Football Manager 2019

[Gray Fox]

Season 3 has come to a close and I'm reasonably happy.



We weren't quite as good as I'd perhaps hoped, but bedding the new tactic in after the winter break probably cost us a little. I do feel like we stagnated at times, but I think the table flatters us in some ways.
For example, we've played Kobenhavn 5 times this year, once in the cup, and won every game. That says to me that they are actually better against the rest of the league. This is something I'd like to fix moving into the next year.

Moving on to the Danish cup, we flew through into the final where we met the defending champions:



Ferreira our bargain goalkeeper, who has been fantastic all season long, picked his worst possible moment to have a 5 rating. He spooned 2 shots directly into the net and the 3rd hit the post and hit him. From 3-0 down we did put on a fight back, but could only claw it back to a 3-2 defeat. Quite gutting as we had the best of the match. This could and should have been a very good double.

Elsewhere around the continent there weren't many surprises. Though we got a mega clash in the CL final. Liverpool v Man City. Liverpool did end up winning it 1-0, funnily enough with a goal from Everton.

That takes us to the coefficient table and the great news is despite going it alone, we move into 9th spot for the coming season. This is huge as what it means is now, whoever wins the league next season goes straight into the CL group stage. 2nd place will go into the last Best Place Play off round. Then 3rd place will go straight into the Europa League groups as well. The next target is to consolidate our position in the top 10 and aim for 6th, as there is no difference between 10th and 7th.

Another thing to note is the attendance at our games. When we started we were tending to get around 40% of the 11k seater stadium filled.



This year sees another steady increase and we're now pushing towards capacity. The club however does not own the ground and I'm interested to see what happens should we start to pack it out.

After all the prize money hit this season we were left with £44m in the bank. I've asked for everything I can to be upgraded, with me maybe looking at specialised coaching staff either this season or next. The board has also given me initial budgets.



To put this into perspective, last season was £95k p/w and £2.4m. If I cut their wage package in half I can get about £25m of spends, which is massive. The wage I can offer has increased drastically too. Up to £45k p/w for a key player(was £9.5k p/w). And so those 2 seasons of saving whilst being in Europe have paid off massively. The only thing stopping me bringing in some top drawer players will be our reputation. If we're going head to head with Europes elite, we wont win. However if we can find a gem here or there, we could get something good going.

[Gray Fox]

It's been a busy summer at Randers. Armed with all of the riches previously mentioned I went shopping. At first I was frustrated. Some of the regens I had waiting on my shopping list were taken away from us as bigger clubs circled. However as the summer has gone on, I've got happier with my business.

We must first consider the clubs position before looking into it. We're now up to 64th in the club coefficient list. This is vast improvement, however we're not at the point of going out and signing the finished article and wont be any time soon. Thus a scatter-gun approach is almost what is needed. Youth should be targeted and developed.

It should also be pointed out that the club has now used the money in the bank to become debt free. Besides the stadium, we're pretty much self sufficient.

Now onto the juicy stuff. I'll only link the regen players for the sake of space as this will be a long one already.



As you can see there has been some good movement in. What's also not listed there is an extension to Van der Heides loan deal. Lettieri finally joins after we agreed that deal way at the start of last season. The loans are mainly to cover positions we lack depth in. Almost all of the deals were pulled off by activating a release clause to foreign clubs. The good news is, besides Moreira, there are no sell on fees or release clauses.



I was toying with a permanent move for Rissardo, but he came in late when funds were getting low. I was also unsure how a 5"4 full back would do.



Moreria unfortunately wouldn't join without a non-negotiable £3.9m release clause. I'd hate to lose him for that, but it'd still be profit I guess.



Cardozo is one that interests me. He wasn't my first choice in a new striker, but said 1st choice did later become available. His technical and physical stats are very good, but his mentals aren't there. He should still bang them in, in a league like ours but it may put a ceiling on him.





