He was really trying to...Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
...but they sacked him before he could. 231 days in charge.
He was really trying to...
...but they sacked him before he could. 231 days in charge.
Where’s Dirk Kuyt?
I'm a twit
He's manager of Atalanta.
And they've realised the error of their ways...
Loving that objective.
Real Cinderella story.
Might have to suspend the Journey part of the Journeyman game here for a while, there is much to do and taking this club back to the top appeals a lot. If I can ride out the first few months that is, I suspect there's a very real danger I could go the same way as Malky, the squad is that shit.
Leverkusen 2031/32 Season
Second season here in Germany. I explained the whole process we went through last season in regards to finances, and it isn't quite looking like it'll get much better. The two positives are that we have, for the most part, steadied the ship (I fully expect us to go slightly into the red during the season and then just recover with prize money and the likes) and our squad is quite solid. That doesn't of course mean that I wouldn't go for improvements. But, the players that we would be improving upon will fetch us some decent money so the possibility of that improvement being relatively cheap was high. In fact, we spent 128m this summer, while raking in 100m, so that's just 28 million net spend (obviously that goes up with signing fees and whatnot) in what I thought was massive improvements. We signed a total of 9 players, the most important of which were:
Far and away the most important transfer of this summer. Right winger was a position that we were really lacking on and, even though this guy cost a hefty 55m, he was well worth the money. He had a 4-star evaluation when he joined, but I guess as the squad improved those evaluations sort of normalized.
A familiar face here, as we signed this lad from Slavia Prague. At just 16m he was a real bargain and he went straight into the first team. It's always nice when you get to carry players with you in those Journeyman games.
This is a bit of an odd one, as we paid 35m for him, which for a backup player is a ton. But he is a great player, he is young, he is German and he was willing to join as a backup player, so he was a perfect fit really. He seems to have a tendency to randomly get injured, but at least his injuries are generally fairly short.
One that's more for the future, but when you get to sign a player like that for just 15m, he deserves a special mention. Really loving that 20 for Determination.
With the transfer stuff done, let's get on with the actual football. The expectation was the same as last season: qualify for the Champions League. With how strongly we finished last season, and with some noticeable improvements in personnel, I thought we had more than enough to not only achieve that goal, but also go one step further:
Now finishing 2nd instead of 4th doesn't really lead to anything different, but it shows that we are on the right track and that we can be the ones who battle with Bayern for the title. It wasn't to be this season, as frankly Bayern are one, or even two, levels above everyone else, what with this being their 20th consecutive league title, but it's a step in the right direction nonetheless. We weren't that much better than Dortmund and Leipzig in our head-to-head, but we were more consistent throughout the season and deservedly finished comfortably above them, beating the club's records in games won and points earned. We also scored 14 more goals and conceded 8 less compared to last season, so quite the improvement really. We coupled that performance with another decent run in the cup:
We reached the semis, where we got Bayern away, the worst possible draw, but we held our own and only lost by a single goal in a rather close game. The other two teams were Dortmund (who won the whole thing) and Leipzig, so it's not like there were any easy draws after all.
As opposed to last season, this time around we also had European football on the table (which makes our domestic achievements all the more impressive to be honest) and we got possibly the most horrendous draw I've seen in this competition under the new format. Yet we actually performed great, winning all but one game in the group stage, a goalless draw against Feyenoord at home, where they were playing with 10men for almost a full hour. It was a tough pill to swallow at the time, but in the end it didn't matter at all, as we topped the group:
Sadly as you see we didn't make it much further, as we got a bitch of a draw in the last 16. With possible opponents like Sevilla, Feyenoord, Nice and Benfica we went and drew Leipzig and then got knocked out in extra-time. In fairness, they were the slightly better team across the two legs, and they were knocked out by Real in the next round, so it's not like we would have gone much further had results gone our way.
That's a much much better image compared to last season's. Quite a few things to talk about here, really. Let's start from Rijkhoff who showed glimpses of brilliance in the second half of last season and just carried that form into this one, finishing with a magnificent 37 goals. The trio behind him were also incredible, with newcomers Marchal and Barone filling the missing pieces of the puzzle and helping create a formidable attack. Lastly, Bruno Jose, with his mediocre 20 for Jumping Reach, had shown some ability in scoring from corners, but this season he took it to a completely next level, I would assume because he had better service, and we also just naturally won more corners. Nevertheless, he singlehandedly won us some games and there's not many defenders that can say that.
