An Attempt at taking over the British isles

After a small stall on another save that I have, i thought why not have a go at an another challenge save.

I've never before attempted to do the British Steel Challenge, but it appeals to me as I like to have saves that are in low ranked division and working my way up to the top with certain teams.

The only nations I have loaded up are England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland.

On last couple of additions I have founded myself in Northern Ireland and actually enjoyed my time there in those saves. Thats where I will be starting this challenge.

Portstewart is the team i've picked. We are tipped to finish 10th and fight bravely for relegation.

A brief look at the team shows some promising young players that I will mould the team around. In the first season I normally don't bring in many players and usually just play with what i have to see what positions i need to strengthen.

My first port-call was to bring in a chief scout, physio and a fitness coach. To max out the available coaching staff the board will allow.

Heading into pre season, I wasn't bothered if the team didn't get any wins i'm more bothered about getting the fitness and the team being close to fluid in the tactic i am going to use with Portstewart.



A few good performances there, we kept in and dominated some games just wasn't able to see certain games out. Looking at the results our defence seem to leak goals but at the same time I'm happy with the amount of goals and chances we were able to score. I thought we was a little short in the centre of defence so a CB was in order. As Coleraine is an affiliated club like Larne are. I was able to loan a young 18 year old CB from Coleraine. Jordan Grissam.

Close to halfway through the season we are playing well, a lot better season so far then i originally thought we will have. Being top of league makes it promising but i'm hoping we don't have a run of games where we fall away too much.



To pick out one of the games through the first ten games must be the 5-5 against Dundela. They were originally predicted to win the league this year by the media but seem to be struggling.

The game was the most frustrating game i have had for a while. To be down 3-0 to come back and be leading with only a few minutes to go and draw the game was frustrating. It seemed what ever happened in the game every attack for any team was going to end in a goal. Ive uploaded the highlights of all the goals too.

This is where the unfortunate slip down the table is occurring. 11 games later we are finding ourselves 6 points behind the leader Bainbridge. The crunch match was the lost against them 2 games ago. That game was a defiantly a 6 pointer game i knew anything than a loss would keep us in the run in. Sadly we didn't and have to settle for fighting for second. We have 5 games to go to save the season what started on the right foot.

The team inconsistency could be down to the fact that Grissam got injured for 8 weeks, McGowan and Donnell's goals have seem to dry up and with out them the teams inconsistency has seem to show. My Captain and the other CB Peden has had some horrible games recently Av Ratings being 4.5, 5.4, 6.1's A few fringe players have started to moan for lack of game time so moving forward into the last couple of games might have to mix the starting line up a little bit more than i've been doing.

We've started to stop the rut with 2 wins out of 3 games. We are in touching distance of the playoff spot, even chance to win the title but there is too much to happen to make that possible. Last two games are Limavady and Wakehurst.

The YouTube highlights of the 5-5 draw against Dundela doesn't seem to win - it's all scrambled.

But nonetheless, you have had quite a tremendous season at Portstewart and promotion to Championship 1 may happen although of course it's going to be tough. It's not only nice to see someone else attempting to equal @Gendo in completing the British Steel Challenge but it's also nice to see someone begin the challenge in Northern Ireland. Good luck.

Cheers, yeah i'm not sure why its scrambled i just exported it out of FM to youtube but i'll see if i can fix it.
It's going to be a challenge for sure after reading yours and dan's story made me want to make an attempt at it.

Good luck in Northern Ireland, mate. It's unfortunately a veritable black hole for football, but if you can find momentum with Portstewart, it could lead you to not just a couple trophies, but possibly a better job within the nation too!

2 games left to see if Portstewart can move themselves up into the playoff place for the chance of promotion to Championship 1 next season.

Wakehurst at home is the first game, a team that is in the relegation zone but still has chance of stopping up.

The game was a nervous one and one that i knew was slowly moving away, as chances came and went and 5 minutes before half time Wakehurst get the first goal. Conor Gregg. It took until the 90th minute and a own goal for us to get on level terms. A draw was a disappointing result as a win was really needed but a draw still kept us in with a shout. All we NEED is P.S.N.I to lose, and Queen University, Sport & Leisure not to win for us to have a chance at promotion. Do able but will need everything to go our way.

We were in the position to get the win that we needed and hope the other results go our way but losing 2 goals in 5 minutes made it even more difficult before half time, second half we just went for it all guns blazing we got one back with 32 minutes to play but nothing more could be done. Other results sadly wasn't going our way and the chance to get the playoff spot was increasing diminishing.



Finishing 5th is a good achievement but it is slightly disappointing not to be able to continue the form what we had in the first ten games. But its higher than the media prediction and what the board wanted at beginning of the season so got to be happy with that.

