Welcome to Part One of my new Football Manager 23 save, “The Journey Person; From Field to Favoured Personnel”.

I started blogging back in FM19 as a way to record my saves for posterity, and over the last few iterations of the game I have had a lot of fun with my alternate reality built around former KGB agent Ruslan Chepiga. This year, however, I wanted to do something different.

It has been a long time since I did an actual long term journeyman save (*or Journey Person, don’t assume gender) so this year I am going to try and work my way up from the depths of the third tier in my home country of Northern Ireland to, hopefully, the very top of world football.

Aims of the Save

The journeyman save is nothing new to the FM content creation scene, so I won’t be breaking new ground here, but I have a few aims and rules that I would like to outline at the start. As mentioned above this won’t be a #CreativeFM series but I do require you to use your imagination a little bit now. I want to take you back to Summer 2013, a simper time before, Brexit, global pandemics, economic crashes, and war in Europe. Blurred Lines and Get Lucky were in the charts, what a time to be alive. I am having a walk close to my new house in the outskirts of East Belfast with my wife of almost 5 years. She turns to me, her green Irish eyes glistening in the street lights, and asks, “Is this the time to have kids?” For some unknown reason, I said, “Yes”. Fast forward to 2022 and I am knackered, I’ve aged about 20 years, and I no longer know what the point of it all is. Nobody told me it was this hard.

In a sliding doors moment - for the purposes of this save we are going to pretend I turned around and said, “No chance love, kids aren’t for me.” I have no doubt this would have inevitably led to a divorce but at least I’d have been free to pursue this fictional career in football management. The new me wants to become the greatest football manager in the world but having never played the game, nor studied for any badges, the road will be a long one.

Taking that as a starting point I want to try as far as possible to make decisions throughout the save how I would actually make them in real life. For example, I have a decent job so I wouldn’t be in a position to manage full time until the wages offered at least matched what I am earning now. Also, I wouldn’t upsticks and move to China or England for a few extra quid a week, it would have to be a really good offer. This decision making REALISM will also form part of the player interactions and press conferences I have. We all know the right answers, we all know how to get lovely green responses in team talks, but this year I am going to say and act how I really would in real life.

I am going to make more use of staff than I normally do. We have seen across content creation in recent years the increased use of the Director of Football as one example. I will fully utilise my staff and take on board much of their advice, if I find us contantly disagreeing I may look to replace them, but if they are there to do a job I will use them. I think this will keep the save fresh as I hopefully move up the divisions, and the backroom staff grow. It is unlikely that I will have a Director of Football or a Technical Director in the third tier of Northern Ireland so I will be far more hands on with the day to day running of the club early on in the save than I would be later on at a club like PSG for example.

Finally, I will only really be interested in furthering my own career and keeping my current employers happy. If they want Route One defensive football then that is what they will get, if a certain trophy or rivalry is important to them then they are the ones I will be focusing on. This won’t be a save where I find a pressing tactic that works and I just keep using it at different clubs. The jobs I take and the state I find the clubs in will determine how I approach things with that team, I hope this will keep the save interesting for the next 8 or 9 months.

What do I want to achieve? I want to become the best manager in the game. How you measure this is open for debate, but as a starting point I want to attain a 5 star reputation and I want to be the world’s highest paid manager. I have thought about how long this could take as I am a fairly slow player and I may decide to make this a two year FM journey and start FM24 where I finish in FM23 but we shall see.

My next aim is in the title, I am going to keep a count of how many teams I become at least favoured personnel for, I’m not ambitious enough to try and have stadia named after me, or become a legend; favoured personnel will do fine. I did once get a business studies school report that said, “Chris set very low standards last year and so far this year he has failed to meet them.”

The image below is my profile, looking happy, as the game stands on day one. Not much to write home about but I will return to this screen as the save progresses to see how I develop. I’m the highest paid manager in the division and I would be among the highest paid in the division above, £1,700p/m is not a bad wage, so it could be that I stay here for a while yet - providing I don’t get sacked. We start with half a star reputation so only another four and half to go - easy.

I should point out that I have French and German as fluent, I am going with A-Level French and GCSE German as qualifying as fluent (sue me). Favoured clubs are also true, having so many may seem odd to English readers but here in Northern Ireland it is not uncommon for people to follow a team from NI, Scotland and England. Dundela are there as my grandfather used to be on the committee, my family are social members there, and I went to Dundela Primary school which shares a fence with the football club. I’ve spent many a happy Saturday at the “Hen Run” when the Glens were playing away from home. Interestingly, the ground was also used in filming for the brilliant film “The Keeper” which was based on the life of Manchester City’s German goalkeeper from the 1950s, Bert Trautmann. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it.

Game Set up

For any journeyman save it is important to carefully consider what active leagues you set up with. Fully playable leagues are processed by the AI in much more detail and should mean these leagues remain competitive for longer especially if/when we start to play in European competition, or want to move to a job abroad. With this in mind I have selected the “big five” leagues (England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy) as fully playable. In England I have made all the available divisions fully playable as it is more likely for me to move to the lower reaches of England and Scotland than those farther afield. I have also added the leagues of neighbouring countries, I have already mentioned Scotland, but I have also added Republic of Ireland and Wales. This will make recruitment more realistic and hopefully give me the option of making realistic career choices by potentially making the small move to Ireland or Scotland for example.

