Football Manager 23 [Archive] - Page 4

thommo

09-12-2022, 11:45 AM

2023/24 - Season 2 - Persela Lamongan

After our comfortable promotion in my first season, along with the incredible cup success, I was feeling quite confident stepping up to the rigours of the Indonesian top tier. After all, we'd beaten 4 Liga 1 opponents in our cup run and we had matched up really well against all of them. I made some signings, bringing in the 3 foreigners we were allowed to register for the league. We opened the season with a different cup competition solely made up of Liga 1 teams, the Piala Presiden. It basically acted as a pre-season opportunity to build fitness and introduce our new signings and although we bowed out on penalties after the group stages, we'd acquitted ourselves fairly well.

Things went downhill after those opening games...

https://i.ibb.co/k99QWPf/lamongan-season-2-results.png

Honestly, we were woeful. A couple of results weren't particularly deserved - the opening day 2-1 loss to PSM Makassar was one we were fairly dominant in, as well as the 3-0 thumping we received from RANS Nusantara, a side that are floundering near the relegation zone. Otherwise we were roundly beaten, with little to no possession and a poor disciplinary record leading to giving away multiple penalties and receiving numerous suspensions from the number of yellows and reds we were getting. The Asian Confederation Cup offered some respite as we sneaked through to the group stages on away goals, before being fairly competitive, snatching a win in Vietnam over Ho Chi Minh City and fighting hard in our other group games.

After 10 league games, we'd picked up a solitary point and it was looking dire. Thankfully, at the 11th time of asking, we won a league match, thanks to 47 year old veteran Christian Gonzalez coming off the bench to score a winner. We even followed it up with a snatch-and-grab 1-0 win away at Pusamania Borneo, bundling in a winner with virtually the last kick of the game. It really felt like we were turning a corner, the signings were gelling and we were getting into a bit of momentum. Our next game at home to Madura United was a heartbreaker - we played remarkably well against a side in form, got back into the game late on after a sustained period of pressure, before giving up a counter attack and winner in stoppage time to lose it at the death.

And the dreaded message popped up - the board wanted to have a meeting to discuss our poor performance.

Going into the meeting I bemoaned the number of injuries we'd had (it had definitely been a factor early in the season, especially with the fixture congestion), but they weren't buying it. I asked them to not cause any more upheaval within the club, and that touched a nerve. I was gone. Sacked on the 28th of October, just months after a heroic and unlikely cup triumph. :moop:

https://i.ibb.co/fSp9YBH/sack.png

Admittedly it had gone terribly. Even with those 2 victories, Persela Lamongan were rooted to the bottom of the table and there was still a definite gap in quality between ourselves and the majority of the league. With the recent performances improving, I definitely felt more hopeful but I had been perusing the job market in recent weeks, expecting to either jump or be pushed in the near future.

https://i.ibb.co/3kxh2cs/lamongan-season-2.png

So, I'm back in the job centre, and applying like crazy. Some of the Scandinavian seasons have come to a close, with a lot of vacancies opening up. Or I could continue my tour of South-East Asia if the opportunity arises...

Sir Andy Mahowry

09-12-2022, 11:58 AM

Thommo sacked :rave:

Limoutsonik

09-12-2022, 12:18 PM

https://twitter.com/DTS_JuularDT/status/1601188949824720896

As the tweet says,this is by far and away the craziest game i have ever played in all my years playing this game series. Is the game really that busted or have i just made a shit hot tactic? Cause i have mentality set to Attacking no matter the opponent and i finished second in my Champions League group with Barcelona,Milan and Sporting CP. This is the very first season as well so i only made loan transfers,didnt really buy anyone.

Sir Andy Mahowry

09-12-2022, 12:21 PM

You just put the numbers at the end of a tweet into tags not the whole thing.

Ben

09-12-2022, 12:24 PM

1601188949824720896

...

Limoutsonik

09-12-2022, 12:25 PM

What?

Ben

09-12-2022, 12:26 PM

I fixed your link.

Limoutsonik

09-12-2022, 12:30 PM

Ah,thanks. Sorry but i clicked the help here and apparently i messed something up and it didnt work properly.

Offshore Toon

09-12-2022, 02:34 PM

I didn't realise the TTH thing was happening in here. What page did it start? Glad, but not surprised, to see I was the best player.

Dquincy

10-12-2022, 10:06 AM

Approaching the business end of the season. My 10 point lead has shrunk to 4 points. :uhoh: We surely can fuck it up again, can we?

https://i.gyazo.com/b9edad13d1283d3fc12cdecf63e65739.png

https://i.gyazo.com/f90b4a8ecc45fbcd3829215b5cf3df76.png

Dquincy

10-12-2022, 10:14 AM

6 pointer coming up.

https://i.gyazo.com/6c7c67100519203de99e141fa728bfb0.png

Dquincy

10-12-2022, 11:57 AM

6 pointer coming up.

https://i.gyazo.com/6c7c67100519203de99e141fa728bfb0.png

https://i.gyazo.com/8f0ac8a2f14434a5228cdf6a530505aa.png

Our GK won MOTM which says it all, but we'll take it.

Also had to play the previous match again as my laptop crashed. Feel bad as we won the match (drew it previously), but hey ho.

Sir Andy Mahowry

10-12-2022, 01:52 PM

Shit.

My best player has been poached by a third tier Spanish team :(

Adramelch

10-12-2022, 04:59 PM

So with all that said, a long summer awaits. We have been given a measly 700k euros p/w to spend on wages (which is a decent 15-20% lower than the current lowest in the Premier League), coupled with a pretty respectable 37m euros to spend on transfers. But I am really expecting it to be rough. I genuinely think we'll finish dead last, possibly with fewer than 20 points, since we are severely lacking in quality and the money/time we have just isn't enough to brings us up to EPL levels. But that's fine. I'm just gonna enjoy the ride and be happy that we're getting money in, so that we can establish ourselves as a yo-yo club before we make it to the Premier League for good.

Went better than expected I guess:

https://i.gyazo.com/5043d75f50c21f8f7ef08a898cd69abd.png

Not dead last and not fewer than 20 points but still relegated. We were in with a small chance of surviving up until that last game, where we'd either have to beat Arsenal (at home) or rely on Bournemouth and Brighton to lose. In the end it was just a slim chance and where we really failed our survival was 2 games before that when we were winning against West Ham but conceded a silly equaliser in injury time. I also have to take a lot of the blame as I decided to go with our sort of all-out attacking formation at the start, which ended up with us getting 1 points from the first 6 games, with 11 goals scored but an embarassing 29 goals conceded. I eventually decided to opt for a counter-attacking strategy, also changing our formation from a diamond to a more conventional 4-2-3-1, which however meant that we would have to play a few players out of their natural position as we had no wingers.

The board did threaten to fire me (which I think is bullshit in itself), but they didn't, so I'm hoping we get to easily win the Championship and get another shot at this.

ScousePig

10-12-2022, 11:08 PM

A very quick update with my ultimate challenge save that I've been able to fire up again recently. I've already won the league, cup and Champions League with Arsenal so I should really move on, but I don't want to. We've got an exciting young team that I keep adding to so I'm sticking around for the foreseeable, before a move to France, Italy or Germany.

https://i.ibb.co/ZznKdBJ/End-of-season-competitions.png (https://ibb.co/m5LtJ9B)

https://i.ibb.co/rFjnhSx/End-of-season-table.png (https://ibb.co/k57YTf4)

https://i.ibb.co/Vgp7y8J/End-of-season-squad.png (https://ibb.co/7nNwcFj)

ScousePig

10-12-2022, 11:10 PM

Also, I've now got a 5-star world class rating and have taken over Bob Paisley as the leading English manager.

https://i.ibb.co/FwNNRsY/Hallf-of-Fame-English.png (https://ibb.co/WyqqmDz)

Dquincy

11-12-2022, 09:10 AM

Atalanta : Season 2080/81

The season has ended, and it's been a relatively good one, i think.

Despite the MASSIVE bottling last season, we did not go mad in the summer. I had a young squad and an extra year older made me feel they would be better the next season.

https://i.gyazo.com/83ba6d5f8f28bd20f83e639c0170ac5b.png

https://i.gyazo.com/29278908fed3683c849f06b0e45cf30a.png

From an earlier post, you'll know we were in with a big chance to win the league. Napoli imploded in the end and we won it at a canter.

https://i.gyazo.com/1259274c0ded45a27d5f2f2da17ab79e.png

https://i.gyazo.com/fba737bca36912607f128f6798cc3f0a.png

Also in what might be my last year with Atalanta, it was nice to break the total points record for Serie A. The Parma record was also mine when i managed them back in 2063-67.

https://i.gyazo.com/6263eceae105e39426089a4b77ed010b.png

Italian Cup, meh. I was happy to sacrifice this to concentrate on the league and champions league.

https://i.gyazo.com/4e46e759eb88b32654fae2042ae71052.png

Champions league; i'm still angry about this.

https://i.gyazo.com/d22876a60da1512a448e0456c8a9e53f.png

The squad; My star man Mauricio was crocked for a good few months which affected his season.

https://i.gyazo.com/0a0a7d43d845a2c77502577044be90b2.png

The question is, do I stay with them or move on? The fact the board will refuse to build a new stadium means we are limited to a measly 24,000 stadium, so I'm looking elsewhere.

Bam

11-12-2022, 09:22 AM

Season 2080/81? :yev:

Dquincy

11-12-2022, 12:17 PM

I'm 97 years old but still going strong.

Sir Andy Mahowry

11-12-2022, 05:12 PM

Palamós CF 23/24 season update:

https://i.imgur.com/DOBb8VE.png

https://i.imgur.com/IZ2mUei.png
https://i.imgur.com/QXSyS9M.png

After the first 4 games I thought we were going to walk the title. My star striker was banging them in for fun, the team was looking good and we were creating so many chances (30+ shots in games 2 and 3) and then it started wobbling. We kept throwing away points, the striker stopped scoring and chances were few and far between.

I kept switching from my 4-3-3 Wing play (which is what I used last year) to a 4-2-3-1 Tiki-taka to a 4-2-3-1 vertical Tiki Taka (both with CM's) after Prat B battered us I moved to a 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress with DM's which is a super original tactic. We didn't have any decent DM's as I couldn't find any but I had a decent youth and started re-training my CM's. We lost to Mollerussa early but we still looked good and I kept with it and we looked great.

Thankfully no one really broke away although Mollerussa was threatening to do so but then just started losing and lost 6 of their last 12.

Also, not sure why so many teams were added this season compared to last.

Cup:

https://i.imgur.com/spyeo7v.png

They're in the same tier as us and it's a shitter we couldn't go further but this happened in our poor run of form.

https://i.imgur.com/UC9RHyE.png

Squad is very good for the level and I think it could be enough for the level above. Especially as our board have pretty much doubled the age budget. Unfortunately it looks like we will be losing Villajoana our best striker as he's still refusing to sign a contract but our backup Genar has done well when called upon.

https://i.imgur.com/cGYeAWf.png

I also thought we might struggle when our best player was poached mid-season to a third tier side as he was really starting to grow into his role and had 12 goals in 22 this season by the time he left. Thankfully our backups were good enough.

Adramelch

11-12-2022, 05:41 PM

Powered my way through our return season in the Championship since things were simple. We had money and increased status to improve the squad and we finally had a tactical approach that seemed to be working.

https://i.gyazo.com/ae0810487dde1dcc4f71fa5dfd8ac5d2.png

We were first the entire way through and at no point was our position threatened. We were even in with a good chance of breaking the points record, but after winning the league we kind of switched off so only ended up equaling it. Honorable mention has to go to Stoke who were in mid-table for most of the season, until going unbeaten for the last 16 games.

https://i.gyazo.com/a0a6d179b1cb1c104b454ebdaa5aa5e4.png

Solid performances from the whole squad. O'Leary was voted as our player of the season from the fans and he's well and truly a club icon. Joined us in League Two and he's still the first person in the team sheet five years later.

So we have established tactics, a better reputation and more money so I can only hope we will be competitive in our second foray in the Premier League.

Baz

12-12-2022, 09:37 PM

Meant to post if anyone doesn't have FM graphics and wants a mEgApAcK without any effort, I synced my graphics folder to One Drive: https://akr.st/fm

Download the whole folder and put it in Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2023\graphics

Dquincy

12-12-2022, 10:52 PM

Have left Atalanta and moved to the Gills for my 2nd stint. They finished a lowly 11th in the season just gone.

http://gillshop.co.uk/images/gillinghamfc-1.png

Fair to say we've not had a great start.

https://i.gyazo.com/bcb056b90fabb0f33a898a91bb30c0a8.png

thommo

12-12-2022, 10:58 PM

So after being unceremoniously dumped from my job in Indonesia, it was back to the job market in an attempt to restart my fledgling managerial career. One that still had no coaching badges, as Persela Lamongan constantly refused my pleas. :moop:

A lot of low level Norwegian and Swedish jobs were available in their respective regional divisions, but most were offering a mere couple hundred in the wage budget for the entire squad and it would be a real slog to build my reputation up. I was applying for jobs across most of the world and after a few weeks, the job interviews started rolling in. From these numerous interviews, I received job offers from clubs dotted all over the place, from Ireland, Wales and Latvia in Europe, to Singapore, Malaysia and even another offer from the top tier of Indonesia. I was tempted but ruled that job out purely to mix up the career and move on to a different league.

And so, I ended up accepting (on Boxing Day 2023) the job offer from...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/37/Kedah_Darul_Aman_FC_logo.svg/450px-Kedah_Darul_Aman_FC_logo.svg.png

Kedah FA, a team who play in the Liga Super Malaysia, the top tier of Malaysian football. They play at the Darul Aman Stadium in the north of Malaysia, and want me to avoid relegation in the upcoming 2024 season.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Stadium_Darul_Aman.jpg/800px-Stadium_Darul_Aman.jpg

Avoiding relegation seems to be a fairly easy task, as they finished 3rd (of 12 teams) in the most recent season. It's a simple 22 game season, playing both teams twice, with the season running from March to September. There are also a couple of domestic cup competitions to take part in which will offer opportunities for silverware.

The squad is thin as I take the job, albeit with some good youth prospects, and the transfer window is open until late February, so reinforcements will be brought in. We've only got 1 foreign player registered currently, Dechi N'Guessan, and he happens to be the captain, and the best player in the squad by quite some distance. I'll be looking to bring in 2 more foreign players of similar quality to really beef up the squad. My own personal target will be a top half finish, and some coaching badges as soon as the board let me.

https://i.ibb.co/SwTTrLp/dechi.png

John Arne

13-12-2022, 10:14 AM

John Arne

13-12-2022, 10:53 AM

Just seen that the PS5 version of the game still hasn't been released :D

It's going to be 2024 in 2.5 weeks.

Browning

13-12-2022, 11:08 AM

Pleb Lasso

So 5 of us (Pleb, myself, Thommo, Mahow and Gray Fox) have got together for a good old fashioned "Succession Game" playing as Unemployed Sunday League footballer Pleb Lasso and.... what a start we've had.

Pleb was up first and landed the job at Gloucester who expected midtable but were in the relegation zone with 8 points from 11 games. Pleb then managed 16 points from the next 14 games, leaving them still firmly in the relegation places when it came to me. Due to lack of updates from him I have no idea what happened during that time...

First thing I noticed was we were facing Leamington at home who Pleb had just beaten 5-2 away so I didn't want to bring in massive changes right off the bat. I stuck with his tactic even if it was a weird 4-4-2 with an AML but a normal RM.... and even if we had no good options at RM or LB in the entire club. I even stuck with the 2nd choice keeper being in goal.... because Pleb has inexplicably only started our "first choice" keeper 3 times. I was depressed by the lack of loans.... I thought Pleb knew loans were the way to the Champions League, but in fairness.... my stint didn't go much better. We did beat Leamington again and picked up 7 points from our 5 games in January before following this up with a 1-0 win against Bradford PA which moved us out of the drop zone. Unfortunately, the next game was against the team directly below us, Curzon Ashton, and after playing 70 minutes looking like 11 blokes that had never met and being 2-0 down, we battled back to 2-2... only to lose to a 95th minute corner. That result felt massive and the writing was on the wall. Not long after the board gave us an ultimatum of 11 points from 5 games or be sacked and despite heroically beating top of the table Spenny 2-1 and then going away to Buxton and thumping them 4-1, the axe fell on Pleb Lasso following defeats to Kidderminster (0-1) and Scarborough (1-2) so we got sacked at Flamingo Land Stadium. My stint ended with us taking 17 points from my 13 games in charge. Gloucester would ultimately get 12 points from their final 8 games and stay up by 1 point.

We go again and I hand over to thommo after securing a job with Dulwich Hamlet....

Baz

13-12-2022, 06:15 PM

FM Rensie sent me his private skin so using that for season two. Might change tactics too, but probably not.

New skin and old profile for comparison:

https://i.imgur.com/i8mdEKh.png

https://i.imgur.com/SFHcRXo.png

Feels like a different game.

Sir Andy Mahowry

13-12-2022, 06:19 PM

Why does he have a private skin?

I'm not a fan of it, looks a little too busy.

Baz

13-12-2022, 06:31 PM

Why does he have a private skin?

I'm not a fan of it, looks a little too busy.He’s made skins for years but this time decided to just give it to his mates cos people kept reusing his stuff without crediting him. Wasn’t the whole Zealand/FME skin stolen from him? Something like that.

And yeah it’ll take some getting used to. The skin I was using wasn’t the default one anyway, cos I pinched some QoL stuff from the skinning section of the SI forum.

Sir Andy Mahowry

14-12-2022, 12:25 AM

Palamós CF 2024/25 Season Update:

Transfers:

https://i.imgur.com/gfQw8Fq.png

Quite a few in (and a lot out too) as even though I felt my squad was good enough to compete at this level my scouts kept finding some real gems and some older players decided they didn't want to stay with us. Including my star striker from last year, he scored 28 in his first season and 29 last season but he didn't want to re-sign and he's still without a club now. It seems his contract demands were too hefty for third/fourth tier Spanish football which is what he was aiming for I believe.

We also sold some players for money:

https://i.imgur.com/IS9vBz5.png

£9k rising to £10k with a 30% of profit sell on. I brought him in last season with the idea of starting him at CM but I changed tactics and he didn't have a place in my team until our AMC was stolen but this year I upgraded and he went out the door.

https://i.imgur.com/RaChwZl.png

I bought him this season and he was meant to be a star for next year but his potential ability was marked up too high by our shitty scouts and I took £3.7k for him.

https://i.imgur.com/fmmrH9i.png

Much like the guy above, although he only went for £1.1k.

League:

https://i.imgur.com/RogfTTx.png

https://i.imgur.com/ZtenAiB.png
https://i.imgur.com/c4BXq87.png

I thought we'd do well but I'm stunned that we did this well. It looked like it was going to be a three horse race but Espanyol (whose wages are almost 5x the amount of the second highest team) and Igualada (who I'm stunned did so well as they were in our league in the first season and we battered them twice) started falling off.

No one seemed to expect this as my board wanted us to survive relegation, the media predicted us 8th, my players wanted mid-table and the season preview before the first game had us in 5th.

Cup:

For some reason our league was not entered into the Copa Del Rey. I'm not sure if it's a league update bug or what but it is what it is.

Squad:

https://i.imgur.com/oZB15ae.png

I feel this side is good enough for the fourth tier but 14 players (16 including the 2 loanees) contract's are expiring in a few weeks. Those include our starting striker who scored 24 in 28, both starting DMC's, our starting RB, our starting GK and starting AMC. Of those the only one I have offered a contract is the AMC, Olabe. I would also like to bring back the loanees (but that's almost impossible in FM23) but outside of that I think we can improve on the rest. Maybe the younger DMC (Angresola) and GK could be kept but all these players want to be starters and I'd want them as backups.

Here are the guys who are 4* who will be coming back, plus my latest youth recruitment:

https://i.imgur.com/2jibGtV.png

I needed a CB when we stepped up and my scouts were struggling to find someone who weren't asking for silly wages and who would actually come to us (so many rejected us in favour of other clubs) and then I decided to look at the season preview of our old division. I wanted all of the top 5 but only this guy was interested and he's been a rock.

https://i.imgur.com/KcAhX1v.png

I kept looking for a RB as our current one isn't good enough and then the scouts finally found this guy, although he's a natural CB and that's where he's played all his games.

https://i.imgur.com/BWk4WZK.png

He was in our first youth intake and he played a few games in our first season before becoming a starter last year. He did well in the sixth tier but he exploded this year with 31 goal contributions in 30 games, he's got the highest average rating in the league as well as the most assists, is now our key player, has the highest current ability and he's listed as a leading fourth tier player. What a guy.

https://i.imgur.com/Plb4p8i.png

Our starting AMC, he played really well but I kind of expected more as he was meant to be our talisman but was out-shined by our wingers. He has been offered a new contract as he's finally agreed to talk.

https://i.imgur.com/fdMAJAQ.png

He came in our latest youth intake and before he had even signed his youth contract my coaches were telling me to put him into the senior squad. He's a natural striker who can play as an AML. This is what I really like about the save right now, every single youth intake matters.

Baz

14-12-2022, 09:42 PM

I'm not a fan of it, looks a little too busy.Being able to actually see post match stuff straight after the final whistle has me completely sold.

First game of the second season:

https://i.imgur.com/IVBadQM.png

TTH are marching on, on, on.

Sir Andy Mahowry

15-12-2022, 11:47 PM

https://i.imgur.com/gnckzRv.png

This xG table is disgusting btw.

Sir Andy Mahowry

16-12-2022, 08:08 PM

Palamós CF 25/26 Season Update:

Transfers:

https://i.imgur.com/RKPGXYk.png

Feel like I improved the squad a lot over the course of the year but we are missing a striker.

Cup:

https://i.imgur.com/3Tj6ZPl.png

Battered by a 3rd tier side IIRC which is a bit shit as I wanted a nice run.

League:

https://i.imgur.com/yHhurn9.png
https://i.imgur.com/r99ewke.png

Forgot to grab the table before I exited the game. Here though is the xG table after all was done:

https://i.imgur.com/11A3KiC.png

I lost the title to Penya by 1 point but should have won it at a canter.

Also those string of 1-0 losses near the end were all because my only right winger got injured and suddenly we could not find the net at all.

Here is the playoff final:

https://i.imgur.com/RxdRZNA.png

Where the game robbed us again.

You will note the big green H by Osasuna B's name, that is to indicate they won by being the higher seed because they finish with a whopping 4 points more than us. I was gearing up for a shootout and then to have them just win was heartbreaking. The only tie that saw two second placed teams face off.

Their goals in normal time came from a kick off and from a throw in after the 3 minutes of injury time had been played. I'm absolutely drained and need a break for a couple of days, this is bullshit.

