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“When they kick at your front door, how you gonna come?”
That is the opening line to the song “Guns Of Brixton” by The Clash. I bet the writer, The Clash’s bassist Paul Simonon, never imagined that the line could be interpreted the way I have. “Kick” could be a reference to kicking the football and “front door” could mean football being played professionally right there in Brixton, on the former ground of HM Prison Brixton. And I hope the fans “come” in droves.
This a Football Manager 2014 Dynasty Report inspired by my love of English music. I’ll discuss Football Manager later on.
My long fascination with England is rooted in my love of bands from there. My two favorite bands are New Model Army and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. Other English acts that I love are XTC, The Clash, Pop Will Eat Itself, Queen, Gary Numan, Billy Bragg, and The Streets.
There are many connections between Brixton and the music I listen to. First and foremost, the song I mentioned above, “Guns of Brixton.” Another reference you might be familiar with is Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue.” Many Carter USM songs make reference to areas like Tulse Hill, Clapham, Peckham, New Cross, and of course Brixton itself. Several musicians were born there (David Bowie, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon), lived there (Mike Skinner, Jimbob, Fruitbat) or spent time in Brixton Prison (Glenn Danzig, Mick Jagger).
Speaking of Brixton Prison, in the fictional story (in my head) of the team’s origin, their future massive stadium will be on the former site of the prison spreading up into Windmill Gardens, its name sake. (Brixton Prison was closed due to its upkeep becoming too expensive for the local government and the Brixton club owners agreeing to build a new facility outside the city.) Windmill Gardens is scheduled to open on 1 July 2018 and thus the club built a small stadium on the westside of Brockwell Park; it also functions as the training ground/reserve stadium and will remain so after the move in 2018. City Heights Academy in the real-world is where the Brixton Youth Academy is.
I’m not being too original but the nicknames for Brixton will be Mortars and Guns. I made Guns the second nickname because those bastards at Arsenal are already the Gunners and I don’t want too much confusion.
This Dynasty Report was directly inspired by three people:
Jim Gindin Of course it starts with him. In the late 90s he took sports simming to a new level. I guess over the years I spent around $150 on his products. From around Christmas 1998 to Halloween 2007 I played FOF or FOF:TCY (mostly TCY) just about every day. For 2 to 12 hours per day. Money very well spent. You’re a legend, Jim!
Scott Brown When I finally got my act together and stayed with FM for more than a month, I was struggling to understand position combinations. While researching I found this wonderful Let’s Play by accident and learned some stuff. More importantly, I was entertained. I’ve read it in full probably four or five times since October 2019. I wonder how he feels about Wrexham getting two Sugar Daddies.
Loki Doki A YouTube personality (and what a personality!) who lives a simple life of playing Football Manager for profit. Not a lot of profit, mind you. He’s always entertaining and keeps me out of the FM doldrums; I watch him to get a good laugh and get inspired to get back into the game.
Welcome to Football Manager 2014. If you don’t know what Football Manager is, read the next paragraph. If you already have devoted your life and soul to Football Manager, skip the next paragraph.
Football Manager is THE premier sports simulation computer game for managing football clubs. Clubs not teams, I’m talking association football, or as us ‘mericans call it, soccer. You can choose to manage a club in your nation of choice, though for some of the smaller nations you have to download custom databases from Steam Workshop. Everywhere in the world except ‘merica the football leagues have a promotion/regulation pyramid structure meaning that bad teams get dropped to a level below and the good teams get elevated to a level above. To put it in U.S. terms, the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions would have been dropped down to Division 1 and Alabama and Georgia would be in the NFL.
For this story I am playing in England in the 9th level of the English football pyramid (English football league system - Wikipedia). Essentially, at that level it’s a bunch of guys in their late 20s and early 30s trying to (re)capture that glory that eluded them. FM doesn’t come stocked with that many leagues for England (you can go down to the 6th level) so I had to download a databased called “England lower leagues” by FloddyJump. Mad props, dude! (Because the base hair styles are very limited, I downloaded from FM Scout the FM2014 hair pack, titled “OLT Expanded Hair Pack v4.0 – No Shirts”. As an early 50s balding man, I'm absolutely not jealous of some of the hair styles. Or Harry Styles.)
However, because Brixton is a fictional club, I’ve had to add them to the database. The scenario I’ve chosen is that Brixton is owned by a Sugar Daddy who has pumped loads of money into the team, built a highest-quality Youth Academy, built a 7,000-seat Reserve Stadium (that will act as the Senior stadium for now), and is building a 25,000-seat stadium, which will lie on the grounds of real-world Windmill Gardens and HM Prison Brixton, set to open on 1 July 2018.
I’ve also granted Brixton a full complement of coaches because despite loving the endless scouting for players, I just cannot stand scouting for staff. I’ve got an assistant manager (hereafter known forever and ever as an AssMan), a head of youth development, two goalkeeping coaches, two fitness coaches, and five regular coaches.
I added Brixton to the Southern Counties East League, swapping out Phoenix Sports because they had the lowest Reputation (1). I’ve given Brixton a reputation of 1,001 (out of 10,000), which is just 1 better than the highest team in the SCE, Whyteleafe.
I have not added any players to the database for Brixton as I wish to start what is known as an Empty Cupboard Challenge. I plan to simulate through the season until Youth Intake Day, which in 2014 should be 13 March. This means I’ll only have grey players on my team. Grey players are filler and worthless. Sure hope I have a good record by 13 March so I can get promoted!
As far as other playable leagues, I added Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. I also added Belorussia so I could have a late-February start in order to have enough time to find players before the start of the season. However, I changed my mind on simming until Youth Intake Day but then I screwed up and forgot to remove Belorussia. Once I realized my mistake I removed them from the database but it’ll take several month of game time for them to disappear. (This is because you have to let a nation finish its season before it can be removed.) So with a start date of 20 February 2013, it’s time to start the fun.