So I ended up joining Feyenoord and the board expects us to reach the CL semi-finals. Even though we were 3rd seed in the group stage draw.
So I ended up joining Feyenoord and the board expects us to reach the CL semi-finals. Even though we were 3rd seed in the group stage draw.
I love it when a plan comes together.
I'm approaching 4 years with these kids now, and decided ahead of this season to collectively give them as much gametime in the league as possible, except for against Barca & Real. Naturally the rest of the squad started making a fuss in about December on their own playing time, but it's working quite well so far overall.
All 5 are still on track to become good to great La Liga-players (Garcia is turning into a monster), so will get some fresh screenshots of them up soon. Goal is to get as many of them on the Sociedad legend list as possible.
Last edited by Bernanke; 03-12-2021 at 10:18 PM.
Just spotted this guy in my save. Fucking ridiculous:
He deserves a new contract tbh.
I guess not, seeing as he's earning the same as this guy:
After the World Cup semi-final with Norway's golden generation, it was time to swan off somewhere else in search of the next one. I think I may have found it in Bogota.
Toggle Spoiler
By the time I've holidayed through the blank first year/had a few friendlies, I'm hoping they might be even better and ready to take the fight to Argentina and Brazil, as well as get to the 2030 World Cup.
Colombia have been churning great players pretty steadily in my saves in the last few versions. Not so many high profile players in my current one though it'd seem. This is their star player:
Last edited by Adramelch; 04-12-2021 at 12:14 PM.
Season 2030/31 Update
As I mentioned previously, I did end up joining Feyenoord in the summer. Monaco also offered me a job, but they had many aging players and not much money to replace them, a situation I didn't really fancy getting myself into. Staying at Olympiacos was also somewhat tempting as I felt the squad I'd built was pretty strong, but I thought that things would get stale super fast if I did so. The expectations from the board were pretty ridiculous: We were supposed to win the Eredivisie (which is an ok expectation, but Ajax did win the league by 10 points the season before, so there's that), win the Cup (no problem here) and more importantly reach the semis of the Champions League, with the club only going past the group stages twice in the last 12 seasons, getting eliminated in the first knockout round both times. Much like at Olympiacos, there was a lot of reshuffling in terms of players, as I ended up buying no fewer than 17 players (few of them are future prospects), while selling 9.
Pretty fucking crazy if you ask me. For the last 4 months or so, it was just a case of us and Ajax trying to outscore each other as it looked like it'd come down to goal difference. And it almost did, but Ajax failed to beat VVV-Venlo (the surprise team of the season as they also made it to the cup final) in their penultimate game which gave us the chance to actually leapfrog them and eventually win the league. Had that not happened, they'd have won the league courtesy of their ridiculous 117 goals scored (no idea how, given their 78 goals the season before, with no new signings). Still, I haven't had an unbeaten season in quite some time, so it was pretty satisfying. Especially given that in all but one of our draws we were superkeepered. For those interested in stats, we scored 2 goals out of our 13.56 xG in those 6 games. Nevertheless we set the Eredivisie record for most points earned, while Ajax set the record for most points earned without winning the title. We also set records for most wins, fewest goals conceded (13) and most clean sheets (24). We managed to couple our league title with a cup win:
Pretty smooth sailing all the way up to the final (with a very satisfying 6-0 over Ajax). In the final VVV actually put up a decent fight and even took the lead twice, but in the end our superiority showed.
In the Champions League we had to go through the qualifiers and even though we had fairly tough draws we made it through. There, we were third seed in the draw (only two places from second seed sadly) and got a fairly tough group.
Apart from the game in London, we gave a very good account of ourselves and I'd argue we were kinda unlucky not to go through, as we should have very easily beaten Celtic at their place, as well as gotten draws in both Juventus games. In the end though it's the mark of the big team that they can get the points in a fairly even match, so no complaints there. An honorable mention must go to our ridiculous 10-1 win over Shakhtar in the qualifiers, in a tie that had a total of 17 goals over two games. Ridiculous. Anyway, our third place in the groups meant we would go into the Europa League knockouts, with the board (unsurprisingly at this point) expecting us to win the whole thing:
A very lucky set of draws once again. If Jim thought Charleroi in the quarters was lucky the last time around, how about Nurnberg in the semis. There's not many times you get a 10-0 aggregate wins in the semi-finals of a European competition, I'll tell you that much. The tie against Lazio was a proper hard one, as they inexplicably got a 2-1 win at our place and were 1-0 up at their with 15 minutes to go, but then our super-sub striker (more on that later) bagged two goals to send the tie to overtime and eventually penalties. Speaking of penalties it was a tense one:
14 penalties a piece. It started horrendously for us but thankfully our keeper brought us back and we ended up winning. Damjanovic got a proper telling-off for missing both penalties though I'll tell you that much. Same thing happened to Belardi one would imagine. Anyway, our win over Nurnberg set us up for a final against Leicester (coincidentally the team I beat two seasons prior when I was at Krasnodar), who after a 4-0 first leg win over Chelsea were all but through. Well as it turns out that wasn't the case, as Chelsea also beat them 4-0 in normal time (with two injury time goals) and then went to score two more in extra time. I was a bit annoyed as I definitely fancied our chances against Leicester, but oh well:
Toggle Spoiler
A great set of players all around. The most observant of you will have noticed that I brought three of my Olympiacos players with me, namely Alzate, Damjanovic and Grahovac. I tried to bring a couple more, but it wasn't to be, with one of them even joining Barcelona instead. These were the stand-out performers:
Toggle Spoiler
Last edited by Adramelch; 04-12-2021 at 08:04 PM.
