All in all, a bad move that one.
I might have fucked this having resigned from the Slovakian club, no one is touching me.
After 5 months of slogging through offers from Swedish 4th tier teams we finally got a decent offer at the start of the 24/25 season.
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@Boom Boom
I'm a twit
Ventspils & Latvia 2028 Update
We pretty much achieved all of the above this year, securing another third place finish in the league, although we were in the title race until the final month of the season, so we're definitely still making progress. We made the second qualifying round of the Conference League, beating Maltese side Hamrun Spartans before getting seen off by Hibernian. I think we're at the point where we should be able to consistently make the third round as long as we avoid a brutal draw, so I'll be hoping things fall our way next season.Originally Posted by Dan
Just to give you a proper run down of the side, it's very Brazilian heavy! We have Adailton in goal with Alemao at RB, Aleksejs Bite at LB, and Rodrigo & Guilherme Anselmo at CB. In midfield we're rolling a 4312 with three from Paulo, Adriano, Alisson & Tonci Soldo and club captain Rodrigues playing in behind a front two of Kleber & Daniels Smitins, who has now overtaken Aleksejs Davidenkovs as our record goalscorer.
We have a few more Latvians on the bench, including a couple of good young strikers, and I've been raiding the rest of the league already to bring in some of the better young Latvians for next season, so we should see the squad depth continue to increase. We have massively jumped our wage budget from £5k p/w to £15k p/w though, so the European money is going to be more important that ever next year - if I've worked things out right then the money from getting to the second qualifying round should completely cover our wages for the year, so hopefully we won't lose too much money from everything else.
We did also get a small upgrade from the board, but it was only to our academy coaching. I think we'll still need another year or two of good European money before we can really afford to start upgrading the facilities, especially now we've tripled our wage bill. The league is hovering around 26th-29th in the coefficients, so we'll need Riga & RFS to pick up some unexpected wins so that we can sneak up to the next jump in European places.
We ticked both boxes this year, finishing third in a competitive Nations League group & winning all four of our friendlies, although I made sure we had some winnable games. It would be nice to get a World Cup qualifying group where we could at least pick up a few points, and I'll be trying to arrange some more winnable friendlies to keep morale up. I'm sure we'll also get some more nationalised players popping up to help us out too, so fingers crossed someone gifts us a CB with some speed, as we're generally pretty lucky to get more than 10-11 pace out of anyone competent.
European Journeyman Game - 2024/25 - Exeter City
Halfway point of our first (and probably only) season with Exeter and things are going much better than they did in Slovakia.
We've led the league for most of the season and while there's a decent cushion to 4th place I really want that title, but Wrexham can probably add to their squad in the window whereas we can't.
European Journeyman Game - 2024/25 - Exeter City - League Two End of Season Update
Expected to finish 2nd by the media and top three by the board, in the end we romped home and beat Swindon Town's near 40 year old points record. Particularly pleasing that as normally the team's form drops right off once 1st place in the league is secured.
So many good performances, but these two in particular stand out.
32 goals in 39 starts in the league, the massive Gambian was instrumental in a cracking season.
At the other end of the pitch was Kinnear, who becomes the first player I genuinely want to sign at another club. He kept saving penalties, just over and over again, which I assume is down to his ludicrous agility for a League 2 goalkeeper, but when you look it's actually almost as good as any keeper in the game. Dying to try him at a better club and particularly in a shootout.
Future Plans
Securing promotion pushed our rep to two stars and then winning the title pushed it to two and half, which is excellent news. We're nowhere near good enough to mount a promotion challenge in League One and even if we were, I'm not sure I can hack another 46 game season, so off we go with the target to get a job in a top division (in any European country really) where we can challenge for the title and hopefully win one.
CV looking much better now after the Slovakian aberration.
Signed this kid from ASEC for $280k....
198cm
So we left Exeter in July and holidayed a bit before getting a new job.... at Shamrock Rovers
6 games to go so we have an outside chance of getting 4th and Conference League football, but this is my first club with actual money and I think we're going to get a transfer budget of over £1m in the off season.
