Twenty in the Trees - FM16

[Suntan Superman]

Twenty in the Trees - A Football Manager 2016 Game

This story will all be written in a retrospective, documentary style way. I find that the pace of play is hard to keep up with in FM as a diary style game, I'm already much further into the game, but considering it's quite easy to go look up history, plus a myriad of screenshots for bragging rights in the FM thread should make this a hopefully interesting read. I will also edit this post with a table of contents, as this will most lkely be a lot of reading. Hope people enjoy.

Entry 1 - Hiring
Entry 2 - From Liverpool to Cardiff

[Suntan Superman]

Twenty in the Trees - Hiring

Fawaz Al-Hasawi(Chairman of Nottingham Forest)
We parted ways with Dougie Freedman much sooner than anticipated, and quite frankly I was tired of going through managers. 9 managers in 6 years was just far too many, and with the club celebrating it's 150th year I wanted something special from the next appointment. We interviewed a few people, including some bigger names, Michael Laudrup being the biggest of them, none of them quite felt 'right'

Paul Wood(Supporter Spokesperson)
It was disappointing, in the year of our 150th anniversary as a club, we end up with a transfer embargo, and a terrible start to the season, sitting 23rd at the end of October felt completely unacceptable. We really wanted to turn around the team, but we didn't know what we would do. As fans we showed up to the matches, and cheered on our players but they didn't seem to have any cohesion as a unit.

Chris Cohen(Nottingham Forest Captain)
As captain at the time, it was difficult, guys weren't preparing fully for games, they weren't giving 100% in training and it kind of felt like we were mailing in the club's 150th season. Fawaz made it known at the beginning of the season that he wanted it to feel special for the supporters and that it was important for the club's future that we perform well.

Dougie Freedman(Former Nottingham Forest Manager)
I don't think I ever lost the team as a manager, I just don't think what I was doing was working, simple as that. We played well multiple times, but just never got the results we needed.

Michael Petersen(Nottingham Forest Manager)
Oh man, I didn't know what I was getting myself into, I had just joined Arsenal in the summer as sort of a Youth Development expert, I think that was my official title, but I really wanted to sink my teeth into management. I asked Wenger if I could seek out the Nottingham Forest job, and he said of course, but it was very likely that I wasn't going to get it. I submitted my CV a mere 30 minutes after that meeting

Fawaz Al-Hasawi
I saw an application from Arsenal, and I got excited, perhaps one of their staff wanted to join Nottingham Forest and take us to the Premier League, then I look at it, and it's this 27 year old who just completed his coaching badges, and joined them in the summer. Ambitious fellow he was I suppose, after reading his CV, which included a brief outline of the philosophies he'd like the club to implement, I actually decided to call him in for an interview.

Gary Brazil(Former Forest Staff Member)
I figured I was going to take charge til the end of the year when I was promoted to Caretaker Manager, but as it turns out, that wasn't the case(chuckles to himself). Then I heard about the people he(Fawaz) was bringing in for interviews and I was admittedly a little disappointed.

Chris Cohen
I saw this guy who looked younger than me walking around the facility in a suit laughing and talking with Fawaz, I thought maybe we had a new signing or something, I never would have guessed that this man was about to become the Manager of Nottingham Forest.

Fawaz Al-Hasawi
Michael came in, and we hit it off pretty quickly, he was adamant that he wanted to get promoted this year and take advantage of at least year one of the new Premier League TV Deal, then take things as they went from there. After talking about the expectations for the year, it almost felt as thought it was meant to be. I didn't interview anyone after, and I came back with a contract offer for Michael on the 26th of October.

Michael Petersen
I was nuts, I came in and laid out my goal as Promotion for my first year. I set the expectation that promotion was achievable. Who does that? Why did I do that, I was desperate to get my claws on a Management job I suppose. I signed a contract with Nottingham Forest, said farewell after a short four months at Arsenal, and found a place to live in Nottingham.

