Hello again. This is the third and final chapter of my Championship Manager 00/01 mini-series. Starting in the year 2000, I’ve set out to lead Millwall from Division 2 to the top of world football.
Having first made it into the Premiership, and then won every major domestic trophy, it’s now time for the endgame. I have just three seasons left in which I want to win the Champions League… and a world championship.
PHASE 3: CONQUER THE WORLD
SEASON 8: 2007/2008
As we looked to take the next step towards winning the Champions League, we bade farewell to our last three survivors from Division 2. Goalkeeper Tony Warner would see out his days at Wycombe, while unsung centre-back hero Eifion Jones also stayed in the top flight – making the short trip to Brentford. Set-piece king Lucas Neill would drop down a level and sign for Wigan in Division 1.
From this point, though, my record with incoming transfers gets a bit patchy. Bolton’s left-footed defender Paul Dillon was a model professional with some solid attributes on paper, but he was also surprisingly error-prone.
At least Dillon lasted longer than his former Trotters team-mate Richard Gibson. Just imagine if Nicolas Anelka was a right-back with a West Country accent. Now there’s a thought.
Defensive midfielder Ivan Rousel was a slightly better £3.5million signing from St-Etienne – at first. After one season as Foé’s deputy, the Bulgarian also had a tantrum and demanded a move to Aston Villa.
Nonetheless, we retained our Premiership title… though not quite as comfortably as last season.
Bolton ended our long home winning streak with a 0-0 draw in September, and when Sheffield Wednesday left The Den with maximum points on New Year’s Day, it looked like we might falter. Fortunately, we didn’t – with Tonton, Alessio Goisis and Robbie Fowler each scoring 12+ goals to fire us to glory.
We also won our first Community Shield – smashing the FA Cup holders Manchester City 3-0. Unfortunately, Sunderland dumped our reserves from the League Cup at the Quarter Finals, while runaway Division 1 champs Newcastle ended our FA Cup dreams at the Semis. Can you guess who the Geordies beat in the Final?
And what about the Champions League? Well.. I’m sure you all know about Murphy’s law, where everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
First we blew a half-time lead and lost in Porto. Then Goisis and John Atkinson both got sent off in a home meltdown against Real Sociedad. When we then contrived to draw BOTH matches against Dinamo Zagreb – having been 2-0 up at home! – it seemed we would crash out of Europe with a whimper…
…until Goisis came to the rescue. The Italian stallion’s winners against Porto and Real saw us squeeze through the group by just one point.
Naturally, we cruised through the second group phase unbeaten against Celtic, Lazio and HSV – setting up a Quarter Final showdown with our old foes Sunderland. We suffered a late 1-0 defeat at the Mackem Estádio da Luz, before playing out a second-leg thriller at The Den. With the score at 2-2 with just four minutes to go, we were once again on the brink of elimination…
…until we rallied late on, with Tonton driving the ball home home before Beattie completed an outstanding hat-trick to see us through to the Semis! Could we now go one step further?
Alas, no. Barcelona beat us 2-1 on aggregate, thanks to yet another AI super-keeper – though this one was Gianluigi Buffon, not some random bloke off the street.
That said, if we could outplay an elite team like Barça, then I believed we could beat ANYONE next season.
SEASON 9: 2008/2009
After six solid seasons, utility man Chris Bart-Williams left us on a free transfer and signed for Leeds. Ageing midfielder Mattias Jönsson got himself one last pay day at Liverpool, a rapidly declining Fowler headed to Tottenham, and – as previously mentioned – Rousel moved to Villa. Meanwhile, we had our biggest summer spending spree yet.
First, we spent a club-record £10.75million on Sheffield United’s Stuart Parsons – a creative midfield mastermind with devastating set-piece skills. However, like so many of my other big buys, I also found out he was a monumental cry-baby with an extremely short fuse. The final straw was when Parsons had a go at his team-mates in the press late in the season. I sold him to Middlesbrough early in the following campaign.
I then broke our transfer record again – forking out £11.5million for Fiorentina’s Saliou Lassissi. Again, his attributes screamed “elite defender”, but his performances whispered “not that great, actually”. By contrast, I was very happy with our new left-back Giovanni Morabito (£10.25million from Torino), and we got some insane value out of attacking midfielder Tobias Hysén (£1.5million from Göteborg).
The Charity Shield was a doddle, as we creamed Newcastle 5-0. The League Cup… not so much. After beating Brentford 1-0 in the first leg of our Semi Final, we then choked at Griffin Park and lost 3-1.
We did get our revenge on Brentford in the FA Cup Semi Final, before crushing Bristol City (from Division 1) at Wembley – with 19-year-old striker Graham Gough completing a 3-1 win. As you can probably tell my now, lower-league teams reaching major cup Finals is a VERY common occurrence on Championship Manager.
