Championship Manager 2 96-97 - Taking Queen's Park to the top! - Season 5

After accomplishing my initial goal last season - winning the Premier League - I genuinely wasn't sure if I wanted to carry on as Queen's Park boss, but having not yet been able to capture the FA Cup in my x4 previous seasons and with the prospect of European Cup football ahead of us I decided to do one more season! Before I could even get started on Season number 5 though the initial challenge I was faced with was the mass retirement of six members of the squad! Mark McLauchlan - my in \ out Right Back, Stephen Cadden - my left sided Central Midfielder who missed most of last season with a bad injury, Centre Forward Peter Dwyer who had struggled for form last season, Centre Back James Ward who had barely featured since we were a Division Two side, Centre Midfielder Dominic Callan who was one of our best players in the lower leagues, and Attacking Right Winger Craig Winter who just hadn't really been able to break into the team. Combine that with a couple of players leaving on frees at the end of their contract and for the first time in a while I had some serious space in the squad to bring in some new talent! After completing a sale of Centre Forward Joseph West to Liverpool for £1.2 Million, after they triggered his "big club" release clause, I spent £1.9 Million on bringing in Left Winger; Sergei Kovalets to the club from Dinamo Kiev to replace Stephen Cadden. A new record signing but I think he is really going to be something special.

Alongside Kovalets I brought in Centre Forward Florin Raducioiu from Hibs who scored 15 goals last season even though Hibs were relegated. No relation to Sasa seemingly as he is Romanian and Sasa is Macedonian... Alongside him, Centre Midfielder Guillermo Schelotto also joined us from Aberdeen who I hope is going to be goal provider for my attacking players and challenge Justin Cameron for his place in the team, Championship Manager legend; John Curtis - Centre Back joined us from Everton to bolster my defence, and Goalkeeper James Gerrard who will likely be my new Number 1 joined us from Sheffield United. My last bit of business a bit late on was schoolboy Left Back / Centre Back; Gordon Mathers on a Free Transfer as he seemed to be highly rated by all x3 of my scouts.

Despite losing a handful of players, the majority of the spine of the first team is intact and I'm hopeful the new signings will slot in quite nicely with the rest of the squad. However before we progress further, there is the small matter of a new job opportunity to discuss! The Scotland national team underperformed at the Euros and as a result there was speculation around the future of manager... ALEX FERGUSON!

Yep, he left Man Utd and replaced Craig Brown about 2 years into my career! Big Alex ultimately resigned days later and, keen on a shot at an international challenge and fancying my chances being about the 3rd best manager in Scotland at this point, I applied for the job and a couple of weeks later was offered the role by the Scottish FA!

I haven't decided yet whether I will blog about my adventures as Scotland's new International Team manager separately or not? But since this is a focus on my career with Queen's Park, for now I won't share any more about my progress, but it will add an interesting dynamic to the upcoming season as I balance the two roles!

Back to Queen's Park and my season kicked off with the first two legs of the European Cup Prelim round against Switzerland's Sion which after beating them 1-0 at Home and 1-1 Away, we qualified to progress to the European Cup Group Stages. Alongside that we made a strong start in the League Cup, beating Division 2 Stirling, Premier League Clydebank and Premier League Hearts in to progress to the semi final. In the league we stumbled to both Celtic and Rangers in our first 10 games, but racked up 8 wins against the rest of the competition including an outstanding 4-0 win away in Edinburgh against Hearts and sat comfortably in 2nd position just 3 points behind Rangers. Drawn with Brondby, Steaua Bucharest and last year's Runners Up; Dortmund in the group stages, we had to balance European football with Premier League progress and as a result, fatigue had an impact on the squad. We were still able to pick up a good majority of wins largely thanks to James Gerrard being a top class goalkeeper, but we once again suffered defeat at Celtic and Rangers and as a result we continued to chase Rangers in 2nd Place 5 points adrift, but with a game in hand by January.

Progress in the European Cup Group Stages was going well though, and despite me initially fearing we would struggle, we picked up a 4-0 win against Brondby at home, a 2-1 win away at Steaua and a 3-1 win away at Dortmund. Brondy responded with a 1-0 victory over us back in Denmark, and Steaua also bested us in a 1-0 defeat in Romania but thanks to a 3-1 win at home against Dortmund we progressed from the group stage in 2nd place to take a spot in the Quarter Finals.

Back in Scotland we surged past previous league rivals; Alloa in the League Cup Semi smashing them 5-1 to set up a Final with Rangers at Hampden Park. After besting them 4-3 we picked up trophy number one for the season! And our 2nd League Cup trophy in 5 years. And we did it without James Gerrard who managed to stub his finger 3 days before the final... Luckily we had Stuart Garden to fall back on!

