Good Evening and after a slight delay to the competition due to alledged fraud in the 1st round draw the Court of Arbitration in Sport met in Geneva to conclude that the 1st Round of the draw was legit, SM is right to enact its changes and Sepp Blatter is as innocent as Frank Hirst in a Manchester city centre Bar Brawl.

Beddows wxplained that due to SM changes and manager departures the draw would be slightly different with the 14 1st round winners - 2 (Feyenoord and VFB Stuggart due to manager changes) were in the draw.

Man City and Tottenham drew but Beddows after consulting Frank decided that Tottenham should pass.

Plus Man Utd who received a 1st Round bye would make up the draw which = 14 teams.

That left two teams left. Beddows decided to have a ‘lucky loser’ pot where two teams who lost in the first round would be granted a 2nd round place, but that it would be AWAY from home.

So 12 winners + Tottenham + Man Utd + 2 lucky losers = 16

READ MORE TO SEE WHO YOU ARE PLAYING AND IF YOU WERE A LUCKY LOSER.



So to explain a little here were the first round results:

VfB Stuttgart	3	-	1	Bayer Leverkusen
Stoke City	0	-	3	Flamengo
Aston Villa	0	-	1	Atalanta BC
Celtic	0	-	1	ACF Fiorentina
Manchester City	1	-	1	Tottenham Hotspur
Genoa CFC	0	-	3	AS Monaco
Juventus	3	-	2	River Plate
Levante UD	0	-	4	Feyenoord
Independiente	0	-	1	Atlético Madrid
FC Porto	2	-	1	Villarreal CF
Club Brugge KV	2	-	1	Borussia Dortmund
Paris Saint-Germain	5	-	2	Zenit
Sampdoria	0	-	3	Real Madrid
Fenerbahçe SK	1	-	0	Shakhtar Donetsk
AC MILAN	0	-	2	FC Schalke 04   Draw Introduction Video     2nd Round Draw     Just to remind you the games can be played on either Saturday 12th December OR Wednesday 16th December. Good Luck everyone who is left.