That FA Cup was the second part of a potential treble. Though we started our Premiership season slowly – zigging and zagging up and down the table in the early months – we hit our stride from November onwards and eventually retained the title by 11 points. Goisis scored 15 goals in the league, and 27 across all competitions.
With our third title in a row wrapped up, thoughts turned back towards the Champions League.
Millwall bossed the group stages – winning 11 matches out of 12. Though PSV scored a late home winner in the first leg of our Quarter Final, we put that right by winning 3-0 at The Den (sorry, Monique).
That set up a Semi Final against AB – the 2nd-best team in Denmark. Nice and simple…
[Record scratch] What the? Oh, for God’s sake, not ANOTHER of those bloody super-keepers! We now HAD to win the second leg away from home…
…and we did. Eventually. Our incredible right-back Ibrahim Ates set up a vital equaliser for Keith Dunne (one of 18 goals the Irish midfielder scored this season), and then delivered a perfect corner onto Hysén’s head right at the end of extra-time.
Millwall were into the their first Champions League Final. Our opponents at Wembley were none other than Internazionale.
It didn’t get off to a great start. Ronaldo might have had knee ligaments made out of play-dough, but he still skinned Alan Hendry to put Inter ahead early on. 10 minutes later, though, Ates won us a penalty, which local boy Atkinson duly scored to restore parity.
Inter missed several chances to go back ahead in the second half, and boy did we make them pay. When Beattie volleyed in his 164th goal for Millwall, we found ourselves 20 minutes from immortality. Now we had to hold on…
…and hold on we did! Millwall had done the treble – and for the first time in our history, we were champions of Europe!! Our rags to riches story was almost complete.
SEASON 10: 2009/2010
First England. Then Europe. Now we just had to conquer the rest of the world. And then probably space. (RIP Tim Curry.)
Before beginning our quest for global domination, we said goodbye to Dillon, Parsons, Michael Gray… and captain Philippe Mèxes, who headed to PSG for £7million. Ates took over the captaincy, having been consistently brilliant at right-back for the past six seasons.
We beefed up our frontline by signing the giant Swede Jerry Wiklund from NAC. He was fine.
Oh yeah… and we also brought Cherno Samba back home from Manchester City, who allowed his contract to expire despite getting 15 Premiership goals last season. Cherno didn’t quite hit those same heights with us, but it was still great to have him back.
I was very excited about another free transfer – Ajax’s former attacking midfield starlet Edwin Driessen, who played much like Keith Dunne (except that he spoke like Steve McClaren). I also signed a few centre-halves, but the best of them was arguably also the cheapest – Joe Flynn, who cost us £1million from Tottenham.
Samba made an instant impact, as he scored twice in an easy Super Cup win over last year’s shock UEFA Cup winners – Orlen Plock from Poland. We also won our third Charity Shield (4-0 vs Liverpool) and our second League Cup (1-0 vs Birmingham, from Division 1).
Now I had just one more trophy left to win – a world title. Our first chance was in the Intercontinental Cup, against Boca Juniors.
[Sigh] Not only did Boca score two goals from their only two shots of the entire game, but they also beat us in a shoot-out. Who knew that the Dutch were even worse at taking penalties than the English?
Oh well. At least we still had the Club World Championship to aim for in the new year. This made for some truly insane fixture scheduling.
After winning our opening two group games against South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns and Uzbekistan’s Turon Nukus, we just needed to avoid losing 4-0 to Flamengo to win the pool. Flamengo only beat us 1-0 in the end – with their only shot of the game, no less. But that result was still good enough to take us to the Final, where Barcelona awaited us.
It was a very close contest for 75 minutes… but in the final 15, we hit top gear as Barça imploded. We could now call ourselves world champions!
But could we finish this glorious decade with a fourth Premiership title? Erm…
Our squad had now become so strong that basically every team was fielding the exact same ultra-defensive 4-3-2-1 formation against us whenever they had to come to The Den. This meant our 4-1-3-2 was starved of any oxygen in the opposition penalty area, and even switching to a more attacking 4-3-1-2 didn’t help.
Scoring goals was becoming a real problem, and we were dropping so many points that it looked like we would throw the title away – most likely to Manchester City. For the first time in several years, I had to make a major change of tactic.
And so I went for this wider 4-1-4-1. Dunne and Craig Strachan would storm up the wings to help out the lone striker, and there was some extra youthful energy in our midfield. Martin Daly was a 19-year-old academy graduate (our best since Atkinson), while Martin Nyberg was an agile 18-year-old Swede signed from AIK.
