Wife heard the celebrations and gave me my Christmas present early
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Wife heard the celebrations and gave me my Christmas present early
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Mike’s wife > my wife
I won the league with Sampdoria the other night and got told to shut the fuck up.
Incredible
Finally settled on something a bit more normal lads
Bert Verbruggen GK corner taker don
Stopped updating this thread but carried on playing this Lazio game on FM23 and a couple of nights ago had probably my favourite ending to a season ever.Originally Posted by Browning
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2 in games years ago I started getting headlines about Haaland being on the move from City. Seeing as we kept getting dumped out of the CL by 35+ year old players who were still elite (Vinicius, Bellingham etc) this gave me the chance to get one of my own and we signed him for a pathetic £5m given his age. He was 36 and looking to retire at the end of the season. He came in as our first back up striker and netted 4 goals in 7 (14) league games but was more impressive in the CL where he scored in our 2-2 aggregate draws with Liverpool and Hertha, both of which we advanced past on penalties. The Semi Finals once again proved our undoing as after a 0-0 with City at home, even starting Haaland against his old team couldn't help us as we lost 5-2 at the Etihad (although to be fair we were the better side until very late on when we chased the game too much). Haaland also has success in the Italian Cup Final where he scored 2 and created 2 in a 4-0 win as we sealed the domestic treble and our 6th Serie A title in a row. I also managed to talk him out of retirement and get him for one more year....
And how vital that would prove. In his final year he managed 7 goals in 4 (18) league games which didn't really matter (although we did set all kinds of league records and only dropped points twice all season) but the Champions League was his time to shine again. After taking just 4 points from our opening 4 games and looking in trouble we stormed the 2nd half of the group phase to narrowly finish 9th and miss out on the bye. Roma awaited in the Play Offs where Haaland opened the scoring in the "away" leg and we ultimately cruised through 7-1 on aggregate. He would score one more as we dismantled Hertha 7-3 showing how much we'd improved since last year. AC Milan in the quarters was similarly uneventful as we knew we were easily the best team in Italy and battered them 6-2. Then it was the Semi Finals where we had fallen 6 times in the last 7 years and had never got beyond in in the team's history. We had a massive injury crisis up front leaving Haaland and a guy named Bartomeu who I did not trust at all as our only 2 fit strikers. We edged out PSG 1-0 at home with winger Trapero scoring the only goal, and then went to Paris and quickly fell 2-0 down. I feared the worst but a goal from Haaland on the hour levelled the tie on aggregate and it would be decided on penalties where old man Gavi was the only one to miss and we finally, FINALLY made it to a final. It would be the last game of Haaland's career and of course..... it was Man City.
I debated so long and hard over whether Haaland started the final or not. On the one hand, he was Mr Champions League for us. On the other hand.... Karaman, our main striker, had 56 goals on the season. Karaman was also coming back from injury and hadn't looked great in our last 3 league games either so there was half a temptation to push him out onto the right (where he had played most of his Lazio career until the last 2 years) to accommodate Haaland. In the end though, pushing out a 56 goal striker just made no sense and so Haaland started on the bench, but I decided before the game if we ever fell behind he was coming on and I was changing formation to the one that had almost got us back into the game against City the previous year after we had fallen 2-0 down early on. In the final this time around it looked like a similar story when a horrific defensive error on 10 minutes lead to City taking the lead. Haag, our RB, who was not the one to blame for the goal, was hauled off immediately after just 10 minutes and Haaland was introduced. It took only 7 minutes for Haaland to equalise from the penalty spot. Krajewski, an elite striker who had started alongside Karaman but dropped back to number 10 once Haaland came on then picked up the ball and scored a wonder strike on 28 minutes before Haaland whipped a free kick onto the head of Cazzaniga (our only good youth team prospect in my 10 years managing the team...) who headed us 3-1 up. At that point, Trapero was sacrificed for a new RB as we went back to our old system and pushed Karaman out wide to leave Haaland up front and drop back but goals from former Balon D'or winner Ghillarducci (42 mins) and Karaman from the right (45 mins) sent us in at HT 5-1 up. Literally nothing happened in the 2nd half which suited me fine. I've probably never made that many tactical moves in one game in my FM career and what an outcome it was. Haaland
He has now retired, and is a shit Assistant Manager. Really and truly I should leave Lazio now and try and fix the fact that Spurs have won the last 3 Premier Leagues but... I'm level with Trappatoni on 7 Serie A titles so..... 1 more?
