The Big Mans Managerial Career

I've not had much chance to play FM recently what with working fifty plus hours per week at my new job, but I have a few half days coming up now so I will give it another shot.
I'm going to be playing as one of my all time favourite players, Swedish captain Olof Mellberg who has been an inspirational centre back all over Europe with clubs from his native Sweden, to Spain, Greece, Italy, England and Denmark. Collecting 117 international caps along the way and featuring in the UEFA All-Star team for Euro 2004.

In England he will probably be best remembered for his seven years at the heart of Aston Villa's defence, although he was a Serie A runner up with Juventus as well as a Greek Championship winner with Olympiakos in 2011 and 2012.

I am starting unemployed and have utilised the in-game editor to give him the correct number of caps;

To start with I think I will take the Solskjarer route and head home to gain experience before moving on to bigger things. Lets get it on!

At the Job Centre....

There were five jobs immediately available in Sweden, four in Allsvenskan (top flight) and one in Superettan (second tier), Elfsborg and Malmo immediatly piqued my interest (mostly because they were the only two I'd ever heard of )


Malmo were first to take me up on my advances so I opted to begin the glorious career of Olof Mellberg at the Swedbank Stadion;

Nice idea mate, would be nice to see you at Villa eventually!

Good luck with this, though it hurts seeing Mellberg in MFF. Even if he didn't stay long in AIK, it was enough to win Allsvenskan, and that's where he belongs!

Let's take a quick look at the club before we get down to business;

Malmö are Sweden's most successful club with seventeen titles and fourteen Svenska cups, they have also appeared in European competitions more than any other Swedish sides, including reaching the 1978 European cup final where they were defeated by Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest.


Here's my preliminary squad;

As you can see the team is predominantly Swedish, Allsvenskan enforces a rule that match squads must have at least nine Swedish players in order to ensure the national sides prosperity which I am interested in as I would one day like to take charge of Sweden.
Fielding a side of promising young Swedes should be no problem as we have plenty of talented starlets vying for a place in the first team;

With the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimović coming through Malmö's ranks already, who knows what gems we could unearth?

After a series of friendly games my first competitive game with Malmö will be away to fellow Allsvenskan side Kalmar in the Svenska cup group stage where we will also face Orebro and Sandvikens, the group winner qualify for the quarter finals of the competition.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________
SR67: Thanks mate, there's a good chance I will end up there in the future, however I wanted to somewhat mirror Ole Gunner Solskjarer's career and return to Olof's homeland to build my managerial rep before moving on.
Itchycoo: Haha, sorry about that, I would have gone to Elfsborg (I don't know if that's any more preferable to an AIK fan?) but Malmö replied with job offer first.

It's a great squad with lots of talent. Sixten Mohlin and Erdal Rakip were key figures in the Swedish U-17 team that won the bronze medal in the U-17 World Cup 2013. (The brightest star, and top scorer, was Valmir Berisha, I believe he plays for Halmstad)

Svenska Cup Blow

My first three games in management saw us finish the group stage of the Svenska cup with two wins and a, very, disappointing draw;

So disappointing! allowing a 3-0 lead to slide like that is truly infuriating, especially a the referee chose to add on three extra minutes for no apparent reason to allow Kalmar time for their equiliser. It's fair to say I let my players know exactly what I thought of their capitulation...


After that set-back it was important to get back on track at Division one side Sandvikens;

A relatively comfortable home win which saw us go top of the group as we approached the final game.


A close run thing where Brazilian winger Ricardinho's brace saw us edge out Allsvenskan rivals Orebro, unfortunately Kalmar pipped us to first by scoring one more goal meaning we bow out early, a bitter disappointment.


So far I've utilised 4-5-1 with this line-up;

I'm not sure what kind of tactic to employ, I would like to play some tidy possession football, however I got good results in the first half of the Kalmar game playing direct route one type stuff.

I have two new signings thus far, both to add depth to the midfield;

Joakim joins us for £195k from Brommapojkara, he's a good solid midfielder who will certainly do a job as a box to box type player.

Luis is obviously knocking on a bit at 35 but he will provide a real injection of experience to my young squad as well as still being a quality option to have, most likely as a rotation option as I don't want to hinder the progress of any of our youngsters but he will be an excellent tutor for one of the lads.

Lindner is a great signing, Brommapojkarna is a good place to find talent

Good start this rick, unlucky in the cup but that 4-4 draw is a typical FM result when your 4-0 up at the break