The Football Manager 2017 Thread - Sponsored by Brexit.

[Dark Soldier]

Game is running like shit off a shovel after new patch

Also:



Jesus Christ this formation.



JESUS CHRIST THIS FORMATION

[phonics]

CD-Keys is proper dodgy just FYI.

They have a rep for using stolen credit cards to buy CD-keys that they then sell on the website. Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole but a lot of people seem happy to.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

They're fine.

I've been using them for years now.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Fuck it:



£21m possibly rising to £31m.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

My 4th choice striker is either going to Madrid or Bayern on loan for £250k a month to be first choice.

I've broken the game.

[Disco]

They're fine.

I've been using them for years now.

They're demonstrably not fine, it's just not you getting scammed.

[Giggles]

CD-Keys is proper dodgy just FYI.

They have a rep for using stolen credit cards to buy CD-keys that they then sell on the website. Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole but a lot of people seem happy to.

I use the Revolut card for all online purchases now, so I get a notification on my phone if it's used and can turn off ATM transactions and online purchases when not using it.

[Adamski]

I use the Revolut card for all online purchases now, so I get a notification on my phone if it's used and can turn off ATM transactions and online purchases when not using it.

Ideal for SportsMania...if I hadn't just got my 6 month sub

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

They're demonstrably not fine, it's just not you getting scammed.

I'm fine with it.

My trainers also feel better having been softened with 6 year old's tears.

[Adamski]

And your cock.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

You're mistaking me for Magic.

[John]

Magic's cock certainly wouldn't be softened by children weeping.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

[Giggles]

Ideal for SportsMania...if I hadn't just got my 6 month sub

Funny enough I just had to do it there for SportsMania myself as my month had run out. Done the 6 now, took fucking ages to let me log back in again.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I have no idea how you lot do so well at this. Results since I took over at Colchester:

Toggle Spoiler

We've probably been second best in two of those games, Plymouth and one of the draws. I made a couple of defensive tweaks which have largely worked, but now we don't ever score. Just a constant inability to take our chances, while the opposition are absolutely lethal with theirs.

Utterly infuriating.

[Dark Soldier]

Treble won with Bury. This formation seems even stronger after the patch

FA Cup final was a penalty shoot-out, CL final was a 116th minute winner in a 2-1 win over Leverkusen. We went down to 10 men after 60 minutes and were very fucking lucky to win it.

[Manc]

The fun is in the pain, Jim.

I'm fully convinced I'll be playing Europa League football for the next decade. Tremendous.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

This geezer is actually interested in joining

£105m release clause so I'd have to sell our stadium and every single player probably.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Christ.

I don't know if I can reject that.

[John]

Less than an hour between the realisation that you need a hundred million quid and a hundred million bid coming in.

[Raoul Duke]

I don't think so - that's proper bonkers. You'll fairly easily clear £100m from that.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Less than an hour between the realisation that you need a hundred million quid and a hundred million bid coming in.

He wants £140k a week in wages.

Despite having £831k a week free I can only offer £79k a week.

Stupid fucking board.

[Mazuuurk]

I signed Griezmann for 109 Million

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

The outs:



A lot there. But more was spent :\





I've been after him since he popped out of Swansea in 2024/25 and he finally relented. Swansea seem to be the best at producing talent in England in my save right now so I'm checking them a lot at the production date.



Didn't think I'd ever get him but after the update I've cracked Germany and he came over. I like that he can also play behind the striker so he can fill in if Van Den Boogaard gets injured despite all my other replacements being out on loan.



The big one, it didn't look like it was going to happen but then Atletico came in and took Martin so I snapped. Stupidly I made an offer for him instead of scouting him to see his wage demands. When I approached him for real I couldn't get him any closer to the £140k.

2 goals and 2 assists in his debut so he's already started to pay it off.

-£25m in the bank \0/.

I could do with the extra instalments from the Martin deal for appearances happening sooner rather than later.

