Greetings and welcome back to Barnsley, where the Tykes and hoping to prove their second place finish in season 2 was not a flash in the pan. Season 3 started well last week, we sit 3rd and not disgracing ourselves in the Champions League, so let’s try and hunt down Arsenal.

I have bad news. We won’t be winning the League Cup. Signori’s late penalty miss was a chance for salvation but he put it wide. All that experience.

A favourite of mine Kevin Gallen gives Nottingham Forest the earliest of leads but Marty Bullock equalises. We have to settle for a point, our record against the lesser fancied team is our biggest problem.

Hristov’s early goal should open the floodgates against Brondby but it doesn’t and we’re hanging on a bit by the end. Still, 3 points is all I asked for.

De Zeeuw is out for 4 months. I feel like the injuries are bigger and more frequent in this original version.

Here’s a dull game.

Here’s a disaster. Andy Ansah, he of Unbelievable Tekkers fame, is on the scoresheet and Pana scores a pena. Disaster.

Off we go to the Bernabeu expecting the worst…but leaving with a remarkable victory! Signori at the double, he can’t score a penalty in the League Cup 3rd round but a double in Madrid is a possible career highlight. Hristov limping off is the only bad news of the night

FOUR MONTHS!? Just like De Zeeuw. That’s our main goal threat gone.

I think it was Nick who said Barrera is a good turn. He’s 29 going on 30 but we’re not in a position to build players for the future.

Charvet! From kick off, the greatest of men. We win 2-1 against the mighty Magpies.

What is Darren Purse doing in Austria? Could he always play as a forward too? Either way, I offer him a route back to England.

This Yorkshire derby goes our way. 3-0 up after 18 minutes and things are looking up.

We only need a point in Azerbaijan but we’re given a mighty scare on our way to earning it. Some dude called Alekperov scores but his name is not worthy of being listed. Anyway, Dion Dublin of all people secures us a point and a passage to the last 8.

Here is the mystery man.

Confirmation of our passage to the last 8.

Barcelona?! Oh maaan.

Juventus wouldn’t have been much easier. Galatasaray was probably the one to get.

Charvet’s torn a hamstring. Goodness me.

No Leeds, you can’t have my good Bullock.

Arsenal are flying at the top but we save ourselves for the big occasion. Bakayoko shows what he can do amidst a heap of criticism on Twitter. Oh it’s on.

Wimbledon – not an issue.

At Darlington in the cup we go behind to Linton Travel Tavern but a second half surge sees us progress for a trip to Leeds. That’ll be eventful.

Unlike this visit from Liverpool. David James is at his best, sadly he didn’t get the new Tomb Raider for Christmas.

Here’s the table at the turn of the year but we’ll carry on for a few more games yet.

£11m! That’s a lot of bang for your Bullock. Still, no.

He thanks me by scoring the opener at Molineux. He celebrates by pulling out an exit sign and begging in front of me. What is he getting at? Casper the friendly idiot wins it from a corner.

He’s at it again as we see off Coventry in a surprisingly entertaining encounter. The goals are spread about, sometimes.

There’s a lot of interest in Shaun Newton and the best offer we get is this one. I say yes, he says no.

FA Cup time and a tight first half is blown open by our former player Kevin Street. Judas. We go for it late on and it only results in a quickfire double to secure our loss. We’ve done well in Europe but early exits from both the cups is disappointing.

We bounce back at Old Trafford. A great win, although I should point out Fergie has gone insane and signed Andy Goram who plays ahead of Schmeichel. And Alan McLaren. And Eoin Jess. So you know, a wins a win.

We’ve made second place our own but we’ve got 5 points to make up on Arsenal. I think getting in the Champions League again is the least we should aim for.

Here’s an update on the squad. It’s a bit mad, some of the old guard are unhappy at their lack of action.

The values are all over the place. I haven’t altered any of these, I’m guessing this got tempered a little bit in the patch. Solano at £10m is spicy whereas Barrera cost me £1.7m a few months ago.

That wraps up another fun week. I’m enjoying this save so I hope you are too. Join me next Sunday at 11am for the conclusion to season 3 but first, here’s the nerd corner

Was he always this good?

Continuing our look at the official patch release notes, here are the next batch of bug fixes:

Fixture Clashes

We have removed where ever possible top division fixture clashes with international matches

I’m not sure how well this went. In my book, where I used the patched version, Atletico Madrid have to field Vieri in goal for one game as Spain have a match. I guess they did say wherever possible.

Too many friendlies (the “Addfix 1” bug)

The fixture scheduler has been improved and now will not crash if you arrange loads of friendly matches.

I didn’t know that was a thing, but good.

Work Permits

Computer teams will also suffer from work permits not being renewed. Computer teams will be willing to sell players without a work permit.

Free transferring players without work permits will not affect board confidence.

To be fair this did used to annoy me, especially the last paragraph. On the patch you will see a lot of non-EU players being released as soon as their contract expires.

Dutch Player Histories

Many player histories for Dutch players have been added. We would like to thank Sander Coolen for supplying us with this information.

This might not seem like much but the Dutch database was pretty horrific early on. Any of you who have seen ChampManFans will know I installed the 95/96 versions and they all have glaring errors. Ronaldo for example is there twice at PSV, incorrect DOB too. So I’m pleased they did that.

Minor Fixes

During the making of the foreign language versions of CM97/98 many minor improvements have been made to many areas of the game.

I know a few of you who interact on Twitter play the foreign language versions so I’ll be keen to see if you’ve noticed anything here, I’m not really in a position to comment.

Next week I’ll finish this particularly detour with the list of bugs that weren’t fixed!