Newcastle V Liverpool yesterday through the eyes of Jimmy Liddel…

Hey guys, as you will know by now I decided to quit on Soccer Manager after the absurd changes they made to the best football management game in the land. I stand by my decision and although I will miss it greatly, there was just no way I could continue to play a game that I wasn’t going to enjoy. What didn’t help was Soccer Manager’s arrogant attitude to the changes on the their social media pages. They were delighted to add comment to anyone who praised the changes but refused to even acknowledge any criticism and, going by some comments I managed to read, actually removed comments that they didn’t like, saying they were made by trolls.
It is this ignorance that has blighted them over the years. To me, with the addition of the ‘You can skip this advert in 5…4….3….2….1’, it looks like they have decided to make a quick buck rather than listen to the paying customer. Ok, yes, their were a few who wanted all of these changes but they were in the minority and not the majority as SM try to suggest. In my opinion, all that was wrong with the game was that the match engine needed renewed. One job Soccer Manager, just one fucking job. We all know the match engine was outdated and unrealistic with one of the things that annoyed me most being the red card scenario, where a team had a player sent off and then 95% of the time scored the next goal and often went on to win. It was if the engine issued the red card and then gave the advantage to the wrong team. They did say there was a new match engine now but I don’t know what difference it has made but I did see that in another custom world, The Ashclowbel, which has it’s own Facebook page, that one of the boys put a report of his team’s 5-3 win and mentioned on how his team won the game despite being reduced to 10 men for 65mins. WHAT!!!! He also showed a screen grab of the final score and, going by the time of the goals, he had a player sent off on 35min and then scored on 40min. Oh oh, that looks very familiar. This new match engine doesn’t seem that new.
The interface, as you know, changed dramatically. It changed so much that they felt they had to issue instructions on how to use it. The game has slowed down and you need to click a million times to see everything you could see in one or two clicks with the old format. It took me a good while to find the league table, something that should be available instantly. I don’t even know what it is like to buy a player as I got bored by time I even thought about it. Some teams that have been built up over the course of 3 or 4 seasons were rendered almost useless because of the change of where players can play. I have read some comments that have shown their anger of players becoming useless in their system overnight after they had spent much time trying to negotiate deals to buy the player from another manager. The answer from Soccer Manager? the silence was deafening. These guys do not care about the paying customer, only what money they can bring in from advertisers. The way they introduced the free single player game and then neglected the multi player game tells its own story.
I am very sad at how this has all turned out as the game became a part of my life for nine years. I have even put it before many other things I could have done and whenever the wife would say that we were going out somewhere or had been invited to a party etc, my first thought would be how to sort my teams for that night. Damn, I even took my laptop on holiday abroad so I could still play the game. Even the wife gave up moaning about the game and knew that she would always have a happy husband as long as he had his laptop and Soccer Manager.
So, as you can see, I was a great fan of the game due to the way it was played and the way that I could choose how to play it. Even better was the interaction with other players. I have got to know so many people that I could call friends without ever having met them. A few put a lot of effort into making the game more enjoyable, making it more realistic with these blogs and giving the chance to people to live in an imaginative world, an escape from the pressures of life.
I have to mention some folk here and if you are not mentioned then it doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy playing the game with you. It is folk I feel have influenced the way I have played the game and the way they have made it much more enjoyable over the years. These people are, in no particular order, Frank Hirst, Stephen Beddows, Steven Lowery, Dale Price (Piero), Clint Brownfield, John Vinicombe, Prince Michael William, Lee Reynolds, Steven Connell (Brian Clough), Jim Kennedy, David Tollan, Adam ? (Golden Bear), Scott Brown, Michael Hudson and many others.
I have not closed my account as I have SM coins still remaining and I leave the option open to come back if I miss it too much but I doubt that will happen with the game in it’s current format. As for now, I would like to thank everyone for making the game so enjoyable over the years and in case I do not ever return would like to wish you all good luck in whatever you do in the future.

Ciao.

SC. International  2  Real Madrid  5…


Real Madrid won the Top 100 Shield Tuesday night after a superb display from Neymar. Real Madrid took the lead on 4 minutes with a fine goal from Lewandowski, only for International to equalize 3 minutes later. Then up stepped Neymar to score a hat trick in ten minutes before half time. Neymar scored his fourth and Madrid’s fifth late on , only for International to pull one back in the final minutes. Roy Keane thanked International manager for making this a cup final to remember.

Good afternoon guys and welcome to the second Thursday blog. Now before I start, I had a look at last week’s first of the series and I couldn’t help feeling, that the way I started with ‘Hello everybody’, made me sound like Dr Nick Riviera from The Simpsons. Every time I see it now I hear his voice. Trust me, I am nothing like the character.
This week has been all about going back to work after being on holiday for two weeks. Three mornings of 4am rises has certainly worn me out. Ok, the half past three finish is good and my plan is always to go back to bed for a couple of hours but it never works out that way and before I know it it’s 9pm and I need to go to bed if I am going to get a decent sleep before work the next day however with the wife liking the TV to be on, I usually only manage about 4-5 hours sleep. The good thing is that my rest days are today and Friday and there is no one else in the house except the dogs and I can do as I please. I can even walk around the house naked if I want and put on some swing music to go with it haha. I don’t by the way, honest.