Here's my Champions League group:



A special European night at Anfield and taking on Klinsmann's AC Milan. Fucking woof, I'm loving it.

[Shindig]

I've been after him since he popped out of Swansea in 2024/25 and he finally relented. Swansea seem to be the best at producing talent in England in my save right now ...

Read that one back to yourself, mate.

[John]

I'd be sweating like Magic at a funfair if I was twenty five million in the red. With Zagreb I had eighty million in the bank and was still wincing every time my accounts popped up with a million quid monthly loss.

[Dark Soldier]

Getting a new stadium

£131mil cost, 45k capacity. Named after a certified Bury legend. Welcome, the Lowe Arena!

I'll be funding over half of it with the sale of this lad to United for £71mil if he accepts the contract. He scored my winner in the CL final, but I've three strikers ahead of him and to be honest he's fifth choice:



He's genuinely going to be a megastar but we need that money. We've got £170mil in the bank but pre-stadum purchase we're roughly £4mil a month in the red so with that on top I'd probably be bankrupting us come 2024.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Read that one back to yourself, mate.

The English league system.

I'd be sweating like Magic at a funfair if I was twenty five million in the red. With Zagreb I had eighty million in the bank and was still wincing every time my accounts popped up with a million quid monthly loss.

I'm used to it.

[Mazuuurk]

Getting a new stadium

£131mil cost, 45k capacity. Named after a certified Bury legend. Welcome, the Lowe Arena!

I'll be funding over half of it with the sale of this lad to United for £71mil if he accepts the contract. He scored my winner in the CL final, but I've three strikers ahead of him and to be honest he's fifth choice:



He's genuinely going to be a megastar but we need that money. We've got £170mil in the bank but pre-stadum purchase we're roughly £4mil a month in the red so with that on top I'd probably be bankrupting us come 2024.

Your stadium is just a little over what I paid for Griezmann

Which I suppose is symptomatic of how the real world works. I wonder how large a stadium you could have built for the money United paid for Pogba.

[Mazuuurk]

And, @Andy Mahowry how do you get such high-profile players to join you as Katowice? Have you won the CL enough to get a super-rep?

I mean, you must just walk through the league each season yeah?

[Jimmy Floyd]

Enacted a massive summer overhaul of my Colchester squad (and changed to a 3-6-1 - going to see how the 'enganche' gets on in League Two), but the jewel in the crown was definitely getting Carlton Cole in as Director of Football on £875pw.

[Adamski]

Enganche might work quite well that far down Jimmy.

I've went Lyngby in Denmark second division and doing a youth only save. Going quite well, got 3-4 really promising youths from the off then got another 2-3 from the first intake who will be decent enough in the top league.

Won the league fairly comfortably in my first season. I actually didn't realise I was even close to promotion until I got the news item asking me to have a team meeting to encourage the players to gain promotion in the next match. Came out of the blue a bit as for some reason there's 11 teams in the league and everyone only plays each other 3 times. Bit odd. There's also a 3 month winter break after the second round of games leaving only 10 to play in March and April.

Won the league by about 8 points in the end. I don't think the top league is a massive step up in quality so feel I should be fairly comfortable staying up.

Will post some screens tonight.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

And, @Andy Mahowry how do you get such high-profile players to join you as Katowice? Have you won the CL enough to get a super-rep?

I mean, you must just walk through the league each season yeah?

He's the first high profile player I've ever bought, usually it's just promising newgens. I wouldn't have been able to buy him before this last update with him being in Germany too.

I've won it once but also got to the final once and done pretty well in the other seasons. We've got a huge boost to our rep, I think we're like top 20 or something right now.

Yeah, there's no competition.

[phonics]

Stole the tactic that DS posted above. 3 0-0s and lost 6-1 to Arsenal. Hate this game.

[Chris]

Enganche might work quite well that far down Jimmy.

