Career Raising the Dragons (fka A Trip Around The British Isles)

[MikeF]

I’m not quite sure what this challenge will end up being but I’ve never managed in the small leagues. So why not start with the lowest ranked playable league in the game - Wales.

I wanted to start with Llandudno as they’ve got great facilities for some reason so that will help me along the way hopefully, and after my last academy challenge, I believe the children are the future.

Some further inspiration when trying to see why they had such good facilities:

On 20 May 2021, it was announced that Llandudno, alongside Scottish Championship side Ayr United, League of Ireland First Division side Cobh Ramblers and NIFL Premiership side Portadown, had entered into a partnership with Premier League club Burnley, which was dubbed the 'British Isles Club Partnerships'.

So starting with the British Isles leagues loaded, I guess I want great success in all countries? What that means will depend on boredom factors but at least win the domestic league and see what happens in the CL. Much easier for Eng and Scot but I’ll start with the lower chaps.

Here are those lovely facilities:

Not bad for a semi-pro club in the Welsh feeder leagues. I never could find out why they were good and it seems they even lost academy status this year and had to dump all youngsters.

Not sure what we can do with these finances but I’m sure there will be a few free transfers who fancy a stint in the lower Welsh leagues…

Edited February 5, 2024 by MikeF

[Dai_]

Love this. A bit mad but, why not? 😂

 

Best of luck with whatever it is you want/are able to achieve. 👍

[MikeF]

Season 1

The season started off well with our first superstar coming through the youth team. 

It can’t be him can it? In the Welsh second division? I guess we have the best youth facilities in Wales so the best Welsh regen would come here. Almost looks too good to be true but let’s see how long he hangs around before he wants to leave. 
 

Using my Spurs tactic again we were flying. And then came the dreaded curse of the Entertainer…

But I’m also a star maker so hopefully it’ll balance out a bit. 

 

Anyway, we did well in the competitions getting to the Semi of the Welsh Cup, the final of the league cup, and winning the tier 2 league cup picking up a trophy in the first season.

We walked the league too.

The huge transfer budget was put into wages and I had to dump a load of poor players to get the wage bill down but our finances are nice and balanced now. I’ve even got £10 a week to spend so I’ll be competing with the Saudi clubs soon 😜 

Plenty of goals from my front 3 and midfield.

Noa was an absolute beast but was also injured half the time. Maybe it is The Golfer after all? Although his stets didn’t improve at all over the season so he’s either maxed already or just too good for the Welsh leagues.

Onwards and upwards. There doesn’t seem to be a huge gap in ability between the leagues so with luck we can push for Europe with a couple of key signings and that’s where the fun begins. 

Edited January 31, 2024 by MikeF

[MikeF]

Season 2

No complaints here winning the lot. 

Stormed the league and won the cup double. 
 

 

Plenty of goals coming from my front 3 again. Garrett was injured A LOT but still managed to get 33 goals. 
 

The challenge will come next year with CL qualification. 
 

[MikeF]

Season 3

Doing anything in the CL was going to be a huge challenge with the players and resources we have. 

8 qualifying matches before we’d even played 3 league games but we managed to take a couple of scalps along the way beating Maccabi Tel Aviv and Qarabag. 

We made it to the league phase but the draw was not nice at all. Man City, PSG, Ajax, Inter and Lyon.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot we could do. 
 

One highlight this season was another star coming through the academy:

Domestically we won all Welsh competitions but didn’t do well in the weird Scottish cup we were invited to.

 

The team performed well. Garrett was unreal scoring 58 and staying reasonably injury free with some new physios. We got a big offer for him from West Ham (7.5m) which would transform the team but I think I can get more so I cancelled it. He’ll go soon though.

I also lost my star defender to Rotherham on a Bosman which is annoying but he wouldn’t sign a new deal. It’s going to be tough replacing him.

 

Still regional, I get a lot of job offers from national league and league two but it’s not time to go yet.

 

[StuartM]

Love this Mike, great going! I'm sure it is the man himself... maybe you should only sell him to Real?!

