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Career Llandudno For The Champions League!


Mr.Manager
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Let me set the scene:

The season is 2024/25. Young manager Ryan Giggs (me!) has swatted away all competition in Wales with an expansive Llandudno side. Despite limited funds as a semi-professional outfit and the restrictions of Brexit (man, I hate Brexit!), his team had racked up an impressive 7 league titles and 7 domestic trophies in the last 8 seasons.

Europe, however, has been a different story. Battling through the Champions League qualifiers has been difficult enough, with tricky ties against the likes of Rosenborg in Norway and Astra in Romania a long way to travel for my intrepid part-timers. And that was just to get through to the competition proper.

Llandudno had only managed to scrape through to the group stages twice before, and it had not been pretty:

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But maybe, just maybe this season is going to be different.

Qualification was straightforward enough. Sure, Anderlecht managed to beat us in Belgium, but they paid for that with a 5-0 thumping back in North Wales. By now we've gotten fairly used to facing off against teams of the calibre of Qarabag (why are an Azerbaijani team in European club competition?!). Dundalk? Done deal.

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And so it's time to don our best dinner jackets, as we attend the draw for the group stage. Our opponents: BAYERN MUNICH (5 times winners), MANCHESTER UNITED (3 times winners) and AS MONACO (runners up in 2004). Are you kidding me?! Talk about a group of death.

But we can't let that bring us down. Come on boyos, lets grit our teeth and set out to take on these uppity glamour clubs.

Aaaaand... we get our asses handed to us.

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3 games, 3 defeats and each worse than the last. Try again next season eh?

But wait, what's this...

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Surely only a consolation win though, right?

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Waaaaiittttt a minute. That's 2 wins in a row. 2 fairly comfortably wins in a row even.

1 game left to play. Away at Bayern Munich.

Inspection of the table tells me that Man U have already qualified, but second place is still up for grabs.

All Llandudno have to do is win. 1 win. Away at Bayern Munich.

Yeah, that's all.

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We won! Away at Bayern Munich! Ginter missing a penalty was incredible. We got hammered throughout the game but somehow we hung on. Away at Bayern Munich!!!

Stay tuned to see which European giant is next to fall victim to these mighty Welsh dragons...

 

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5 days later, it's time for the draw for the 1st knockout stage. Drum roll, please...

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Llandudno will take on Los Blancos! What a match up for our minnows.

It's also a special fixture for one particular senior member of our squad...

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Yep, we snapped up Bale 3 seasons ago on a free transfer from Real. He was much better then, honest!

As a side note, @scratch99 might be interested to see his decline over the last year:

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We only have adequate training facilities currently, so hopefully Armstrong won't regress quite as badly.

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Enjoying this. Hope you take the game to Real Madrid and get the win! :)

I'd be interested in seeing more about your squad and the tactics etc. I had a sort of similar struggle (starting from where you are now) to turn Celtic from a team that might occasionally get out of the group into a team that would win the Champions League most years. I'm guessing I had a lot more money (and better facilities etc) than you probably do at Llandudno, so I'm fascinated with how you'll do it and how hard it will be etc.

And thanks for info on Bale's decline. It looks a fair bit quicker than Armstrong's, although his attributes are falling away now he's 35, especially his Physical attributes - they'd dropped down to 13,9,8 but all are back up a point now for some reason. I am really grateful for the top level training facilities, that's for sure!

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7 hours ago, scratch99 said:

Enjoying this. Hope you take the game to Real Madrid and get the win! :)

I'd be interested in seeing more about your squad and the tactics etc. I had a sort of similar struggle (starting from where you are now) to turn Celtic from a team that might occasionally get out of the group into a team that would win the Champions League most years. I'm guessing I had a lot more money (and better facilities etc) than you probably do at Llandudno, so I'm fascinated with how you'll do it and how hard it will be etc.

