With FM15 very much in injury time at the end of the game, my thoughts have flicked into reflective mode. FM15 has been the first Football Manager I have been able to play since the game moved from the Championship Manager name. By play, I mean really play. None of that play it for a month then life gets in the way gubbins. I\u2019ve been able to average at least 3 hours a day since it\u2019s release. Probably not Champions League winning numbers, but a solid start for a former veteran.<\/p>\n
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FM15 has been good to me. I mean, really good to me. Since it\u2019s release I have seen my two books, \u201cJohnny Cooper, Championship Manager\u201d (still available on Amazon) continue to sell daily. I\u2019ve been lucky enough to use my FM story to get a seat on the board at a professional football club in Spain, Club Deportivo Torrevieja. This fact led to me being asked to do a \u201cWe are the Managers\u201d video alongside people like Spencer FC (already a good friend from our shared love of Real Oviedo), Steven Finn (England cricketer), Carlo Cudicini (one of the coolest men on the planet) and Mark Chapman (who I have followed since he was on the Sara Cox radio show on Radio One!) Through in an interview on TalkSport in a couple of weeks time and yeah, FM15 has served me well.<\/p>\n
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Save wise, well I can remember them all for different reasons. I dipped my toe back in gently, trying to get used to the new edition, with a quick save in Turkey with Altay. I recall a promotion in three seasons, or something. Then shit got real. CD Torrevieja. This is where FM15 and Strikerless got in my blood. Using Guido Merry\u2019s concoction I took the Spanish club from Tercera to La Liga in five or six seasons. Having then moved here, it felt weird playing as them, so I left the save on a high. Next up was Clapton FC. I managed successive promotions to the Conference, but the fact I had turned off player attribute masking started to annoy me, so I left the save there as it wasn\u2019t feeling real. I restarted, at Carl Zeiss Jena. My good friend Paul Wandless, owner of www.footballmanagercentral.com had just started a save with Magdeburg in the 4th<\/sup> tier of German and I wanted to race him to the Bundesliga. I won, promoted in successive seasons once again. We got relegated in our first season though, my first relegation. Off to Holland, reforming the defunct club of Haarlem in the lowest Dutch level of amateur football. This went well for a few seasons, but a corrupt database killed it for me, I was genuinely distraught. I returned home to my home town of Guildford, once again in Step 9 of English football and started moving up the ladder again, reaching the Ryman Premier without breaking a sweat. However, with the imminent launch of www.thehighertempopress.com I felt I needed a save I could write about that people would connect with, a bigger club and a well thought out challenge. Hence \u201cBeating Brian,\u201d my attempt at emulating Brian Clough by taking a regional side in the second tier and beating what he achieved in a decade with Derby and Forest. Read how I did here, as eventually I moved from Wolves, to Internacional, to Boca and then to Lazio where I reside today, waiting for that BETA code to be sent.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why am I telling you this? Because I am thinking what my greatest FM15 side would be from the players I have managed. Regardless of the level I have been managing at, I have unearthed some personal legends. So this is my side, playing in my favourite tactic of FM15, my Argentine Strikerless.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Those that didn\u2019t quite make it, well there are a few. Carl Ikeme was superb for us in goal at Wolves. Vadala and Manfru have already been mentioned, but Carrasco and Ossie were goal machines for me at Torrevieja and Guildford City. Blakey was a key midfielder at City also, and will be as disappointed as Ongenda for not making the final cut. Probably the hardest for me to leave out though was Tino Schmidt. He was another original at Carl Zeiss Jena playing in the central winger role, and I loved him like a son.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Feel free to share your best XI\u2019s of FM15 with me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With FM15 very much in injury time at the end of the game, my thoughts have flicked into reflective mode. FM15 has been the first Football Manager I have been able to play since the game moved from the Championship Manager name. By play, I mean really play. None of that play it for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[5,6,7,34,8,9,10,11,12,14,15,40,16,41,42,19,21,22,23,24,25,26],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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