Hello and welcome back to my semi-regular updates on my FM career where we see how many places and how what’s the furthest I can travel from my current location. Last time we met, I had pitched up in Belfast, Northern Ireland and had just won the league with Portadown. It was time to see whether we’d stuck around or moved on already after 18 months there.
Rules of the Save
Before I move onto the current season, I wanted to touch on the rules of the save. I’ve decided to add in the rule that I’m not allowed to manage in the same nation twice within the save. I realised after doing some planning that I could realistically end up moving backwards and forwards from one nation to another with the way the rules were currently set up.
The 23/24 season
So due to a lack of decent jobs avaliable, I decided to stick with Portadown for another season. And to be honest, with Champions League football, it wasn’t the worse place to stick around. If the aim of the save wasn’t to move around, I would probably stay here. It reminded me of the job I did in Gibraltar with Lincoln Red Imps in FM20. Anyway, on with the season!
Transfers
I got quite a bit of stick in the last update because of the amount of players I’d signed. And I’m pleased to annouce that this season I’ve signed even more!! I’m not going to go in detail this time over each one, but they will all be avaliable in the slideshow below.
I was pleased with all the players brought in. We even managed to secure Diego Moreira who absolutely lit it up until Christmas. He had decided to leave Benfica on a free transfer at the end of the season, so I thought we might have a decent chance of signing him. However on January 2nd, he completed a £275k move to Crystal Palace! Damn my home club!!
Danske Bank Premiership
So in strange turn of events (I’m currently two seasons ahead in-game), I haven’t actually got a final league table!!! I could show you one after 11 games or 25, but not 38. The long shot is that we won the league at a complete canter, a full 20 points clear. The scheduling was ridiculous at some points, during August, December and January, we played a mammoth 31 games! And yet played just 7 games over October and November. Either way it was a succesfull season. What was more pleasing this time, was that we didn’t just rely on one player to score the goals. Nobody hit the same heights as Spyrou in 22/23 (not even Spyrou himself), but at least 5 players managed to hit 15 goals over the whole season.
With just four defeats over the league season (2 of them to fucking Larne!!!), we had teams sitting deep and trying to contain us. We were a big side!!!
Northern Irish Cup
We drew Crusaders in the 5th round, possibly one of the toughest draws we could have had. However our prowess from set pieces gave us a relatively comfortable 3-1 win. Victories over Harland & Wolff Welders (2-1) and Ballycare (3-2) followed, before we ran into Linfield. I say we ran into, we ran over Linfield as we demolished them 4-0 to ease ourselves into the final. After a nervy opening hour in which we were 1-0 up, 3 goals in 6 minutes saw us leading 3-1 when Insitute had Ronan Wilson sent off, which saw off any comeback from them. Dorrington scored in added time to give us a comfortable win and back to back Cup wins.
Mid Ulster Cup
We’ll keep this short and sweet. Four games to win the whole tournament. 23 goals scored, two conceded. Quite honestly the easiest cup I think I’ve ever won. Poor old Glenavon in the final…
Bet Mclean Cup
The less said about this the better, but for a different reason!!
Fucking. Larne. Again. Two late goals saw us dumped out with barely a whimper.
Irish Championship Cup
This cup sees us take on the champions of the Republic of Ireland league, in this case Dundalk. I was expecting a tough game, with the Republic league being quite a bit higher in the rankings. However that didn’t prove to be the case, as we comfortably beat Dundalk over two legs, winning 5-1 away from home to prove that the North is mightier!
Europe
Usually I would have titled this section as ‘Champions League’ or ‘Europa’, however I’ve decided to call it Europe as, quite bizzarely, we managed to play in all three European competitions in the same season!
In the Champions League, HJK (Finland) and Qairat (Kazakhstan) were cast aside with relative ease, although we needed a 94th minute winner from Dillon Chan to give us the lead in Kazakhstan. A Danny O’Connor hattrick saw us progress to play Young Boys. Who would eventually be prove to be too strong as they handed consecutive 3-1 defeats to see us drop into the Europa League Playoffs.
Where we faced Appolon Limassol for a place in the Group Stages. We had a very comfortable 2-0 win at home in the first leg, before an asolutely insane 4-4 draw in Cyprus. We found ourselves 2-0 down at half time before a raft of changes saw us take the league before being pegged back almost immediantly and then Limassol took the lead again. They needed another goal to take it to extra time, but Nightingale provided the equaliser in the 96th minutes. Then the group stages were drawn.
Riiiiiiggght.
Well it started brightly enough with a 3-1 win away in Rennes. Despite them taking the lead, Cunningham and Spyrou did the damage. This was followed however by three 1-1 draws on the trot. We were 1-0 up in Zagreb and if we had held on, I think we would have qualified.
We do need to talk about the AZ games though. They lined up in both games with a strange, narrow 4-1-2-2-1, with 2 attacking midfielders. It wasn’t a formation I’d encountered before and we really struggled with it. In the home game, we switched to a 3-5-2 and seemed to control it better, equalising in the process. However in the away game, we started with the 3-5-2 and got absolutely whalloped. It finished 6-1 and we were lucky to get the 1. It really knocked our confidence and we limped out with a 4-1 loss at home to Rennes. It was enough however to finish 3rd and qualify for the Europa Conference League Knockout Stages.
This won’t take long. We were drawn against Slovan Bratislava, who’d finished 2nd in their group behind Rosenborg. They also proved too strong for us, with us going down 4-1 on aggregate.
Fairly short and not very sweet. Confidence was massively knocked after the Dinamo game, not holding on to the win was key for us. Nevertheless, here ends our European adventure for this year!!!
The Key Players
First up is Laurie Belcher. He ended up with 27 goals and 6 assists and was quite a key player in the end. He proved to be an intelligent player with his link up play as well as his goals. Laurie is one I will look to sign in future teams.
I was so pleased when James Jones decided to sign for us. I was even more pleased when he started playing. Ignoring his attributes, he played much better as a box to box midfielder, adding goals to his game, but still contributing 13 assists.
Dillon Chan proved to be a great signing. He only scored 8 goals all season, he snared 23 assists in all competitions, earning himself the clubs player of the year award.
The next step
I have decided to leave Portadown at end of this season, although we do leave the club in a better situation than when I arrived.
I have already signed a contract with another club, but you’ll have to wait till next time to see who it is. I really enjoyed my time at Portadown (eventually) and have made a separate save file in case I decide to return in the future. Come back next time to see where I’m moving to, but until then, thank you for reading and Happy FM-ing!
thefmnewby 