Has anyone tried FM on steam deck? I don't like gaming on my PC but I'm craving a lower league caper.
Has anyone tried FM on steam deck? I don't like gaming on my PC but I'm craving a lower league caper.
FC Groningen 2023/24 End of Season Review
We entered 2024 sitting 9th, right where the board expected us to finish, but having come off a slump in December it felt like we were squandering the chance to push for Europe. Could we get ourselves together and outdo our 8th place finish from last year?
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All of that left the final table looking like this:
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Players of the Season:
Just like last season, we had one guy that we relied on to score most of our goals - Ricardo Pepi. Having somehow managed to convince Augsburg to let us have him for 0% wages & £0 loan fees for the second year in a row, he continued to bang them in, scoring almost half of our league goals. I don't think we'll be able to get him back again next year, and we don't have the finances to pay his agreed fee or pay his wages, so a striker is going to be a huge priority, but I'm definitely going to be asking for a third freebie year if possible.
We also had big contributions from new arrival Victor Jensen, who was our main creator, and Paulos Abraham, who stepped up when we had to sold our best player for £6m in January. A couple of loanees played big roles too - firstly Antonio Blanco, who came in on loan from Real Madrid but has agreed to join Armenia Bielefeld next year, and secondly Taylor Booth, whose work rate & versatility got him on the pitch a lot.
We very nearly had another of our core group of players leave in January, with goalkeeper Peter Leeuwenbergh agreeing a move to LAFC literally twelve hours after our transfer window closed, however we were saved by them getting taken over before the transfer could be confirmed.
Next Season:
I think we'll struggle to match this finish next year with the extra European commitments & potential issues up front, but as long as we can stay in the hunt for Europe we should be fine. We have some good young players at the club & are continuing to bring in more, having added Leandro Morgalla & Philipp Schulz, and we're also bringing in Elia Caprile, who we nabbed when it looked like Leeuwenbergh was leaving, but he's clearly an upgrade so I'll have to figure that one out over the summer.
Our academy is working wonders so far, and may in fact provide the long term solution to our striker issues. Having given us Roberto Kruiswijk & David Coolen last year, we've had a third impressive striker come through this year in Roy Birza, who headlines an excellent class alongside the likes of Syb Schaars & Kenji Mulder.
We've also added Milan as a parent club & gained a feeder club in the Ereste Divisie, so hopefully we'll be able to get some loans going in both directions to help keep the squad ticking over.
I'm not sure it'll be easy to reel in the big three any time soon, so I might just play out next season & see what jobs come up, but at the same time there are a lot of interesting players I'd like to keep developing, so I guess we'll just see how things go.
Am I okay? 👀Originally Posted by Baz
This seemingly broke FM cos it crashed straight after.
Yes, very good. Probably first choice winger.
Survived another transfer window without losing anyone. Mark accepted an offer from Everton for @AyDee but offering him out to everyone all but secured a deadline day move to Man City, until I pulled the rug out in the final stages.To avoid a meltdown, he went there on loan instead.
I was half-paying attention when accepting loan bids but from memory about four players went to Brentford with the promise of regular starter, and I feel like we’re left with only @Mike and @Dark Soldier as makeshift centrebacks. The league is all sewn up so even an unlikely run of losses shouldn’t affect our campaign.
Also got beat 2-1 at Old Trafford, which earned us over a million in ticket sales. The previous month we only made 200k total.
I'm a twit
I've hit the halfway(but not quite) point of the season in Athens.
The summer reinforcements have really kicked us on a gear. Combine that, with me going a little bit more attacking in general, we seem to have good control in the league. The biggest surprise is quite how easy it has been so far.
With added Europe and not going out of the cup immediately on top, I've had to do some rotation as there's been pretty much a game every 3-4 days. A big change from last season.
Even with this, we have two players on an average rating of 8 or higher so far. Sidebe and Levi Garcia.
As for the other teams, Olympiakos has really shit the bed this year. Though it was about this time last year they kicked off a run of about 13 wins in 14 games so we'll see. PAOK have really used not being in Europe to keep chase. They were crap last year and didnt spend anything.
As for Europe:
A 4-2 and 4-0 loss to PSG was offset by two wins against Red Star(1-0 and 6-2). The games against Benfica were very entertaining. They scored a last minute equaliser in Portugal to save a 3-3 draw and then we had ours disallowed in Greece to see them hold on for a 3-2 win. Ramos scored 5 across both ties and terrorised our defence to death.
It was a spirited showing, but it shows how far away we are from Europes elite. PSG the bastards played 3-4-2-1. The 4 was flat across, one step ahead of the CBs, which seems to be a big in-thing in FM atm.