Unbeaten season
I'm a twit
I'm toying with playing 01-02 and signing only players sharing a surname. Good footballing surnames would be welcome. I'm thinking about Cole.
I stayed up in my second season, avoiding relegation from Bundesliga 2 with a few games to spare. Unfortunately two of my best players refuse to sign new deals and are leaving on a free at the end of the season.
I appear to have been given a faustian pact of a save where I have inexplicably had two golden generation youth intakes in a row but every single prick I enter contract talks with will not accept anything less than important player as squad status
I managed to get Derby up via the playoffs first season (would've been automatic without points deduction) - then West Ham came in for me in December in 19th place. Had to do it.
Playing Sesko and Vlasic as CMs
This is what my ass. man. gets up to when I holiday over a game:
Mind you, this was an internal friendly against Sociedad B, and he has 17 in Motivation.
Edit: Apparently he just showed up with bottles at half-time.
Last edited by Bernanke; 05-12-2021 at 12:42 PM.
I hope the water bottle throws were consecutive, using the same water bottle.
I found the footage.
(Start at 3.20)
Last edited by Bernanke; 05-12-2021 at 12:49 PM.
Haaland April 2031 in my game. I only thought to look due to his absolute bonkers league record this season....
Toggle Spoiler
112/91
fail
I'm a twit
Here is the golden generation, 5 years on.
Sadly, Ayerdi never recovered his potential after an 8 month injury within his first year. He's still a really solid utility player for my system though so no need to kick him out yet.
Gil is an odd one, his output is actually way stronger than his stats would suggest.
Garcia is the real star however. Two-footed with that anticipation/composure/decision/technique is an incredible combination.
Garcia's value.
I'm a twit
Second season at St. Pauli went a bit better, though I'm still struggling to find a proper run of form.
I was mostly relying on kids though (most prominent exception being a 34-year-old Patrick Bamford for mentoring purposes) who should come into their own this year. Promotion or bust!
I can tell you with certainty that they weren't.Match Engine 21.3.0.0:
– Near post corners made less effective
@Serj: I reckon just by sticking to the same squad, you'll see a pretty decent improvement honestly.
Last edited by Adramelch; 07-12-2021 at 04:34 PM.
Season 2031/32 Update
My second season at Feyenoord is over and done. There were fewer changes to the squad with only one major transfer, a couple youngsters as well as a few players returning from loans:
Toggle Spoiler
And now for some action:
We didn't manage to stay undefeated like last season, but we earned 7 more points and we scored a ridiculous 117 goals (matching Ajax's record from last season), while still only conceding 20 (half of them coming after today's patch which does seem to have messed with our defence a bit). Ajax were nowhere near as good as the previous season, so really the title was ours essentially from the first game of the season. That said, they did manage to beat us in the cup final (on extra time), after we had a player sent off, and ruined our double. Oh well.
Pretty fucking crazy I tell you. Once again we were somewhat blessed with the draws, but we did show up and demolished the first proper big club we encountered, so nobody can say we were lucky honestly. That said, we definitely didn't deserve to go past Newcastle and eventually stole the tie with two late (88, 90+1) goals from Satriano in the return fixture. Anyway, we were set to face Bayern in the final:
Toggle Spoiler
Let's start from the obvious. Satriano is an absolute fucking beast. I thought he was insane when he scored 51 in 55 last season, and then he went and scored 54 in 46 this season. Bonkers. This time around, Velenzuela joined him in being amazing, even if not quite at the same level. Baturina, Rogerio Jose, Damjanovic and Nagy all deserved a mention for creating an incredible amount of goals. Lastly, I should mention that Grahovac's stats are not correct in this picture (it's his Inter stats). He scored 10 and created 5 in 23 games before leaving in January.
An incredible season all around, with us even going on a winning streak across all competitions that lasted 5 whole months. I was headhunted throughout the season, as I was offered interviews by Valencia, Hertha and Chelsea without even applying. I decided that I would stay at Feyenoord for at least another season, but I didn't expect us to do so well in the Champions League, so now it sort of feels like there's no way but down from here on out.