Squad:

https://i.imgur.com/DQ40vV1.png

The squad is good but we will be losing our best CB as he doesn't think we have the money (we don't) but other than that no one is leaving unless pushed. We need a new striker because our starting options combined for a whopping 22 goals this season with Jimeno (our striker who started the season as number 1) and Giner went so long without any goals.

Baz

16-12-2022, 09:18 PM

Just did a 'full rotation' and lost. Third game of the season and we've already lost. 3-2, but still. Shouted at you all at Ben's come crying after the match that I was too harsh.

Need to loan more out so I don't have too many losers to keep happy. So far only Luca's gone out on loan.

Baz

16-12-2022, 09:25 PM

Aaaand we've lost -james-

https://i.imgur.com/ofZ2IDQ.png

Adramelch

16-12-2022, 11:02 PM

Our return season in the Premier League was, as expected, a lot better. We went into it with a stronger squad (albeit with several weak points still) and a lot more money so I had the chance to build something that would see us avoid relegation, and that's exactly what happened.

https://i.gyazo.com/1c350be677335edcfbdf50da572e4b57.png

We didn't spend a single week in the relegation zone and, in fact, the lowest position we were ever at was 15th for a total of 2 weeks. We had a fairly reasonable defensive record for a bottom-half team with 54 conceded, however our offensive record wasn't as good with just the 48 goals scored in 38 games and it really showed. We dropped a lot of points in games where we didn't take our chances and we either conceded a late equaliser or were held to a goalless draw. Late goals were definitely our achilles heel in general, as we dropped no fewer than 11 points from goals conceded in the last 5 minutes of the game.

We also did really well in the League Cup, through a quite tough run:

https://i.gyazo.com/dd9d557571c1ce2075b8c5a3a0f43b2a.png

Highlights were of course the back to back wins against Chelsea and Liverpool, but we eventually came unstuck against Newcastle in the final. They didn't deserve to win by that much mind you, but we were second best throughout the game nevertheless. Still a great run, unlike the FA Cup where we fell at the first hurdle, losing to Leicester away, albeit in a fairly even game.

https://i.gyazo.com/740ff9eb1d8e37c545a6ca3a90997d0f.png

Not that many players standing out, but that's to be expected a bit for a bottom-half team. In terms of the players that were with us from the start of the season (and from last season even), Fetih Ozdiraz was quite consistent albeit with not that many impressive performances, while Saric was the exact opposite with some insane games and then nothing for the next two or three. His stats are not quite representative though, as he did feature a lot on the right wing, so his 1 in 2 record is quite high. That said, the obvious star was ex-Arsenal youngster, Catalin Cirjan, whom we picked for just 3.8m in the deal of the century. His arrival didn't quite improve our results by much, but we just started playing a lot better in general. Here (https://i.gyazo.com/e3767c2a41fe8aabb6dee21ba5ccf674.png) he is if you are interested in his stats. How he was playing in Romania before we signed him baffles me a bit.

So we've shown we can hang out with the big boys and we have a very young squad, so there's a lot of promise. I will be doing my best to improve the defenders and the midfield, cause even though our offensive record is what was lacking, it did feel like the problem started from the back in that respect.

As an aside, having played 8 seasons now, I am enjoying the game but it does have some glaring errors. The one that really irks me is that it feels like more than half the goals scored (for either side) come from very simple mistakes from an opposition player, be it misplaced 5-yard passes, outrageously bad first touches or just players holding the ball for way too long. Obviously all of that should be in the game, but I think the frequency of them is way over the top.

Browning

17-12-2022, 12:37 PM

Started my traditional save of starting unemployed with no rep and seeing where I end up. The difference between this and the one I did on FM21 is that it's on Full Fat FM instead of Touch, and I'll hopefully be adding some more countries to move into later in the save (though I've started with only England and Scotland playable and a bunch of places on View only).

The first team to offer me a job was Buxton. They were languishing in the relegation zone of the National League North and spending over £1000 a week on one striker. I took the job and I swear the board wanted a mid-table finish but as soon as I got there it was changed to Play Offs. It wouldn't have mattered either way as I was absolutely shite and didn't even get them out of the relegation zone before I resigned. The only significant thing I managed there was signing Josh Hmami on loan from Southport because....

My next job would be at Southport where I would reunite with him. Our wage budget was 7k a week, down from the 11k I had at Buxton (although I never got to do anything with that). They wanted a midtable finish and were predicted to finish 14th. Jordan Archer, brother of Cameron at Villa was a very good striker for this level and the previously mentioned Hmami was a midfielder I really liked despite the coaches not rating him. They also had 2 quality CBs for this level but not a lot else. Annoyingly, despite having Accrington as a parent club, they had already wasted that union on loaning 2 kids for the youth team from them. I bought in a couple of players on loan from Walsall and a defender on loan from Kidderminster who would all play a decent enough role and my most significant signing to that point was Jake Burton on a free transfer after his release from Tranmere. He would bag 16 goals and 5 assists in 36 league games for us but ultimately despite a bright start the season fizzled out into nothing except midtable mediocrity, which the board were thrilled with.

As contracts expired and we had the option to get players from Accrington I was hoping we could push on and do better in season 2. I would secure Joe Starbuck on loan from Wrexham and Bobby-Joe Taylor on loan from division rivals Scunthorpe who would be our starting wide midfielders with both having the option to play RB/LB if needed. The accrington relationship would yield us Emerich Polly who would rotate with Jack Bainbridge who was already here to play in CM alongside Hmami, who was our best playmaker no matter what the coaches said. We also bought in Blaine Rowe after his release from Coventry to be out starting RB and Jaden Forrester to start on the left or up front came in from Rushall Olympic of all places. A new first choice keeper joined in the form of Aidan Dowling released from Blackburn.

We went flying out the gates this season and soon settled in as the 3rd best team in the division, miles behind champions elect Fylde and somewhat behind Spennymore. Then in January came the pivotal moment of our season as 35 year old Scott Sinclair rocked up looking for a job. We had no money to give him, but towards the end of his 4 week trial and after negotiating some pay cuts we were able to offer him a massive £250 a week and a 1 year extension if we got promoted. Shockingly, he took it. He made his debut against top of the table Fylde and scored in a 2-1 loss. Had we won we would have moved to just 4 points behind them with a game in hand, but the loss ended any faint hopes we had of challenging them. His 2nd game he netted twice but we again slipped up and drew 2-2. This began an awful run of form for us that saw us win just 1 in 6 games, and that was the 1 game Scott didn't get on the pitch. Despite his bright start his career wasn't going so well here. With Scott dropped from the team, only featuring occasionally off the bench, we continued to stall and I place the blame on the fact Jordan Archer went on a massive goal draught and was moaning about wanting to move to a bigger team. Having taken 5 points from 6 games after Scott signed, we proceeded to take 9 from the next 5 which was clearly an improvement but we were very lucky and not playing well. A 2-1 win away at in form Banbury where Jordan Archer got back on the score sheet seemed to be a turning point and we then thumped 2nd place Spenny 4-0 and won 1-0 at Hereford with Scotty Sinclair being the super sub hero.... things were looking up but another poor spell saw us fall to 5th for the first time. I was genuinely afraid we might throw it all away and not even make the play offs but with 5 games to go something clicked. We battered Bradford PA 3-0 and then went away to Fylde and won 2-0 despite Jake Burton seeing a straight red 20 minutes in- Sinclair netting in stoppage time to wrap it up. The suspension to Burton combined with an injury to Archer left us with only Forrester and Sinclair to play up front... and Scotty rose to the occasion bagging a hat-trick against Scunthorpe in a 5-0 win and scoring again against Scarborough on the final day (2-0) saw us, somehow, finish 2nd, ahead of Spenny on Goal Difference. The makeshift strike force of Forrester and Sinclair continued to click in the Play Off Semi as both netted and we dispatched Hitchin 2-0 but disaster struck as Forrester went down injured....

This left me with my toughest team selection to date. Forrester could play with injections but I didn't want to do that if I could avoid it. Burton returned from his 3 game ban and was an obvious choice. Archer was also back in contention following injury but a combination of him being a moody cunt and not being fit made me not want to use him. Sinclair was on the form of his life but had started the last 3 games and was 35. We also had a young striker out on loan in Belgium who had been called up for the Belgium Under 20s as a result of his form there- Eden Benteke. Benteke was recalled for the Play Off Final, but to my surprise a 17 year old from Newcastle's academy- Fred Luvovadio arrived and could play. Picking the 2 strikers gave me a headache but in the end I opted for Burton and Luvovadio, giving the kid his professional debut at Wembley. Forrester, with injections was on the bench along with Sinclair as Archer and Benteke missed out. We went 1-0 down after just 2 minutes but Burton levelled it after 6 minutes and then Hmami gave us the lead from the spot. The youn kid Lovovadio could have been a hero when some good skill got him through and he squared it to Burton but Burton missed a sitter. Not to worry as Scott Sinclair came on for him and netted the goal that sealed the win, sealed promotion and sealed the old man another 1 year deal. :cool:

I wasn't planning for promotion. I was waiting for the deadwood contracts in the squad to expire (my 5 top earner are 4 players I'm releasing for not being good enough and Archer who doesn't want to stay) and to allow me to rebuild and push for promotion next year. God knows how we'll do next year but one thing is for sure.... even if I end up at Real Madried, I'm taking Josh Hmami with me.

So this hasn't continued in the way I expected. After taking Southport up the following season in the National League was..... a train wreck. The board barely increased my already pathetic wage budget to the point mu budget was still higher at Buxton than it was here. I thought I did some good work on improving the squad but seemingly not as we were the whipping boys of the league. I'd have stayed and gone down with them, but the minute the board changed to "disappointed in my management" after the miracle promotion, I was done with them. Zero backing financially and now they weren't even backing me results wise. I resigned and their new manger was almost fired for being even worse than I was at that level, but somehow got a new deal in the end despite taking them down without a fight. 2 of the kids I signed are their best 2 players now though, so that's something.

There was quite a bit of demand for my services but the most appealing job (with the most money) was Airdrieonians FC in the Scottish Championship. They were 5th in the table and their manager had just departed for a job in the SPL but they only wanted to avoid relegation which seemed easy enough. It was a trap. I quickly realised the squad was by far the worst in the division and they also had the least money of anyone in the division. We were quickly sucked into a relegation battle and down to 9th in the 10 team league. We then beat the champions Ayr and followed that up with a win over 3rd placed Hamilton to move 3 points clear of the drop zone... but the team directly below us (Queen of the South) battered us 4-0 to move above us and a loss on the final day sent me into a relegation play off with Dunfermline. The first leg was a boring, pathetic 0-0 at their place and we bossed the 2nd leg until we conceded a cheap penalty from a corner, and then conceded a 2nd goal straight from the kick off. Season over, relegated and sacked. Josh Hmami (who wasn't good enough for them) would sign.... after I had left the building. :D

What followed was a long summer of interviews. I was interviewed by 3 of the 4 teams who were relegated from League 1 into League 2, as well as Posh, Wycombe, my own team MK Dons and Hartlepool. None of them offered me the job but at least Dons and Hartlepool have since sacked the guy they picked over me.... so.... there's that. Finally at the end of October 2 teams offered me a job.... Woking and Newport, both in the National League. The Dons job was about to come up again and League 2 Stevenage named me as their leading candidate so I held off on both.... but eventually could hold off no longer and signed for 19th placed Newport. We've hit the ground running, with me taking 15 points from my first 7 league games to move into the Play Off places. We also faced League 1 Cambridge at home in the FA Cup and battled to a 2-2 draw, taking us back to their place (where they only attracted 3000 fans vs our 8000 for fuck sake...) where a 1-1 draw saw us progress on penalties. Unfortunately, League 2 Bristol Rovers in round 2 were a bridge too far and they battered us 4-1 and then drew Man United in round 3.... oh what could have been..... but they're at home so fuck them.

Dquincy

17-12-2022, 02:18 PM

Gillingham : Mid Season Update - Season 2081/82

After a shocking first four games, our form gradually picked up and we're performing slightly better than predicted at the halfway mark. The media predict us to finish 7th.

https://i.gyazo.com/0d543bf4e4d8c7ab26220b74cdd13375.png

https://i.gyazo.com/e8e6c394156fea2210699f9dd29c5a0a.png

https://i.gyazo.com/3a1d3eee5e85e7eca17d986383d56308.png

Apart from the Man Utd match just now, we have been flying. Does help not having Europe, so fixture list isn't overly heavy and we have plenty of time to recover.

https://i.gyazo.com/624ae4b2579e431169b846485eaf3d87.png

This is the squad at the halfway stage. You might notice that i've pinched 3 players from my old Atalanta team. Mosquera has been our star man up front.

Finances, however, are a bit shit. The lack of European involvment is limiting the revenue, but hoping a top 6 finish this year will help sort that out.

https://i.gyazo.com/afa8f072a15425881dee5da8a0946956.png

Dquincy

17-12-2022, 03:01 PM

This fella, worth buying or not? Will cost me my remaining £18m transfer budget (ignore that we're already in debt :uhoh: )

https://i.gyazo.com/79dd87c3dd8a9825979b565961920f38.png

randomlegend

17-12-2022, 03:04 PM

Being able to actually see post match stuff straight after the final whistle has me completely sold.

First game of the second season:

https://i.imgur.com/IVBadQM.png

TTH are marching on, on, on.
Yevrah and Randomlegend partnership dishing out donnings from Southgate to Dagenham :cool:

randomlegend

17-12-2022, 03:08 PM

This fella, worth buying or not? Will cost me my remaining £18m transfer budget (ignore that we're already in debt :uhoh: )

https://i.gyazo.com/79dd87c3dd8a9825979b565961920f38.png

IDK because having every stat above 10 being green has completely messed up my ability to judge at a glance.

Adramelch

17-12-2022, 11:00 PM

He's been in a crazy form this season (26 goals in 27 games), but sadly Real just activated his release clause (at 101m mind you) and obviously I can't convince him to stay:

https://i.gyazo.com/e31e755caac8e714b2e50ba2336f0526.png

Don't know that I will be able to find a good replacement in time which sucks, but oh well.

Bam

18-12-2022, 10:27 AM

IDK because having every stat above 10 being green has completely messed up my ability to judge at a glance.

Ok autism.

Dquincy

18-12-2022, 10:37 AM

It's also two different colour greens so I don't get what the issue is.

Clunge

18-12-2022, 10:45 AM

Right, I've been playing Touch '23 but the whole only small database thing is going to irk me too much. So please, how best can I make the full-fat FM experience more bearable? Do all the stupid meetings, etc, actually really matter? I basically just want to build a squad, blood youngsters and play. That's it. Can everything else truly be ignored?

Gray Fox

18-12-2022, 12:04 PM

You can quite literally delegate everything to the assistant manager, bar taking control of the games if you want.

You could even put a DoF in charge of signings and let that be taken care of too.

Jimmy Floyd

18-12-2022, 12:08 PM

From about three versions ago I have played as a GM more than a manager. All training, team talks, press conferences, touchline instructions, oppo instructions are delegated. All I do is build the squad and pick the team and tactics.

Baz

18-12-2022, 12:10 PM

Training is a ballache if you dare take control of it. You have to set the routine every week. I regularly forget and presumably go weeks on end allowing Pokémon TCG tournaments in the canteen.

Sir Andy Mahowry

18-12-2022, 12:12 PM

Training is a ballache if you dare take control of it. You have to set the routine every week. I regularly forget and presumably go weeks on end allowing Pokémon TCG tournaments in the canteen.

Yep.

I've been downloading "Mike's best training schedule" (I assume not your Mike) for a while but I might just go back to delegating it to the Ass Man. It's been a joy not having to do it for Palamos as they can't use fully professional training schedules at the moment.

Baz

18-12-2022, 12:13 PM

Yep.

I've been downloading "Mike's best training schedule" (I assume not your Mike) for a while but I might just go back to delegating it to the Ass Man.

Same here. :D And his preseason one.

Adramelch

18-12-2022, 10:05 PM

Bit of a quick update as I went through another season during the weekend.

https://i.gyazo.com/4ade4363d4c86efdc8984f5284ca27cd.png

Came a bit out of left field, but it wasn't an accident by any means, as we spent the majority of the season in the CL spots. We made several improvements across the board, with a new goalie and new midfielders being the ones that immediately stood out. I also was hard at work in the pre-season and sorted out our set-piece routines and we certainly reaped the rewards. We didn't score a significant amount, even though we did improve in that respect, but we most definitely minimized the goals we conceded from set-pieces. I also started switching to more of an attacking mentality in games that we should be winning and it really improved our results. This time around we also managed to win the League Cup, even though our run was once again not that easy, as we had to beat Tottenham, Liverpool and City in the process.

https://i.gyazo.com/845bf7f146c852e471b4a8068abba675.png

Wrong stats in the case of Savic (it shows his Real stats), but he did score 27 goals in 28 games, enough to still keep him in the best eleven come the end of the season. What's more important though is that we managed to improve across the board, with more diversity both in scoring, but also in creating goals. The money from Savic also means we have a "warchest" for the summer (which I have already gone through and spent).

Luca

19-12-2022, 12:52 AM

You are excellent. Wanted by 20 clubs, as a matter of fact:

https://i.imgur.com/SFHcRXo.png

Here are the squad stats for those that opted to stay and win the league:

https://i.imgur.com/3sbVqHi.png

I played to give everyone a fair amount of games, as you can see.

Nice that everyone scored a goal. Even Lofty scored a penalty in the cup to open the scoring in a 10-1 win against a leisure centre or something.

And the ones out on loan:

https://i.imgur.com/aE7Beuv.png

Definitely must include 'can be recalled' on any future loans. Moyes and Vieira are never loaning anyone ever again.

Fucking Crotone.

Baz

19-12-2022, 05:51 AM

Fucking Crotone.

SPAL this season.

niko_cee

19-12-2022, 07:51 AM

Glad to see that the game has me as conclusively the worst player, probably all because I picked Baron Davis as a picture. Racist game. :nono:

Baz

19-12-2022, 07:52 AM

Glad to see that the game has me as conclusively the worst player, probably all because I picked Baron Davis as a picture. Racist game. :nono:
I finally found someone willing to play you at leftback (and not wingback) on loan so I’m happy.

Clunge

19-12-2022, 10:17 AM

Ngl, I look the bees knees statistically :hail:

Browning

19-12-2022, 11:26 AM

The season at Newport was a ridiculous success and I have no idea how this team were 19th at the end of October when I took over.

As part of my interview I demanded a parent club and the board delivered with Crystal Palace. This allowed me to sign 2 of their young players on loan for the season for free. One of them, Marc Hulse would probably be our most important player of the season. The other Nicky Maher was a fantastic sub option who ended up winning a spot in the team more and more towards the end of the season. I also bought in Thomas Riley on loan from Lincoln who wanted to be an AMC but I insisted on playing him up front, which paid off as he netted 22 goals and provided 19 assists in 40 games. It's a shame that probably none of them will return next year as they'd all like to but their clubs won't allow it.

After getting dumped out of the FA Cup by Bristol Rovers in my last update we went on an insane run of 10 wins and 2 draws from the next 12 league games, while also making our way through the rounds of the FA Trophy. The streak ended with a 0-1 loss at Torquay where we just didn't turn up, but already the season was looking like a complete success seeing as the board just wanted me to avoid getting pulled into a relegation battle. Somehow, South Shields, managed by Kevin Phillips, were the runaway league leaders when I took over but we continued closing the gap and a 3-2 win over Chesterfield and a 3-1 win at Darlington saw us finally reach the top ahead of our game with them. For some reason, South Shields then played midweek and won to go top again, but it wouldn't last. They turned up at our place and were one of the worst teams I saw all season. We battered them 3-0 and their only meaningful contribution was hacking down my star midfielder in the middle of the park when 2-0 down to get a pointless red card. Bowen would pick himself up and curl in a free kick at the end of the game to cement the win and send us top.

We wouldn't stay there though as our FA Trophy run meant we stopped playing league games and Chesterfield moved above us, at one point being 4 points clear but we had 3 games in hand. We navigated the FA Trophy semi finals, drawing 0-0 at Fylde before coming back from 0-2 down at HT in the home game to win 5-2 and progress. Unfortunately, the first of our games in hand was the most ridiculous games of the season and the one where I realised just how vital CB Marc Hulse was. We lead 3-0 at HT when I subbed him off as he was tiring.... only for Hartlepool to get it back to 3-3 when one of their players scored on 61, 68 and 70 minutes. We then went 5-3 up with the 5th coming at 90+2... just for them to score on 90+5 and 90+7 to snatch a point. I was fuming. It looked like we might make this hard for ourselves but in the next game, our hardest remaining fixture, Gillingham away, we dusted ourselves off to win 3-2 (scoring the winner on 90+4....) as Chesterfield lost to South Shields, putting us back on top still with 2 games in hand. Which was lucky as we went to Bromley and lost to 2 of the same corner routines.... going down 2-1. A 2-1 win in our next game with Altrincham, whilst Chesterfield also won meant that with 2 games to go we were level on points with them but they only had 1 remaining game. Our GD was also miles better so if we could beat relegation threatened St Albans at home, we'd be basically there. We delivered, smacking them 7-0 to mean Chesterfield would need a 15 goal swing on the final day to stop us. We romped home to a 3-0 win at Scunthorpe (who were relegated as a result) whilst Chesterfield bottled it, losing 3-1 at Woking to finish 3rd in the end.

Chesterfield and South Shields, who had been our title rivals, contested the Play Off Final and South Shields won it, so that should be 6 easy points next season. Unfortunately, the season ended on a sour note as Boston, from the tier below us, beat us 2-1 at Wembley to win the FA Trophy. Honestly we just didn't look bothered and didn't look fit, possibly due to the 3 week gap between the end of the season and the game, whilst Boston were busy winning the NLN Play Offs to seal their own promotion. Would have been lovely to win it all but given I took over in 19th place at the end of October, and won 75% of my matches in charge, I can't complain too much.

The board want a top half finish next season..... I don't know how likely that is without our loan stars, but we'll see.

John Arne

19-12-2022, 01:37 PM

Is it me or is scouting still borked on this game? I'm getting scout reports from players I scouted over 12 months - even if I already checked the no more reports button. Same players all the time coming through.

Sir Andy Mahowry

19-12-2022, 01:41 PM

Yep, I've even had players still get reports when I put them on the not interested list.

randomlegend

19-12-2022, 01:45 PM

Ok autism.

I notice you've not given an opinion either.

Nor has anyone else.

Ergo, I am right.