Ristovic was my first choice but has been out with a hip injury. He's not yet back, but other clubs were interested so I thought I had to strike when I did. He's much more well rounded than Cardozo. Since the move though he's been labelled as a wonderkid. I'm hoping between these 2 and Pedersen, we have our strikeforce locked down for years to come.




Quintana looks tasty. He's good for an 18 year old but I want to see how he copes as almost the focal point of the attack.




Last but not least we have Marinkovic. A tad small, but looks like he could lock down the DM position for a long time. We need players like him for all the dirty work. I found him when we played Partizan in the qualy rounds of the CL last year. We got back to him just in time.


From there we move into the CL groups. Despite me being sure we'd have to, we didn't need to qualify and went straight into the group stage. I'm still not sure how. But we're in it and we've been given our group:



Those who have been reading along will notice the group is almost identical to last years. Just swap out Benfica for Olympiakos. I'd like to get out of the group again, but it doesn't escape me that we've had a large turnover of playing staff. This season will be about getting everyone to gel together.

As for our Danish counterparts. Kobenhavn lost in extra time to Braga to fall at the final hurdle and drop into the group stage of the Europa League. Nordsjælland also made it there, so we should have some decent back up in our quest to build the league.
The former have just lost their star man in Fischer to Man City(who also bought Mbappe for ~£180m) and haven't replaced him well. You'll also notice I haven't signed anyone from other Danish teams. I feel it should probably be an imposed rule from here on out in order to improve the rest of the league and avoid a Bayern Munich situation.

[John Arne]

Trying to find the relatively simple stat of 'average rating by position' (I have a fullback that I rotate between LB and RB) and I stumbled upon the analysis page, where I was able to highlight fouls against my full back, on the right hand side of the pitch, during the first 45 minutes, in the 2nd game of the season, whilst attacking. Does anybody actually use this rubbish?

[Baz]

Mantralux.

[Clunge]

Started up a GF-esque challenge with Hajduk Split in Croatia on FMT17. Not sure if FMT though is sophisticated enough for a deep dive into dynamic rep, coefficients, etc. Still, my initial aim is to close the vast gulf to Dinamo. Then look at Europe.

[Gray Fox]

It's great if you're looking for a long term save. I've lost track of the amount of saves where I've got myself to season 5 to find my team is now great and can't be all that bothered to go on with it.
I was also looking at Hajduk as one of my options. You need a big rival in a save like that, or else winning the league will become a cakewalk inside a few years. You also want some help once you break into the group stages of Europe.
I've seen someone do a save in Poland and they're 17 years in. They started at the bottom of Polish football and are now has won the CL in 2 of the past 4 seasons. However the rest of the league are useless so he wins that at a canter and they also make no progress in Europe. He is stuck in 6th in the coefficient table and isn't really near 5th. Dinamo should help you out there.



As for me I've hit the winter break in season 4(2021) and before I get into how things have gone there's a little bit of news to go through.

Firstly, there was a takeover of the club. However it was one where someone from the board took over from the Chairman. I don't believe this actually does anything, however the new guy was very easy to sweet talk into upgrading our facilities again. We are at Superb and Good for those, and another ~£7m now goes into upgrading again.
The stadium will soon become a concern too. We have actually sold out 3 league games so far and have a 97% attendance rate. There's the option to buy, expand or build a new one in the board options. I've no idea which is best so I'm not touching that.

We also had a news item telling me the UK will not be having Brexit after all. Onto the pitch side of things:



The difference between us and Kobenhavn is the game we won over them. We've been scoring a lot more, but the team isn't quite in sync in some games. I put that down to a lot of foreign players coming in. Still we're attacking well in spells and Cardozo has been great. He has 12 goals in 13(3) games and has the highest average rating in the league.
He actually has 28 in 20(3) games in all competitions too. He's loving it here.

Things did not go so well in the Danish cup however. Our 5th round game was scheduled right in the middle of an international break for u21s and we were missing half of our team away at Aalborg. I cobbled together what I could but it was a 6-2 defeat.

