retired_sharonnabailey

I can't promise steady updates on this story, but I'll do my best. Stick with me and drop me a note if you like it

(And a big hello to Peacemaker7, Raptor and all my old friends on the FMS forum - I know I haven't been around for a year or so, having a child is more work than you'll ever imagine!)

THE HUMBLE BEGINNING

A flamboyant owner, Corny Littmann, who is at once a millionaire, but makes no disguise of also being a part-time transvestite (this is, in fact, the truth. The only transvestite among German football managers, unsurprisingly). Supporters, most of whom are punk rockers, left-wing activists and anarchists with a habitual urge to smoke wacky baccy on the terraces and a stadium located on the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s infamous vice district.

Yes, FC St. Pauli really is one of a kind.

For thirty years St. Pauli have annoyed the crap out of the establishment of German football with cup upsets, loud behaviour and results that belied this small club’s resources. Now, however, after a collapse which, after yet another brief flirt with the 1. Bundesliga, saw Pauli relegated successively and threatening to drop into the 4th division.

Anyhow, since I love St. Pauli and what they stand for I decided to take them over and get them back to the top. Using FM2005, patch 5.02, that has been quite a challenge so far.

As I write this I am in the 2008-09 season. I’ll take you rapidly through the first four seasons up to the point where we are today. I never planned to write this as a story, but the thrills of managing my favourite club compel me to document the ups and downs of Pauli.

2004-2005
The meagre £16,000 set aside for transfers and suchlike meant I had to be creative in finding new players that would strengthen the team. A search on Iceland produced a marvellously gifted Scotsman, Ian Paul McShane, who went straight into the first XI. McShane arrived from GrÃ*ndavik where he had been for seven seasons, no less, which at his age (26) might mean that he was in fact born on Iceland. Also, Stèfan Gislason, a defender, arrived from KeflavÃ*k. The two were to form the backbone of my team in the coming seasons.

I devised a defensive 4-5-1 counter-attacking tactic which suited the team very well. While left short handed for qualified goalscorers when hitman Sebastian Wojcik was stretchered off for the rest of the season in November, our defence was robust and tough and we were difficult to break down. Defensive robustness was to become the trademark of this team.

The German third level of professional football, Regionalliga, is divided into two groups; North and South – two teams are promoted from each group. The youth and amateur teams of the bigger clubs – effectively their feeder clubs – are allowed to promote up to the Regionalliga. With these feeder teams not allowed to promote to the 2. Bundesliga, we could theoretically win promotion even if we finished 8th.

And indeed we did get promoted, finishing fourth. Though no joy to behold, we scraped together 58 points over 34 games, finishing a whisker ahead of our main rival Lübeck, thanks largely to our defence. The mentioned Sebastian Wojcik, although barely playing half of our games, finished as top scorer with 12 goals with another Icelandic signing, forward Gunnar Konraðsson, weighing in with a few important goals. Although certainly at least one year prematurely – the team was by no means good enough for promotion - we made it into the 2. bundesliga at the first opportunity!

The numbers:
Home: 17 9-6-3 23-9 33pts
Away: 17 6-7-5 24-19 25pts
Total: 34 15-13-8 47-28 58pts

shannon2007

Hi Trigz, great to see you back again! Glad to hear you're enjoying fatherhood

retired_sharonnabailey

(Thanks PM7, good to see you're still around.)

2005-2006
In:
Brian Deane (free)
Nicolaj Hust (Fortuna Düsseldorf, £15,000)
Bob Peeters (Millwall, £1,000)
Celsinho (Portugesa, £12,000)
Josè Paolo Guerrero (free)
Fatmir Vata (free)
Martin Oslislo (p/ex, Burghausen)
Tom Geißler (Burghausen, £15,000)
Les Ferdinand (free)

Out:
Bob Peeters (january 06), Burghausen
Brian Deane (may 06)

2., or Zweiter Bundesliga, was a whole different world. There was no room for wimps in the second best division, and using whatever means I had I brought in a number of experienced players. It was however young Josè Paolo Guerrero, formerly of Bayern München’s Amateurs, who salvaged our place in the second division. Others, such as Brian Deane, Les Ferdinand and Bob Peeters, whose outrageous wages made Millwall give him to us on the cheap, flopped completely.

