Crazy Diamond

Weeee are the champions of the... Swedish top flight. Against the odds, Malmo dropped points, and despite not having my first choice goalkeeper for the run-in for a second year, we won it with a game to go. Champions League next season! Woop woop!

I met Sean when on hack duty at SMS after we beat Watford this season, he's a really nice bloke, but his voice, christ! I thought he had a sore throat when I first heard him but that's how he actually sounds all the time, quite incredible. Six points clear in the league with a game in hand, knocked out of Europe by Metalist, not overly bothered really. Three red cards in three games recently, I'm going to tinker with my tactic I think. Moldova really interests me now! Let us know how you get on.

Just did an experiment. Ran a game whilst unemployed, but made sure Saints won all their home games. They won the division comfortably. What followed next was absolutely ridiculous. Adkins was made Arsenal manager, Sean Dyche took over for Saints' Premier League campaign. This compared to when the game was left alone and Saints couldn't buy a win, sacked Adkins in October and replaced him with Strachan. Strachan was then sacked at the start of the next season. Meanwhile, in Gothenborg... We scraped past Tallinn, beat our nearest rivals to go six points clear of them with a game in hand then beat Dinamo Bucharest in the Europa League third qualifying round. Niiice.

Europa League qualifying draw will please Mr. Crab Lungs and niemi14, first up a trip to Andorra and then if I beat whoever the team are, I go to Tallinn, Estonia! Bit of a wobble in the league meanwhile, we were comfortably clear at the top by about five points, that's now down to two after a loss and two draws. Grrrr.

And it's HI HO, STEVE DE RIDDER, anywhere you go well baby, I SEE DE RIDDER SCORING, but I don't make a fuss, cos it's obvious. To the tune of 'Hi-Ho Silver Lining' by Jeff Beck.

Ha, yes I saw the Anguillan option, worst ranked football league in the world? You enjoy a challenge, fair play to you. I'm sick of seeing people going 'I've got a great tactic, just won everything with Barcelona'. Yeah, well done on doing something that isn't very difficult at all. I've done my fair share of taking turds and polishing them (Berwick, Winchester City, AFC Wimbledon in the Blue Square South, Barnet, Cambridge United) so I'm going to step up a few levels. Currently with IFK Gothenborg, going to beat Sven and win the Champs League. Just beat our deadliest rivals 5 - 0 on their own patch, which I love (Keegan style).

Moldova! Wow. That's a new one on me.

Thoughts, ladies and gentlemen? Try to avoid saying 'Smoke on the Water' as a default choice. For me, either Black Night or Stormbringer. Was reminded of them by the ads for their tour with an orchestra (I won't be going, personally) and gave them a listen. What a great band, but to me Deep Purple aren't Deep Purple without Blackmore.

Just seen that the player I sold to Saints has won them the derby against the fishy few. That's improved my mood somewhat!

Urgh. That tactic served me so well until I lost my first choice goalkeeper and I was hit by suspensions. We lost three in a row, blew the narrow lead we had at the top and hosted our local rivals in the title decider. Anders bloody Svensson scores a 35 yarder to win 2 - 1 and they take the lot. Sigh. Anyway. I'm gutting my squad now, which is what I've wanted to do for ages, and now that we're in the Europa League we might get a bigger budget and bigger names on our teamsheet.

Measured yes, but the fact is he was brought in to work with what they've got and develop their young players to use them in the first team squad, and he's basically said he needs to strengthen... So that original idea has gone out the window already!

****ing hell skintsaint, that's brilliant work. What tactic are you using? I tried tweaking my tactic to get some goals out of it, I had something stupid like 12+ shots per game on target but I put barely any of them away, but I failed. Then I came across this It's a great tactic, I've won eight and lost two using it with a fairly average team. It gets plenty of goals - just beat my local rivals 4 - 0.

Alan Ball was partial to a bung from what I can gather - he was the one that accidentally outed Don Revie as a shady character. Revie got someone to pay him £100 a week when he was at Blackpool to turn down contract offers in the hope he'd sign for Leeds at the end of it. He mentioned that to a Mirror journalist and they discovered Revie may have fixed matches. No legal proceedings were ever brought against Revie or the paper for their allegations, so who knows.

It'll also be the featured game on the BBC Football League Show. Whenever that's the case, you can bet there's a feed of it.

Miss Aisles at school was a good one.

+1 (Do not read the text in these brackets. It is only here to fulfil the minimum character criteria, which was not met with just the '+1' message)

Talking like a massive tw*t is not clever and not funny. End of.

Stormbringer - Deep Purple

I remember that well, the Italians were going mental about it. I remember telling my tutor at school who said, "They ought to know about match fixing". Two years later, the match fixing scandal rocked Italy which saw Milan lose the title and Juventus were relegated. How right he was!

Didn't Alan Ball have a go at Funnell when he hit the post?

Well said. Whatever happened to the days of just paying and playing? If you pay for the game, you should decide when you play it.

With Brighton in town tomorrow, I was reminded about this '0 - 0 Fix' thing that has been mentioned once or twice on these forums. As I understand it, in 1978 a draw would have seen both us and Spurs go into the first division, whilst Brighton were also in the hunt and the right result for them could have seen them in the top flight for the first time. There's a theory that we agreed to draw the game with Spurs in order to get promotion for us both. I'd just to like to know more about it really, any posters here go to that game or hear anything about it?

LMA Manager used to have different options along those lines, you could choose to just do the team selection and transfers or you could add in the option to do all the finances etc. Wouldn't go amiss in FM.

Jose, what have you done.

I must admit I'll be genuinely disappointed if his amazing hair has changed dramatically. Apparently he does look a lot different, will have to find out tomorrow!