I mentioned the dogs there. We have six dogs, five poodles, of which 1 is a standard and 4 are toy, and a pug, which really belongs to Elise. At the moment we have four pups also, that were born on October 27. I only remember that because they were born on my birthday. Typical that, my birthday and I am not the centre of attention. I will have to become a diva to get some I think. Anyway, the four toy poodle pups were sold within nine days, probably because their date for going away to new homes was December 22, just in time for Christmas. At £750 a pup, that’s a cool 3 grand, which almost pays for our holiday next year. This is our fifth, maybe sixth, litter of pups from the different dogs (bitches) and they generally pay for our holiday each year.
This week I have been in the middle of a fall out between my wife, Alison, and eldest daughter, Elise. They really rub each other up the wrong way and being in the middle is one of the most frustrating things ever. They are both as stubborn as each other but, to be honest, Elise can be very annoying. Nothing is ever her fault. There is an excuse for everything. Alison thinks Elise does nothing around the house (pretty standard around the world if you ask me) while Elise thinks that no one else does so why should she. The kids all have jobs around the house and to be honest, they are pretty shit at their jobs. I don’t know how many times I have spent my day off tidying around the house because of their failings. Alison is way too uptight though and needs to chill. Every house, I am sure is untidy at some point, and if everyone in the house works then it becomes very difficult to keep it tidy. Throw six dogs into the mix then I am sure you know where I am coming from. We used to have a cleaner who would come in twice during the week but she seemed to spend more time talking on her phone so we got shot of her. Anyway, as I have told them, I don’t want involved in their fall outs, they can sort it themselves.
Last week I said I would ask the family if I was allowed to put their picture on here. The kids said they didn’t mind but Alison and one of the toy poodles said no. So I can now properly introduce you to the two girls this week with Elise being the top picture and Janene being the bottom.

Pos			Team	P	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts
1			Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk	29	16	3	10	68	56	12	51
2			Montpellier HSC	29	13	7	9	45	33	12	46
3			RSC Anderlecht	29	14	4	11	47	40	7	46
4			CLUB BRUGGE KV	29	13	7	9	48	46	2	46
5			Dynamo Kyiv	29	14	3	12	45	39	6	45
6			AZ	29	13	5	11	55	51	4	44
7			São Paulo FC	29	12	7	10	50	40	10	43
8			River Plate	29	11	10	8	52	45	7	43
9			Independiente	29	12	7	10	40	38	2	43
10			Rubin Kazan	29	12	6	11	46	37	9	42
11			Flamengo	29	11	8	10	53	52	1	41
12			Santos FC	29	11	8	10	50	55	-5	41
13			FC Augsburg	29	11	7	11	42	40	2	40
14			Dinamo Zagreb	29	11	6	12	33	42	-9	39
15			Standard Liège	29	10	8	11	40	44	-4	38

32 teams have been assembled and along with their fans tuned into Sky Sports News and any other channel that they could find screening tonight’s live 1st round draw.

A reminder that their are 16 ties in total
16 home teams and 16 away. It is the job of the home team to invite the away team to this friendly.

The 1st round is 2nd December 2015. You must set you team to have 11x players aged 21 and below.

If those matches finish as a draw that a replay will be played (a reverse fixture) on Saturday 5th December 2015.

The 2nd round draw will be made after Wednesday.

The rules and consequence if you don’t are explained on the relevant blog page.

Please ‘read more’ to watch coverage of the draw.

Last night Levante went into action at home to Udinese looking to win their third game on the trot against Italian oponents. Having beaten Torino 2 - 0, and Atalanta 5 - 2 in their previous two games, the Spanish side were full of confidence.

That confidence looked well placed too, as Levante went 1 - 0 up from a free kick with the first attack of the game on 9 minutes. Angel Romero’s delivery was finished off by Jelle Vossen for his third goal in two games.

Hello everybody and today I am starting a weekly blog that will take my real life and issues and also life in the Top 100 with Club Brugges in Division 5. There may also be a look at other stuff around the game world mainly anything that has caused an interest to me, but not necessarily to you since it’s my blog.
In this blog things probably won’t be that exciting since I will introduce the main people in my life, them being my family and my girlfriend (don’t judge me, it’s not something I’m proud of but the heart is a strong thing) as well as what interests me and what I do. I will then, as mentioned before, go o to this game world, which I hope will be a bit more interesting. I do guarantee though that as the weeks go on, it will be entertaining and I base that on the fact that my life is one big soap opera.