Sir Andy Mahowry

19-12-2022, 07:36 PM

Palamós CF 2026/27 Season Update:

Transfers:

https://i.imgur.com/0O2HFlF.png

Still yet to sign anyone for actual cash but I had my highest ever sale:

https://i.imgur.com/jlgwdnG.png

Signed him last season to be our star man but he flopped hard despite looking really good for this level. He only scored 6 league goals in 20 starts and 14 sub appearances (he was ousted about halfway through due to his shitness). He also hasn't done well with his current club only scoring 8 in 36 starts.

League:

https://i.imgur.com/AegYV6v.png

https://i.imgur.com/xW7YoZL.png
https://i.imgur.com/WPAPplK.png

We should have won it easily on xG last year but the shitness of our strikers let us down. This year we stormed it and led the league from match 1 until the end. We set a record for most league goals in the division with 90 having broken the old record with 13 games to go. We had little wobbles near the mid-season break where we'd batter a team and then not look like scoring and we wobbled near the end where we'd go 2 or 3-0 up and then either draw or almost hand the points away.

Cup:

https://i.imgur.com/hEuTTyi.png

Our first win in the cup so far. 2-1 flattered them as we battered them but couldn't score a second in normal time before one of our defenders gifted them a late goal. Granada then made us look like chumps but we did at least make some decent cash. We also set records for our lowest attended game in the first round and our highest attendance in the second round.

Squad:

https://i.imgur.com/ec80B6O.png

We had a lot of players turn up but I'm going to pick out these two:

https://i.imgur.com/VSCuCtz.png

https://i.imgur.com/PIgkcl4.png

I had about £700 a week in wages to spare but my scouts were struggling to find someone who would add quality to our team without spending crazy cash. I decided to increase our scouting package to WORLD for a week or two and hoped that they'd find something. They found these two, Bertelli has been a real improvement over our last starting AMC and Ozer, whilst a little streaky, was magnificent in finding the net. I would like to bring back the German (who my coaches feel could be La Liga standard) but I'm sure the game wont allow me.

Next season might be a bit tricky, the board want playoffs in the Primera Federacion but we've only got a wage budget of £16.25k (thanks to being £262k in debt) and our players are now all asking for new contracts with big demands, especially as we're now a professional outfit.

Dquincy

20-12-2022, 10:37 PM

Gillingham : End of Season Update - 2081/82

This season has been a surprising one tbf. The media predicted us to finish 7th, but after 5 games we were in the relegation zone. We then however discovered some form.

First, transfers in:

https://i.gyazo.com/0913af3c34c6e3e57c19881e863d222a.png

Brought in quite a few new players given that it wasn't 'my' squad. The main two were purchased one in the summer and one in January.

https://i.gyazo.com/fa954e2e663567f205af0e5089ab1a17.png

Stole this chap from my previous club as he always showed promise when out on loan. As you can see, he didn't disappoint and was our star striker. If it wasn't for injuries, his goal tally would have been much higher.

https://i.gyazo.com/2db93d3a4dc26a745b6ccc1c7c72a585.png

This fella joined in January after my scouts loved him. A wonderkid, so should pay back the fee in years to come.

Onto the Premier League, so given our shit start we found our form and were pushing for top 4 at the turn of the year. But we just kept on going!

https://i.gyazo.com/58738934fd69b64937e82e840df87d48.png

Given we had no Europe this season, the League Cup and FA Cup were a focus for me.

League Cup:

https://i.gyazo.com/f38e94db1078ecfbc4cf37ec004a55e2.png

This set up a final with Sheff Utd, who have finished 2nd and 3rd in recent years. Could we win it?

:pards:
https://i.gyazo.com/ce6d0bc78af4e32d18ed05372240439f.png

Onto the FA Cup:

https://i.gyazo.com/89f04be62a90760d1b0c6647a8591801.png

A fairly easy run set up a final with Liverpool. Shame we shat the bed.

https://i.gyazo.com/81705d5e2064b5020a66ca00aacc7898.png

So this is the squad at the end of the season. A decent team, but we're losing both LB's and a MDF so need to replace them along with strengthening in depth due to the Champs League next season.

https://i.gyazo.com/101a0e8c6efc69a3ccb38c16f9f417f7.png

Gray Fox

21-12-2022, 06:07 PM

So as Browning earlier shared, Pleb, Browning, Thommo, Myself and Mahow are in a succession save, starting as a nobody, with a fair few leagues loaded, hoping to get to the top of the game. Pleb Lasso has a dream.

Pleb kicked us off and found our first job at Gloucester City, however by his mid-season hand off to Browning, found us in trouble. He did his best to steady the good ship Lasso, but it'd already taken on a lot of water and we walked the plank before the season was out. Without us they survived by a point, so maybe they had the last laugh.

Even so, the job hunt began and with a couple of offers on the table, Dulwich Hamlet became our new destination. Thommo was first up in the new job and found our new home was seemingly newly decorated. Everything nice and shiny. As such has romped to a great start and we find ourselves in this situation as I take over and inevitably fuck it up:

https://i.gyazo.com/aa7884a3d98a6b44a3d50531c317a013.png

Jimmy Floyd

21-12-2022, 08:26 PM

I've buckled and got it (predictable).

'Sounded positively chuffed'. What is this, Dressage Manager 2023?

Yevrah

21-12-2022, 08:37 PM

Great stuff Jim, always enjoy reading your journeys on FM.

Where to begin?

Jimmy Floyd

21-12-2022, 08:42 PM

Chelsea, whereupon I've just gone in for the CL draw and was absolutely not expecting the entire speaker system of my flat (an Echo dot) to belt out THESE ARE THE CHAAAAAAMPIOOOOOONS. Shat out 100,000 Swiss francs.

Quite a good challenge I think as we have a good squad, but a really poorly constructed one with some huuuuugely overpaid players (not to mention kakkers out on loan raking in £350,000 every seven days) and I can't see any realistic way of catching City and Liverpool in the near term. I have however signed Gavi, who Barcelona were strangely willing to part with for only 50 odd million.

Browning

22-12-2022, 12:27 PM

Newport County 2027/28

Having won the National League (despite taking over 19th in October) and almost won the FA Trophy last year, the board wanted a top half finish. My plans for the summer were to learn from the disaster of my last promotion with Southport. I would try and keep the band together while strengthening the areas we were weak in. This meant I was targeting a new keeper and a goal scorer. We also needed a new LB and a new RB because our starting LB had refused to negotiate a new contract whilst our starting RB wasn't very good (and now I'm halfway through the season.... he's spent almost all of it injured too, so it was lucky I replaced him). We also had some loanees in last seasons 11 that would need replacing, namely Marc Hulse (CB), Thomas Riley (ST) and Nathan Moriah-Welsh (RW). The last of those was made easier when Moriah-Welsh agreed to join us permanently after his Barnsley contract expired.

Before the transfer window officially opened we began our business and I limited myself to just 1 youth signing after going overboard with them last time.... Brian Martin, a LB from Man City. He wasn't good enough to start but had bags of potential. Ryan Wood, a handy looking CM who wasn't quite ready for the first team would join from Dundee (I had previously tried to sign him for Airdrie only for Dundee to trigger a 1 year extension on his contract) and we paid £4k for veteran striker Elliot Lee from Torquay who would go down as a dud. The most exciting business was bringing in Ross McCausland, a very good winger for this level on a free from Swansea. We also added John Griffiths on loan from Coventry to be our starting RB and got 3 youngsters from our parent club Crystal Palace, the pick of which was a CM named Marc Francois.

When the transfer window opened we confirmed the signings of some new starters- Evan Watts (Goalkeeper, free transfer from Swansea), Will Reddie (CB, on loan from Bolton) and the previously mentioned NMW. They were joined by Lewis Freestone (a LB/CB from Rotherham who made his loan permanent) and utility man Elijah Dixon-Bonner on a free from Cheltenham. There was still work to do as we desperately needed a LB (Freestone would do, but we needed an upgrade), Watts wasn't particularly good as a GK and we still needed at least 1 if not 2 strikers to come in. As the summer progressed we signed some more loans who wouldn't end up featuring much due to the limit of being allowed to use 5, and Harry Tyrer signed on a free from Fylde to compete for the GK job. Not long after the season started we raided Plymouth for 2 LBs- Evan Towler on loan and Bryant Akono Bilongo on a free.

All of this meant our line up for the opening day would be:

GK- Harry Tyrer, who had narrowly beaten out fellow new signing Watts to get the nod.
LB- Brian Martin- too young and not good enough, but our other options were injured and the 2 new ones from Plymouth were yet to join.
CB- Declan Drysdale and Will Reddie- The best player at the club paired with a new kid on loan who looked decent.
RB- John Griffiths- Another loanee who was much better than what we had.
CM- Jack Jenkins and Marc Francois- This was meant to be Jenkins/Bowen, our pairing from last year, with the young Palace loanee Francois providing cover off the bench, but Bowen had a knock and couldn't play.
LW- Jahmal Hector-Ingram- last season's best player.
RW- Nathan Moriah-Welsh- Also great last season, now our player.
ST- Omar Bogle and Ross McCausland- Bogle is 34 but that's one less than the goals he scored last year. McCausland is more of a winger but we had no options at ST so he plays there....

Francois would boss the first game and score 2 in a 2-1 win over Sutton. By the time Bowen was fit, it was clear this kid was vital to us, so Bowen came back in for Jenkins who was demoted to a bench/rotation player. The 2 Plymouth LBs would come in and displace Martin who was loaned out. But the big news came on transfer deadline day when a headline said that Thomas Riley could be heading out on loan again from Lincoln to Crawley. Over my dead body... I put the bid in and the boy came home. This let us deploy him up front and move McCausland back to RW where he belongs with NMW becoming a bench option. And that was us done for the first half of the season.

The results were.... very good. We won our first 10 league games before hitting a bit of a blip. We lost 4-0 at South Shields (of all fucking places) and then after taking 4 points from our next 2 games (including vs title rivals Pompey) we got beat 4-1 by Orient. This lead to me changing the goalkeeper to our other new signing Watts but he (maybe due to lacking match fitness) was woeful as our run of results with him in goal was a 5-2 win over lowly Harrogate (where they scored their only 2 shots on target), a 2-0 loss at Bradford, a 3-2 win over Altrincham who are 2 leagues below us and a 3-1 win over Brentford U21s followed by a 1-1 draw with Southend where again they scored the one time they managed a shot on goal. Still performances had been good even in the drubbings (where we matched them on xG) and we were overachieving so I didn't want to change much. I handed the keeper duties back to Tyrer (slightly worse attributes but I trusted him more) and decided to finally bench old man Bogle despite his top scoring form (as I write this he is our top scorer with 20 goals from 25(8) games, second place has 11 from 25(2) and 3rd place has 10 from 33). The changes paid off as we won our next 6 games in all competitions but annoying Hector-Ingram who I had moved up front and had started banging them in (he's our 2nd top scorer) picked up a 3 month injury which meant the old man came back in. Tyrer also got a 3 week sickness to hand the goalkeeping job back to Watts, who improved enough to keep the job after Tyrer returned. We followed this up with another wobbly spell as we took 2 points from 3 games (albeit they included Crewe and Pompey away, our 2 toughest games of the season on paper) but rounded off December with wins over Wycombe and Northampton which were vital given I'm from MK and thus hate both.

All of this means we get to January with the table looking like this after 26 games:

Newport- 58
Crewe- 56 (played 25)
Portsmouth- 53
- - - - - - -
Cheltenham- 46 (played 25)
Orient- 45
Grimsby- 41 (played 25)
Stockport- 40

Crawley and Carlisle also have 40 points and have a game in hand so could move up into the play offs, as could Stevenage (39) or Exeter (38).

I'm not sure we'll win the league. Crewe looked fantastic when we lost there and they have players who are just too good for this level. I will, however, be disappointed if we don't get automatic promotion, we're definitely good enough for that.

Jimmy Floyd

22-12-2022, 12:57 PM

Chelsea 22/23 - First Half
Money was reasonably tight and the wage bill more extravagant than Liberace's wardrobe. Things needed freshening up, though, with all the youth out on loan and the squad thin in some areas. Out went Little George, or 'Jorginho' as he is known in foreign climes, to a gullible Real Madrid for £50 million. The same sum found its way to Barcelona in exchange for younger model Gavi. I extended Ngolo Kanté's contract by a year in exchange for a 50k per week wage cut. What a nice man.

Tactically the plan was simple - 4-2-fucking-3-1, except against the big sides where the AM would retreat and become a DM in an altogether more negative arrangement. I soon found we were shorter on wingers than anticipated, particularly with Pulisic having the staying power of an ice statue in a foundry. Early results were not great, with points binned against Fulham and Brentford as well as a defeat at OT in the first four games. However, the visit of Friendly Arsenal F.C. for a 2-0 win had us back up and running and after that only City, Liverpool, Evert'n and somehow Dinamo Cunting Zagreb could best us before the migrant worker break. That 2-1 reversal in Croatia was the only points dropped in a remarkably kind CL group of Porto, them and Waxy Tap Republic of the Donbass. In the last 16 draw, 5 of our 7 possible opponents were German, so obviously from the available panzer batallions we drew Bayern Munchin'.

In the league, we are 3rd, gazing up longingly at the top two and pretty much level pegging with the People's Arsenal and Man Yoo. Edging at least one of these two out for 4th will be the aim this season. Fortunately Tottenham have plunged to about 11th so they're not much of a concern.

The big pluses have been Raheem Sterling, Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell. The minuses, this being Chelsea, have been the centre forwards, who can't hit a prozzie's hind parts with a ukulele. Mount leads the way on six goals, while Havertz and Aubameyang have five each.

I can't really be arsed with screenshots at this stage so instead here are my top nine terrible value contracts currently at the club:

1. Romelu Lukaku, £350,000 a week for the next 4 years. Now half of this is currently being paid by International Milan, but what the fuck?
2. Baba Rahman, £86,000 a week for the next 2 years. What a life he must lead.
3. Kalidou Koulibaly, £300,000 a week for the next 4 years. What in God's name were they thinking? He's a tidy defender but already 31 and by the time this contract finishes will be one of the world's oldest people ever to have lived, up there with Jeanne Calment and Noah.
4. Kepa Arrizabalaga, £145,000 a week for the next 3 years. Who the fuck pays a bloke this much money to sit on the bench?
5. Wesley Fofana, £230,000 a week for the next 7 years. You can tell some dumb fuck Americans have taken over, can't you. What if he turns out to be shite and/or injury prone? 'Gee, buddy, he won't pass to free agency until Joe Biden is 87 years old. Team control!' My word.
6. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, £150,000 a week for the next 2 years. This guy keeps rejecting moves away, and I can see why. Who in God's name decided he was ever worth spaffing the value of four brand new Jaguar XFs on every week?
7. Carney Chukwuemeka, £100,000 a week for the next 6 years. Todd, he's 19.
8. Marcus Bettinelli, £30,000 a week for the next 1 years. You might as well just pour £30,000 a week into a rubbish chute.
9. Raheem Sterling, £350,000 a week for the next 5 years. Do you know how much money that is? That's £91 million.

Browning

22-12-2022, 11:39 PM

We faced Southampton away in the FA Cup and they only rolled out a 35 year old Neymar against us. The worst part was he did nothing for 90 minutes and then whipped in the game winning corner and we went down 2-1. Still, at least we made about £310k from it.

Sir Andy Mahowry

23-12-2022, 12:40 AM

Palamós CF 2027/28 Season Update:

Transfers:

https://i.imgur.com/wKJJ47w.png

We didn't have a huge wage budget £16.5k which is £602k per annum (well what we spend is) which is the lowest in the division. The next lowest? Ejea who are spending £1.26m per annum. As such loans were going to be vital especially as we had been pushed to a professional club and every fucking player wanted a new contract.

We have two cash sales this year, one sanctioned by me the other by the board:

https://i.imgur.com/c0KJ7Tr.png

He was our best CB last year and I just about managed to convince him to sign a new contract and stay this year. By the time the season started though the two CBs I signed with him last year had progressed past him and I had a couple of loanees so he was 4th/5th choice so I cashed in.

https://i.imgur.com/Kcls6dG.png

This one hurts. I protested the transfer as it was way too low but the board told me to fuck off and Tenerife also wouldn't offer a loan back as they wanted him in their first team. Thankfully we do have 40% of profit so we stand to make a lot seeing as he was sold for peanuts. I could sell the clause now for just over £300k but I'm going to let it ride for now.

League:

https://i.imgur.com/YEgSDrE.png

https://i.imgur.com/uOp6DYt.png
https://i.imgur.com/iOApwjz.png

When we won our first two games 3-0 I thought we were going to piss the league but then he had a big wobble. We slipped to 12th and dynamics were starting to tumble which I made worse by saying the wrong thing in a meeting. Thankfully we lifted ourselves in November and from there it was a three horse race with us, Logrones and Andorra. We went into the final two games knowing a win or two draws would be enough. We drew the first but we played like shit in the second and lost but thankfully Logrones who were 2-0 up after 8 minutes conceded an equaliser in the 75th minute and they weren't able to find a winner handing us the title.

Cup:

https://i.imgur.com/BoGjKDL.png

A tough opener against a La Liga team (they finished 15th this year) but we battered them and 3-2 flattered them. An easy game in the next round and then Real fucking Madrid. It's a shame the Spanish system has lower division sides at home automatically as I'd have loved some gate receipts from the Bernabeu.

Sadly FM did the classic little v big team and we had a man sent off after 11 minutes and the ref gave them a penalty after 60 minutes. We did score in the 89th minute and we started looking decent with 45s on the clock we started a final counter attack but the ref blew the whistle early and Real Madrid (who had battered us especially in the first half) took the win.

Squad:

https://i.imgur.com/VbxmaPu.png

These three deserve special mentions:

https://i.imgur.com/RnP7iw9.png

https://i.imgur.com/6PenQQJ.png

https://i.imgur.com/qox1eqm.png

Early in the season Hammouche was our striker with Rouabah being our AMR inside forward but nearer the end of the season they swapped but were great at scoring goals and it helped us so much. Yegor was our rock at CDM (although he was the one to get a red against Real Madrid) and he spent most of the season listed by our coaches as either a La Liga 2 or La Liga standard player on current ability. I feel their judgement is a bit wonky but he was great for this division and that average rating is huge for a CDM.

Finances:

We're £400k in debt which isn't great but it's also not bad for Spain. I just checked our division and only 3 are not in the red with quite a few being in millions pounds worth of debt. That said:

https://i.imgur.com/J1M6Yjx.png

We have a transfer budget for the first time and the wage bill is going up by £8.5k a week so we can do a lot with that. Not sure how many of the current squad will be kept, I'd like to keep all of the loanees but that's going to be a tall order (especially Yegor) but we'll see.

On to La Liga Smartbank which the club have not been in since 1995 and will only be their 7th season in it.

Adramelch

23-12-2022, 01:23 AM

My 10th season at the helm of Wrexham is over and it was another great one.

https://i.gyazo.com/da4a19bc8c53483f078af635e19369f0.png

We finished 3rd again, consolidating our status as one of the top clubs in England and I would argue this season we were quite comfortably the third best club in the country. We only managed to gather 1 point more than last season, but that's because we somehow managed to lose 3 of the last 4 games of the season, when we had already guaranteed 3rd place. We were generally hard to beat and even though I don't really look to defend in games, we generally tend to have low-scoring games as evidenced by our 61 goals scored (still 4th highest in the league, but not what I'd classify as "high scoring") and 32 goals conceded (second best after United). Our status as a big club also showed in the cups as we made it to the semis of the League Cup before getting knocked out by United, and we also ended up winning the FA Cup after beating Arsenal (3-0) and City (3-1) in the semis and the final respectively. This time around we also had European football to look forward to as we were entered in that absurd 36-team Champions League group phase. We remained unbeaten in that stage, eventually finishing 3rd behind Inter and City meaning we would phase Juventus in the round of 16. We were the better team in both games, but unfortunately we struggled to score and conceded a bit too easily, so we ended up going out after a 2-1 aggregate defeat. Still a very impressive debut in the competition I'd say.

https://i.gyazo.com/92ba3f33b22c7ece33225c17ee52b8de.png

Generally satisfied with all the players, though I do think we could improve our full-backs. They are not bad per se, but they are very inconsistent. Up front Grabowski made it to our best eleven due to his amazing performances from the bench, but as you can tell from the amount of games played, he wasn't our main striker. That was Fabio Silva of Wolves fame, who joined us last January when Real bought Savic. He was decent last season, with 7 goals in 16, but he really came to his own this season with 30 goals in 44 games. He's not the most consistent player, but my main issue is that he seems to be injury prone, picking a 2-month injury in February as well as 4-month one in the tail end of the season. That coupled with the fact that he'll soon be 30 means I will probably be looking for a replacement. He was sort of a panic buy anyway when we lost Savic. Speaking of age, we have a very young squad, with just the 5 players above 25, so we should be set for the foreseeable future. That's not to say that I won't be looking to improve the squad but it's good to know that there's a solid basis to work on.

ScousePig

23-12-2022, 11:13 AM

I've started a new journeyman save. For anyone wondering about the ultimate challenge I occasionally update on in here, I'm still at Arsenal and will continue that alongside this save, but for the time being I'm staying put at Arsenal because we have such a fabulous team. My new goal in that save is to discover/train/sign/create the 'next Messi' i.e. a world's best player who wins several Balloon Doors and scores 400/500 career league goals. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to go about it yet though. I have a couple of fantastic Brazilian forwards at the moment at Arsenal who are world class, but they're not best in the world/best ever territory and they're already early twenties. There is one English lad who signed for Inter who potentially fits the bill, but he's already 23 or 24 and I'd have wanted him much younger to start with. So the search goes on.

For a journeyman save, I usually start unemployed and holiday for a season, either taking over a newly promoted club to a bottom division, or applying for anything and everything. However, that invariably leads to me managing a National League North/South team, or a team in the lower leagues in Scotland. I didn't really want to go down that path again, so I decided to appoint myself in one of the lower foreign leagues. I ended up in the Croatian second division at a club called Dugopolje FC. We're a semi-professional club to the east of Split, with our parent club being Hajduk Split. Our stadium holds 5,200 and we've never been in the Croatian top league.

https://i.ibb.co/tC8Z7xQ/Original-profile.png (https://ibb.co/nkz3Hn6)

My profile, which shows I'm pretty much as useless as it gets to begin with.

https://i.ibb.co/NKcDBD4/Main-tactic.png (https://ibb.co/sq8xYxB)

Fortunately, the team allowed for a pretty conventional 4-3-3 with attacking full backs and inverted wingers. This made things pretty straightforward from the start, and meant I didn't really need to make any signings. The only thing I don't particularly like is both wide attackers and the main striker being on attack duty, but it was fine.

https://i.ibb.co/ctZTyR6/Winter-break-league-table.png (https://ibb.co/Gk8PdGW)

https://i.ibb.co/FXLDGdH/Winter-break-squad.png (https://ibb.co/bFMKpGb)

A pretty comfortable start to the season and nothing to suggest we wouldn't go on to secure a fairly comfortable promotion.

https://i.ibb.co/RS532Mz/End-of-season-table.png (https://ibb.co/4fQ8WDP)

It was very easy. In the meantime, I managed to get my first coaching badges, improve my reputation to 15%/1 star, and the club have turned professional.

https://i.ibb.co/fvdRP3k/End-of-season-squad.png (https://ibb.co/gVZ1B0S)

https://i.ibb.co/CvkVjvY/End-of-season-finances.png (https://ibb.co/L6L9T6c)

195 shirt sales!