And thanks for info on Bale's decline. It looks a fair bit quicker than Armstrong's, although his attributes are falling away now he's 35, especially his Physical attributes - they'd dropped down to 13,9,8 but all are back up a point now for some reason. I am really grateful for the top level training facilities, that's for sure!

Thanks man! I wouldn't be surprised if we just get humiliated but I'll update either way.

I'll definitely give a bit more detail on the squad and tactics before the game. Thanks for the tip.

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Update: we're still only in January but our team has been rocked by a couple of major developments.

Firstly our star winger was laid out for two months with a painful injury:

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A lot of our strategy against the bigger sides is to have men behind the ball with pacy attackers to counter attack. This is a real blow. Ha, real blow, pun not intended.

Things then got from bad to worse... 

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This is huge! Rawlinson has been our star striker this season, and that's another of our paciest attackers down. Disaster!

Our squad is already thin and the transfer window has already closed. If I'm honest, I think this has pushed our chances from minimal to non-existent. The lads will just have to go out there and enjoy themselves, and hopefully Real will be overly complacent... Is complacency even a thing on FMM?!

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That sucks! But as you say, all you can do is to get the lads to go out there and do their best. Good luck and looking forward to the next update!

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Before you knew it, the big day was upon us. Having lost our two principle attackers to injury and "big club" Burnley respectively, I had been furiously tweaking my tactics in recent games to try to compensate for their loss. It is questionable, however, whether match ups against the likes of Bala or Aberswyth provide adequate preparation for a showdown with the Galacticos...

Our injury concerns weren't, in fact, over. Two days before we were ready to face off, the below message was delivered: IMG_0147.thumb.PNG.218d868b53ed1a6f3071205de2d22928.PNG

Not really a problem for our first team, but such a shame for the big guy. And all of a sudden the press are questioning whether this is the end for Bale. Quite literally adding insult to injury.

Anyway, back to the game. My first thought was to put an extra man in defence and effectively park the bus. Our centre backs are of a decent standard (probably about lower to mid-table premier league level) and you only need to score once to win. With that in mind I set the team up as follows:

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Unfortunately, Real were still finding it very easy to get through our defensive shield and were creating chances for fun. With that being the case, I switched to my default defensive tactic:

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We came back in to the game a little bit but ultimately we deserved to lose.

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Still a 1-0 defeat wasn't bad and with another 90 minutes to play we were still in this. Besides, with all the bad luck we've had with injuries and whatnot, surely our luck was going to change...

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Paul Garrett and Tom Lawrence both wiped out in the same match! They were both likely starters in the attaching positions and I really had very few options available to me.

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Last resort, pump it up to the big up top.

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It worked to an extent.IMG_0160.thumb.PNG.9ac1b3d8c3007c30b57124bbabd129c5.PNG

But they had just too much for us in attack and we bowed out. A 4-2 aggregate defeat seemed fairly respectable to me though.

Thats that for this season. I'll rebuild again go again next year and I'll let you guys know how we do!

Edited by Mr.Manager
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Dude a 4-2 loss to Real Madrid while playing as Llandudno and loosing so much of your attacking force is just unreal and a fantastic achievement for yourself and the Club, well done

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15 hours ago, Taff said:

Dude a 4-2 loss to Real Madrid while playing as Llandudno and loosing so much of your attacking force is just unreal and a fantastic achievement for yourself and the Club, well done

Thanks Taff, I am amazed at how close we ran them considering! We'll get there eventually!

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So, after a season of unprecedented success for a Welsh side in Europe, Ryan Giggs and Llandudno looked forward to the 2025/26 season with unbridled optimism. But would our quiet confidence be misguided? Let's find out!

Despite still having to fight through 3 rounds of qualifying just to get through to the group stages, by late August we had won our place amongst the last 32. Look at all that green!

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Celtic ran us close mind, doing brilliantly well to overturn our first leg advantage and needing extra time to finally be sent packing. Still, 20 goals in the first 6 games of our European campaign showed we had plenty of fire power and were ready to take on the big guns.