Only downside is taking the job has dropped my rep back to two stars.
How's the latest patch compared to the previous ones (match engine wise)? Been thinking of getting back to it but can't really be bothered if it's more of the same.
I didn't play that much of it before the patch but I quite like it in the state it's in now. Nothing too annoying happening on screen and the variety of goals/outcomes is good.
10 (or however many it's been) versions later and I still haven't understood why they decided to change a perfectly working manager reputation system and proceed to mess it up.
What did they do to it? This game does feel a bit different from Journeyman games of yesteryear.
Back then there used to be the "Automatic" option, which would set your reputation at a level matching the lowest league you had loaded. They changed that to what we assumed was the average of all leagues loaded (and later removed it altogether). In the same version, they must have messed something up in general, since we started seeing clubs with much higher reputation than your own offering interviews (without you even applying for the jobs). They seem to have toned that down somewhat at least, but in those first few versions it was ridiculous. Something like me managing Steaua and getting offered the Arsenal job (which might of course happen once in a while, but it was a very regular occurrence).
Ah, I see. They've sorted the ludicrous job offers out now I think. I certainly haven't had any in 4/5 seasons of this save.
So I did end up starting a Journeyman save. I loaded the top division from the big, say, 7-8 nations, as well as an assortment of lower leagues from the eastern bloc, and set out to find a club. A few months went by without even a peak at an interview, but by October, a couple of clubs sacked their managers and came knocking my way. I would like to pretend that I had a hard choice to make, but in reality I was only offered one job, so I just went and accepted it. That was in the Slovakian second division, at a club called Povazska Bystrica, from what is apparently the 13th most populous city in Slovakia. The club was expected to finish 7th, but found themselves at 14th place, with 14 points in 14 games, just 2 above the relegation zone. The players at the club were mediocre at best, but with the club in the red and above the wage budget, there wasn't really any room for improvement during the season.
We weren't amazing by any means, but we were firmly in control in most of our games. In fact, I would go as far as to argue that we shouldn't have lost a single game, but sadly the low quality of the squad prevented us from doing that. The xG table (I know) had us finishing third in fact. Nevertheless, 29 points from 16 games under my reign is a great return.
In fact, if we had the same yield over the whole season, we would have finished a comfortable 3rd, so things look promising for next season. Speaking of next season, however, there will be a decent amount of problems. Half the squad is on contracts that are expiring in the summer and it's not like we have a lot of money to spend. We could probably come to an agreement with most of them, but the question is if that's the way to go. Maybe it'll be better if we just let them go and start rebuilding the squad from the ground up.
Ventspils & Latvia 2029 Update
Well, it turns out I was very wrong about us not losing too much money other than wages - we were losing about £100k a month this season, so we were eating through our European money pretty quickly. We did top it back up with another second qualifying round elimination, but I've already started trying to move a few fringe players on now our players have decent transfer values.
The Virsliga was the same as usual, with us finishing third behind Riga & RFS, although we did take a bit of a step back towards the chasing pack thanks to a combination of injuries & inconsistency. Our main man Daniels Smitins missed four months with a broken foot & then got another injury that took him out of the last few games, but luckily Kleber continued to bang them in & our two young lads - Marks Pulis & Maksims Jakovlevs - both chipped in with double digit goals to help take some of the pressure off.
It still feels like we've got a bit of work to do to overhaul the big two, so I'm expecting more of the same again next season, but hopefully we can get a nicer draw in Europe & make the third round. Luckily Riga & RFS are both in the ECL league phase & have picked up a few points, so we should hold our spot in the qualifying places table, and maybe we'll even sneak up a few spots if they pull off a few more results.
We had a pretty successful campaign in WC2030 qualifying, finishing third in our group & getting double digit points. We pushed both Serbia & Croatia close at home as well, so I'd say this was our best year so far with the national side. We could still use some pace in defence, and probably a couple more central midfielders, but hopefully we'll be able to build on this year & stay competitive through the Nations League.
Mike, The Reid and I will be starting an FM save later. Arsenal, United and Liverpool, as always. Will probably put it on Twitch but with zero interraction cos it'll be full screen on the living room TV.
