Having managed this team for approximately 4 years now I’ve finally made it to a top division! Initially this was really underwhelming for me, despite my best league finish ever (a comfortable 5th in Scotland Division 2), I swapped to Greece in hope for an easier league tie but was instead placed into the first Division. However I won’t be ‘celebrating’ as so to speak until I feel this is deserved by either avoiding relegation (Which I deem to be a feasible target with a bit of luck) or by being promoted sometime in the future after relegation. That said, I’m still rather excited and actually plan on watching all my games this season.

One concern is my stadium, currently with a 20,000 capacity (Level 4), looking at my home fixtures for Monday I would not sell out on 9C and the most profitable option is to list tickets at 8C for now, meaning I will not upgrade my stadium… That said, if I win a few games and increase my fan base etc. or play against some of the top dogs; maybe it would make sense to upgrade?

This weekend I’ve invested around 20 Million into my squad, it’s now the strongest team I’ve had and this included a notable record transfer spend on a 92 rated GK for 4.9 Million. Now speaking of concerns with my stadium mentioned above, one thing I feel I need to be careful of is retirement… Perhaps this should not be something too worrying for a manager who has for the most part always opted with older, higher rated players to climb the league table and whilst I’ve maxed out my teams contracts as a safeguard obviously in the worst case scenario if an older player I’ve spent almost 5 million on retires, he can not be replaced like-for-like in revenues from a single season.

I’ve spent the last couple of seasons experimenting with tactics, but obviously due to the lack of individual-instructions this is very limited, though seemingly I’ve found a formula that works for me. On the subject of tactics I am still yet to decide if I should play this season with a base template for all league games or try to tailor for survival e.g. by playing a bus to try and salvage a point against the very best teams, or by not even trying and playing a 2nd starting XI in order to preserve player energy so I can play with a higher tempo against mid-table and bottom half sides.

Moving away from the excitement of finally playing in the top division and onto club finances for this week I’ve had an income of 28,265,455 C this season and an expenditure of -29,400,968 C resulting in a loss of -1,135,513 C. For the most of this season my finances were looking like one of the best weeks I’ve had on the game, in fact prior to my usual Sunday spending spree I had a profit of approximately 15 Million listed. Of cause, as per usual I will be selling players to try to make a profit throughout the week. I’ve actually spent -2,486,523 C on contracts this week… Not really much to say about that figure other than the fact I am very scared of retirements when trying to flip older players. So far I have avoided mentioning my balance (4,363,557 Credits), needless to say it’s very low!

In summary, it’s disappointing to make it to the first division in this way but I’m going to make the most of it! Looking at my team and the league opposition, do you recon I will be able to maintain status as a top-flight team? (Guess I’ll find out next week) Is there anything I could be forgetting?

Thanks for reading this or for any advice.