This nice run has kept the bank balance at £13m.
Our reward for finishing 3rd is a drop into the Europa League where we will face Rosenborg. I'd hope we can win that, but I'm not sure of our chances to go much further.
I checked the facilities page after the training ground was updated and it's got us as now searching for a site for a 28k seater stadium. No idea how much longer it may take, but the pitch at our temporary home is being trashed as it's being shared by us and Apollon Smyrnis, who are our feeder team from the league below.
Lastly we come to the transfers. Our run sees a fair few players wanted. Most of them are for the end of their contract. Araujo and Sidibe are both set to expire in the summer and I think I'm going to let them go. Both are coming up on being 32 and will likely want wage rises to stay, which I don't want to do.
Levi Garcia however has interest from Leicester. His value range is listed at £10.5-£12m. He has come to me 3 times begging for a new contract this season alone and I've told him to piss off each time, which he has taken well so far. However if Leicester do come in for him, I doubt I could say no to a fee north of £10m.
Vida, who also starts regularly for us, but is out of contract in the summer too, has had a bid from Hajduk Split and he wants to go.
I'm fine with most of these, but then it's the release clause guys that worry me. They're all now valued at around what their clauses are, or higher. I don't have the spare cash to renegotiate with them yet.
I would hope this window and the summer will be the last one of major changes in the squad all at once.
Peñarol - 2025 season
We're at the point now where we're the dominant team in Uruguay and will not be challenged, so the triple aims are: try to build a team that can one day win the Libertadores, produce youth players who will help keep the dominance going (as the foreigner limit of 3 isn't going away), and keep the Thiago Borbas goal tally ticking.
To achieve some of the above I brought in two Argies to play in the creative midfield roles. This lad, clearly unencumbered by his disastrous surname, arrived on a free from Rosario Central:
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This fella cost only £600k from Boca Juniors, where he had barely played:
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Versatile forward Franco Perez came in from Rentistas to bolster the attack, and he would end up being first choice on the left wing. Facundo Pellistri would also be added mid-season. Defence was a bit more mix and match but with our vertical tiki-taka style we often have 70% of the ball even against illustrious Libertadores opponents, so defending is mainly about winning headers and passing it out. I already have a lot of academy grads filling the bench and rotation places, even though not all of them are amazing on paper.
The league doesn't need mentioning. We won all three parts and were not threatened even for one game. Nacional, playing awful defensive football, have fallen away completely and this year Defensor Sporting, who play more expansively, were able to beat them into second place:
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In the Libertadores, we're still second seeds (not really sure how or if one can earn top seed status) and we were drawn with Brazilian giants Palmeiras, Venezuela's Deportivo Táchira, and Ecuador's Barcelona. We started by beating Táchira, went to Palmeiras and were soundly beaten 2-0 (it's impossible to describe how much of a gulf there is from Brazil's top sides to us), and smashed Barcelona 8-0 at home with Borbas scoring four. We then went back to theirs and managed to drop points with a 1-1 draw, which was pathetic and would prove unbelievably costly with the way the Libertadores works - the second round draw is determined by first round record, so you need every point you can get. We then had Palmeiras at home and, much to my surprise, beat them 2-0, a rare clean sheet for us (even in the league we nearly always concede) and our first win over a Brazilian side. We finished with a win in Venezuela to end the group in 2nd place on 13 points - Palmeiras had 15, so if we hadn't dropped those ridiculous points in Ecuador we'd have won the group and received a far more favourable draw.
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As it was, we drew Athletico Paranaense, who apparently added the 'h' a few years ago in a perhaps optimistic bid to attract English-speaking fans. They are a constant presence in the Brazilian top six and twice Lib semi-finalists in the last three years. As such, I was expecting a tough test and to brush them aside 3-0 in the home leg was most unexpected.
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We went 1-0 up in the away leg, too, then we tried our very best to fuck the whole thing up. Thankfully, the boy netted another late goal to end the anxiety.
So through to the quarter-finals and the nightmare draw: Flamengo. Whilst all Brazilian teams are strong, Flamengo are on a different level - the best team in South America by a mile, winning five of the last six Brazilian titles and only missing one of the last four Libertadores finals. Their assembly of names - Gabriel Barbosa, Marcos Leonardo, Victor Hugo, Matheus França, Pedro - amounts to a Harlem Globetrotters in the context of South American football. Could we shock the continent?
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No we couldn't. It was a dispiriting two legs. The first leg should have been about 6-1, and the second leg in particular was a horrible watch. The whole game was just wave after wave of lightning one-touch attacks, scything through us at will. 8-0 would have been a fair scoreline (their xG was 3.98) - they missed a penalty, our keeper had a blinder and their finishing was embarrassing.