Although it's a journeyman save, my reputation won't allow me to move anywhere better yet, so I imagine it'll be at least one more season with Dugopolje.

Adramelch

23-12-2022, 11:53 AM

Strong start that. The reputation doesn't update that fast initially so you do get that bit of "lag", where you have to stay at the club one more year, but given how easy it was in the second tier, perhaps you get to make an even bigger name for yourself by having a decent season against the big boys. I personally look to stay at each club for 2-3 seasons anyway so it suits me I guess.

What's your finances like? It's typically the biggest hurdle in the first few clubs I've found.

ScousePig

23-12-2022, 03:10 PM

They gave me nearly £20k wage budget for the second season, which was about ten times what I had in the first season. I've only used about half of it.

We're £420k in the red but our turnover is around half a million more than expenditure and the projection is to be well in the green by the end of next season.

Sir Andy Mahowry

24-12-2022, 10:53 AM

Got boned by the La Liga 2 wage rule which I had completely forgotten about (clearly didn't pay enough attention to Yev's Melilla save) as I had brought in a lot of good loans that make sub 1.3k.

I wasn't going to continue paying for these scrubs to sit around and had no terminate clause so I have used the in game editor to terminate them that way. It's not ideal but the game really should warn you on the loan screen.

Also annoyingly I'm going to have to loan out the youth who would normally be my backups as I'm not giving them new contracts.

Yevrah

24-12-2022, 11:34 AM

There are indeed some utterly counter-intuitive rules in Spain now. Wage cap coupled with (a very generous) minimum salary per player? Cheers.

Browning

24-12-2022, 12:45 PM

Newport County 27/28 Season- Second Half

Having left off 2 points clear of Crewe but with them having a game in hand, I was expecting them to win the title, or at least a close race between the 2. In the end... neither of those things happened. January saw us knocked out of both the Pizza Cup (losing on penalties to Oxford) and the FA Cup (losing 2-1 to a 90th minute goal from a Neymar corner at Southampton...) but our league record was 4 wins and 1 loss (getting spanked 3-0 by Orient who beat us 7-1 over the 2 games somehow). January transfer business was basically non-existent. We went in for a new RB who chose Sunderland over us, a new keeper who signed a new deal with his own team, and a new LB who we got priced out of. As a result our only signing was an unemployed Josh Kayode, previously of Rotherham, who came in and immediately created 2 goals off the bench to turn a 1-2 deficit around and see us win 4-2 at Crawley in the most significant January match.

February saw us win 5 out of 5 and then March started with 3 wins on the bounce too, taking our total wins in a row to 9. This meant that with 7 league games to go, we would secure promotion if Cheltenham failed to win against Wycombe. They scored a 87th minute winner to make us wait, and then we only managed a 2-2 draw at lowly Sutton to extend the wait even longer. Our next game was Yeovil at home and before that Crewe (2nd) played Pompey (3rd) in a game that was moved for TV. Pompey beat them 4-0 in a result that meant if we beat Yeovil we would not only be promoted, we would be champions. Kayode opened the scoring and old man Bogle came off the bench to net twice in a routine 3-0 win that sent us up as champions with 5 games to spare. The scheduling of the league then got really weird. We had a 3 week break before our next game and just like last season we came out of a long break looking like shite. We lost 5-2 at Cambridge and then after ANOTHER 2 week break lost 1-0 at Stevenage (though we bossed the game). 5 days later we made it 3 losses in a row going down 2-1 at home to Exeter but a 2-1 win at Shrewsbury (after another 10 day break...) meant the final game against Crewe was important. A win would see us break the all time wins record and the all time points record. We delivered, beating them 2-0, meaning despite out shit end of season form we end up like this:

Newport- 104
Crewe- 91
Portsmouth- 90
- - - - - - -
Cheltenham- 87
Orient- 79
Exeter- 79
Stockport- 78

Marc Francois the youngster we had on loan from parent club Palace was our player of the season, scoring 7 and creating 15 assists (honestly if they tracked the number of goals where his pass was the most important one in the move but not the actual assist i'm sure he'd have a ton) and an average rating of 7.38 from 50(2) games. Riley (on loan from Lincoln, and the loan has been renewed), Drysdale and new boy Koyode also managed average ratings of above 7.20. Goals wise, old man Bogle lead the way with 32 goals in 32(22) games and McCausland managed 19 in 55 starts, most of which were on the wing. Riley seemed to go off the boil after a hot start and ended up with 16 goals and 13 assists from 43 games.

Squad wise I think we have a good base to plan for life in League 1 but there is work to do. 3 of our 4 starting defenders were on loan so the position will need to be addressed, although Will Reddie is out of contract and loves the club so hopefully we might be able to make something happen if Bolton don't renew him. Our midfield and wingers are solid but we will have to look for a Francois replacement as he's already turned down an extended loan. We could still do with a striker so we aren't so reliant on Bogle who will be 35 by the time the new season kicks off. We also might have an issue with McCausland as I might have promised him new training facilities to get him through the door.... but we'll see what happens there.

Sir Andy Mahowry

24-12-2022, 12:45 PM

Yep, I'm now pretty much fucked with the wage cap.

17 registered (one of those is a non contract player and I'm not sure how he's been allowed in) with no backup keeper and I'm at the cap as I brought in two big wage players before I knew of it.

Sir Andy Mahowry

24-12-2022, 03:13 PM

https://i.imgur.com/rvcSBUZ.png

I had a loan RB lined up for £1.4k but he rejected me and then all of a sudden clubs started accepting that loanees can go out for no wage contribution:

I have a backup keeper now and I've got really good depth all over.

That window was a real painful experience. I hope we go straight up (media prediction has us at 21st and season preview has us at 18th so tall order) and our cap isn't so pitiful.

Mike

24-12-2022, 06:48 PM

I’ve not started a save yet on FM23. Baz has got me a ‘mystery shirt’ for Christmas, and I’ll be starting my save with that team.
I’m becoming more worried that I’ll get someone like Barcelona though. My plan is that’s the case it to start without a job with the aim of working up to manage that club.

Gray Fox

25-12-2022, 06:01 PM

Well you will need to learn Spanish...

Mike

25-12-2022, 06:05 PM

Alebrijes de Oaxaca Fútbol Club. It’s pretty special.
http://cdn.footballkitarchive.com/2022/07/10/OLP8yDKldVQvYpa.jpg

Gray Fox

25-12-2022, 06:11 PM

Did you get the CM Punk shirt for Christmas too?

Mike

25-12-2022, 06:11 PM

Last year :D

Baz

25-12-2022, 07:16 PM

I also got him that. :cool:

Bam

25-12-2022, 09:54 PM

Got this today. What is the bullshit you have to do to get the poxy Nazi team real names again?

Baz

25-12-2022, 09:58 PM

Got this today. What is the bullshit you have to do to get the poxy Nazi team real names again?

Don't forget to fix names and stuff: https://www.fmscout.com/a-fm23-real-names-license-fix.htmlHere.

Bam

25-12-2022, 10:02 PM

Thanking you Barrington. :beer:

Jimmy Floyd

26-12-2022, 11:47 AM

I'd forgotten how unhappy this game can make you. Blood properly boiling after a 1-1 home draw with Leeds. Cardiovascular system needs looking at.

Jimmy Floyd

26-12-2022, 12:27 PM

Nope, it's gone. What are you supposed to do when your forwards just will not score for games and games in a row? 8 xG in the last 6 games and two goals scored, which wipes out all the good play in the first 40 games / 15 hours playing time of the season.

The ridiculous new board performance thing means I'm on the edge of the sack as well. Why are they seething that I haven't signed famous players? This is FM, not Marketing Manager 2023.

Jimmy Floyd

26-12-2022, 06:03 PM

I'm not sure what the worst paragraph in this is. Being reminded about losing a Champions League quarter-final to fucking Celtic (0-1/0-0, literally couldn't hit a barn door for 180 minutes), Ranieri being lined up as replacement, or John Terry taking charge of team affairs.

https://i.ibb.co/VNZ6h1t/sacked.png

I came 5th in the league, CL quarter-final and FA Cup semi. Just an immensely frustrating and infuriating second half of the season. Any time we scored we were immediately pegged back, the forwards were just atrocious and couldn't hit the target, and we got so many yellow cards that set pieces against and suspensions took their toll as well. But mainly it was about being wasteful and not being able to put away chances.

I'm going to stay in the same save and try and get another job I think - I'm enjoying the game, but it's just so difficult to get it right unless you micromanage everything and so commit 12 hours a day to playing a handful of matches.

Dark Soldier

26-12-2022, 06:57 PM

It doesn't really matter what you do Jimmy.

The Match Engine is fucking abhorrent. Player promises are even more broken. Its a fucking piece of trash.

Baz

26-12-2022, 07:18 PM

Fun when you’re managing 31 blokes off a message board you’ve posted on for over 20 years, mind.

Sir Andy Mahowry

26-12-2022, 07:50 PM

ME might be trash but this is the version I've had the most fun with in a while tbh.

Adramelch

26-12-2022, 07:58 PM

Another season done at Wrexham and it was quite a bittersweet one:

https://i.gyazo.com/5b4bcb1f2bd1e5d3d16e5a863b56238e.png

We really improved this season, as we were competitive in pretty much every game and ended up with 5 points more than last season. In fact, we were in with a decent shot at the title up until the start of April or so, where our form just suddenly dipped and we only managed to gather 8 points from the last 6 games, which meant we actually missed out on Champions League football. A real gut punch as we spent the whole season at 4th or higher and only fell out of the top 4 on the final day. The penultimate game was the one that did it though, as we were ahead against (20th mind you) Leeds and they found an equaliser out of nowhere in the 4th minute of injury time. Our cup performances were also disappointing but I did make the conscious decision to play weakened squads there so it was inevitable.

https://i.gyazo.com/69818088e585f6959c1d8db3cde07b9b.png

Now here is where it becomes interesting. We won all 8 of our CL group phase games, including a magnificent 4-0 away win over Bayern as well as a 6-0 win over Benfica. We were somewhat lucky with the last 16 draw as Dortmund weren't really up to our standards. Our next hurdle was Liverpool in the quarters and that one stung a bit, as we were fairly comfortably the better team in both games, yet it was them that somehow went through. Oh well.

https://i.gyazo.com/6e28987f7fb7a65c37b5741fe1d3f8b5.png

Very good performances all around with the very glaring weakness being our left winger, though in reality the right winger is just as average, he just gets a few assists more as he's often our set-piece taker and that props his stats up. The dilemma here is: I would really like to tweak my tactic a bit to get more from our wingers, but at the same time "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? So ye, I would like to change something, but I am also a bit scared of messing things up. As for individual players, I can't not mention Davidson, who we took a gamble by signing him from a Championship club for a club record of 72m euros, but he really delivered:

https://i.gyazo.com/8f73d018a25aa14643917c7b0794b323.png

Edit: Well it seems I spoke too fast. We still qualified for the Champions League courtesy of City winning the whole thing and earning a spot that way.

Mike

26-12-2022, 09:07 PM

Here we go!
https://i.imgur.com/Lrq7Lzi.png

Jimmy Floyd

26-12-2022, 11:02 PM

It doesn't really matter what you do Jimmy.

The Match Engine is fucking abhorrent. Player promises are even more broken. Its a fucking piece of trash.

There are things I notice in the match engine which are superficially improvements from previous editions - players actually react to deflections/cannons within 10 seconds, now - but they don't seem to have solved for some years now the idea that forwards just get put clean through far too often (for whatever reason - my centre backs turned like boats but it may well be that they all do) and that means that they also have to miss a lot of seemingly easy chances or else every game would end 7-5.

Adramelch

26-12-2022, 11:25 PM

That wasn't as prevalent in the previous version but it was most definitely still there. My main issue is how virtually every other goal seems to come from a hilariously bad pass getting intercepted, a player inexplicably dallying on the ball for far too long and/or a horrendous first touch. Like I get it, these things happen, but ye it's way over the top in that version.

Browning

27-12-2022, 12:05 AM

Worst thing for me is rebounds. It's like players just aren't ever expecting them. I think about 80% of the rebounds my players actually get on to (which isn't many at all) end with a tame shot that is cleared off the line by a defender who isn't in position to get anywhere near it if they just hit the fucking ball with any power. Even if ones that go in trickle their way over the line.

Sir Andy Mahowry

27-12-2022, 01:07 AM

https://i.imgur.com/EOy42UW.png

Granada predicted third by the media and the season preview tab who were favourites at home destroyed :cool:

Fans still don't like me all that much though.

John Arne

27-12-2022, 02:38 AM

Adramelch

27-12-2022, 08:05 AM

The player interactions and mood swings really is really borked. I use the in-game editor to remove unhappiness most of the time. I'm not having a player I signed 6 months ago from obscurity (Uruguay 3rd division) moaning to me about rejecting a $200k bid from Real Betis. Cunt.

I just tell them to suck it up and go on with my life. Can't say I've noticed any negative influences.
Browning: I don't generally have many rebounds, but you just described exactly what happens when a player goes around the goalkeeper and shoots against an open goal.

Baz

27-12-2022, 08:51 AM

Just get Danny to have a word. He sorts most problems out.

Jimmy Floyd

27-12-2022, 12:33 PM

Here's another one. Corner takers being offside on the second ball back to them. I know it happens very occasionally in real football, but jesus christ it happens the entire time on this version.

Dark Soldier

27-12-2022, 01:42 PM

Think they added that as short corners used to be absolutely fucking broken.

Danny

27-12-2022, 03:20 PM

Just get Danny to have a word. He sorts most problems out.

I was very confused until I realized you probably mean the TTH FM game :lol:

Dquincy

27-12-2022, 06:20 PM

Gillingham : Mid Season Update - Season 2082/83

After a busy summer, where I think i've made the squad a bit worse than it was, this is the standings at the halfway stage.

https://i.gyazo.com/9c9b42a7547382c14e98893647b369e2.png

https://i.gyazo.com/2ae3e7a69a5c6fec9de13ea7335a9a06.png

https://i.gyazo.com/937fc2006472430e764e570b8b612b79.png

Dquincy

27-12-2022, 09:36 PM

Well, that's annoying. FA Cup 3rd round.

https://i.gyazo.com/e9a565efe00fd540cea8466907f6ebfd.png

Gray Fox

27-12-2022, 11:31 PM

After taking over from thommo in Dulwich Hamlet the job was simple. Dont fuck up the good start.

After a wobble in the very second game against Weymouth, I thought I may have been in trouble, however the league was plain sailing throughout. The league was secured with 4 games to spare. The team definitely switched off after that though. Only 1 win in the last 4 games.

https://i.gyazo.com/6528b4f1ef9f50cfad322413de6cd692.png

A little annoying to not quite break the 3 figures in points, but it's still a record for the league. Most of our good fortune was down to Alex Bonnington. Immediately nicknamed him Bono and sat back as he finished the season with 33 goals in 38 starts.

https://i.gyazo.com/0c698edcedaee4984310e1dc7378033f.png

As we were flying high in the league I turned my attention to the FA Trophy as a chance at a double for the season. We saw off Banbury United, Scunthorpe and Darlington to set up a semi-final clash with Woking. A very tense 0-0 away leg allowed us to bring it to our place with game fully on. A 2-0 win saw us to the final with by far the biggest fish we'd faced in Yeovil Town. Even worse. Our talisman Bono picked up a yellow card late in the return leg to get himself suspended for the final.

The game started horrifically as we conceded a penalty inside 3 minutes to go 1-0 down, then very much clung on to half time. A sprinkling of half time changes got us off and into the game and saw the game levelled on the 50th minute. From there it was very much back and forth but no further goals sent it to extra time. Could we push on and nab a famous winner?

https://i.gyazo.com/041f3033bb79d62a85a3afb80f604fa7.png

No. We could not. Despite fashioning two great late chances, the ball just wouldn't go in. Still a great season and this popped up after:

https://i.gyazo.com/382c7a88b4a96ddb6a49f1d90f32924f.png

I hand over to @Mahow with a club very much on the up. Let's see what happens next.

Jimmy Floyd

27-12-2022, 11:52 PM

Get in there Lewis.

I've taken over Nottingham Forest (in the Championship). Thought it was a coup to land such a job as the press were linking me with Exeter and Morecambe, and then I quickly found out why. Inherited a post-relegation wage bill of £1.3 million with a budget of £55,000 per week while the highest earning player alone was on £88,000. Managed to slice £800,000 per week off the wage bill and bring in £57 million in player sales, but wasn't able to spend a single penny of it because we're still 5 times higher than the maximum wage bill the board will allow. That part was quite fun.

Then the matches started again and although we're 6th after 15 games, it's about the least enjoyable thing I've ever done in my life. The last two games have featured us binning 2-0 leads in the last five minutes because I don't have a squad deep enough to rest anyone and they all die after 80 minutes. I've started just fielding random kids and hoping to get away with it even though they're barely Conference standard.

Browning

28-12-2022, 12:00 AM

2 days rest from training after every game will sort you out Jim.

Jimmy Floyd

28-12-2022, 02:14 AM

Nottingham Forest, 19 games into the season update:

https://i.ibb.co/Cwrz5J2/forest-table.png

Terry Waite had more fun chained to a radiator than I am having playing this. One of my centre forwards has an average rating of 6.24, the other one hasn't hit the target with any of his last 17 shots. I can't sign anyone because the board have decided a budget of £110,000 a week is 'high enough as it is', despite the balance of £92 million, transfer budget of £18 million and the fact that this would be the lowest wage budget in the Championship by a mile (we are actually paying £520,000 which is 6th highest). Our first win was 4-1 on the opening day, since then the remaining 7 wins have all been by one goal, three of them 90th minute winners and the others clinging on for dear life. We've also thrown away 13 points from winning positions. xG has us bang in the correct league spot.

The in-game part of the FM experience is just pure agony. I don't think I've ever had less fun playing a game.

Lofty

28-12-2022, 09:41 AM

What's the verdict on this one then? It hasn't gone off as cheap as I imagined in the sale.

Baz

28-12-2022, 09:49 AM

Jim and DS hate it. Everyone else is enjoying it.

ScousePig

28-12-2022, 10:13 AM

Could you post up your tactic screen, Jimmy?

randomlegend

28-12-2022, 10:19 AM

On the one hand I have fomo as everyone is having fun with this.

On the other I trust DS that it's shit.

One of life's great quandaries.

ScousePig

28-12-2022, 10:30 AM

I'm still on 22 so have no idea but I've heard some horror stories about the ME, which is the single most important part of the game (and often the weakest).

Jimmy Floyd

28-12-2022, 11:08 AM

Could you post up your tactic screen, Jimmy?

Not got it open but I go between 4-2-3-1 VTT in home games against shite and 4-3-3 fluid counter attack in more difficult games. We have averaged out at 60% possession which feels like a lot. Chance creation we are about 9th in the league, defending about 4th. xG we are bang on where we should be.

None of it's terrible and I'm not losing consistently, it's just unbelievably stressful to be part of. The wage budget issue mentioned above will probably torpedo my Forest reign, I might give it one more job in the same save lower down and stop playing high pressing.

Jimmy Floyd

28-12-2022, 11:12 AM

I should also say that I've really enjoyed the squad building and off-field part of the game, it's just the ME making me shed organs.

Dquincy

28-12-2022, 11:37 AM

Gillingham : A Further Mid Season Update - Season 2082/83

We've now played 3/4's of the premier league season and it's still tight. We've hit a run of form and Liverpool have slipped up slightly, which puts us in the lead as we approach the home straight. Worht noting that we are still in the champions league and FA cup. Liverpool, however, have only the FA cup to deal with having finished bottom of their champs league group of Lyon, Ajax and Valerenga, which could work in their favour.

The current league standings at the 3/4 stage.

https://i.gyazo.com/ddd651906591ee75d2b4ffcd00126a87.png

https://i.gyazo.com/c6d9f4b00e864b576723e21841357a91.png

On a separate note, as we're in 2082, i thought i'd upload the world cup winners over the past 70 odd years and also the current longest serving managers.

A special mention for Senegal and Cameroon.

https://i.gyazo.com/ad8656e20fbea7e1ee5245615eb0fd75.png

The longest (current) serving manager has been at Algard for over 30 years.... :|

https://i.gyazo.com/bf910aaa045341c5d28d563da693e100.png

wullie

28-12-2022, 12:40 PM

That's a hell of a run for Brazil

ScousePig

28-12-2022, 12:44 PM

My first season in the Croatian top flight with Dujopolge has been completed. For some context, if you remember this is our first season ever in the top flight and we were predicted to finish last. It was also our first season as a professional club.

Starting with the league qualification rules for anyone unfamiliar with Croatian domestic football:

https://i.ibb.co/jGW9wv7/League-qualification-rules.png (https://ibb.co/xGfKgSV)

It's safe to say that Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split are comfortably ahead of anyone else in the league, with Dinamo a level above Hajduk.

https://i.ibb.co/18bdtDS/End-of-season-table.png (https://ibb.co/r4vcRCW)

An excellent season overall. And European qualification! A season slightly tarnished by the following:

https://i.ibb.co/WHpjGDS/Past-positions.png (https://ibb.co/fXGLq8m)

We were second for much of the season, but blew it towards the end, losing to Hajduk a few games from the finale really cost us. It was the difference between some sort of Champions League run and the Europa Conference League. I can't imagine we'd have gone far in the Champions League so this may work out okay, but you'd imagine there might have been some financial implications. Not to worry.

https://i.ibb.co/2ZHGPtx/Cup-final.png (https://ibb.co/sWz8Qwn)

https://i.ibb.co/q1Hy2ZF/Cup-final-2.png (https://ibb.co/HgcF9Jp)

We also lost in the Croatian cup final, to a team finishing mid-table. This was disappointing after beating Dinamo Zagreb in the semi-final.

https://i.ibb.co/x7kGKYm/Chances-created.png (https://ibb.co/S3j0DcQ)

https://i.ibb.co/QNkmNw4/Expected-goals.png (https://ibb.co/hWc8WzS)

As you can see, we showed we're capable of mixing it with the big boys.

https://i.ibb.co/hf6rf2m/Record-high.png (https://ibb.co/SrjHrV3)

Below you can see that our reputation has increased and a review of our season.

https://i.ibb.co/g7ssfVC/End-of-season-reputation.png (https://ibb.co/z5KKBJw)

https://i.ibb.co/yP15kHW/End-of-season-review.png (https://ibb.co/g9pwWkz)

https://i.ibb.co/GxKW3Mr/End-of-season-top-scorer.png (https://ibb.co/Rvx346J)

Finally, our squad and two main tactics used. There's going to be a bit of an overhaul in the summer as we're losing a few and others are not quite good enough.

https://i.ibb.co/YbDN7HG/Squad.png (https://ibb.co/4JsFZhx)

https://i.ibb.co/vcJcWc6/Tactic-4-1-3-2.png (https://ibb.co/NFLFqFd)

https://i.ibb.co/CtbV55s/Tactic-4-3-3.png (https://ibb.co/59rsWWx)

Dquincy

28-12-2022, 12:53 PM

That's a hell of a run for Brazil
Bottle jobs.