Progress in the FA Cup was also going well as we picked up a 3-0 win against Brechin City, a 3-1 win against Dunfermline, and an emphatic 6-1 win against Hearts in the Quarter Final. However the real challenge was ahead of us. After... somehow... masterminding a 4:3 win on aggregate over Barcelona in the Quarter Final of the European Cup (!) we had the prospect of 2 time Winners and 1 time Runners Up; Juventus in the Semi Final and although they missed out on the Final last year, they demolished everyone in the group stage by 4, or 5 goals and beat Real Madrid 3-2 on aggregate to set up the tie against us and with household names like Didier Deschamps, Zinedine Zidane, Allesandro Del Piero and... Alan Shearer... playing for them. I had a feeling we had our work cut out. For now, back in Scotland again though, we finally managed to secure a win over another Glaswegian team with a 2-1 win over Celtic in the League followed by a 3-1 win over them in the FA Cup Semi Final, before we were promptly thrashed by Rangers 4-1 back in the league! Thankfully though Rangers form stumbled where we remained consistent and with a 2-0 win over Hearts and a 4-0 win over Aberdeen, who are something of the in form team this season, we edged passed Rangers by 4 points to move into 1st place for the first time since early November. Our European Cup run came to an end unfortunately, but albeit not unexpected though, when Juventus beat us 5-3 on aggregate. I was slightly disappointed but we had done well to even get that far and I felt like we had performed beyond expectations. The Board must have felt the same way as I got no negative feedback from them on the result, and to be fair the rewards for our progress had put over £3 Million in the bank this season so even they couldn't really have any complaints!

With hopes of European success now firmly dashed, we could at least turn our attention to finishing strong in the league as we currently sat 6 points clear of Rangers in 1st place. After they were unable to pick up a result against rivals Celtic, midweek, we had a real chance of making it back to back League Titles. Following a 2-0 win over St. Johnstone that same week and a 3-0 win over Dunfermine the following week, we were crowned Premier League Champions with a 5 point gap and game to spare over Rangers.

The Board were "Delighted" with winning the Title. This time I managed to catch it and not accidentally double click over it! And so was I. It had been a difficult season balancing European Cup football alongside Domestic competition and the team often struggled with fitness, but we had managed to prevail and prove last season wasn't just a fluke. Despite not collecting a European Cup trophy this season we had got a domestic double in the League Cup and League Title.

Now there was just the small matter of finishing the domestic treble with an FA Cup Final to contest against former Premier League team; Hibernian! Of the two trophies, the FA Cup and European Cup, this was the one I wanted to win the most. We lost out last year in the FA Cup final to Hearts and the Board made it clear then they expected us to win it! We'd got passed Celtic in the Semi's, arguably the harder fixture, already and we couldn't fall short against a relegated Premier League team now! However Hibs were no pushover. And at half time the score sat at 0-0. But after subbing off Guillermo Schelotto for Justin Cameron in the 75th minute, we were able to create x2 goal chances that both Sasa Raducioiu and Mark McMillan buried to settle the game 2-0 in our favour. The last of the x3 domestic trophies that I was missing had just been added to the collection; FA Cup Champions.

The Board were "Delighted". And to be fair to them, have seemed to have relax the pressure a bit this season. No constant "Disappointing" messages after a narrow loss or sarcastic "we expect a better league position" messages when we sat in 2nd, 3 points off top with a game in hand... And they ought to be delighted as we collected another 3 trophies this season and added a cool £5 Million to the club bank account in the process. I think I've done alright as Manager so far! At the End of Season awards, as a club, we did very well! I picked up Premier League Manager of the Year to complete the quartet of League Manager awards, Sasa Raducioiu picked up Player of the Year, and mid season signing: Lou Moore picked up Young Player of the Year.

Sasa Raducioiu was once again our best player this season. Although he missed 3 months through injury and initially struggled for form a bit on his return, he eventually recovered to help us pick up key wins in the League and in Cup games, and more often than not was the deciding factor when it came to winning matches.

Gerard Dowie was second in our goal scoring tally this season with 16 goals and 11 assists from 34 games and although not prolific, his contribution to our goal tally was the best of our x3 other strikers and was pound for pound about the best option we had up front this season in terms of goal scoring.

Justin Cameron yet again topped the goal assists table with 28 assists in 42 games, although he seemed to really struggle with form this season and his average rating reflects that. He featured more in rotation this season as other players stepped into the Central Midfield position and although he was the highest contributor of goal assists he often fell short in other areas of the game and we were still able to pick up goals without his presence in the team.

And finally a honourable mention to new signing Sergei Kovalets, who tended to feature more as a left sided Central Midfielder, taking Cameron's spot to a degree, than he did Left Winger. But he had a good first season, picking up 13 goals and 17 assists and helping us to maintain a good run of form when Sasa Raduciciou was out injured for a period of 3 months mid way through the season.

So with Season number 5 now done, all x3 domestic trophy victories achieved including back to back League Titles, Queen's Park, in my opinion, are now firmly cemented as one of "the top" teams in Scotland. I feel like I've accomplished my goal. I do have the option of trying to chase and add a European trophy to my collection, but with my attention now split between managing both a National and Domestic team I feel like it's time for me to step away from Queen's Park and focus on trying to achieve International success. It's been fun and I enjoyed the challenge of taking a Division 3 Scottish club all the way to the top, but I feel now is the right to step away! I'm currently 2nd in the World Cup Qualifying Group Stage with Scotland after 7 games, and my focus now should be on taking them forward. I may or may not be blogging my progress as Scotland national team manager, watch this space depending on what I decide to do!