[MikeF]

58 minutes ago, StuartM said:

Love this Mike, great going! I'm sure it is the man himself... maybe you should only sell him to Real?!

That makes me glad I turned down the West Ham offer - he’s not going there! 😂 

Saying that, my master plan has failed as no one came in for him over the summer…

[bcfclee27]

Have you been able to upgrade facilities?

[MikeF]

5 hours ago, bcfclee27 said:

Have you been able to upgrade facilities?

Not yet. I think you need a couple of million to be able to upgrade facilities at this stage and we’re way off that. 

[MikeF]

Season 4

Solid domestically, although we got knocked out the league cup early on as half the team were on international duty. 
 

But we won the other cups, including the Scottish invitational.

We met Copenhagen in the CL playoffs but managed to get by meaning we qualified for the league phase again and managing to scrape through to the knock out round play off.

We hammered Roma but met Bayern in the next round who gave us a good 5-1 thumping. Good progress year on year though. 

The team did well, but my Welsh Wizard was about 20 goals short from last season as goals were spread out more evenly with my attackers. 

I sold a decent player who could play across the front 3 for 350k only but I’ve got a 40% sell on so I’m hoping he does well in Scotland and we get a good pay down down the line. Hes worth £5m already. 

 

I checked the league rankings and I’ve dragged the Welsh Premier League up from 49th to 40th. 

I think this will be now challenge now. How high can I get the Welsh league in the rankings. 

With another couple of decent seasons in the CL we should climb more but I might have to start selling my academy prospects to other Welsh teams or raise money and give it to competitors to strengthen themselves. If that would even work. 
 

Recruitment is very hard as no one wants to come to play in Wales but I’m hoping with a sale or two each year we can raise money to get a sugar daddy owner, or at least to pay silly wages to free transfers.  
 

Move over Ryan Reynolds, Wales has a new saviour. 

[MikeF]

Season 5

I realised the league rep gets updated after the season ticks over so we ended last season with the Welsh league in 34th place for coefficient and 47th for reputation (2 stars).

We won the domestic triple as expected

but had to sacrifice the Scottish cup as I had no players available!

We had a great run in the CL beating Benfica and Man Utd in the league phase as well as a couple of smaller teams. 
The draw was on our side too with Real Sociedad up first followed by Benfica again.

We also had massive amounts of luck with those winning goals. 96th minute own goal? Yes please.

We drew Monaco in the quarter final which sounded doable. After we secured a 3-1 first leg away win that put us firmly in control. All we had to do was not lose. And so they hammered us 6-1 at our stadium 😂

We ended the season with a nice goal fest to win the Welsh cup so the fans were happy.

Plenty of goals all over. I had my two main strikers both injured so recalled King and he turned out to be an absolute beast scoring 15 and setting up 10 in 13 games. 

 

My midfield AP wonderkid Allen did amazingly with 20 goals and 16 assists and was the subject of a missing war. Chelsea offered £18m and he had to go. That sort of money will change the club allowing us to offer silly wages to free transfers and attempt some international talent. Work permits are hard in Wales so I’ve been signing any random foreign player I can to hopefully unlock abolish work permits. 
 

I’m up to a national rep.

And the board improved our training facilities (although refuse to improve youth).

We’re still only 2* rep though. 
 

Talking of rep… once the season updated we’d moved up to 31st in the coefficients giving us a Europa League spot for second place now.  The league rep also went up to 44th with 2.5*.

All heading in the right direction. 

 

Edited February 8, 2024 by MikeF

[MikeF]

Season 6

A solid season again winning everything we could domestically. Plus we strengthened our squad nicely now we’re enjoying regular CL football. 

The new legal team is working well too:

We managed to get to the quarter finals of the CL again but Inter were too much for us. 
 

Goals galore here. New signing Morgan Whitaker was a beast scoring 24 and setting up 27 goals in his first season and somehow Justin Kluivert fancied a stint in the Welsh leagues putting a good effort in too.

On transfers, my long term strategy of selling talent with big sell on fees is starting to pay off:

and we very nearly got the biggest FMMing of all time:

 

Anyway, here’s me:

Here's the club with our new 5* youth facilities:

 

But the key info, we’re now up to 24th in the coefficients, above N Ireland and Ireland now, and 42nd in terms of league rep.

