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I go to plenty of non league games when ipswich aren't playing and will do so.
However I played at a good level and I don't really enjoy paying £6 to watch people who were the same standard I played at if that makes sense.
Essentially I've been to 50 odd league grounds and I was planning to start visiting the rest for one of matches. Just so happens I can do this and instead of sitting as a neutral can lend my support to Rochdale, who I've had a soft spot for for years.
Not a bad result for Ipswich either. There was a rumour going round that Norwich at home was on the one Saturday I was unavailable at a wedding in London but fortunately that was false.
Can't argue with Birmingham, Millwall, Barnsley, Brentford to start. The worry will be if we start poorly though. Having been used to looking at the Championship and thinking there aren't many teams better than us, I am struggling to see too many teams I see finishing below us this time around. Everyone looks so much stronger but then nothing ever pans out how it looks on paper.
I'm going to go to the opener against Birmingham and I'll make a decision after 6-8 games on whether to renew my season ticket. Mick is clearly staying unfortunately but we've just spent £1m for the first time since 2012, so hopefully it's dawned on the owner finally we actually need to add to the squad or we are going down. I'd love to see Evans attitude change and fans come flooding back but as it stands I expect to miss out on every game for the first time in decades, to go to half the home games and mix in some great away days following Rochdale.
Looks like my first Dale game will be Southend away at the start of September and I will be able to get to Milton Keynes a mere fortnight later. Then a fortnight later it's Wimbledon!
Not long to have to wait before I can get to my first few games.
Charlton is November, Gillingham is January, Northampton is February and Peterborough and Oxford are April. A nice fairly even spread.
I'd never really wondered about the decision making process of sleep deprived chairmen on transfer deadline day until I made a very silly move last night.
My star player Kamal Castegren was now 81 ability and valued at £18m when a host of clubs came calling. Watford made the biggest bid of £34.5m and instead of just rejecting it I made a counter offer.
See that kind of money is pointless because any player of the same ability would break my wage structure. So the offer would have to be ridiculous. So I set Watford a ridiculous £60m. They did the ridiculous and agreed it. That was that.
The best player I've ever managed on FIFA was gone. £50m in the back towards a replacement. I eventually settled on Guedes from Benfica who would play on the other side and so I'll use a remaining squad player to fill in for now in Castegren's spot and see what the summer brings.
We are now top on our own and 7 ahead of 3rd. Liverpool are the main challengers 3 points behind us. It's looking like another stroll to the title.
We got past Scunthorpe 3-0 on aggregate using squad players to reach another Wembley final against Arsenal. I was delighted that their beast of a keeper Oblak moved to Barca. He was a proper nemesis.
So at the start of February we are top of the Premier League, in the League Cup Final and have a Champions League last 16 tie with Napoli and an FA Cup 4th Round Replay with Brentford to look forward to.
Even if I were to win the lot I still don't think I'll get over the decision to sell Castegren. I may even make him my main transfer target but he's probably on £100k a week now, well above my £40k ceiling!
Despite a less than ideal start to the season, the Rochdale train is now rolling.
Just past the half way point of the season and we've just taken over at the top of the league from Liverpool after beating the 3-1 at Anfield. We sit on 41 points ahead of Liverpool on goal difference, whilst Man City, Spurs and Chelsea all have 39 points.
For the first season in my three years in the Premier League we are not miles ahead. It's much more enjoyable I have to say.
We qualified from the Champions League with ease. A 2-0 win at home to Barcelona was eclipsed by a new biggest night in Rochdale's history with a 3-0 (!) win at the Nou Camp. We finished top of the group and that away win dumped Barca into the Europa League.
For the second year running we have Napoli in the last 16. I am hoping we don't become Arsenal to their Bayern Munich. We lost on away goals last time. I'm determined to go through.
We are also into the League Cup Semi Finals and have League One surprise package Scunthorpe over two legs. I'm as confident as I can be we'll be in the final.
So we are currently on to win everything. Once that happens I'll be leaving Rochdale to join another club lower down the leagues and try to rise again. But I don't expect to win everything. My team is worse than last season.
I've missed the players I sold and the replacements are okay. I am on course to bank another £100 + million but expect the board will be their usual generous selves and I am now getting close to not being able to buy a player to improve the squad.
Still. Rochdale have just hammered Barcelona home and away, are top of the Premier League, almost at Wembley in the League Cup final and are FA Cup holders. I won't grumble too much!
There does seem to be something in the Vaughan link.
We've all but signed Joe Garner for £1m from Rangers. Everything signed but just waiting on a document from Rangers. Garner is getting married today which has held it up slightly too. We are also due to unveil Celino soon on a season long lone from Manchester City.
Vaughan looks like an ideal replacement (finally) for Murphy and to an extent Pitman who is leaving. He's been prolific in the Championship for Huddersfield, he's only 28, he's got a physical presence, can do the business in the air and won't cost much. Seems we've had £500k rejected but that we are going back with £750k.
It'll be interesting if we do get Vaughan and you get Graham, as he's someone Mick likes and would have been someone I'd have expected us to have gone for before Vaughan, especially as (no disrespect - well actually as it's Bury a little) I doubt there's anywhere near the fee for Graham as there is for Vaughan, if any, and the Ipswich way is to do things on the cheap.
