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for my first FM story, i wanted to take on liverpool, but a big club success story wasn't that appealing. so i've decided to nick PM7's idea of relegating the club to the first division due to 'financial irregularities' and releasing all the best players.
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Football Association Press Conference - Soho Square - Saturday 10th July 2004
Brian Barwick: "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm sure you're all aware of the grave reason for which this press conference has been called, so i'll get straight down to the matter at hand. Over the past few weeks, as has been widely reported in the press, there have emerged serious financial irregularities within Liverpool Football Club and the way it has been run. The evidence we have gathered indicates that these irregularities are both against the spirit in which the game is played, and outwith the laws which govern it. Such is the severity of the problems uncovered at Liverpool, that we felt action must be taken.
After much deliberation between the FA board and with our lawyers, it is the decision of the Football Association that Liverpool Football Club be relegated to the Coca Cola Championship for the commencement of the 2004/2005 season. We realise that this is an action unprecidented in this country, but feel that a strong hand is needed to deal with the matter and that a warning must be sent to clubs around the country. We will not tolerate any kind of financial irregularities, and such are the scale of those unconvered at Liverpool that we felt this the only correct course of action.
Obviously, this leaves the Barclaycard Premiership with only nineteen teams. As such, Leicester City shall be spared relegation and will compete the 2004/2005 season in the country's top flight. Obviously, Liverpool have the right to appeal our decision and have 14 days to do so. However, we believe our move to be entirely within the bounds of legality and expect no need to make any sort of reversal.
As for the player situation at Liverpool, i will now introduce Gordon Taylor, the Chief Executive of the Professional Footballer's Association."
Gordon Taylor: "Good afternoon. It will come as no surprise that the way Liverpool have conducted their business constitutes a breach of the contracts of every single one of their players. As such, every player has the right to consider said contract null and void. Liverpool have, in their favour, offered any players who wants a mutual termination. The following players are now no longer employed or contracted in anyway to Liverpool Football Club and are therefore free agents able to sign with any club as per FIFA rules: Milan Baros; Igor Biscan; Jamie Carragher; Bruno Cheyrou; Djibril Cissé; Salif Diao; Alou Diarra; El-Hadji Diouf; Jerzy Dudek; Steve Finnan; Steven Gerrard; Dietmar Hamann; Stephane Henchoz; Sami Hyypiä; Josemi; Harry Kewell; Chris Kirkland; Luis Garcia; Antonio Nunez; John Arne Riise; Vladimir Smicer; Djimi Traore; Stephen Warnock and Xabi Alonso. The PFA would like to wish each and every one of these players the best of luck in finding suitable clubs to further ply their trade.
I would also like to add, on behalf of the League Manager's Association, that Liverpool Football Club manager Rafael Benitez has decided, in light of recent events, to end his employment with the Anfield side."
Brian Barwick: "OK. That's everything for now. We have nothing further to add and will not be answering questions at this time."
Liverpool have today stated their intention to abide by the ruling passed down from the FA yesterday afternoon and take their place in the Coca Cola Championship. After a night of talks with club lawyers, it was felt that grounds were not strong enough for a successful appeal, and that the process would merely take crucial time away from the management team as they prepare for their assault on the second tier of England's game.
On another note, new chairman Steve Morgan said in a press release early this morning that he hopes to have a new manager appointed at the club by Tuesday morning after an interview process which shall take place tomorrow.
Liverpool today announced the indentity of their new manager after Rafael Benitez left the club on Saturday afternoon. The new man is 30 year old Scotsman Simon Furnivall. Furnivall, who spent the entire of his playing career with Alloa, has been on the coaching staff at Anfield for the past two years. His coaching career began in 1999 with Dundee United in Scotland after his playing days were cut short by an horrific knee injury. During the three years he spent at Dundee United, he gained a high level of respect from within the game, and it was countryman and Liverpool's chief scout Alex Miller who recommended him to the club. Now taking up his first job in football management, Simon was quick to say that he is hoping for a speedy return to the Premiership.