I'm a twit
European Journeyman Game - 2025 and 2026 - Shamrock Rovers
So we joined Shamrock Rovers in 2025 with six league games left and them sat in 6th, sadly we couldn't improve on that position so no European football achieved, but with a decent window behind us I was reasonably optimistic of being able to take the title and bed in for a good 2/3 years with a club, racking up the Hall of Fame points and Rep along the way. Oh how wrong I was.
The season started badly with two defeats but we played alright so I remained optimistic. We then had a cracking March to move into title contention, but April was plagued with xG horror shows as we drew three games and lost one having created a bucketload of chances. After the St. Pats game I saw an option for a team talk with the squad, so I thought "why not?". This was why not...
Absolutely battered in the three league games and the cup loss was against a tier 2 side. Any further attempts to talk to the squad did nothing and with both the club atmosphere and support for me seriously in the red I felt the only recourse left was to resign before being sacked. Fucksticks.
The only positive is that the board had agreed to fund my continental pro license before I jumped ship (which completes in 7 months), but even then my rep is back down to 2 stars/40% now.
State of play after 4 seasons, average at best I would say, which is obviously disappointing. Next job is crucial for me to succeed at.
I don't think I've ever had a positive experience out of those team talks (or the ones where you're meant to rally the squad ahead of a crucial game). I just avoid them like the plague.
Nearly every interaction seems likely to backfire. You do something as innocuous as congratulate someone on playing well and they shout WE HAVE DIFFERING OPINIONS ON PLAYING WELL DAD IM GOING TO MY ROOM and their form dives off a cliff for the rest of the season. That one where you're to gee up a team ahead of a big game is an instant skip.
Yeah, I've always skipped the one before a big match. Well, at least since I used it and it fucking sucked.
European Journeyman Game - 2026/27 - New Job Time
So, after the disaster in Ireland I holidayed for a bit and after unsuccessful interviews at 3 Championship clubs an opportunity with Istra 1961, in the Croatian 2nd Division, arrived.
Having just been relegated we're huge favourites, but nearly all of the first team squad want to leave. What could possibly go wrong...
The bookies really don't fancy anyone to win it, blimey
1/90 and then 12/5, that bookie must have queues going out the door.
And we’ve no money to spend!
European Journeyman Game - 2026/27 - Istra 1961 Mid-Season Update
Wouldn't say we're quite performing at odds of 1/91, but this league is absolute bilge and we're well set as we head into the Winter break to make an immediate return to top flight football:
The dropped points have mostly come on international breaks, which in the Croatian second tier, aren't breaks and half our first team is missing as a result.
What has been top class though is our performance in the cup:
The first round was pretty routine against some non-league shite, we then knocked out Hajduk Split (which was less impressive when I realised they were somehow bottom of the top flight), but the win against Dinamo Zagreb is comfortably the best single game in my 155 game managerial career.
The draw isn't made until the middle of Feb for some reason, but it'll be one of the three sides highlighted below that we'll face.
Osijek will probably be a step too far, but I'd fancy my chances against the other two sides, particularly at home.
A couple of other things to note:
My board have been selling players out from under me, which this time is very much welcomed as the cuts haven't been too deep and it's given us a decent WARCHEST for the transfer window. The other is this guy:
An Istra youth product and was sat in the under 19s when I joined. He has 5 star potential (which might not mean that much at this level), has played for the Croatian under 20s already and perhaps most importantly of all has absolutely ripped it up when I've played him, which would have been more if this league didn't have a bizarre rule about not playing players under 17.
European Journeyman Game - 2026/27 - Istra 1961 End of Season Update
January Window
With some players (that were miserable and whinging anyway) sold on, I had a fair few quid to spend (by Croatian tier 2 standards anyway) in the window and we brought in the following:
With my first choice keeper sold for his minimum fee release clause we needed another one and Perisan seemed to fit the bill. Potential bargain too at a mere £50k from Angers.
£71k from LKS Lodz, another bargain in the offing.
£375k from a team in the Slovakian 2nd tier with a very hard name to spell, so I shan't even try.
