England's got a goal machine. He's Ahmed Kamel and he's gonna score.
I'm a twit
A very fitting name considering the new ownership too. He'll fit right in.
Ahmed Kamels running through
You know he's gonna skill you
You deny our business deals
And we will fucking kill you.
Armoured Camel
Anyone got some decent plug n plays? CBA building proper tactics myself this edition...
I was having some success with Vujevic's tactics, with some slight changes to suit my players. However, after a massive slump in form, I switch to this 442 and it's hlped massively.
Vujevic: https://fm-base.co.uk/threads/vujevi...tactic.174569/
442: https://fm-base.co.uk/threads/442-v-...-goals.177840/
2032/33, if I don't do it now I have to retire on sheer principle alone
Brighton having a lovely old time.
C'mon Villa.
I've just started playing for the first time in about 5 years and the fm22.2 shaolin 433 v2.fmf from the above link is absolutely broken come my 4th season. Won the treble with Leipzig in my 3rd year using that formation but mixing it up against better opposition. Start of the 4th season has seen me win 5-1, 3-0, 7-0, 8-0 and 4-0 so far.
Szoboslzai, Adeyemi, Gravenberch, Mudryk and Gabriel Menino are all ridiculously good. Bayern have beaten me 80% of the time but seem to absolutely throw multiple games a season whereas I just beat everyone else fairly easily. They also keep funding me buy paying over the odds for half my team and then not playing them. 4 years in and they still have the same team as they do at the start of the game playing every week minus Gnabry for Mbappe and Saelemaelers for Pavard. Lewandowski still scoring 35 in the league aged 35
Toggle Spoiler
Looking forward to these beasts. It's probably common knowledge but the following from Reddit has made finding and getting newgens for cheaper much easier. Bit of a slog going through them all but worth it.
Whenever new youth intakes start coming in sign them before they sign pre-contracts with the club they are at. To do that go to "World" menu. It's the one that looks like a globe on the top right hand corner of your screen. Choose the continent you want and click on "transfers". You will be taken to another page where you will see another pop down that says "All Transfers". Click on it. Then select "Youth Intake". You should then be able to see all the players that joined club youth teams that month. Clubs usually offer them contract about 2-3 days after they join so if you see a player with seemingly good attributes, you can offer him a contract, then scout him later. If he doesn't turn out to be that good, then you can withdraw the offer. You might still pay the 3-4 million but it will be staggered into clauses, some of which you might never fulfiL
SEETHING doesn't even cover it.
I hate Man United so much in this save, they are our kryptonite and it seems no matter how good we are they'll always fuck us up.
A quick update on where I am with things with my current (now old) save with Wolves/journeyman. It got a bit too easy in the end as I spent a few seasons with Wolves and built up probably the best squad in Europe. Man United were still a threat but we were generally dominant, including three Premier League titles out of four, and we'd likely have gone on to win more.
This is where things more or less wrapped up by 2034. My career path was as follows: East Fife > Blyth Spartans > Millwall > Brentford > Wolves. I don't think I've missed anyone out there. It was fun, but to be honest I'd be wanting to move on to FM22 (this was still 21) and get accustomed to the data hub and new ME, so that's what I did.
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After playing around a little bit with Huddersfield to get used to the game, I went straight into one of the official challenges over at SI forums - the FM Youth Academy challenge. The idea is to take a club previously unplayable on the game as far as you can, i.e. if it's an English club to the Premier League and Champions League titles. You can't sign anyone, and must rely solely on your youth intakes. A fair challenge, then.
The idea is that you holiday for a season and take over one of the promoted sides into the bottom league of your choice, however as I've downloaded the English lower league database, I felt I could go straight in with a team below the National League North/South.
Taunton Town are a club in the Southern League Premier South. I've had the pleasure of seeing them at Wembley in an FA Vase final 20+ years ago, so The Peacocks seemed a reasonable choice.
Interestingly, I've also seen one of their rivals, Tiverton Town, play at Wembley, so it was a close run thing, but in the end I think maybe the kit swayed it.
