The rapid rise of Truro City showed no signs of slowing down as Perran Trevelyan led his hometown club to Vanarama National League glory, establishing The Tinners as Cornwall's first-ever Football League side. The Cornish folk were out in full force as Trevelyan and his young team celebrated their third trophy with an open-top bus tour around the county.
A few months back in England with West Ham United had seen Trebor Mahtal lift the club's first silverware in 19 years and take them back into European football. But the Zambian manager had significant challenges ahead if he was to help the Hammers compete with England's best.
Mahtal was now just over one-quarter of the way through his Alphabet Challenge, having added A to the previous success at clubs beginning with E, L, P, S and U. He was also approached by Inter Milan and, intriguingly, Neuchatel Xamax but chose to head to England.
With EURO 2024 ongoing and England just about scraping into the last eight, it got me wondering how good this current set of players are and how they'd fare as a club side. To put that to test, what better way than to put the current England squad into the Premier League?
A historic season at Reebok Stadium saw Bolton Wanderers tie their all-time record league finish and reach a first European Final. So things were on the up for Trebor Mahtal as he usurped Big Sam Allardyce's achievements within two seasons.
In the first part of our attempt at the Sir Alex Ferguson Challenge, we took control of Nottingham Forest on 6 November 2022 and just about kept them in the Premier League in an exciting final-day relegation fight. Now a big rebuild was required to strengthen an under-par and bloated squad.
Trebor Mahtal led his exciting West Ham wonderkids to back-to-back titles led by the exceptional Ronaldinho and Hidetoshi Nakata in 2025. And more exciting times were in store for Irons fans.
Having just completed a Football Manager Experiment using a custom database in the European Super League, we were keen to take on another fantasy challenge in FM23. So the release of The Mad Scientist's annual retro database was very timely.
Big Sam's final set of options in this Bottom At Christmas series included one standout team as West Ham propped up the Premier League with just 12 points.
This year, we're bringing the Bottom At Christmas experiment back but on a bigger scale, with leagues in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain available to choose from. First up, is Southampton!
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