It was a busy few days earlier this month.

New Player Concerns Rule

We had the Player Concerns vote, in which 92 out of 100 managers voted within two days, surely a record turnout.

We used a new voting service called Strawpoll, recommended by Beddows. One of the features of Strawpoll is that you can set it up so that you are guaranteed "one manger, one vote", and that it's anonymous (i.e., a secret ballot). True direct democracy!

The result was 51 managers in favour of a new rule from next season whereby any players reaching Level 3 concerns MUST be sold to an external club. 41 voted against. One manager abstained from voting (he couldn't decide). One manager quit (Partizan). One manager was sick and hadn't been able to login. Of the remaining five, four later told me they would also have voted in favour of the new rule. Only one manager I didn't get a final response from despite repeated efforts.

The result caused quite a bit of controversy. A few people feel very strongly one way or the other. There was a 100 plus comment thread on the newsfeed, although by my reckoning there were contributions from just 12 managers.

At the end of the day, the new rule simply brings forward by two levels the time by which managers need to either start playing unhappy players, or sell them. Which is exactly how player concerns are designed to work, and very similar to how things work in real life football management.

We'll see how it goes next season. If it proves to be controversial in practice, then we can have a second vote at the end of Season 22 to see if we want to continue with this new rule.

New Manager Appointments

While all this was going on, Dan W quit as manager of Barcelona, which also stirred up a lot of controversy. As well as the small matter of appointing a new manager to one of the biggest and the most successful club in Top 100 history. And the knock-on effect of appointing new managers to the clubs that became available after that. Mike T also quit Internacional.

In the end, it was Adam who left Villa to take the Barcelona job. It was a very close vote between Adam and two other managers. Jamie H quit Manchester City shortly after, which meant that we were able to appoint two real life fans to Villa and City - King Kev to Villa and Alex, returning for what must surely be his final chance at City. Paul M left Celta Vigo for Internacional, and Attila left Atalanta for Galatasaray. We appointed three returning Top 100 managers from Top 120 to the vacant posts at Celta, Atalanta and Crystal Palace - welcome back to Walter, Feargal and Greg.

Future Votes

I hope to run more polls with Strawpoll. It's pretty easy to set up. But to use the "one manager, one vote", secure anonymous voting feature really requires me to have every manager's email address, so that I can paste them all into the Strawpoll settings and then it automatically emails everyone with each individual vote. That's why I've asked people to complete a from to be included in what is in effect a new Top 100 Managers' Panel. You don't have to be on it, but if you want a vote on new rules, changes to rules, manager awards, etc. then you need to be.

Back Page Headlines

The last week or so, everyone seems to have settled into the new season, and I for one am loving all the match previews and manager reactions after the results come in on Thursday and Sunday nights (or Friday and Sunday mornings). If you haven't seen it already, I've been using some of these to compile Back Page headlines for each matchday. So keep them coming.

New Blog Updates

Finally, I'm trying to revamp the blog a bit to keep it up to date, lively, and to make it more user friendly and easier to find what you're looking for. And big thanks to Gav for redesigning the Top 100 logo and banner on the blog and on our Facebook page. It will take a while. Any suggestions and contributions are always welcome.

The Clubcall feature is pretty neat. It's like a blog for each team. You can check out updates and history of many (but not all) Top 100 clubs there (e.g., Espanyol). If your club isn't there, or there's not much to see, get posting (and if you need help posting, please ask for help - like most things, it's easy enough when you know how to do it).