Championship Manager 2 96-97 - Taking Queen's Park to the top! - Season 1

For the best part of a decade Championship Manager was the dominant brand of football management games. From humble beginnings in 1992 with the eponymous first title on Amiga right up until CM 2003/04 on PC it ruled the roost of football management sims until the great fragmentation of 2004! But potentially more on that another time. In more recent times, as a way to wind down after work, I found myself wanting to go back to those old games and after starting a save on CM 2001/02 nearly 5 years ago now... I took Brechin City to the pinnacle of European football over the space of 10 seasons before guiding Leyton Orient to Champions of the English Premier League. But when I found myself with nothing left to win... I started to turn my attention back to some of the even older versions of the franchise.

I was 9 years old when Championship Manager 2 - 1996/97 version arrived for PC / MS DOS but I have fond memories of playing it a handful of years after release, after school, guiding Middlesborough to Premier League victory. And it was one of my favourites, despite it's successor; 1997/98 potentially being the better game. I'm lucky that my Dad is a CM / FM mega fan and has kept copies of every single game! So I dug out the old CD, worked a bit of tech magic and got it working on both my Windows 10 laptop and my Samsung tablet and after noodling around with a couple of different saves and a couple of different teams, I kinda missed playing in the Scottish League again and settled on managing Queen's Park in the Scottish Third Division.

I picked Queens's Park for a couple of reasons; Brechin City start in Division 2 and I wanted to start from the very bottom, Queen's Park didn't do very well in real life finishing 8th and only 2 places away from bottom so I fancied the challenge, and they looked like they had a fairly minimal team with room for a bunch of new signings. So I meticulously scrolled through the Free Transfers market (because we had no transfer budget at all) and signed a handful of new players; Graeme Hamilton, Kenneth Hannah, Scott Ramsay, Paul Crawford, Joseph West and Robert Scott. Having done no research beforehand on 'top wonderkids' or 'OP tactics!' I literally relied on what I know about finding decent players already coupled with whether or not my scouts recommended them. I don't have any hot tops or unspoken secrets but if you're looking at Defenders look for good Tackling, Marking and Strength stats. If you're looking at Midfielders; Creativity, Passing and Technique. If you are looking at Forwards; Pace and Shooting. I tend to also prioritise Determination and Off the ball when signing a player in any position but to be honest, stats are sometimes only half the story. If a player is playing well for his club, chances are, if you already have a half decent team, that he will slot in and do well for you in a similar system. On the subject of systems, I kept it simple and went with the default 4-4-2 Formation already pre-loaded into the game, tweaked nothing, but played Direct style.

I've found trying to play anything too wild, or exotic, or modern in this game just results in you getting battered. Although when I've had chance to develop the team more, I might try switching to my favourite 4-1-3-2 formation that served me so well in CM0102 but for now, keeping things simple. Start of the season went well and we quickly cemented ourselves in the top half of the division with key victories over East Stirling, Albion Rovers and Ross County. We also flourished in cup competition and by November, found ourselves up against Falkirk in Division 1, two divisions above us, in the final of the League Challenge Cup. And in an incredible performance we beat The Bairns 2-1 with goals from Scott Edgar and Scott Ramsay to win the game inside 90 minutes!

The Board are delighted, which is great because we are haemorrhaging money all over the place every month at the moment... so maybe they won't notice if we keep doing well... Our decent league form continued although we stumbled a couple of times, losing 1-0 to Alloa our rivals for top spot of the league and disappointing losses to Caledonian and Forfar which left me with questions as to whether our current Number 1: Chris Cameron is really up for the job... We did sneak above Alloa on goal difference though by the beginning of March but critically had lost 6 games and drawn 6 games costing us vital points in a competition with Alloa for the title who just seemed to never lose! 10 days and 2 games later though and we had racked up enough points to at least secure promotion.

Something else which distracted... I mean... delighted the Board and after 36 games and by end of the season we finished 2nd behind Alloa with 72 points, 12 points clear of Arbroath to join our rivals from Clackmannanshire (that's Alloa I mean... if your geographical knowledge of small towns in Scotland is not quite that detailed...) in the third tier of Scottish football. I was pleased, but disappointed we couldn't clinch the title! New signing and superstar right back Graeme Hamilton was hands down our best player all season with 6 goals, 29 assists, and an Average Rating of 8.31.

Although not too far behind him in my estimation, was another new signing in Robert Scott who bagged 24 goals in 26 games and just missed out on Division 3 Top Goalscorer behind Peter Dwyer of Alloa.

And thanks to a League Challenge Cup win earlier in the year and decent but fairly unremarkable cup runs in the other tournaments combined with a 2nd place league finish, I found myself only behind Walter Smith of Rangers - Premier League Champions and League Cup winners on managerial performance points.

All of which, presumably, also contributed to me taking home the Division Three Manager of the Year! Yeah, suck it Tommy Hendrie! Which to be fair was a nice surprise.

But there is work to do before we kick off next season in the Scottish Second Division. We need to improve in some key positions. Chris Cameron is not good enough for first team football, and having lost Gary Bollan - our first choice Left Back - back to Rangers after his season long loan finished, we need a new left sided defender because Paul Ferguson is not good enough. There's also space for a strike partner alongside Scott as new signings Crawford and West have both been disappointing. Speaking of which, when does Peter Dwyer's contract expire?... Oh?...

... so yeah, his contract expired in early June and I made him the last new signing of the current season bringing him to Hampden Park on a FREE TRANSFER. Top scorer of champions Alloa and they lost him for nothing! And I have a few other similar targets to strengthen the rest of the squad in key areas in prep for next season. But I'm looking forward to it and we are one step closer to our ultimate goal of dethroning Celtic and Rangers as the defacto top teams of the Scottish Division!