They went on to melt Sao Paulo in the semis before once again inexplicably bottling the final. It's hard to see how we're going to be able to beat a team like that, so either it's a case of waiting for them to get worse, or we'll have to somehow keep getting better. At least in this year's comp we made the jump up to be able to beat a win a couple of games at home to other Brazilian teams.
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So to the Borbas goal count. Games (goals):
2022: 24 (31) in the league; 29 (37) overall
2023: 37 (37) in the league; 52 (52) overall
2024: 31 (50) in the league; 45 (66) overall
2025: 36 (49) in the league; 48 (67) overall
For the club: 128 (167) in the league; 174 (222) overall.
He doesn't even do anything spectacular. Alongside those 166 league goals he has a grand total of seven league assists for us. He isn't amazingly quick or a world class finisher. He just gets into position and scores, again and again. He is, as a fat man once said, a predatory motherfucker.
We had a £1.9 million bid from Porto, that went straight in the bin and he was cool with it. Legend.
I've loaned out so many players that the crappy regen TTHers have been called up.
Easy to keep a small group happy though innit.
EDIT: Can we see an updated Borbas screenshot?
I'm a twit
Palamós CF 2033/34 Season Update:
Transfers Out:
The offer of £25.5m was brilliant for Taner. It was well over his value and he was now our second choice RB. This was a board sanctioned transfer though and I have a problem with it. We are paying £15.5k of his wages until 2037 (which is only 1 year fewer than his Galatasaray contract), two other teams made a £25.5m offer. One wanted us to pay only £5k a week and the third wanted nothing, why would the board not just accept these two and tell Galatasaray to fuck off is mental.
Nemanja Millic aka THE PROJECT. I had high hopes when he came in for £6m and after becoming the starter last season he started moaning near the end about leaving and said he was considering his options. I didn't want to sell him but I said I'd look to do so however the offers were poor until Ajax came in with a bid that was accepted by the board. I feel we could have got more for him but it does include a 20% of profit sell on (as does the Taner deal). Annoyingly Liverpool are interested in him so he'll become a villain of the save if he runs to the dark side.
Jonathan Molina was bought during our second season in La Liga (IIRC) for just £4.5m and he was a key player for three seasons. I'm conflicted about this deal as £40m is amazing money for him and he's someone who probably wasn't good enough for us anymore but I was attached to the guy and it killed me to see him leave for Atleti in a straight up £40m deal.
Transfers In:
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League:
We were absolutely brilliant this year, we made mistakes (the 4-2 Almeria defeat where my keeper just gave up stands out) and we actually led the league for a while but Madrid are just absolutely ruthless in this save. We'd have only won the league once in this save with that points total and this is Madrid's lowest points total since 2029/30 where they also got 94, just look how good they've been:
Regardless though, we did amazingly well. I was hoping to get third and look better than the rest of the pack so to be in a genuine title challenge and push them so close is insane.
Cups:
Meh. We were also in the SUPERCOPA which is weirdly a 4 man competition in January, I sent out the reserves who took Atletico to extra time in the semi-final which we ended up losing 3-1.
Europe:
Spain have been poor in Europe so 4th didn't guarantee groups, I thought we might lose to Sporting but they proved to be easy. I also thought that taking a 9th-24th place and thus playoffs should be achievable if we beat Jablonec, Haifa and Hamburg. I did not expect to beat Milan (who are in the final) or Man City which left the league phase looking like this:
I included Chelsea so we can laugh at them. The game said we weren't guaranteed qualification before the Liverpool game but I don't see how. We were in third we beat Man City and thus had the H2H record against them and 4 sides in the top 10 were facing each other (all were below us) and there was no way they could all jump us.
Knockouts:
Round of 16:
First up Dortmund who I felt was one of the easiest teams that we could face. We were lucky in this first round as they dominated us but we put our chances away.
In the second leg they couldn't get near us, great performance from the team.
Quarter-Final:
Bayern up next who have Endrick in my save. At the time he had scored 18 in 10 games before this with Aston Villa the only team to shut him out. We played really well and whilst the score flattered us a bit we were good for the win.
I went in to this game cocky and I cam crashing back down to earth pretty quickly as Endrick was a menace. Our keeper had a nightmare and their xG flattered them:
The penalty obviously boosted them a huge amount but outside of that it was fairly close. Felt bad to lose but overall they were the better side and they're now in the final.
Squad:
I like where the squad is at and I feel we're deep in all positions. I will cut some fat a bit this year with me wanting to sell Nkosi, Mario and Corradini at a minimum, I can also see us having to sell a star or two off if a big club puts down some big cash.