Looking at the squad screens, you'll see I've made a few adjustments to the most important attributes. As I'm sure most of you are aware, acceleration and pace remain the most important attributes generally, with dribbling still very high. There have been some adjustments meaning that stamina (in particular) and work rate also now factor in quite heavily. With that in mind, you can see my key players are likely to be Jared Lewington and Lee Lucas. Player wise, we've no depth so I've had to promote a number of 16-year-olds to the first team squad, and we're very light on full backs, and defenders in general. Midfield and attack we're a little more blessed, but not to the point we're I'm going to be able to do lots of rotation, so there will be a heavy reliance on around 13-14 players.
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Creating my tactic. I found a very useful guide over on the SI forums for this. I'll number the steps to make it easier.
1.Choose your mentality. The recommendation is you focus on cautious, balanced or positive. The more extreme attacking and defending mentalities should be more situational, unless you have a particularly extraordinary team relative to your league. Consider your predictions and comparisons here. Our predictions didn't help at all: our media prediction was 2nd, our season preview predicted a mid-table finish, yet the board were simply aiming to avoid relegation. The squad comparison screens gave me a much better idea, and I took from them that our squad was slightly below average for the league - a bottom half side. It's always useful to flick between the squads in your league with your chosen filters on as that gives you a good idea too. With all that in mind, I opted for a BALANCED mentality.
2.You need to identify a defensive style. Build your tactic from the back. Check your defenders' pace, acceleration, marking and anticipation to decide on your defensive line. Again, customised squad screens are great here. Our defenders are pretty steady overall, so I kept the defensive line at STANDARD. I like this as it's my go-to choice anyway - I don't mind having higher one if we're going to really pressurise our opponents and keep a compact shape, but it's risky and you need the right defenders.
3.Line of engagement. Check your attacker and attacking midfields' work rate, pace, acceleration, aggression, bravery. Fortunately, I was confident enough here to opt for a MUCH HIGHER line of engagement - again, my usual go-to.
4.Pressing intensity. Similar to above but with strength and tackling taken into consideration, I felt we could go with a MORE OFTEN trigger press. Not overly extreme, but definitely along the Gegenpress lines.
5.Next, pick your defensive shape/formation. My favourite shape is 4-3-3 with a DM, however my next would a version of a 3-4-3, so I'm open here. We don't have enough cover to play three at the back, so a back four was quickly established. I like to have a back three option against two striker oppositions, but that's for the future.
6.The flanks. Full backs and wingers are the natural choice/imperative in a back four system, so this was pretty clear cut. More so by the fact we actually have some decent wide attackers, and a little bit of depth. As we're playing quite a high pressing game, it makes more sense to have the wide attackers in the attacking midfield strata rather than the central midfield one.
7.Up front. A slight dilemma here, as we have a star striker and another decent option. A lone striker is my preferred method, and that still suits our options.
8.Fill in the middle. We're left with a 3 man midfield. We've got options in each strata, but no real depth. Really, we have a decent defensive midfielder, an excellent defensive/central midfielder, and an attacking midfielder. So it how to get the best out of those three. A single pivot was obvious, but an asymmetrical formation seemed likely too.
9.Roles and duties. A sweeper keeper needs certain attributes, and mine is just about okay. On a balanced mentality, a sweeper keeper on defend is logical.
10.Defensive duties. You need three in a balanced setup. The two central defenders are a given, and usually the DM is the most obvious choice. You want it to be your most offensively limited player, in terms of physicality or technically (as in he will lose the ball easily), which isn't necessarily the case here, but there's not much in it between the DM and full backs, so to keep the balance and allow both full backs to support, this made sense.
11.Attacking duties. These should be the most capable going forward - your best attacking players. This may seem obvious, but I'm not sure it really is. In the past, if I've had a top class creative midfielder, I would have naturally put him in some sort of support duty. Apparently, it's better to have him on attack as he'll then become a more prominent player. Firstly, identify your best goal-scorer, who should be put on attack in a goal-scoring role such as shadow striker, advanced forward, inside forward etc. Then, identify your most creative player. Initially, I was going to play Lee Lucas as a defensive midfielder, but after reading this guide it became obvious that he should have a more attacking role in the central midfield area, with him being probably my best player. Then you should identify an attacker who can penetrate from a different area of the pitch. I kind of had this luxury, but for my main tactic I had to compromise a bit here.
12.Support duties. Everyone else, basically. So you have your most limited/defensive players on defend, your three best attack-minded players on attack, and the others supporting. This should provide the best balance. You need to try to make sure all five horizontal channels are filled as best as possible with people not getting in each other's way, but that's a whole separate discussion.
13.Attacking instructions. You could go into great detail here, but ultimately it's about the type of football you want to play, and the players you have at your disposal. Automatic choices for me are to play out of defence, work ball into box, usually low crosses and as high a tempo as you think your players can realistically manage.
14.Transition instructions. Regroup or counter-press (or neither). Look for aggression, teamwork, tackling, speed, bravery, work rate, stamina and make a decision. If you are going to counter-press, ensure you have cover with those defensive duties outlined earlier. Hold shape or counter. Look at pace and off the ball movement in particular for your attacking players.
That's pretty much the basic guide I followed. I also know what works and what doesn't with the ME, and it's something I can't really ignore either With all that in mind, I came up with this:
There's no huge differences, although I'd class two as a 4-3-3 and one as a 4-2-3-1. The only difference between my 4-3-3s is that one has a central midfielder on attack with the wide player supporting, and the other has a box to box with the wide player attacking. The 4-2-3-1 might be slightly more solid and it allows Lucas to drive forward from deeper.
Following with interest. This may be of use.
Pogon Siedlce & France 2038/39 Season Update:
Transfers Out:
4 big deals in Javi, Mariusz Duraj, Smolinski and Kalinowski. Javi was just a sub option who was constantly complaining (he was also one of our own) with the other three being regular starters. Or they were but were getting phased out of the team by younger players and I decided to cash in.
Transfers In:
I think this guy is going to be incredible. He went on loan to Slask this year and scored 11 league goals from 24 starts and added another 10 in 4 cup games.
An absolute steal and I've already made profit as Legia paid me £60k to take him on loan where he played incredibly well.
No loan for him so he stayed in the second team where he was ok.
Not sure why his determination took a hit, he had a few injuries but nothing major. He scored 14 goals for the second team and played very well for them.
Another who had to settle for games with the second team but again he did well.
League:
Not sure what the fuck happened in that Widzew game. At 6-0 I made subs and went for a piss and to eat something and I came back to Widzew having been torn to shreds. xG was 5.68 and we only had 21 shots on target.
Cups:
Playing our second team in the cup final They had an easy run to the final other than the first round (Wisla Krakow) but it was great to play them, just a shame we battered them so badly as I wanted to see the forriners show their quality.
The second team also ended up doing something the first team was unable to do which is win the I Liga becoming only the second reserve team to do it. The other time it happened was 2023/24 when Legia II stopped us from winning it.
Europe:
Our first time as second seeds and we got arguably our hardest ever group and I was worried that we'd end up having to settle for third. Beating the holders Madrid both times is easily our best moment thus far in the competition.
Unfortunately we were drawn against our old foes (they're now 8-0 against us with a goal difference of thirty seven) and despite looking like the better team across both legs we got fucked up.
It's annoying as we had been making real waves lately in the Champions League and I thought we had a shot this year.
Squads:
I'm relatively happy with the first team. RB remains a problem though and the strikers blow hot and cold a lot. It might be time to unleash Nusret fully as he keeps banging in goals when he does get minutes.
The second squad is heaving with forriners waiting to collect their Polish papers and in the next season we should see Cicevski, Ascacibar, Galat and Barilari (who I'm most excited about as he should solve the RB problem) get their passports.
France:
After the World Cup with Nigeria I had my pick of various nations and I decided to go with France as they have some players that I had been wanting to manage.
In my save it still appears that the HOME NATIONS are over powered. I'd love some international silverware soon and I'm also hoping that I can re-gain my job with the Polish national team (currently managed by Andrea Pirlo) as I'd like to win something with them too.
Thanks Manc, I've used Passion4FM quite a bit in the past.
One thing I do need to remember is to actually play my youngsters a bit to aid their development. None of them are particularly good at the moment, but there's an attacking midfielder who isn't bad and a left winger with potential. And since my update above, I've had two first team wingers pick up long term injuries.
100% here for Peacocks chat. I’m Taunton born and bred and I can’t wait for next season for all the away games in London and for FM23.
Have they been promoted in real life then? I was going to have a look.
Here's my HOYD and two most promising teenagers.
The youth development bloke is the only person I've brought in. I didn't have much to work with, but he has a fairly sporting personality, is great with working with youngsters and his second preferred formation is what I'm hopefully after long term.
Yes, they're NLS next season.
Half-time update. Things are looking good in the league.
Some excellent performers:
As you can see, our league form is good but so is our FA Cup progress. We've made it to the second round proper and we'll play League 2 Walsall shortly. They're three leagues above us so it'll be quite the test. We beat National League South high flyers Dartford and Ebsfleet, which bodes well for next season if we manage promotion.
Looking at a few select pass maps, you can see how we've incorporated the 2-3-2-3/2-3-5 shape quickly and effectively.
Finally, another young lad who has broken through in recent games (and a cracking name to boot). I should also mention that I'm using the Southern League Cup as a chance to play as many teenagers as possible, and the five that started round 1 have seen us through.
Apologies for the lack of updates but it's been a heck of a week for one reason or another.
We're up! A lack of squad depth made it a little uncomfortable at times, but being able to concentrate on the league and not too many injuries second half of the season meant we were able to ride out any blips.
Unsurprisingly, my star men (Foulston, Lewington, Lucas, and to an extent Adelsbury and Grimes), experienced players running through our spine, saw us home. Some of my 17-year-olds such as Warwick and Clifton got to see a fair bit of first team action, and next season as they turn 18 that will be vital for their development.
We sold 82 shirts and our reputation has increased from half a star to one star (as has my own reputation).
We've got our youth intake, and it's promising enough with many of them being offered contracts. Filipe Afonso and Emmanuel Adjei probably stand out but there's a bit of everything in there. I'll update you soon on how our first team squad looks but in brief, we've no established keepers and barely any full backs, so watch this space.
Felipe Afonso
I'm a twit
There's the boy. He's remaining in my under 18s for now though.
Scary.
A couple of slight tweaks to my tactic:
-Mentality dropped to cautious
-DM moved up to support to negate the cautious mentality
-line of engagements dropped down to 'higher'
That's it for now, all taking into account the step up in level and lack of options in a couple of defensive areas.
Here we go...
We’ve got a couple of Portuguese restaurants and several peri peri joints in Taunton these days so Filipe will be just fine.
My 5th season with Llanelli is done, and we managed a top 3 finish for the 3rd year in a row, and with our highest points total so far. Unfortunately we bottled 2nd on the last day, conceding an 89th minute penalty to draw 1-1, and with TNS losing the Welsh Cup final on penalties, we had to go through the European Playoff. Thankfully we managed it with a couple of routine wins and confirmed our place in the Conference League for a 3rd season.
Don't be fooled by the 6 point gap, TNS are still as dominant as ever - they clinched the title with 4 games to spare before playing their reserves and losing the next 3. We managed to actually beat them twice this year, but losing 3 out of our 4 games with Bangor really hindered us.
Our Conference League run was impressive - we started with a fairly routine 2-0 aggregate win over HB of the Faroes, before being drawn against WSG Tirol, a professional Austrian team who had received significant investment and were paying a small fortune for a number of internationals in their squad. We were beaten 4-2 away (and we were lucky to get 2), and at half-time in the 2nd leg, they led 1-0 and the dream seemed to be over. But somehow we burst back into the tie with 3 2nd-half goals before the local boy Gwion James thumped in a winning penalty in extra time, sealing an incredible 6-5 aggregate win. The 3rd qualifying round against Cherno more Varna was somewhat of an anti-climax as they controlled possession in both legs and thoroughly deserved to progress, but our exploits earned us approximately £850k through the prize money and gate receipts.
And this is the group of players that did the job for us this season:
Our loanees were a step up in quality this season, and we've already agreed deals to bring Brümmer, Carey, Johns and Martins back for another season. Remi Bourigeaud was snapped up by Metz for £20k and they allowed us to loan him back for the season but ultimately, he was disappointing and ended up sitting on the bench for the majority of the year. We also brought in Matt Everitt and Danilo Orsi-Dadomo on free transfers throughout the season, and while Everitt has taken some time to gel with the team and tactic, Orsi-Dadomo was immediately influential with 9 goals in 11 games, ensuring we remained unbeaten throughout and had a really strong end to the season during the Championship Stage.
Finally, Gwion James. Our very own youth prospect just continues to improve and consistently perform, winning the Young Player of the Year award for the division and constantly chipping in with important goals and assists. But unfortunately, he only has a year left on his contract, and is refusing to enter talks, claiming that we don't have the quality in the squad (which is probably true). TNS have already been sniffing around and I'd be sick if I lost him to the current dominant force in Welsh football.
With the funds generated from our European run, I was able to push through some training facility upgrades and we FINALLY turned professional at the end of the season, which will hopefully really help with our fitness levels and development throughout the squads. I've managed to get most of the first team onto full time contracts whilst keeping wages fairly reasonable. Hopefully as the season goes on we can persuade James to sign a full-time contract - I'd be willing to break the wage structure to keep him here. Left-back is the main priority in the summer transfer window, and we already have a couple of centre-back options joining. Lastly, bad news from the Conference League 1st qualifying round draw - we've been given BATE Borisov, probably one of the strongest clubs to be drawn against and it'll be very tough to progress. A single round appearance is still good for £300k or so, but I'd love more to really improve the coaching and scouting available to us. Fingers crossed for another magical European night at Parc y Scarlets...
A quick update as we've reached the end of the regular season:
Better than expected. I'm genuinely not expecting or really fussed about going up; I'm more concerned with gradually blooding our youngsters, some of whom are now establishing themselves as first teamers.
:
A quick look at the youth intake for next season:
I'll go into more detail later but it isn't overly promising. I'm more concerned with last year's lot now reaching 18 and the importance of giving them more game time to aid their development.
You can see a slight tweak between my first XI and youth XI tactic. You'll also notice the lack of real options at full back means when the young ones play there I'm more or less being forced to play them on a defensive duty.
I'll give a more detailed update after the play-offs.
Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Billericay are stronger than us so no real surprise.
In terms of the squad, clearly Jay Foulston, Jared Lewington and Lee Lucas remain our key players. Foulston is only 22 and as long as we can keep hold of him, he'll help keep our defense solid with the teenagers around him. Lewington and Lucas are now both late twenties/pushing 30 so won't necessarily be in our long term plans, however they remain key for now. They're great pros and leaders for the others.
You might also notice I've made some amendments to the squad screen, including resetting the attribute threshold colours, so now it's the oranges we're looking out for in terms of good players at this level.
Clifton is my main breakthrough player. I have to play him as an attacking midfielder rather than a shadow striker, but he's good creatively and we'll possibly build our team around him in the future.
Fowler is quicker and more direct than Clifton, and when he plays as shadow striker the latter drops into central midfield.
Logan had some game time and will eventually replace Adelsbury in defensive midfield, although we do have a lad called Sibanda who I am eyeing up as a potential deeper-lying playmaker in the future.
Our first-choice keeper through necessity.
Not a lot to go on with my under-18s, but we'll see. Xavier Slack is good in the air and Scott Webber has pace.
I'm having a bit of a problem with Taunton. I lost two of my promising youngsters (Fowler and Sibanda) with seemingly nothing I could really do. We then lost our assistant manager. That would be okay if the young players were developing, but they're not really. Even the 18 year-olds that are regularly playing aren't really getting any better. All I can really see happening at the moment is I continue with my three or four star players as they gradually get older, and the young players become integrated into the side without really improving things. I can't increase the youth level or improve the training or youth facilities, and the board won't entertain the idea of turning professional.
That's all fair enough as it's Taunton and they're a part-time outfit with limited resources, but I'm in danger of just stagnating. The season is going okay in general and I'm seen as being untouchable, but I'm not really sure what the end game is. I've been linked with a couple of league sides and I'm considering changing tact slightly. It'll still be a youth academy challenge with no signings, but perhaps I'll need to move clubs at some point in order to progress things.
...
These were the two players we lost early in the season, shorty followed by our assistant manager.
...
However, in much more positive news...
A much more positive youth intake has left some grounds for optimism.
Hickinson is comfortably the best player to come through the youth setup since I joined and will go straight into the first team squad, and Fanning is a promising keeper (essential). Torniainen is a wild card but has plenty of pace.
We were very inconsistent this season and I had to do a lot of tweaks to the shape and personnel. It turned out our other young keeper was much better than the lad I'd had in the first team squad from the very beginning, so he shored things up. Also, I had to bite the bullet and do away with inverted wing backs as they just weren't working: not only are our full backs poor offensively, we ended up conceding a lot from crosses so I opted for regular full backs and inverted wingers towards the end of the season. This seemed to help our shape and it's an approach I'll probably use at the start of next season.
The usual suspects were the best performers, however Clifton has now firmly established himself as key member, despite his attributes not improving much.
And the next gen for a bit of fun...
San Félix have hit the jackpot.
Pogon Siedlce 2039/40 Season Update:
Transfers In:
He's a natural DM but he can play at CB, RB and CM. I have no idea why I ended up giving him such a fat wage as the deal was done a few seasons ago and we had to wait until he was 18 to join us.
I couldn't say no considering how cheap he was. He's done well for the second team so far but for some reason the manager has been playing him at RB.
Most of the time he's played at AMR for us and he's done fairly well. I think he could be a real talent.
I think he could be our next great Polish CM.
I'm buying too many wingers but the game just seems to keep producing bangers in that area.
We have an absolute beast at LB right now but fuck all depth there.
I think he's great but I don't think he's going to end up getting to his potential unless we can sort him out a loan deal to a Polish club next year.
Transfers Out:
This guy was the only meaningful transfer out. He was produced by us and I think he looks pretty good but his potential is seemingly quite low, had it been 4 stars I'd have kept him around.
League:
Our first invincible season and we're currently on a 63 game streak without losing. We set records for most points, most wins and most goals (145). Wisla also set a record for most points finishing second in large thanks to one of our players:
We sent him on loan there this year and he ended up as the league's top scorer (only because we rotate so much) with 26 in 32.
Cups:
Europe:
A shaky start to the campaign and we needed to avoid defeat to Lazio in the final game to go through which we thankfully did.
In the group stage this guy only scored 3 goals. This was due to some rotation and me playing him at AMR as an IF at times. In the knockouts he went batshit though.
Against Barca he scored all 4 of our goals, he also got one against PSG and another against United to help us through to the final.
Another 3 from Stanczyk but it wasn't enough. We dominated them especially in the first half:
And I thought we had it when Topalovic made it 4-2 in the 86th minute. Lemmens decided that wasn't the case though and he grabbed two late to send it to extra time. In ET they were far better than us but when we scored I thought it would be enough but this dickhead popped up again
The player I hate more than any other across all my FM saves. When penalties came around I feared for the worst as we only had 4 players with a penalty taking attribute of 10 or higher, this fear became reality:
Annoyingly too Nusret came to me a few days before angry that he wasn't starting enough games and he hit it right at the keeper. When Fournier had his penalty saved by Pahor I thought maybe we were going to win after all but then Ascacibar stepped up, a man who has only had a Polish passport for a few months and he smashed the ball out of the stadium.
I'm absolutely devastated.
Squad:
I have the Euros with France in a bit but I need some time after that CL final.
Mahow, can't you spoiler that stuff?
Shut up you fat slag.
Euro 2040:
Group Stage:
We drew Holland, Croatia and Bulgaria. We won all three games 3-1 against Holland, 1-0 against Croatia and 2-0 against Bulgaria:
Knockouts:
Against my old team who fired me after doing shit at the last Euros. I instantly resigned after the game as I wasn't keeping the job at all.
I've decided I'm taking a break from International football unless the Poland job comes up again. I did think it might come up after this as the Italian job was avilable and I thought Pirlo (managing Poland) would apply and get it but that didn't happen.
My Taunton adventure is over. I think I mentioned it the other week, but too much fun was being sucked out of the game with not enough reward to make it worthy. The Youth Academy Challenge is a great idea, but when you're a part-time side punching above their weight yet I can't turn professional, do anything meaningful in training and the board won't/can't even contemplate upgrading training facilities, youth facilities or youth recruitment levels, then it all becomes a bit...pointless.
I was doing okay again in my third or fourth season (mid-table despite predicting bottom), but all that was happening was my best players remained my best players, but they were getting a year older. I had one good youngster from the beginning who had made himself a first-teamer, and he'd improved certain attributes through individual training, but regressed in others. I looked at the screenshots comparing him at 17 and 19 years old and he wasn't really any better overall. The same for Afonso (the Portuguese striker). I had one good youth player from the latest intake who had made himself a first-teamer, but it was only going to be the same story. My best hope was that I'd get one youngster through each season and after five or six years they'd make up most of my first team, as the older players retired or left. Then we'd have (at best) a competitive National League South team. It just didn't seem worth the time and effort.
On the flip side, I do like the theory, it just needs to be at the right club, so I decided I'd keep going and hopefully find a more suitable club. What I like most about it is really getting to know your small squad of players, and tying to eke out the best of them. I was being linked with League 2 jobs by this stage and had three interview - Leyton Orient, Northampton and Morecambe (I think). Northampton offered me the job, so I moved on.
That's the current table, as I forgot to take a screenshot when I arrived, but here's my results so far:
I tried something a little bit different for me - a 4-2-3-1, supposedly a Mourinho-inspired tactic. It was one I downloaded as I was doing a bit of experimenting.
It seemed okay at first, but then we took two absolute batterings away from home and I quickly remembered when I'm so fond of the 4-3-3 with a DM. In the Cheltenham game, they had an attacking midfielder behind two strikers, and the AM had free reign whilst our centre backs marked their strikers. In fairness, I played all my back-ups too so it wasn't just down to the tactic. The squad are absolutely shattered and we're playing twice a week, and so far that's probably been the biggest challenge.
So I reverted back to the tried and trusted, and created my own 4-3-3 from scratch. I've created two home and two away and will happily go into detail on why I've settled on these roles and duties if anyone is interested.
In brief, it's a mixture of playing my favourite shape, trying to get some verticality into the side, trying to gradually train the players up to become better technically and also knowing what works well within the game in general. My ultimate goal is to play some kind of total football which is not really possible for a lower league side, but it's something to work towards. On that note, my other save, which is my own version of the Ultimate Challenge, has Sporting playing this version of Johan Cruyff's 3-4-3 diamond:
Absolutely great fun, but not for the faint hearted. Also not my tactic. You need to be one of the better teams in your league and you need all round good footballers, so it's something I'm going to look to emulate on a more manageable level at an average club over time.
If I wanted to make TTH on FM23 would you lot bother filling in the template?
I'm a twit
Got back into this during El Covid strike 3. Lucca is lol
Pogon Siedlce 2040/41 Season Update:
Transfers In:
Our only signing this year at £525k, I don't think he's going to be anything special but he was cheap and I thought I'd take a punt.
Transfers Out:
Three big transfers left the team, here they are:
I had thought about selling him for a couple of seasons but I kept putting it off as I do like him a lot, however he only had 2 years left on his contract and I didn't think I'd be able to make him happy enough to sign a new contract.
Signed him from Man United for £425k and he never really kicked on so I decided to sell him, I was stunned to get so much.
I loved Nusret but he has massively pissed me off lately. He missed some good chances in the Champions League final last year and he missed his penalty, in a Champions League group game he missed this chance:
And I decided I had enough. We also have a 50% next sale clause on him so we're going to make a lot more I feel.
League:
Two invincible seasons in a row now and we're on a 97 game unbeaten streak.
Cups:
Easy enough, just a shame we pumped our second team as I had hoped they'd put up more of a fight.
Champions League:
We finished second in the group, we only needed a point against Lorient but we kept missing good chances (see Nusret) and we lost an easy game. However we got an easy tie in the next round before being drawn against our old nemesis.
I thought THE CURSE was done as we beat them last year but it's back.
We were all over them before the red card and even then we were controlling the game until they got a jammy equaliser with the last kick of the game.
We dominated them again but we missed good chances and they did not.
Angry to have been dumped out so early after getting to the final and being a minute away from winning last year. Poland are moving up to 6th in coefficients now though so a second Polish side join us in the groups along with another getting the chance to qualify.