I've went Lyngby in Denmark second division and doing a youth only save. Going quite well, got 3-4 really promising youths from the off then got another 2-3 from the first intake who will be decent enough in the top league.

Won the league fairly comfortably in my first season. I actually didn't realise I was even close to promotion until I got the news item asking me to have a team meeting to encourage the players to gain promotion in the next match. Came out of the blue a bit as for some reason there's 11 teams in the league and everyone only plays each other 3 times. Bit odd. There's also a 3 month winter break after the second round of games leaving only 10 to play in March and April.

Won the league by about 8 points in the end. I don't think the top league is a massive step up in quality so feel I should be fairly comfortable staying up.

Will post some screens tonight.

I'm also playing in Denmark at the minute, I'll have another update to post, probably this evening, got 1 game left this season. I'm a bit lower down the divisions than you in the second division currently.

The winter break does seem to be a massive pain in the arse, particularly having to play 2 lots of friendlies a season, players did seem to pick up fitness a lot better after the winter break though, even though it is seemingly longer than the summer break

Did you start in the second season as Lyngby are in the Superliga in the first season, aren't they?

[John]

In Serbia the winter and summer breaks are the same length, two months each. We do our training camp during the winter break, which seems a bit backwards, and my assistant arranges about twice as many friendlies midseason as in the offseason.

[Chris]

Toggle Spoiler

Lacking fitness going into the start of the season was always going to be a problem, and with 3 games in the first week I wasn't enthused at the start we would make. Going down 4-0 on the opening day and 2-0 in the cup 4 days later I was very concerned that we wouldn't even pick a draw up let alone a win. We managed to pick up 4 players over the next couple of weeks which would give us a fighting chance of staying up. Tokay, Jessen & Petersen bolstered the very weak midfield while Hansen would come in as first choice Target Man. With Tokay being the pick of the bunch. My scout also claimed that an 18 year old Wingback Steffen Rothausen was going to be the next big thing, we broke the bank in paying him £160 p/week as I was really struggling with depth in that area, turns out he was nothing more than average, and he's now our highest earner on a 2 year contract, should have really done a bit more scouting on him but the window was shutting and we needed numbers in.

I managed to get an Assistant Manager in at just after the halfway point in the season, as well as a Goalkeeping Coach, so the staff and training is looking a lot more promising now, and I don't have players continuously moaning about the state of training. Anyway, back to the results, we picked up our first win a convincing 3-0 home victory against Vanlose IF in the 4th game of the season and the players seemed to start gelling a bit more, I was quietly confident we wouldn't be as doomed as I thought. We then lost the next 3 on the spin before picking back up again to be in slight contention of avoiding the relegation group. Going into the last day of the season this is how the table looked.



We needed a victory against Avarta, at home, who had already beat us twice this season (once in the cup) with an aggregate score of 5-0, and hope that results in other matches went our way. HIK had B93 away and AB had Vanlose away, so we didn't have the best of the fixtures and HIK could maybe be considered favourites. We grabbed an early goal to go one up, I immediately switched to a more defensive formation, dropping Gokhan Tokay back to a Defensive Midfield position, we held out until half time, where things were looking like this.



HIK were drawing 1-1 and AB were winning 3-0, I needed B93 to grab a goal against HIK and AB to concede a couple or us to score a couple more. I thought that it was a big task but it was out of our hands so all we could do was go out in the second half and make sure we kept up our half of the bargain. Within 10 minutes of the second half starting AB had conceded 2 quick-fire goals for us to leap frog them in the table, but unfortunately within 2 minutes of the break HIK had took a 2-1 lead, they managed to double that lead after 65 minutes and it was plain sailing for them from then on in. We finished 5th and missed out on the Promotion Group by 2 points. We would be in the relegation group for after the winter break (I really don't know how my players are going to get fit enough to give this a good run, as they only come back 3 weeks before the first competitive game). In the relegation group you keep the points from the first half of the season against the team who are also in the relegation group with you, this leaves us in this position, with a further 16 games to play. The scheduling gods haven't been particularly kind to us, starting with 2 away games and finishing with 3 away games, the middle section of our season is what will make or break us I think. Here's how things look going into the Relegation Group.



