A New Challenge - by WD-Smiffy

Just before I begin, I wanted to give a little bit of background about myself and my FM ‘career’. My name is Ryan, I’m 19 years old, support Watford and have been playing Football Manager since FM05. Back then, I didn’t really know what I was doing and didn’t really grasp the concept of how to play the game and I would often get frustrated when things didn’t go as I planned them – often resulting in me deleting the save and starting fresh. As the years have passed I’ve slowly but surely managed to become a little more competent with the game and started to have a lot more fun with it.

Normally when I start a new game in FM I start with the team I support (Watford) and see how far I can take them and then move abroad to a lesser known team and try and do it all again. However, in this save, I’m going to try something a little different.

I’ll still be starting my career in England with the lowest possible stats for a manager. I’ve put all 72 Football League teams into a 'hat'. Whatever team gets drawn out of the hat is where I’ll begin my career. My aim with the team I end up managing will be to make them the most successful club in England and Europe. I’m sure this has been done before, but for me, it’s a unique twist on how I normally do things in Football Manager.

That’s pretty much it for this opening post, the next update will show the team I end up managing with some history on the club, the leagues I have loaded, my managerial style and the tactics I'll be using throughout the save.

Here's hoping you draw Blackpool

Suffolk Seasider - I was hoping for a League 1 or 2 side as I've never really played as a team with a small budget before. It would have been pretty cool.
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So, we’ve ended up in West London at Queens Park Rangers. I’ll be honest, this project has started off a lot easier than I thought it would. Below is a brief history courtesy of Wikipedia (everyone’s go to source for information) on the club.

QPR was founded in 1886, when a team known as St Jude's (founded 1884) merged with Christchurch Rangers (founded 1882). The resulting team was called Queens Park Rangers, because most of the players came from the Queens Park area of North-West London. QPR became a professional team in 1889 and played their home games in nearly 20 different stadia (a league record), before permanently settling in Loftus Road in 1917 (although the team briefly played at White City between 1931–32 and 1962–63 in the hope of attracting larger crowds).
Queens Park Rangers played on two grounds within Park Royal. The first was the Horse Ring, the site of the now-demolished Guinness Brewery, on the Royal Agricultural Society's show grounds from 1904 to 1907 which had a capacity of 40,000. When the Society sold the grounds in 1907, QPR moved to the Park Royal Ground, 400 yards south, an almost exact replica of Ayresome Park, with a capacity of 60,000. The club were forced to move out in February 1915 as the ground was taken over by the Army.
QPR were promoted as champions of Division 3 South in the 1947–48 season. Dave Mangnall was the manager as Rangers enjoyed 4 seasons in the Second division, being relegated in 1951–52. Tony Ingham was signed from Leeds United and went on to make most ever league appearances for QPR (519).
Prior to the start of the 1959–60 season saw the arrival of arguably the club's greatest ever manager, Alec Stock. The 1960–61 season saw QPR achieve their biggest win to date – 9–2 vs Tranmere Rovers in a Division 3 match. In time, Stock, with the advent as Chairman in the mid-60s of Jim Gregory helped to achieve a total transformation of the club and its surroundings.


These are the leagues I have loaded for this save:



This is my managerial profile:



The tactics I have loaded are the ‘Goodbye 3430’ and ‘Wheels of Fire 3430’ which can both be found here.





I've decided to use the same tactics that have been so successful for me personally in my Watford save. It seems like the 3 and the back formations with wing backs are really effective this year. Depending on results, I may or may not tweak and play around with the tactics.

In the next update, I'll be showing: training setup, scouting targets, pre-season results, signings (if any; I only have a £1,000,000 budget with QPR), Sky Bet Championship Fixtures and the top 3 stand out players in the squad.

Never seen a career with QPR so looking forward to this. Always had a soft spot for them!