That league rep will take some work to improve but we’re fighting the good fight. 

Edited February 12, 2024 by MikeF

[MikeF]

Season 7

A slight hiccup as we lost in the Welsh Cup semi final. CL league stage went well with us coming 4th (playing three Turkish teams weirdly) but we drew Barca in the last 16. They beat us 2-0 at theirs leaving us a big job to do. We won the home leg but only 1-0 so we crashed out.

Ive been in the CL for 5 seasons now so we need to start progressing further to up the coefficient as they’re on a 5 year rolling score.

Goals, goals, goals.

My star goalkeeper was too disruptive and had to go when I got a juicy bid for him and although I wanted to keep Bale 2.0, there was a bidding war for him and when Spurs were the final team in it, I had to sell to them. Almost £40m is silly money for this team but I’ll miss him. I’ve got a sell on clause too but Spurs don’t seem to be playing him. I don’t know why this game hates Spurs but they always get relegated. I tried to help. 

Anyway, this gave us a hefty war chest. 
And even paid for a new stadium:

Me:

Still an entertainer, but now my players like the title.

Finally.

No real change in club status. The board still won’t give me a 5* training ground .

 

The league:

Up to 17th in the coefficients which is great as we’re almost at two CL places but I need to start progressing as I said earlier or we’ll stay still now. Rep is up a bit but not by much. We want 3*.

 

And this year saw the first annual Mike F grant awarded to TNS. Random academy kid bought for 10m and set free.

Hopefully they invest it wisely 😂 

I can see at some point, maybe when we have 2 CL slots, I’ll have to move to TNS if the job opens up as I’m not sure they can do this on their own. Let’s see.

 

 

Edited February 16, 2024 by MikeF

[Dai_]

This is brilliant. Not just because Welsh. 😂

[MikeF]

Season 8

The perfect season, almost. Undefeated in the league. Undefeated all season in fact apart from the CL semi final. I took out some big teams along the way making easy work of Barca, but Real were just too much for us. We drew 1-1 at home but away, well we almost took them to extra time but...

 

Very active in the transfer market this time as a few unsettled players had to be moved on. Some guys can be reassured that they should stay, some just want to go and there's not much you can do there without unsettling the team or selling them. I try to wait until you have several bids to get a bidding war going as otherwise teams make stupidly low offers for my players and everyone is hugely undervalued in the Welsh league.

The one that hurt was Vlachodimos going for such a small amount as he was a rock but he wanted to go and got all stroppy so when Spurs came in for him, I sold him.

Incomings were another story, we got the cheque book out and spent big on some future superstars. Shuttleworth is Kane regen im pretty sure so i swapped my star striker and a whopping £30m for him but he's a beast already at just 16. Jesus is a Portuguese midfielder who has bags of potential but i dont know who he was in a previous life, saying that my scouts are iffy so who knows how he'll do. And Barco came from Spurs as he was unsettled there. But the biggest signing of all was getting Echeverri on a Bosman. I'll play him until a good offer comes in and flip him for profit.

I unlocked work permits towards the end of the season so we're loading up with wonderkids now to try and develop and sell to keep money coming in. Or to sell first teamers for good money and replace with youngsters. Whatever works.

 

Kane 2.0

 

Goals and assists:

41 goals from my 16/17 year old front man is a good start! I'm pretty sure that Soek-Jae Yang is Sonny (feels nice having Kane and Sonny back together). And Dewsbury-Hall is a machine as my B2B at 32 and gives me some experience in the middle of the park.

I'll tweak my first team a bit as i'm yet to find the best position for Echeverri (he can't play as AP in the CM position which is where i have mine so i'm trying him as an IF).

After selling Bale 2.0 to spurs they hardly played him and the worst possible thing happened. They sold him to a**enal. Gutted. But we did get a pay day. I was hoping he'd play and improve and go for big bucks (he's worth almost double what he was at Spurs) but that's a nice pay out.

 

Me:

Continental rep means i'm getting lots of offers but there's only job that interests me. I need the TNS manager to move on so i can jump ship and drag them up.