And, as I finished that post, this piece of news came up:
Last edited by Adramelch; 08-12-2021 at 09:01 AM.
23/24 went great, thanks for asking
In the remaining games I somehow stretched out the inevitable by beating Man City at home and the 5-5 draw at Norwich on the last day at least kept me ahead of Wolves, but I believe I've obliterated the record for worst defensive performance by some distance. Turns out retaining a large chunk of your players from League One doesn't carry over too well
Season two's window.
Annoyingly, despite the window being open to sign him, I can't register him to the squad!
He's very similar in attributes and wage to the ancient firmino who rocked up in the Scottish championship for me and got a 6.5 average. Legend.
So after surviving my first season in the Prem with Slough Town in FM19, I've shelved the game for the time being. I'll be back to it but because FM22 became fully available on Xbox GamePass (AND modded, which allowed me to remove the fake names and open up the German national team, etc.), I've started a new save on the new game to see what it's like.
I decided to go for Llanelli Town, currently in the 2nd tier in Wales (JD Cymru South), as it's actually the closest playable team to where I currently live.
Firstly, I know some other posters have praised it, but I really dislike the new transfer ranges. I understand why it's in - different teams will value players differently and this fluctuates regularly - but I felt the previous system was fine and you were able to work out the true value of players fairly easily. I also hate how it looks, both on the squad screen and on the player profiles.
Secondly, I forgot about Brexit. In my Slough save, Brexit was cancelled and so signing youngsters was never really an issue. If I do manage to get Llanelli Town up into Europe, it'll be tough for me to improve with foreign youngsters with the work permit rules in place. If that happens, I'm either going to be jumping ship to another nation or starting a journeyman save with some random leagues across the world. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
And lastly, with this being my first new save in god knows how long, I'm finding it hard to have a connection to the team and players yet. Obviously understandable as I've come from a save where we went from Tier 6 to the Prem and I dragged a lot of players up with me and had a connection to them all. I'm sure over the course of a few seasons I'll be fully invested but it's weird coming from a long-term save and starting fresh, especially on a newer version of the game.
As for the season itself, we've started strongly. We're predicted to finish 6th and the board expect a mid-table finish, but we're unbeaten after 7 games and sit top of the pile. Pre-season favourites Carmarthen Town have had a stuttering start (we managed a 1-1 draw at their place) but I imagine they'll be back up the top challenging as the season goes on. Only the champions go up as there are 2 regional divisions, so it's top or bust if we want to get straight into the top division.
Yeah I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember signing players and then having to wait months before being able to register them.
Played everyone once.
Mostly down to this man
Ye he was a beast for me too at RFS once he got going.
Last edited by Adramelch; 08-12-2021 at 08:10 PM.
The Haaland in my game is doing well. Could hit 150 if he doesn't retire.
Love it.
I'm a twit
My goalkeeper in general is one of my best players, but I have the feeling on some days he just cannot be bothered.
Six conceded from seven shots on goal against, with expected goals against being 0.9.
THE STREAK is dead
Easily the longest streak I've had in one of the top 5 leagues.
I just checked and they were the last team to beat us in the league too, back in November 2045.
Satriano has had a decent start to the season:
Got a galaxy book, got FM22 on gamepass, got the logo packs ready. Just need some time now.
Has there been a patch?
The match screen always shows my opposition ratings and formation by default now.
I'm a twit
Also:
I'm a twit
Just a quick one. I'm managing Qatar SC and pre-season I'm looking to offload sone of the older players. Suddenly Guangzhou offer to take my 31 left back (he's decent, but replaceable) on loan, so I up the loan fee hugely just to fuck with them, $700k-a-month, plus his $23k wages per week. They said yes
The cunt then turns them down. Fucking $8m down the fucking drain 'cos this cunt didn't want to spend 12 months in China. What a colossal twat.
Mission failed, after another season of infuriating inconsistency.
The board are still delighted with my performance, especially as we made it to the cup semi-final (no chance against a Haaland-led Bayern there). Still, as I haven't met my target I'll resign. England, Italy or Spain next, I think.
I think the 5-1-3-1 that I played around with has a lot of potential, but I never really managed to make it click for more than two or three matches on the trot. I'm tempted to stick with it, but I'll make that dependent on what sort of players are in my next squad.
Quite pleased with that. Squad looks good as well, apart from up front where they still played an aging Belotti last year. They do have a lot of inverted wingers though, so I'll probably adapt my tactic from 3 central attacking midfielders to one playmaker with two inverted wide players either side of him.
Not enough central defenders either, so three at the back is probably out.
I might try something like this and see if it leaves me too open at the back.
The away version will probably have two DMs.