As for the future, the Liverpool job is available so I threw my name into the hat, but honestly I wouldn't be too disappointed if I just got to stay at Leverkusen for one more season. I haven't spent more than 2 seasons at a club for quite some time now (only did it at Povazska Bystrica and that was just the 2.5 seasons there) so it might be nice for a change. That said, obviously I'll take my chances at Liverpool if it comes to that.
Edit: And as I say that, Liverpool offered me their job but their finances show as "Okay" at the end of June, which to me means, they are probably in the red after all the prize money have come in, so I thought "fuck that" and said no. Hopefully I don't come to regret it. Hopefully they snipe the manager off of another club that's more suitable for me.
Last edited by Adramelch; 27-04-2023 at 04:26 PM.
European Journeyman Game - 2032/33 - Man Utd - Sit Rep
Fuck me, where do I start with this...
Competitions
This is the league table as I join:
Southampton (h), Villa (h), Fulham (a) and Brighton (h) are our first four matches, which is nice, but that's then followed with an horrific six game run, so if we don't pick up points in those first four I could be here for less time than Malky.
FA Cup is yet to be drawn and we lost at Exeter in the 2nd round of the League Cup. Europe? We're not in anything this year unsurprisingly.
The Finances
These were listed as "Ok" when I applied, which worried me somewhat, but the situation is nowhere near as bad as I feared now I've had a chance to have a proper look.
We have £247m left on a bank loan that runs at £1.3m payable per month until 2050 (18 years from now) and are overdrawn by £27m.
The board have given me £21.5m for the January window and we're spending £3.85m per week of our £3.935m wage budget (I've no idea how given the shit we have).
The Squad
The players want to leave the club and they've taken an instant dislike to me, citing a lack of experience. Worse still, the club's transfers and youth have been horribly mis-managed. The squad is ageing as fuck and we have 5 trained in club players and 2 more trained in nation from the 26 there when I joined. Those stealing a living are:
Jadon Sancho (32 years old and on £275k p/w), Antoine Leopoldie (regen striker with 11 finishing, on £225k p/w), Sammy Braybrooke (signed from Leicester for £51m, 28 and on £225k p/w), Antony (32, £190k p/w and still doesn't have a right foot), Giovanni Reyna (29, £185k p/w), Nicolas Seiwald (31, £185k p/w, Sir Marcus Rashford (35, £170k p/w), the list just goes on.
Now ideally I'd get rid of all of the above and more ASAP, but they're all on long contracts and as they do have some ability I think it'll be a sure fire way to get sacked if I cut too much, too quickly. So, we're going to run a policy of "no new contracts for anyone, unless they've both played well under me and are under 33.
On the plus side, I had a rootle through the under-21s and under-19s and found these two bad boys.
Who are basically regens of Paul Scholes and Lee Sharpe if ever I saw them. Mission for this season will be to blood them in the first team squad.
The Backroom Team
Full of absolute shite and people somehow still stealing a living off the back of Alex Ferguson. I do however, have a plan for this.
Expectations
The board reckon they'll be happy with just avoiding relegation, but I don't really get what that'll look like - if we don't start getting wins we'll have lost the dressing room well before securing 17th place, so I confidently predict we'll either be safe in mid-table/pushing Europe (a few seasons back the top 10 in the Premier League made it) or I'll be out of a job come March/April.
You've taken the Graham Potter leap.
Burn it all down Yev, burn it all down.
Thanks for not having them as Man UFC
I'm a twit
My plan for the backroom team died before it got started when Roy Keane turned me (and £4k more a week) down to stay at Paris FC.
Fuck my life.
Is Sam Allardyce still in it as a scout?
I'm a twit
That name pack you linked to to thank for that Baz, cheers. It really is the nuts.
He isn't now, was he ever?
European Journeyman Game - 2032/33 - Man Utd - Mid Season Update
Very pleased with how things have gone since joining. The task was made easier by the dressing room atmosphere inexplicably being excellent, maybe removing the smell of Malky brought that about...
The win over Southampton to start was far harder than 3-0 looks and we probably created more against Villa in the next game than the first, but the win at Tottenham was enough for me to know we'll be nowhere near relegation come the end of the season. Defeats to Arsenal and Newcastle were expected, but we were hardly outplayed and we really should have scored against a Haaland-less Man City to take the win there.
Most of the old players I suspected were stealing a living have proved me right (special mention to Giovanni Reyna who is a genuine disgrace), but Jadon Sancho has been surprisingly good. Blooding the two youngsters is going nicely and was so good to see Myler rocket his first goal for the club in from 30 yards against Palace.
