Yeah, I am in the same boat with you Yev. I am in my first season in the Championship and I don't see a way out for quite a few years since our budgets are so much lower than everyone else at the moment.
Yeah, I am in the same boat with you Yev. I am in my first season in the Championship and I don't see a way out for quite a few years since our budgets are so much lower than everyone else at the moment.
As soon as they made an offer I rejected all other bids.Originally Posted by Baz
It's nuts, isn't it. Which team are you?
Gateshead. Mind you I expected to go down since the squad I managed to assemble was ridiculously substandard (my coaches reckon that a good 80% of the squad are decent to good League Two players), but it somehow happened. The only good thing about it being that we are not hemorrhaging money (for the time being) since the budgets are that low. I think hitting gold with loanees is the only way it's going to work to be honest.
Last edited by Adramelch; 07-10-2021 at 09:55 PM.
Did they let you expand the International Stadium much?
We had no sellout games, even in the Championship, so no need for it yet. Them having a fairly large capacity for a non-league team is one of the main reasons I went with them to begin with.
He's finally back after however many seasons in Manchester:
Paying 140 million for a 30 year old attacking mid might sound like a bad decision, but this save has gotten really stale at this point, so I just want 1-2 seasons of my dream midfield where he was a necessary inclusion. He'll join two other AMCs in a narrow 4-2-3-1, with the Danish lad being an absolutely absurd player:
Capping it off up front is this two-footed monster who has been at the club since he was 17:
All hitting their prime at the same time.
Not answering the question though, treacle.
It wasn't a dig and I don't why you took it as one.
So I have my assistant manage friendly games, and he just fielded a player that's injured for the next 5 months, and he even scored a goal.
Yeah mine played The Ox at the start of the first season when he’s very much injured.
I'm a twit
Just after the season finished I asked my board about my professional status - we were amateur, and I thought with a bit of begging we MIGHT have gone semi-pro. Immediately get a notification that we're going PROFESSIONAL, the first Gambian side to do so. In the second tier. With us boshing some Djiboutians in the prelim round of the African equivalent of the Europa league, it's turning into a fucking weird save. I will probably leave Gambia before Igor gets a crack at the Gambian prem cus, er, since we went pro we haven't exactly had @Yevrah's control of the finances...
Well shit, in the first round proper we've got the 3rd best Dr Congo team, one of whom's players is worth over 100k.
The board just requested a meeting to extend my contract, I told them we should spend the money on the training facilities instead and they told me that we've had a poor run of results so I don't get to ask for anything.
Can never understand why they don’t fix that shit.The board just requested a meeting to extend my contract, I told them we should spend the money on the training facilities instead and they told me that we've had a poor run of results so I don't get to ask for anything.
The worst is the way that when they occasionally get presented with shit like that, Sports Interactive people always reply like politicians being grilled on the news. "Uh, actually it's a realistic reflection of blah blah blah.." The SI forums are hilarious/infuriating to read whenever it's about bugs and general game problems for this reason.
Yer man that makes it is meant to be a total wanker that refuses to change anything isn’t he?
Lost 6-1 in the first leg of the DRC game so I guess I'll just slog through the domestic season to get my first league of the journeyman, even though it's the 2nd tier. Maybe have a crack at the top tier if I haven't totally bankrupted them.
Yeah, he's a proper twat. It's mean to criticise people's appearances (and rich from me), but he absolutely looks like your man in this as well:
Wrexham Football Club - 2032/33
Departures.
Mike Maddocks - Sold to Ipswich having failed to make the grade or an appearance for the first team. A mixed loan spell at League One side Rochdale told us all we needed to know.
Billy Wood - Part of the 2026/27 intake, the winger was loaned out on no fewer than five occasions but still failed to make a dent at his parent club. A £4.3M transfer to Sunderland brought us time at the club to a swift end.
Gus Levitt - At times it looked as though Gus was going to navigate the path from U23's to the first team but after half a season in the top flight, it was clear he needed more time and at a lower level. A reasonable loan spell to Bristol Rovers was arranged and it was hoped he'd return for the 2030 season ready to stake a proper claim, that never materialised. Two further loan spells to both Sheffield Wednesday and Aberdeen were arranged, neither were overly successful so when Italian side Bologna bid £6.75M we duly accepted.
Shane Wandless - Another who looked to have made the jump and represented the club over sixty times in the Premier League alone but he fell out of favour in 2029/30. Loan spells at Bournemouth (twice) and Rangers followed before Celtic took a £13.25M plunge.
