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.