Championship Manager 93 - Taking the Spireites to new heights! - Part 2

Promotion to the Second Division secured, and a 100 point season achieved I turned my attention to the improvements I wanted to make ahead of next season... and swiftly discovered none of my transfer targets were interested in joining Chesterfield! Amongst others I very much wanted to add Ashley Ward of Crewe to my team (he ended up joining First Division West Ham) and Welsh Goalkeeper Martyn Margetson from Man City, but neither one were remotely interested! I did end up adding new Goalkeeper Stuart Ford for £120k and new Right Back Scott Hiley for £90k both from Stoke, along with youth promotions for Scott Brightwell and Kevin Walker.

I wasn't too concerned with making wholesale changes as I felt the team were mostly capable of mixing it up in the Second Division, and the first test for new keeper Ford, and for the rest of team came with our opening game against Millwall which we comfortably won 2-1. Before returning to Derbyshire for our first home game of the season, I managed to snag future Birmingham City legend Dele Adebola. At this point in history though he'd never played for them and was still a promising youngster at Crewe.

I initially wanted him to play central midfield, replacing a departing Scott Whitehead, but as the league campaign progressed I quickly discovered he was much better suited to a forward role. But I'm getting ahead myself... The return to Recreation Ground went well as we picked up a 5-2 win thanks to a Paul Lemon hat-trick, but then we were very quickly brought back down to earth by Cambridge United who comfortably beat us 2-1 and handed us our first defeat in Division Two. The team responded well though, first dispatching Hull City 4-0 and 5-1 respectfully in the League Cup, before smashing Birmingham City 5-0, winning at Port Vale but drawing with Preston 2-2. We then picked up wins against Burnley and Notts County at home before an excellent 2-1 win in the League Cup away at First Division Wolverhampton Wanderers.

See, it was excellent. My Board thought so! We then travelled to Oxford and made light work of the current 2nd placed team in the Second Division soundly smashing them 4-0, then picked up a narrow 1-0 win to Fulham at home before holding Wolves to 0-0 draw in the returning League Cup fixture to progress to the 3rd round where we drawn against one of the Premier League heavyweights;

Likely foretelling the end of our League Cup run but at least something nice for the fans to look forward to...! Before welcoming the Gunners to Derbyshire, we were held by one of my CM teams from the past; Leyton Orient 1-1 (not something I've blogged but I took Leyton Orient to Premier League and Champions League glory on CM01-02), but picked up a 2-1 win at Reading and a win that saw us move into first place at the top of the Second Division table for the first time. Welcoming George Graham's men to the Recreation Ground, I fully expected us to be comprehensively beaten by a far superior, far stronger Premier League team. So long as we put in a decent performance and at least wasn't totally embarrassed I'd feel ok.

Ok, suddenly this team were becoming something special! Despite a Premier League team full of household names, we easily got the better of the Gunners 3-1! Paul Lemon despite not registering a goal, picking up Man of the Match! We were by far and away the much better team! And Arsenal were swiftly ejected from the 1994 League Cup! Next up in the tournament was another Premier League team in the form of Sheffield United.

Just keep 'em coming lads, and we'll show you how to play attacking football! Much closer affair this one, granted, but 2 goals from Paul Lemon, a goal from Adebola and a goal from Mark Jones filling in for a injured Trevor Hebberd was enough to topple the scoreline in our favour! Last Seasons League Cup champions and Division 1 Derby County awaited us on the Quarter Final. Meanwhile, progress in the Second Division was also going well. In between playing Arsenal and Sheffield United, we picked up wins against Bristol Rovers, Rotherham, Bradford, Southend, Stoke and Brighton making it 7 wins in a row and extending an unbeaten streak to 15 games. We squared up against Second Division Bristol Rovers in the First Round of the FA Cup and beat them 4-2 with 2 goals from Dele Adebola. We drew at Exeter, but won at Millwall, Luton and Cambridge before facing off against recently relegated and current First Division leaders, Chelsea in the Second Round of the FA Cup where we were totally outclassed in every way, suffering a 3-0 loss and barely even showing up.