Matty Graham - Three loan spells in League Two with Barrow, Scunthorpe and Exeter were followed by a £73,000 move to Coventry. We did have hopes he'd be a reliable option once upon a time but he was forgotten about relatively quickly.
Neil Smart - Perhaps the saddest departure of the lot as one of our longest serving players decided he needed first team football. After over 350 appearances, the defensive midfielder opted to join Augsburg for £27.5M. I wasn't too fussed where he chose, he earned the right, I guess.
League
We improved on last seasons position and points total with our 5th place finish but we were never really near the Champions League places after continuously throwing away hand delivered opportunities to close the gap. It still bodes well for the future and as can be seen, we got into the top competition anyway...
32 year old Erling Haaland reclaimed the Premier Leagues Golden Boot award, Craig Cummings only managing 21 this season although much of that was due to the emergence of Alec Blake. Blake had a short stint on loan at Benfica at the back end of last season and has really come on this year.
12 in 19 is a decent return for the youngster and he also played his part in our cup runs.
Talking of which....
EFL Cup
Kieran Hayes last minute strike at Stamford Bridge kept us in the competition but the return was a true annihilation. It's just a shame it ended up with us relinquishing our trophy and to Man United to boot.
FA Cup
Reaching the first FA Cup final of the clubs history, another Wembley appearance only this time Chelsea avenged their EFL Cup defeat with a heavy win. Deserved too which rubs it in somewhat.
Europa League
We weren't exactly European heavyweights but we felt like we could hold our own these days and reaching the final last season merely confirmed that. We started with great intent this time round by rinsing the group, causing a national emergency in Spain after trouncing Atletico and then Basquing in the glory of a second successive final, we had only Portuguese giants Benfica to overcome.
And overcome we did as both centrebacks scored late on to hand us a second trophy of the season and a ticket back to the Champions League.
Wait.
Second trophy, Smiff?
......
Whatever the International Champions Cup is, we won it by winning the overall table.
Maybe it is a yearly thing now as we've qualified for it for the upcoming season too.
Squad Summary
Liverpool have shamelessly courted Brett Parker for months now with Haaland and TAA both coming out in support of the transfer. Parker has since claimed the FIFA Best U21 Men's Player, the Welsh Young and Football of the Year Awards whilst he was runner up in the 2032 FIFA Ballon d'Or. He's a diamond. An expensive one, mind.
Craig Cummings grabbed 36 in 37(7) as he found himself struggling to contend with Alec Blake's emergence. Tim Hunter and Charlie Summers both chipped in with double figures in goals and assists but neither have realised the potential they had a few years back. Hunter is probably close to leaving the club in truth.
That said, fellow strikers Peter Blackwell (former Golden Boy winner) and Jac Carroll both look set to join him.
Next Season
We'll finalise the first team squad during the pre season but I would like to see us finish closer to 1st and to at the bare minimum get back in the Champions League.
If we don't then we are definitely going to end up losing one or two of our big names.
Those players.He's finally back after however many seasons in Manchester:
Paying 140 million for a 30 year old attacking mid might sound like a bad decision, but this save has gotten really stale at this point, so I just want 1-2 seasons of my dream midfield where he was a necessary inclusion. He'll join two other AMCs in a narrow 4-2-3-1, with the Danish lad being an absolutely absurd player:
Capping it off up front is this two-footed monster who has been at the club since he was 17:
All hitting their prime at the same time.
Are they giving you world domination?
Wrexham Football Club - 2033.
Tim Beck
Surpassed Gary Bevan as the clubs number one and the end of last season and so this season we've decided to go with him. Tim has had three loan spells away from the club at Barnet, Cheltenham and MK Dons but now the hope is he cements his position between the sticks long term.
Mark Thomas
Another new name and an important season for the wingback. After spending half a season on loan at Scottish side Rangers, we ended the deal early and brought him back. He's going to be first choice this time round but he'll do well to stay there.
Ryan Young
Young completes the trio of fast tracked youngsters although in case of the full backs its because we sold the previous two occupants when deciding on a formation change. Just five first team starts at the end of last season means both he and Mark Thomas have a lot to prove this season.
Russell John
Although he's still to hit the heights expected of him, the wantaway defender is still arguably our second best at the back. This season will be his fourth in the Premier League and I'm anticipating a better average rating than the 6.86 of last season. If we can keep him that is as I have promised he can leave....
Eddie Eardley
One of the clubs longest serving and most impressive. 383 league appearances and he's won everything we have along the way.