Onto the Champions League though:



A similar story to last season. We won all 3 home games, although the last one with Atletico was meaningless and they rested. You can probably tell by the goal difference what happened with Shakhtar but they again were truly awful. My away match with them lead to this:



That's the biggest win I've had on any FM ever.

Our reward for this form is a tie with AC Milan. They have 11 players on over £100k p/w including Donnarumma, who earns more by himself than our entire club. Our home form is very good though so I hope we can give them a good game.
As for other Danish teams in Europe, FC Nordsjælland went out by finishing bottom of their group. But better things for Kobenhavn. They came 2nd in their group and will face Watford in the first knockout round. They're a middling EPL team so I'm going to use that as a barometer for how we're looking so far.

[John Arne]

Hmmm... I suspect a couple of names will be added to the FM2020 'do not use these name' list.

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[Clunge]

Season one with Hajduk was an absolute painfest. I struggled my way to fifth lacking any discernible firepower whatsoever against a media prediction of third. Somehow kept my job. Saving grace was agreeing new deals with all my key players with at least £7.5m release clauses, mainly £10m. Arsenal came in for Nikola Vlasic for £7.5m and he was off in January which dented our already pisspoor forward line even further. The upside was that come the summer, we had £15m+ in the bank which resulted in a bumper transfer budget (£6.5m) and wage budget so I've absolutely rinsed the freebies and transfer list plus a few youth prospects and we're currently P5 W3 D2 L0 in season two. Of course, coming fifth means I'm not in Europe after making it through to the last 32 of the Europa last year which is a real bummer. Aim this year is for 2nd or 3rd and mix it with Dinamo and Rijeka.

[Gray Fox]

First couple of seasons are the hardest. Try to use it to build the club up if you can. I'm on the 3rd consecutive year of upgrading all the facilities. You want to get the best out of any gems you may find.
Getting into even the Europa League is key. I believe we got somewhere around £5m just for getting to the first knockout rounds and going out. That could well earn you a player or two.

Not wasting money helps. You might see a decent player there, but unless they can improve your team or earn you money down the line, there's no point.

[Clunge]

Yerr, I went a bit too nuts in the summer and overstocked in certain areas. Handily, a few players I picked up on one year contracts and/or wages less than £2k a week so the dent isn’t too bad. I’ve let a couple of the younger ones go out on loan too. £13.5m in the bank still, which is mega for a club of our stature. Our stadium is huge too (35k), bigger than Dinamo’s. Facilities are ‘Good’ across the board too.

[Spikey M]

I'm in Season 3 as Leyton Orient and Back to Back promotions see us in League 1. I too am focusing on updating/upgrading our shit at the moment. Upgrading the Stadium is proving particularly tiresome. I'm on my 2nd upgrade and it 's still only to 14000. Plus, I keep having to threaten to leave to get them to even bother. I've been operating on a shoestring, using our youth prospects and we have a MASSIVE £3 million in the bank you cunts.

[Byron]

I've actually started a game, with Rotherham after about 4 years of pissing about doing nothing. Early doors but we don't seem to be in a relegation fight, which is the aim really. In the 3rd Round of the League Cup as well after securing a SHOCK CUPSET away to Fulham. Fuck all money to spend, and my best Keeper and CB are loanees, so this is going to be a bit of a MONEYBALL game.

[Byron]

Not bad for a first season but going into the final game we still had an outside chance of a Playoff spot so a tad disappointing, our form in the final 5 (3 draws and 2 losses) really killed us, as well as the fact that we were playing 4 of the top 8.

It's going to be a bit of a rebuild job for us, since we lose our best goalkeeper (Rodak), right back (Vyner) and midfielder (Towell) who all go back to their parent clubs. In addition there will be interest around Vaulks, Newell and Vassell and given that we are 1.5m in the red I'll likely have to sell two of them to balance the books. Wood and Potter both want to leave and are old so they can fuck off.

