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

Having achieved promotion from Division 3 in my previous season, my attention at Queen's Park now turned to cementing a decent position in Division Two and work on building and strengthening the team. I brought in new Goalkeeper; Stuart Garden from Brechin City (who have just been promoted to Divsion One ahead of us), new Left Back; Paul Deas from Stirling Albion, new Centre Back; Jimmy Sandison from Airdrie, a new Central Midfielder in Justin Cameron from Ayr United and Attacking Midfielder / Forward; Craig Winter from Cowdenbeath. All on FREE TRANSFERS owing to contract expiry. If you want a tip for playing CM2 engine games, look for players close to contract expiry in 3 months and go for them when their contracts expire. For some reason the CPU managers don't do contract renewals until expiry! After shopping around and bringing in a few more new players to bolster out the team, the squad was now looking like it had pretty decent coverage in pretty much every position on the pitch.

However less than 7 games into the new season and last season superstar Right Back; Graeme Hamilton had his "Big Club Release" clause triggered by Chelsea with the tribunal setting the fee at £1 MILLION. I'll be frank, whilst I was disappointed to see him go, he handily cleared the clubs money troubles, and then some... with that nice hefty transfer fee!

Thankfully, with a fairly decent squad depth, we are able to cover his loss and although Kenneth Hannah and Mark McLauchlan are not quite on the same level, they're both decent enough that I think we can bank the proceeds and not have to worry about dipping into the transfer market for a replacement this season.

That minor hiccup aside, and despite stumbling in our first game in Division Two with a 2-0 loss to newly relegated East Fife; a result the Board described as "Poor," which, to be honest I thought was a bit harsh... things are going quite well in our start to Second Division football as we currently sit top of the league with 6 wins from 7 games! And the success didn't stop there. We knocked defacto rivals Alloa out of both the Challenge Cup and League Cup before besting Celtic after penalties in League Cup Semi Final (!) and going on to beat St. Johnstone in the Challenge Cup final to retain the trophy from last year!

The Board were delighted. And so was I! Clearly proving that last seasons success wasn't just a fluke. The new signings were slotting into the team nicely. For the most part, the top players of last season were continuing to put in great performances and in Midfield, I was genuinely a little bit spoilt for choice! Everything was clicking into place nicely and the team performed really well in almost every game! We continued to sit on top of the Division, recording our record best result yet with a 6-0 win over Stenhousemuir and in the League Cup final we took Rangers to Extra Time in an incredible 4-3 win to steal the League Cup and achieve a domestic cup double!

So if you haven't been following, that's wins over Celtic and Rangers in cup competition! A message from the Board found it's way to me indicating they were "Delighted" with the League Cup win... However despite our success and continued good form in the league, I felt like Paul Deas was just not quite living up to the expectations I had set of him and I decided to spend some of that Hamilton transfer fee on bringing out of favour Rangers Left Back; Gary Bollan back to Hampden Park after his spell with us on loan last season.

The first player I've actually spent some money on! With the distraction of winning trophies out of the way momentarily, by January, 20 games into the season, we were sitting on top, 10 points clear of... ALLOA in second place! They just won't go away! Facing off against them later in the season, we beat the... *checks notes*... The Wasps 2-1 to move 18 points clear on top, which I hope all but guarantees us promotion and League Champions...

I knew bringing Gary Bollan back was a good idea. Our incredible good form continued, we had only lost 2 games and drawn none by this point. I have never managed a club in any of these games that plays this well and just refuses to lose! By the beginning of March, promotion had been confirmed with 9 games left to play and with a 20 point gap between us and Alloa in 2nd place. And 4 games later, 5 games left to play before the end of the season we were crowned champions after a 4-1 win away at Hamilton.

Interestingly enough, the Board didn't seem to be too bothered about winning the title, and I didn't get a "Board are Delighted..." message? They were delighted with achieving promotion, but seemingly not bothered about being crowned champions? Weird. I, on the other hand, was absolutely ecstatic! Not only did we win back to back to promotion, but we smashed the league to become champions by, at the end of the season, 25 points!

Despite our outstanding league form though, we weren't able to get the better of Kilmarnock - a Premier League team - in the 4th round of the Scottish FA Cup and they bested us 2-1 to knock us out. Disappointing but we'll have other opportunities at that one hopefully! And my initial goal this season was really just to stay in the Second Division and acclimatize to the tougher competition. I never expected we'd be league challengers let alone league winners! But I'll take it! Player of the Season this year went to Dominic Callan who missed the first couple of months with injury but still put in 33 games for us and with 10 goals and 18 assists cemented a position on the team sheet as first choice Centre Mid.

And Top Goalscorer honours were shared equally between last season's late new signing: Peter Dwyer and established goalscorer Robert Scott, both with 20 goals each and joint top goalscorers in the League.

And also, a honourable mention goes to new signing Justin Cameron who established a place in the first team alongside Dominic Callan in Midfield and, playing most games, racked up 24 assists in 41 games.

And thanks to racking up 3 trophies this season; Challenge Cup, League Cup, Division Two Championship, I bested Hearts Manager; Bruce Rioch to 1st place! The Manager and Team that won the Premier Division this season!

And at the End of the Season, not only was I awarded Division Two Manager of the Year but our team also won the FA Fair Play Award!

Phew! That's a lot of winning! But I am under no illusions. We have had a very good season, but there are tougher challenges on the horizon. After our first season I felt the team was at least decent enough to play Division One football and whilst we have grown and improved in areas, the step up in competition will certainly be steeper next season than the transition from Third Division to Second Division has been. And there are a couple of areas where I see improvements that can be made. I'm not confident James Ward can hold down a spot as first choice Centre Back and whilst Scott and Dwyer have had good seasons generally, their form has been inconsistent and whilst Daniel Ferry seems to be blossoming into a decent player, I think a third striker might be a wise investment. However my transfer options this season aren't quite as abundant as they were last season and I think it'll really take some digging around to find worthwhile additions to the squad. And at time of writing, although I wasn't aware of it then, but I was about to face my biggest challenge yet with Queen's Park... The Spiders were going to Europe!...