If Ipswich get Vaughan (who I can forgive as he played less than half a dozen times for the budgies) and weaken Bury in the process it'll be a great bit of business :)
EPISODE 11 - The Greatest Night In Rochdale's History
The Premier League campaign has started well but has been much more difficult than in previous seasons, partly due to me making slight tweaks to the settings to raise the difficulty level.
We started with 4 wins, 2 draws and 2 defeats which puts us 3rd on 14 points, ahead of 5 other teams on goal difference. Chelsea are top with 19 and Liverpool second with 18. A third straight title is going to be tricky looking at the state of things.
I used the transfer window to release some squad players. Reuben Noble-Lazarus asked to leave and sadly his wish was granted. What a player he's been for the last 5 seasons. He went off to Blackburn in the Championship for £2m and I couldn't turn down £3.5m for Josh Ginnelly, with it being twice his value even though I wanted to keep him. Bristol City were the lucky recipients of me not needing four very good players who can all play wide on the left.
The Champions League draw was greeted by pandemonium at Spotland. BARCELONA were drawn with us as were Monaco and, for the second season running, Wolfsburg.
We started with a 0-0 draw with Monaco before Barcelona came to town. Never have I played FIFA like it. I completely dominated them from start to finish, won 2-0 and should have battered them.
This was followed by a 3-1 win in Wolfsburg to put us within touching distance of qualification. Unfortunately I have to wait until Matchday 6 to take Dale into the Camp Nou. I just hope I'm through by then!!!
This career is showing some unusual quirks though and a bogey team has emerged. In m first Premier League season I lost 6 games, last year 8 and this season 2 so far. 16 defeats in all. In that time I have only lost 7 away and THREE of them have come at the Britannia Stadium.
Stoke have beaten me on all three occasions I have gone there. The first season I could have clinched the title there but the loss postponed it for a week. Last season I was soundly beaten there. Last night I went down 2-1 and I just cannot seem to get a result there - which I am blaming on the ridiculous pattern they've cut in the grass. Clearly far too distracting!
Whilst it is correct that they finished 8th and reached a League Cup final, it's far more complicated than Southampton just have ideas above their station.
They finished 8th on 46 points. Watford who avoided relegation by one place in 17th finished on 40 points. So Southampton were only two wins better off over a 38 game season than the team that finished 4th bottom! They were only 2 points off being 12th, which would have been seemed as a big step backwards.
They finished 15 points behind Everton in 7th place, one above them. They were only 12 points better off than Hull City who went down. So points wise they were closer to relegation than 7th.
The league position flatters them. They could easily have finished anywhere between 8th and 17th and in reality, anything outside the top 10 would be seen as going backwards when you consider how established they have become in the Top 8.
In addition the football was apparently terrible. Lots of Saints fans unhappy they have gone from free flowing passing football to very negative football. I think I read that they failed to score in their last 5 home games.
Credit to the board for making the change now. I thought it was abysmal how they sacked Adkins after what he did, yet Pochettino took them to a different level. This looks the right call, especially if they can lure Tuchel to the club.
The difficulty they will now face is how they feasibly improve. The top 6 you would imagine are all out of their reach and Everton are about to spend £150m on what appear to be very decent players (Keane, Pickford, Classen and a few others) and I think Koeman is a terrific manager and in Steve Walsh they have one hell of a scouting system.
So really that makes the same 8th place they achieved this year the likely realistic target next year, which seems crazy but they lost 16 games this year and any other season with that points tally would have been 12-14th.
I think it's the right call when you dig deeper. If only Marcus Evans listened to fans unwilling to watch negative dross!
With the title sewn up I then lost back to back games for the first time in the Premier League at home on both occasions. A 2-0 defeat against Southampton was followed by a 2-0 loss to Liverpool. In fairness I was now playing largely kids to see who impressed. Nobody was the answer.
On the final day I was also 1-0 down to Swansea and worried that my form would have gone heading into the cup final but I turned it around to win 2-1 and headed to Wembley to take on Arsenal.
We completely outclassed the Gunners but couldn't find a way past Oblak in goal. It was looking like extra time but then big Senegalese full back Keite Sane popped up against all the odds in the area to slot home from a tight angle after another Oblak save and on 78 minutes Dale had their winner.
So the double was achieved which means I now have in my first 5 season - 2 Premier League titles. 1 FA Cup, 1 League Cup, 1 Championship Runners Up, 1 League One Play Off winners.
We finished the season with £162m in the bank after Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup money.
What did the board give me? Bloody £13m. Better than £9m last season but almost all that vanished upping wages from £20k a week to £30-40k a week for my top players. Similar players at other clubs are getting £50k + so I am still underpaying. So I bought two £4m players, a new right sided forward and a right midfielder. To just about improve the squad but not by much.
So that's £310m I have raised in prize money in two years and £22m that I have been allowed to spend. The board are living the high life I tell you that!
My second charity shield ended in a 1-1 draw with Manchester United. I lost 4-2 on penalties for a second successive defeat in the Wembley curtain raiser.