I'll upload the Euros when I'm next on.

ScousePig

28-12-2022, 12:54 PM

https://i.ibb.co/wBLxywR/Conference-League-3rd-qualifying-round.png (https://ibb.co/pbP92Rx)

https://i.ibb.co/XVP7YwH/Conference-League-group-stage.png (https://ibb.co/523rK7Z)

A quick look at the Conference League and it looks like we'll get £85k for appearing in the 3rd qualifying round. Win that and it's the same in the 4th round. Win that and we're in the group stages, and it's £428k for a win. That's about a third of our current annual turnover.

If we'd finished second and qualified for the 3rd qualifying round of the Champions League, the finances would have been similar (£85k appearance). The difference being if we'd lost, we'd have gone into the Europa League 3rd qualifying round and been given a hefty £239k. If we'd won a couple of games and gone out just before the group stages of the Champions League, we could have qualified for the Europe League group stages.

Gray Fox

28-12-2022, 01:28 PM

That's a grand first season in the league ScousePig.

You'll likely be better off in the conference league as there'll be more chance of stealing the odd win or draw. You also don't need 6 humpings scattered through your season. Terrible for morale.

The catch 22 you face is that Dinamo will be a bastard to catch, but you'll also need them to be good because you'll be needing their European Coefficient points(assuming you stay there a while mind you).

Also interesting to still see Hajduk are listed as a parent club. Maybe some chance to grab a loan or two for next season?

Adramelch

28-12-2022, 05:13 PM

What's the verdict on this one then? It hasn't gone off as cheap as I imagined in the sale.

I think it's just as bad/good as the previous X versions if I'm honest. I still got my money's worth just off the basis of the ME being different than the previous version.

ScousePig

28-12-2022, 09:57 PM

ScousePig

29-12-2022, 09:25 AM

A quick update to the start of the season with Dugopolje. First game of the season against rivals and second favourites for the league, Hajduk Split:

https://i.ibb.co/S3Dv574/First-game-of-season.png (https://ibb.co/Vq0BJpc)

And onto the Europa Conference League. We drew quite tough competition in near neighbours and two and a half star rep Maribor.

https://i.ibb.co/qDd5HCT/Maribor.png (https://ibb.co/NFsS0rc)

https://i.ibb.co/FsWJ7PP/Conferene-League-3rd-qualifying-round.png (https://ibb.co/0BXZJww)

And walloped them (we drew the second leg). Meaning that if we could win our next tie, we'd be through to the knockout round, which would be pretty massive in terms of financial gains.

https://i.ibb.co/VNxhpcG/Nordsjaelland.png (https://ibb.co/z5FLHTg)

A tough one. A 3 star team that are a fair bit bigger than us, and would arguably be the best side in Croatia if they were in our league.

https://i.ibb.co/kqK7Thy/Conference-League-4th-qualifying-round.png (https://ibb.co/KV6Pg9G)

Again, dispatched pretty comfortably. We lost the second leg by the odd goal but the game was wrapped up in the first leg, like Maribor.

https://i.ibb.co/RTzsfMx/Conference-League-group-draw.png (https://ibb.co/whMPVb9)

https://i.ibb.co/xL5ckDm/Prize-money.png (https://ibb.co/3dh837f)

Two more big clubs meet us in the group draw, however with the other team being an also-ran, I fancy our chances of causing an upset.

https://i.ibb.co/HxwtMt7/Antwerp.png (https://ibb.co/GtYW1W7)

https://i.ibb.co/pXhvTxj/Victoria-Plzen.png (https://ibb.co/C0P5yzK)

Both 3 and a half star teams. A domestic update:

https://i.ibb.co/rMnSVm8/Result-vs-Dynamo.png (https://ibb.co/NpwPMsD)

In my head, I have this as my final season with Dugopolje. I'm hoping for a title challenge given how well the early season has gone, and I'm open-minded about the Europe Conference League. With me studying for my badges, I now have a two-star reputation and hoping that will give me enough to be taken seriously for some 3-star jobs, possibly next summer.

Baz

29-12-2022, 09:39 AM

Man, I wish I had as much time to play FM (or do anything, really).

ScousePig

29-12-2022, 11:06 AM

I've had a bit of a nightmare. Just realised that because I put some of the main leagues on 'view-only', they don't have the proper squads. All the top divisions do, but I had a quick look at the Championship squads in England and they're all made up teams.

Not sure I want to continue.

Browning

29-12-2022, 12:08 PM

That’s surely not how view only works?

ScousePig

29-12-2022, 12:45 PM

I didn't think so but not sure what else it could be. I'm carrying on at the moment but it's annoying that from the Championship down all the players are made up.

Baz

29-12-2022, 12:54 PM

Strange question but have you pirated the game? Randomising the names of players was in a previous version of FM if it was pirated.

ScousePig

29-12-2022, 01:03 PM

Nope. Just started a new game again and can confirm that if I put England on 'view only' then only the Premier League players are real. When I change to 'playable' they are all there.

I might just start a new game with all leagues playable and hope it doesn't slow me down too much.

Browning

29-12-2022, 01:17 PM

That seems very odd. When I set up my current game I had only England/Scotland as playable but Italy/Spain/Germany etc as view only and their squads seem to be fine.

Jimmy Floyd

29-12-2022, 01:19 PM

I thought view only simply means that the matches/tables are generated superficially but the squads are as if the league was not loaded at all, i.e. high rep players are there but not others.

Maybe if you bring the league in as playable later it generates fake players to fill up the squads?

ScousePig

29-12-2022, 01:33 PM

That seems very odd. When I set up my current game I had only England/Scotland as playable but Italy/Spain/Germany etc as view only and their squads seem to be fine.

Did you check outside the top league?

Browning

29-12-2022, 01:48 PM

Only very briefly but Parma had some of their real life players after starting in Serie B

Adramelch

29-12-2022, 02:41 PM

What's your player database at? It could be the "view only" lowers it by default but you can adjust that?

ScousePig

29-12-2022, 06:28 PM

I so sometimes play around with the database and tick aspects like 'current internationals only' and the like. However, I unticked all that today and it gave the same results.

I tried starting a new save with all the same leagues loaded on playable and gave it a pre-season but I didn't get into it, so I'm just going to return to my Croatian save. I've put England onto playable from next season so it might start sorting itself out. I've no intention of managing there for a long time anyway.

Jimmy Floyd

29-12-2022, 11:26 PM

Seeking something different, I've started again in Uruguay which unlike the English game has actually been enjoyable so far:

https://i.ibb.co/gFJzXqT/penarol2.png

Except for the fact that my job is 'Insecure' because of this:

https://i.ibb.co/zVjHdvD/penarol1.png

Have they even bothered testing anything in this game or do they just pump it out regardless?

Nacional have the cannibal up front who has scored 18 goals in those 13 games, if we somehow pip them it would be miraculous.

Sir Andy Mahowry

29-12-2022, 11:37 PM

Uruguay has some weird placing system IIRC.

A second league phase or some bullshit with average points or something.

Is there not another table?

Gray Fox

29-12-2022, 11:39 PM

South American saves in general tend to be batshit in some way, regardless of country chosen.

Brazils season having about eleventy billion games is also quite something.

Jimmy Floyd

29-12-2022, 11:45 PM

Uruguay has some weird placing system IIRC.

A second league phase or some bullshit with average points or something.

Is there not another table?

There is an overall table comprising apertura and clausura, but since we're in the apertura it's the same as that table. The average points table is just for relegation purposes but we're 2nd in that as well.

The number of cards and fouls is highly entertaining. I spend almost the whole time playing either with or against ten men.

Adramelch

30-12-2022, 08:53 PM

The dilemma here is: I would really like to tweak my tactic a bit to get more from our wingers, but at the same time "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? So ye, I would like to change something, but I am also a bit scared of messing things up.

In the end I decided to give it a go. The formation stayed the same, a 4-2-3-1, however I swapped from traditional wingers to inside forwards, while instructing the full backs to get further up the pitch and overlap. In terms of the actual football I think it was a good decision as we do tend to generally create a lot of chances, while still keeping it fairly tight at the back. In terms of actual results though, it wasn't as impactful:

https://i.gyazo.com/539a7a9a1709f80f2f0aaf4748915325.png

I wasn't expecting us to mount a title challenge or anything, but we were miles off the pace this time around. We did score more and concede less than every other season, yet we somehow managed to finish 7 points off last season's tally. All that said, I think we were quite unlucky at times and the all important xPts table agrees, as it has us finishing 4th. In any case, we drew the last 2 games, where just 1 win would have been enough to guarantee us 4th. However, we missed a penalty at the 87th minute away at Chelsea and then proceeded to get held to a 1-1 draw at home to Aston Villa despite dominating the game. At least we did manage to win the League Cup for the second time in 4 years, comprehensively beating City in the quarters (4-0) and United in the semis (4-3 on aggregate but quite comfortably I would say), before limping our way to a 1-0 win over Leeds (who play in the Championship) in the final. Also made it to the Quarters of the FA cup where we lost away to Newcastle, after beating United in the previous round. All in all, I'd say knockout football seems to be our thing. Until this happened:

https://i.gyazo.com/0d09b3a8468079d1f276c6d2de6b4c83.png

Easily our worst performance in the last 5 or so years, from start to finish. But then this also somehow happened:

https://i.gyazo.com/9134b84ba4bc7d782f8b1fd1ff955ef9.png

And then this:

https://i.gyazo.com/3d151a216e8a4722cfe469e70129e4b3.png

And finally this:

https://i.gyazo.com/6fcb3dc7d3034ff2b7290cac1eebbb94.png

:jayjay: :jayjay: :jayjay:

I don't quite know how this all happened, but it did. Something just clicked after the humiliating defeat against City and from there on we just dominated every remaining game and won the whole thing. To think that we entered the competition, somewhat by coincidence (City winning it last season allowed us in, despite finishing 5th), and ended up winning it is quite bonkers.

https://i.gyazo.com/2d2919a957de002e394598f17bd3394b.png

Stark contrast if you compare it to last season's stats, with the wingers bagging 32 goals between them (compared to just 10 last season), without "stealing" them from the attacking midfielder or the striker (in fact both of those players also scored more goals). Another important thing to mention is that every single one of those players was here last season as well. In fact we only really signed 2 players this season, both in a sort of rotation role too, while we mostly looked to trim all the excess fat and maybe give a few more opportunities to some youngsters and I think that will be of benefit in the future. That said, we have a lot of money in the bank and it might be the summer where I actually spend most of it. I will also be looking to get rid of Sadilek, a winger that's been a long-term servant of the club, having been a first-team player for the last 5 seasons, who didn't really adjust to our tactical revamp.

So for the future, the name of the game has to be to challenge for a title win and eventually win it. Our Champions League win massively increased the club's stature, so hopefully that means we can sign a few stars to help us get there.

thommo

30-12-2022, 10:51 PM

2024 - Season 1 - Kedah FA

Despite the finances already looking fairly bleak, the board were happy to offer a huge wage budget surplus to afford me some dealings in the transfer market. I didn't go crazy by any means, but I was able to fill up our foreigner quota with the signings of Barcellos, a young Brazilian centre-back, and Roman Alles, a 5 star central midfielder from Argentina who was to play alongside Dechi N'Guessan, our club captain. We looked quite bare up front, so I stuck to a 4-3-2-1, with a DM sitting behind Alles and N'Guessan. To flesh out our attacking options I snapped up Engku Yacob to be our starting striker, and a couple of Malaysian internationals to rotate at the left wing spot. The youth teams looked quite strong, so I was able to call upon a decent batch of youngsters to fill out the subs bench and play the odd game when needed.

It turned out to be a very good window, as realistically, our league season couldn't have gone better.

https://i.ibb.co/mS8V7dD/kedah-2024-table.png

https://i.ibb.co/LRnQ9vG/kedah-2024-fixtures.png

We stormed our way to the title, sealing it with 2 games to spare with a comprehensive 3-1 victory over Johor Darul Ta'zim, the previous champions, a fitting way to confirm our place at the top of Malaysian football. We started the season with 10 consecutive league wins, mainly thanks to the incredible scoring efforts of our new signing, Engku Yacob. Once he picked up a fairly lengthy injury, we started to drop points and lack goals, but the rest of the team eventually picked up the slack - N'Guessan especially providing the output with 9 goals and 11 assists over the course of the league. Roman Alles was the perfect foil for him in that central midfield spot. His true box-to-box ability meant so much of our success came through him, be it winning the ball back, setting the counter free with the initial pass, or firing in an important goal from outside the area.

https://i.ibb.co/hBNZxQ4/alles.png

As it so happened, we were actually involved in the AFC Champions League, entering in late July. Unfortunately for us, it was a short stay with an immediate defeat to Macarthur FC, the Australian champions. We battled hard to get back in it after going 2-0 down early on but ultimately they had too much quality in attack.

https://i.ibb.co/7QJyrMQ/kedah-afc.png

Malaysia has two domestic cup competitions and we were strong in both. We needed extra time to make it through our first game of the Piala FA Malaysia (after conceding TWO stoppage time penalties), but we made it through fairly comfortably to the final, even dispatching JDT in the semi finals. And so we were matched up with Sabah FA in the final, a team from the second division, and I was confident of securing the cup.

But we faltered in an even game, gifting them a soft equaliser that dragged us to a penalty shoot-out where our usually reliable youngsters contrived to miss twice. We'd thrown away the cup and an opportunity at a domestic double (and a further rep boost!).

https://i.ibb.co/nQ0YG2b/kedah-cup-1.png

The second cup, confusingly named the Piala Malaysia, was held after the league season and we were drawn in a weak group which saw us breeze through to the last 8. Unfortunately, international call-ups were causing us some issues, with our first choice goalkeeper, centre-back and left winger all away for the knockout stages, To make matters worse, Dechi N'Guessan's contract was up at the end of November, and yet the competition was to run until mid-December (if we made it all the way). He'd already agreed to return to the Ivory Coast before I could get a contract offer in and so we'd be without him if we were to progress in the competition.

We saw off Terengganu in a really close battle over two legs, before N'Guessan marked his last game for the club with a goal (his 20th of the season) in the first leg of the semi final. We also needed a late equaliser from our left-back to salvage a 2-2 draw. The second leg was incredibly close, and despite taking the lead in extra time, we gave away a 118th minute equaliser and penalties were once again going to decide our fate. We missed our first two, and that was it. Dumped out in the same disappointing fashion.

https://i.ibb.co/VpfzcGQ/kedah-cup-2.png

Despite this frustrating end to the season, all in all it was a huge success. An unprecedented league title, earned in stunning fashion. Two coaching badges, somehow sanctioned and funded by our board, who were leaking money all season long. But I think my stay in Malaysia is going to be a brief one. The finances at the club are poor, and I can't exactly do much better than I have this year. The continental football is not worth sticking around for, as I saw how over-matched we were in our one game this year. And my contract is officially up, meaning any club who wants to offer me a job will not have to pay a compensation fee. Back to the job market I go...

Jimmy Floyd

31-12-2022, 12:33 PM

https://i.ibb.co/p67W4h3/run.png

A 13-match unbeaten run in which we concede precisely one goal twelve times, and nine in a row. Absolutely bizarre game.

Baz

31-12-2022, 12:52 PM

“Clean sheets? No.” (Jacobson, M. 2022)

ScousePig

31-12-2022, 05:37 PM

When creating a tactic at a new club, do you all have a template which you work from or just start from scratch each time?

I've created a few templates which I know are very strong, and tended to just work my players around them, making the odd tweak. However, I'm now finding that a bit boring and trying to create something completely from scratch, trying to get the best out of the players at my disposal.

My aim is to start with a clean slate in terms of team instructions and not add any extra player instructions unless I know I want them from the outset. I feel I've got a good idea on how to get the best out of shapes in terms of channels, half spaces, overloads and transitions. I also try to build tactics vertically rather than horizontally, for example trying to find partnerships between my left back, wide left attacker and left central midfielder in a 4-3-3.

Gray Fox

31-12-2022, 05:43 PM

I tend to get the low down on the team I've inherited and what they're good or not so good at first.

No point asking a team with CBs that while maybe competent, all have 5 for pace, to play a Liverpool type joke of a high line.

Dark Soldier

31-12-2022, 05:48 PM

I make my tactic in beta then generally just vary roles and positions. Always ultra attacking regardless.

Sir Andy Mahowry

31-12-2022, 05:50 PM

I beat my team into submission.

They will play my system or they will be sold.

Dquincy

31-12-2022, 10:08 PM

Gillingham : End of Season Update - Season 2082/83

The season is complete. In the end we won it relatively comfortably.

https://i.gyazo.com/63ffbc2807eaedff932aaaabdd004a08.png

League Cup = shit.

https://i.gyazo.com/50e82199cdc8d27ab86dc05b9a66a1d6.png

FA Cup = success.

https://i.gyazo.com/8b9014326c634c6118538da66671097e.png

https://i.gyazo.com/0c8693bfee4c3a8a49f6c7d439699e55.png

Champions League = Emotional.

We progressed through the group stage, only just. First knock-out round brought us together with my old club, Atalanta. Could i show them what they're missing?

No. :(

https://i.gyazo.com/dd79093fc7c89bc239728a3e68acfd97.png

Can it get worse?

Yes. :( Atalanta ended up winning the champions league, with 10 of the first 11 being the players that i nurtured and breast fed. They also wonthe treble having won Seria A and the Italian Cup. I'm not bitter, honest.

https://i.gyazo.com/3cdd2ca33ab2cfaea6f5375c2f6c64a9.png

Normally i'd show the end of season squad, but i forgot to get a screenshot and i've progressed through the summer already.

Dquincy

01-01-2023, 09:29 AM

Hi all,
As I'm playing FM11, shall I not bother posting updates? If you're not fussed, I'll just leave it, but happy to carry on if people read them.

Baz

01-01-2023, 10:33 AM

Carry on.

thommo

01-01-2023, 11:25 AM

I enjoy reading all updates in here, so I'm in agreement, carry on.

Gray Fox

01-01-2023, 11:33 AM

There should just be a general FM thread instead of year by year tbf. It's not like we have hundreds trying to post through different versions.

Jimmy Floyd

01-01-2023, 12:26 PM

Peñarol - 2022 season
I had a little go in Uruguay as I wanted something different. I thought I was enjoying the game for the most part but the vagaries of European high pressing were getting me down. As it turned out, this was a really enjoyable season and a breath of fresh air.

Peñarol play in yellow/black stripes and are one of the two historical giants in Uruguay, the other being Nacional. As the season panned out, this proved very much the case again. Our squad was, like a lot of South American squads nowadays, a mixture of old and young. Our highest earning player is ex Napoli midfielder Walter Gargano, now 37, on £8,000 a week. There is quite a lot of solid young talent in the squad but many of the players are physically not great, either because they're old or because they are just slow. The overall standard of the Uruguayan league I would say is somewhere between the Championship and League One, but with less physical ability and more technique.

There are two things that surprised me during this season. The first is that this is a violent league with plentiful red cards pretty much all the time. 5-7 yellows per team per game is very much run of the mill. I don't know if the players all have high aggression or the referees are mental or both, but you have to get used to the idea that your guys are going to get booked and sent off a lot, as are the opposition.

The other surprise was that when it comes to the Libertadores, or South American competition in general, Uruguay is absolutely miles behind Argentina and further still behind Brazil, to the point where to imagine we can compete with them is ludicrous. This can't always have been the case, as Peñarol are five-time Libertadores winners and Nacional won it as recently as 2011. However, these days our assaults on South America have a similar chance of success as Celtic and Rangers heading off into the CL. Brazil and Argentina get 8 clubs each into the Libertadores and it's Brazil who are completely dominant, providing 7 of this year's 8 quarter-finalists.

Domestic matters first. The Uruguayan championship has a three-part structure: the Apertura (1), the Intermedio (2), and the Clausura (3). 1 and 3 are mirror image leagues of 15 games where you play each team once. The two winners of these qualify for the season-ending finals. The Intermedio, meanwhile, sees the league split into two groups for a further 7 games. While all this is going on, the games from 1, 2 and 3 all count towards an overall table (4) of 37 games. The winner of 4 is fast-tracked into the Championship Final. The winners of 1 and 3 play off for the right to face the winner of 4 for the national title.

Nacional have Luis Suarez. Fortunately, they won't have him in 2023, as he has buggered off to Lazio. However, this year, his toothy presence made life difficult for us.

This was the Apertura table:

https://i.ibb.co/WtxmKWD/ap22.png

The Intermedio saw us in a different group from Nacional. We both won our groups easily and then played each other in the final in a typically lol game of Uruguayan football:

https://i.ibb.co/HXTf92f/if22.png

The Clausura went like this:

https://i.ibb.co/tLYxHnq/cl22.png

And the overall final table thus:

https://i.ibb.co/tDQSRJW/ot22.png

We therefore entered the brief playoff system. First up we (as Clausura champions) played Nacional (Apertura champions) for the right to play off for the title against Nacional (who topped the overall table). In effect, we had to beat Nacional to earn the right to play them again for the championship.

The initial playoff went like this:

https://i.ibb.co/nMjmZ7Q/PL22.png

We were by far the better side, referee completely bent and desperate for a Nacional win. Fortunately that will be Suarez's last kick for Nacional.