Firmly mid table as we hit 2033, but I'd be disappointed if we didn't get some form of Europe. A 5th crack at the Europa Conference League would be nice.
Transfers
Decided against buying anyone of first team quality in the window, for two reasons really. We don't have the money and I'd rather wait and see if we can attract a better calibre of player in the summer if we're back in Europe. Got my eye on 2/3 youngsters though that would be good to bring in. Given the lack of fixtures left I'm also going to actively try and ship some of the old shite in the window, maybe 3-4 of them, but I don't hold out much hope of being successful. Without European football we lose money during the season (we've shipped another £10m onto the overdraft since I joined), so I'd like that wage bill below £3m per week by the time we start next season.
Enjoying the saves Yev & Adra.
Where are Haaland/Mbappe at the moment in your games? What became or Ronaldo + Messi?
Mbappe and Haaland are both still going and both still where they were. I'd put their records up but as I've only just got to the Premier League and never managed in France the results there have been generated on minimum detail until now and they never post particularly good numbers when that's the case. Haaland does have 148 goals in 132 caps for Norway and a World Cup and a Euros to his name though.
Ronaldo took his oil money and disappeared. Messi toyed with being an assistant manager but would never join me and no one else wanted him so he also retired from the game completely.
Well then
Also MitroGod
Ronaldo retired in 2024 and got into managing shortly after. Started at Farense in Portugal, then went to AEK in Greece where he won 2 league titles and he's been at United since 2028, where he's finished 6th, 5th, 4th and 5th and has won a League Cup. Messi retired in 2025 and didn't do anything after that.
As for Haaland and Mbappe (keep in mind that only shows the league stats):
Somewhat underwhelming (and unrealistic) stats to be honest. Haaland's highest goal tally across all club competitions is 41 (in the 2031/32 season) and Mbappe's 39 (in 2022/2023 - in the save that is, he had more a couple seasons back in real life).
France just won the Euros in 2032 and came third in the 2030 World Cup, while Norway made it into the quarters in 2030 where they lost to Mexico on penalties, and have had a string of mediocre to bad Euro performances (never going past the first knockout round).
Last edited by Adramelch; 26-04-2023 at 07:52 AM.
What’s your formation like @Dark Soldier?
I'm a twit
On my one Christian Eriksen has only just left Man Utd at 39 to go back to Ajax still as a full-time player, so the heart is holding up absolutely lovely.
A simple tactic. Its the corner routine. One third of my 90 goals scored in 22 matches are corner goals.
Sounds like you're making the most of set pieces.
All those AI boards not as daft as they look.
Trying this now, 5-1 v United and 3-1 v City, promising start:
What happens in the match engine with the gaping hole in the middle of the park?
IWBs set centrally but will track wide, DWs press like rabid animals, BPDs push up and the AM tracks back to middle of park, so its like a condensed 8.
Pass map is wide, full side overload when we have the ball
City had two whole shots in the area
This happens every year on the SI forums and then makes its way here, but if you’re using cheat formations that would never be used in real life then there’s no point in playing it really.
It’s just for fun. Doesn’t need to be a 1:1 simulation.
I'm a twit
If you can enlighten me how the above is a cheat tactic, im happy to hold my hands up. The prior one was set up for corner weakness, this doesn't have it.
Its just knowing how the game works.
It bills itself on realism.
Its never been realistic.
No team in real life would play that shape. Not your fault, it’s the useless developers.If you can enlighten me how the above is a cheat tactic, im happy to hold my hands up. The prior one was set up for corner weakness, this doesn't have it.
Its just knowing how the game works.
Excuse me. Me playing gegenpress and expressive creativity in the Vanuatan third division is very realistic.
4-4-fucking-2.
Think I've genuinely broke it, 49mins in
Add your fancy corners.
And get some kits you dirty scrub.
I'm a twit
nah fuck kits
Bosko Delic just scored against me.
First game back after my holiday in Poland:
DS isn't the only one who can score goals.
European Journeyman Game - 2032/33 - Man Utd - Sit Rep
End of our first season at Man Utd reached and pretty happy with how things turned out.
The League
The win against Villa was our 8th in a row and at that stage I was hoping for Champions League football, but results tapered off a bit and we ended up 7th.
This would have been enough for the Conference League, but England got one of the two extra Champions League spots for having the best coefficient and we were bumped into the Europa League instead.
FA Cup
I was reasonably confident of winning this given our league form to that point, but the semi against Arsenal brought us back down to earth with a bump.