The start of the season was, not to put too fine a point on it, a ****ing nightmare. Just three goals were scored during our first nine games, and we seemed as lost at sea as only a second-rate team finding themselves one shelf too high can be.

But things picked up. Two highly surprising successive wins at 1860 München (4-2) and Ahlen (3-0) and a couple of draws meant we weren’t all that far gone at the half way stage. As it turned out, we were still notoriously difficult to score against and, while we continued to score few goals, two matches before the end of the season we could celebrate staying up for another season.

Two genius signings were made during the season. Burghausen came in for Bob Peeters in January and offered sturdy midfielder Martin Oslislo in exchange. At the same time I swooped for youngster Tom Geißler, a winger with huge potential who wasn’t getting the chance to prove it at Burghausen. Geißler and Oslislo went on to add some desperately-needed flair to our midfield, and results improved drastically. Ian Paul McShane however, for the second year running, was our Player of the Year while young Guerrero finished as top scorer, his 10 goals playing a big part in our campaign for survival.

The numbers:
Total: 34 9-8-17 39-47 25pts
Home: 17 5-4-8 20-20 19pts
Away: 17 4-4-9 19-27 16pts
August - December: 17 4-5-8 20-22 17pts
January - May: 17 5-3-9 19-25 18pts

retired_sharonnabailey

(That should obviously read 35 points, not 25, sorry about that)
2006-2007
In
Willie McLaren (Ross County, £14,000)
Iulian Filipescu (free)
IvÃ*n Kaviedes (free)
Clayton Zane (Anderlecht, £75,000)
+a few less interesting ones

Out
Les Ferdinand (free)
+ a host of free transfers you don’t need to know about…

Rumanian international Iulian Filipescu was the cornerstone in our defence, Willie McLaren did an good job as left winger, and in January, attackers Kaviedes and Zane arrived. Before that time however our goalscoring problems were overwhelming.

We continued to linger in and just above the relegation zone. The first half of the season brought just 14 goals from 17 games. Thanks entirely to a well-organised defence however, we scraped no less than eight draws from the same games to prevent us from losing touch with the teams around us. Come the winter break we were in imminent danger of falling through the trapdoor.

And then Clayton Zane arrived! Zane, formerly of my real life favourites Lillestrøm SK and the 2001 top scorer in the Norwegian Premier League set Millerntor on fire and propelled us almost single-handedly to safety as spring came and went, scoring nine goals from just 16 league appearances. Unfortunately, though, he was also highly injury-prone. But the whole team rose to the occasion, and young Geißler in particular was in wonderful form in the second half of the season.

IvÃ*n Kaviedes is best forgotten about, however. The Ecuadorian striker’s complete lack of pace and stamina outweighed his undoubted goalscoring skills. After a promising start, the lazy git went 22 games without scoring!

We had become a relatively potent counter-attacking side – but with Zane’s injury problems, we still lacked a real, consistent goalgetter. Nonetheless, we amassed ten points more than the previous season and escaped relegation comfortably in 10th place.

The numbers:
Total: 34 11-12-11 41-34 45pts
Home: 17 7-4-6 20-13 25pts
Away: 17 4-8-5 21-21 20pts
August - December: 17 2-8-7 14-17 14pts
January - May: 17 9-4-4 27-17 31pts

retired_jgirl87

Good start, Trigz. KUTGW :thup:

Glad to see Clayton Zane, an Aussie, was able to help your team out.

Raptor

Brilliant to see you back mate :thup:

retired_sharonnabailey

(Cheers and hello Raptor & Spav)

2007-08
In
Emanuele Calaiò (FC, Pescara, Bosman)
Marc Ziegler (GK, Austria Wien, Bosman)
Lars Müller (DML, 1860 München, Bosman)
Mounir el Hamnaoui (FC, Roda, Bosman)
David Unsworth (DLC, QPR, free transfer)
Mark Fotheringham (AMC, Dundee, £250,000)
Kamal Jasmath (MLC, Kaizer Chiefs, £200,000)

Out
IvÃ*n Kaviedes (january 2008, Leicester, free transfer)
Sebastian Wojcik (free transfer)
+about ten more, but don’t worry

I wanted to make a full-blast attempt at becoming a real promotion candidate, and of the players brought in, Calaiò, Ziegler, Müller, and el Hamnaoui all went straight into the starting lineup. I spent some time developing a new formation suiting Mounir el Hamnaoui’s ball skills better. He played just off the striker in a 4-1-3-1-1 system, allowing the Dutch-Moroccan artiste all the creative freedom he wanted.