As for the Libertadores, expectations were low and we met them. We had two Brazilian sides in our group and although we played pretty well in 5 of the 6 games, four points was probably as much as we deserved.

https://i.ibb.co/rvwp2yD/lib22.png

The challenge in the future will be to work out how to do better in a competition and one day hear this theme tune ring out in the final:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPWGneCu0dE

Until then, it will be about trying to establish domestic supremacy over Nacional. It's pretty clear how things are going to work managing in Uruguay. If you get anyone really good then Argentina/Brazil or even Europe will come in for them, so you need to keep the production line of talent going, either from within or from poaching the best from other Uruguayan clubs. I made a start on this after the Apertura by signing 20 year old stiker Thiago Borbas from River Plate (not that one) and goalkeeper Lentinelly from Liverpool (not that one). Borbas made a wonderful impact. In fact, he was better than that, as his 41 goals in those 37 league games (11 for River Plate, 30 for me) beat Suarez's puny 37 goals to become the new all-time record. He isn't rapid or a lethal finisher, but he is so busy, very good in the air and puts his chances away when he gets them. Hopefully will be able to hold onto him for as long as possible, but not holding my breath.

https://i.ibb.co/NSvWFcF/Borbas22.png

Sir Andy Mahowry

01-01-2023, 01:42 PM

Me next in the succession save where I had the first half of our season in the National League.

https://i.imgur.com/9XfDZtL.png

https://i.imgur.com/neMNKqo.png

It started really well but then in September/October we got into a rut and it didn't look good, thankfully I managed to plug the leak (hopefully) near the end of my stint before handing over to Pleb.

The goal was to be in the playoff spots before the handover so as to reduce the damage that Pleb might do.

Adramelch

01-01-2023, 04:20 PM

As stated in my previous update (been going through the seasons since I'm off work due to the Coronas), I planned to finally spend our warchest™ and I did just that. I only really signed one player that would go straight into the first team:

https://i.gyazo.com/fde7d52033f3431a325b20b70755b624.png

whom we paid a massive 105m euros for (a bit too much maybe, but it does include the home-grown tax). Other than that, the name of the game was to improve our bench as our main issue last season was that injuries meant we were fielding heavily suboptimal options (for the most part) and, even more importantly, we didn't quite have players that could come off the bench and make a difference. That was especially true for our wingers (or inside forwards rather), where, after our 2 main choices, it was just chaos. So with 70m spent to bring in 2 strong backup options there, as well as another 22m for a backup option for the attacking midfielder position, our squad looked a lot stronger. And it showed:

https://i.gyazo.com/b1c97b3a54f8eccefc0819c224e94a99.png

We actually had a very rocky start, with home losses to City and United and away losses to Arsenal and West Ham in our first 15 or so games meaning we were already 6 points off the pace by the time December came. But December did come and with it a favorable schedule and a strong run of form from us which saw us going on a 26-game unbeaten run across all competitions (17 games in the league), with just 2 draws and the rest of them being wins. That, combined with the fact that all other clubs around us just faltered, meant we came ahead with a 8-point lead and from there on the title was all but guaranteed. It was all the more impressive seeing as we had the most goals by some margin (94 to City's 79) and the least goals conceded (just 28). In the cups we did just ok. We won the UEFA Super Cup against Tottenham, got eliminated in the fourth round of the League Cup by Wolves and the quarters of the FA Cup by Liverpool. The Champions League was a different story:

https://i.gyazo.com/3a5f137ee37f50dadcf7758a5511a77f.png

That's a singular loss in 15 games, but unfortunately it came when it mattered the most, i.e. the final. It wasn't the most exciting of affairs, but truth be told Real were marginally better so they deserved it. Not to mention that they had to go through City, PSG and United to get there, while we had a much more favorable set of knockout games. Still, I am very happy with our performance since it shows that last season was not a fluke.

https://i.gyazo.com/0926ef23dfbd139c709726bd9db6e044.png

Yes, you are reading that correctly. Davidson finished the season with no fewer than 64 goals, comfortably finishing top scorer in both the league and the Champions League, even breaking an all-time record in the latter with 23 goals in 15 games. Apart from him, both Geiger and Grabowski were in top form again, with the latter being a key contributor to our change of pace in December. Escalante also found some ridiculous form in the closing stages of the season after a very slow start. The only somewhat negative aspect was Crothers' form, which was much worse than last season (or the two seasons before that even), but I do feel he's been punching above his weight for a while, so perhaps it's time for a change? Talking about Grabowski and Geiger, I guess they do deserve a screenshot:

https://i.gyazo.com/8302abe4705d22d03f79231df911d49d.png

Grabowski is the longest-serving player in the club at the moment, as he joined us back when we first made it to the Premier League and has stayed with us since (this was his 8th season at the club). He was a bit of a part-time actor in the first few seasons, before emerging as our "power-sub", but he really came up big when I changed our tactic to include inside forwards.

https://i.gyazo.com/cb63a427046838e31254baad7c8d7bf9.png

A player I signed 4 seasons ago, mostly because we had to pay just 12 million for him and his stats were already really impressive. When I first signed him, I didn't quite know what to do with him and even tried to retrain him to a striker. He ended up being the first indication that inside forwards might work for us, as that was his role when he came off the bench even when we played with traditional wingers and he usually managed to be an impactful sub. Since our tactical change, he was the obvious choice for the right wing and he's never really looked anything but great.

Sir Andy Mahowry

02-01-2023, 12:35 AM

https://i.imgur.com/AbbEY9N.png

:drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool:

Holy shit, we've put Barcelona in the fucking mud already.

Edit: Just checked and it's their first loss of the year :cool:

igor_balis

02-01-2023, 01:42 AM

my fm 22 game is proper stagnating, in the 3rd tier of italy with livorno (start in the 5th tier). always the way with those LLM games - bosh early promotions then it gets annoying.

Browning

02-01-2023, 01:49 AM

Newport County 2028-29 Season

Having won the National League and League 2 back to back, the board wanted us to avoid relegation this season.

We started our transfer business early in June, signing Aaron Ramsey (not that one) on a free and paying out a massive £30,000 to secure Brooklyn Lyons-Foster from Blackpool. Both players would mainly play off the bench. We then trialled all of the released Premier League youngsters and struck deals with James Simmons, a fantastic looking winger, and Crossley Oatwell, a LB who wasn't ready and would be loaned out.

When the new season ticked over officially we broke our transfer record signing Will Reddie from Bolton for £175k (rising to 250k) who we had had on loan the previous season. We also secured Abu Kamara from Norwich on a free transfer. The rest of our business, aside from a new back up goalie who never got a kick, was done in the loan market the most significant ones being Alexander Hofmann (LB from Middlesbrough) and Luis Santos (Striker from West Ham). Thomas Riley and Griffiths who we had on loan last year had already renewed their loans.

No one significant left the club although some high earners we weren't using moved on. This meant our team for most of the season was:

GK- Evan Watts- Signed on a free in our League 2 season and eventually won the job. He improved enough towards the end of the season to enter this one as our number 1.
LB- Hofmann, on loan from Boro.
CB- Same pairing as last season- Declan Drysdale who was here when I arrived and Will Reddie who was now our player.
RB- Griffiths, renewing his loan from Coventry.
DM- Sam Bowen and Jack Jenkins- this has been our pairing in the national league, but Jenkis was upgraded to Francois in League 2. Francois did not want to return for another loan spell and we couldn't find anyone else so Jenkins was reinserted.
LW- James Simmons, the new youngster from Chelsea who looks a bit special.
RW- Ross McCausland, who we signed on a free from Swansea last year and was great for us in L2.
ST- Thomas Riley, now in his 4th season on loan from Lincoln, and Abu Kamara our new free agent from Norwich.

Brooklyn Lyons-Foster served as first reserve for the entire defense and DM positions. Aaron Ramsey saw a good amount of game time from the bench at LW and players like Nathan Moriah-Welsh, Ryan Wood and Luis Santos all appeared frequently from the bench.

Our first game of the season was away at Oxford and we had no way of knowing how big this game would be. We were 2-0 down after 42 minutes but Jack Jenkins justified getting his place back with a screamer just before Half Time. Goals from Simmons and Santos in the 2nd half sealed a thrilling comeback to win 3-2. We would end August with 4 wins from 4 and top of the table, though we surrendered the lead in September following back to back draws with Swansea and Bolton. We then beat Salford 4-2 before I suffered my first loss of the season in my first ever game at Stadium:MK, losing 2-1 to my own team MK Dons. We took 7 points from the next 3 but a loss to Rochdale saw us fall to 3rd. We then won 6 of our next 7 games (with a draw at Sheffield Wednesday in there) which moved us back into the top 2 heading into December. December was a mixed bag as we lost to Posh and our title rivals Barnsley while also drawing winnable games against Forest Green and Colchester, but we did beat Lincoln, Luton and Plymouth, smashing the latter 5-1 on New Year's Eve.

Our unremarkable FA Cup run ended in Round 3 again, this time at Bristol City. However a 3-0 win against Rochdale and a 1-1 draw at lowly Walsall was somehow enough to see us move ahead of Barnsley who had been the runaway league leaders at one point. And having got our noses in front, we weren't about to let it go as we then won 6 on the bounce. The streak ended on 13/02/29 when Oxford came to town. They were 3rd in the table and thus the team we were most keen to stay ahead of. We got a 1-1 draw in a game we should have won, but it kept our lead over 3rd at a whopping 11 points. And this was lucky because our next game saw us get battered 5-0 at Wrexham out of the blue and we followed that up with a 2-0 loss at home to Wednesday. Something clearly had to change so our captain, Declan Drysdale, was dropped for the next game against Posh. The physio was constantly telling me both Drysdale and Reddie needed a rest and I couldn't get it to stop even by resting them here and there so I made the decision to drop Drysdale for 2 games and then drop Reddie for 2 games. This paid off against Posh who we smashed 4-1 but facing Birmingham 3 days later and with our LB suspended meaning Lyons-Foster would need to play LB instead of filling in at CB made me tempted to recall Drysdale but I knew I would just prolong the issues. In the end we took our medicine and lost 2-0 at Birmingham with a makeshift back line and Declan returned for a massive 1-0 win at Stockport where all our rivals (Barnsley, Oxford and Plymouth) dropped points. We then battled to a 1-1 draw at promotion chasing Blackpool before beating Tranmere and Lincoln at home, the latter of which sealed our promotion as everyone else kept dropping points. We followed this up with a 3-2 win at Luton which combined with Plymouth losing sealed the title. Ironically it was Oxford who lost to help us deal promotion and Plymouth who lost to help us seal the title but Barnsley who eventually finished 2nd behind us.

Newport- 96
Barnsley- 87
- - - - - -- -
Plymouth- 85
Blackpool- 83
Birmingham- 80
Oxford- 78
- - - - - -
Peterborough- 75

Oxford pushed us so close for so long and then completely collapsed and nearly missed the Play Offs.

We also made it to the Semis of the Pizza Cup before losing 3-2 to Everton U21s.... Fun times.

Player wise our highest average rating was Abu Kamara who scored 41 goals in 54(1) games and got an AR of 7.36. Sam Bowen and Will Reddie both finished on 7.20 from over 50 games and Drysdale, Jenkins, Watts, Santos and McCausland were all over 7, along with a loanee called Wahlstrom who filled in at DM/CB towards the end of the season after joining in January.

Goals wise Santos was 2nd with 15 goals in 7 (44) games and Riley was 3rd with 13 from 52(2). He's not really a League 1 striker it seems... lucky I've renewed his loan again for the Championship..... 5 years at the same team on loan!

James Simmons, the Chelsea youngster, was our top assist maker with 14 (to go with his 12 goals). Bowen (11) and Riley (10) also had double figures for assists.

We're.... going to get fisted in the Championship.... but oh well. :D

Adramelch

02-01-2023, 10:57 PM

https://i.gyazo.com/14d6825245055670004f1273aef1d847.png

What a career he's had.

City: Left at the end of his contract (2023)
Spain: 2024-2026 - Sacked
Tottenham: 2026-2028 - Sacked
Gladbach: 2029-2030 - Left to take over Southampton
Southampton: 2030-2031 - Sacked
Switzerland: 2032-2032 - Left to take over QPR
QPR: 2032-2033 - Sacked

And he's just been signed as a scout for us in 2035 after two years without a job. Won the league in 2023 with City and a Supercup with Gladbach and that's all his titles since the start of the save.

Gray Fox

02-01-2023, 11:52 PM

https://i.gyazo.com/025315a35a518fff67978fd0161c75af.png

Hello there.

It's been a while since I did a FM save(Maybe Randers in FM19/20?) and I've a month of gamepass and so it's time to give it a go. So why Greece?

Well after looking, there's only ever been one European finalist from Greece. That was Panathinaikos in 1970/71 and they lost to that Ajax team. No Greek team has been to any European final since. I'd like to fix it.

Why AEK?

Well there's a bit of a Bayern situation going in in Greece. Of the last 25 league seasons, Olympiacos have won 21 league titles(2 for Panathinaikos, 1 PAOK and 1 for AEK), including the last 3 in a row.
AEK were however screwed out of a title in 07/08. They finished in 1st place a point ahead of Olympiacos, however Olympiacos had lost a match earlier in the season 1-0 to Apollon Kalamarias. It turns out Apollon Kalamarias had used an ineligible player in that match. Olympiacos took this to court and it was deemed Apollon Kalamarias were to be docked 1 point and Olympiacos would be given 3 points and therefore the title.
It was that bad that Panathinaikos took the matter to the Court of arbitration for Sport. They asked the Greek FA if they supported this claim and they said no, so the case was refused and the title was handed over.

After this, AEK fell away from the title picture and then eventually financial problems caught up to them. They were relegated in 2013, but as an agreement to settle their debts, took a voluntary relegation to the 3rd tier.
This seems to have been a great decision as they were able to gain back-to-back promotions and return to the first division, they were then able to win the league for the first time in 24 years, three seasons later.

The clearing of the debts also allowed the club to work on another situation that had plagued them. Their home. They used to play at Nikos Goumas Stadium however it was damaged in 1999 by an earthquake. It was deemed that the entire site needed demolishing and to start again. They moved into the Athens Olympic Stadium in 2004 and demolished the old ground, but were hit with multiple cases of obstruction and many legal delays which stuck them in limbo.

In 2013 the club picked back up the plans to move into the site of their previous stadium but were again hit with legal challenges, which this time, they eventually overcame and planning permission was finally granted in 2017 to build the 32,000 seater Agia Sophia Stadium. However at the time of the start of the game the stadium is still not ready. Local councils took an age to give the club decisions on roadwork changes around the stadium. It was supposed to be good to go for the 22/23 season, but some more delays have meant that it will not be ready until October. So the club will play a few games at Georgios Kamaras Stadium to start the season off.

Success on the pitch faded a little after the title win, with AEK last year finishing 5th. The club isn't exactly flush, there's 'only' £6m in the bank and the wage budget is £340k p/w. However the club is debt free and the stadium has been paid for without burdening the club too. This where I step in.

There's a few objectives I'd like to reach with the save:

- Actually stay interested for longer than a week
- Make AEK the biggest team in Greece
- £100m in the bank
- Max out facilities
- Win a European title
- Make AEK the biggest club in the world
- Get the Greek Super League as high in the rankings as possible

But mostly I just hope it keeps my interest for a bit.

I didn't last the week as I got absorbed looking into the Club TTH Universe, then Christmas came and yeah... Anyway, back to it!

The linked post covers AEKs background, time to move more into the present. Here are the current lads(sorry if this image is huge):

https://i.gyazo.com/a721a67f2c41127252b4764d5ea5eab3.jpg

What you'll immediately notice is a problem I'd like to get to fixing quite soon. Firstly the squad is quite old. This is to be expected in a "lesser" league, as the level is not quite as high, so playing careers can go on a bit longer.

Secondly, the 30+ guys make up a fair amount of my wage budget. I have the first transfer window disabled for a bit more realism, but the wage budget I've been given is £360k p/w.
There is £6m in the clubs coffers and we currently spend £344k p/w on wages. I imagine come January there is scope for a signing or two.

As I've not played a league game yet I can't see everyone else's wage bill in comparison, but I can view their squads and it would seem that ours is in line with that of Panathinaikos and PAOK, but we all fall way behind Olympiacos, who have James Rodriguez and Marcelo on 50k a week.
Panathinaikos' best player seems to be Bernard, formerly of Shakhtar and Everton, mean while PAOK have FM legend Andrija Zivkovic as their top guy.

As for our lot, there's some recognisable names in there but our best player is either Sergio Araujo or more likely is Levi Garcia:

https://i.gyazo.com/15055d17820e264b0238ae5e1fd7026e.png

For those wondering the game thinks this league is around the level of the Championship or Swiss Super League.

As for the league itself? There are 14 teams in the Greek Super League. Everyone plays each other twice before going into a Championship(top 6) or Relegation Group. Once there teams will carry over 100% of their points and will play each other once, if in the Relegation Group, or twice if in the Championship Group.

At present Greece is 14th in the coefficient list, this means that in the Championship Group there are currently no spots for automatic European group places. 1st and 2nd go into the UCL Qualifiers, 3rd into the Europa League Qualifiers and 4th-5th into the Conference League Qualifiers.
The Greek FA Cup also awards a Europa League Qualification spot to the winner.

In the first year, AEK have no European football at all. They didn't qualify from last season, so it's a clean slate. However this will impact finances slightly and we'll now need to rely on our fellow Greeks to do well for coefficients sake, as we currently project to fall to 15th.

The only other thing to be wary of is that Greece imposes a max limit of 5 non-EU players in any match day squad. That also applies in the Greek Cup. This means no mass raiding of South America.
A maximum limit of 12 non-EU players in the entire squad, with that being further restricted to 8 over the age of 23. It currently takes 7 years to become a Greek National, so that'll likely not happen very often to save me.

As for expectations, I'd just like to get to club back into Europe first. The board and supporters however both require me to finish in the top two places in the league. The board require me to work within the wage budget and would prefer if I played attacking football. The supporters themselves apparently have a 4/5 influence on the board and they require me to finish above PAOK and Panathinaikos and their desire is to finish above Olympiacos and become the most reputable team in Greece.

Let's see what I can do I guess.

Jimmy Floyd

03-01-2023, 12:56 AM

You'll need to do an Alexander the Great, hoover up all the good young Greeks and use them to your advantage. Though he only really won the Asian CL and a couple of Egyptian titles.

John Arne

03-01-2023, 03:42 PM

Started a new game at Nordsjaelland... literally 10 days into the job half the squad are pissed because I rejected a $750k bid for our 2nd best youngster.

This game used to be fun.

Adramelch

03-01-2023, 04:08 PM

You'll need to do an Alexander the Great, hoover up all the good young Greeks and use them to your advantage. Though he only really won the Asian CL and a couple of Egyptian titles.

You lost me there.
John Arne: Just ignore the fucks. Been working well for me.

Jimmy Floyd

03-01-2023, 04:12 PM

I'm finding that anyone who doesn't start most games will end up in a bitching and moaning vortex, and the only way to satisfy them is to give them 100% of what they want.

Even had someone with their squad status set to 'Fringe Player' demanding a move away because a bloke averaging 7.7 was starting ahead of him.

Adramelch

03-01-2023, 05:31 PM

I think it has to be some personality trait (hidden or otherwise) cause I've had plenty of regular starter status players not complain about only really starting cup games, while I even had a breakthrough prospect complain about starting games. Nevertheless I just tell all of them to fuck off (unless I was planning to sell anyway) and after a couple months they have forgotten that it even happened.

Baz

03-01-2023, 10:46 PM

Yev with a 13 minute hattrick.

https://i.imgur.com/3K5gp4H.png

niko_cee

04-01-2023, 09:45 AM

10 minute.

Jimmy Floyd

04-01-2023, 09:50 AM

11 minute. I'm Ross Perot.

Sir Andy Mahowry

04-01-2023, 01:57 PM

Palamós CF 2028/29 Season Update:

Transfers In:

https://i.imgur.com/bfaikas.png

A natural CB who can play at RB, I probably paid a bit too much for him in terms of wages (especially considering the cap which I didn't know about at the time) but he's fairly solid.

https://i.imgur.com/7srKUa3.png

My Boy :cool: When I saw him my eyes almost popped out of my head, I had to have and I managed to get him for a decent wage. He is incredible.

Transfers Out:

https://i.imgur.com/oGAYoel.png

He was my first choice CB in the fourth and third tiers but Spezia came in with a low offer, I then countered with his release clause and they took him for some reason.

https://i.imgur.com/ZSWKsPJ.png

Our backup keeper, he went for 55k potentially rising to 94k with a 50% of next sale transfer clause. I wanted to keep him but he wanted to go and I felt that 50% could yield a lot of money.

League:

https://i.imgur.com/PXLBIf3.png

https://i.imgur.com/rMINT8w.png
https://i.imgur.com/SjOcmHr.png

At one stage I thought we might run away with it as we were 4 points ahead and looking really good. I then stopped playing for a week or so due to Christmas and doing the Dulwich Hamlet succession save. When I came back we lost to Sabadeil and we went on a really bad run.

We set a team record for most games without a win, dynamics were stating to sour and we went 3 points behind Zaragoza. Thankfully they stumbled as well and we managed to sort ourselves out and had the league won with a game to go as we had the best H2H against Zaragoza and Granada.

RIP to Valladolid btw, they got relegated from La Liga last season and are going down to third tier.

Cup:

https://i.imgur.com/dGGkOZg.png

When we drew Las Palmas I thought we had a good chance at beating them, they're one of the worst sides in La Liga and looked likely to go down (they did) but I did not expect us to follow that up with wins against Betis who finished 7th and Barcelona who won La Liga on H2H. They actually finished the league with 0 defeats and their only other loss this season was in the Champions League to Liverpool who beat them 3-1 in the semi-final.

A bit annoying to then lose to fucking Huesca but I can't be mad at that run.

Squad:

https://i.imgur.com/N94bmSl.png

Elorza was incredible for us. 50 total goals with 46 of those coming in the league (the next closest scorer in the league was Granada's Adam Armstrong with 28), he was a man possessed and he wanted to play in the big leagues.

Our strength lies in our attack with Sors on the left, Ormaetxea on the right and Campillo behind Elorza. Obviously we lose 2 of these next season and a whole lot of others in the team.

Plan is not to rely so heavily on loans next season and I'd like to improve our defence and keeper (who was incredibly suspect at times this year).

We've been given £8.6m in transfer budget and our wage budget is going from £30k (we were spending 26.7k with our first team salary cap at £22.5k) to £65k a week. I wont be signing players early this time to make sure I know how much we can actually use on the first team.

We're also 9k seats short of the minimum in La Liga (lol) so we're having to move somewhere for now although they haven't found a home yet. We are also building a new stadium for next season:

https://i.imgur.com/LwIf1z4.png

Which is dead on the minimum, would have liked something a bit bigger as we can afford it seeing as the parachute payment if we get relegated will be £11.75m plus TV revenue should be huge so the £15m stadium seems a bit cheap.

thommo

04-01-2023, 08:01 PM

So after winning the Malaysian title in my first season, it was time to move on and explore pastures new. Kedah had a good team and were poised to challenge for the title again, but with debt rising to around £500k at the start of the season it seemed like the right time to go. Once my contract expired, I was still at the club on a month-to-month deal, and I decided to stick around through the 3 months off season while I applied for a new job. By the time March rolled around I was still in Malaysia, with only 2 job interviews to speak of.