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And big guns we got, with the draw putting us up against Arsenal, SLB and Sevilla. Not quite the horror show of last season but a very tough group nonetheless.

Having experimented with my formations last season, I've settled on a favoured formation for games when we're the underdog:

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It didn't do the trick for us in the first tie, but we didn't embarrass ourselves. And in the next two games, it worked a treat.

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Unbelievably, that put us top of the group at the halfway stage, and looking well on course for a spot in the last 16 again.

One thing I did notice in those victories were the bizarre tactics being adopted by my opponents. Arsenal seemed to treat us with a LOT of respect, whereas I'm not sure what Sevilla were thinking with their formation and players out of position. Whenever I see a red in a defensive position I target that player.

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Game number 4 brought us back to Earth somewhat...

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...But a magnificent victory in game 5 meant we were all but through.

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A 2-0 defeat to Arsenal was a not quite the close we were hoping for but it made little difference at the end of the day.

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And so for the draw for the knockout stages. All of Europe's most storied and illustrious names were pulled from the hat one by one - Bayern, Juventus, Barcelona, Dortmund, Real Madrid, Llandudno... And our opponents, Manchester United.

The perfect fixture for our giant killing team! I am a fan of the Red Devils myself and, with Llandudno just 80 miles away from Manchester, there was the air of a derby about the game.

And, as we all know, anything can happen in a derby...

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Another unlikely victory!

However, it was the slenderest of advantages to take with us to England, and I was in two minds about whether to push for a crucial away goal or to really shut up shop. In the end, I think I left myself too open and we crashed out thanks to goals from Wilson and Volland.

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Another season of defeat at the first knockout stage and, while I know in my heart of hearts that that constitutes a huge success, I can't help but wonder what might have been. In January, we splashed £5m on an impressive looking striker (a huge sum of money for us - I'd only spent £1m on all my other transfers over 10 seasons combined!), only for him to get crocked weeks before the first leg.

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Who knows how well we could have done with him. Maybe he'll propel us to champions league glory next season eh?

Edited by Mr.Manager
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Seasons came and went, and Llandudno continued to scrap admirably against Europe's elite.

Our campaigns however, were beginning to have familiar feel to them…

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That's four out of five seasons where we exited at the last 16 stage. We were beginning to feel like Arsenal!

But could that change in the 2029/30 season? Could that be why I'm providing another update??

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Well, no. A tough group, but another disappointing campaign culminating in exit before Christmas.

All we had to keep us warm over the winter months was the memory of this unforgettable victory

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And the prospect of a shot at the Europa League trophy.

Fastforward to February and we swatted aside Slavia Prague and then Hapoel Be'er-Sheva. Not the toughest draws for European knock out football, especially considering the likes of Barcelona, Dortmund and Man Utd remained in waiting.

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And so to the quarter finals, further then we had ever got in a continental competition before. Would we get another kind draw? Would we heck.

Bienvenida Barcelona.

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We really rode our luck in the second leg there. 4 - 2 down on aggregate with 2 minutes to go I switched to the following long ball tactic and somehow bagged the two goals required to send us through on away goals. Incredible!

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For the semis we faced Portuguese giants SLB. Although a daunting fixture on paper, we have fond memories of a 6-0 drubbing of them five seasons ago (easy enough to remember when it's posted on here!) and so we held no fear. As you can see, by the following scoreline:

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A nice performance in the second leg saw us through 10-1 on aggregate, and into our first ever European final!

I think at this point I'd like to just pause and let you get to know the squad a little better.

I've taken on this challenge without the benefit of any of the unlockables, and so my squad has been built using year after year of transfer profits. You can see from my manager profile that I've spent £68m in 14 seasons, which is an average of £4m per season. Delving a little deeper though, we actually spent £41m this season, funded by a complete squad overhaul.