From next season, we'll have 2 CL spots. No other team is any way near good enough to even get through the qualifying stages and TNS aren't spending the money i gave them last year (dodgy shareholders?!) so i'll move there when i can and hope Llandudno don't sell all their good players.

We're 15th now in the coefficients and 36th for rep. A long way to go for rep still but the club just hit 3 stars so hopefully the league will follow soon.

Edited February 20, 2024 by MikeF

[MikeF]

Season 9

This was the season we'd been waiting for. The goals were flying in and our CL journey was a tasty one.

Hammering Juve 7-0 over two legs in the knock out stage.

10-0 for Porto

We then drew Real, our bogey team. With a 2-2 draw at home we had it all to do at the Bernabeu. 0-0 after 90 mins and a bit of luck with a red card. The game went to pens and we won!

Squeeky bum time scraping a 1-0 aggregate win over Atletico.

Liverpool in the final? Easy.

We won the rest too, as expected.

 

Transfers:

Nothing major here, a few players out, a few players in.

 

Team:

We scored over 200 goals which was pretty insane and 9 players had assists in the double figures. #teamworkmakesthedreamwork

 

I'm world class now, but that doesnt make much of a difference other than being spammed with job offers.

 

So how are we doing overall?

Wales went up one place in the coefficients, getting fewer points that the previous season despite the fact i won the CL.

The Cymru Premier is not a 3* league and sits at 35th in the reputation standings.

I don't fully understand the scoring here but I do know we've hit the limit of what can be done with one successful team in Wales. Its time to move on when the opportunity comes up and hope Llandudno don't sell off their star players when i'm not there.

 

[StuartM]

Champions League in Llandudno has got to be up there, brilliantly done!

[MikeF]

Season 10

Season 10 started well with us winning the Euro Super Cup. 

A job at another club finally came up so I took the opportunity to move to Carmarthen and start the rebuild process there. All Llandudno had to do was stay decent and we’ll soon have two teams in the CL.

 

Carmarthen Town were 4th I took over and we stayed there securing Euro Conference football.

And then it all fell apart.

I thought I’d check in with my old club, currently responsible for holding up the Cymru Premier, and saw this…

The idiot game AI sold every single decent player. They made £300m+ but didn’t replace anyone, and crashed out of Europe in the qualifying path. 

I should have stayed.

Anyway, here’s where we ended up. 

14th in the coefficient ranking.

34th in rep.

A disappointing end to what was a fun challenge. 

[Dai_]

Simply... Gutting 😂😂

[Sege77]

Nice journey 

[leedsunited87]

I wouldn't finish here mate, doing amazing 👏 do what you did with Llandudno with (current team, can't pronounce it) not a million miles off your goal buddy! 

[MikeF]

[MikeF]

Season 11

After a bit of a regroup I decided to play on. Part of me moving to Carmarthen included a parting gift from Llandudno. 

Feels a little like cheating but it’s all in the rules of the challenge to drag up the Welsh league. 

Despite having a few million in the bank (to try and improve facilities), it seems the club isn’t doing very well financially. 

 

Hopefully the chairman won’t start accepting offers on my behalf but let’s see. 

A good first season winning the domestic triple and getting to the semis of the Europa Conference where Bournemouth knocked me out. 

 

Team:

We spent £20m replacing the entire squad with youngsters with potential so let’s see how they develop. 

Before our financial troubles set in, the board improved training and youth so we’re at 3* each. 

Club rep is low at 1.5* still. 
 

As expected our coefficient ranking dropped 2 places so we’re back at only 1 CL spot but maybe that’s for the best until the game AI can do better.

We did go up 1 place in rep so we’re still headed in the right direction. 
 

And finally the money starts flowing in the league. 

Llandudno, who must be sitting on £300m or so, finally decided to spend some of their money. 

[MikeF]

Season 12

The season didn't start off the best with the club being declared bankrupt, despite having over 8m in the bank.

It wouldn't even let me move transfer funds into wages as wages being 1% over budget seemed to be the big issue. Anyway, we pressed on.

