When I first joined Clough, I had prepared a shortlist of 18 players (with back-ups for every one of them), and I think I managed to get all but 3 of them - needless to say, better than I could have ever wished for. It started well too, and I managed to get my still highest ever World Ranking that first day, a thursday in November - 128th in the World.
As you can presume, my team has gone through rough patches since, and I even restarted once back in February, for the sole reason that I had lost the love for my team, and thus the game. I felt we underachieved - having the great Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the team obviously made me feel somewhere, deep inside, that I was supposed to win every game - so I restarted, abolished my All-Swedish policy, and got myself a promotion to my FA Premiership.
I regretted my decision ever since though, and just a season later I had started re-signing some of my old Swedes, and two seasons later we were back in business. This time around though, I knew this was long-term for real, and since I had an overall worse squad than before, I simply enjoyed the games I won, instead of accepting nothing less than wins in every game.
Since then I've built a solid infrastructure, with two Youth teams at U18 and U21, also having a Reserve Team, and my Senior squad consists of 22 players - 11 developed by my own Academy. At the same time, roughly five of them are my first choice for the Senior Eleven.
I am now enjoying the game more than ever before, and I decided to start this blog to both share this joy, and record it so I can came back in the future and enjoy what once has been.
How it's going for me now? Well, we're competing in the Evening FA Division Four (6th Tier of 7) and we're challenging for the title, together with the mighty likes of teams like Barwell FC and Zoetermeer FC. Life could be worse!
