Dr. Nick

Playoffs

Completed a season with Montrose and had my first expierience of SFL playoffs.

I had the dubious pleasure of leading my Montrose team out in front of a packed hampden (att. 1709) to face Albion Rovers, 90 minutes of football to decide wether my Montrose side who finshed second in the league or Rovers who finished 4th would join the elite in Scotlands second division next season.

So how is everybody finding this revolution in the scottish leagues, for those that don't know

Scottish Football league 1st & 2nd division
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bottom team automatically relegated, 2nd bottom team enters a playoff against the teams finishing 2nd-4th in the division below

format

2nd bottom team plays fourth placed team of division below

teams from division below
2nd plays 3rd

both ties are over two legs (away goals count)

the winners of these playoffs face each other in a one off game at hampden park (winner goes up or stays up as the case may be)
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It will take a lot of getting used to for me my thought is that the leagues are too small for this (10 teams and only 4 of them won't be involved in relegation/promotion), I'm also disappointed FM hasn't managed to add the best item of these rule change's in Scotlands lower leagues - If a team finishes bottom of the 3rd division twice in a row they can be voted out of the league and replaced with a new team ( probably gala fairydean or a highland league side)


I could finally get to mange Brora Rangers :cool:

Kfoolmoon

Playoffs suck.

That said, i'm aiming for that elusive 4th spot with East Fife, but it's gonna be a struggle.

Pangaea

Thanks for the rules Nick, I've been wondering how that stuff worked as I'm playing there myself. Wish stuff like this was in the Rules in FM, not just 2nd-4th goes to playoff.

I'm at Stenhousemuir, and got promoted as champions. Hoping for a tough struggle next year. Back-to-back promotions isn't good for longterm games.

Dr. Nick

if it is any consolation east fife were bottom of the league in my game, however apart from abroath who had the title won by march it was much of a muchness amongst the rest with only 20 points between 2nd and 10th, I only secured second place thanks to my half time team talk ( I like to think it was that anyway) that saw My team recover from 3-1 down at HT to win 4-3 against erm .....east fife in the last game of the season

Kfoolmoon

It's just as you said so far. Arbroath first and 6 or 7 other clubs fighting it out for the playoff spots.

It seems that the ratings of the East Fife players I remember from managing them under FM05 have been divided by four for FM06.

Marmaduke

Good news with the changes, think I'll definently be starting off at East Stirling now

delliott

This should make playing with Elgin City much more of a challenge. I managed to get to the 1st Division in FM05 (after 6 seasons), but it was a nightmare because I couldn't attract any quality players and the other teams were signing players for £300/400k and I got sacked instantly.

This new playoff system should allow more time for a time to adjust to a new league.

mkus

I'm not sure I follow your logic there.

delliott

In what way?

Kfoolmoon

I think he means a playoff system is more likely to reduce your time of stay in a division rather than give you more time to adjust to it.