When it comes to writing blogs, sometimes it’s hard to know where to start and how to get it off the ground.
Other times finding the right angle is something happens naturally within a couple of minutes of an idea.
This particular entry lies somewhere in-between, although it is with a heavier heart than usual.
With the release of Football Manager 24 and all its glorious new concepts such as defending Libero’s, Inverted Fullbacks, positional play and an overall smoother match engine, it makes sense for the Rotherham Revolution save and story to come to an end, a powering down if you like of my first real attempt at FM content creation.
There’s a few reasons for this, some of which were surprising at first, although after mulling it over, with hindsight it makes sense.
After grinding my way through the leagues and finally reaching the Premier League – my first season of survival in the top flight was one of the my favorite accomplishments to date – the save has become tedious, primarily because of the restrictions I’ve put in place.
Focusing primarily on a 4-4-2 shape the relies on (mainly) hardworking mental attributes and signing British and Irish players, Rotherham had made it into Europe, although the pace at which their reputation was increasing – and thus the ability to attract a higher caliber of player – was too slow for my liking.
Because of this, it meant that I was missing out on players that I wanted to sign as the game went on – players like Gareth Bale, Wayne Rooney – whilst already established players – like Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and the like – had no interest in coming to South Yorkshire.
As I continued through the seasons, I realize that the concept of signing British and African players, which is a common theme of pretty much all of my saves, was not allowing me to progress at the rate that I wanted, and gave way to the good ol’ ‘save fatigue’.
Carrying on the save into FM24 was fun, especially as I used it as a yardstick to get to grips with new roles and the new match engine, in the hope that I could create new iterations of the 4-4-2, or explore potential concepts such as bringing Diego Simeone’s 3-6-1 / 6-3-1 style tactics to life.
But with Manchester United having the likes of Luis Suarez, the ‘original’ Ronaldo, Daniel De Rossi and so on, coupled with a Michael Owen powered Liverpool (who also had Kaka and Ronaldinho) and a Nicholas Anelka inspired Arsenal, I realized that my chance of silverware and success was probably going to be left wanting.
As such, it makes sense to bring this save to a sensible (albeit abrupt) close.
But I shouldn’t be sad, and neither should those of you who have followed this story. Despite wasting hours of time playing this save and not moving at the rate at which I would have liked, I do consider the save a success, primarily from the perspective of content creation.
Using the Rotherham Revolution save as a way to find my voice within the FM community, and to try and use the save as a way of creating content at a quicker rate and in a different style compared to what currently exists out there, is a journey that was worth exploring.
And despite some of the grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and general lack of follows and visitors (which I hope will change over time), the save was a good benchmark and platform, to be able to do something that I’ve always flirted with throughout my life, which is content creation on a subject and in a community that’s given me a lot of joy over the last three years.
As such, it’s time for me to start a new save, taking the best parts of the previous save and bringing them forward into FM24, coupled with a couple of other aspects that I think will keep the save interesting in the long term.
The save is question has already begun, although it’s already started to become an uphill battle.
In the next couple of days, I’ll release a blog that will set out the premises and identity of the save, what I hope to achieve, and what the long term goals are.
The save will be based around the ‘Suffoco’, aka The Advanced Destroyer, a role that is not currently playable in FM but has been used in real world football fleetingly over the last decade and a half.
Thank you for those who have followed the Rotherham Revolution; thank you to those who have gotten to the end of this blog (and any of the others that you’ve read). I have a feeling the next one is going to be an absolute straight fucking banger.
