Career The Stripes are Back

[S4NCH0]

 

 

 

 

 

[S4NCH0]

1. The Press Conference:

"Good afternoon everyone. First of all, thank you for coming today on such a short notice. We have summoned you here to inform you of the latest events inside the club. Rumors have circulated around social media, and we feel it's our duty to give fans the transparency they deserve. We sadly announce the resignation of Gary Bowyer from his position at the club. It has been a wonderful opportunity working with such a professional, dedicated, and a passionate person like him. It is to our misfortune that he has decided to join club. This is undeniably a gain for them but we can only respect and honor his choice as he believes that this is for the best.

On behalf of everyone at Bradford City, I would like to thank Mr. Bowyer for his efforts and wish him the best of success in their future challenge. The club has already started to look for Mr.Bowyer's replacement, and compromises to inform the fans and the media as soon as an agreement has been reached. As for these next couple of weeks training sessions and games, Santiago Fernández, Bradford City's U-21 manager and Fitness Coach, will be taking part as caretaker manager. Once again, the club wishes wish Mr. Bowyer a successful future and reaffirms it's confidence in Mr. Fernández. I will only be talking 3 questions from the press, thank you." 

 

Question 1: "Good afternoon Mr. Rahic, Henry McArdle from The Football League Paper here. Last year Martin Drury lasted over a month as caretaker manager in which the club performed very well and grabbed some interesting results in League One. Following his dismissal due to the subsequent appointing of Gary Bowyer, the club seemed out of form and was unable to stay up and was relegated into League Two. My question is: Will the club trust Fernandez for a longer period of time if he manages to get the team going and gets the club good results?" 

 

Answer: "We believe an experienced manager is needed to take on the job, and it's our objective to find one that fits the club mentality and pleases the fans' demands. Therefore, it's in the club's best interest to find a replacement for Bowyer as soon as possible. However, we do recognize Santiago's knowledge and love for the club, and therefor we are willing to give him a chance if we perceive that during his short reign he manages to have a positive impact on the club and guide us towards the club's objectives."

 

Question 2: "Hello Mr.Rahic, Abraham Wells from Sky Sports. You just talked about the club's objectives so I wanted to know: What are they? Do they change with the change of manager? Thank you"

 

Answer: "The club's objectives are clear and they are the same since we took over the club. In the short term, the club expects to win promotion back into League One, while on the long term the club expects to become an established Championship team. We expect to do this with special attention to our mentality which is the use and development of homegrown talent, the signing of good, experienced talents and the production of an attractive style of play. Maybe during this period of change the urgency of these objectives is diluted, but as soon as the club management comes back to normal, then yes, the club objectives will recover their short term status"

 

Question 3: "Hi sir, Mark Abbott reporting for The Guardian. My question is wether the club will make any transfer through Chairman Mr.Rupp or through Santiago Fernández or will the club wait for the new manager?"

 

Answer: "The answer is simple, both Fernandez and Mr. Rupp will join our scouts and look for potential targets in the market who they believe fit the club's philosophy. As I told you before we are already going through a few candidates for the managerial vacant, so the idea is to have a couple of players already in mind which the club thinks may fit the styles and philosophy of these shortlist of potential managers and our philosophy.  All I can tell you with total certainty, is that Fernandez has already asked for the recalling of experienced striker James Vaughan and promising wing-back Jackson Longridge, as for the rest of the transfers I can't talk a lot about them. But well, that's it for today. You'll have the chance to learn more about all of this as the month moves forward and talks develop, until then please remain patient. Good afternoon"

[S4NCH0]

 

 

 

 

 

[S4NCH0]

2. A new era begins

Chairman (Rupp): "Thank you for coming once again. We summoned you here to announce that due to the positive atmosphere shown during the preseason and the good results the club got, together with the inability to attract a manager to the club who the directors felt fulfilled our philosophy. Therefore we are pleased to announce that Santiago Fernandez will be managing the first team at least until the last match of December. The club will then analyze the team's performance, and if we believe we're going in the right direction then Santiago will remain in his post, otherwise, pertinent actions will be taken. That's it for today. Once again, thank you for coming."

[S4NCH0]

3. Objectives

Santiago Fernandez: "Good afternoon people of the press, I'm delighted to be here today in front of you. As most of you already know, I will be talking charge of Bradford City at least until December of this year. I want to reassure the fans that I'm in love with this club, it's history captivates me, it's social responsibility and community involvement make it a huge club for me, and it's current situation infuriates me. Furthermore, I've worked in the club setup for many years now as a fitness coach, as an assistant, and as a Academy manager, and I know the club from the inside. All these points together, I believe make me the right man for the job, and being able to have this opportunity so early on in my managerial career is a dream come true. I want to thank the directors at Bradford City FC for their trust, and I warrant I won't make you regret your choice. Without much more to say, are there questions?"