Steve Richards
We threw him in as a teenager back in our debut season in the top flight before realising it was far to soon so we sent him on loan to Championship side Norwich. A season long move to Premier League club Bournemouth followed and he's been a regular for us for the last two seasons.
Blessing Mhlanga
Blessing was said to be one of the players of his generation when he arrived at the club in 2024. He made his debut in 2029 against Heracles, had to wait a full two years before his first strike but it's long been apparent that goals isn't his forte with just six career strikes to date.
Jordan Hopkins
One of the clubs most dependable players and another long time servant. Often linked with moves away but rarely kicks up a fuss.
Kieran Hayes
See Jordan.
Brett Parker
Quite simply one of the best players in the world, heavily linked to the big hitters in the game. He'll not stick around much longer but he's tied down for the foreseeable so he'll have to like it.
Alec Blake
It takes some talent to keep Craig Cummings out the first team but Alec seems to possess it and we're expecting big things from his this season. If not, Craig comes back in although he's currently miffed after we rejected a few bids from Man City for him north of £80M+.
The second "teaser" for FM2022 dropped yesterday, and it really does look like a data update - like the only new feature is the DATA HUB, which I imagine most of us lot probably will never touch
It's not too surprising, but it does mean no new real features for another 2yrs, given it sounds like FM2023 is gonna be the same, but with all the development going into adding the women's game.
I can't see why adding in the women's league would be that big an effort. Mostly it's just a new database? Sure there'll be some logic changes but can't see it being a multi-year project
That's what I thought - but they've already confirmed that they started work on it some time back, and it's basically a lot more difficult than anyone who doesn't work for Miles thinks.
Well, the season played out just according to plan.Those players.
Are they giving you world domination?I struggled for the first half to get the tactics right, but after switching to a vertical tiki-taka variant in Feb I was coasting.
Beating Hertha at their home-turf, with Zapata scoring the nail in the coffin in stoppage time:
And elsewhere things fell into place too:
Best part of it, that midfield trio delivered:
All three defenders and Aguirre are mine too.
Seems I've finally got a decent regen coming in:
He's not amazing but he looks like he could be very good.
They could just 1 rate all the keepers and job done.
I've reached the turn of the year with Slough and the good form has continued. In fact, we're currently running away with it and it would require a fairly sizeable bottlejob to not finish the job off.
Win our game in hand (a home game against Oldham) and we're 11 points clear. Even the long-term injury to our main striker didn't slow the team down - the wingers and midfield have chipped in constantly with goals and assists. It's been pretty remarkable and I don't remember being so dominant at all throughout the save, at least not since the days of the National League South. Our run of form from mid-October shows this:
You can probably notice one name in there - Bobby Decordova-Reid joined us on a free after the injuries to my strikers and while being generally a bit sluggish, he's chipped in with a few goals. I had to take the opportunity to sign him - he may not have ever played for Fulham in this FM19 universe, but he's as close as I've got to a Fulham link.
We've got West Ham away in the 3rd round of the FA Cup, so we should get a big influx of money to the balance in a few days time. With all the away games, we just dipped under £1m in the bank. No further news on the new stadium either, it's still in the planning process.
Oxford City End of Season 2033/34 Update - Championship
Third season in the Championship, with the aim having to be to make the playoffs after last season's 8th placed finished.
Transfers
With a few players shipped out on loan and with some done to get work permits, our only sale in the summer was Liam Potter to Swindon, for £250k. With finances at a minimum only two players joined:
Joined on a free and immediately packed off on loan.
£700k from Benfica. With the deal done a while ago Daniel had progressed nicely since it had been and joined armed with a work permit. Lovely stuff.
Kolar joined at the turn of the year:
And then this happened:
Which was massive. He'd never played for us as he hadn't yet got a work permit, but had been doing pretty well on loan. Palace came in with a bid I managed to negotiate up to £5m and then decided to whore him out for £10m in the hope of some takers. Premier League Everton bit and we now had some money to do something in the January window.
After scouring the market I couldn't find anyone to buy to improve the first team, so whacked the increase in budget into wages and snapped these two up on loan.
Both went straight into the first team, improving the spine of our side immeasurably and hopefully giving us the push to make the playoffs.
The Championship
The thing to note here and what I was absolutely ecstatic about was that the three newly relegated sides (Palace, West Ham and Watford) all had shocking seasons, which made the points required pretty low. It all came down to the last day and we needed a win over Palace to guarantee a playoff spot. The other dynamic was hoping to avoid Derby in the semi's if we did make it as they were in fantastic form. We drew with Palace, but Boro coudn't manage a win and we'd made it. Perhaps even better Norwich lost again and in form Derby snatched the second automatic spot, setting up a playoff Semi against the East Anglian side.
