The Hearts Beat Stronger?

After strolling to the Championship title last season and beating rivals Hibs and Rangers to promotion, how will Hearts fare in their first season back in the top flight of Scottish football?

A good mix of young Scottish talent alongside some continental flare should mean that the squad is good enough to find themselves towards the upper half of the table come the end of the season. However, when you add my managerial skills into that mix we could well find ourselves back in the Championship in no time.

Anyway, lets see how my first attempt at playing FM in a while goes...

Looking forward to this Duffy , always like to see Scottish League stories , hope all goes well.

Good luck with Hearts, Duffy

Aims and Expectations
I'm hoping to use this season to develop the squad, find a tactical system that works for us and then build from there. A top six finish should be achievable with the squad that I have although it would be nice to finish within the European places. A cup run would be an added bonus but won't be the main focus for this year.

Squad
As I said, the squad that I've inherited is pretty strong with a mix of talented young Scottish players alongside some continental experience.

I'm planning on using a 4-2-3-1 formation however for trickier games I might sacrifice the attacking midfield player for an extra holding player in the centre of the pitch.

Neil Alexander will be my first choice keeper offering plenty of experience. The defence will generally feature Callum Paterson at right back, Juwon Oshaniwa at left back and Igor Rossi and Alim Ozturk between them at centre back. Jordan McGhee, Blazej Augustyn and a few younger players offer competition for places at the back although this is an area I may look to strengthen on in the future.

Experienced duo Prince Buaben and Margaro Gomis will play in the middle of the park. Ahead of them will be the exciting trio Sam Nicholson, Jamie Walker and Billy King. Plenty of alternatives in midfield with Danny Swanson, Miguel Pallardo, Arnaud Djoum and again a few promising youngsters.

Osman Sow will lead the line although Juanma and Gavin Reilly provide adequate back-up and a bit of a selection headache.

All in all, pretty happy with the squad although I imagine it'll take a while to fully decide upon my strongest starting XI.

Transfers
Although I have a transfer budget of around £250k available I don't intend to spend much of that unless the right players comes up or I received a decent offer

My plan is to develop young Scottish talent of which there's plenty within my squad at the moment, sell them on for decent money and then replace them with new youngsters from the lower leagues or smaller Scottish Premiership clubs.

I had a look around the Scottish Championship and considered making a bid for Falkirk midfielder Blair Alston but decided against it. He later signed for Rangers so that may turn out to be a bit of a missed opportunity but we'll see.

A few bids were received for Osman Sow and Prince Buaben however nothing that tempted me to sell and as such I start the season with the squad that I started with.

Friendlies

Decent if unspectacular results in friendlies. A couple of close games against some good European sides and then rounded off with a 2-2 draw against Bournemouth which is a confidence booster. An easy win in the first round of the Scottish League Cup at home to Montrose sets us up nicely for the league campaign to get underway.

And with that, off we go into season 1...

Duffy! Good luck with this fella, always nice to see Scottish stories on Susie.

Just hope you lose every competitive and non competitive game against Rangers, please and would be greatly appreciated.

Kind of intended on updates to be a bit more regular, but I barely have time to play the game nevermind update this. So, season 1...

Season 1- 2015/16
Competitions-


League- 3rd place (Europa League qualification)
Scottish Cup- 5th round (vs Kilmarnock)
League Cup- Quarter Final (vs Ross County)

Little bit disappointed with the performance in the cups but fairly content with the league performance. I had a really bad time in October and November which led to me being called to a meeting with Queen Ann Budge to discuss this. I admitted that I had made a few mistakes but I was confident of rectifying this going forward. She was happy with my response and gave me her backing. If only all women were that understanding, eh?

The table was really tight going into the post-split fixtures but a combination of poor performance and a tough fixture list meant that we had to settle for third. Happy enough with that though, European Qualification and I think I've built up the foundations of a decent team to start bridging the gap between Celtic and the rest of the league.

Transfers
In:
Jason Cummings (Hibs, £500k)
Antonio Vacca (Reggiana, £275k)
Kieren Tierney (Celtic, £600k)

Out:
Prince Buaben (Young Boys, £750k)
Miguel Pallardo (Young Boys, £50k)

All of my transfer activities were conducted in January after identifying areas where I felt we needed to strengthen. I was a bit disappointed to lose Pallardo and Buaben but the money offered for Buaben I was confident that I could find a better replacement and I basically cashed in on Pallardo before he left on a free in the summer. The wages he was asking for were way out of my budget and he wasn't really anything special anyway.

I brought in midfielder Antonio Vacca following a recommendation from my scout. Tierney is a highly rated left back that I managed to get from Celtic, he wasn't getting close to their first team but I was confident that he would do a job for me and is definitely somebody with potential. Final signing was pretty controversial but I had confidence it would work out well. Jason Cummings was released by Hearts as a youngster after picking up a nasty injury, he then signed for Hibs and has been banging in the goals for them. I was surprised that he was willing to sign for me and the fans were initially a bit annoyed by the signing however his performances soon helped them warm to him.

Player Stats
Top Scorer- Osman Sow (21)
Highest Average Rating- Osman Sow (7.10)
Most Assists- Sam Nicholson (14)
Player of the Match awards- Jason Cummings (5)

As the stats show, Osman Sow was a key player for me with a good number of goals. Jason Cummings scored an incredible 14 in 15 games since arriving in January and I'm desperate to work out a way to get the two of them to play alongside each other. Sow was top scorer in the SPFL, Cummings finished 2nd despite only being their for half of the season!

Sam Nicholson also picked up the SPFL Young Player of the Season award following an impressive season from him.

Next Season...
Hoping to push on next year and as I said bridge the gap between Celtic and the rest of the league. I'll probably look to add a couple of signings but nothing major and ideally I'll hold on to everybody that I have at the moment. The foundations of a really good squad are definitely there. I've been given a budget of £1.25m

I think we enter the Europa League in the second qualifying stage so even to get to the group stages could be a bit of a struggle if the draw isn't kind. The financial rewards of doing that make that a big target though.

Definitely aiming to be more competitive in the cup competitions next season. Would be nice to bring a bit of major silverware back to Tynecastle for the first time since 2012.

St Mirren won promotion from the Championship this year so we'll be facing them next season, Hibs and Rangers both face a third season in the second tier following missing out on promotion in the play-offs.

Decent finish in the league Surprised to see Patrick Thistle 2nd

Good first season man! As Johno said, what are Patrick doing up there!

Yeah Partick Thistle seem really good on this, I've only managed to beat them once in six attempts!