Paul Wood
We had no idea who this guy was, many of us were mad, and decided we didn't want to support the club if they were just going to yank our chain with this appointment, the guy was 27, not a lick of experience to his name.

Fawaz Al-Hasawi
I almost sold the club on the 27th(chuckles) but really, I got some angry phone calls, and letters about my appointment, and things didn't get off to a great start. He was going to take charge for the next match, our Capital One Cup game against Premier League side Liverpool

Michael Petersen
You start a new job, and your first match is against a relative footballing giant. Welcome to your new life I suppose. I was determined that this was going to be our year though, and maybe my naiveté is what motivatd me though. I didn't know what I was doing, and proved so almost immediately against Jurgen Klopp.

Chris Cohen
When we had a team meeting on the 27th to introduce him to the players, I don't know if anyone was happy, we knew nothing about this guy, and quite frankly it was almost a little insulting to have a 27 year old in charge of the team. He was going to have to prove himself against Liverpool, or it was going to be even more of an uphill battle.

[Suntan Superman]

Twenty in the Trees - From Liverpool to Cardiff

Michael Petersen(Manager)
That Liverpool game was a headache, we had 7 guys on the injury list, and it was hard to fill out a lineup sheet I felt fully comfortable with. Then we start out by going down 3-0 almost immediatly, thankfully after halftime we got back on the horse and netted two, which was a little unfortunate because it almsot seemed like we could have won that game. I did get to see my team in action for the first time, and I think the squad had the right mentality. They didn't seem to like me much though. It was probably the yelling.

Kelvin Wilson(Nottingham Forest centreback)
That Liverpool game was the second worst of my career there, on top of the fact that I'm trying to impress a new manager I go out and score an own goal in the thirteenth minute. I almost thought my second stint at Forest was done in that one moment, but Michael didn't give up on me, just yelled a lot.

Dexter Blackstock(Nottingham Forest striker)
I scored in the 90th minute to make it 3-2 and Michael still didn't look happy, I wasn't sure what to do differently, but I thought we had done well to make it 3-2. In the dressing room after the match he said he was proud of the second half but we need to work on defending better, and learning to communicate better.

Chris Cohen
I wanted out after that game. I didn't tell anyone, but I could tell that the manager and I were not going to get along, we were playing a Premier League team for heavens sakes, he's yelling at us like we should be winning that game. It was ridiculous and his age and immaturity really showed during that game.

Michael Petersen
I needed to make changes, on a personal level, and a personnel level. I wasn't happy with a lot of the players I had available to me, so we decided to send some scouts out and find us some people. Plus I had my knowledge of Arsenal targets and I knew I was going to make some moves once the Embargo was lifted. To make things even better we did great after the Liverpool game. From there til the Cardiff game we won 6, drew 4 and lost 1, shooting right up the table.

Henri Lansbury(Nottingham Forest Midfielder)
We beat Derby 3-2 and I think that was the real turning point for the season. Derby were 2nd in the League, and we honestly ran them off the park, and Michael just tore into their manager.before and after the game, and I think that gave us confidence.

Paul Clement(Former Derby Manager)
I don't want to say he beat us because he mocked me, but I sure wanted punch him after the match, we didn't even shake hands because the **** was busy celebrating like they had just won the league. Classless and just an overall mook.

Stephen Keenan(BBC Writer)
After that Liverpool game the Nottingham Forest team really turned it on. Their only loss was to Reading, and it was a 4-3 game. You could tell the club had an air of confidence surrounding it, results were good, and some players were really stepping up. Henri Lansbury, Kelvin Wilson, and Jonny Williams were impressing week in and week out. Especially Lansbury, he really just stepped up and became a whole new level of player.

Fawaz Al-Hasawi
I was excited that our embargo was going to be lifted in January, however the team was preforming well, and I wanted Michael to either sell players or be content with the squad before making additions, so I didn't let him know for awhile. It may have affected some of our transfer dealings but I think he'll agree that was the right move.