Special mention goes out to Leonardo my backup striker who ended up with more goals that Jorge Sanchez our starter. The kid was on fire and seemed to keep scoring even when coming off the bench although he did slow down the stretch. At one point he was averaging a goal every 46 minutes in La Liga.
I think we can win the league as Madrid are ageing now and they did look vulnerable at times this season.
There's not much to see.
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He plays as a lone Advanced Forward and does pretty much nothing other than score. A lot of them are from inside the six yard box. Gets called into every Uruguay squad, rarely plays, and when he does he's shit. He's like peak Ian Wright.
Christ @Mahow. Which player did Madrid buy about 6 years back to improve on their goal tally so much?
Vinicius Jr turning into a machine really:
Then it seems to be spread out:
They signed this guy 3 years ago and he got 24 last year with 20 this season. 35 year old Valverde has scored 15, 14, 6 and 13 in his last 4 seasons from midfield, they have Angelo (who is at Santos in real life) who has double figures for a few years, in the past 10 seasons Rodrygo (who has never been a starter) has scored between 11 and 22 a season. Even Tchouameni chips in with a fair few from CDM.
Klopp (who has just left for Newcastle) led them to those 100+ seasons. His attacking 4-3-3 seems to have gotten the best out of anyone who plays there.
I hate to break it to you Nige but no TTH account = no gametime.
I'm a twit
Won the FA Trophy, which is really good considering I won't get chance to do so ever again. Everyone lucky enough to remain at the club scored this season - except Mo and ScousePig. #teacherstrike
EZ.
Onto League Two. Sincere and Trancemeister are poised to join us in the Summer.
Thanks to whoever it was who told me how to stop the board selling players.
I'm a twit
Where have I ended up?
Also, could you share the current save file? I'd like to have a play around. Cheers.
Will check later.
And sure so long as you promise not to spoil anything with regards to development or PA/CA etc.
I'm a twit
Of course, no spoilers shall be announced.Will check later.
And sure so long as you promise not to spoil anything with regards to development or PA/CA etc.
Lost on pens 31-30
Imagine staying an extra hour+ to watch that.
They came in for him
He demanded to talk to Leicester and I couldn't stand in his way. He's on £53k p/w there and we can't get near that currently. To add insult to injury, I did not notice that he had a 40% sell on fee clause in his contract so he takes £6m of that figure for himself.
We could have got more straight cash I think, however I got a loan back until the end of the season and a 50% of next sale fee included, which I think works for us better long term.
I've arranged the free transfer in the summer of Spanish inside forward type Róber. He should do alright as the replacement.
I did want Datro Fofana, but Dortmund came in for him and that only ends one way.
FC Groningen 2024/25 Midseason Update
Having finished 4th last year & secured Europa League football, things are likely to be a bit trickier this season with the increase in fixtures. I'm hoping we can stay in contention for a European spot whilst making the knockout rounds of the Europa League, and so far things have been a bit of a mixed bag.
Transfers:
Lots of churning still going on, with a handful of guys coming in at the end of last year, and we spent the summer scrounging from the loan market & our new parent club Man Utd to build out our squad. Somehow we also managed to sell a winger that I'd grabbed for free off an amateur deal last season to West Ham for £10m without him ever playing a game for us, so that's given us a nice boost to our finances. We decided not to spend any of the money though, instead we converted some of it to wages & brought in a bunch of loans & veterans on freebies to fill gaps iuntil we can actually offer good enough wages to get quality players in long term.
Domestic Stuff:
We've actually been pretty good so far. We didn't show up in the opener, ran into the Ajax steamroller a few weeks later & got mugged by Fortuna, but otherwise we've managed to maintain our level of play from the end of last year & we're ending the year back in fourth place, behind the usual suspects. AZ & Willem were actually in the top three until recently, but they've slowed down as Feyenoord & PSV have come back in to form.
We got an annoying tough second round draw against Excelsior in the cup, but ended up cruising it & have been rewarded with a third round tie against second division side Almere City in the next round.
Europe:
We were handed a pretty unfavourable set of fixtures for the league phase, and have been very up & down, as you can see from our results so far. We're sitting 17th with two games to go, so every outcome is still possible, but I'm hoping we can at least hold on for a spot in the playoffs.
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We should be in for an interesting second half of the season, but one bad run of form could see it all fall apart, so fingers crossed FM plays nice for a while longer!
Fucking hellLost on pens 31-30
Did you watch the whole thing or just leave & come back an hour later to find them still going?
Fortunately, it was the Papa Johns shite, just Instant Result'd it.Fucking hell
FC Groningen 2024/25 Season Review
It did not play nice.