Transfers
I'll do a full update on this when the summer window closes, but I'm striving to get the wage bill down to under £3m and have us start the season in the black. Being constantly in debt is not something I'm prepared to tolerate, even if not being comes at the expense of being able to sort the squad quicker.
Great turnaround that. How's the finances looking now, with prize money and the likes?
They're looking fairly promising now. I'll give a full update when the window's done, but no stone is being left unturned and I'm in the process of disbanding the under-18 set up.
Our staff wages and bonuses etc. amount to £19m a year, which is just insane. £9m is getting trimmed off that.
Is there a way I can edit coaching assignments for the under 21s? The under 21 coaches all seem to appear with the first team squad coaches in the main edit coaching assignments screen. Do all coaches work with all levels?
Leverkusen 2032/33 Season
Having improved the squad (and our performances) significantly last season and having finally brought some stability to our financial woes, I set a simple goal for myself really. More of the same, without overspending, while I wait for a better club to come along, pretty much. To that end, the only "important" signing we went for was a right back, as PSG came knocking for our current one, and since he really wanted to leave, his contract was expiring this season, he was the wrong side of 30 and he didn't impress last season, I thought I might as well let him go and find a replacement. To this end, this guy came in:
Honestly, not too impressed, especially since he cost 42m, but he was the best we could afford really so not much choice there. He ended up being the weak link in our squad, so not too happy about that transfer.
The rest of our signings were either backup players, or promising youngsters, the best of which was this young Romanian lad:
He joined us for a measly 3.9m from Yevrah's Steaua, but stayed there for the season. He was already looking great but he also improved heaps over that season and I'm sure he'll become a world star eventually.
We also let a significant number of players go, some because they wanted to leave and we had good offers and some because they just wouldn't be able to make it at this club. All in all, we spent 76m in transfers, while selling 107m worth of players, so a positive window money-wise if anything.
With the squad staying relatively the same, I didn't expect any improvement compared to last season. And we didn't really improve. In fact, I'd say we were significantly worse than last season performance-wise, but at least we kept up result-wise. The one positive thing is that our loses came against lesser sides this season. Why is that a positive thing, I hear you ask? Well, this time around we got a lot more points in our games against Bayern, Leipzig and Dortmund, which, more importantly, meant that we prevented them from gaining as many points as they typically did, resulting in this shock result:
If I'm being honest, we didn't really deserve it, even if we did win it with one game to spare. We were lucky that we pulled out some wins out of thin air, we were lucky that Bayern had a very rare bad season and we were lucky that the results in the games between the other three teams always seemingly went the way that would benefit us the most. Lucky or not, we broke a 20-season long spell of dominance for Bayern, while winning the club's first ever Bundesliga. And all that, while earning two fewer points that last season. #efficient
We could have actually won the double and we had to go through all 3 big teams, but in the end Bayern manage to narrowly (but deservedly) win the final. I was actually gunning for Nagelsmann's (yeah, he's still there) job and I reckon beating them in the final would have been the final nail in the coffin, but alas it wasn't to be.
A much worse performance in Europe as well. We threw away a lot of easy points at home (same thing happened in the league actually, where our insane away form carried us - 9 points more than the second best), which meant that we would have to go through the playoff system, where we got a rather reasonable draw against Milan. They were stupidly lucky to not lose the first leg, with both of their goals coming from set-pieces, but they took advantage and then dominated the second leg to go through. The board was still happy that we made it to the knockout rounds, but I certainly wasn't.
A rather similar situation to last season. Rijkhoff, Paz and Marchal terorrized defences, while Viola and Bruno Jose kept things tidy at the back. The one notable difference was Barone, who was mediocre at best, and possibly the reason for our somewhat worse performances. Oh well, can't have everything.
And as my third season at Leverkusen comes to an end, the Bayern job might not have become available, but another high profile one did and it was a no-brainer:
Toggle Spoiler
I leave Leverkusen, having won their first ever league title, having steadied the ship financially and with a host of young players whose value has skyrocketed, so all in all, a very successful stint. I join a club that has just finished 7th, after being projected to finish 3rd, but a club with a very good basis for growth. Financially stable, not overspending in wages and with a relatively young squad, so things are looking positive.
Last edited by Adramelch; 27-04-2023 at 06:25 PM.
Make yourself training for u21s in responsibilities. First team coaches work with u21s. I think GK and fitness first team coaches work with u182.
Race to the prem title for you two. I've been reading your updates about your journeyman games and been enjoying them. Keep them coming 👍
Cheers DS and congrats on the league win Adra!
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