Championship Manager 93 - Taking the Spireites to new heights! - Part 1

It's been a while since I played a Championship Manager game, took a little break after Cesena to focus on some other games, but after watching a couple of YouTube videos I wanted to give the old 1993 version of the game a shot! I haven't really played it in any detail before, when I got into the games as a kid I started with CM2 96/97, and I was only about 10 years old when that was out... so I was probably born a little bit too late to enjoy CM93 the first time around!

I'm emulating the Amiga version for this save, using Amiberry on my PC, and the experience is really nice to be fair! Although there is an MS-DOS version of the game, I just have a bit of a special connection to the Amiga, and I thought it would be fun to play this one a little bit differently. I opted to start off with Chesterfield for no other reason than I knew they were in the bottom league, and starting in the lowest possible league to then try and build my way up to the top is my usual approach to playing these games. And I wanted to play as a smaller team that hadn't already built up a legacy during the real life time gap like say, Hull City, or Cardiff.

If you want a measure of just how old this game is, Number 2 "Dyche S" there is 54 year old former Nottingham Forest, Everton and Burnley manager; Sean Dyche... he's 21 years old in this game... Current Brighton Head Coach; Fabien Hürzeler had just been born... Yikes.

I brought in only x2 new signings before kicking off the season. 20 year old John Ashdjian from Scarborough, because somebody on YouTube said he was really good (spoiler: they were wrong...) and 21 year old Warren Hackett from Leyton Orient because we had no cover beside Carr and Hebberd on the left side of the pitch. Not that it mattered too much though as I opted for a very attacking Direct 4-3-3 formation to go with a 'score more goals than the opposition' kind of approach!

My ambitions for the season are fairly modest, whilst I'd like to take the Spireites up straight away, in reality the team finished 8th in the real life 1993/94 season, so not poor by any stretch, but expecting Shrewsbury Town, Chester and Crewe Alexandria to be much stronger sides. Although our season started positively enough; we smashed Blackpool 4-1 in our opening game, before being politely humbled 3-0 away at Hartlepool. Back at home though we demolished Wigan 5-1 before wins away at Cardiff and Preston and at home to Hull City. After picking up 6 wins on the bounce though, we suddenly found ourselves mixing it up at the top of the league with Hartlepool and Preston inside the first third of the season! Unfortunately though, after knocking out Walsall, we weren't able to get passed Premier League Aston Villa in the second round of the league cup, after losing to them 1-0 at home and 2-1 away respectfully.

Not totally embarrassing though, and given the difference in pedigree they ought to beat us, so not something I was massively hung up on at this very early stage in my career! League form continued well and despite a 1-0 loss to Barnet we went on to pick up wins against Walsall, Wrexham, Scarborough, Crewe and York to maintain our lead at the top of the table, by the halfway point of the season.

It's not looking good for poor Scarborough who are yet to pick up a win at home and have only scored 8 goals all season. Can't help but feel a little bit guilty that maybe poaching Ashdjian from them has something to do with that... Meanwhile in the FA Cup we were blessed with some favourable draws, knocking out Non-League Northampton Town and Non-League Sutton United out of the cup.

Owing to the limited nature of the game, Non-League sides don't have real named players which, to a certain degree, is quite nostalgic! And Sutton United were certainly no pushovers here! Taking it all the way to the 80th odd minute before Dave Lancaster sealed a win with his 3rd goal. We were drawn against Premier League Wimbledon in the Third Round, a match I felt for sure would be the end of our cup campaign but incredibly we were able to not only hold our own against the Premier League team but even managed to sneak a goal passed them to seal an incredible 1-0 victory over a team 3 divisions ahead of us!

OK, not the most inspired performance ever, and I would like to highlight that average ratings are slightly different on this game; a 5 / 10 is what would usually be an average 6 / 10 in the Championship Manager 2 engine, but a single goal from Steve Norris was enough to be the difference maker! And we made national news; picking up Performance of the Week!

We followed that up with wins at Hull and hosting Cardiff before our FA Cup dream came to end against Premier League Ipswich but again, not a disappointing end for a team of this calibre sat in the English Third Division. It apparently had no effect on team morale either as we responded the following weekend by obliterating Preston North End 7-2! SEVEN-TWO to open up a near 13 point gap on our closest rivals for the Division Three championship.

With only 13 games left to play, mathematically I knew a sustained run of good form would see us take the Division Three title and automatic promotion with games to spare. We'd only lost 4 times and drawn once all season. Wins at Chester, Plymouth and Rochdale followed. We beat Shrewsbury 5-0. We went to Mansfield and won the Miners Strike Derby 5-0 on away turf! Not only picking up the Derby win, but also mathematically achieving automatic promotion with 8 games left to play.

We beat Huddersfield. And then Barnet and I knew a win at Walsall and mathematically we couldn't be caught and pipped for the title. We eased passed them comfortably with a 2-0 win and we were Division Three champions. And by a margin of 20 points.

Weirdly, no message popped up about being Divison Three champions... no message from the Board, no congratulations, no nothing. I even checked my math just to be sure! But there were 5 games left and only 15 points to play for. So Preston had no hope of catching us, especially after losing their fixture 1-0 against Blackpool. But suddenly, a new goal materialised. We had 85 points from 33 games. 5 games left to play... 5 more wins and we would finish the season on a round 100 points! Bonkers but totally achievable! We won at Wrexham, an edgy and close game but a 2-1 win. We squeezed passed Crewe Alexandria 2-1 in another close match. We thrashed Scarborough with a comfortable but ultimately slightly wasteful 2-0 win. We just managed to get passed York with a 1-0 win and then finally, last game of the season and we picked up a deceptively easy win against Exeter, only beating them 1-0 but with 13 attempts on goal.

Division Three champions with a 100 point tally, and joining us in Division Two next season would be Preston and ironically, Exeter, who got passed Hartlepool in the Playoffs, Hartlepool having been behind us for a good portion of the season before dropping off slightly and falling behind. Our player of the season and top goalscorer was Mr. Paul Lemon with an incredible 29 goals in 45 games.

That might not sound especially impressive compared to maybe more modern standards but not only was Lemon the top goalscorer in Division Three, he was the top goalscorer in the entire English League pyramid! With only David Hirst of Premier League Sheffield Wednesday coming close with 26 goals in 46 games.

At the end of the season I sadly missed out on the Division Three Manager of the Year award, but Paul Lemon won Division Three Senior Player of the Year. I do also have my eye on Division Three Young Player of the Year Ashley Ward of Crewe Alexandria, and I'd very much like to take him with us to the second Division next season...

So that was my first season in charge of Chesterfield! And my first ever full season playing CM93. It's certainly alot quicker to get through a whole season than the CM2 engine games, and although the simpler, reduced nature of the game compared with it's sequel does mean less control and less detail. It does allow you to spend more time just picking a team and playing matches. And I found that enjoyable. Certainly going to stick it out with Chesterfield, pick up a few new signings and see if we can cement a comfortable spot in the second Division next season!