That was worrying, because despite being newly relegated and despite dominating at the top of the First Division, Chelsea incidentally would go on to win the league quite comfortably, if we were to get promoted this season, Chelsea were the type of opposition we would have at least 6 games against. Tottenham, Crystal Palace and Ipswich would all go on to be relegated from the Premier League at the end of this season so if we were to finish in the automatic promotion spots, we would have to get used to contending with teams of that calibre. My team clearly didn't dwell on it too much though, responding with a great win over Birmingham City 3-0 before we met fellow Derbyshire rivals; Derby County in the League Cup Quarter Final, one of our biggest games yet!

Ok so probably not helped by having both of our Full Backs sent off... but Derby - another First Division team - were just that little bit more better than us here. And enjoying the home advantage they picked up a 2-1 win to move on to the Semi-Final. And that was the end of our cup runs! But League Cup, or FA Cup success is not even close to being on the agenda at the moment. So I can't say I was too gutted, and just to have a nice run was rewarding enough!

The team clearly didn't let the cup defeats effect them too much. We picked up wins against Port Vale, Preston, Burnley and Notts County. We picked up a great 3-2 home win against 3rd placed Oxford to widen the gap between playoffs and automatic promotion. We won 3-0 at Fulham and 4-1 against Leyton Orient at home and I knew a win at home against Reading would be enough to mathematically achieve automatic promotion. Reading were languishing in 15th place so I had no real concerns going into the game...

Yeah just kidding. 2 goals from Adebola and Brightwell, don't worry about the injury to Paul Lemon he was fine after the game, and we had done enough to, at the least, achieve automatic promotion with a 22 point gap and 7 games left to play.

I had my eyes on a slightly nicer prize though. A 4-0 win at Bristol Rovers was next, another good result with Rovers mixing it up in the Play Off places. Followed by a home win at Rotherham 3-0, that meant we had opened up an - at least- 16 point gap on second placed Cambridge. On checking, my pals from an alternative future universe; Leyton Orient had done me a solid. Smashing Cambridge United 3-1 at home meaning that gap had widened to 19 points and with only 5 games and a potential 15 points to play for, we had secured the First Division title.

Still feel it's a bit disappointing that the game engine doesn't recognise a league championship win. There's no message, no recognition, nothing. Disappointing. But I knew, mathematically we had done it! We continued the winning streak, picking up wins at Southend and Bradford before a draw at Stoke and a poor defeat against Brighton, a win that coincidentally saw them climb out of the relegation spaces so I guess they just wanted it more... saw our 14 game unbeaten streak finally come to an end! But the hard work had been done. That being said though, we decided to end the season with a bang, systematically destroying fellow Division Three promotees Exeter City 5-0 to sign off collecting the Division Two title with a statement win.

Just for posterity sake, Cambridge United kept up the good run of form to join us in Division One next season, and Bristol Rovers won the playoffs to take the 3rd spot, and probably deservedly so despite Oxford maybe being the better team most of the season. We finished the season on 97 points, just 3 points shy of another 100 point season! If only that loss against Brighton had been different! But with us only picking up 3 defeats all season and 2 of them being against Cambridge, I was really happy with how well the team had performed.

Top Goalscorer was a two way tie this season! With both Paul Lemon and Dele Adebola both picking up 22 goals each throughout the season.

Excellent work from new signing Adebola who had cemented himself alongside Paul Lemon and Scott Brightwell as one of the three starting Centre Forwards. We have been blessed with 17 year old Scott Brightwell who picked up 13 goals in 29 games and was now firmly established as the left sided Centre Forward and will almost definitely start alongside Adebola and Lemon next season.

As you can see, we did pretty well at the Yearly Awards! I took home Division 2 Manager of the Year, Paul Lemon was Division 2 Senior Player of the Year and Scott Brightwell Division 2 Young Player of the Year. I genuinely think I might have a future top star in Brightwell...

So with this season over, I have to turn my attention to competing in Division 1 next season! I anticipate it's going to be tough; League Cup champions Derby County, Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur, and West Ham all compete in the league so it's going to be a real test of how good the team can be. I have my eyes on a couple of new signings to strengthen ahead of the next league campaign but largely thinking I'll keep the squad fairly consistent as the younger stars start to develop.