So I'll likely need a new spine and with not a lot of money. Sheffield Wednesday, Hull and Bolton were relegated so I'll take a look at them but we have the smallest age bill in the division by far so I'll have to scrounge the free market.

[Spikey M]

at the moment. Upgrading the Stadium is proving particularly tiresome. I'm on my 2nd upgrade and it 's still only to 14000. .

The season just ended (another promotion ) and the board has decided to expand the stadium again. 2 months before the building work on the last one was due to finish. So now we have another 18 months of building work, to expand to 18000. Why has the game decided that the previous 12 months of building didn't actually happen all of a sudden? Spastics.

I'm also under a transfer embargo due to a takeover bid, just as clubs have released players. FUCK OFF.

[Yevrah]

Anyone know of a good free tool that I can download without filling my PC full of shit and that will allow me to mount CM 01/02 to a virtual CD drive?

If that makes sense.

[igor_balis]

Daemon was the one I used back in the day yev but I'm not sure if it's full of spyware or not as I was pretty reckless with my computer when I was younger. Probably got it off limewire.

[Shindig]

I used WinCDEmu the other week for GP Legends and erm... I think it's kosher?

[Yevrah]

WinCDEmu gives me an error message when trying to install.

I'll try Deamon with my fingers crossed.

[Yevrah]

AVG found a threat during the installation process of Daemon so keep em coming.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I've only ever used Daemon but I'd imagine that anti-viruses will always flag any of those programs.

[Shindig]

Yeah, anything that needs to spoof a fake drive will get flagged.

[Yevrah]

Against my better judgement I figured if I had a hankering to play an football management game I may as well go for the latest one.

My first FM in two years is purchased.

How do I get rid of the random Brexit shit?

[Yevrah]

And is there anything I should be aware of having not played it for 3 years?

[Gray Fox]

Training and scouting has changed.

Also I believe Brexit outcome is hard coded when you first create the save. Once started there's no way to alter the decision.

[Yevrah]

DS mentioned something about being able to fully disable it? I assume using an .edt file or whatever passes for one of those now.

No problem playing with it if it ever actually comes into force, but in previous versions you'd get an rng outcome and I can't be arsed with that.

[Yevrah]

Ah, think there's one in the Steam workshop.

[Danny]

Another vote for Daemon tools, never seen it flash as a virus either.

[Yevrah]

Oh and sorry for the noob questions, what's the difference between these two versions bar six quid?

https://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/foot...c-steam-cd-key

https://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/foot...19-steam-pc-ww

[Yevrah]

Going through my old FM folders while waiting for the FM17 graphics to delete (all 600,000+ of the fuckers) I found this:



I forget which version that was on, but if I still had the save file I'd crack straight back into it. Best game of FM I ever had that and was absolute gutting when I realised EA hadn't made the TV money in Spain dynamic, or in typical fashion had lied about having done so.

[Yevrah]

I guess the clue would be in the starting season that it was FM15.

[Gray Fox]

Oh and sorry for the noob questions, what's the difference between these two versions bar six quid?

https://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/foot...c-steam-cd-key

https://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/foot...19-steam-pc-ww

The cheaper of those can only be activated in Europe. The other is worldwide.

Yeah if you're going to be effected the the Brexit outcome there'll be a database with it disabled completely. In my Randers save they didn't end up leaving the EU.

[Yevrah]

We're on, downloading now. £11.99 is a bargain and if it's any good and I get back into it it should see me through to when FM20 has been released long enough to be patched multiple times.

Now to sort the licenses, player faces, logos, font size in the default skin etc. Yawn.

I still don't understand how SI get away with not having proper licenses but including all the player names anyway.

[Yevrah]

The fucking state of these skins and interfaces.

Why is everything highlighted in about 3 different ways when just the fucking number or text would do? It's genuinely giving me a headache trying to focus on the salient information.

