[NoSkillz]

Queen’s Park FC – A Brief History

Queen’s Park FC is the oldest football club in Scotland, having been founded in 1867, and is also the oldest club outside of England and Wales.

The early years saw the club enjoy a great deal of success, notably winning the Scottish Cup 10 times, the third highest total of wins to this day, with only Rangers and Celtic having won more. Considered pioneers of the modern passing game, the team was a dominant presence in the late 1800s, especially in cup competitions. However, the team’s last Scottish Cup win was in 1893.

The club enjoyed a prolonged spell in Scotland’s top league during the first half of the 20th century but struggled against their professional counterparts, usually finishing mid-table or lower during that stretch. The team was relegated to the second tier in 1948/49 and would win promotion back to the top flight in 1956/57. Two seasons later, the club was relegated once again and to this date, have never been back in Scotland’s top league.

Queen’s Park, affectionately known as The Spiders, was relegated from League One in 2017/18 and begin the 2018/19 season in Ladbrokes Scottish League Two, where 45 year old Canadian NoSkillz begins his managerial career, replacing incumbent Mark Roberts.



Manager and Team Status

Upon my hiring on June 25, 2018, I have no status in the world of football, with a “Minimal” reputation (one half star) due to being a “Sunday League Footballer”. Queen’s Park, as previously mentioned, is a very proud Amateur club and doesn’t pay their players or their staff. We’re all here because we love the game but the ambitious among us obviously want to use Queen’s Park as a platform to display our skills to other professional sides and hopefully, earn a job that actually pays us a salary one day.

I have a National “B” coaching license and hope to take classes that allow me to improve my modest managerial skillset. I have a decent “Attack” coaching attribute of 10, have a “4” rating in Tactics, Mental, Adaptability, Man Management and Motivating, “3” ratings in Determination and Level of Discipline and “2” ratings in Working w/Youngsters, Player Knowledge and Youngster Knowledge. All other coaching categories see me with a lowly “1” rating.

There are a lot of negatives to managing Queen’s Park, most of them relating to our amateur status and inability to pay our players and staff. I imagine it will be commonplace to see top players and coaches getting poached by professional teams but having volunteers means we can have a larger squad then normal simply due to the fact we aren’t paying anyone.

Another positive, and a large one at that, is that we play our games in historic Hampden Park, a 51,866 all-seater right in the heart of Glasgow. Despite being the national football stadium of Scotland, Hampden is still owned by Queen’s Park FC but we’ve come to an agreement with the Scottish Football Association that will see them take ownership of Hampden upon the expiry of our lease in 2020 for a fee of £5 million. We will then move to Lesser Hampden, our current training facility and reserves stadium and play our matches there.

Our team has a “Below Average” reputation with an estimated value of £95,000, which ranks us third in our division and 27th (out of 42 teams) in Scotland. Our squad is deemed to be “Fairly Professional”.

We currently have a whopping 250 season ticket holders, no wage budget, no transfer budget and a paltry £1200 scouting budget.

The media predict an 8th place finish for Queen’s Park in the upcoming season.

I’ll chart the history of all these stats on a year-by-year basis, so you can see how things change during my stewardship.