UEFA Wanderers, formed on 16 August 2010, have already experienced the highs and lows in their short history. After securing promotion in their first season, with an impressive record that saw them lose just once, their second campaign resulted in relegation before a third term of mere consolation.

You're the Boss is the UEFA Training Ground's free real-time coaching simulation which allows the user to control a club from top to bottom and attempt to steer them from grassroots anonymity into the big time. The UEFA Training Ground therefore felt it only right that we pitted our wits and kept you up to speed with our progress as the weeks go on.

In this latest update we focus on the start to UEFA Wanderers' fourth campaign but you can also read about a topsy-turvy first month in the team's history.

WEEK EIGHT
Down in the dumps after a season bereft of progress? Not a bit of it. If we did not show faith in a squad full of the exuberance of youth, who would? Questions, questions, questions and a scarcity of answers which had us quietly worried about what the future had in store.

How we should have had more faith. A 0-0 draw on the opening day of the new season may not have set pulses racing, but it was the first sign of a new steely resolve and discipline which had previously been so conspicuous by its absence.

Clean sheets had always been rare commodities for UEFA Wanderers and three goals conceded in our next two fixtures proved we had not quite turned ourselves into a lean, mean defensive machine just yet. The difference, though, was that we showed the nous to secure victory in both games.

Seven points from our next three outings showed that we might just be the real deal after all. Stopped in our tracks by a 2-1 loss to league leaders Royal Oak AFC, we were nevertheless well placed in third and at a crucial crossroads in the season. Having started the campaign with minimal expectations, we now had a realistic chance of pushing on for promotion.

The mood around the club was slowly but surely improving so I and the chairman sought to capitalise by bringing in a raft of new sponsors which would hand us a much-needed cash boost. Still not enough, however, for us to get our hands on any available players who were better than what we already had at our disposal. So, over to the young guns once more…

WEEK SEVEN
Football is a fickle world. When you are winning everyone is your friend, players want to play for you and fans all adore you. Sadly, the glory days and promotion parties of week one were now a distant memory, and UEFA Wanderers were about as popular as the proverbial bull in a china shop.

As if things could not get any worse, our ambitious bid for midfield marshal Anders Wolson to add some quality to the engine room was ruthlessly rejected by the player while my own popularity rating had plumetted to 'the pits'. The only silver-lining as the dark clouds gathered over our new 2,000-seater stadium was the fans were still coming through the turnstiles, bringing in some much-needed extra revenue.

With both relegation and promotion seemingly out of the equation, it looked like the end of the season in Grassroots League Division III 16 would just be a period of consolidation. So it would prove as we finished seventh.

With the season over we could have opted for another radical overhaul of personnel. Instead I chose to stick with the youngsters we had brought in, giving them a chance to prove their potential. I knew they had the ability, now it was down to me to make them believe it and for them to show me and the fans it on the pitch.

WEEK SIX
Keen not to become bogged down in our perilous present, I was adamant that UEFA Wanderers needed to keep one eye firmly fixed on the future. I saw something – as yet unrealised – that I liked in the unheralded 20-year-old Gary Colegan, so in he came to a club, and a starting lineup, in dire need of freshening up.

His debut? The small matter of a crunch trip to a team by the name of UEFA All Stars. Although Colegan failed to answer my prayers and went unnoticed, Lampham was far more conspicuous when he was sent off before half-time. It mattered not, though, for we were already 1-0 to the good and victory was soon confirmed through Robinard.

It was a valuable victory which started to seem positively priceless when followed by two successive defeats, though a subsequent 3-1 win – and a double for one of our umpteen teenage gambles, Joe Anderard – gave me hope that the tide might be turning after all.

There was, however, something still lacking despite our slow but steady climb to sixth. Shorn of midfield options and with a side brimming with youth but short on experience, it was time to kill two birds with one stone. A €5000 bid for a quick and combative 29-year-old midfield marshal would hopefully prove the missing piece of the jigsaw.

WEEK FIVE
Relegation may still have been raw but we had to jump straight back on the horse that is Grassroots League Div III 16. An opening 3-3 draw suggested our close-season efforts might just reap reward, but two successive defeats threw UEFA Wanderers into a state of flux. The management team's popularity was at an all-time low and a crisis was no longer merely on the horizon.

Tactical tinkering and stellar signings were not the way to clear up such a mess – it was time to dig our way out of a very ominous looking hole. The whole club needed a shot in the arm and it was imperative the fans were not forgotten, so a reduction in ticket prices back down to €6 was introduced in a bid to stave off the dogs.

Determined not to shrink into our shells, and following lengthy discussions with a somewhat begrudging chairman, we soon went one better – a brand new stadium. A renovated and rejuvenated (so we hoped) club that had just a solitary point three games in did, at least, have reason for cheer – would such lavishness in such desperate times prove the folly that hammered the final nail in our coffin?

Sleeves rolled up, socks pulled high and chests puffed out, it was now that UEFA Wanderers showed what they were made of. Three wins and a draw were enough for us to climb to eighth in the table and inject hope back into a club that had, at one stage, looked to be on its knees.