That they've added even more box ticking team talk media wank is also disappointing.

[Yevrah]

Found a skin I liked on Susie so we were all set to go, but running it (and the fact FM17 was still installed) made me realise that a good old system restore is long overdue, so I'll be partaking in that joy this morning before settling in for a game this afternoon.

[thommo]

All this revitalising of the thread (starting with GF's cracking write ups) is making me want to get back into the game. I'm only in the 2nd season of a Slough Town save so will see how quickly I can motor along with that.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

It started with my shit write ups/updates you prick. No one had posted in a week before I came in.

[thommo]

Put some more detail in and I might read it next time.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Eat a dick.

[thommo]

You've slacked since your GKS days. That was a good read.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I cannot disagree there.

[Gray Fox]

Mahow ON THE ROPES.

I'm going to get back into mine. Haven't touched it since my last update as I've had to work back some hours. I needed all the sleep I could get.

[Yevrah]

The Susie facepack takes over three hours to unzip in Winrar. Is there a quicker way?

[Spikey M]

I never bothered. That was quicker.

[Giggles]

Yeah I could never play without names, kits, and (to a lesser extent) logos being correct, but couldn't be arsed with how long face packs took.

[Vercetti]

I bought this on a whim the other night.

Currently doing a save with Inter to get myself used to it all. I was still playing '17 until a couple of weeks ago.

[Mike]

The Susie facepack takes over three hours to unzip in Winrar. Is there a quicker way?

Just start it and play the game as it’s unzipping.

[Byron]

So second season done;



My transfers over the summer were about trying to replace departing loanees but on a budget, so Christy Pym came in from Exeter to take the main keeper spot. Mark Beevers and Jack Hobbs came in to central defence. Jason Naismith and Joe Rafferty both came in to shore up the right back area (and allow me to flog Billy Jones) and Bruno Andrade came in as a winger while Viktor Gyokeres came in as a very young striker.

The player sold were all backup filth except Semi Ajayi who wanted to go and warm Sheffield United's bench, so I got £1.5m for him.

However for a large portion of the season we were struggling, only barely hovering above the relegation zone. It was only in the last few games where we switched to a 4-1-4-1 that I managed to make a charge up the table. The result being that we were only five points off last season's tally but it wasn't anywhere near as comfortable.

I did get 3 decent looking youth prospects though;

Anderson Brown

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Matthew Madge

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Gareth Battersby

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None of them are world class but all of them apparently can play to a Championship level so I'll see what I can do with them.

We went out in the 2nd Round of the League Cup to Fulham, after beating Burton.

The FA Cup was far better as we beat Brentford and Sunderland to get to the 5th Round. We put in a fight, but ultimately Watford were too good and we lost 2-0.

Likely to be another summer of change. A number of contracts come up and while most of the players are not irreplaceable, star midfielder Will Vaulks is one of them so he'll likely be off. I reckon I can get £3.5-4m for him so I'll want to use that to get 3-4 quality players who improve the first team. Still not sold on Pym as a goalie so if a better one comes up that'll be the priority.

[Yevrah]

All sorted so it's time to play a game.

As is customary and due to them having a phenomenal team when I first started playing CM back in 1993 and absolutely creaming myself when CM Italia was released so I could actually manage them, the team will be Milan.

We're expected by the board to qualify for the Europa League, bin off the Super Cup, reach the semi's of the Italian Cup and the Europa League. I'd like to win something other than the Super Cup and get into the Champions League.

First window transfers are off.

[Yevrah]

This is a horribly presented and bloated mess that runs like a sack of shit on my (not too shabby as it happens) laptop.

I'm going back to an older version.

[John Arne]

This is a horribly presented and bloated mess that runs like a sack of shit on my (not too shabby as it happens) laptop.

I'm going back to an older version.

It seems hit and miss on laptops. I have a pretty decent laptop, that it runs shite on, and a run-of-the-mill laptop that it runs decent on.