sanjeevdas

I have been playing FM from its 2005 version onwards, and have been a big fan always. In all the previous versions, Chelsea had been my preferred team to manage and I would manage them till they won all the trophies in the season for a few years and then I would take up some other challenge.

But this time, since Jose left, I am not that much interested in Chelsea, and I thought I would better start with the Premiership underdogs, Derby County.

Have been playing ever since the game released, and have completed 2 seasons already and am in the final third of the 3rd season.

I was only expected to fight against relegation, but I always claimed to the board that I will not get the team relegated. And it's going all good. Finished 15th in 2007-08, but lost David Jones in the summer because of his ambitions and then lost Giles Barnes in the January transfer window for the same reason.

But, I could keep my performances intact and finished 16th in the next season. In this season, i.e. 2009-10, I applied the strategy of not reacting at all or very late to all the transfer speculations for my star players and it paid off. I could retain everyone of them, and added another 2 in the summer transfer window as well.

I really had a good first team to kick off, especially strikers, the area where I was struggling earlier, and started the season in fabulous way. After 2 home victories and 2 away defeats, I had another home win, and then an away draw. From then on, I had an 8 game winning streak at the end of which, I was top of the table with 34 points in 14 games. But all good things come to an end, and I lost the next match. Then the team really struggled for the next 2 months in which I could not get a win. After that, I got a couple of draws and finally won, away at Charlton. By the time I had fallen to 10th in the standings, when my strikers returned to form again. I have not lost since, though the number of draws have increased and am currently 5th in the standings.

The media expectation from my team is 20th, so its quite a feat for me. My optimisitic hope this season is to qualify for Europe, but I would be satisfied with a top 10 finish as well. I am not sure if my team are ready for Europe yet, because of lack of backup in the team, and it would affect our regular season. So, I think we need another season and some more good signings to be ready for Europe.

Now, I think this is a good achievement. Do let me know your views.