[FM24] Regionnaire Challenge: Keeping it Local

Greetings all, hope you are well, and thank you for checking out my career!

As the thread title suggests, In this save, I'm going to be attempting the Regionnaire Challenge. 

The Aim: To implement a transfer policy of only using players born/raised in a certain geographic region. Much like Bilbao's policy of using only Basque players.

My Area: I live in Cumbria, in North-West England, however, I spend a lot of time just across the border in South-West Scotland, so I will be limiting myself to players and clubs either side of the Solway Firth, in either the counties of Cumbria or Dumfries & Galloway.

This is a pretty big catchment in terms of area, however, both counties are largely rural and thus are sparsely populated. Carlisle is the only city in either. (and that is only a small city with a population of around 70,000) This will make finding players of sufficient quality a challenge. 

There are only five options club-wise in the vanilla database, so I have downloaded Leo Messi's excellent level 10 English database, as well as a Scottish extension that I have loaded down to tier six to enable the South of Scotland league. These expansions give me the following options;

I won't be limiting myself to one club, I will be able to hop between them, however, I must enforce what I am calling, the Solway development mantra upon whichever side I am managing at the time.

I shall be starting off unemployed, with no coaching badges and a Sunday league reputation, we shall see where that gets me!

Post reserved for career summary

Yes, after interviewing for a couple of different jobs, I have opted to start my career with Wigtown & Bladnoch in the South of Scotland League.

Wigtown is in the South-West corner of Dumfries & Galloway, at the mouth of Wigtown Bay on the Solway Firth. Bladnoch is a small village around a mile outside Wigtown itself. The town is famed for being ‘Scotlands Book Town’, with its abundance of book shops and annual literary festival.

 The football club plays its home games at Trammonford Park, which has a capacity of around 900.

The Reds board expects me to guide the club to a top-half finish within the South of Scotland League this season, something I think is more than achievable. We also take part in no fewer than four cup competitions, so silverware could be a possibility.

 The SoSL consists of twelve teams, all aiming to finish top. Being champions doesn't guarantee promotion here, the winners of the South of Scotland League, West of Scotland League, and the East of Scotland League, all play off for a single promotion berth to the Lowland League. So getting out of tier six won't be easy.

Here is my initial squad, as you can see it is entirely populated by newgens. Most of whom were born outside of my Solway area, so I will need to let them go and rebuild. This will be made more difficult by the fact there is no reserve or youth teams, so there is no talent to fall back on there.

Wish me luck, I'm going to need it!

Mate this is actually an incredible save, good luck indeed

Thanks mate, keep reading!

Pre-Season

My first month in charge was more about building a squad rather than getting results on the field. I have achieved that objective and assembled a team of twenty-one. Naturally, with my limited catchment area, it has been difficult to find much top-class talent, but I think the squad is strong enough to achieve our objectives this season.

Everyone was either unattached or was poached away from other local clubs for free. We still need a second, and possibly third goalkeeper as I'm not convinced that Lewis Hyslop is going to be my number one.

Adam Main will be my ‘main’ man up front, he has represented Workington, Kendal, Gretna, and Penrith so he is very experienced, and can play up front, or in midfield.

I also have high hopes for left-wingback Charlie Birch, who like Main has played for Workington and Penrith, as well as playing for our Dumfries & Galloway neighbours, Annan Athletic. Usefully he can also play further forward.

Onto the business of results;

Doesn't get any more middleing than one win, one draw and one loss. But as I said these games were more about helping the entirely new squad gel together and build up fitness.It may take a month or two before things really click into place, but I'm convinced that they will eventually.

We open the season at home to Moffet based Upper-Annandale, before a derby game against rivals Creetown at their Castle Carry ground. Sandwiched between those games is a Scottish Cup Preliminary round game away to East of Scotland League side Vale of Leithen.

As I mentioned in the first post, we are entering four cup competitions this season;

Scottish Cup: The main cup in Scotland, which celebrates it's 150th anniversary this year, making it the world's second-oldest knockout competition, after England's FA Cup. It features the 130 members of the SFA. There are two preliminary rounds and a potential further eight rounds after that. The current holders are Celtic, who have won it 41 times.

South Challenge Cup: Open to clubs who are currently playing in the Lowland League, South of Scotland, West of Scotland, and East of Scotland leagues. Currently held by Spartans.

South of Scotland League Cup: Our best chance of silverware this season. A cup competition for the 12 clubs in the South of Scotland League. Currently held by Abbey Vale.

Scottish Juniors Cup: For those who don't know much about Scottish football, ‘Junior’ refers to amateur clubs rather than an age range. There are eight rounds, culminating in a final at Kilmarnock's Rugby Park. The current holders are Crumnock Juniors.

August 2024

We are off and running for 2023/24, and have shown some good football early on.

Opening day saw us play host to Upper Annandale at Trammonford Park. My managerial debut could hardly have gone better as we ran out 4-0 winners, with striker Adam Main bagging a hat-trick on his debut.

Pleasing stuff, despite having less of the ball we looked a constant threat when we countered. Sadly the same could not be said as we faced Vale of Leithen in the Scottish Cup…

Eastern Superleague side VoL looked much sharper than us in every department, we managed only 37% possession and deserved our exit from the cup. We had been expected to reach the first round proper, however, we have let ourselves down and missed that target.

Shortly after the game, we learned our opponents for the South of Scotland League Cup quarter-final will be Stranraer Reserves.

 Hopefully, we can get past the first hurdle in that competition.

I finally managed to confirm the signing of a second goalkeeper, 21 year-old Robbie Minto joins us on loan for the rest of the season from Dalbeattie Star;

He went straight into the line-up for the trip to face our nearest neighbor, Creetown;

A clean sheet on his debut for Minto. A draw wasn't the worst result in the world considering we had just taken a battering from Vale of Leithen. Creetown had the momentum early on and I admit I was worried, my defense did a better job today though, perhaps buoyed by the new goalkeeper. As the game wore on I switched to a more possession-based system, which did the trick in quelling the home side and allowed us to take control of the ball more. Creating several decent chances, though none we could avail ourselves of.

Disappointingly winger Ellis Pearson will be out for about five weeks after suffering a back injury.

Finally, we rounded off the month by making the short journey to Kirkcudbright to face St Cuthbert Wanderers, Where we put on a footballing masterclass;

It was a fantastic showing as we dominated from start to finish, midfielder Nathan Naylor was particularly impressive with his two goals, both from a distance. 

This excellent performance earned no fewer than eight of our players a place in the team of the week.

So after three games, we sit second in the league, with a game in hand.

Next up is more cup action, this time in the Scottish Juniors Cup against Newmains United. We then return to the league at home to Mid-Annandale.