£600k from Kalmar, Kingstrom became my record signing so far on the save. My board hated the fee but didn't try and block it so for once at least when it comes to transfers, I win. Or at least I will if he's any good.
The League
So with first season in Croatia having drawn to a close we ran away with the league title in the end, securing it and promotion back to the first tier with 7 games to go.
Not much to say on this other than the rest of the teams were dreadful.
The Cup
Having reached the semi-finals before Christmas we had a long wait to see who we'd draw and we hit the jackpot, in both avoiding Osijek and getting a home tie.
We played brilliantly and the 2-1 scoreline probably flattered them a bit. So with the league wrapped up it all came down to the final of the cup against Osijek to see if I could win my biggest trophy to date.
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Povazska Bystrica 2023/24 Season
I've just finished my first full season at the team with the unpronouncable name. To set the stage, we had a lot of loanees and expiring contracts at the end of last season, so that left me with a big rebuilding job ahead of me. Seeing as the club doesn't quite have the scouting resources to go out and get the best of players, most of our signings were, let's say, an educated guess. On that basis, no fewer than 12 people joined the club, with 5 of them going straight into the first XI and another 3-4 being key squad players. The board expected us to finish in the top-half, which based on last season's performance was more than reasonable, while the media expected us to finish 10th out of 16 teams. With our wage budget being the 7th highest in the league, it all pointed towards a top-half finish indeed. But that wasn't the case.
Let me start by saying that we were the best team in the league, so our promotion is more than deserved. And we did play good. But we were also fortunate that everyone else around us was just mediocre at best. Dubnica were ahead of us for most of the season, but they ran out of steam towards the end with just 6 points out of their last 7 games. We finished the season with the best attack and defence, with 49 goals scored and 22 conceded.
Looking at our first eleven, undoubtedly the stand-out player was Kucharchik. I can't even recall the last time I had a central defender with that high an average rating without it being down to several goals/assists from set-pieces. He was just a beast defensively and honestly single-handedly carried our defence. Sadly, many first division club put in offers for him at the start of the season and after I rejected them, he (deservedly, mind you) threw a fit, resulting in him opting to run his contract down, so he won't be with us next season. The other player I want to mention is Vosko, who joined to be our backup striker, but grabbed the opportunity to shine when our main striker picked up a 3 month injury in just the third game of the season. He was quite consistent and won us quite a few games on his own.
With all that said, I had planned to leave the club at the end of the season, but with us getting promoted and the board offering me a relatively hefty wage budget, I opted to stay for one more year. I don't think the squad is anywhere near good enough to stay up, especially with our two best players leaving. But I do have a decent bit of money to rebuild, so I will take my shot and see where it takes me.
I would still apply to any proper opportunities, but ye, bar something big coming your way, I'd say you stay until the winter at least.
Presumably you get a rep boost if you win a few European games.
Like a decade back or so I did ran a Journeyman game where I tracked the changes in my reputation via the editor and even just participating in European games gave your rep a boost. It's been a while since then but I'd expect that to still be the same. It does depend on what your reputation is already though I would imagine and at 3 stars you might indeed have to win the games.
No idea how you fly through seasons, Yev. Mike, The Reid and I played for around 3.5 hours last night and progressed approximately 2 weeks in game.
I'm a twit
I would assume multiplayer is inherently a lot slower and summer transfer windows are also quite slow. I've gone through 2 seasons in 12 hours of gametime, though I did have a tactic created in an old save so I didn't spend any time fiddling around with that.
Something I don't think I have ever come across before: We have a hefty wage budget, but the board won't allow me to shift any of it towards transfer fees. Which is all good and well, but they won't even let me cover signing bonuses of like 1k euros, meaning we're locked out of great players. Quite annoying I must say.
Yeah, we do seem to be especially slow.
Mike and Reidy are trying to sell players, with the latter hoping to raise enough money to buy Harry Kane. He’s so far sold nobody.
