It’s the final preview episode before the first weeks of the season tomorrow. Here’s Nick with the latest…
As a Leeds fan, this team would have been the last one that Ross (@RossBell1984) would have wanted to draw, but can he put his club rivalry aside and steer the 1999 treble winners to glory? Here’s the man himself…
Well well well, when Nick pitched this idea I was very excited. The fact people are this good at making content for a game over 20 years old really excites me. Then tragedy struck. Through a combination of bad luck and fixing I ended up with Manchester United’s 1999 squad.
On the face of it it looks to be one of the stronger squads in the whole competition, why aren’t I more excited ??? If you’ve followed the blog over the last few years you may have noticed I have a certain affinity for a team on the other side of the pennines. This is going to be tough.
The Squad – Obviously it’s a very strong squad, in goal we’ve got the great starjumping Dane Peter Schmeichel, that’s a good start.
For the formation I plan to use I need two CBS, right up Jaap Stam and Ronny Johnson.
I’ll be using one of the tactical mastermind Nikolai’s tactics, so i need 3 DM’s for this and Roy Keane and Nicky Butt fit the bill. David Beckham played there in his later years so I’m probably going to give him a glimpse into his future because aside from those 3 Fergie really dropped the ball with his midfield in ’99.
Attacking wise I’m pretty well set as Fergie clearly decided to take inspiration from Keegan and just loaded up on forwards, a combination of Scholes,Yorke, Giggs, Cruyff, Blomqvist, Solskjaer, Sheringham, Nevland and Cole should be able to get the job done.
I’m going all out for goals in this competition and lets be honest, as a Leeds fan I won’t be too disappointed if we don’t end up winning this but that doesn’t mean we will be an easy victory. In the famous words of Status Quo “Come on you reds, come on you reds, Just keep your bottle and use your heads, For ninety minutes we’ll let them know, Who’s Man United, here we go”.
P.S Never forget I’ve got a secret weapon to activate at any moment…… Phil Neville!
And that nice little reference to Phil Neville being a secret weapon brings us nicely on to Phil’s biggest admirer, one and only @KingOfTheRooks, aka Andrew. Andrew’s blogs are anything but boring and he comes up with come out of this world ideas, so let’s see what he can do with the 2001 champions, Bayern Munich…
My gut instinct on being drawn as Bayern was not good. Why? Well, we all know that the scouting of the German league in CM9798 was poor, besides a group of players who formed the core of the German squads from Italia 90 and a little after.
The key examples here are, whilst Kahn and Scholl have solid ability stats, they are essentially random in game with ‘0’ for all but consistency, so it just depends which Kahn comes out on the day! Also, Jancker is 9’s and 10’s across the board.
It’s not all bad. We’ve got a solid core 14 players that can compete. Our weakness is that we have the poorest rated attacking players of the 10 Champions League winning sides in the league. Ranking these players on ability, we’re 10th, so goals will be the problem. We’ll be reliant on Elber and Sergio getting some form together. It’s a bind as, we won’t want to concede too many as coming back will be difficult, but we’ll need to create heavily to have any chance of scoring!
If we can finish 7th, I’d call that meeting our base objective, anything above that will be a roaring success celebrated with lederhosen, bratwurst and plenty of wheat beer!
Whilst I think everyone is focused on Milan and Juventus, who on paper look outstanding, my tip is that if Dean can get the best out of Ajax, then they are clear favourites, followed by Man Utd and Dortmund. Real have three of the best attackers in Suker, Mijatovic and Raul, but I think they’llstruggle defensively. Here’s my prediction for the final table:
1. Ajax ‘95
2. Man Utd ‘99
3. Dortmund ‘97
4. Juventus ‘96
5. Milan ‘94
6. Real Madrid ‘98
7. Bayern Munich ‘01
8. Barcelona ‘92
9. Marseille ‘93
10. Red Star ‘91
So that’s the talking over with, and it’s now time to let the action begin. Join us tomorrow for the first blog episode, which features the first two rounds of fixtures. See you then!