After parachuting into Top100 in late December and having had the opportunity to get a feel for the league I thought by way of introduction it may be a good idea to provide a bit of my SM background, my experience of SM generally and how I came to join the Top100, in the process I hope it will also give a perspective on the league from the point of view of a newcomer such as myself.

I will apologise in advance if it’s a bit long winded, please bear with me, I have a tendency to get writers diarrhea.

As an ex-amateur footballer and semi-professional referee I have always loved the game of football and joined SM in October 2012, which is a story in itself that can wait for another day.  On joining I eagerly clicked “Add New Club”, selected my home club Hudds Town, picked the first league that came up and away I went.

The first thing that struck me was where are all the managers? The league had no more than a dozen, typically those that there were had plumped for the big clubs with only me and Bristol City pottering about below Div 1.

SM had claimed to have hundreds of leagues packed with thousands of active managers, all I could see was tumbleweed and cobwebs.

Whilst still tinkering around with my Hudds team I suddenly thought go European, maybe that’s where all the managers are at. I ended up managing Marseille in a custom European league of 4 divisions of 10 clubs with nearly 100% manager take up. This is more like it I thought, then one by one managers hit their 30 day failed login markers and off they started to pop.

This I learned was the norm across SM leagues, new managers fresh to the game would invariably grab the first big club they could lay their hands on, get bored after a few days and never login again.

Then the second thing struck me, nobody chats, there was this News Feed thing that showed automated messages and had the facility for you to post messages but nobody used it. I would send out the odd pieces of bait, but hardly ever a bite, just more tumbleweed.

By this time I had a couple of people on my friends list with whom I’d chat through PM’s but the News Feed always seemed to remain a quarantine area. Where was the banter, the friendly rivalry, the fun!

Maybe it all happens in the Gold leagues! So I pay my money and join a league, more managers for sure but still more tumbleweed. Well at least I had a Gold Shortlist, which was the only benefit I could really see for my outlay, I dabbled with International teams but the results appeared to be determined by a monkey on a random number generator so I soon lost interest in that.

With two exceptions I have always selected lower division teams when joining a league, enjoying the challenge and mechanics of improving the squad and progressing through the leagues whilst continuing to see the new managers going straight for the top clubs.

I had also begun setting myself restrictions with my teams, including building an entirely French squad at Marseille, a severe handicap despite which I managed a few titles, I had an Accrington Stanley squad which I restricted to being entirely U21. This gave me my third realisation, that my enjoyment of the game was not the game itself it was what I was making of the game.

Becoming disillusioned I decided to start dropping clubs, being conscientious by nature I would see seasons out before resigning, with one exception where I resigned from a league when SM refused to deal with a manager who was so blatantly cheating Stevie Wonder could have seen it.

One of these leagues was English Championship 222 where I had managed to drag another Accrington team from Div 4 to Div 1. This league was quite well populated, though not particularly friendly, with a large number of player “hoggers” which made it difficult to improve your squad. Having made the top flight and unable to strengthen relegation was immediate, my decision to quit came part way through the next season, not wanting the few golden nuggets in my squad to go to the vultures that circle when a club becomes un-managed I either sold them external or offered them to the few other managers I got along with. One of these being Jens Mourinho~Jairzinho, the manager of Celtic here at Top100.

Then came Dark December and the SM update. I logged in thinking Walt Disney had bought out SM. The new interface was clunky and cumbersome, nothing about it was user friendly. I spent 5 minutes trying to find the result of the match for the first club I’d logged into and then another 5 trying to find the league table, what a monstrosity.

Then to I discover the “engine improvements”, increased wages, positional changes, hiked player values, etc. etc. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for making the game more realistic but to unleash this in one fell swoop without any warning or consultation with your customers smacked to me of business incompetence of the highest order.

I ventured to the SM Forum to see what was being said, I was aware of its existence though I never registered, like most forums it is a place where good ideas go to die and sycophants are born. Over the next days I continued to read the feedback, with few exceptions bad, with few exceptions deleted. SM had designed a horse by committee and now took exception to their customers pointing out that it had humps on its back.

Learning to deal with the new Mickey Mouse interface was one thing, having your clubs which you had managed to be financially stable suddenly start leaching millions each week and squads you had painstakingly built up no longer suited to your preferred formations was another. It was time to leave.

Then the option to be able to use the old interface suddenly appeared I decided to wind down each club to the end of their seasons rather than binning SM full stop.

It was at this time I PM’d Jens to comment on how I thought the “hoggers” in 222 would be reacting and he mentioned Top100, a lively league, with 100% uptake, could this be a last bastion refuge I thought?

Worth I try so I PM’d Frank who put me on the waiting list and mentioned the Blog, I read through the articles with interest and remember Gordons “Thursday Blog” particularly striking a chord for its accurate comments and his opinions on the SM update.

Then I received the job offer from Frank, Olympiakos!!!! My instant reaction was what shit on a stick is this, do I turn it down and write off SM go buy an Xbox and hope they put COD4 back on the server? I think better of it and accept, hmmm bottom of Division 4 and relegated with 1 game to play, do I press resign button and reach for the Argos catalogue? Then I think what better way to recapture some enthusiasm for the game than a challenge like this, even better when every player on your Gold Shortlist is taken, venture into territory new, back to researching and trawling player and club lists and get your game head back on!!!!!

I can say without doubt joining Top100 has stopped me from leaving the game altogether and is the best decision I’ve made at SM since buying Busquets the day before the update when his value went up by £20 million !!!!!

This league is a diamond in the rough, the people, the banter, the fun, it’s what this game should be and a model for SM to aspire to. The time and effort that Frank, Stephen and everyone of you put into contributing to make this an active, vibrant community rather than a stagnant league of individuals is remarkable and should not be under estimated by anyone and be something that you are all proud of.

SM could seriously learn from what goes on in this league to make REAL improvements to the game platform, something which I hope to expand on in a future post.

Again my apologies for my lack of brevity but if you have managed to get this far thank you for reading and take care.