retired_amyslack

Good stuff Stuart - nice to see you back.

retired_embartl

bloody buggering b*llocks Hard luck PM. Really built the tension up well if that's any consolation.

shannon2007

Yes well, you get over it. Now I really like this game on the whole, but it does seem to me I get too many bookings and red cards and penalties against me, and I wouldnt mind if i was playing hard tacking, but Im not.

Oh well, makes a good story I guess.

BarryLFC

Boo. Bloody Brazilians.

retired_bbcarr

cheating *******s

look forward to seeing where you move onto

shannon2007

Where Do We Go From Here?

My whole belief system had been shattered. Had it been Uruguay, or Germany we had played, we could have expected that kind of cheating. But not from Brazil, not from the country who epitomized all that was good about football. They had disgraced not just themselves, they had disgraced the whole of the game, and I really did wonder how they could sleep at night. If this was what football had come to, then it could just bugger right off.

Yet the success I had had in the World Cup had not gone unnoticed, and it seemed there were club sides that wanted me to manage them. And once again it was Elizabeth who stepped in to save my sanity, and push me in the right direction. I was ready to walk away from it all, back to being a nobody. But she ‘encouraged’ me to at least look at the job offers on the table, and so I did. And besides, two years ago when I had been a nobody, I didn’t have a family to worry about. And Elizabeth had just told me she was pregnant.

I guess it was the spur I needed, and I looked at the two most attractive offers. Dundee and Villarreal were the sides who were after me, and I had to look at the pro’s and con’s very carefully. Moving to Spain wasn’t out of the question, the biggest problem would be how it would affect the children’s schooling, especially that of Derek who would be starting second year of High School. The twins it didn’t really matter too much, they were young enough to be able to adapt.

Villarreal had spent the previous season in Liga 2, having been relegated, and upon returning to the top flight, had lost their manager in the process. In the few days I spent out there to assess the club, they seemed to have a half decent squad, but La Liga wasn’t an easy place to manage a smaller club in. They were offering me an incredible £17,000 a week, and with a transfer budget of £12M, it was certainly a very tempting proposition.

On the other hand, Dundee had a very limited transfer budget of about two and half millions pounds, and were offering a salary of £3000 a week. The advantage of being in Dundee though was that we would still be in Scotland, and it wouldn’t affect schooling or any other way we lived our lives. We wouldn’t even need to move house as I could easily commute there each day if it came to it. We spent quite a few hours as a family discussing the matter, to see what everyone thought, and although it would mean a lot of upheaval, and a huge culture change, we decided that the conditions and salary on offer from Villarreal were just too good to turn down.

The other huge advantage to moving to Spain, was that we would be out of the limelight of the Scottish press. It would give me more chance to settle as a manager and make my mark. In Scotland, I was a somebody now, and the press wanted a piece of me everywhere I went. In Spain, they wouldn’t be overly interested, and besides I couldn’t speak a word of the language, so I wouldn’t know what they were saying about me!

And so, we packed our bags, sold our house, boarded a plane, and headed for sunny Spain. It was sure to be an incredible adventure……..

retired_tonytranbg79

Hard luck PM, but now you may be able to get revenge on a few of those pesky Brazilians, perhaps you should show them what hard tackling is

retired_hafa2915

Fantastic read mate. Great job. Enjoyed it a lot while I'm at work

shannon2007

The Rain In Spain – The Villarreal Years

Villarreal are not a ‘big’ club by any stretch of the imagination. They had had some moderate success in the few years before I arrived, most notably a 7th place finish in La Liga in 2001, their highest ever league placing, and a couple of moderately decent runs in Europe without ever really setting the heather on fire. At the end of the 2005 season though, they finished 18th in Liga 1 and so were sent packing to Liga 2, where they immediately popped back up from, and having lost their manager who was tempted away by some other club. They turned to me then to bring them back to, perhaps not glory days, but certainly days where they could be moderately happy.

Vila-real de los Infantes is a small town near the eastern coast of Spain, on the Golfo de Valencia, just a few miles north of the city of Valencia. They are therefore always in the shadow of their more illustrious neighbours. In many ways their fans didn’t realty expect too much, but I had set my sights on bringing some kind of success here, although I was well aware that this would not be an easy task. Yet perhaps we could win the Cup at least, although my target for the first season was quite a simple one. Don’t get relegated!

A lot of eyebrows were raised, and not just in Spain, when I started to bring in a core of Scots. It wasn’t that there were no Scots in Spain. In fact there was an incredible Scots influence here, with Scott Brown already at Villarreal, Barry Ferguson at Real Madrid, Charlie Adam just down the road at Valencia, Craig Gordon of course at Barcelona, and possibly a couple of others that have slipped my memory for now.

I though decided, for better for worse, to build a backbone of a side on Scottish talent. This wasn’t really me trying to be a good patriot, its just that these were the players that I knew and it made perfect sense at the time. For most of time at Villarreal the defence was all Scots, with Graeme Smith in goal, and a back four of Alan Hutton, Kevin McNaughton, Phil McGuire and Russell Anderson, with Bob Malcolm in the midfield holding role. They said it would never work, that so many Scots simply couldn’t adapt to the Spanish game, and it is true that we did seem to pick up an inordinate amount of bookings.

Indeed, Scott Brown was red carded twice in his first three games, and again before Christmas, and it was at that point I decided to discard him, selling him on to Barcelona, which didn’t please the Villarreal fans who had somehow become attached to the little git. I say that in the friendliest way possible of course. And there were those who simply couldn’t settle into the Spanish way of life and style of play, like Steven Thompson and Derek Riordan, who both came to Spain, decided they didn’t like it or me, and were promptly moved on again. They were no great loss really, and to be honest I probably shouldn’t haven’t signed either one as they simply weren’t good enough to cut the mustard.

Despite the doubters though, we made a particularly good start to the 2006/07 season, winning our first three games with ease, with striker Paul Gallacher in particular showing some fine form as he banged in the goals. Such a start of course helped to endear me to the home support, and ease any fears they may have had about my signing policy. A defeat at home to Valladolid did little to dismay the fans, and we even gained an excellent 2-2 home draw with Valencia, before crashing out of the Spanish Cup in disappointing fashion to Pontevedra in the very first round.

We were soon to get back on the wining trail though, and after nine games sat proudly in second place in La Liga. The press were taking notice, but it was early days yet, way to early to talk about a Championship bid. And indeed we were soon to be put firmly in our place as we were crushed at home to Real Madrid, and could only draw with Barcelona, before crashing to Betis, then Mallorca, and suddenly the honeymoon was over…….


Villarreal Club Song


La il•lusió de tot un poble,
industrial i llaurador,
és un club que a tots pregona
la força de l'afició...


La gent de la nostra Vila,
de la Plana, del Millars,
porta al cor la seua estima
per l'equip més exemplar.


Els nostres colors són el blau i el groc
i els nostres amors pel Villarreal;
en el Madrigal sempre lluitarem,
tots agermanats sempre animarem...


Canteu, penyes! Canta, afició!


Endavant, a triomfar, a guanyar Villarreal

retired_tonytranbg79

I thought I got an unfair amount of cards but yours sounds rediculous :eek: