Football Manager 2022

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

World Cup 2042:

Group Stage:



No problems here as you'd expect.

Second Round:



Probably should have rotated a bit more for this game as it was always going to be easy and stamina was a bit of a problem later.

Third Round:



It was a bit nervy when Mercier got sent off but we played well and saw it out.

Quarter-Final:



I thought we were done when England went 2 up as our players were tired , thankfully our front two of Lemmens and Ceyssens had too much quality.

Semi-Final:



Never in doubt, it was nice to face a side I managed in FM19 IIRC.

Final:



We dominated them throughout but our finishing which had been our strength throughout but we thankfully got a goal and it was done.

Squad:



Also, Lemmens finished second in the golden boot and was instrumental in winning it for us. He was once an enemy of mine:



and whilst I can never forget I can forgive. Leo, we're cool.



Tree:



Career Stats:

[Yevrah]

That win percentage.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Pogon Siedlce: The SIMMED YEAR:

The early favourite to replace me was Marko Arnautovic, I'd like to think I marched into the boardroom and said no fucking chance. Regardless of how it went down, Arnautovic took the Leeds job. The other favourite was Anthony Briancon but he decided to take the French national job. So in came Sergio Alvarez:



He currently plays for Eibar where he retired in my save in 2027 before taking on Manager jobs at Extremadura (great name), Getafe, Marseille, Sheffield United, Celtic and Hoffeinheim before taking the big Siedlce job.



Obviously he won the league (and cups) easily. However the team only scored 112 goals to our 152 and conceded 10 to our 9, he ruined my team.

Europe:



Not only did he fuck the final but he also lost our undefeated streak which was just 10 days away from hitting 2 years.

In terms of transfer he had a £300m WARCHEST and he sold £150m worth of my youngsters, all of which were sold far too cheapily. Did he spend? Did he fuck, he bought a 32 year old French backup Goalkeeper.

Clearly I am better than Sergio Alvarez. Although the cunt did have a 92% win percentage which is annoying.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Pogon Siedlce The Simmed Year 2: Electric Boogaloo:



Simple again with wins in all domestic games yet again which leaves the club record looking like:



The date right now is 29th May 2044, the last time we drew a game was the 30th November 2040 and our last loss was 21st August 2038. Lol.

In Europe how did Sergio Alvarez fare:



Badly and I'm stunned he survived to live the tale and is still considered very secure. The club were asking for semi-finals the year I left and I know the year after they wanted finals from now on.

Did he spend? Yes, he actually spent £237m but this was spread on 7 players with the biggest fee spent being £48m on Omar Rachedi who barely played (only 8 starts for him) in a position, CM, where the club is still stacked.

He also sold £297m worth of talent which leaves the club balance still at £375m.

Here's the squad:



It's a shame my PC isn't a lot quicker or I had a second PC as I'd like to sim another 10+ years but we will leave it here.

Dobranoc Siedlce.

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 7 - 2027/28 - End of Season Update and Season 8 Summer Window

So our chances of 4th went down to the final day, but they were pretty slim. As it turned out we didn't even do what we needed to so Europa League it is:



Finances and Facilities



The 5th placed finish gave us our biggest budget to date, but the best news was this:



Football is coming back to Africa! (In 2031).

Transfers



Wouldn't normally touch a player with that determination but at £500k from Peru and with bucketloads of potential I figured it was worth the risk.



Can't currently play this chap due to foreigner restrictions so out on loan he went, but at £2.5m from Atletico Mineiro he seemed like a bit of a bargain.



Out of favour at Man City another bargain at £1.2m.



On loan from Southampton with a future fee clause of £16m, which I won't be opting to exercise as he is always fucking injured.



£4.2m from Pec Zwolle.

I have a couple of first team players who're spoiling for a move and won't extend their contracts which expire in 2030 so it might be time to cash in as I need some more weight in the transfer market to push on at this point I feel.

[Manc]

I wonder where they plucked 33,000 from.

[Yevrah]

Does seem a bit high, we've been averaging 13,000 at Almeria, but then our fans do need to take a boat to get there.

[igor_balis]

Awesome effort @Sir Andy Mahowry.

Which database edit you using for the other save?

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I believe it's called "England Realistic".

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 8 - 2028/29 - Mid Season Update



Bar an absolutely horrific spell in September we've been pretty on it all season and Champions League qualification now looks a realistic target.



We're in the last 64 of the Spanish Cup against some wine makers and 2nd place in our Europa League group sees us play a loaded Monaco in the last 16 of that tournament.

[Ameen1190]

Beta is no more.

[wullie]

https://www.footballmanager.com/game...l-manager-2023

In news I wasn't expecting they're doing a 2023 version, it's on PS5 this time which might tempt me to switch if only for match highlights that aren't in stop motion.

[Baz]

https://www.footballmanager.com/game...l-manager-2023

In news I wasn't expecting they're doing a 2023 version, it's on PS5 this time which might tempt me to switch if only for match highlights that aren't in stop motion.

I had £11.23 in my steam account from selling those trading cards (who buys those?!) so just preordered for less than £25. Cool.

Another reminder to join the TTH team if you haven’t already.

[CJay]

I might actually play Touch via Apple Arcade on my iPad this year. Pretty cool to have access basically for nothing.

[Clunge]

Glad Touch is back in a more playable format.

[Manc]

What's the consensus when it comes to player development? Is it best to farm them out on loan where they'll get minutes or keep them in house and focus on mentoring and training.

[Giggles]

Touch

[Yevrah]

What's the consensus when it comes to player development? Is it best to farm them out on loan where they'll get minutes or keep them in house and focus on mentoring and training.

For me at Melilla and my awful facilities it definitely seemed better loaning them, but I’d be curious to hear the thoughts of others.

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 8 - 2028/29 - THE RUN IN

In the light of the very sad news this evening I thought long and hard about postponing the Melilla save, but probably unlike real football this show will continue.



This is what's happened since January and in a nutshell, we suffered with all the games. With players knackered left right and centre we had little chance against 3rd place in their Champions League group Monaco and the relentless Valencia while also trying to push for the top four. Still, now we're out of all that we have ten games to go and this is how the league sits:



Two points to claw back but on the plus side and for the first time since I've started checking this stuff we have a better record vs. Valencia over the two games against them that we've already played, so two points is all we need.

Then, in what might be the biggest thing to happen to this club, this chap is the subject of a straight up cash money bid of £42m from Man Utd.



His contract expires in just over a year and he wants to move to a bigger club and with that sort of money (hopefully combined with CL football) it might be the catalyst we need to push on and establish ourselves as the number three club in Spain.

[Yevrah]

It is on!

[Yevrah]

And it is done...

[John Arne]

And it is done...

[Jimmy Floyd]

Have Atletico Madrid re-appointed Ron Atkinson, or what?

[Yevrah]

Simeone left in 2022 for Man Utd and while Vivas had a decent stint for 3 or 4 years it's all gone to absolute shite after that.



They've still got some amazing players, including Joao Felix, so I would love them to finally go down.

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 9 - 2029/30 - Summer Window Update

Fresh from a 4th place finish and our first Champions League qualification, Joao Alves departed for Man Utd for £42m and in addition Jerry Lewis (who we'd only signed 12 months ago) also left for £8.25m. I didn't want to lose him but as the season wore on it became clear that he, and there's really only one way to put this, was a cunt. Some English clubs were interested and did make bids, but in a petty act of revenge for all his moaning and fuckwittery I rejected all of those and sent him to Tijuana in Mexico instead. Have fun in that footballing graveyard!

This also happened with the tv money too.



Which is about £5m more than previous seasons, suggesting that LaLiga tv money might finally be dynamic.

Despite over £50m coming and CL qualification the board still only gave us £37m to spend in the window, which is prudent as fuck but still represents nearly four times as much as we've ever had to spend in a window before. In came:



£7.25m from Genoa. We had him on loan a couple of years ago so he already speaks fluent Spanish and goes in as first choice at right back. Nowhere near as good going forward as Alves but much better defensively.



At £13.5m from Sporting Lisbon, Bessa becomes our record signing. Probably good enough for the first team now, but I'll rotate him with Toni Lato who still has a fair bit to offer.



I tried to buy Gila last season but he opted for Betis instead. 12 months later and £6.75m I finally have a player with exceptional leadership, who goes straight in as captain.



Very excited about this one. £4.7m from River Plate, his estimated value increased tenfold as soon as we signed him. Out on loan for this season due to the 3 forriner limit and because I'd rather he played a shitload of football, but big things expected within a year or two.

And finally on the player movements front, a moment please for Jose Antonio Gonzalez.



Gonzalez was the last original Melilla player we had left and with his contract up and his stats frankly far too shit for this level it was time to let the club captain of eight years go.



He's seen it all since the start and never once let us down, playing an instrumental role in getting us out of the basement of Spanish football and then again when we made LaLiga. Legend, well Icon according to the club info screen.

I've played a few league games, but I'll update those when we reach the winter break. But until I do, the Champions League Group Stage draw has also been made:



A horrible group, but I guess to be expected given our coefficient is awful and we were 4th seeds. It's imperative we somehow finish at least 3rd in this group to get that up.

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 9 - 2029/30 - Mid Season Update



Horrible. Just horrible. Things were going fairly well to start then I rotated the entire first team against Leganes to rest players for the game away at Sporting. We were humped and then slid into the worst run of form I've seen in this game so far.



Mid-table and out of Europe altogether. Might take a break from this save for a bit, feels like it's needed.

[igor_balis]

Started my second season with livorno, newly promoted to serie D, pissed out of my head last night when I got home. You'd think I'd have learnt by now. Wonky 3-5-2 has us, league favourites, on one point from 9. Nice one, drunk Igor.

[Yevrah]

I have a question...

Is there a way I can change a setting to force matches in certain competitions to appear when I hit continue? For example the World Cup.

[Clunge]

Isn't that in the screen flow settings?

[Yevrah]

Thanks Clunge, that is it!

I couldn't remember what it was called and swear it didn't used to be in preferences.

[ScousePig]

I usually have the World Cup and European Championships on a screen flow every two days during the competitions, just so that they don't bypass me competely.

...

In the absence of a Melilla update, I'll jump in with my Atletico update. If you remember, I'd decided to give the experienced heads a crack at the title, as there were many fan favourites still playing there and I felt they could probably get some silverware.



And there it is. A clean sweep (of important trophies) and it's mission accomplished in Spain.



The only real challenge was going to be whether we could oust two dominating sides - I never doubted we'd get a lot of points, but Real Madrid and Barcelona can be pretty unstoppable too. Indeed, Real went the whole season unbeaten before losing their last two after we'd secured the league.







This felt like quite a pivotal moment as Liverpool were completely dominant in Europe, and we swatted them aside in this match. At some point during the season, Klopp was given his marching orders and Steven Gerrard took over an ageing side.





Winning the Copa Del Rey was lovely as the cups can be tricky, and as you know my goal is to win the league and cup in each of the top leagues in Europe.









Lovely.

Some records:









Lots of records broken, and below is my main man Thomas Lemar, and my one signing of the season. It was a mixed bag from Kaio Jorge, who is on about a par with my only other striker who was already at the club.





...

Now for the negatives and the future. I need to improve how I handle older players and their contracts. After deciding to keep hold of a number of 30+ players to have a crack at the title, I'm now losing many of them. Marcos Llorente, Rodrigo De Paul, Timothy Castagne, Jose Gimenez and Ivo Grbic are all leaving on a free transfer. Koke is 34 and wants about £250k a week so he might be going too. Long story short, the squad will need an overhaul which leaves me in a bit of a dilemma. As I've completed what I set out to in Spain, the natural inclination is to move on. However, I don't want to feel like I'm leaving them in the shit, so I'm tempted to stick it out another season and begin some kind of rebuild. Also, there are no appealing jobs open at the moment anyway.

What I don't particularly want is to get to November, something come up and me leaving mid-season again. Watch this space...

[Manc]

Kaiserslautern - 2023/24



Back-to-Back

I had a sense the 2. Liga would be lacking quality given how stacked the Bundesliga was, but it never crossed my mine that we'd be capable of promotion let alone lifting the title. Not only did we win our second title in two seasons, we did so at a canter finishing an impressive nine points ahead of second placed Dusseldorf. Promotion ensured we were only the ninth team in German football history to advance from the third tier to the promised land in consecutive seasons. Remarkable. Perhaps more notable is how long we spent at the summit of the table with the only real wobble arriving after the winter break. With ten games to spare both Nurnberg & Hansa Rostock began to breath down our necks, but ultimately both sides struggled to keep pace and we earned promotion with three games to spare. We would be crowned champions the very next week and I can only assume the celebrations got out of hand as we were dismantled the following Saturday 5-0 away in Bielefeld.


The Runners and Riders

Credit must go to the board who backed me financially with a £6.5m transfer budget and £70k increase in the weekly wage budget, albeit with the aim of staying in the division. The recruitment philosophy hadn't wavered as once again we were looking at home grown talents who ideally still had plenty of room for improvement. Munich was the first stop as we secured bosman deals for Nicolas Kuhn (formerly of Ajax) & complete unknown Jamie Lawrence. At just 20 years of age Lawrence would become the best defender in the league, and despite a slow start Kuhn would grow into the role of a shadow striker and earned a contract extension in the process. Another player poached from the Bayern academy was central midfielder Torben Rhein who had very little involvement, but is very much one to watch. Sticking with the middle of the pitch and next up was Jens Castrop. Half German, half Korean, my scouts were incredibly keen for me to sign this player and it's worked out very well so far playing every minute of every game. He is the perfect 6 in a midfield that has a lot of moving parts. Bolstering the ranks were Felix Udokhai from Augsburg & Ansgar Knauff from Dortmund for a combined £1.8m. Steal. Last but not least is our new No1 Christian Fruchtl (also from Bayern) who looked unbeatable at times and really took the team to the next level.

With the scouting operation now in full flow, alongside those listed above we began to go fishing in the newgen/regen (which one is it?) market with some success. The ultimate idea being to have a pipeline of talent on hand when inevitably our first team players are poached by the giants of European football.

Ain't no party like a Kaiserslautern party

Just a quick word for the fans who I have largely ignored in these write ups. In the third tier we were averaging around 19,000 per home game (we are massive), which last season jumped up to a whopping 27,000 or so. In the one home game I have played in the top flight thus far, the Fritz-Walter Stadion was almost sold out as we hit 47,846, a figure which puts us right in amongst the likes of Frankfurt, Koln & Gladbach. Financially in the long term at least this should give us a a big advantage over a lot of lower established Bundesliga teams, but we first we had to stay in the division.

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 9 - 2029/30 - End of Season Update

After a bit of a break we're back to finish off our 9th season at Melilla. The first half of the season was a bit shit as we crashed out of Europe in our debut Champions League season (admittedly from a tough group), but the second half was much better:



We seem to cope much better with only one game a week and secured our second trip to the Champions League. It's vital we at least finish third in the group to get that coefficient up which is still dogshit and sees us outside the top 100 ranked teams in Europe.



Other thing to note is what Jurgen Klopp is doing at Real, which is frankly ridiculous. I can't ever recall seeing a CPU managed team be that dominant in the league.

Nearly forgot that in the January window we did some business. This chap (whinging fuck) left for Benfica for £40m:



And we brought in another winger for £13.25m minimum release from Brazil.



Onto the summer window in advance of our 10th season.

[Gray Fox]

6 points dropped across an entire season. +112 goal difference too

Who is spanking in all of these goals for them?

[Yevrah]

This fucker.



38 in 37 league games last season.

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 10 - 2030/31 - Summer Window

Season ended and budgets were set as follows:



Before I did any transfers I wanted to finally sort my staff out, looking for at least 4.5 stars in every training category, which we achieved. Out went Edgar Davids, Aguero and a few others. As a result we needed a new assistant manager and there was only one man for the job.

Toggle Spoiler

Oh yes.

We also brought this guy in as our first Head of Youth Development:



Transfers In

Only 3 signings this summer:



£3.5m from Olympiakos.



£750k from Cosenza.



£10.5m from relegated Schalke.

Results



Three things to mention here.

On the plus side this is our first season in Europe where our league form hasn't gone to shit while playing in it, suggesting we might finally have the squad depth to cope.
On the downside we were awful in Europe, losing home and away to Rangers and with our only points picked up in the win over Lazio. Disastrous stuff for the coefficient and genuinely pissed me off.
The Elche game was a disgrace.



Klopp is still Klopping but we genuinely could be in with a chance of our first ever second place finish, or at least third place, which would still be our best. With the window approaching I need a better goalkeeper and a target man to replace Uldrikis whose rapidly declining physicals are beginning to cause a problem, but (the European aberration aside) it genuinely feels like we're getting close to having a team that could challenge for the title, especially if/when Klopp retires.

[Clunge]

Real problems at the bottom of the league.

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 10 - 2030/31 - End of Season Update

Starting with the January window we had our busiest one yet:



Revilla joined on an 18 month loan originally but our record sale, Daniel Jimenez allowed us to set up the transfer for Revilla for £15.25m when his loan ends. Uldrikis was an icon of the club but at 33 it was time for him to part ways, leaving behind him a legacy of 85 La Liga goals in 133 games.

Players in:







Results



Revilla was a cracking success, with 16 goals in 19 games and while we had a bit of a limp finish the final day of the season win saw us finish in an all time high of 3rd.

[Clunge]

So from where are we pre-ordering FM23 cheapest? I can see it for £30.99 (Steam) via CDKeys, can anyone do better than that?

[7om]

@Baz

[Giggles]

Hopefully won’t get stung for it at all if it’s on Apple Arcade.

[SincereTheRebel]

https://www.footballmanager.com/game...l-manager-2023

In news I wasn't expecting they're doing a 2023 version, it's on PS5 this time which might tempt me to switch if only for match highlights that aren't in stop motion.

I wast planning on getting 2023 as I am cool with 2022, but I think i will run it on console.

[igor_balis]

Console fm sounds like the worst thing ever

[Shindig]

I've lived it back when they put one of them on the 360. Very clumsy but you can do it.

[SincereTheRebel]

Console FM sounds like the worst thing ever

I agree, but im prepared to give it a go.

[Giggles]

Surely any modern console can take a bluetooth keyboard.

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 11 - 2031/32 - Season Review

Full season update this time, having hammered through the whole thing before being arsed to post an update. It was pretty crap overall, but did have three things that made it bearable.

First one was we are finally back in (the continent of) Africa!



Here's how the facilities now look, we're starting to smell like a proper club.



And talking of proper club, with over £100m in the bank the club have seriously released the purse strings.



Key Transfers



£6.5m from Brugge, he played the season as back up left back.



£13m from Rapid Vienna, played a fair few games.



Joined on a free, spent the season on loan at Toledo.



At £300k he looks like an absolute bargain and his value has shot up while he's been ripping it up at Rayo Vallecano.

And then in the January window I brought in these two:



Been tracking him for a couple of seasons after he made the German U-19 team at 16 years old and when he finally became interested snapped him up for £10m from Stuttgart. Couldn't get him out on loan but he got 3 goals in the league coming off the bench.



£2.7m from Sociedad. Couldn't get him out on loan either, but he did ok in the few appearances he made.

Results



After crashing out of the CL in 4th place in each of the two previous seasons we really needed a decent showing to get that coefficient up and we finally got one. In fact, we were 30 seconds away from making the knockout rounds against Juve when the ref blew for a push in the box to send us into the Europa League. Gutting, but another chance to boost the coefficient.



Which we did until we ran into Spurs in shocking form and in an injury crisis. Still, I'll take Europe as the second decent thing this season. A look at the coefficient table suggests we should now be in the top 50 come the next season.



A decent season turned shite in the last few months and we limped to 6th. However and due to Spain losing its place in the top 4 European Leagues (Melilla playing no small part in that..) that means we qualify for the Europa Conference League and I'll take that as the third decent thing this season as it's an excellent chance to get us further up those European rankings.

Next Season

We need to push on and win something, so if we can't do that in the Europa Conference League this season I'll view that as a disappointment. I have some decent squad depth now and some cracking youngsters, but need to be spending the funds this window on players who'll increase the first team quality. Priority number 1 is a new keeper as Vitek, as good as he's been for 326 games, is not the man to take us any further.

[Manc]

Nice to see Oviedo flirting with the big leagues.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Ashington Town 2021/22 Season Update:

League:




Shocking start but we managed to turn the corner in February and after the Newcastle Benfield game we were top on goal difference. Then we fucked it up against Consett.

In the final game we had to win and we needed Billingham Town (who were top) to lose as well as West Auckland Town failing to win. Billingham were losing and West Auckland were drawing while we were winning. It was looking good and then in the 79th minute West Auckland scored to take the league from us.



Playoffs:

Spoiler in the above image but oh well.



In the semi-final we enacted revenge on Consett.



Sadly in the final we completely fucked it.

Cups:



Board were happy with the FA Cup showing (they didn't care about the competition) and the Northern League where they wanted us to make the quarters. They were not happy with us failing in the FA Vase though as they wanted us to reach the fifth round.

Squad:



We've done a lot of wheeling and dealing (I'm a fucking football manager) and we needed to. The squad could not score and for a long time our top goalscorer was our best CB Aziakonou (sadly he left in March for Blyth Spartans) and the signings of Lewis Martin and Darren Brannigan helped massively.

I've got a lot of shit in the squad as I was hoovering up any talent early in scouting reports in the hopes of getting them ahead of other teams and most of the time it didn't work out as they were a lot worse than the initial report. Playing with hidden attributes isn't easy.

Not sure if I'll stay or jump ship to another team yet.

[Yevrah]

Melilla Season 12 - 2032/33 - Mid Season Update

Into our 12th season and the monies just keep getting better.



Which led to our biggest budget yet:



Tried to buy a couple of first teamers but lost out to Man City so settled on the following three players to join.



Always on the look out for African players due to the situation the club are in and this absolute bargain at £50k from King Faisal is the latest to join.



Released by Barca and snapped up by us.



Really wanted a quality keeper but sadly this chap was the best we could get at £9m from Palmeiras. He has a fair bit of potential according to our chancer HoYD but he's hardly what I imagined I'd end up with.

So with the pre-season transfers done I settled down for the new season and was very surprised when this happened.

Toggle Spoiler

Naturally we jumped at the chance.

Results



The Conference league has been great fun so far as it seems no matter who I play from our squad, we win. It's also doing wonders for the co-efficient and already has us close to the top 30 looking at next season's rankings



Our league form has been blighted with inconsistency, which is very annoying as for the first time in ages Real Madrid are having a shocker by their standards.



Still, with only a 5 point gap to bridge I'm not ruling us out yet. So desperately want a trophy this season.

England

With a World Cup in two years time it was up to the Nations League to fill the calendar for the rest of this year.



The loss to Italy was ridiculous, but nonetheless we topped the group by 5 points and will play either Ukraine, France or Portugal in next summer's semi-finals.