Between the sticks, the capable but ageing Achim Hollerieth is replaced by Marc Ziegler, and midfield handyman Lars Müller covers a lot of ground on the left flank. Mark Fotheringham is brought in mainly to cover for Ian Paul McShane but finds himself playing every other game, as our injury-plagued captain goes in and out of the physiotherapist’s office. McShane misses the second half of the season through injury, and Fotheringham and enthusiastic midfielder Kamar Jasmath do a competent job at filling the gap.

The real treat however was my Italian stallion. [b]Emanuele Calaiò[b] had explosive pace, great aerial ability and was clinical in front of goal. He was the one goalgetter I had spent the last three seasons looking for. Clayton Zane also raised his game and was, for the first two months of the season, my first choice. Calaiò averaged almost a goal a game whenever coming on as a substitute, but impressed no one when in the starting lineup, at least to begin with.

We are in tremendous form from the first match and produce brilliant results in the first half of the season. At Christmas time we lie fourth with 34 points from 17 games and a real chance of going up. Then, in January, Clayton Zane’s groin all but bursts, and with him out for the rest of the season, young Calaiò is trusted with the responsibility of keeping us in the promotion race.

And did he deliver! An attack all on his own, Calaiò nets an amazing 17 goals from the remaining matches, including wall-to-wall hattricks in the last two games. Serviced by McLaren and Geißler’s incisive crosses, the Italian scores from everything he touches. Meanwhile, el Hamnadoui finally settles into his playmaking role and provides options through the middle as well.

After going neck-and-neck with Mainz all spring, despite an alarming slump in form towards the end, we just beat them to third place on the last day of the season as we produced our finest performance of the season, winning emphatically 4-0 away to Burghausen and reaching our target - promotion. After three seasons building the squad, we are ready for a crack at top-flight football.

But the week after the end of the season, disaster strikes: Calaiò breaks his leg in training and will be out for upwards of five months. What now? He has scored 29 goals from 18 starts and 12 substitute appearances!

Also, the promotion race has cost us. Our wage expenses have blown out of proportion and I’m forced by the board to make some dramatic cuts ahead of the new season as the club is £600,000 in the red and losing money like it was going out of fashion at the end of the season.

The numbers:
Total: 34 17-10-7 50-30 61pts
Home: 17 11-4-2 28-8 37pts
Away: 17 6-6-5 22-22 24pts
August - December: 17 10-4-3 26-14 34pts
January - May: 17 7-6-4 24-16 27pts

retired_sharonnabailey

2008-2009

(This is the season I’m playing at the moment)

In
Thomas Gravesen (MC, Everton, £1,000,000)
Anthony Gardner (DLC, Tottenham, bosman)
Goran Sukalo (MC, free)

Out
Josè Paolo Guerrero (Leverkusen, £1,200,000)
Willie McLaren (Wolverhampton, £400,000)

Erster Bundesliga, one of the toughest leagues in the world. German football isn’t quite what it used to be, but this still remains one of the best leagues in European football. For the last four seasons Bayern München have dominated completely, winning the title every season and, while clubs such as Dortmund, Hertha Berlin, Werder Bremen in particular have invested heavily in players ahead of the new season, FC Bayern remain everyone’s favourite for the title. Meanwhile, surprise package SC Freiburg have shocked everyone, probably themselves included, by finishing a very respectable third the previous season.

As much as Bayern are top favourites to defend the title, St. Pauli are everyone’s deadcert for the drop. Our wage budget - £7,000,000 annually – is what Lúcio and Landon Donovan, two of Bayern’s top stars, get paid in a year between them. We have to do things our own way to survive.

