield, but he draws the line at Altrincham? You could have been on 5 grand a week if you’d listened to our offer, you tit! Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Well that was unexpected. I’ll make one last approach, maybe after seeing the paltry pay packets on offer from the other clubs he might just give us a chance this time.

Nope. Can’t say I’m too surprised.

Meanwhile in World Cup news, After squeaking through a playoff against Belgium, England have been handed one of the softest groups I have ever seen:

If they don’t get through that then Hoddle will have quite a few questions to answer. I’ve made one or two signings by now, but to be honest it’s not going too well. There is a dearth of quality players with a contract situation I can take advantage of, and of the small number that do just don’t want to play for little old Altrincham. I’m going to be at the mercy of the schoolboy regens for quite a few positions unfortunately. I have at least found a decent candidate for my playmaker role:

He came with a hefty £140k price tag, but his recent cap for Algeria takes care of any work permit issues thankfully, and his stats are decent in most of the right areas. His injury proneness may cause some issues later in the season, so I’ll need an able deputy for the times when he’s crocked. I picked up this feller from Hudderfield for £120k who should fit the bill

Incidentally, I’ve chosen Hereford’s Edgar Street stadium as my “Home” picture, as it hardly ever gets any use during a normal playthrough. I’m still trying to attract players, though to be honest some of their wage demands can be a little…unrealistic at times:

After the David James debacle, I have at least found a half-decent replacement

He’s got a respectable average from the 18 games he played in the 97/98 season with Reading in division 1 so I’m confident he’ll be good enough for our level. At only £83k he seemed like a bargain so I dived right in (as I hope he does for us throughout the season). I’ll grab any old schoolboy on £200 a week as his understudy, as hopefully he’ll avoid injury/suspension and be an ever-present in the season to come.

England come through their group stage with maximum points, as well they bloody should, and face Norway in the last 16. Scotland get a much trickier tie against Germany, so I expect this is as far as they’ll get

England’s involvement draws to a disappointing conclusion with a 0-1 defeat, and Scotland follow suit with an identical score against Germany. Thus my interest in the tournament similarly fades away, but I’ll announce the winner anyway. The final is between Holland and Italy:

De Goey concedes a 105th minute own-goal, further compounding the dubious decision to pick him ahead of Van Der Sar. Hopefully they will learn their lesson in time for the Euros. I won’t bother with the end of season awards this year, as it’s all rather abstract when you haven’t played any part in the season itself. With the lacklustre recruitment so far, I’m not exactly confident of seeing my own name up there in a year’s time.

Wait, hold the phone – The board reacts to me emptying the piggy bank with a potential season-saving cash injection, hurray!

I could almost cry when I see the next screen.

They’re expecting 15,000 fans to turn up week in week out to watch Division 3 matches? The lunatics are running the asylum in here. To be fair, the money wouldn’t have made a huge amount of difference as nobody wants to bloody play for us anyway. We end up £200k richer in any case, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

With 3 days to go until the first game, the squad is finally taking shape

We’re still missing a couple of central defenders and we’re obviously short of cover for most positions, but it’s a start. You might notice Matthew Bound, who featured in Matt’s Stockport series, but aside from that it’s a squad of nobodies really except for Hollywood A-lister Bradley Cooper, who in a previous life was a central midfielder. Experience (and the captaincy) is provided by 36 year old Dean Wilkins, he might serve me well in my first year if he can steer clear of injury but will definitely need to be replaced by my second season.

It’s getting dangerously close to the start of the season so I make a couple of loan approaches to fill in the gaps. Unfortunately, they arrive a couple of days too late for the first game, a home match against Darlington. At least I’m first in the table, though I’m not expecting that to last for much longer

Due to the lack of centre backs, I have to ask Bradders to fill in at an unfamiliar role as right wingback, while my intended wingback plays in central defence. I don’t even have enough players to fill the bench, so 14 is some greyed-out autogen player.

I was expecting the first few games to be heavy going, and this confirmed my worst fears. Darlington appear to take the lead on 24 minutes with their first attempt on goal, however it’s ruled out for offside. They continue to batter us though, and although we somehow make it in at half-time at 0-0, things look ominous. Sure enough, we go behind 5 minutes after the restart and they add a second through a penalty on 71 minutes. 2-0 doesn’t sound too bad on paper, but the attempts on goal tell their own story. It’s going to be a long hard season at this rate.

2 days too late my defensive reinforcements arrive, including this exciting import from footballing powerhouse nation Mozambique:

Next up is the League Cup game against second division Grimsby, and it’s fair to say I couldn’t give a toss about the result. I would have forfeited the game if I could, the last thing I need is players getting knackered and potentially injured in a competition that’s bloody pointless. We lose as predicted, but there are some encouraging signs at least

We actually take the lead after 5 mins, but we’re quickly pegged back and find ourself 3-1 down by half-time. Things don’t get any worse however and we show some promise in front of goal, hitting the post at least 3 times in a fairly even second half. I hope we can take this into our next league game instead of the shocker played out in front of Darlington.

A trip to recently relegated Brentford is next on the agenda, and despite several of my lads being knackered it’s largely an unchanged team owing to my pretty tiny squad. Well, it’s fair to say they exceed my expectations:

We are on top from the off, coming agonisingly close to taking the lead on a couple of occasions, but ex-Evertonian Paul Gerrard pulls off some impressive saves and the post comes to the rescue for them. Our young striker Kerry Allardyce, despite doing precisely sod all for us in the first two games, bundles home after a goalmouth scramble a few minutes after the restart to send the Altrincham faithful delirious. I fear the worst when Bound is forced off with 20 mins to go, especially as he was playing a blinder, and it’s all Brentford but we hold on. Phew!

That seems like a good place to stop off at for now. It’s early days but things are looking up. Please tune in next week to see if we can build on the momentum of that early victory and climb up the table.