Question 1: "Good afternoon Mr. Fernandez, Henry McArdle from The Football League Paper here.  My question is very simple, what are your goals in the short term? Are there any transfer targets you have in mind for the task?"

 

Answer: "My answer is simple, the club must play League One football in no more than two seasons. We were only relegated a couple of seasons ago, and therefore we believe we have to take advantage of the fact that we still have par of the administrative team we had last season, that some experienced players have decided to stay and that our facilities haven't suffered any downgrade. The bounce back is necessary if we don't want this club to stagnate. As for the transfers, you'll have to wait and see. The club scouts are still working on it"

 

Question 2: "Hello Mr. Fernandez, Abraham Wells from Sky Sports. You just talked about the club's objectives on the short term so I wanted to know: Are there any specific long term objectives? Assuming obviously you were to stay here"

 

Answer: "My first longterm objective is to establish our selves in League One and become a competitive team being able to challenge for promotion to the Championship. If we make it to the next tier in the first couple of seasons, and manage to retain momentum we could be achieving this in just a few seasons. That's for the realistic objectives. If you ask me about my dreams, I'd like to become a record breaker manager and bring back the glory days to this wonderful club, and if you ask me, I would love to see some club legends back at the cub, we've already reached out to some, but who knows maybe one day we see Nahki Wells around Valley Parade's turf again. Who knows, maybe we will be playing Premier League on the long run hahaha but for now let's focus on more realistic targets "

 

Career Objectives:

 

Long-term objectives:

- Have Nahki Wells retire here

- Hire Greg Abbott as a coach

- Develop homegrown players

- Become the base of English National Team

- Become a dominant European force

 

Records to break:

- Win 2 FA Cups (won in 1911)

- Win a Carabao Cup (Runner ups in 2013)

- Win the Premier League (Runner ups in 1999)

- Go 22 games unbeaten (21 in 1968)

- Win 11 consecutive matches (10 in 1983)

- Have a player play 575 games (574 appearances from Ces Podd)

- Have a player score 144 goals (143 from Bobby Campbell)

- Have a player score 37 goals in a season (36 from David Layne 1961)

- Get 95 points in a season (94 in 1984)

- Manage the team for 498 matches (497 by Peter O'Rourke 1905-1921)

 

 

[S4NCH0]

[BatiGoal]

All those club records you're intending to break should keep things fresh in this quest for European dominance. Best of luck! 

[S4NCH0]

On 06/04/2020 at 11:01, BatiGoal said:

All those club records you're intending to break should keep things fresh in this quest for European dominance. Best of luck! 

It's a good way to spice up an otherwise generic career. Also, I've never been any good at big challenges like the DT or the 1000 goals, so smaller achievable challenges are my go to hahaha. Thanks!

 

[S4NCH0]

Season 1

From now on I'll be posting season summaries, I'll occasionally may post some media as the posts above but College is a little demanding at times haha. Let's start:

 

Starting setup:

Spoiler

Just wanted to show you the leagues I've loaded, so you know it and maybe if you guys want I could give you an update on the whereabouts of your favorite teams. I've loaded Scotland and France as in my opinion, they are the birth place of the best bargains in game, who can easily be bought and get a work permit. As for Spain it usually produces top notch, world class players who aren't that expensive (but not as cheap as the other countries) and they also usually have their teams scouting the best foreign talents. 

Board and Club Status:

Spoiler

Reasonable expectations since we were only relegated one season ago. In my opinion the team isn't the best and the budget is very low, hence I think promotion is way more reasonable. 

Staff looks pretty decent at the start of the season, not much to say about it. Hopefully we have some money left to reinforce it. 

One of my goals was to have club legends back either as staff or players, and the addition of Greg Abbott to the team directs us on that way. He is a former Bradford City legend both as player and manager. 

Some additional information for those interested.

 

Transfers Out:

Spoiler

As for the transfers out I believe we did a very good job getting rid of old players and dead wood. I also wanted get rid of high earners who in other circumstances I would have kept but that set the club wages a little bit back, hence the sales of Pritchard, Reeves and Mellor. In summary, I think we did a very positive job here since managing to get 1.1 million pounds into a League Two club is always respectable. 