If you’re wondering what happened to Tonton, we sold him to Manchester United for £12.25million on February. He’d scored only 4 goals in 37 games this season, lost a lot of his pace, and couldn’t find a place in this new tactic.
The 4-1-4-1 could become defensively suspect if we ever picked up any red cards, as we found out in a couple of heavy 3-0 defeats at Sheffield Wednesday and West Ham. Despite that, the change largely worked a treat, and we ultimately defended our title with a game to spare.
Unfortunately, there was no major treble this season. Because of our Club World Cup exploits, we entered the FA Cup at Round 5… and then immediately exited it after losing 1-0 to Fulham (from… you’ve guessed it… Division 1). Oh yes, and Fulham’s goal was scored by one of our loanees. I might have immediately terminated his loan and then cancelled his contract, but I swear I’m not petty.
As for our Champions League defence, that ended when Roma knocked us out at the Semi Finals. On away goals. After Ruud van Nistelrooy scored their only two shots on target at The Den. I love this game.
Mind you, four out of seven trophies this season ain’t a bad way to bow out, is it?
EPILOGUE
In just 10 years, I had taken Millwall from Division 2 to the very top of world football. We had won four league titles in a row (a new record for me) and lifted every major trophy at least once (except for the Intercontinental Cup and the Checkapizza.com Pointless Trophy). I had nothing more left to achieve.
I leave this great club with £103million in the bank, a big 38,400-seater stadium expanded to its full capacity, and a cosmopolitan squad that has a grand total of four English players. No one likes us, but we don’t care.
Before I put this save to bed, I want to play tribute to some of those Lion kings who have been instrumental in our successes.
Even at a time when it feels like every opposition keeper plays like Superman, I’m glad that we have a goalie we can rely on ourselves. Dionisis Chiotis could be quite infuriating earlier in his Millwall career, he has settled down and become a reliable shotstopper – particularly in big games.
Ibrahim Ates’ real-life career never got him past the Heracles youth team, but in this universe, he has become arguably the best right-back in Europe. A consistent creative threat going forward, a strong tackler in defence, and a truly lion-hearted captain, that £1million I paid for him in 2003 now looks like an incredible investment.
I’m sure most of you will know about Marc-Vivien Foé‘s tragic story, and this shows what might have been. The Cameroonian was rotting in Southampton’s reserves when we picked him up, and he instantly became a sturdy anchor between defence and midfield. Though he has impressively aged like a fine wine, he will leave Millwall this summer for one last challenge elsewhere.
John Atkinson was by far the best player to emerge from Millwall’s academy during my tenure. Though not the most outstanding of midfielders, he’s a fine box-to-box player with exceptional long-range shooting and penalty prowess. I’d argue that last season was his best yet, and who knows – maybe England will come calling soon?
While Gavin Strachan wasted his career in Tottenham’s reserves after leaving The Den, Craig Strachan has blossomed into a world-class attacking midfielder. The silky Scot’s arrival from Derby in 2006 immediately transformed us from mid-table into a genuine Premiership force. Those assist statistics would make his old man very proud.
But even Craig couldn’t hold a candle to Keith Dunne – the best free signing I’ve ever made. Since joining the Lions in 2001, the playmaker extraordinare has produced 149 goal contributions in 325 matches and delivered on so many of Millwall’s biggest nights. Once a stroppy teenager, the 25-year-old has now matured into a global superstar.
Big, tough target men don’t get much bigger or tougher than Alessio Goisis. I saw value in his physical attributes when Lecce didn’t, and he repaid me with 90 goals in four seasons. Despite being nominated for European Footballer of the Year in 2009, he still cannot break into the Italy squad (though to be fair, Italy have won each of the last three World Cups).
And, of course, I must give the last word to the true hero of this save. James Beattie was a goalscoring machine in Division 1, and he was still very prolific once we reached the Premiership – excelling either as an out-and-out striker or as a supporting number 10. He even netted the winning goal in the 2009 Champions League Final.
Unfortunately, Beattie’s powers waned in what would be his ninth and final season at The Den. After scoring 168 goals in 409 matches for Millwall, he will now join Chelsea in their perennial battles to avoid relegation. He leaves us as a legend.
And on that note, it’s time for me to say goodbye to Millwall as well. I’m sure this team won’t fall apart without me… right?
Thank you for reading. I wasn’t planning to write a big story about his career (which I was only really playing for my own enjoyment) but I hope you liked the season summaries.
I’ve already started planning for my next Championship Manager adventure, and with Football Manager 27 on the horizon, I am obviously looking forward to playing that soon. I’ll discuss these plans in more detail in a Fuller FM blog update very soon.
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