I even did all my stuff while I was meant to be working, to save time in the evening when they came round (sorted my back room staff and scouting jobs) but still took forever to progress. I’m kind of glad though, I’d rather we took our time and set everything up right so we hopefully get way into it, like some of our old saves.
I think a side game of whose centre half can score the most goals will keep me most interested, with corners still being a total joke.
I'm a twit
There's a streamer I watch and he takes about 7 or 8 hours just to advance the first day in a new save. He does load every single player in the game though and spends fucking forever finding targets.
Which I find oddly enthralling.
I do that a lot later into saves. Going through tens and hundreds of clubs and checking player by player.
Cheers for the input lads, I've decided to stay with Istra for at least one more season. The chance of guaranteed European football for the first time was too much to turn down.
Povazska Bystrica 2024/25 Season
Powered through another season in Slovakia. Having been promoted to the top division, our task would be massive. We had to try and survive the drop, with a squad that was massively below the standard of the league. This was made even worse by the fact that we had no transfer budget whatsoever, to the point that we weren't even able to go through with some high profile free transfers, courtesy of not being able to afford the sign-on bonuses. All that said, the league format is quite forgiving. Firstly, after the 22 games of the regular season, the league is split into two groups, a championship and a relegation one. That meant that even if we took our sweet time to get going, we would have enough time to turn things around in the last 10 games, against more reasonable opposition. Even then, only the last spot would lead to automatic relegation, while the one above that would lead to a relegation playoff against the runner-up of the second division. So I was cautiously optimistic.
Much like the season before, we had to go through a massive overhaul, as when the summer transfer window started the squad had a total of 12 players, with no strikers nor goalkeepers. We signed no fewer than 14 players, with 6 of them going straight into the first eleven. I would go through individual screenshots of the key signings, but the level of the league (or rather that outside the top 3-4 teams) is so low, that I don't think there's much point in that. So, how did all that go I hear you wonder?
In the end it wasn't that hard. We did struggle in the first few months, as we only managed our first win 9 games into the season, and we had only amassed 10 points after 14 games. I wasn't extremely worried as we weren't the only ones, and even at that point, we were outside the relegation zone, but still, we needed to start getting more results if we wanted to survive. And that's exactly what happened. We gained 13 points from the remaining 8 games of the regular season and went into the relegation group with a rather commanding lead over the bottom two teams. There we gained 14 points out of a possible 30, which, while a bit disappointing all-in-all, was more than enough to keep us safe. For the first season under my tenure, we also entered the Cup, where we beat two amateur teams, before losing 0-3 at home, to a team that had just gotten promoted to the second division. Embarrassing, but oh well, it's not like we would be going much further anyway.
As you see, not much to write home about. Murko was our only actual scorer and even he was very hit and miss. Jerolimov was actually our marquee signing and he ended up being the best player in the squad, so no surprises there. As a whole, our defence was fairly impressive given the large gulf in class in the league, with 37 goals conceded in 32 games. The same can't be said about our attack though, as we only mustered a total of 28 goals.
I could stay on for another season, but our finances are horrendous and I don't see us doing any better any time soon. But that would make for a miserable and boring experience, and something I don't think would have much of an impact on my reputation, so I've decided to move on. Where will I find myself, I don't know, but I am thinking what makes the most sense is to either stay at Slovakia, move to a neighbouring country (say Austria or Czech Republic), or maybe Greece if an appropriate position becomes available. In any case, I think I'm quite content with what I've achieved here and I most definitely think it's time for me to move somewhere else.
Mid-season update to come, but I think I've made it, clubs are actively coming in for me now. Hull City (bottom of the Championship, told them to do one) and now Basel, which I thought was appealing until I realised that they aren't what they once were.
get Salah back to Basel
I'm a twit
Those are a career maker in my opinion. They have good facilities and the likes, a still (I assume) reasonable reputation to attract good talent, relatively easy access to European football, yet the expectations are somewhat tempered. That said, they are typically a 3-4 season long project, so you'd have to be up for that kind of commitment.
I turned them down too.
Although it may make more sense when you see the update.
One of my favourite teams on an old journeyman game was a relegated Montpelier, together we rode a wave of euphoria back to the lower top half of the table before I then fucked off to Everton. Had a soft spot for them ever since even though it was a very brief spell.