 

Tranfers In:
Now let's see how the money was spent

Spoiler

As seen in the past spoiler, our sales got us a lot of money to spend and we did by reinforcing almost every area. I'm specially excited about the incorporation of Byrne (former Manchester City academy player) and from March (a hidden bargain I've never seen before). We also had around 500k left to reinforce our staff and maybe in a future upgrade the facilities. 

Here are the profiles of all the players we've bought:

Spoiler

 I tried to keep it as realistic as possible, bringing in some natural talent in Byrne and March, some experience in Mulholland and Keogh (who already seems as Championship quality), and some youth in the rest of the players. 

FA Cup:

We played 4 matches in the FA Cup, finally exciting against Premiership side Everton. If you notice the match, they were absolutely dominant with 15x the shots we had and 11x the shots on target. An inclined road lays ahead of us if we ever want to compete in the first division.

League:

After the first six months went by, we sat in 3rd place but the situation was deceiving. We had a horrible start to the season with two consecutive defeats, tied every second game and scored few goals, we where also only 4 points above 11th place which wasn't very enticing nor what the board expected. 

But at least we kept the job, and were given a chance ahead of the next six months, which went as folows:

We didn't manage to win it, but on the positive side we got our selves promoted and managed to get the team to function properly!  

 

Awards and Best Performers:

Manager Profile:

Spoiler

Not that bad after all. The sale of so many youngsters and former players wasn't well received and the acquisition of older players brought my youth policy down. However, I still managed to achieved a Well Respected status and managed a satisfying 100 goals. 

Best Players:

Spoiler

As said before, I had very high hopes upon March and Byrne, and neither of the two disappointed. March scored 26 goals, while Byrne assisted for 17 goals. A massive season from them. Here's their profiles at the end of the season:

M

March developed some green areas, became confortable with the left wing position, and increased his value from 75k to 375k. If he continues to deliver in such manner, we might see a good profit from his sale.

 

Byrne was a fans favorite (I guess that's what the golden frame means) for the whole season, he also developed but not as much as March, and his value rocketed to 1.9M from only 190k. We would be seeing a 900% profit if we sold him for that much. 

Awards:

Spoiler

We didn't dominate the Payer's Team of the Year, but at least managed to get March and his natural substitute Ismail into the team. I'm satisfied with that.

March comes on top by only one goal. Very respectable return for a young, debutant, and cheap player as him.

Since goals are what win matches, March also comes first in the Player of the Year award. It's nice to see James Hanson (former Bradford City player, and one of my idols IRL) and Ismail in there as well, seems like the bantams flew high this season.

Reserves:

Spoiler

 

A very positive return from our youngsters in the reserves. We came one point close from winning it, but sometimes it goes that way. Hope the future youth intakes see us bring in a couple of players who can win us the Reserves Leagues.

 

 

Long-term objectives:

- Have Nahki Wells retire here

- Hire Greg Abbott as a coach Hired this season 

- Develop homegrown players

- Become the base of English National Team

- Become a dominant European force

 

Records to break:

- Win 2 FA Cups (won in 1911)

- Win a Carabao Cup (Runner ups in 2013)

- Win the Premier League 

- Go 22 games unbeaten (21 in 1968)

- Win 11 consecutive matches (10 in 1983)

- Have a player play 575 games (574 appearances from Ces Podd)

- Have a player score 144 goals (143 from Bobby Campbell)

- Have a player score 37 goals in a season (36 from David Layne 1961)

- Get 95 points in a season (94 in 1984)

- Manage the team for 498 matches (497 by Peter O'Rourke 1905-1921)

Conclusion:

The season leaves a nice taste in my mouth. The lack of defensive steel and squad depth is already in my mind, as the bantams head into the new season. Let's wait and see how we fare there. Thanks for reading and until next time!

Edited April 9, 2020 by S4NCH0
Forgot to add objectives

[Mr Tree]

Lovely stuff - keep it going! Although, I don't remember Bradford being Premier League runners up in 1999 🤔

[S4NCH0]

8 hours ago, Mr Tree said:

Lovely stuff - keep it going! Although, I don't remember Bradford being Premier League runners up in 1999 🤔

Thanks! And yeah you are right, they were runner-ups to the First Division in 1999. I totally forgot the First Division became the second tier in 1992. My bad! Hahaha 

[S4NCH0]

Season 2

After a very successful debut season, what will season 2 bring our way? Let's find out

Youth Intake: 

Spoiler

Here is our Youth Intake for the season. In the end we kept all the players. Collin Nicholls seems as a good prospect, but not good enough to play in the first XI right away. That leadership is what excites me the most. 