So let’s get this party started. You all know me as Gino. You just know me as another guy that plays my first love in entertainment, Soccer Manager. I have played since 2008, and it was my stepson that introduced it to me. I always remember playing in my first ever league as Derby County in Division 2 and after a couple of seasons winning promotion to Division 1, of which I was shit scared lol. I was convinced I would struggle near the bottom but actually done reasonably well and was delighted to finish 8th or thereabouts. I actually remember looking at this gold membership thing and thinking that the game was good but, me being Scottish and miserable, I would never pay real money for it. That actually lasted for just over 2 years before I decided that the international game looked good and I paid for a year’s membership (I think). Turns out the international game was boring but I enjoyed the gold worlds. The rest is history, and despite thinking of quitting a couple of times, I  am still here. What you will find as I do this weekly blog is that I tend to go off subject a lot. For those who are old enough, if you can remember the Two Ronnies on television and Ronnie Corbett on his big chair, he used to do the same thing so be prepared. Back to me, and I have been with my current wife, Alison, for almost 12 years. The kids are hers but you would think they were mine by just the way they act. They love me to bits and to be honest, I really wish they were mine such is my love for them. I work for McGill’s Buses as a bus driver. It’s a job that one day you can hate it but the next day you love it. My mood tends to go with the weather. When it’s nice and sunny, I love the job but when it’s wet and miserable, it’s not so good. I will tell you more about it in later blogs. My favourite sports, in order, are NFL, football and tennis. I love American football and I am a huge Dallas Cowboys fan. I went to see them at Wembley last year and it was a great experience. One of my ambitions is to go and see them in Dallas and it is an ambition I will realise. Football and Derby County are my number one club. I’m also a big Rangers fan. The tennis, I just like in general but for obvious reasons, I like to watch Andy Murray.
My family consists of my wife, Alison, stepson, Stuart(22) and stepdaughters Elise(21) and Janene(18). This blog will be completely honest and nothing will be dressed up to make it sound good. I say this because Stuart is an asshole. He is also the most boring person you will ever come across. There is only one subject he ever talks about - himself! He also is the type that uses 100 words when 1 will do. The biggest mistake you can make is to ask him a question. He then goes on for ages about nothing and how it affects him. Seriously it is zzzzzzzzz after 2 minutes.
Elise is a very strong willed person. She knows what she wants and can be quite difficult to handle. She will feature many times in the blog as she is hilarious in a dumb blonde sort of way but can also be quite rude. There is hardly a dull moment when she is about.
Janene is almost the opposite. She is short on self confidence and cries a lot. Recently I have noticed a change in her and she can be quite a feisty bird now. She is naive in life’s challenges and although she is 18, she seems more like 15/16. Her advantage is she is stunning. Taller than me at about 5' 10'', long blonde hair and very slim. I don’t stand beside her when she is dressed up to go out as she wears heels and is over 6' when she has them on. I feel like a dwarf.
Alison, my wife, has pain issues. When she was younger she had operations in both knees and they are still not right today. She can walk ok but if she is on her feet too long then she suffers for it. She is a nurse but she no longer paces the wards, instead having a 9-5 sit down job working for Atos and doing assessments for folk claiming disability.
The only other person close to me in my life is my girlfriend Gemma. I know I shouldn’t even have one but she is special to me. The thing that may have some of you thinking I am out of order, which I would understand, is that she is 22yo. That is 30 years younger than me. I first met her when she was 16 and she came on my bus and we got to know each other but that is a story for another week.
So that is the people in my life and I think that is enough to bore you about my personal life for one week. Next week will be a bit more of what has been happening in my life and a couple of stories from the past that should tickle you. I aim to have some pics to go with my talk but I will have to ask my wife and daughters for permission to put their pics up.