Josè Paolo Guerrero leaves after never really fulfilling the huge potential he showed glimpses of a couple of years ago. I’m delighted that Leverkusen are willing to pay the money they dish out for his services, as it allows me to make another hugely important signing. Thomas Gravesen comes on the cheap from bankruptcy-threatened Everton, now relegated to the Championship over in England. Gravesen is recovering from a knee injury that kept him out for the better part of last season and takes a substantial pay cut in order to join us. Guerrero and, later, McLaren leaving frees up the necessary wages to bring Anthony Gardner and Gravesen to the club. With a wealth of experience and a lot of class, they will strengthen our team significantly.

Early results are as follows:
St. Pauli v Hertha Berlin 0-2
Bayer Leverkusen v St. Pauli 0-1 (Tom Geißler)
St. Pauli v Schalke 04 1-1 (Marius Flatken, my fourth-choice attacker)
SC Freiburg v St. Pauli 2-0
St. Pauli v Stuttgarter Kickers 0-0
St. Pauli v Hansa Rostock 0-0
St. Pauli v Hamburger SV 1-2 (Konraðsson)
Werder Bremen v St. Pauli 0-0
Borussia Mönchengladbach v St. Pauli 2-0
FC Köln v St. Pauli 0-1 (el Hamdaoui)
St. Pauli v Borussia Dortmund 0-1

As expected, our first weeks of Bundesliga football are quite brutal on us. Although managing to sneak two 1-0-wins away to Leverkusen and FC Köln, we are effectively outplayed by the opposition. And without an effective target man – Zane, my backup striker, picks up minor injuries between matches which take their toll on his overall sharpness – our attacking options are both limited and result in us losing possession all too easy. 11 games into the season, we have scored a paltry four goals. An extremely defensive tactical approach and our brick wall defence performs heroics – and between the sticks, Marc Ziegler makes miracles happen.

Eventually, we finally crack it. Away to Eintracht Frankfurt, who are sinking and looking helpless at the foot of the table, Clayton Zane finally opens his goals account for the season, scoring twice inside the first ten minutes. An own goal compounds the home team’s misery and we come away with a crucial and deserved 3-0 win.

Like out of a movie script, Emanuele Calaiò returns as we take on runaway leaders Bayern München at Millerntor, and what a match it turns out to be. Calaiò celebrates his comeback as he equalises Bayern’s lead with a header. Later, Celsinho converts a penalty completely against the run of play and we settle in defence for the last hour, intending nothing other than clearing the ball out of the stadium every time we come near it. It nearly works – Bayern throw the kitchen sink at us in the final ten minutes, eventually equalising through Claudio Pizarro. Nevertheless, I thought getting a point out of Bayern München was impossible with this team, but it finishes 2-2.

Calaiò nets five goals in six before the winter break and helps us turn a corner, the final games before the winter break finishing thus

Eintracht Frankfurt v St. Pauli 0-3 (Zane 2, o.g.)
St. Pauli v Bayern München 2-2 (Calaiò, Celsinho [p])
Bochum v St. Pauli 1-0
St. Pauli v Hannover 96 3-2 (Calaiò 2, o.g.)
Arminia Bielefeld v St. Pauli 0-1 (Calaiò)
St. Pauli v Wolfsburg 1-1 (o.g.)
Hertha Berlin v St. Pauli 0-2 (Calaiò, Celsinho / Sent off: Calaiò)
At the end of December: 18 6-6-6 16-16 24p, 10th place.

retired_sharonnabailey

(Switching to real-time writing, sort of)

The winter break passed without any fuss, and with a surprising 24 points, we seem more than ready for the battle to stay up that lies ahead in the coming five months.

We are also making good progress in the cup, qualifying for the quarter final as we breeze past second division Trier in the 3rd round. 1860 München await in the quarter final.

First we have a number of league matches ahead of us however, starting with Leverkusen at home, who are surprisingly struggling in the lower half of the table

St. Pauli v Bayer Leverkusen
Millerntor, 24.1.09
So far we have only won once at home all season – our defensive approach to the games are less effective in our own back yard. Clayton Zane, who has been far from impressive this season, starts in Em Calaiò’s place, the Italian being suspended. As suspected this puts a dent in our attacking flow and, with the rest of the team also performing far below par, we come away empty-handed. Leverkusen score from their second biggish chance of the match and we never manage to get back into it. Probably one of our worst performances of the season, and to add insult to injury Iulian Filipescu leaves the pitch halfway through the second half with injury.
St. Paul 0 Leverkusen 1
0-1 Massimo Donati (16)
Att.: 22,025 (record)
St. Pauli: 19 6-6-7 16-17 24pts.