Llandudno got their act together and pushed me pretty hard for the title. I'm glad that my time there wasn't wasted! They also had an ok Europa run getting to the knockout stage and made some decent signings. There's hope after all.

Cups were ours for the taking.

 

And we had a great CL run. In the quarter finals against Inter we lost 3-0 in the first leg and I thought that was us. But the boys wanted to put on a show for the home crowd and we made it past the Italians to play Porto in the semis.

Porto hammered us.

 

But a good season and some of my youngsters are starting to look decent.

We're not scoring the amount of goals that Llandudno did in our golden years there but we're early on in this project still.

I swear I was World Class before, but have dropped to Continental now.

 

And we came out of the financial hole by the end of the season. A couple of good players had to go to bring money in but we made it.

 

 

And onto the Welsh league... a big season all round in Europe (and some poor runs from other nations) saw us climb back up to 2 CL spots for next season

And our rep is up too. Surely we'll hit 3.5 stars next year.

 

 

Edited March 8, 2024 by MikeF

[StuartM]

Motoring on, well done Mike - I'm glad you have persisted

[MikeF]

Season 13

Lucky 13 for us. 

A cheeky 91st minute winner in the CL meant the second CL winner from Wales in only a few years.

Everything else went as planned.

 

More goals which is what we like to see. And some well know names in there too, albeit past their best.

My entire team is wanted by other clubs which doesn’t help keep people happy but well need to sell a couple to bring some money in to start sharing the wealth around the league again so at least we'll have some choice in who to sell. I only well when i get multiple bids for a player as bidding wars are my friend. 
My transfer policy is oldies on frees and regen hunting to bring money in. 

 

I’m world class again.

And the club now has 5* facilities all round and financial security. We just need to get a new stadium.

 

We dropped a place in the coefficients but kept our two CL spots which is key. But we did finally go up to 3.5* rep which has made all my players worth a lot more money which is a nice bonus. We’re now 25th in reputation.

 

A sneak peek from next season…

Edited March 11, 2024 by MikeF

[StuartM]

Very nice Mike, is the plan to get a new stadium and then move?

[johnikon]

Congrats on winning the 2nd CL title. Btw, who's managing Llandudno currently, I'm kinda curious 🧐

[MikeF]

10 hours ago, StuartM said:

Very nice Mike, is the plan to get a new stadium and then move?

I want to see if I can get the club rep above 3 stars before i go. I left Llandudno at 3* but they don't recruit very well so i'm thinking a higher rep will attract better players. And another MF Arena of course haha. 

 

2 hours ago, johnikon said:

Congrats on winning the 2nd CL title. Btw, who's managing Llandudno currently, I'm kinda curious 🧐

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Eustáquio

Continental rep as manager but not doing amazing with them in any European competition.

Again, if i can leave Carmarthen with higher rep maybe they'll get a better manager to replace me.

 

My main issue coming up will be that my recruitment is heavily around seeing what players are retiring and then hunting their regens if they're going cheap in order to get OP players and then sell for profit/keep if happy. The last of the known players are retiring so we'll be entering unknown territory soon unless I can track regens of regens but that can be tricky (I think i just found Ronaldo 3.0)

Edited March 11, 2024 by MikeF

[MikeF]

Season 14

I’ll make these briefer. 
 

Won lots:

 

Scored lots:

 

The club is 3.5* for rep so we’ve improved on Llandudno. I was hoping we could get to 4 stars by winning the CL a second time but it didn’t go up.

The stadium is 19,000 now too so Carmarthen are in good shape. Maybe time to move on soon…

Me:

 

I had to sell Bacca, our best player, as he was bringing everyone down and Barca offered £96m for him. How do you replace your best player?

With a bit of luck and a bit of nostalgia it seems…

Chelsea released my boy and he’s coming home.

And now the important bit. 
We dropped one place in the coefficients but still have 2 CL spots. 

And although the league is still 3.5* for rep, we moved up 5 places to 20th. 

I’ll see if we can have another good season to help rep but if a job comes up it’ll be time to move on taking some of the Bacca money with me. 
 

Edited March 14, 2024 by MikeF