BRUGGES, BELGIUM: Life in Brugge is comfortable. We are lying third in the table despite some erratic form which I suppose doesn’t say a lot for the competition. At the moment we seem to be winning every second game but that will have to improve if we want automatic promotion. At the start of the season I sat with the chairman and we decided that this would be a season for building a team, getting the right players in and planning for the future assault on this league created by Frank Hirst. There is no doubt that we have exceeded expectations, rolling along quietly, managing to avoid any nominations for manager of the month. I mean, why is that? Is it an anti-Belgium thing. Does Frank just not rate Belgium and their clubs. There was a token focus on our derby with Anderlecht but even for the pre match interview, Frank turns up with a big hole in his tights. I know they talk about climbing Frank’s ladder to reach the top but surely this is not what they meant. Anyway, the interview actually went quite well if awkward. Maybe if Frank is allowed back into Belgium, he can wear a nice suit with suspenders.
We have some good players here at Brugges. Apart from Belgians, we have players from 13 different countries making us a multi-cultural club. We decided that for meetings and get togethers that every player should be able to speak the same language as then no one could have the excuse of saying they didn’t understand the instructions. It flopped at the first hurdle as I didn’t know how to speak Hebrew. We eventually settled on Australian. I managed that as it is very similar to English but I still need to work on my accent. I am trying to arrange elocution lesson with Michael Hudson but he is hard to track down. People have said to me to try the bush but I thought that was just too personal.
Our newest addition to the club is French striker Yohan Mollo. We hope to give him some playing time tonight in Argentina, where we take on Independiente who is managed by nikolas NIKKIS nikolaou. We have had a few meetings in the past but I am not sure of my record against him. Three points is the aim but it will be tough since they lie in 7th place and have promotion ambitons of their own.
We arrived in Argentina last night and the only thing on the players minds was to get some sleep after the long flight from Belgium. I agreed that they should get some sleep and then we would meet up for dinner. As it turned out, I couldn’t manage to nod off so I went for a walk along the corridors of the hotel. I didn’t get very far as my attention was drawn to quite a noisy sounding room. I thought, wait a minute, that is Javier Aquino’s room. He was bunking with fellow Mexican Carlos Fierro, one of our youth players. What was going on? They were all meant to be getting some sleep. The door was unlocked so in I went only to be met with the sight of the whole fucking squad playing strip poker with three senoritas. The first thing that came into my mind was to shout ‘BEDDOWS!!!!’ Surely this was his doing but then I thought, it can’t be Beddows as he would be in France with AC Milan. Ok, how do I handle this. I mean how dare they have a game of strip poker and not invite the world champion, me!! I had the last laugh however as when the senoritas lost, sparking a lot of excitement amongst the squad, they turned out to be senor’s haha. Down came the panties to reveal meat and two veg. Hahahaha, I was in stitches and so nearly were the senors, only in a different kind of stitches. They were chased out of the room by some angry players. If only they could translate that rage to the pitch then we might be top of the table. The whole situation will be dealt with when we get back to Belgium but the guys should expect some hefty fines.
So tonight, the players owe me a big performance and I am expecting a win and nothing less. I will have a couple of glasses of wine after the match with nikolas to help console him after the defeat.
Next week I will let you know how the game went, how I dealt with the players when we got back home and all the latest news from the inside of Club Brugges.

Well that’s me for the first of my weekly blog. Apologies if it was a bit boring but really this first one is just to lay down the foundations for the future ones.
Thanks for reading and I wish everyone luck for tonights games. I will be back with number 2 in the series next Thursday. Until then hope everything goes well for you in whatever you are doing the coming week.

Ciao

When I came into this game world, I decided to keep my head down and to stay silent so I can 100% focus on pushing Zenit upwards enough to be considered as contenders for promotion. However, since I suffered my first defeat at the hands of Smiff’s Sporting, I’ll be expressing my thoughts & opinions by posting on the blog more often.

I would first like to thank my predecessor Stephen [Beddows] for leaving behind a team that’s in a good enough league position, a team that performs well in my style of play & for making a few good signings, for example Petersen & Lodeiro, who I plan to use in my plans for next season. On the other hand, I do question some of his transfer activity, buying some players as well as selling others, but I’ll be able to make-do with what I got.

I honestly never knew that I would go undefeated for 9 games from the start of my spell at Zenit, which makes this club serious promotion contenders this season, given our current position. Therefore the first aim this season is to gain a promotion spot & with our next game at the Petrovskiy against FC Schalke 04, who sit one place & one point below us, it’s simply make-or-break time.

Click Read more to view the Manager of the Quarter Shortlist…




Gursimran Brar (Bayern Munich)