Toggle Spoiler
Nice.
It's been awesome following this save for the past 10 seasons or so [not in on the ground floor]. You going to be tooling around in the prem with that tiny stadium of yours or does the game have an answer to that?
Cheers Niko!
Finance and Facilities update incoming.
Great job Yev. That Portuguese striker looks great.
This is where I'm at the moment:
I don't think I've ever had that close a season ever before. We're basically all collectively shit so nobody gets to build a lead. Had the chance to do so but we went and lost to 20th Preston instead. Doesn't help that our top three scorers were all injured in the same game a couple weeks ago.
Oxford City End of Season 2033/34 Update - Championship
Finances
Hopefully what you see above our the last set of finances from the football league, but I imagine staying up is going to be tricky.
The thing that should stick out like a sore thumb there is caused by this:
Guessing the existing one couldn't be expanded any further, we play at Reading's ground until it's complete.
We now have this debt to pay off too.
Within there was also a little bonus for me!
Looking forward to next season and the money involved is obscene.
Leading to this WARCHEST.
Quick fag packet calc looks like they're being conservative with that given the tv money coming in, but at least I can spend it all safe in the knowledge it won't bankrupt us. I can now offer £76k p/w wages, my highest earner (Hines) is on £15k a week at the moment.
I can finally have a full compliment of backroom staff so key tasks are sorting that and going shopping for a goalkeeper, a quality centre back and a quality midfielder.
Cheers Adra, that table is absolutely crazy. Good luck!Great job Yev. That Portuguese striker looks great.
This is where I'm at the moment:
I don't think I've ever had that close a season ever before. We're basically all collectively shit so nobody gets to build a lead. Had the chance to do so but we went and lost to 20th Preston instead. Doesn't help that our top three scorers were all injured in the same game a couple weeks ago.
Alas, it wasn't meant to be. We drew all three remaining games (including at home against 23rd Stoke) and then lost to Brentford 3-2 in the playoffs. Just one win would have meant second place but our abysmal finishing let us down.
This reputation thing is annoying though. I just told the players that we should be able to avoid getting dragged into a relegation fight (which in itself is preposterous seeing as we've been 20th>11th>5th in our three seasons in this division) and they all got angry as it's apparently unrealistic expectations. Oh and yeah, that minor thing of us losing potential signings to relegation fodder and League One teams.
Last edited by Adramelch; 09-10-2021 at 06:12 PM.
Can we get a profile update on Shaun Hines? He must be a club legend or icon at this point. Cracking promotion, I presume 17th is going to be the target any way possible?
Both those things drove me mad. On the season meeting I just ended up telling the players whatever the board wanted of us.
He's still only favoured personnel. Only I've managed to become and icon, but no one touches John Woodley.
Here's Hines:
He's a legend to me.
And cheers Thommo, just staying up will see me well chuffed.
So I have this young left winger who was so-so for me, valued at 325k and I got two bids that I negotiated up to a total of 7 million. Fucker rejected both contracts.
As a sidenote, if we had a million for every time we hit the woodwork, we'd have bought Mbappe by now.
Last edited by Adramelch; 09-10-2021 at 08:15 PM.
Nothing better than getting people for £170k from Rochdale and them going on to do that.
Yev
So the new stadium is going to have the same name as the old one? Nobody does indeed touch John Woodley.
I'm a twit
Yev smashing through the 20 year barrier there. I didn't think it was possible.
I reckon they've gone conservative with the budget as they'll be expecting a struggle to stay up.
Just about to start my first (and almost certainly last) season in the Gambian top flight. We're already 30k in debt and projected to finish the season -100k.
Incredibly, this is based off only spending half of our frankly insane £4600/week wage budget, so I'll just blame the board.
Whenever I have previously attempted journeyman saves, I've gotten too attached and ended up staying with the first team, so this is almost two birds with one stone - the extravagant spending makes the teams really good in the short term, but fucks them up so badly long term that I have no reason to stay.
Igor Redknapp
Presuming it doesn't work, but thought I'd post it just in case.
I would feel so dirty doing that.
Rest assured that I subsequently read it doesn't actually work.
Not surprised, they'd have patched that in two minutes I'm sure.
Reply With Quote
I genuinely thought we'd fucked it with half an hour to go and then again when Birmingham equalised in extra time, but Shaun Hines was on hand to grab the winner and take this tiny club into the Premier League after fifteen seasons of grind.