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author's note: i've removed David Moores from his position as chairman, adding in Steve Morgan instead. i've put in a bank loan of £75M with monthly repayments of £500K and reduced the bank balance to just £2M with bugger all transfer funds
You'll still be in Champions League though, tbh I think 500k a month isnt enough in England if you really want to be under financial strain, they have money
PM, in the editor i put a £75M loan with 50 monthly repayments left (if my maths is right that should be £1.5M per month) but the game interpreted it as £500K per month and i couldn't be buggered trying to sort it out.
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So that was it. At the start of the summer we had expected the new era to be one of excitement and trophies. With Rafa at the helm and a whole raft of quality players at our disposal, we were expecting to finish at least in the top four. And now we were going to be visiting the likes of Turf Moor in an attempt just to win our place back at the big table. Had we had the finances to keep even half of the players that left, then promotion at the first attempt would have been a real possibility. But with the group of kids i had been left and room on the wage bill for perhaps one or two loan signings, we were buggered, despite the board's insistence that they wanted to be back in the Premiership this time next season.
The squad i had at my disposal had an average age of about 12 and few of them had ever even come near a first team game in the club's previous life.
Liverpool Squad: Season 2004/05
Between the Sticks:
Out go top class 'keepers Kirkland and Dudek, in come the vastly less experienced and talented Paul Harrison and Patrice Luzi[/b]. Luzi was brought in by Houllier with a high level of expectation on his shoulders but so far has done nothing save look pretty ****. Harrison, could turn out to be half decent, but at the moment he's no better than Luzi.
Stoppers:
A backline of Jon Otsemobor, Mark Jones, Zak Whitbread and Grégory Vignal is hardly one that will strike fear into the hearts of strikers around the country, even at Championship level they have neither the talent nor the experience to provide me with a solid unti at the back. But it's what i'm stuck with. To be honest, i'd like to see if i can find enough money stuffed down the back of my sofa to bring in another centre back, but somehow i doubt i'll be successful. Jordan Holmes, still just 16 years old, is my second choice right back, and youngster Danny O'Donnell and David Raven will provide cover in the centre. **** knows what i'll do if Vignal gets injured.
Engine Room:
A world class midifeld gone in the space of twenty four hours. The prospect of Stevie Gerrard and Xabi Alonso linking up in the centre was mouth-watering, now the fans will have to make do with two of Darren Potter, John Welsh and John Paul Kelly. Young Scot Robbie Foy is a good prospect, and he'll battle for a place on the flanks with Richie Partridge and Phil Townley. Luckily, all three are comfortable on either wing so at least we have some versatility. When he returns from injury, Anthony Le Tallec will give us some creativity in the centre of the park, but one player does not make a team.
Glory Boys:
With no Cissé and no Baros, Neil Mellor and Florent Sinama-Pongolle will be the likely starting pair. Conall Platt and Karl Noon will provide inexperience back-up, and if the money were available i'd be scouring the market for strikers. Hopefully neither of my first two get injured, if they do we'll find it harder to score than one legged scientist with buck teeth, bad breath and NHS glasses*.
So it was going to be damn difficult to get promotion at the first attempt. But, on the brightside, UEFA were kind enough to allow us to keep our place in the Champions League. The third qualifying round and a tie awaited after trying to get our game plan right through five pre-season friendlies.
