CM 97/98 12 CM9798 challenges to help you during “social distancing”

Hello! As the whole world is stuck indoors for the foreseeable future, there’s a lot of people reaching for the CM9798 comfort blanket. With the help of the blog team and some other retro enthusiasts, we’ve come up with 12 challenges for you to undertake whether you’re self isolating or just working from home.

Let us know how you’re getting on, you can tag @CM9798 on Twitter and use the hashtag #cm9798challenge

Good luck, and remember there’s full instructions for running CM9798 on your laptop or Android tablet here (including a download link).

1) A-Z: EXTREME (By Liavinco)

You’ve seen Liam’s A-Z series…well, let’s take that up a notch. Be a club and only sign players beginning with the same letter. So you can be Blackburn and have Bohinen, Barmby and Batistuta. You get the idea.

2) Marching on Together…at least two metres apart (By 2020 CM Cup champion Ross Bell)

We all saw Ross’ horror show with Leeds. Even signing Emile Heskey only helped slightly. Can you do better? Take over as Leeds, sign nobody in the first season and try and make them a Champions League club. Over to you, Rod Wallace.

3) The Martin O’Neill Challenge (By Nick Rowe/Matt_C_Wills)

We’ve got a few of these. Why wouldn’t you want to emulate a man who looks like Artie Ziff? If you’re feeling really brave, try and start at Wycombe and move to Norwich and then Leicester – or just start at Leicester where O’Neill is in 1997. You then need to move on to Celtic, Aston Villa, Sunderland and Nottingham Forest – maximum bonus if you can get the Ireland job, although Mick McCarthy never gets the boot. Other managers are available – Louis Van Gaal? Kevin Keegan?

4) The Arsenal double (By 2018 CM Cup champion Dan W)

Arsenal won the League and FA Cup in 1997/98 but I’ve never seen them achieve it in the game. It doesn’t help that Anelka isn’t really that good at the start of the game but that doesn’t matter. Can you stop Man Utd?

5) Republic of Ireland (By 2019 CM Cup champion Ash)

Ash has recently started a save as the Republic of Ireland. Qualifying for World Cup 98 is tough as Romania practically have the group sewn up, but if you can get through the playoffs who knows? Can you lead Eire to the World Cup and beyond?

Put down your spatulas, pots and pans. This is the most action-packed game of football that you're going to see over the weekend, just in this one penalty shoot out! It had everything. You will have to watch till the end to see what the outcome was. Can you guess the unsung hero? pic.twitter.com/xEriexpOYa

— FPLHINTS (@FPLHints) March 21, 2020

6) Bingo (By 2018 CM Cup Champion Dan W)

Load three leagues and win every cup available. Just the top division honours unless you’re in it for the extremely long run, in which case win EVERY LEAGUE AND CUP EVEN THE WINDSCREEN SHIELD. Might be a laugh.

7) Scotland in the knockouts (By Nikolai_9798)

Scotland made it to France 98 but they failed to get out of the group stage. In fact, they’ve never managed to get out of the group stages. But YOU could be the one to change that! Set your manager name as Craig Brown and take over Scotland, rewrite history and make it to a tournament after World Cup 98.

8) Retain the Champions League with Borussia Dortmund (By KingOfTheRooks)

Dortmund’s Champions League victory in 1997 was a huge shock, their final victory over Juventus remains one of the biggest surprise results of all time. Can you retain it though? Armed with Scott Booth, for some reason, Dortmund will have to fend off Barcelona, Juventus, Man Utd, Monaco, Real Madrid…and many more to retain the trophy. Can you do it?

9) Win the UEFA Cup with Ipswich (By Matt_C_Wills)

Bobby Robson did it – can you? They start in Division 1 so you’re looking at a few seasons to do this. They’re not great either, there’s a lot of work to be done! We wanted this to be the Sir Bobby challenge but need more than the 3 allowed leagues.

10) All Abroad (By various artists)

I tried this with Benfica and made a team of only English players. That was fun. Andrew then did it with Swedes at Barcelona, which was brilliant. Dan has done it with Scottish at Celtic. Where will you do it? It’s harder than it looks! Why stop there though? Why not have Barcelona only buying players from the Scottish Premier League?

11) Three in a row (By Nik Keijn)

Ajax are a force to be reckoned with but their team usually gets picked apart. They have no trouble finding replacements but the real test will be winning the Champions League and retaining it. Then retaining it again. Can you do three in a row with Ajax? Or any club for that matter.

12) Blow your whistle for Partick Thistle

Partick have a whole load of wonderkids, can you try and keep hold of them and let them lead you to Scottish glory? Or better? If you do sell them, get into a position to bring them back. Don’t let them get away!

Remember to keep us updated with your progress, you can tag @CM9798 on Twitter and use the hashtag #cm9798challenge or we’re on Facebook. You can of course add your own ideas, just pop them on Twitter with the hashtag and we will share them.

Have you listened to episode 3 of the CM9798 podcast? Download now!