In 2008, aged 16, I signed for Lewes FC. The club was in ascendancy: newly promoted to the Conference, we had a new stand at the stadium (later paid for by selling our best players, but that's another story), a new Under 18s coach, brought in from the Brighton and Hove Albion academy just down the road, and a new intake of what was, genuinely, the best squad of non-academy players in the south of England. Most of them came from professional academies like Brighton, Bournemouth and Southampton, some released at the big jump from Under 16s to Under 18s, others who had the chance to carry on but turned it down (and if you're wondering why they might reject something as fabled as an U18's contract - known as a 'scholarship' - at a top club by the way, it's probably because that contract entitles you to the sum total of about £60 a week, mandatory residence in 'digs' and a BTEC in Sports Bullshit that you have to take instead of college). Some, like yours truly, came from non-league clubs, having never quite edged their way in on the ground floor.

Jul 10, 2018 - Football Manager is renowned for the quality of its scouting - Sky Sports. 'I have actually found your profile in the database because, once a player's. See in the in-game editor for this that act like Overall ratings do in FIFA). Also, after reading this, I went investigating and booted up FM 2012 for the.

For four years I road-tripped around half the professional academies in the bottom-right corner of the country; three days a week my poor mum picking me up from school and, instead of heading home, handing me a sandwich, a protein bar and a sports drink and driving me two hours down the coast, or up to London, or sometimes just down the road. For those fours years I'd been consistently rejected. From Portsmouth, for a chap they flew in from Argentina, from Charlton Athletic for a lad from the USA, Fulham for the England U16s goalkeeper and from Brighton - twice - for a boy who, to be fair to him, was about twice my height and really very good.

But I got into Lewes. I think I can say that it was a very good team. Lewes U18s won the top division by a good way, and got knocked out of the FA Youth Cup, in the third round, by the Premier League's Hull City. That Hull City then narrowly lost the next round to Manchester United. I watched that game against Hull from the stands. I'd just partially dislocated my shoulder for what was the fifth time in my life (and not the last), and was waiting for a scan.

I could have saved the shot - and ahead of the next round there'd absolutely have been a United scout to see it.:: Here's Lewes' Stadium, The Dripping Pan. It's quite nice! I don't actually know.

It's a long time ago. Maybe I tell myself I could have saved it in a blaze of glory because it made me feel better at the time - 'if only I hadn't got injured, I'd have won us the game and got signed by the club I've supported all my life'. And then I'd win the lottery and go to the moon. It's embarrassing when you say it out loud, but at sixteen years old, suddenly staring straight at a pile of sagging grades and drifting friends, I think it's probably what I needed to hear. Either way, around about that time I was also playing a lot of Football Manager. I'd love to tell you there's a complicated psychological thing behind that but it's not really very complicated is it?