I'm not even gonna do a proper update, this was fucking brutal. We spent most of January & February playing a game every three days, which tanked the squad and meant everyone kept getting injured. We slid down the table, got SMASHED 5-1 by a second division team in the cup, and just struggled to do anything positive.
We finally managed to put some results together once the fixtures eased up, and clung on to a spot in the European places playoff, only to lose the final on penalties after failing to score a winner despite playing against 9 men for 15mins. We limped our way through the Europa League group stage before squeezing past Ludogorets, only to get drawn against our parent club Man Utd, who proceeded to stomp us.
I think this was the final straw for Groningen - the gap between us & the big three is huge & we just don't have the resources to be able to close it any time soon. The board have no ambition whatsoever, and we pretty much have to rely on loans to bulk out our squad as we can't afford to sign anyone. In two and a half seasons I've spent £1m+ on a transfer twice, and our highest earner is still on less than £10k a week.
SQUAD OVERVIEW | CLOSING LEAGUE RESULTS |EREDIVISIE TABLE | EUROPA LEAGUE FIXTURES | SEASON TRANSFERS
So yeah, I've applied for Sassuolo, who barely avoided relegation in Serie A, and Schalke, who didn't avoid relegation in the Bundesliga. If I don't get either of those I'll probably stick around at Groningen until something else comes up that's interesting, but my contract runs out next season & I have no intention of signing a new deal even if I do make it through another whole season.
Last edited by Dan; 29-01-2023 at 12:24 PM.
Going into the final day of the season and things are TIGHT at the top:
We play Sevilla (who sit in 5th) away while Atletico and Real play off at the Bernabeu.
If we tie at the top with Atletico we win as we have a superior H2H against them, if it's tied between us and Real it will come down to GD.
If it's tied at the top between Atletico and Real Madrid then Atletico take it.
If we are all tied at the top on 89 at the end of the day then Atletico take it as they'll have more points in the three way tie. This is going to be intense.
Palamós CF 2034/35 Season Update:
Transfers Out:
I signed Mario the season before for £4.3m purely because he could play across the entire defence. He hadn't kicked on and quite a few teams were in for him so I cashed in for £8.75m to Newcastle who loaned him to Rotherham in the Championship and he was shit.
Nkosi was a bargain for £500k in 2031/32 and he had two good seasons with us but last year he got phased out as he hadn't progressed and others had. £24.5m was a nice healthy profit too.
Transfers In:
In addition to those 3 I signed this guy early:
Riccardo Cirigliano was picked up for £4m and has been with the youth team the whole season. I think he's got a bright future but he wont be ready for a while, especially as we're stacked in his position.
Still on the hunt for a quality youth keeper so in came Ggrica Matjas who spent the year on loan to Almeria in the second tier where he did alright.
I wanted to bring in Talal Ali Al-Mesmari in the Summer when he had a £2.9m release clause in his contract but he kept rejecting me. He then signed a new contract with a larger release clause and became interested in me. I wasn't going to buy him as £15m was a bit steep considering his poor physicals, unambitious personality and lack of consistency but I had money to spare and went for it. He's also my 21st different nationality in the first team squad.
Another keeper in Ivandro, his potential dropped from 5 to 3.5 after signing annoyingly and he couldn't be registered as we had no non-EU spots left but his value has boomed.
League:
Here's our last game of the season:
It was tough to watch but that final 20 minutes was a joy where the team just went all out for the win which we got (Real Madrid beat Atletico 1-0) to win us the league.
It did not look likely with a few weeks remaining as Real Madrid were 4 points behind us with 3 games to go which they played in between our 36th and 37th games. They ended up winning 1, drawing 1 and losing 1 which set up the epic last day of the season that Sky would be wanking themselves silly over.
It also looked unlikely as we were behind them in GD but the 8-1 against Gijon swung it in our favour.
Incredible stuff.
Cup:
Played the reserves and we went down to 10 men early then they went 4-1 up. I made changes (including to my keeper) and we really should have won it but I left it a little too late.
Also lost the Supercopa by sending out the reserves against Madrid.
Europe:
A harder set of fixtures for us in a way but we did really well.
Weirdly Milan finished in 28th, they were rancid this year having been the beaten finalists last season.
Knockouts:
We weren't good enough and I feel the occasion got to the players, keeper really should have done better but he struggled in big games this season.
Squad:
The standout who Jorge Sanchez, I was rotating him a lot more with Leonardo this season (although he was shit this year) and then he came to me asking to start more which I obliged and he went on a Moukoko-esque run of hattricks which also won him the golden boot (scoring a goal every 65 minutes). Our squad is really strong right now but I'm also in a bit of a pickle with it.
Sanchez scored loads but Macneil now looks like a better striker than him on paper and Chapaev (who started the season as a backup RW) is now ranked as our best player and he looks really good. The best two to play are Macneil and Chapaev out of the three but I don't know if I can boot Sanchez out.
Here are the three in question:
Last edited by Sir Andy Mahowry; 29-01-2023 at 04:12 PM.
Season Review: 2023-24.
It felt all season like we had it in the bag. PAOK tagged along for a little bit but as you can tell by the goal difference, we've smacked a lot of teams about. Mostly the teams in the relegation group.
The league now seems to have 3 groups in it. The bottom 5, the guys in between and then there's a top 4 group. The bottom 5 are in truth quite terrible in comparison to the top guys. The other 3 in said top 4 all tend to take points off each other.
I even thought the unbeaten season was in the bag as well, but we fell 1-0 at home to PAOK in game 34
That came right after game 33 where this happened and I thought it was written in the stars:
Cup Competitions.
As previously seen we cantered to 3rd in our Champions League group.
From there we dropped into the Europa League and the draw was very kind to us with Rosenborg. A 4-1 aggregate win lead us into another favourable draw in Celta Vigo. This was much closer on the pitch and ended 4-2 on aggregate in our favour.
Into the quarter finals and we got Lazio. They won 2-1 at our place and we were unable to score over there as they really should have put more past us, but a 0-0 there saw them through.
As for the Kypello Elladios(Greek FA Cup).
We enter at the 6th round stage and for some reason every round but the final from there is a two-legged affair. We got to the final without much trouble and there we faced Panathinaikos. It was a very good game with them constantly catching us on the counter. However Levi Garcia popped up late on in his very last game for the club and saved the day.
Here are the final stats for the boys:
As you can see almost everyone got their fair share of game time in. Fernandes and Eliason the unhappy parties, but they can suck it up.
Almost every outfield player scored a goal and everyone but the backup goalkeeper registered an assist.
The attention payers will notice two big things though. There really is a lack of home grown players at the club. This badly affected us in Europe due to registration rules.
To this end, I've been running a massive scouting mission. In the player search I used a filter to narrow it down to all players in international U21/20/18 squads that were age 15 to 17. It came up with some 900 odd players, which should be 90%+ regens. I've since been whittling it down. I've attribute masking on so some players got glowing early reports and I moved to snap two them up for cheap. Now they've been further scouted one looks a reasonable prospect and the other just looks a miss, but both have yet to arrive.
We're about halfway through the list of players for now, but already some great looking players are starting to show. For now they're just out of price range or play for bigger clubs than us, but we'll find some.
The other problem is that Sergio Araujo, easily the clubs top scorer this season, is leaving. If he didn't count as a foreign player I'd be keeping him. But a lot of scout suggestions are coming back as South American, so I need to free up some space. This would however leave us with no recognised striker. I'd have to gamble that I would find one in the market.
Noel Lopez who has impressed on loan would be available for £2.2m. Both I and the club are listed in his favoured section, so I think he'd join too. e may be a good fall back option.
Elsewhere around the world, Olympiakos, the useless fucks, came bottom of their Europe League group. With all other Greek teams out but me, we're now projected to move down a place in the coefficient list. Hopefully PAOK can at least make the group stage of the Europa League next year. It'll be great for their finances.
Speaking of finances, the board gave us a nice budget of £10.63m with an wage budget of £525k p/w(up nearly £100k p/w). I might squeeze a few out of that, or maybe one big one. However they then dropped this news on us:
That'll over double our attendance. There's no loans on it either which is further great news.
I'm hoping this leads to more facilities upgrades down the line with more guaranteed income too. We have 13k season ticket holders now with a further 19k on the waiting list, so it should really fill the new place immediately too.
had an absolute nightmare with Livorno. promoted from 5th tier to 4th to 3rd in consecutive seasons, then took a couple of seasons to get to serie b.
was upper mid table all season, then went on a mental run of about 16 wins, finally moving into automatic promotion spot with three games to go. then lost all three games, and then lost the playoff final against genoa
Alan put £61m into the club's bank account and instantly asked for a meeting to raise the wage budget which went from £935k to £1.29m a week
We're only allowed to register £750k of wages right now but when the new season starts it will update and hopefully be closer to that new number.
Edit: Allowed to register £1.2m worth of wages, ka-ching.
Last edited by Sir Andy Mahowry; 29-01-2023 at 05:02 PM.
Got the ol' Covid and booked the week off as annual leave so rebought this.
Patch is better, Beta was disgusting.
Going for this:
Who you managing?
Southampton
ohh...