I also selected the advanced set up and loaded all Northern Ireland players, all Scottish players, all European Internationals, as well as players of a national reputation in Argentina and Brazil. This has given me a player pool of around 70,000 and represents a balance I am happy with. I may change this as the save progresses, we shall see where the adventure takes us!

Finally I have selected to disable the first transfer window, in my opinion this should always be ticked as in real life the transfer window has already happened and is reflected in the game anyways. My love / hate relationship with attribute masking continues, this year I have decided to keep attribute masking on. Attributes are not realistic, we all know Pep isn’t sitting at home checking Foden’s passing attribute but I do think they are a necessary evil. By masking them I think this adds to the realism somewhat without going full Dan Gear attributless.

Why Start at Bangor?

Last summer I moved from my beloved East Belfast out to the newly awarded City of Bangor, on the North Down coast. The slim chances of ever returning to the office full time meant I was no longer constrained by the prospect of a long commute everyday and the idea of living farther from Belfast was more palatable.

The settlement of Bangor dates back to the 6th Century and the formation of Bangor Abbey, the grounds of which are still in use today, at this time Bangor was one of only four recognised settlements in Ireland. Similar to other monasteries at the time, the settlement came under sustained Viking attacks and was eventually completely destroyed in 824. It took another three centuries for the monastery to be rebuilt.

• Bangor awarded City Status.

In 1605, during the plantation of Ulster, King James I granted lands in North Down to a Scotsman, James Hamilton, and he began to develop the area as a town. New homes were built and Scottish migrants brought over to live in them. Hamilton’s descendants, the Ward’s, continued to develop the land, building a park and a castle, and even tried to introduce Cotton Mills to the area during the industrial revolution (this never really took hold and after a series of fires the mills were closed down in the 1850s.).

Bangor’s role in the region changed with the coming of railway in 1865. A direct rail link to Belfast meant Bangor became a place of leisure and entertainment for wealthy Belfast professionals to take a vacation from their busy city life, or in some cases move permanently, which led to the building of a number of Victorian Villas that overlook the harbour to this day. This expansion slowed during World War I but picked up again during the 1920s and 30s and the creation of many art deco buildings in the region which have since been demolished, although Pickie Fun Park remains and is still a firm favourite for children in the area - my own included.

In the years following the Second World War, Bangor continued to grow as a tourist resort and a commuter town, this did begin to change in the late 1960s as foreign travel became affordable and many families started to holiday in Europe rather than visit the seaside at home. Many B&Bs closed as a result but at the same time the population grew quickly as people moved from Belfast to escape the troubles there. The latest census reported the population of Bangor to be 61,000

Having followed East Belfast giants Glentoran my whole life, I have recently taken a closer interest in my new local side, Bangor, even attending a couple of games with my eldest son.

The Northern Ireland leagues are fully licensed on Football Manager and playable right down to the Premier Intermediate League (third tier) where Bangor currently play, so it is surely one of the lowest rep leagues in the vanilla version of the game.

Bangor was formed at the outbreak of World War I as an amalgamation of a number of smaller clubs in the area that had to fold because they lost so many players to battle. For most of their history Bangor occupied the lower reaches in the various leagues they were in, but I can actually remember Bangor being relatively good when I first started watching football in the early 1990s. They won the Irish Cup in 1993 and qualified for Europe three times between 1990 and 1995. You can obviously read more about them on their Wikipedia page, but in short since their heyday in the 1990s various financial and administrative blunders has seen them plummet down the leagues in Northern Ireland. Culminating in them being relegated to the Ballymena and Provincial Intermediate League (4th Tier) at the end of the 2016/17 season. Promotion back to the Premier Intermediate was secured just before the Covid-19 pandemic, and last season Bangor finished 2nd in the Premier Intermediate narrowly missing out on promotion in a playoff with Knockbreda.

What’s next?

To be honest the club doesn’t matter in this save, my only priority will be to further my own career and line my own pockets. With that in mind I will be paying particular attention to the board vision and supporter expectations. At Bangor on day one, the only requirements from the board are a top half finish and to keep within wage budget. I am hopeful I can manage both fairly easily. The supporters only requirement is to be competitive against local rivals Ards should we play them (Ards currently share a ground with Bangor and play in NIs second tier.). Supporters would also like us to make the playoffs, so this would require us to finish at least second in the league. The ever unreliable season preview provided by FM has us as joint favourites for the title with Moyola Park. I will be interested to see how newly promoted Ballymacash Rangers get on as in real life they have received heavy investment and have started the season very well, remaining unbeaten after seven games and sitting top of the league.

One other thing about Northern Ireland football is the sheer amount of cups, it must rival Brazil in this regard. I actually see this as a good thing as success in one of these minor cups might give us a little rep boost.

Final words

I hope you enjoyed this little introduction to my main series this year. In the next episode I will take you through our first team squad, my thoughts on a tactic, and review our first few games in charge. I’m really looking forward to see where my journey takes me and I hope some of you will join me as well.

If you are still looking for more to read can I recommend you head back to the CoffeehouseFM homepage, the quality of blogging coming out of “the house” over the last few days has been fantastic.

As ever thanks for making it this far.

Over and Out

@FMEadster!