Championship Manager 2 96-97 - Taking Queen's Park to the top! - Season 4

So... here we are! After back, to back, to back promotions, Queen's Park have arrived in the Premier League! And destiny awaits! Realistically, whilst I'm generally pleased with the calibre of my team I do feel some under performers last season will need replacing if we stand a chance of competing with Rangers and the fast developing Premier League heavyweights; Hearts in the top division. And the season started with a message from the Board announcing the injection of £2.2 million cash boost to the clubs finances in readiness for the challenge ahead. After the surprise retirement of Paul Ferguson (at 24?!) and the not-surprise retirement of Robert Scott, together with some free transfers at contract end I have a couple of gaps in the team to bring in some new signings. I immediately took some of that £2.2 mil to bring in record signing and, by my metric something of a risky signing... Attacking Midfielder Sasa Raducoiu from Steaua Bucharest for a tribunal fixed fee of £1.3 million at contract end.

With 25 goals and 7 assists at his former club, I'm hoping he will be an exciting spark in Midfield that will bag us some goals. Joining him is another 'foreign' signing; Nii Babangida on Left Wing from Rio Ave, as well as new left sided Forward; Gerard Dowie from Cliftonville who scored 38 goals in 39 games for the Northern Irish side so he certainly knows how to find the back of the net... Completing this seasons new signings is young Right Winger; Mark McMillan on a free transfer who I think is more one for the future but will play backup to Scott Edgar.

Unfortunately, or fortunately for Mr. Garden if you like, there wasn't really any decent Goalkeeper options so for now he gets to keep his spot. And if you've been following my last 3 posts with detail, let me tell you I sincerely regret signing Paul Crawford to a 5 year deal on £900 a week...

We were immediately dumped out the League Cup in our first game with a 3-1 loss to Celtic, but otherwise our first 10 games in the Premier League started off very promising! We picked up a 4-0 win against Hibs on the opening day of the league season, a 2-1 win away at Celtic, a FIVE-2 win against Rangers, and a 4-0 win against Kilmarnock amongst others meaning that we slotted in very nicely at the top of the table in the opening quarter of the campaign.

Our good form continued through to January with a 2-1 win over Rangers, a 2-1 win over Celtic, a 3-0 win over St. Johnstone and a 6-0 win over Dunfermline! We managed to stay unbeaten for 13 games until we were finally conquered in a 3-1 loss to Raith Rovers. Also along the way we unfortunately lost Jimmy Sandison to Montrose after he was poached by them to be their new Player/Manager thanks to Managerial clause in his contract. Disappointing as he was a regular in the side but with a decent squad depth and the fact that he was one of our highest paid players, it's not a total catastrophe and I'm sure we can adapt to life without him!

Although it was about now that all the problems started... We'd already suffered some significant injuries in the first half of the season; Justin Cameron had been out for 3 months. 18 games in and Sasa Raducioiu who - spoilers - at this stage in the season had averaged a goal a game was injured for 3 months. Nii Babangida was out for 6 weeks. And it only got worse from there, it quickly developed into a season plagued with injuries. At some point, x3 of my Centre Mids were all injured. Both Dowie and Flack - my first choice Forward players picked up injuries. At some point practically everyone in my starting 11 was out for at least some length of time and I was forced to rely on the depth of the squad to get me through games. The injury crisis finally reached it's crescendo when, 8 league games and a Cup Final left to play Stuart Garden, my Goalkeeper, was out for EIGHT MONTHS with a broken pelvis.

Thankfully though, and as I just alluded to, the talent and depth in the squad meant we were still able to keep up the performances and after fending off all competition to stay at the top of the table throughout most of the season, a position with which the Board notified me they were "satisfied" with... cheers guys... we also managed to string together a good FA Cup run, besting top of the First Division Clydebank in the 3rd Round, Premier League St. Johnstone in a 4th Round replay, First Division Dundee in the Quarter Final and Premier League Motherwell in the Semi Final to setup a Final with our biggest competition in the Premier League... 1998 League Champions, and last seasons League Runners Up; Heart of Midlothian! I started this challenge intended to be the team dethroning Rangers and Celtic, however it appears on our journey to get here we were beaten to it by Hearts who have overtaken Celtic as the second most successful team and with 8 games left to play are our biggest rivals alongside Rangers for the Premier League title.

