This blog will centre around my journey from an unknown English manager to the fame and fortune of continental success on Football Manager 2019.

Creating an alternate reality

In previous versions of the game I’ve successfully been hired for my first job by clubs in National League and National League North/South which are ranked in the game with 1 ½ and 1 stars respectively. As such I looked at other 1 and 1 ½ star ranked leagues and found Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Romania, Scotland, Slovakia, Sweden and Turkey all offer playable leagues at this level.

The appeal of a Northern Europe save was too much to resist with all of the Nordic leagues being available alongside most of the UK and Ireland, plus France. However, I omitted Ireland, along with Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Turkey as I really didn’t fancy starting in any of those leagues.

I usually always end up taking my first job in England but I’m up for a new challenge this time so have chosen to load Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as Playable, with England, Scotland and France as View Only for now while I get my career off the ground. Keeping up with news and updates from the latter three might come in handy in a few years time if I’m looking for my next opportunity, at which point I will look to switch them to Playable and load some more nations as View Only for the same reason.

Finally, I’ve customised the database to include all but the Players Based in Nation and Players of Nationality for Europe, North America, South America and Asia and then opted for Large which gives me around 95,000 players in the game. I’ve also left attribute masking on as real-life managers wouldn’t have instant access to unknown players without the help of their scouting network.

A (future) star is born

Now that we have the game world established, it’s time to create our manager profile. He’s English, in his early 30’s, born in my hometown of Braintree and is a lifelong fan of West Ham United.

I’ve never played football to a standard beyond Sunday League and I don’t have any professional qualifications yet so these settings are adjusted accordingly. This gives us limited scope in terms of attribute levels with only 4 extra points available to allocate under each of the Coaching and Mental skills. I’ve stuck to my personal strengths of Fitness and Mental for Coaching, and then Adaptability and Man Management for Mental.

As mentioned previously, I’ll be starting as unemployed and will immediately take a holiday while my assistant applies for jobs on my behalf at all lower league clubs. Since I don’t have a club yet I'm not worried when we start start the game and so have opted to begin in Sweden at the latest date possible which is 9th July 2018.

And away we go! Thanks for reading so far, I hope to have an update for you shortly with an interview offer or two.