I had no real intention of slogging through the busy domestic months of April and May, and so after a few early-season league and cup matches (one of which was my first league defeat in charge of Kedah :moop:), I decided to officially resign and allow them to have someone a bit more committed at the helm.

It was still slim pickings on the job front for a few months, but once June rolled around, the vacancies piled up and so did my job applications. Despite winning a top level title, my reputation is still quite poor - the next step was undoubtedly going to be a sideways one at best. As we entered July, the invitations for interviews increased. If I was turning up in person, my air miles would be through the roof as I attended meetings with clubs in Mexico, Chile, Slovakia, Slovenia, Belarus, Russia, China, Hong Kong, Wales and Northern Ireland. And from that glut, there were inevitable job offers. I turned down a couple of options in Belarus, and one newly promoted team in Slovakia, and decided on....

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/94/Kitchee_SC_crest.svg

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/07/91/40/04/caption.jpg

Kitchee SC of Hong Kong, who play their home games at the Mong Kok Stadium. They play in the Hong Kong Premier League, the top tier of football in Hong Kong. It's a 10 team league, with just 18 fixtures stretched across 9 months. To fill out the schedule, we also have 3 domestic cups to compete in, including the Hong Kong Sapling Cup, which consists of an 8 game group stage.

Kitchee finished 2nd in the 2024/25 season, 5 points behind the champions Lee Man, so there is clearly ability in the squad. This also means we're in the Asian Confederation Cup, where we will be playing Khaan Khuns Erchim of Mongolia in the 1st Preliminary Round.

The board only expect a top half finish for the upcoming season, but I definitely think I can challenge to win the title. It may be a bit of a step down reputation-wise from Kedah, but the bank balance is a lot healthier (£1.15m with £240k to spend for transfers), we've got £6k/pw of unused wage budget to utilise, and there are no rules regarding the number of foreigners in the squad.

Speaking of the squad, it's quite bloated at the moment. A lot of dross that don't look up to it so I'm going to have to do some wheeling and dealing to improve central midfield and up front in particular. Our key man is Charlie Scott, an ex-Man Utd youth player who can slot in at right-back, centre-back or defensive midfield. Unfortunately he is already adamant that he will be "exploring his options" when his contract expires at the end of the season, along with 2 of our other top-rated players. Something that I will have to address over the course of the next year...

Browning

05-01-2023, 03:52 PM

Looks like my time at Newport County is at an end.

After winning League 1 and moving to the Championship the budgets I was given were quite frankly sickening. We were given £2m to spend on players and about an extra 20k a week in wage budget... nowhere near enough to survive at this level (we spent the least on wages in all of League 1 last year.... that 20k probably wouldn't have even put us in the top half of League 1 sides, Luton, who nearly went down, spent about 9 times what we did...). Nonetheless I could only try and we did a lot of shopping and honestly I feel I strengthened the team significantly, including signing the current Finland #1 keeper from Ipswich for about £200k, but I feel like the team I was building was one that would have pissed League 1 even easier than last year but I have my doubts it would have stayed up. A large part of that was that fact that Simmons, Reddie and Kamara, my 3 most important players, all only had 1 year left on their cheap contracts and thus most of my additional wage budget had to go on renewing them. I was somewhat looking forward to the season but fully expecting a relegation and probably another easy League 1 win the following year.... instead, before the game even officially recognised us as a Championship team, I was offered an 8 grand a week pay rise to move to recently relegated to Serie B Lazio....

Now Italy was on "view only" for my first few seasons so I'm not sure what state it is in, and one of my objectives is to repair financial damage.... so I have zero clue how this is going to go.... but going from a £400,000 transfer budget (after I chucked so much into wages) to £28m at another 2nd tier club with a much higher rep and a much bigger wage feels like a no brainer. Bye Newport.... it's been great. 3 League Titles in less than 3 years.... but I do truly feel that's as far as they can go.

Dquincy

05-01-2023, 09:55 PM

Gillingham : Pre Season Transfer Window - Season 2083/84

Having won the league, we needed to make enhancements to the squad to make more of a dent on our Champions League ventures.

https://i.gyazo.com/3f2c4390fd44b545f3ec22437f1861a7.png

https://i.gyazo.com/289cec39238349ff9fbea0a75617165f.png

One for the future. My scouts liked him, but this means i now have 3 decent teenage goalkeepers.

https://i.gyazo.com/54b9806e5e8e880d8ad05a1ff96821c8.png

New right back from Seria A to compete with my young English full back.

https://i.gyazo.com/b4481143dc94c7c34435543c54e7e6fb.png

My future star to play centre back. Will be on the bench for most of this season, but hope he comes good.

https://i.gyazo.com/56f237b8a7b9bcbb30613a0f50be0e2f.png

Purchased this chap for the future and thicken the squad. I play 433, so will retrain him to play striker.

https://i.gyazo.com/069db4323ca8fe7caff5dd7d4dc1570a.png

Another one for the future. Paid over the odds for him, but he should be one to one in a few years. Currently in the under 18's.

https://i.gyazo.com/f81202d96ea267cdf369bdb60ef88c6c.png

New star holding midfielder. Highest valued acquisition this summer, but he goes straight into the first team.

https://i.gyazo.com/92db5255d81d39d5ef957639033370c4.png

New first team left back and yet another Argie to join the defence. Not the fittest, but a very good left back.

https://i.gyazo.com/9d21b1d37a8c20c7140b2341a061a13b.png

Another full back acquired in this transfer window. But i have sold 4 full backs in the summer so need to reinforce in these areas. At 16 yrs old, he's probably too young, but he is my back up LB this season as his potential is very good.

https://i.gyazo.com/6b3f3fbb8b047373405ed88ff78b8a32.png

Signed this chap on a pre-contract and once he arrived, my coaches didn't like him quite as much as my scouts did. In the reserves he goes.

The season starts...shall update at the mid point.

Sir Andy Mahowry

06-01-2023, 03:03 PM

https://i.imgur.com/cz2br1J.png

We own the cunts.

Kings of Catalunya.

Jimmy Floyd

06-01-2023, 03:04 PM

Why are the regen faces in 23 worse than they were in FM11, for fuck's sake.

Gray Fox

06-01-2023, 03:13 PM

If you care for such a thing, there is a face generation mod available for the game. It's been out for a version or two and they look good.

Sir Andy Mahowry

06-01-2023, 03:23 PM

Why are the regen faces in 23 worse than they were in FM11, for fuck's sake.

Not a fan of all the unibrows?

Gray Fox

06-01-2023, 08:23 PM

Jimmy Floyd

https://youtu.be/pmdIkhfmY6w

Jimmy Floyd

06-01-2023, 09:07 PM

Thanks, I'll try that, see if the 9GB download finishes before the next 37 games of fight club / the Uruguayan league is over and the next batch of regens appear.

Pleb

07-01-2023, 01:55 AM

Saved Mahow's arse by getting us out of the National League in the SAVE.

Jimmy Floyd

07-01-2023, 03:03 PM

Peñarol - 2023 season
Having had a strong finish to 2022 but just missed out on the title to Nacional, there wasn't too much to be done for 2023. We have a decent financial position by Uruguayan standards so I was able to pick off some handy end-of-contract transfers - in came Nigerian winger Osinachi Ebere, midfielders Nicolas Fernandez and Bruno Veglio, Argie defender Barboza, and, as a special treat, flairy number ten type Bruno Nazario, a late 20s Brazilian who was once at Hoffenheim. Foreigner limits of 6 in total / 3 on the pitch meant that there was a bit of juggling to be done, although Ebere is on the way to qualifying as Uruguayan.

The main thing was that remarkable 20 year old goal machine Thiago Borbas attracted no interest from Europe or even Brazil/Argentina, so his dangerous £1.9 million release clause remained untouched. At the same time, Luis Suarez had left Nacional, and although they had replaced him with the best of the young forwards in the league (Borbas aside), they were clearly going to be way down on goals.

The championship. From the very first game it was clear we were now in a class of our own, and that sense didn't really lift all season. We won the Apertura, the Intermedio, and the Clausura each in their own right, and so the usual championship playoff was not even needed.

https://i.ibb.co/Hd3fty7/ot23.png

Goal difference should demonstrate the nature of our superiority. We were similar to others at the back, but we just had so many more gears in attack.

The Libertadores. This is very much the next world to conquer, but how to do so is something that is a bit of a head-scratcher. The Brazilians... they're just better than us. All of them.

The draw was kind-ish: alongside Sudamericana champs Sao Paulo (not in the top three in Brazil currently but probably in the top 6), we had Paraguay's Cerro Porteño and Bolivia's Oriente Petrolero, so it seemed a better chance to get out of the group than last year when we came bottom. We started with a 2-1 win in Bolivia, then came back to host Cerro Porteño and played them off the park but only got a draw (we will revisit this theme). Then it was a double header against Sao Paulo. They absolutely spanked us at our place, and really did so again at their place but somehow we spawned a 1-1 draw with a glitch goal in the 96th minute. That left us level on points with the Paraguayans and really needing a win there. We duly got that win, brushing them aside 3-0, and then beating the Bolivians last up to seal a fairly decent qualification to the last 16.

https://i.ibb.co/dmQGZCh/libgroup23.png

The draw looked decent, too - we avoided all the Brazilian giants and got Argentina's Belgrano, a side who had done well in the group stage but were no great shakes on paper. Unfortunately, we did not sink the bastards. We completely dominated both legs - and I mean completely ripped the arse out of them - but Borbas (more on him later) found himself allergic to goals and xGs of over 3 in each leg led to just one goal in total, in a 3-1 second leg reverse after drawing 0-0 at home. Our Libertadores xG underperformance of -4.82 topped the charts, and... yeah.

https://i.ibb.co/Y2q8YSZ/cl23.png

You can see there just how dominant the Brazilians are. Palmeiras, Flamengo and Corinthians are a clear top three and are miles ahead of the rest. We will need to get some nice draws to get anywhere near winning this, but over time, who knows.

So, Borbas. Having bagged 48 times in 2022, this year he upped the ante still further and claimed no fewer than 52. The strange thing about this was that there were two stretches of the season where he completely went missing, notably around our Libertadores exit in the summer, but also towards the end. At other times, particularly with headed chances, he was completely rampant and could not be stopped, and was a large part of the reason we did well. I managed to give him a new contract with the release clause up to £3.3 million - MLS teams are sniffing so we'll see if we can hold onto him.

https://i.ibb.co/Pgfj0xw/borbas23.png

The off season will be about shifting some shite and adding where we can - a lot of squad players are needed as you do loads of games in quick succession here.

Adramelch

07-01-2023, 03:46 PM

Done with another season at Wrexham (we're in 2036 for those wondering).

Let me start from two high profile signings that we made in the summer. Both were somewhat unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, but some opportunities you just don't let go that easily.

https://i.gyazo.com/3935e1f06a48f470a410ce450492e0eb.png

We already had a strong goalkeeper that we'd signed just six months prior, but when you can get this guy for just 57m, you don't say no. Let's all collectively laugh at Bayern for having him at such a low release clause.

https://i.gyazo.com/d33fa0aeb00029b634b4a261321b0e79.png

Likewise, when you have a striker scoring 64 goals in a season, you don't necessarily go out looking for another one, but we only had to pay Brugge 32.5m for Mbombo so it was a no-brainer. He was also fine with not being a guaranteed starter week in week out which helped make the decision.

We also signed one more (very cheap) player for squad depth, so other than those three, the rest of the squad remained unchanged.

https://i.gyazo.com/77d80c43a4f7a2d3391c0b07359987c1.png

We managed to retain our title, spending most of the season on first place, but boy did we make it tough for ourselves. Do you want easy directions on how to potentially fuck up your title run? The trick is to only get 20 out of a possible 36 points against the bottom 6 teams. It's that simple. Still, we showed up in most of the big games, with 30 out of 36 points against the top 7 teams, which made up for it, but we did also require United slipping up towards the end (they drew 4 out of their last 6 games against mostly smaller teams). They did preemptively get some revenge against us, when they beat us in the League Cup final, but it has to be said that a) we were far better than them, but our finishing let us down, and b) we had 5 first-team players suspended and another one injured, so we fielded a heavily suboptimal squad. We nevertheless did manage to grab a cup win and complete the double, as we beat City in the FA Cup final. We also beat them in the Community Shield and both the league games, so we're starting to have the upper hand against them no doubt.

https://i.gyazo.com/090456e8bc5f7fdb2810e2a501842972.png

I think we actually did really well, but we got royally fucked by the draws. Real were just flat out better than us in the semis, so they deservedly went through, eventually winning the whole thing by beating United 3-0 in the finals.

Since I've been playing this save for a while, I thought instead of our best eleven, it was about time I showed you a picture of the whole squad, especially since we rotated an awful lot more this season.

https://i.gyazo.com/0321030955f8ae834b741577a43cde52.png

The main thing to note was Davidson who was a lot more inconsistent this season and was actually out-scored by Mbombo. Not that the latter was any more consistent, but he remained uninjured so got to play a lot more games and have long stretches of form. I would say the team in general was quite inconsistent really. They were generally solid, but you typically get higher average ratings in a season as good as ours, but nobody really excelled. The ones that stood out a bit more were Rankovic, who was solid all around and made fairly few mistakes and Formalik who proved to be a creative genius from the right-back position. I was actually planning to buy a different right back initially, but I think he deserves to get a longer run of games and show us what he's made of.

As for plans for the next season, I've already agreed a massive (136m) transfer for a left-back from Atletico and I will be on the lookout for a defender and an attacking midfielder but noone of note has caught my attention just yet. Other than that we have a lot, and I mean A LOT, of young players that I signed over the years that won't make it here, so I will be looking to cash in on them. I will also be looking to cash in on Belda, our second goalkeeper, as I think it's too much of a luxury to have a player like that on the bench. I think we're looking at raking in upwards of 250m from all those players, so we'll have quite a bit of money to play around with even after the aforementioned left-back arrives.

Sir Andy Mahowry

07-01-2023, 07:32 PM

Palamós CF 2029/30 Season Update:

Transfers Out:

https://i.imgur.com/NVXRd9r.png

Signed last year on a free to be a starter but he never really was a key player due to the loans I had in last year. This year he just wasn't good enough and after being told he was a backup he started moaning and in January I took £150k for him.

https://i.imgur.com/fx1ntXR.png

My 50 goal striker from last year, he was utterly busted that season and he was busted this year too but in the wrong sense. He just completely lost his scoring touch, he had 3 goals in 18 games. I even started him in a cup game against a third tier side in the hopes he could batter them and find his touch again, he missed a penalty and got a 5.8 rating.

Getting £1m for him with a further £500k to come and 50% of the next sale was too good.

Transfers In:

https://i.imgur.com/ocFnPPs.png

French/Polish, signed for £1.6m. I was expecting him to be incredible coming in off the right hand side as an inside forward but he was a bit crap until near the end of the season.

https://i.imgur.com/yK6UGrZ.png

Our other need near the top was an AMC, £2.6m felt like a good deal for him but he disappears a lot in matches it seems.

https://i.imgur.com/NBxYRzR.png

We needed a backup keeper, £200k was decent business.

https://i.imgur.com/z467LUg.png

Free transfer, he was my 4th or 5th choice RB/LB but in the Summer it seemed that almost everyone would reject us to stay at their club or choose to move to another bidder.

https://i.imgur.com/1cvBqpm.png

£575k. Maybe a touch too much for him but I was struggling to bring in players. He's a big boy and I thought that would help at CB.

https://i.imgur.com/e0O7MNs.png

Spent last year on loan at us as a backup option and he came in for just £120k to do the same.

https://i.imgur.com/eiIs8Li.png

£450k to be our starting CB, physicals aren't amazing but he's decent on the ball.

https://i.imgur.com/dMEOU85.png

£750k. When he came in I was excited, we had finally found someone of quality who chose to come to us (quite a few were in for him) but he was a bit of a letdown. Hopefully he kicks on next season.

https://i.imgur.com/VB7vCVi.png

I was starting to get a bit desperate. There wasn't a great deal of money left and by this time in August we had 11 players in the first team so I started signing free players who could be registered as backups.

https://i.imgur.com/cx9qRJy.png

This guy was signed in between the crap though, he's a fairly decent CDM and was a key player. Really happy with him.

https://i.imgur.com/ET4jh07.png

Crap backup.

https://i.imgur.com/EUhPN5e.png

Crap backup who actually has some potential. I think the other crap backups will likely be sold for peanuts/their contracts expire but he could at least sell for something if he comes good.

https://i.imgur.com/w5QsWS1.png

£1m which was pretty much the last of my cash. He provided backup at AML and AMC, I think he could be really good for us.

https://i.imgur.com/48KrcoI.png

Crap cheap backup.

https://i.imgur.com/SjdfR7E.png

Backup.

https://i.imgur.com/5OGGHCs.png

Now we get into the real quality. In January my scouts found this guy (and his friend below at Escorpiones in Costa Rica) and he was available for just £30k. I was quite a bit over my wage budget and despite having cash to spend my board wouldn't increase the wages or let me put money into the budget. As such I started loaning out some of the crap backups and I sold Elorza This guy came in with a huge value and it took him a couple of games to settle but he ended the season as our top scorer. When I got budgets for next season I gave him a new contract which upped his release clause from £16.25m to £80m.

https://i.imgur.com/DrMqQEX.png

His mate who cost just £59k. A lot more raw than Sanchez but he's got bags of potential.

https://i.imgur.com/XW1Gn2l.png

Out of money and wages but I was able to convince the board to buy this guy for me. Think he could be really good for us.

League:

https://i.imgur.com/FTkIcT3.png

https://i.imgur.com/b9C1T1B.png
https://i.imgur.com/ttqk5bh.png

This season was one of the tightest and most tense I've experienced. I thought we'd be dead and buried with the way we started but we kept fighting. Our results against sides around us was poor but doing the double over Barca was insane, especially as we were 2 points from the relegation zone before the second and it didn't look great for us.

Cup:

https://i.imgur.com/OThroPy.png

Played the second string in the first game as they needed fitness but in the second I played pretty much our best 11 (I think I only dropped the keeper and a couple of defenders) as I wanted our confidence up and for our strikers to grab some goals. It didn't work that way.

Squad:

https://i.imgur.com/51WdfA0.png

The squad is pretty shit, especially on current ability but I think we've got some good building blocks. Lizarazu was pretty good in goal (although he had some shit moments) and I think our frontline will be a lot better next year. I think our defence needs some work as does our DM's.

https://i.imgur.com/ulN7pEl.png

Thankfully we've got cash. Our wage budget was only £130k last year but this time they've given us the max that we can register. I've pushed it to £13m in transfer budget with £220k free in wages and I've got a lot of quality in our scouted players list.

Dquincy

07-01-2023, 09:16 PM

Gillingham : Mid-Season Update - Season 2083/84

Normally, If I was to have 50 points at the half-way stage of the season I'd be pretty chuffed. But yet I find myself in 2nd place. Arsenal and ourselves absolutely storming it so far and it's difficult to see many weaknesses in either team.

https://i.gyazo.com/be909fb12461ba0bd94288d61e0272b6.png

Champions League group stage was easily dealt with. Last year, we scraped 2nd place so nice to take top spot and hopefully get an easier draw in the next round.

https://i.gyazo.com/77044cce510ad932c58ef72e84422b97.png

This is the squad currently. Whilst Rafa's is my main striker and top scorer, he's only scored 4 in the last 15 games. Not sure whether to stick with him or splash money on a new striker in the January sales.

https://i.gyazo.com/cacf69d992b3626c292797fcd5bd37e2.png

Rafa

https://i.gyazo.com/4113fe72df92a13330fa55ecacf202dd.png

So that comment about getting an easy draw in the next round...

For fucks sake.

Last season all over again. Hopefully with a different outcome this season. We shall see...

https://i.gyazo.com/c2989deb2cc07c06e4d7f0dad2d57cf0.png

Gray Fox

08-01-2023, 08:18 PM

How does the game run that far into the future Quincy? It's mad to see how much more money is in the game now, just a decade later.

As for AEK, I've finally gotten into pre-season and there seems to be a lot more meat on the bone on this version(last played 19). My go-to has always been to get the coaching staff in order for the season and then use what we have to see who stays and goes.

However the board are only allowing a maximum of £850 p/w on any staff roles and have rejected all of my requests to increase this. In fact I've exhausted pretty much every option for a board request and they've rejected them all bar finding me a loan affiliate. Bastards.

Dquincy

08-01-2023, 08:57 PM

How does the game run that far into the future Quincy? It's mad to see how much more money is in the game now, just a decade later.

It's quite good to be fair. Obviously the further I get, there is incremental slowing down but it's only minor. That said, on the few occasions I've swapped to a new laptop and carried the game over (or reinstalled it) it's lightning quick. Presumably it drops some historic data when I copy it over.

Dquincy

09-01-2023, 11:33 AM

Keep the updates coming chaps. Enjoying reading them.

Dquincy

09-01-2023, 10:07 PM

For fucks sake.

Last season all over again. Hopefully with a different outcome this season. We shall see...

https://i.gyazo.com/c2989deb2cc07c06e4d7f0dad2d57cf0.png

FOR FUCKS SAKE.

1 minute in...sending off and penalty to Atalanta.

https://i.gyazo.com/c2439cf7e34919b0054be8b0903ca7b7.jpg

Dquincy

09-01-2023, 10:23 PM

1st Round Knock Out, 1st Leg : Full Time

Not happy.

https://i.gyazo.com/b79d60c9c563dd0157d203922b298476.png

Dquincy

09-01-2023, 10:24 PM

Next game. Really not happy.

https://i.gyazo.com/c897fe47692e970980e95163dac90f0c.png

Dquincy

09-01-2023, 10:53 PM

2nd Leg. Seriously, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!! Cunts.

Oh and we've had 13 shots to their 3 at H/T.

https://i.gyazo.com/ca5a9a9621ac7164f28d610e87bce48c.jpg

Dquincy

09-01-2023, 10:54 PM

47 mins. We've now hacked down one of their players to give them a pen.

Edit: They scored it.

This can fuck off.

Jimmy Floyd

09-01-2023, 11:26 PM

This lad is like having Pelé. Had a £3.3 million release clause for over a year and no one's partaken, ridiculous scenes.

https://i.ibb.co/qpKstdv/borbasdanubio.png

https://i.ibb.co/rfnDBtp/borbasgls24.png

Now somehow managed to up his release clause to £20 million by saving up for every other aspect of the contract. Can't see anyone coughing for that as he only has 12 for finishing. Might just try and run him into the ground and see how many goals he can score in total.