We really struggled to score goals being the joint lowest scorers in the league with only 13 goals in 14 games, my top scorer was Tokay, our holding midfielder with 4 goals and only then goals were chipped in from other midfielders and strikers but nothing consistent. We probably needed to bolster our attack but I was playing with next to no room in the wage budget, so I'll have to see how things go in the winter break. I've released all but 1 of the players I brought in for free on Amateur contracts from Brondby as the fans hated them and they weren't cutting the mustard once I managed to get my scout to find some real players, luckily I wasn't paying them anyway.

The good news is I've lasted long enough to get my National C License, the board weren't interested in me taking any further qualifications at this point though. At this point I'm quite confident we can avoid relegation as long as I can keep morale up after a tricky first 2 away games and get in a relatively secure position by the final 3 games of the season the escape could be on.

The escape was well and truly on. After a 3 month break the players came back a lot fitter than I was expecting. I drafted in another youngster for the centre of the park in Felix Brun, he was to become the best central midfielder I've got, I also managed to draft in a couple of loanees from affiliate club Brondby, who should bring a bit of competition for places in Thomas Tranum, a young poacher and Kenneth Byrvang a young solid looking Centre Half. Our team was also getting a lot more familiar with the two[0],[1] 3-5-2 formations that I had been using (one at home and a slightly more defensive one away).

I'd arranged a couple of easy friendlies and a couple against more tricky opposition and that got us right back into the swing of things scoring 10 goals in 4 games and winning 3 of the 4. The players were fit and ready to go at the start of the relegation group and go did they. We got off to a flying start, and it never really stopped flying, we won the first 7 games on the spin (adding to the 2 we won at the back end of the first part of the season for a club record 9), we then went on a blip of 3 draws but a couple more wins would all but seal the mini-league win for us and ensure we wouldn't be relegated. It was around the time of the first draw that the board came knocking to try and tie my services down for another season, which I was more than happy to do, given I had the upper hand I managed to negotiate an increase in the wage-budget. The clubs books weren't looking great and we didn't have much cash in the bank but I know I'll need funds next season if we want to be in the promotion mix. They agreed to increase my wage budget from £1.6k to £2.6k which should allow me to get a lot of quality in.



The last few games I rotated and tried to use my fringe players a little more which meant that my unbeaten run came to an end which was a little disappointing but ultimately irrelevant to the end of the season. It's a little gutting that winning this relegation league is absolutely meaningless and I could have finished 8th and it have been the same result, but hopefully it'll give the players a bit of confidence going into next season and the winning run did help the board feel more confident with me at the helm, I guess. I did bring another youngster in towards the end of the season in Marco Bech (on an Amateur contract) who I was hoping could provide a bit of competition for Gokhan Tokay, but given the increased wage budget I may end up letting him go again.

We didn't have any players rated over 7.00 over the course of the season, mainly I think due to the first half of the season when we were distinctly average. In other good news my strikers managed to kick on a bit in the second half of the season and I wasn't just relying on midfielders for goals.



Recruitment is going to be key over the very short summer break now, I need to strengthen defence and find a good goalkeeper to provide competition for first choice Ovays Azizi, strengthening the defence and if I manage to keep on-loan Thomas Tranum I think we might have a shot at promotion next season but I'll be able to reassess a lot better after the first half of the season, all we need to do is finish top-half to be in with a shout.

[Dark Soldier]

Stole the tactic that DS posted above. 3 0-0s and lost 6-1 to Arsenal. Hate this game.

Give it time ffs.

[Dark Soldier]

Anyway here's Bury at the start of the 2022/2023 season.