 

Board and Club:

Spoiler

The board expect us to attain Mid-Table. This will be a challenge considering a couple of seasons ago we got delegated from this league. However, the budget is very decent and we should be able to do a lot with that.

A very improved Staff compared to last season.

Transfers

Spoiler

We end the season with a profit of 1.8M pounds, a very decent amount of money if we achieve promotion. You may notice our top two sales were the best players from last season, March and Byrne. We wanted to keep them at the club, but their good form brought a lot of hard to reject offers, so off they went. To replace them we got Jon Toral on a Free transfer from Hull, and Tarique Fosu from Brentford. Here are our former player's profiles:

Transfer in's profiles:

Now let's see who was bought. I'm specially excited about Barrow and Kane, and the already mentioned Fosu and Toral. We also managed to bring a 5k defender called Aaron Barnes who seems as one for the future. 

Spoiler

FA Cup:

We had another early exit this season against a Championship side. The game stats didn't seem so unbalanced as the final result.

League: 

After the first six months of the season went by we managed to grab a surprising 6th position. Although unexpected, our league position wasn't that confortable considering we were only 3 points away from 8th. Once again, we were tying a lot of games and our defense didn't seem fit for the task. 

Six months later we would finish 3rd place and would have to fight for promotion in the playoffs. We were 2nd for most of the last months, but a horrible streak of games saw us fall to 3rd. 

We would be playing the semi finals against Mk Dons

The first game went pretty well, however, that disallowed goal would have saved me the nerves in the second leg.

Although I expected a tough, nerve-racking game, Mullen managed to grab us a confortable lead only 20 minutes into the game. This lead meant we could substitute our best players and have them fit for our trip to Wembley to play against Doncaster.

The final started off with an early goal from Play-Off hero Danny Mullen, but Doncaster were very quick to react few minutes later. The game was very tied, with few shots on target from both of us and with almost the same amount of time with the ball, however, few minutes into the second half, Tarique Fonsu scored a goal. We narrowed down, slowed the game, and 30 minutes or so after, the underdogs won promotion.

Bradford City is a Championship team!

 

Awards and Best Performers:

Best Players:

Spoiler

The sale of March caused worry, who was going to score the goals now? Luckily, Kurtis Guthrie stepped up out of nowhere and went on to score 19 goals in the second half of the season. Ismail, who made the Team of the Year together with march, got the best average.

Awards:

Spoiler

I managed to grab the Manager of the Year award.

Reserves:

Spoiler

We couldn't manage the feat from last year, but well. A 6th place finish is very decent.

 

Long-term objectives:

- Have Nahki Wells retire here

- Hire Greg Abbott as a coach Hired this season 

- Develop homegrown players

- Become the base of English National Team

- Become a dominant European force

 

Records to break:

- Win 2 FA Cups (won in 1911)

- Win a Carabao Cup (Runner ups in 2013)

- Win the Premier League 

- Go 22 games unbeaten (21 in 1968)

- Win 11 consecutive matches (10 in 1983)

- Have a player play 575 games (574 appearances from Ces Podd)

- Have a player score 144 goals (143 from Bobby Campbell)

- Have a player score 37 goals in a season (36 from David Layne 1961)

- Get 95 points in a season (94 in 1984)

- Manage the team for 498 matches (497 by Peter O'Rourke 1905-1921)

Conclusion:

Once again, the season leaves a nice taste in my mouth. However, we have to find some more consistency if we want to make it to the top anytime soon. The Championship is a very tough league since every team feels like a good team, so no-consistency means no promotion.

Edited April 10, 2020 by S4NCH0
Can't errase the extra pics our of place

[Kanegan]

Great job winning back to back promotions. KIU. 

[gunnersaur]

Great stuff so far man keep it up 

[smoggy90]

Congrats on the two promotions, keep it up and good luck in the championship!

[S4NCH0]

On 10/04/2020 at 20:28, Kanegan said:

Great job winning back to back promotions. KIU. 

 

On 10/04/2020 at 20:52, gunnersaur said:

Great stuff so far man keep it up 

 

On 11/04/2020 at 01:55, smoggy90 said:

Congrats on the two promotions, keep it up and good luck in the championship!

Thanks guys!! I will try to post one more update today and one during the weekend. College has just been horrible this two weeks, but I'll try to update the career soon. Until then!

 

[Dagion]

Excellent read, interesting idea to keep longer careers interesting! Might nick some ideas for future saves 😉