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My squad then is a mishmash of recent big money buys and longer serving bargain basement acquisitions. Here's a sample so you can see what I mean:

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Keep an eye on Garrett, he has more to show you…

And so for the big day against Dortmund. I looked at their recent results, scoured their squad and listened attentively to my scout report to try to ascertain some miracle tactic that will tip the odds in my favour. In the end, I just decided to go with the same formation and XI that I usually do.

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We'd done it! Plucky Llandudno had their grubby mits on European silverware! It's not quite the beautiful bombshell of the Champions League, I grant you, but it's her  a little bit chubbier, only slightly-less-interesting friend at least. We're happy to settle for that!

We won it in style too, scoring 29 goals in just 9 games. Despite entering the competition at the knockout stages only, our players had quickly taken it by storm:

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15 goals from 9 games from an inside forward that I picked up on a free from Stoke Youth.

And so we look forward to another season. The perpetual fear for a club of our resources is that bigger clubs will turn the heads of our prize assets, and it seems clear that we'll have to strengthen again if we're to make a proper assault on the grand prize. Can we do it? I'll let you know soon!

 

 

Edited by Mr.Manager
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Final update

After our Europa League triumph, the strength of our squad snowballed. We quickly developed into one of the Continental heavyweights.

We feared no team, and regularly scored 4 or more goals against the sternest opponents. With form like that, it was inevitable...

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That's Llandudno as European champions! After 16 seasons we had finally achieved what we set out to do. 

Unfortunately I forgot to take screenshots from most of our games! 

It's been an epic campaign, but to be honest, I'm keen to start a new challenge as soon as possible away from the Welsh league and closer to the present day. Roll on the next challenge.

Thanks for reading.

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16 hours ago, LOLITSLIT said:

Just read all of this and I have to say that this is very impressive. Great work on winning the CL!

Thanks man! A lot of work involved but it's sweet to have finally got there!

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16 hours ago, Eogtuc0910 said:

Yeah congrats mate quick question how did you keep it interesting for 16 seasons winning the league every year.

Good question! The career kind of developed as I got further in to it:

1) First few seasons were spent becoming the dominant force in Wales (although I won the league in my first season, I only finished 4th in my second and it took me three seasons to win one of the cups)

2) The next 10 seasons or so were all about building up the value of my team. I started with a budget of £10k and maximum wages of £400p/w so it took a long time to build that up and to be able to spend £10m+. I quite often offered my players buyout clauses, which I know is not often well liked. I find though that it helps me sign better players, and it makes me earn more money through player sales when sometimes I'd just look to reject all bids.

3) Once I had built up enough money it became easier to challenge in Europe and with the end in sight that kept my interest up.

I think it definitely helps that I get through seasons quite quickly too. I can usually get through one in a couple of days.

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17 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

Great job! Congrats on building a minnow into a team that can win the Champions League!

Thanks mate, completed it in the 2031/32 season so around abouts when Armstrong was bagging goal 950...

added 0 minutes later
16 minutes ago, Taff said:

Fantastic achievement dude to take a lowly Welsh club to the heights of European Football

You have made me and my fellow countrymen very proud

Haha cheers Taff! I did think it might catch your eye!

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11 hours ago, Mr.Manager said:

Thanks mate, completed it in the 2031/32 season so around abouts when Armstrong was bagging goal 950...

Hehe, I was going to leave a longer comment, but was out of time after updating the Armstrong thread and needed to get to bed, so just opted for a short one. I was originally going to comment on this part:

On 2/21/2017 at 02:32, Mr.Manager said:

It's been an epic campaign, but to be honest, I'm keen to start a new challenge as soon as possible away from the Welsh league and closer to the present day. Roll on the next challenge.

I can totally identify with this. As much as I'll miss Armstrong, I have so many other things I want to try.

Can't wait to see what you get up to next. :)

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1 hour ago, scratch99 said:

Can't wait to see what you get up to next. :)

Oh wait, I just found the Bradley Wiggins Challenge thread. So I'll see you over there. :)

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