Transfers in/out (I'll only be adding cheap youngsters from here):



I've left the £71mil for that striker off, the others not showing are all out of contract shit youths. All those sales are youngsters I snapped up dirt cheap, loaned for 2-4 seasons, then sold as their price rocketed. Some of them are class, but won't get a game here.

My two main transfers in:



Currently 5th choice CM, but look at that potential

And I finally got my fecking German:



18, stats to develop in all the right places and I believe he'll reach four and a half star potential. Currently 7th choice striker, will be alternating between first team and u18s this season.

My first 11, plus notable rotation players:

Toggle Spoiler

Still a don, although had a rough season last season.


January signing last season. Iorfa shits it in big matches, and there's only really two notable regen right backs and they'd cost insane money.


AKA The Beast.


Powerful motherfucker


Lunatic left back is still here. Still amazing, and has calmed down somewhat as he's matured.


Part 1 of my Holy Midfield Trinity


Part 2. Plays the Lampard role.


God-like.


Ample room to develop and really stepped it up last season with 31 goals.


Similar to Diakite. 27 goals last season, feed him the ball and he charges at defences.


THE G.O.A.T.

Notable squad players:


Wonderful back-up CD. Coming on leaps and bounds.


Not the greatest stats wise but always a solid 7/10.


Rejected an £82mil bid for him in the summer from Real. Will probably be sold eventually, or may replace Bamba at some point.


Been on loan at West Ham for 3 seasons. Time to watch him shine.


Called him back from loan in Jan. Gonna be world class.


Been at Bordeaux on loan for 3 seasons. Earned his chance as he won Player of the Year in Ligue 1 last season.

My midfield three though

Board has asked me to win the league, FA Cup, and semis of the CL this season. United have this geezer who just bosses it every single game:



Its between us and them every season. This is the league last season. We beat United in the 3rd from last game, then they drew final day:



And THE GLORY:



Loving this game.

[Mazuuurk]

Can't see your screenshots DS

Quietly hoping one of them is a sneaky shirtless selfie like back in the days.

[Dark Soldier]

Can't see your screenshots DS

Quietly hoping one of them is a sneaky shirtless selfie like back in the days.

Try a refresh, Gyazo can be dodgy as fuck.

[Adamski]

I'm also playing in Denmark at the minute, I'll have another update to post, probably this evening, got 1 game left this season. I'm a bit lower down the divisions than you in the second division currently.

The winter break does seem to be a massive pain in the arse, particularly having to play 2 lots of friendlies a season, players did seem to pick up fitness a lot better after the winter break though, even though it is seemingly longer than the summer break

Did you start in the second season as Lyngby are in the Superliga in the first season, aren't they?

I'm playing on Fm16

[Smiffy]

Out of curiosity where are Everton now and when did they drop, DS?

[Dark Soldier]

Out of curiosity where are Everton now and when did they drop, DS?

They dropped first season, then got promoted from the Championship with me the season after, then dropped again two seasons after that. Currently stuck in the Championship.

[Jimmy Floyd]

On mine they dropped first season and then took three to get back up. Not sure what's wrong with them, but the game penalises them hugely. Their squad in the 5th season is now a load of Championship shite and I suspect they'll be heading back there.

[Dark Soldier]

Aye in all my saves they've never done much. West Ham always become a good force though, all that stadium cash.

[Mazuuurk]

They must have changed how Media descriptions work - because all of a sudden half my team is labelled "World-class [position]". For instance Mata is suddenly a World-class attacking midfielder even though his ability hasn't changed much, obviously, he's 29 and while he's good, my coached only rate him for 3 stars and, well, you get it.

[Mazuuurk]

Interesting with Everton. Because in the second season here on my save as well, they are currently 3rd from the bottom and heading for relegation.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Awards season:













Bossed it.

[Mazuuurk]

In another turn of bizzarre events, by the way, there was an intense summer battle for the talent of one Breel Embolo from like Shalke or something like that. City and Chelsea were involved.

He went to Hull, for 46 fucking million pound. They are now comfortably 20th in the league.