Despite a bit of a stutter in form and a 3-1 loss to Hearts at Tynecastle we were able to remain mostly consistent and scored 2 more key victories with a 3-0 win at Ibrox against Rangers and a 2-1 win at St. Johnstone who had become something a bogey team for us, with 3 games left to play we were able to maintain a 9 point lead over Hearts at the top to be crowned Premier League champions in May!

I think the Board were delighted, I accidentally double clicked and missed the message... but ah who cares about them. We did it. We accomplished the goal I set 4 seasons ago; we beat Rangers, Celtic and new contenders: Hearts to the top of the Premier League to be crowned champions. We took tiny Queen's Park, who in real life finished 8th in the Scottish Third Division in 1996, to the absolute pinnacle of Scottish football.

Before I move on to discuss the individual records this season, and bring this season to a close there is just the small matter of an FA Cup Final to discuss! With Stuart Garden out for the last 8 games of the season, Young Backup: Grant McNicholl, who has spent most of the season transfer listed by request as he won't sign a new contract and wants to leave for regular first team football... has been filling the gap between the sticks. And whilst not on par with Garden in terms of performances he has been doing enough to keep us in games, for the most part, and saved us falling victim to a complete collapse. Regrettably though he wasn't anywhere near his best for the Cup final and whilst not solely to blame, we suffered a 3-2 defeat to miss out on adding a second trophy to the cabinet this season serving as a anti-climactic end to our season.

The Board kindly dropped me a message to let me know they were "Very Disappointed" with the cup defeat and downgraded their confidence in me from "Delighted" to "Very Pleased" and... I want to take a moment to just reflect on my Queen's Park career; Division 3 runners-up and automatically promoted. Division 2 Champions, Division 1 Champions. Three Time Challenge Cup Champions. One time League Cup Champions and this season; Premier League Champions. In the space of 4 years; 7 trophies. For the first time this season our Gate Receipts out performed our "Other Costs" by over £500k. But a defeat to 2nd paced Hearts in the FA CUP FINAL was "Very Disappointing." That's gratitude for you.

Player of the Season was my risky new signing Sasa Raducioiu, and I say risky because I wasn't sure if Premier League Scottish football was really comparable in terms of competition to playing in the Romanian league at Steaua Bucharest and I wasn't sure if he would do as well, or adapt to the change, but if anything he absolutely smashed it. Our Top Goalscorer this season and new record Top Goalscorer of all time with 28 goals, 15 assists and 12 man of the match awards he was by far and away one of the best players in our first 11.

An honourable mention also to new signing Gerard Dowie who, again was a bit of a risk in that I brought him to Scotland from Northern Irish football but I was confident enough that he knew how to find the net and that I thought he might do well. He managed to find 20 goals in 28 games to establish himself as first choice left sided Centre Forward replacing Peter Dwyer in our starting line up.

And once again the ever reliable Justin Cameron topped the list of Goal Assists with 29 this season, only 1 assist behind his all time record. Having joined us from Ayr United in 1997 he's been a mainstay ever since and whilst not the most explosively impressive performer, he continued to provide opportunity after opportunity to our attacking players and his contributions have been invaluable.

Caping the season off I got a notification that Mark McMillan was out of 6 months with damaged cruciate ligaments... disappointing as I hoped he could play more of an involved role next season. And as the End of Year awards came through I unfortunately lost out to Premier League Manager of the Year to Bruce Rioch of Hearts. Feels a bit unfair when we won more games, scored more goals, lost less games and conceeded less goals but... ok... Some consolation though as John Martin was awarded Young Player of the Year and rightly so as his performances pushed regular Right Back Mark McLaughlan out the team.

And... well... where do I go from here now? The answer is; I don't really know! I've accomplished what I wanted to from the offset; winning the Premier League title with Queen's Park. Next season we play in the European Cup, so there is that challenge. There is the challenge of retaining the Premier League in our sophomore season to consider to prove we aren't a fluke and I still have the Scottish FA Cup to add to my personal trophy cabinet. I wasn't initially sure if I wanted to carry on. To be frank, I find the Board unreasonable and we never have any transfer budget because any revenue is swallowed up almost entirely by "Other Costs". But I'm going to play out one more season with The Spiders and see if I can improve on our achievements this season. That and the prospect of potentially taking on an International challenge may present itself next season...