A Football Manager Journey
Welcome back to the virtual World of Football Manager and my latest blog post about my save with ACF Fiorentina . My last post took us up to the end of January 2020 in my second season at the club with us sitting pretty at the top of the table after 22 games and most definitely looking like title contenders. Our system ‘The Iron Triangle’ was producing the goods then all of a sudden the wheels fell off.
Continue reading “Florence And The Goal Machine : Catastrophic Failures (2.2) 19-20”
Welcome to the 2nd post from our 2019-2020 season. A quick recap for anyone visiting this blog for the first time, I took over at Fiorentina in the summer of 2018 on an initial 1 year contract with the boards expectations of finishing in the top half of the table and my own expectation of European qualification. The Media prediction was that we would finish 7th. My initial thoughts was that I would work with the players already at the club during the first season before making any big changes to both the playing staff and the backroom staff.
Continue reading “Florence And The Goal Machine : The Colour Purple (2.1) 19-20”
Welcome to the first post of Season Two 2019-2020 season. No sooner had the dust settled on the 2018-2019 season it was time to get to work on bringing in a replacement for Paris bound Giovanni Simeone and welcoming back a few players who we had out on loan last season non less so than the talent that is Sandro Tonali who I am really looking forward to working with.
Continue reading “Florence And The Goal Machine : Life Without Simeone (2.0) 19-20”
Welcome to the latest instalment from Florence, my last update took us up to the final 11 games of our first season with Fiorentina with us sat in 4th position in the table. Could we hang on to fourth position and get in to next seasons Champions League? We also welcome Federico Chiesa back from injury and we finish the season off with a transfer story that breaks the clubs record departure of Rui Costa. It’s all happening in Florence so let’s not waste anymore time and get started with this latest update.
Continue reading “Florence And The Goal Machine : No Time For Goodbye (1.2) 18-19”
Welcome to the latest round up of Florence And The Goal Machine. In my last post we had reached the halfway point in our first season at the club and sat in 5th position in the table after a good start to the season. I had been reluctant to use any of the 4 loan signings the club had already made before my appointment because I didn’t want to pick them in front of any of the players that we owned, however once we reached December we had a few injuries so my hand was forced and to be totally honest Marko Pjaca came in and was nothing short of a revalation.
Continue reading “Florence And The Goal Machine : Visioneering (1.1) 18-19”
Welcome to Florence And The Goal Machine my FM19 save with ACF Fiorentina. I have been waiting in anticipation for the release of the game after the announcement of the new features and now it’s finally here I can get stuck in to the game and start to build what I hope will be the strongest club in Italy but first I have to analyse who we have at the club in terms of staff and players and lay the foundations that will give the club a chance to shine over the next few years. Toppling Juventus and maintaining the level to achieve this over time will be my focus. I played a few games with the Viola on the Beta and was going to continue the save on but then decided to start a fresh with the full release with the Serie C bug corrected.
Continue reading “Florence And The Goal Machine : Better To Be Second Than Thieves 18-19 (1.0)”
Welcome to Florence the Italian city that is the home to ACF Fiorentina S.p.A and the club who I will be starting my FM19 save with after the Fred Pentland Challenge is now going to start after Christmas due to the working commitments of two of the participants, so whilst I am waiting to start the challenge with Villarreal I thought that I would drop anchor in Tuscany and see what I can achieve with the Viola. The club were formed in 1926 and have won the Serie A title on two occasions 1956 and 1969 some 50 years ago this coming season. The club were the first Italian Club to play in the European Cup Final in 1957 losing 0-2 to Real Madrid. Fiorentina did have some European success though when they beat Glasgow Rangers over two legs to lift the European Cup Winners Cup in 1961. The club are commonly known as The Viola (Purple) after the colour of their home shirts. They play their home games in the Stadio Artemio Franchi with a capacity of 43,147. The club were deemed bankrupt back in 2001-2002 season before being reestablished in August of 2002. The club are now owned by Diego Della Valle and are looking to better times after the implementation of a sound financial strategy
Continue reading “Florence And The Goal Machine : Introduction FM19”
Welcome to Part Two of my story about growing up with the Italian game. If you missed Part One you can catch up here. It was the summer of 1980 and after watching the European Championships staged in Italy myself and friends were looking forward to the season ahead following our teams in the domestic league’s in England. We spent most of the days playing Cricket and then Football as the season drew nearer. My birthday in June was pretty special I was lucky enough to have been brought a snooker and pool table measuring 6 foot by 3 foot along with a set of both snooker and pool balls. The table would take pride and place in our spare downstairs room which we actually called the front room due to it being located at the front of our house (no science needed right). We lived in quite a good sized house, it was a council house with 3 bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, upstairs toilet, bathroom, downstairs toilet, the front room and a huge garden front and back.
Continue reading “Innamorasi (to fall in love) Part Two 1980-1981 The Old Lady”
Welcome, over the last week I have been looking back at my collection of Italian Football matches on Video and DVD which as brought back some of the best memories I have about growing up watching the Italian game. I have decided to tell my story of how It all begun and how It developed over the years. It all started one winter’s evening in 1979 at home with my parents after a day at junior school and game of football after school with my mates which was common practice if we had not got a game for the school team. We lived and breathed the game I supported Nottingham Forest whilst a few of my mates supported Liverpool another supported Manchester City and another Sheffield Wednesday plus a good few who supported Derby County, one of the older lads supported Everton but we all had one thing in common we loved Football. At that time my club Nottingham Forest and Liverpool were going head to head both domestically and in Europe which gave us chance to have plenty of banter.
Continue reading “Innamorasi (to fall in love) Part One 1979-1980”
Welcome, Friday 17th August 2018 and I am sat amongst friends talking football something that is very much the norm when we get together. The six of us always have some type of yearly football related competition for a small prize fund and this next year is no different except for the first time it will be related to Football Manager and will be called the FM19 Fred Pentland Challenge after we changed the name from The FM19 Super Six Challenge originally chosen solely because there is six of us in it, nothing brain storming, however once the draw was made to decide which team would be used we decided to name the challenge after one of the clubs managers. The prize pot for the winner like always will be a minimum of £1000 which is always nice to win but the bragging rights is by far the greater prize between us.