Thanks Gendo, hopefully i can build with Portstewart to get a job at one of the top teams in Northern Ireland, I've done a couple of saves where I've been in Northern Ireland in the premier division and championship 1 and thoroughly enjoyed it so looking forward to this part of the journey.

Start to pre season hasn't gone straight forward, losing my assistant manager, and chief scout and we are now under a transfer embargo due to a board takeover. Hopefully this doesn't last long.

Pre season has gone pretty quick identified a couple of players that i would like to sign if the transfer embargo gets lifted, we only played one friendly i forgot to arrange more than the usual one with Larne who's our affiliate. We've lost two players who have retired end of the last season, so going forward is the same squad as last year.

Got a new assistant, and a new chief scout and also got a seconded scout to help identify players a little bit quicker.

Took until September for the transfer embargo to lift, by then the players that i wanted had joined other clubs. So i decided to stick with the team i had until our right backs whom did well last season start to have inconsistent performances so i went to the scouts report on my shortlist to see who i could bring in.

Thomas Plant



Couple of months later in December i brought in a CB who i have been scouting for a season now to help out Peden to strengthen the defence.

Ross Stewart

Nice to see another Northern Irish save, all the best with it!

After last season where we came above our expectation from the board this year they wanted at least a mid table finish. The table has been shortened to 12 teams this year instead of 14 so a few less games to contend with.

We never had quite the dizzy heights of the previous season where we sat top after 10 games before slipping to 5th place. This season i can't say we did bad just every other team improved from the year before. As you can see below we didn't have many good runs of form until the last 5 games we won 4 out of 5 to get 6th place, Mid table is what we achieved and thats the minimum i wanted to keep the board happy, i thought we would move forward slightly but that didn't happen as such. If you look at the points total Annagh Utd who returned to the championship 1 on the first attempt got one point less than ban bridge did the previous season and with 4 games less to play this year. Us on the other hand was 6 point behind what we achieved last season with 4 games less, that bring some hope that the team is slowly moving forward.

This season i did have a lot of job offers that i have declined i wanted to see how this season ended.

Knockbreda - Championship 1
Loughgall - Championship 1
Athlone - First Division Ireland
Shelbourne - Just got relegated from Premier to First division Ireland
Finn Harps - First Division Ireland
Albion Rovers - League 2 Scotland
Peterhead - League 1 Scotland
Port Talbot - Welsh Premier

There where many teams that i thought i could move forward but was meaning i would have to come back to Championship 2 at the time wasn't sure whether or not to do that.

We also lost one of our main striker in Johnny Stewart towards the end of the season.

Moving forward into my third season into the challenge i'm hoping third time lucky. I'm finding it frustrating that the scouts aren't coming back with many players that would improve my starting 11. The main players that i would like to sign are not willing to talk to us and then sign for a team that in a lower league than us. At present trying to sign another CB and Striker whom my scouts like from non league football but still they sign new and improved deals at the clubs they are with instead of jumping up one level to play league football.

I had a better pre season this year, i actually arranged some friendlies.

Seapatrick (a) 4-0 W
Larne (H) 0-1 L
Newington (a) 5-4 W
Bryansburn (a) 2-1 W

3 wins and a loss, we played well against Larne was just unlucky that we couldn't take our chances and Larne hit us with a counter attack on the 62nd minute



A good first game against Limavady who i have had some trouble with in the past but a good 3 - 1 win starts the season off on the right foot.

A disappointing loss on penalties in the first round of the league cup, players fitness dropped to mid 40's and high 30's towards the end of extra time.
A few days later we faced Lurgan Celtic the effort we put in against Coagh took its toll and we couldn't find the performance we needed.

A quick bounce back win again PSNI, Nigel Turner turning on the form that I've not seen in the past two seasons he was a player i was going to let go this year but with Stewart leaving last season i kept him around and at the moment he is showing some promise.

NEW SIGNING

We haven't got a lot of options in CM so Jordan Gibson should give us a little more depth.

Robert Donnell - has been Player of the year for the past two seasons he is our star player, first season he played as my right winger but towards the middle of last season i moved him up front and impressed with the amount of goals he has produced.

Double figures for someone with a finishing attribute of 4 and long shots of 2 isn't bad!

DZNY - cheers dude, thanks for reading

Suffolk Seasider - if you put it like that then yes it is, but i guess i see in lower division that you always get wonders that shouldn't be due to attributes being quite poor.

3 good wins on the bounce now sets up a top of the table clash with distillery.

Pretty even game, just couldn't quite seem to get any shots on target. Next up is third place team Nortel.

After the loss against Distillery and a draw against Nortel the team seem to go into a downwards spiral not picking up a win in 8 games certainly made winning the title an impossible task. It was that mid season rut that i have had in the last couple of seasons. It might coincide with Donnell and Stewart both missing for 4 to 5 months with injury after the Nortel game. But still i would have thought some of these games i should be getting points in i would have done. Need to re-evalute the team when we get into these ruts.