*no offence meant if such a person frequents these forums, i'm sure you're a real hit with the ladies
Yeah the finances can be hard to sort out, it actually gave me a £2M budget when I tried to make it 0, ended up making £100k with a few re-tries, seems a bit silly to me.
if they do we'll find it harder to score than one legged scientist with buck teeth, bad breath and NHS glasses*.
no offence meant if such a person frequents these forums, i'm sure you're a real hit with the ladies
thanks, spav and mark, with the squad i've got that isn't too unlikely a scenario i also agree with PM that £500K p/m isn't enough to really cause us trouble. so i restarted the game and upped the loan to £150M and i now have monthly repayments of £1.3M which should cause a few more problems for me (and i put the bank balance down to £250K)
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Three pre-season games were all i had to assess just how bad the squad was. The chairman had agreed to let me bring in a loan signing as long as we didn't have to pay any fee or contribute anything towards wages. Needless to say it was proving somewhat difficult finding any team who would accept to those terms. So i had to make do with what i had for the trip to Dunfermline just four days after i had taken the reigns. Just like everybody else who's lost at East End Park over the past year, i blame their synthetic pitch for our defeat. I'm not sure why, but surely that's the only reason possible as to why their reserves rode over my first XI by a final scoreline of 3-0.
A couple of games in Germany followed, and though we got better performances, the results were nearly as despressing. After holding out for sixty minutes against Hannover 96, we lost two goals in the space of sixty seconds to give them the victory, and three days later an 84th minute goal for Schönberg saw them complete out pre-season misery. We had proven inept in so many more ways than i thought we would. We were incapable of stringing more than two passes together and our defence couldn't tackle a hot meal. There was even worse news in the build-up to the league campaign as John Paul Kelly, one of the few to come out of the three games with any sort of credit, suffered a broken arm in training and would miss the first month of the season. My threadbare squad hardly had enough talent to fill half a reserve team let alone a full first team.
So i was pretty damn pessimistic for the visit of Millbrawl on opening day. The 39,000 fans who turned up expected victory, but they were, quite simply, never going to get it. From the first whistle to the last, Millwall out-played, out-fought and out-classed us in every area on the park. We managed a solitary shot on goal, a 25 yard effort from Neil Mellor which flew tamely into the arms of Stuart Taylor. The visitors carved out no fewer than 13 clear cut chances to take the lead during the course of the ninety minutes, and to say i was amazed that they failed to convert even one of them would be an understatement. Shots flew left right and over our goal when scoring seemed easier, and the couple of saves Luzi was forced to make he did with aplomb. Escaping with a point from this game wa a feat that Houdini himself would have counted amongst his greatest achievements.
Our appearence in the Champions League was expected to be fleeting to day the least. And a visit to face Wisla in the 3rd qualfying round proved that it would be just so. By half time the hosts were three goals to the good and we looked like a Sunday League outfit at best. We panicked whenever we got the ball and made quite a habit of giving it straight back to a Wisla player at the earliest opportunity. Jacek Augustyniak was the man who did most of the damage to us, netting two of the first half goals and going on to complete both his hat-trick and the 4-0 rout late in the second period. So it seemed we were destined for the 1st round of the UEFA Cup, and more than likely a second humiliating Euro thrashing.
Bouncing straight back in the league took on a greater importance after the Wisla incident. But i still lacke dany confidence whatsoever. Creating a decent chance would have made me happy, i thought scoring a goal would still be a bridge to far for us. But i was, thankfully, wrong. Pretty damn wrong in fact. We scored two on the day. And we took the three points. In the press the day before the game, Steve Coppell had been telling all who would listen how his Reading side would make easy work of us at the Madejski Stadium. And, for the first few minutes it looked as if he would be right with American winger Bobby Convey making light work of my defence. But our first attack of the day yielded a corner, and from Richie Partridge's delivery of said set piece, John Welsh rose high to head home his first goal for the club. We suffered a set back before half time when Nicky Shorey levelled the scores from the penalty spot after young Jordan Holmes had hacked down Convey, but when debutant Conal Platt drove a shot home from 12 yards after being put clear by a perfect pass from Zak Whitbread, we never looked back. The fact that Reading defender Phil Ifil got himself sent off for a second yellow card just two minutes after Platt's effort helped us enormously, and whether we deserved the points is highly debatable, but the fact was that we had them and hopefully that would breed confidence in the squad.
When You Walk Through A Storm 
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