Why would the option to apply for an available job be greyed out? The club in question has a caretaker, but the job is available according to the Job Security screen.
Maybe they've already agreed with someone? Or finished with the interview process.
Last edited by Adramelch; 14-04-2023 at 01:11 PM.
Yeah, that might well be it. Someone who'll join at the end of the season perhaps.
European Journeyman Game - 2027/28 - Istra 1961 Mid-Season Update
I fucking love this club.
Summer Transfers
We needed to get business done early as at the beginning of July we were straight into the Croatian Charity Shied, the league and European qualifiers, so we did with four players arriving for a combined £1.4m on 1st July.
Another one in from Angers, this time on a Bosman. Only really expected him to be a backup/sub and that's how things have turned out so far.
£200k from UD Oliveirense. One who looks like he'll be an absolute beast in the future but also good enough to compete for my spot at right back now.
Overpaid for this one but I was sort of forced as we needed a striker and he was the best I could get. £875k from Atletico Malagueno.
And saving the best until last... £350k from Hamilton, the budget Paul Scholes who looks like he could well end up being as good as the England Man. That finishing combined with that off the ball, combined with that trait is just ridiculous at this level.
Charity Shield
I didn't realise Croatia did one of these so it was a pleasant surprise to see our first game of the season presented an opportunity to win another trophy. Sadly we lost 2-1 to Dinamo Zagreb with the scoreline flattering us.
Europe
A massive disappointment this.
We gave Sparta Prague a really good game and while I was disappointed to lose on pens I then set my sights on Conference League football as we dropped into the qualifying for that. Any notion of that was quickly disabused however when I saw the list of teams that we could face in the draw and we ended up getting Sporting Lisbon (I mean, how the fuck are they in this?) and we were soundly beaten.
The Cup
This is rapidly becoming my favourite cup competition ever. After winning it last year we haven't had to face a single side from the top tier in Croatia to get to the last 4 this, with my 2nd string getting some decent minutes against absolute goat herders.
Dinamo Zagreb are the only team left in at the semi-final stage that I wouldn't have us as favourites to beat, but as last year I need to wait until February for the draw.
The League
And this is where it gets really interesting, as I'm in contention for what I think might be one of my greatest achievements ever on CM/FM. We started slowly with two laboured draws, but the wins then came and didn't really stop, with us seemingly getting stronger and stronger as the season went on.
Bull and Delic (more on him later) have been sensational and the win against Zagreb in the final game before the break was absolutely huge and moved us 5 points clear at the top.
It's as I type this that I realise going out of Europe was a blessing in disguise as we're basically only playing one game a week and barring injuries everyone is always in top condition when we go into these games. Zagreb meanwhile are embroiled in a Europa League charge, sitting 7th after 6 games. Their last two are away at decent sides so I'm praying they drop into the playoff spots and drop more points in the league as a result, but the win against them really made me believe we could just do this. There is however, one potential problem beyond Dinamo Zagreb that may stop that happening.
Bosko Delic
I've now seen enough and this kid is seriously legit. Stepped up to Croatian top flight football with no problems at all and is only getting better as the season goes on, he's playing and scoring for Croatia, is courted by a load of clubs and now wants to leave. Balls.
If I can somehow hold onto him through the winter window then I make us favourites for the league. If we can't then I'm not sure, he really is that good.
Me
At some point during our ascent to the top of the table my rep ticked up. Not enough to shift the stars but it moved from 55% to 60% and that seemed to open the floodgates from offers. Hull, Basel and St. Gallen have all been turned down. In hindsight I may have been a bit hasty with the last two as I probably should have set something up for the end of the season, but I didn't consider that at the time. Another interesting angle is that for this season Croatia gets one team straight into the Champions League Group stage, which may be enough to keep both me and Bosko at the club for one more year. Either way and after many seasons of toil and failed jobs, things are finally looking excellent.
Looking forward to the sea of red results in next years Champions League.
You better get 50% sell on fee for Bosko.
I'm a twit
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