Last 3 games against Nortel, Banbridge and Tobermore Utd all ended in draws 0-0, 2-2, and 3-3 respectively.

Another frustrating pre season in terms of transfer in, the targets i want just aren't interested so I'm mainly keeping with the same squad as last season with a couple of additions in Eamonn Holmes M/AMRLC and Michael Mullan M/AML to strength the midfield. No transfer out.

Pre Season.

Started off as badly as i could expect a 7-2 loss at the hands of Newington a non-league club didn't give me a lot of confidence nevertheless it is the first game of pre season. A win against Dergview 1-0 was slightly better before a loss and a draw at Larne and Orangefield respectively.

League season started out great with 2 wins and a draw, then came the League cup 2nd round clash away at H & W Welders a loss there 1-0 changed the season. Back to back defeats then back to back draws before stopping the rut with a 2-1 win at Sport and Leisure. Again back to back losses before our next win away at Ballynure O.B.

Intermediate Cup started and back to back wins against Linfield swifts and Barn utd sent us into the 3rd round against Loughgall where we came our 2-1 winners, 4th round set up a match against Distillery a 1-0 win we went into quarter finals where our run came to the end against Larne losing 1-0 away.

Back to the league where it went from bad to worse in between our cup games we kept falling down the table due to not picking up a win from December to till the end of February. 3 draws and 2 losses. After beating Limavady Utd i thought we could put a run together to finish in the top half of the table thats where i was wrong back to back losses then back to back draws before losing the last game of the season away at Bainbridge saw us finish in 9th.

We could have been relegated even though i never thought that would happen as they were worse teams than us, this was the worse season since i have arrived at Portstewart and i was hoping this season we would have progressed and not regressed. So a big clear out is in order and a complete rethink into the tactics.

So it was back to the drawing board, all tactics wiped and squad was re-evaluated. Not many attributes has changed for my players but the all the star ratings have changed. I put quite a few players on the unwanted list and looked for transfer targets the 4 players i knew would strength the squad all rejected and went elsewhere what lead me to cancel the players that i was going to release. Instead i thought of bringing in players to bolster the squad whom had big potential but with only one to one and half star current ability. Sadly thats all the sort of players i can attract at present.

Joe Kelly was on loan with us two years ago and i was able to sign him on a free transfer after carrick released him.

The rest was all released from varies clubs in the top division from linfield, cliftonville, glenavon and so forth.

Coleraine our feeder club also loan us a few promising youngsters.

Colin Smith was a centre back i have been trying to get for 3 seasons now. Sadly we saw a couple of starters leave. Doherty who isn't on that screen left last season our starting left mid. Plant was our starting right back, Peden was captain and centre back, Ramsey was more of a rotational centerback at times. Joel Madison our starting goalkeeper and David McClements was a back up right mid to Donnell but kept moaning about game time so i released him.

Our squad is the biggest it has been and potentially very good, I'm hoping the young squad will play above there current ability and be able to move up the table and fight for a top half finish what the board is expecting.

Two early exits from the League Cup and Intermediate Cup saw us focus more on the league. It was certain that in the early parts of the season we are incapable of drawing a game. We've kept close to the top 3 only a few points back looking towards the turn of the year. A few jobs from Ireland and wales have approached me, most have been clubs around the relegation positions. One or two have been tempting but we aren't too far away this season so i'm going to stick it through and hopefully we can keep it going and not have a fall like we have in every season so far.

A win in the 5th round started the new year of with a bang were we will face Crusaders in the next round, sadly that is a round too far for us this season where we just ran out of steam after going one nil up we wasn't able to hang on enough and lost 2-1.

Back to the league a loss and 3 draws so us slip down the table and starting to lose ground. Lurgan Celtic approached me who are bottom of the division above i delayed the decision until after the Crusaders match where then i attended the interview hoping i was the person to save them from the drop. Unfortunately i didn't get past the interview so back to Portstewart it was for the time being. Lost against Coagh and then a draw against Limavady i saw Armagh job come up and i was tempted to go for it, but was unsure whether or not if i got it and wasn't able to keep them in championship 1 i might not of kept the job.

Last 3 games of the season a win loss and a draw against PSNI Sport & Leisure and Ballynure O.B finished another slightly disappointing season.

So after two disappointing seasons i have decided to call it a day at Portstewart. I feel that i taken the team has far as i can. I didn't really want to leave without the Championship 2 title to be honest but i know it looks like its going to be a few seasons away unless i can get the team not to have these ridiculous runs of results, And don't really want the story to go too stale otherwise i might lose interest in this save. We started off with some good finishes 4th, 5th and 6th in the first few seasons but a 9th and 10th really made my mind up.




My record at Portstewart