Squad:
Nino Blazic has turned into an absolute don:
He splits his time between CM and ST (where he has gotten more minutes since Nusret left) and he performs incredibly in both positions. I think the team as a whole is really well rounded and I don't think we have many holes.
An absolute god tier finisher would be the only thing we're missing.
How are the other Polish sides faring in Europe?
The year just gone Wisla lost in the Champions League qualifying stages and ended up in a Europa League group with Napoli, Villarreal and Ludogrets where they finished 4th.
Legia finished third in their Europa league group with Southampton, PAOK and Viktoria Plzen. They then beat Sporting (6-5 on aggregate having lost the first leg 5-3) in the first knockout in the Conference but then lost 3-2 to Besiktas in the next round.
Rakow lost to Dynamo Kyiv in their Conference qualifier.
Pogon beat Kalmar but then lost to Cluj in their qualifiers.
Wisla did really well in the previous two seasons though. In 38/39 they got to the Europa League second knockout round (losing to AC Milan but they did beat Leverkusen). They were originally in the Champions League and finished third in a group of Man United, Barcelona and Atalanta.
In 39/40 Wisla lost to Lyon in the last qualifying round of the Champions League but they then got all the way to the Quarter final of the Europa League losing to Lazio.
Anyone ever had any experience with this bloke? I'm on FM Touch '21 still but I've never seen a scout give a 100 before.
He's not a newgen.
Never used him before but I've seen some YouTubers talk about and use him. Meant to be shit hot.
I've parked my Northampton/Youth Academy challenge for now as I was doing some tactic testing with Norwich and realised I wanted to do a proper save with them. I'm planning on it being my 'Ultimate Challenge' save, where you need to try and win the top division and main cup in ten different leagues (plus a certain amount of Champions League or equivalent wins). I've loaded the ten main European leagues so that'll be my aim.
I quickly settled on the below tactics:
The top one is quite overpowering as anyone who has played three strikers may know. The team instructions are pretty set in stone bar a couple, as is the mentality which I'll explain. Initially I was playing with wing backs on attack and it was devastating, however there was a pretty repetitive cycle of the wing backs getting to the byline, firing in crosses and my attackers or midfielders piling onto the end of them. I made a few switches to turn it into a much more possession based tactic, with wing backs on support without taking more risks or dribbling more, ball playing defenders becoming central defenders taking fewer risks and not dribbling, and all the risky passing and dribbling left up to the mezzalas and forwards. The attacking mentality means that even the defensive triangle all have a balanced mentality, allowing for much more fluidity in the play. It works fantastically.
Also, the two slightly different shapes allow for pretty much any type of player. When creating 4-3-3s I've often struggled to place advanced playmaker types, however they can now be trained up as False Nines and they are great at roaming around that attacking midfield strata, linking play and joining attacks. They can even play as mezzalas if necessary as they're quite creative too, but I still see them more as runners. The second shape allows for inside forwards or inverted wingers to flourish, and if we had any out and out wingers who needed to play they could easily be accommodated, shifting the wing back to an inverted role. Defensive midfielders could be ball winners, roaming playmakers or deep-lying playmakers with just small tweaks.
We were expected to do well so winning the league wasn't surprising, but it was done at a canter. I'm trying to now build around my younger players for the Premier League and early signs are that we won't have too many problems. The biggest issue comes with the first shape against bigger sides, particularly those with attacking full backs as we get overloaded as you can imagine, and concede a fair few. I'll need to switch to the second shape at times and also shift to a positive mentality.
After what must be about 8 years I finally bought a new laptop and it runs FM like shit off a shovel, so FM22 has been purchased.
Played a couple of saves so far - an Inter and Milan one with a mate online (which works very well I have to say) and dabbled with Newcastle last night until fifteen players in my squad decided to ask to leave on loan as we were approaching the January transfer window. Note to self to change their squad statuses the next time I try that.
But the game I really wanted to do will start tonight, which is with Norwich, my hometown club. I thought about targets, winning the league, champions league etc. But in the end I decided on one thing and therefore the target for this game will be to bring Kylian Mbappe to East Anglia. I suspect I'll have to accomplish a fair bit on the way to do it, or just still be in the Premier League fifteen seasons in...
Good stuff. Looking forward to the updates.