That's 6 trips to Wembley now in 5 seasons and 4 wins (1 on penalties) and 2 losses (1 on penalties).
I started 2021/22 with a 2-0 win at Spurs, followed by a 3-0 win against Liverpool at Spotland where they outplayed me and I scored two goals in injury time as they were pushing for an equaliser first and then a consolation.
The draw for the Champions League is imminent. I don't have much chance given the lack of investment from the board which is very frustrating but we'll give it a go.
I will admit to almost being a little bored this season as I have run away with the Premier League. I'm on Legendary settings and every match I am still referred to as the underdog. My best player is only 81 skill.
I have just got the perfect system, the perfect players for it and have been incredibly lucky with injury. I made an incredible start and have been 10-15 points clear from the turn of the year and with Man Utd, Arsenal, Spurs and Leicester all roundabout the same points they've been taking them off each other whilst I continued to win.
As fate would have it I had the chance to seal the league title with 4 games to spare when Arsenal, the only team left that could catch me, came to Spotland. You can't write a better script that winning it 1-0 with the last kick of the match. Sub Ethan Baker, a proper cult hero now (which I'll come onto) scored to seal a second successive Premier League title for Dale.
I have those four games left plus an FA Cup Final against Arsenal. This is the first FA Cup final I have reached, having won the League Cup before, this is a chance to now complete all the domestic trophies.
I can't help feeling the cup has our name on it. In the Quarter Finals against Spurs we came back from 2-0 down at home to draw 2-2 only for Bentaleb to put Spurs ahead on 87 minutes. Gutted.
However, Callum Camps headed home on 90 minutes to make it 3-3 and unbelievably Ethan Baker still had time to win a penalty which he converted with a panenka to send us to Wembley!
There we were ahead 1-0 against relegation threatened Sunderland and cruising but they took it to extra time with a second half leveller and then took the lead in the second half of extra time. With 115 minutes on the clock that kid Baker (yet again!) scored a crucial goal (He's a fringe midfielder that barely plays that has won us the League Cup, the League Title, saved us in this Semi Final and scored that dramatic winner against Spurs to get us to Wembley!).
Then Ahearne-Grant, who has an astonishing 25 Premier League goals, grabbed the winner in the dying seconds to defeat Sunderland 3-2 and set up that final with the Arsenal, for a chance at the double.
There was heartbreak however in the last 16 of the Champions League. We lost 1-0 away to Napoli and then went 1-0 down at home but scored twice to level on aggregate. Despite Martyn Tyler and Alan Smith reminding me constantly we were going out on away goals I just could not score again.
Tonight I'll wrap up the season, play the FA Cup final and hope the board give me some proper money. As I have cruised this season I will also reduce the squad size and tweak the difficulty settings to make it a little more difficult.
I still think it's about right but I have just been very lucky with injuries and the way fixtures have fallen (going out of the League Cup early probably helped).
I am hoping the board give me some serious money to actually start buying World Class players. It would be interesting to see how far I can take this team. If I win the league at a canter again next year I may end this career and start all over again in League One, but ultimately I want to keep going until I win the Champions League with Dale.
Another option if I do continue to dominate easily (and I don't exact hammer teams, I just happen to win a lot of games by a goal) then I may even have to have a Malaga style meltdown where I release my top players for buttons and have to start again in the Premier League with a threadbare squad.
There's so much about football that depresses me but at the same time I am also a massive part of creating that problem.
When you hear people refer to themselves as football fanatics, well that is me I am afraid. I've been following Ipswich since the age of 3 when my Dad started taking me to every game on the back of him having not missed a game himself since he was 6. I started going to away games with him aged 7. I worked for Ipswich Town and even my job now involves football (I'm developing a football management game).
Before that I'd watch 3 or 4 live games a week. Now I watch the MLS, Dutch football, Swiss football, Australian games, you name it. I'm completely and utterly saturated by it, which in turn means I pay to subscribe to a lot of the services like Sky that have made football so much poorer. It's not the money in the game it's the distribution of wealth and how the FL is dictated to by the PL, but that's another story.
As a result of that Ipswich have become trapped in being just about organised enough not to go down largely due to McCarthy's effective but horrendous to watch tactics and all the parachute clubs we cannot possible catch up with. Even that hasn't put me off ITFC, it's more to do with the fans being taken for mugs by the owner and plenty of us have had enough.
So that brings me to Rochdale. A team I have always had a soft spot for. I have no passion at all for watching Ipswich stick 10 men behind the ball at the same old soul less places like Reading and Derby where I've been countless times.
It'll be fun to watch a proper club that does things the right way in stadiums I haven't been to (due to Ipswich being in top two tiers for over 60 years) and it'll be my pleasure to contribute in a very small way to Rochdale financially and support wise.
What frustrates me the most though is how many people in Ipswich and Rochdale will support West Ham, Arsenal or Man United or City. It's a real shame that people actively hunt success like that.
The beauty of seeing Ipswich succeed in 2000 was the heartbreak and failure that wen't before. I can only imagine how you guys felt when you finally made it into League One. That to a Dale fan would be a million times better than any plastic city fan celebrating that Aguero goal.
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