Well silly formation works, won 6-1:
Yeah, about that...
I got rejected from every job I applied for, mostly for stuff like having never managed a team that's been in a relegation battle or not using set pieces enough, which are definitely sensible reasons to discount a manager without even speaking to them. I did get one interview, but got turned down from that because they didn't like the changed expectations I'd proposed, despite the fact I'd actually accepted their expectations, so basically FM's terrible logic has stranded me here for a while longer.
It has, however, gone very well so far this season, with us currently sitting in third place at the winter break. We didn't do a lot in the way of transfers, partly because I was trying to leave, but we did have to sell one of our starting defensive midfielders as he wanted to jump to a bigger league & I could hardly blame him when I'm trying to do the exact same thing.
I'm hoping that, without the fixture crush Europa League football led to last season, we'll avoid another complete collapse over the back half of the year & be able to secure European football without having to endure the end of season playoff.
I'm still applying for jobs that look interesting, but I think I'll need a bit more of a reputation boost to actually be able to get on to some of the shortlists as most of the time I'm getting pushed out by 'stronger candidates', so a decent run in Europe next season would be greatly appreciated if we can get that sorted.
If anybody wants to try it, I'm fucking loving this formation:
https://easyupload.io/lnoml8
Two Premier League clubs have separately triggered the release clauses for my goalkeeper Vutsov and my best player in Martim Neto. They're both awaiting work permits but once they get them, there'll be close to £30m for me to spend.
I've got the double facilities upgrades being worked on already.
Problem is my scouts seem to be exclusively recommending players that are non-EU, which I can't just go mad on.
EDIT: Now my best CB too. This is a disaster.
Last edited by Gray Fox; 31-01-2023 at 12:16 AM.
Doing the customary City test (Leeds and Forest also).
Haaland around midway through the season:
Getting to the point now where the scouts have cut out a lot of the shit and quite a few promising looking 16-18 year olds are showing in the weekly reports.
Problem now is that most don't want to leave. They almost always wish to stay and continue their development at their current clubs.
Is this designed to funnel all the goals to the DLF, or so the rest chip in with some too?Doing the customary City test (Leeds and Forest also).
Haaland around midway through the season:
To give you an idea:
I have the usual locked morale/fitness test set-up, so seeing how a season would go with all three strongest 11s.
There are some broken set pieces on there. so 29 corner goals in 26 PL games for City.
Currently City are top, 1 loss all competitions all season. Leeds 4th, Forest 5th in Feb.
Which set pieces?
I'm a twit
On this tactic - tallest player on where the ball ends up. Hence Haaland in the screenshot on the link doing 154 goals in 65 games.Which set pieces?
https://fm-base.co.uk/threads/42121sirjur.180840/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/articles/crge02v2k19o
Southampton have been reading the thread it seems.
FC Groningen 2025/26 Season Review
Well, we didn't have to go through the playoff...
We just kept rolling down the back half of the season, with only the big teams really able to control us, and with PSV struggling we were able to pull away from ADO Den Haag down the stretch & wrapped up third with a game to spare. We also made a decent run to the semi finals of the cup, but drew Feyenoord rather than either of the two midtable shitters, so that killed our first real chance at getting some silverware.
FIXTURES | LEAGUE TABLE
--
We did have a scare at the end of the January window, as our starting goalkeeper decided he wanted to leave & the dressing room agreed with him (maybe they'd been watching him play, he was actually pretty rubbish), so we had to let him go a few days before the deadline. We also had one of our LBs break his leg around the same time that meant we were relying on two youth team fullbacks off the bench, so we grabbed a bunch of reinforcements by signing Jeyson Rojas & loaning in Rayan Ait-Nouri, Alessandro Zanoli & goalkeeper Stefano Turati. We've extended the loans for RAN & Turati for next season, and we might considering bringing them both in permanently after that depending on what wages we can offer them.
TRANSFERS
--
We had some great performances, as you'd imagine when we equalled the record highest finish in club history & smashed their best points total. Florian Kruger has really blossomed since he was forced to move up front a couple of years ago, finishing as the leagues top scorer this season. He slowed down a bit in the new year, but Sydney Van Hooijdonk stepped up & scored some crucial goals to keep us going strong. Summer signing Screve Kabeya also chipped in with some great performances & looks to be our long term starter on the left wing.
In midfield we had the outstanding pairing of Rafael Luis, who was a bargain at £2.1m in the summer, and Noel Aseko Nkili, who is the best player in the team, does everything beautifully & rarely puts a foot wrong. We don't have the money to be able to sign him yet, but we have managed to get him in for a third consecutive season on loan, so I'm praying we can get an offer sorted next summer to keep him around full time.
SQUAD OVERVIEW
--
Looking forward to next season, we're going to need to expand the squad as we were destroyed by the extra European fixtures last season, so it's probably time to start bringing a few more of the up & coming youth prospects in to the first team. Two that are nailed on to see a lot of games are Roberto Kruiswijk, who came through our first academy class & looks like our long term starter up front, and Girolamo Meeusen, who might be the backup at AMC, but we do have a decent number of other players who could move up if needed.
I doubt I'll be applying for other jobs over the first half of next season as I want to see how things go in Europe, but if we have another rough stretch around January that might be the nudge I'll need to start looking again.
Last edited by Dan; 01-02-2023 at 01:53 PM.
FM23 is finally out on PS5.
I'm a twit
Well, this is a problematic, and gives me a little extra nudge towards leaving at the end of this season.
AEK Season Preview: 2024-25.
I was hoping for a quiet summer, keeping the guys that were not released. But the very day the transfer window opened, Crystal Palace triggered Martim Netos' release clause. I saw him as our best player and to lose him was quite frustrating.
More so was when Spurs did the same to our star goalkeeper Svetoslav Vustov. Not only did he leave us to go there, he's listed as their backup on £54k p/w. The boy would have been a star here...
Eliason leaves because I'm sick to death of his bitching every other month about not playing enough. He was valued at double that but I just wanted him gone. He was the first task for my new Director of Football.
Speaking of, the main thing I wanted to address this off season was the backroom staff. Money was tight when I took over, leading to me not wanting to massacre the deadwood staff. Hand in hand with that problem was our inability to offer big wages out to staff members. After the above transfers there was a lot of money in the coffers so I asked for everything under the sun. They said no to everything, with the facilities upgrades being the only two they would talk about. Tellingly I was able to talk them round on both counts, which has never happened before.
Still money freed up I could offer your top positions a decent wage and so set about getting top quality staffers in key positions:
Toggle Spoiler
Annoyingly the scout/coaching wage offerings didn't go up by nearly the same token. As such the scouting department is still a bit lacklustre in terms of top clubs. I was able to add a couple of decent coaches and some physios who don't have about 7 for physiotherapy...
That leaves us with best in class of everything across the board in training, scouting and medical for the league, with the exception of goalkeeper distribution.
Now for the ins:
Again mostly real players for now as it's still a struggle to get the under 18s to leave their clubs. When it was clear we were getting the Neto money, making Lopez permanent was a no-brainer.
The boys in on free transfers I feel are steals. The loanees also cost us very little and will give us great cover through the season and more importantly, buy time to scout out younger options. I tried to get a future fee on Endrick but I couldn't manage it. Vandevoort has a future fee of £4.7 as an option but Lavia has one set at some £60m+.
Almada is the most exciting one there for the here and now. I did try and sign him in the January window for nearly double that fee, but at the time he wanted £75k p/w and the most I could offer was £30k p/w.
Cut to now, I can offer up to £71k p/w for a star player all of a sudden. He wanted in the 70's again and at first negotiation I knocked it down to £51k p/w. He immediately accepted, so I feel like we've overpaid on wages, but I think he's worth the risk. I think he's defacto the best player in the league already and is already in the media dream XI in the season preview.
After doing well(I think) there, I then did horribly with Brimsvik. On one of the first go rounds of the scout reports on my earlier mentioned scouting mission, he came back as high potential with white stars. I saw he could be signed essentially for free and went for it. As he got picked up again a few go arounds later it became apparent he wasn't up to much at all really. He was at the bottom of every one of the ranges I saw in the first report. Still, a lesson learned.
Very pleased to get Kamal for cheap. He is very promising in certain areas for someone of only 16. If every one of his attributes goes up by a few then he could well be a star.
Serge reckons he's also not far off some first team action already. I'm pleased to get him in at 16 too as assuming he does develop then he would count as home grown.
These two full backs were cheap enough for me to decide to run an experiment on them. I saw the same thing in both really in that both are in a very good place with their physicals at a young age, however are quite lacking elsewhere. I want to see what their development looks like.
If things go as I think they will, they'll both be pretty good athletes that are a bit sketchy. If their non-physical attributes take a big spike then both could be great players.
Overall recruitment aims for the future are to continue to bring players in very young to try and improve our home grown quota. Due to the involvement in the Champions League our bank balance is now at a lofty £45m. Speaking of which, it is the first season of the new format I've experienced. We did originally qualify for what was a the Champions Playoff round, but we have just been chucked into the group phase without having to qualify.
Getting into the top 24 with that is going to be tough. I'd love to know how it's decided who you will play.
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