As Calaiò returns for the next week’s match at 15th-placed Schalke 04, defenders Nascimento and Filipescu are missing through injury. This brings 24 year old wing back Philipp Kasperidus in as left back, while Anthony Gardner pulls into the middle.

Schalke 04 (15th) v St. Pauli (11th)
Arena AufSchalke, 31.1.09
I’m worried about our form after this one. Two straight defeats against teams below us in the table is not good, but what’s worse is that the flow we had before Christmas has disappeared. It’s fair to say Schalke outplay us – their 12 shots on target against our 3 tells you everything – and despite another decent performance by Em Calaiò, who nets our goal, there is little to be happy about. If anything, this performance was even worse than last week’s. We must improve, and fast – teams have fallen like rocks before, and it’s not all that big a gap between ourselves and the teams in the relegation zone.
Schalke 04 3 St. Pauli 1
1-0 Cacau (3)
2-0 Cristea (38)
2-1 Calaiò (69)
3-1 Cacau (83)
Att. 42,078
St. Pauli: 19 6-6-7 16-17 24pts (11th)

retired_sharonnabailey

Two straight defeats then, and having finished the first half of the season so well we needed to pull our socks up a bit. The week after, Freiburg came to Millerntor and all I expected was a sound thrashing. The team from the Capital of the Schwarzwald, as they like to call themselves, were on course for another strong season. In 3rd place, they would contend strongly for one of the three places in the Champions League come the end of the season.

St. Pauli (11th) v SC Freiburg (3rd)
Millerntor, 7.2.09
I knew we would have to try to get out of defence if we were to win this match. To that end, playmaker Thomas Gravesen was to come more forward than usual from his place just in front of the defence giving us more options upfield.

Lo and behold, it worked a treat as the big Dane himself put us one up after only nine minutes! We had sustained some early pressure from the away team in the opening few minutes of the match but managed to force a couple of corners, which brought us out of defence and into a fair bit of possession. With the Freiburg defence investing a lot of attention towards Emanuele Calaiò space opened up in front of their box and Gravesen, advancing with the ball from midfield, fired a curler in off the net from well over 20 metres.

Freiburg however dominated the first half heavily, forcing us into our own box and coming through around the sides with alarming frequency. For all their possession and precision passing however they couldn’t break us down, Anthony Gardner and Marc Ziegler in particular doing a mammoth job at holding our advantage. Midway through the first half a touch of genius comes over Tom Geißler who, with one pass, splits open a half-asleep Freiburg defence, sending Mounir el Hamdaoui darting through on goal. The Dutch-Moroccan makes no mistake alone with the goalkeeper, and we are two goals clear.

A shell-shocked Freiburg fumble about until the break and were it not for the post being in the way, Kenny Vanhoevelen, my Belgian right-back who, after almost a century of matches still hasn’t scored a goal for us, would have put us three goals to the good before the break.

Five minutes into the second half however the premises are changed. Emanuele Calaiò, who has done a wonderful target man job for us and distributed well all afternoon, is correctly sent off in disgrace after a nasty elbowing incident, his second red card in four games. Clayton Zane comes on to replace him, and as Geißler is removed to give way to the big Aussie, we close ourselves in defence in anticipation of the hellish forty minutes ahead.

Freiburg do pull a goal back straight afterwards, but for all the enormous pressure applied throughout a highly dramatic second half, in which we barely cross the halfway line, they simply can’t find the equaliser. Marc Ziegler earns a well-deserved Man of the Match award as only one of 18 shots get past him. Our second home win of the season is welcomed, even if I could hardly claim we deserved it.

St. Pauli 2 Freiburg 1
1-0 Gravesen (9)
2-0 el Hamdaoui (23)
2-1 Iashvili (54)
Att. 20,261. Shots / on target: 8-18 / 5-6
St. Pauli: 21 7-6-8 19-21 27pts / 10th.