A lot of them come about in the air, he has 15 for heading, I have a great set piece taker on each foot, and set piece defending in the Uruguayan league isn't what it might be.

Gray Fox

09-01-2023, 11:51 PM

Quincy, sounds like you need to get over to Italy and take care of business personally.

I also saw that Guido(remember him?) got a pretty good regen to in Colombia and stayed with him his whole career to get him to over 1000 goals, I reckon with enough time you could do the same there Jim.

Baz

10-01-2023, 07:02 AM

I saw that. He provides some great FM content to be fair.

Gray Fox

10-01-2023, 03:41 PM

Pre-season in the books in Athens. There were some loans already set up for when I took over and first transfer window is disabled. As such it's a smaller squad than I'd perhaps like with 22 men. 5 picked up injuries pre-season, so we're already depleted.

I'm really trying not to use downloaded tactics this year. So I've had three of the default ones from the game installed, the idea being to tinker as we go. 4-3-3 PRESSING. 4-2-3-1 and a 5-3-2 for seeing games out.
The 4-3-3 is what the staff recommended I play so we've been using that. It's been doing okay in pre-season though I've noticed a weakness to corners already. It could just be personnel but I've tried to fix that.

Just before the first game of the season, the Athens Derby no less, the board also informed me that expectations had slightly been lowered. A top 3 finish now the expectation instead of top 2.

3 wins and a loss from 4 games has us rolling at the start of the season.

As we're not in Europe this season we're reliant on the others to keep our coefficient up. Olympiakos got off to a great start with that and lost to Apollon Limassol in the UCL Qualifiers.
Thankfully they got Europa League group stages. PAOK and Panathinaikos both made the Conference League groups with Aris, just failing on penalties in the final round. They've already won a game in their first two, so it's going okay so far.

Adramelch

10-01-2023, 05:05 PM

wullie

10-01-2023, 05:08 PM

That huge proper regen faces download in the video a page or two back really makes a difference, now the new players seem like people rather than haunted dolls or silhouetted sex victims.

Jimmy Floyd

10-01-2023, 07:58 PM

Here's one for you all (or at least I didn't know this before this save): when you play in South America, there's often a text commentary line that says GOLAZO GOLAZO GOLAZO GOL GOL GOOOOOOL!!!! when you score. Must be one of the naffer things that Miles has put in.

Dquincy

10-01-2023, 08:56 PM

Quincy, sounds like you need to get over to Italy and take care of business personally.

That's not a bad suggestion. I know this is going to sound bitter, but Atalanta are only the force they are because I developed a squad of young superstars with great potential, and then clearly left them just as they were ripening. Not bitter, honest.

igor_balis

10-01-2023, 11:42 PM

Gray Fox

11-01-2023, 12:43 AM

Well that's unrealistic already. Greek teams have been getting knocked out in the qualifiers for a few seasons now. We used to be like 8th in the coefficients about 10 years ago and now we're in a freefall.

Greece has actually already surpassed the total that is set to drop off, with 4 match days left.

At the games start they are 14th in the coefficient list. This start already has us looking at 12th with potential for more.

Gray Fox

11-01-2023, 03:15 AM

Things were going along swimmingly with the only negative being in the support section, the players had poor support of me because of my reputation being set at Sunday League.

Still we've motored on to the World Cup break and things look good:

https://i.gyazo.com/4170a34915c52209521d000ba3c8ec93.png

However despite the great run in the league, I was approached before the 13th game by captain Sergio Araujo and 8 members of the squad to tell me I'd lost the dressing room...
Essentially what has happened is that because we've only played every weekend, there's been no need to rotate as we've both been winning most all games and everyone is healthy. This has lead to all of the fringe players approaching me at once being pissy.
I've now had to make promises to about 4 of them and one of those is to improve support in the dressing room. I'm going to be most displeased if I get fired because I started with the wrong reputation...

Jimmy Floyd

11-01-2023, 08:19 AM

I nearly fell foul of the same problem in the first few months at Peñarol. Lost the dressing room despite being 2nd or whatever it was at the time and winning most games, and was 'Insecure' for quite a long time due to lack of dressing room support. It resolved itself via a mixture of moving players on and just persistent winning, so hopefully the same will happen for you.

Adramelch

11-01-2023, 09:20 AM

Ye much like the previous similar discussion, as long as we're in reasonable form, I just mostly ignore them and the problem resolves itself eventually.

I guess not that weird in terms of Football Manager, but OFI being up there while PAOK being at the bottom is quite wild.

Gray Fox

11-01-2023, 09:46 AM

The typical big boys have all suffered big time from being in Europe. Speaking of which, both Olympiakos and Panathinaikos made it out of their groups, both in second place. PAOK came 3rd in their group but with 10 points. They go out by virtue of beating Lech Poznan 3-1 at home, but losing 3-0 away.

We currently sit 12th in the coefficient list for next year, however Belgium and Ukraine are right there too. What spices this up is that in the next round Olympiakos have Shakhtar and Panathinkaikos have Union Saint-Gilloise. The Swiss and Austria are next above us, but both got too many teams through group stages to be caught I think.

EDIT: An issue for us is I'm sure the move in date for the new stadium was October. I'm in December now and I've had one media question about it a while ago that asked if I'm ready to move in. It's not even listed on the facilities page that we're due to move now either.

It's troublesome as we have 23k season ticket holders but the temporary ground only holds just shy of 15k.

Dark Soldier

11-01-2023, 10:28 AM

I was reading the San Marino challenge thread on sigames forum, and one bloke has been regularly qualifying for the champs league group stages for years, then showing screenies of his league one at best "star players".

I'm staggered that nobody has accused him of cheating cus...I mean, cmon. Dunno if it's savescumming, fmrte or just downloaded tactics but fuck off.

SI forums are great.

I posted last year saying how its a bit too easy. One guy challenged me to be Wycombe in the Championship and not get relegated. I got them to 11th. His response was that I'm using unrealistic tactics and I shouldn't use PIs or team instructions as that makes it too easy. It was a fucking 442 and I did what you asked ya dumb cunt.

Basically don't use tools the game gives you.

Baz

11-01-2023, 11:20 AM

I sometimes post on sigames just to laugh at my avatar (https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/570470-do-any-of-the-transfer-embargo-settings-stop-clubs-from-being-able-to-sell-players/?do=findComment&comment=13839268).

Adramelch

11-01-2023, 12:13 PM

EDIT: An issue for us is I'm sure the move in date for the new stadium was October. I'm in December now and I've had one media question about it a while ago that asked if I'm ready to move in. It's not even listed on the facilities page that we're due to move now either.

It's troublesome as we have 23k season ticket holders but the temporary ground only holds just shy of 15k.

Yeah that's probably a bug. If I recall correctly we did actually play our first game there in October. I've also happened to play against AEK in my Wrexham save and they were in the new stadium.

thommo

11-01-2023, 01:51 PM

2025/26 - Season 1 - Kitchee SC

When joining the club I was under the impression that there were no foreigner restrictions or rules for the squad registration in Hong Kong, and while that is technically correct, I didn't realise that each competition has foreigner restrictions for the matchday squads. :moop: Unfortunately, I only noticed this after the transfer window, which meant a number of new signings would have to be left out for each match. The league allowed 6 foreigners (5 non-Asian) and the domestic cups 4 foreigners (3 non-Asian), but thankfully no-one came to me at all throughout the season to moan regarding their playing time. The reputation of the club is such that the foreigners that I was able to sign drastically improved the squad and really pushed us to be the main contender for the domestic competitions.

Key Signings

https://i.ibb.co/frD73Dw/gelli.png

Gelli was my first signing as manager, picked up on a free transfer after he left Lazio. He was instrumental in the attacking midfield role throughout the season.

https://i.ibb.co/YNrT7yx/clark.png

Travis Clark was just one of a number of really enticing signings I could have made from the American amateur teams. However he did lock-in a training facility upgrade as a promise during negotiations, and has since thrown his toys out of the pram as I wasn't able to get it approved by the board. If he continues to be unhappy, I might cash in to free up a foreigner spot.

https://i.ibb.co/sw2QQZc/guddal.png

Tobias Guddal is up there in the conversation for best signing, along with Gelli. He was on the transfer list at Bryne for £16k and I was more than happy to part with the money to bring him in as our first choice centre-back. With his height, he was deadly from set-pieces too, chipping in with key goals all season long.

We started the season with the preliminary round of the Confederation Cup and we saw off Mongolian opposition in a high-scoring 2-legged tie. Up next was a North Korean team, Rimyongsu. Despite being favourites, we had to scramble a late equaliser in the first leg to remain level, and we missed a host of chances in the 2nd leg to lose 3-2 and miss out on the group stage. We surpassed them in xG in both legs but poor finishing let us down.

https://i.ibb.co/0CCWSNZ/kitchee-conf-cup.png

I was expecting a challenge from Lee Man for the league but in reality, it was an absolute breeze. We were head and shoulders above the competition, starting the league season with a 10 game winning streak, and only dropping points on 2 occasions. It was really remarkable how comfortable it was.

https://i.ibb.co/pKhCCVw/kitch-26.png

With 3 domestic cups, we had a chance to make it a quadruple of competition wins. Both the Hong Kong FA Cup and Hong Kong Senior Challenge Shield had us entering at the quarter final stage, with only 3 wins separating us from the trophy. We came unstuck at the first hurdle against Lee Man in the FA Cup, but strolled to success in the Senior Challenge Shield without too many issues.

https://i.ibb.co/vc0g3kZ/kitchee-domestic.png

And finally, we had the Hong Kong Sapling Cup, with a quite bloated 8 game group stage. The aim of the cup seems to be to promote youth involvement, as you're required to have 3 Under-22 domestic players on the pitch at all times. It didn't hinder us in any way as we strolled through to top the group, before comfortable wins in the semi-final and final. Gelli recorded an average rating of almost 9 in this competition, such was his dominance.

https://i.ibb.co/c37KQmb/kitchee-sapling.png

https://i.ibb.co/XFgcMHh/kitchee-squad.png

And this is the squad that led us to success. Valerio Gelli was brilliant and definitely too good for this league. He formed a really good partnership with Mamadou Bah; don't be fooled by the poor star rating for the Guinean striker, his key (and only) attributes were his pace and finishing, and that's easily enough to have success in Hong Kong, as it brought him 25 goals. I was pleasantly surprised by our domestic wingers Poon Pui Hin and Kong Chin Man, who rotated in and out and were able to chip in with assists and goals.

One thing to note is that Charlie Scott, our captain (and highest earner), is leaving in the summer on a free, along with a few other first-teamers. We also have a lot of the unused domestic players leaving, which opens the door for a bit of a rebuild, be it through some domestic additions, or utilising the youth team (our U18s also won a trophy this season).

So it was a Hong Kong domestic treble to add to the CV. My only regret was bottling the continental preliminary rounds, as it would have been nice to have had a group stage to contend with, purely for the finances and potential of a reputation boost. I have a year left on my contract and I'm happy enough to stay as the team is young and good, and I do think we will be clear favourites next season to sweep the domestic scene. However, our finances are troubling; we lost approximately £600k over the course of the season, despite me not using all of the available wage budget. I'll keep an eye on the job market just in case something enticing becomes available over the off-season.

Dan

11-01-2023, 03:52 PM

I've been playing the console version of FM but after starting at Uruguay, making two WC semi finals with a Copa America title in between, then moving to Porto & winning three title in three years & heading off to Newcastle just to win the league there too, I'm definitely convinced that the console version is easy mode. As such, I've decided to pay up for the real thing & probably get the absolute shit kicked out of me.

Loaded up all the main European leagues & a bunch of the middling ones, then started unemployed at the end of December to see what jobs came up. I applied for a few jobs - Ibiza in the Spanish second tier, Ascoli in the Italian second tier, Fatih Karagümrük in the Turkish Süper Lig & a couple of League 1/2 gigs like Crawley. After a few interviews I ended up getting offered the job in Ibiza, but with a few other jobs still pending I delayed for a week & ended up getting an offer from the team that I thought was probably the least likely to actually hire me.

https://i.imgur.com/u3GSWKx.png

FC Groningen are currently sitting 14th in the Eredivisie (https://imgur.com/4UThJEV) & have a very weird squad that's mostly made up of attacking midfielders & full backs, with hardly anything everywhere else, but they're big on youth, with superb youth & training facilities & a squad that's extremely young (https://imgur.com/MfRfdn4). I've knocked together a few tactics to get started with, but we have no money & we're already £6k over our wage budget, so I'll probably have to move on a few of the seven thousand attacking midfielders we have so that we can get some strikers & defenders in.

I've not played full fat FM in several versions, so it'll probably take some time to get used to all the squad dynamics & stuff like that which has been introduced since, but hopefully we'll have enough to hover around mid-table & I can start to figure things out properly in the summer.

Sir Andy Mahowry

11-01-2023, 04:34 PM

Palamós CF 2030/31 Season Update:

Transfers Out:

https://i.imgur.com/K8T2CGE.png

I did not want the Polish/French lad to go but he was angry that we didn't upgrade the training facilities like he wanted (cheers board) and my efforts to appease him didn't go well. I then told him if he wants to leave it will have to be for his release clause of £19.5m which he was fine with. Early bids were shocking but with a week to go he decided he wanted to stay then out of the blue Cardiff paid his release clause and off he went.

https://i.imgur.com/xfT8I2w.png

He was here as a backup including his loan spell but this year he was annoyed at that so I let him go with St Patty's (alright, Giggles) offering the most.

Transfers In:

A lot here due to the WARCHEST, I also did a lot of business early which is why some of them are listed as last season.

https://i.imgur.com/L9b5nQY.png
https://i.imgur.com/kqLyWMt.png

https://i.imgur.com/ZtQUvZ7.png

RB last season was an old man (now 32 and not good enough) or a CB playing out of position so I needed to strengthen. In came Tanner (I've just spotted that these screenshots don't have the names on them anywhere, weird) who is quick, young and all round pretty good guy. Technicals need a little work but I'm happy with him.

https://i.imgur.com/XHJBV0W.png

Needed a LB as the previous one wouldn't come back to us on loan. De Belder was the best of a vary bad bunch that I could find. He did not play well this season and was eventually replaced.

https://i.imgur.com/gpzdCjt.png

£5.5m from the Austrian second tier was an absolute steal for this guy. When he came in his contract had a release clause of £30m but upon joining his value was as a little less than it is now so as soon as I could I gave him a new contract doubling that clause. I think this kid will be special.

https://i.imgur.com/qHjMRRp.png

£1.1m was a steal for this kid but I wasn't playing him too much and he asked to go out on loan where APOEL are paying 90% of his wages and have paid £850k in loan fees so I've recouped most of his fees. He's done really well in Cyprus and I imagine he'll get a lot of minutes here next year.

https://i.imgur.com/ktJUZUH.png

Jonathan Molina was another that I felt is a bit of a steal. He's come in and been a regular starter for us and done pretty well. Downside is that he's a fucking card magnet.

https://i.imgur.com/rUaaJUc.png

With Slaby leaving we needed a new starting AMR and I decided on the little (he has grown an inch this year though) Toby Macneil. He had a release clause of £5.5m IIRC but I didn't have all that so needed to put some money down over instalments. Third highest assists in La Liga this season so I'm really happy with how he's done.

https://i.imgur.com/POg25yW.png

Nico has a lot of cons in his game according to my scouts/coaches but he's also got bags of potential so I took a cheap gamble on him.

https://i.imgur.com/BrKM4Ps.png

Needed a third choice keeper.

https://i.imgur.com/UB57VQI.png

Felt we needed some more quality in defence as we were conceding a lot (only 1 clean sheet up to January) and so I took Jonczyk who looked the best. I'm not entirely convinced by him though and his lack of jumping has hurt us at times.

https://i.imgur.com/kZMxdU1.png

My previous number 1 wanted a new contract which I agreed to but then the greedy fuck asked for £27k a week I said no and gave Bajic £17k. We went from 2 clean sheet in the league with the previous guy to 8 with Bajjic and looked so much more solid defensively.

https://i.imgur.com/TT6Eyfg.png

Physicals are absolute dirt but he has bags of ability and that price range is obscene. I'll loan him out next season and hopefully some game time makes him kick on.

https://i.imgur.com/BirFwBh.png

Our new starting LB. Sylla has been solid if unspectacular, a big improvement on De Belder.

https://i.imgur.com/m64f0Nl.png

We went from 2 keepers at the start of the year to 5. He's not good enough now but maybe in a year or two he'll have enough quality to be our first choice.

League:

https://i.imgur.com/yePAjG5.png

https://i.imgur.com/CV8Vc9p.png
https://i.imgur.com/UJuMo4z.png

The goal for this year was to never be in a relegation battle and sadly we failed. We were actually in the relegation zone for 4 games straight which is a longer period than last season IIRC. We started ok but November and December were atrocious which made me panic and go spend in January, thankfully our signings had an immediate effect as we won 5 of 6 conceding 0 in those 5 wins. The Valencia result was because we had 3 of our back 4 out so struggled massively. Sadly Barca beating us cause a poor run of form which we suffered with again at the end.

Cup:

https://i.imgur.com/eDrYhnf.png

Annoying to go out earlyish especially to a team in a lower division but I think it helped us during January/February.

Squad:

https://i.imgur.com/GVer3yY.png

I'm fairly happy with the squad, I want to shift some of the 22/23 year old crap that I signed for bench options in my first season but I think the starting 11 is fairly good. The worry is that the Costa Rican striker (who finished third in the golden boot) is wanted by Frankfurt. We need another striker as we don't really have one and struggled when he got injured but I do not want to lose him.

Jimmy Floyd

11-01-2023, 06:26 PM

You seem allergic to players older than about 25.

Never seen this one before in all my long years:

https://i.ibb.co/SwygdgZ/libgroup24.png

I would be seething if I was on the wrong end of that.

Baz

11-01-2023, 06:39 PM

Gamebreaking negotiation bug found on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/108x8z7/i_think_bayern_might_be_high_on_beer/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Sir Andy Mahowry

11-01-2023, 06:56 PM

You seem allergic to players older than about 25.

Never seen this one before in all my long years:

https://i.ibb.co/SwygdgZ/libgroup24.png

I would be seething if I was on the wrong end of that.
I have 4 of them, 3 of which are keepers. That's plenty.

Sir Andy Mahowry

11-01-2023, 07:01 PM

I've made my first two signings of the season and I'm going to share now as I'm pretty excited about them.

Both are Serbia and from Red Star:

https://i.imgur.com/uX641oL.png

He's the more expensive of the two at £6m but he's more of a project. A natural CB who I will be training at AMC henceforth (handy that he's already accomplished there tbh), I have no idea why he thinks he's a CB with his tackling, marking and positioning. He compares very similarly to my current starting AMC and I think he could be really good there.

https://i.imgur.com/jiMkjzH.png

At £3.7m I couldn't believe my luck and had him signed before the season had finished. This kid could be absolutely World Class.

Sir Andy Mahowry

11-01-2023, 07:02 PM

Gamebreaking negotiation bug found on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/108x8z7/i_think_bayern_might_be_high_on_beer/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

wtf.

Gray Fox

12-01-2023, 01:35 AM

https://i.gyazo.com/04b00df3f512c55fc3a1874cb36f0ab6.png

It's still hovering at poor now though.

Still we've made it to the league split:

https://i.gyazo.com/3c36b0fa0717c2ff707b0c51b803d0e0.png

What you will notice is how much Olympiakos have caught up. In fact, after we beat them in a game before the World Cup, they went on a run of 14 wins and 2 draws in their next 16 games.
Still though we're all but guaranteed a top two finish. We've have to lose pretty much half of the games and Panathinaikos win almost all 10 to catch us. It's also head-to-head rather than goal difference as the tie breaking procedure here, so should we not come out of that against Olympiakos worse, then their task is even greater.

I'll be quite disappointed if we throw away the title from here. From research it may also fix this squad mutiny business as winning a competition will up my reputation somewhat.

I was also given £800k to spend in January and set to signing Toni Lato. He's not outstanding but it was a good price (£400k ish) and he is an upgrade on our current LB, who is both at his peak and a non-EU player, so this is a bonus all around. He's not spectacular but he should bring profit down the line too.

thommo

12-01-2023, 11:03 AM

Just got to mid-June in the off season and got a message in the inbox stating that Hong Kong U23s (a team who finished 5th in the division last season) are taking 4 of my (under-23) players on loan. No negotiation, just a statement that they'll be off for the entire campaign. It seems to be an arrangement in the league to allow younger players to get more first-team football but 2 of the players they've taken played key roles for me last season. :moop:

Gray Fox

13-01-2023, 01:39 PM

The season is done.

https://i.gyazo.com/d08d20983e7f3141e0861113d11a5acd.png

Olympiakos only won half of their championship group games in the end, so it wasn't such a worry.

Unsurprisingly I won Manager of the Year and Araujo has gone from telling me I'm unfit, to dedicating awards to me. We also dominated the seasonal player awards:

https://i.gyazo.com/4161e5130bff6e7e28f7cdacf0fd1c47.png

https://i.gyazo.com/73078045dae383a517b86e47d787658d.png

You can really see who was trusted and who wasn't. My unsung player of the season is Jens Johnson. He's sat at the base of that midfield with a composure rating of 16 and it's really showed. He receives the ball a lot under pressure and stays calm to move it on.

In fact the midfield 3 is what I attribute our success to. It's just better then the rest of the leagues, bar Olympiakos. I'd like to keep Pineda for next year at least, but they just quote me his release clause of £19.5m which we cannot do.
We will be losing all of the guys whos contracts end this year. This should save us around £50k p/w in wages. 3 of them are also non-EU players, which helps free up spots for potential others.

As for next seasons budget:

https://i.gyazo.com/3480b4c1de1ce470f2ee9ef35f2e6d54.png

Combined with losing the players above, that's about a spare £140k p/w in wages I have floating about. I reckon I could get 5-6 quality players in for that, if they'll come to me of course. A top player for us is on about £30k p/w.

Financially we're okay. The club did lose about £5m over the course of the season, but I sit here after the end of season awards still awaiting any prize money. The main reason for that deficit in cash is the stadium issue.
The temporary stadium holds just shy of 15,000 people. We have 23,000 season ticket holders and a further 15,000 on a waiting list. The stadium we were due to move into has completely vanished and now on the boards list of objectives for next year is to build a new stadium. Really the club needs a 40k seater. What happens next, I don't know.

We go into next seasons Champions League at the third qualifying round stage, with Olympiakos in the 2nd qualifying round. For a club with currently £600k in the bank, getting to that group stage would be mega. I've no idea how much you get for failing at that stage, but I do know getting to the final play off round at the least is crucial. You either go into the group stage and are showered with riches, or get paid £4m for losing and also go into the Europa League groups for even more cash.

For now free transfers and bargain bin shopping is the order of the day.