Last edited by Browning; 03-12-2023 at 09:05 PM.
What on earthBert Verbruggen GK corner taker don
I'm a twit
He finished the season with 31 assists
What’s your corners like? And why is your GK taking them?
I'm a twit
Yhe game doesn't seem.to know what to do when a GK takes them. Works really well.
Is this one uploaded anywhere? Like the look of thisFinally settled on something a bit more normal lads
Its not, but here it is https://easyupload.io/t0b6c6
Set pieces:
https://easyupload.io/1132ff - this is all routines across throw ins, corners, FKs
https://easyupload.io/459h6k - the above GK based corner routine if you want/need
CORNER GOD
He'll be wasted at International level.
Do they never counter it, with you having no GK?
I'm a twit
Not once.
Here he is in his pomp:
https://streamable.com/i13i1x
1860 Munich 2030/31 Season Update:
Transfers Out:
Here are the main two sales:
Signed on a free but he never really progressed well enough and every Summer since he's been here he's fallen further down the pecking order due to new signings. Can't believe I got £15m for him. Although he's done alright in the second division this season tbf.
Carroll was one of my most important players for many years. I signed him in 2026/27 for £5.25m and loaned him out to Northampton, when he came back he was our starting LB and, for one season, our starting AML. He was moaning a lot about getting sold last season as well as this so I decided to let him go (I had a replacement lined up) and got a bidding war between City and Liverpool going. City won it with £50m plus 50% of next sale. Weirdly he's only started 6 games for them this season whilst coming off the bench 9 times.
Transfers In:
I think this was our best recruitment season so far:
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League:
Bayern's streak is over (they had won it every year on my save plus however many they had won on the bounce prior) and we did it in style. Bayern lost Tuchel in the Summer to PSG and his replacement, Arteta, was shit especially in the first half of the season. Us on the other hand, were machines and we kept putting out result after result. We could have won it a bit earlier but I kept putting out the kids when a European game was round the corner (which is why we lost those 3 near the end).
DFB Pokal:
Board weren't happy but the Gladbach game was right between some important games and the first 11 were shattered.
Europa League:
We were brilliant and the first 11 only lost 1 game, although that just happened to be the most important. Such a shame we couldn't bring the trophy home but I'm happy.
We were FM'd in the final though:
Rendon who had been on fire all season just didn't turn up today.
Squad:
Have to give props to Scrivener, he moaned during the first half of the season about not playing (Rendon was too good) and I tried to sell him in January but he turned down a £55m + 50% next sale move to Fulham. I then decided to play him at CM and he's been absolute class. Still not overly enamoured by my sub options but it is getting better.
Plan is to win the CL and then I'll move on to my next save I feel.
lol.
Been a frantic end to the window
An injury to Francesco Pio Esposito, who signed on for another loan season after being amazing last year, saw two strikers arrive on the last day, along with a new keeper, as mine, while steady, lets in too many.
I've decided to go for a Youth Academy challenge - no transfers in of any kind from the moment I take control of the club. To make things more challenging, the idea is to holiday for a season and assume control of one of the newly promoted clubs to the bottom tier of whatever country you choose to manage in. That way, you're presented with a threadbare squad of questionable quality and surviving until the first youth intake isn't particularly likely. I decided to stick with England for whatever reason, so at the start of the 2024/25 season, I took charge of Folkestone Invicta, newly promoted to the National League South.
A squad of 16 awaited me - within 2 days, that was immediately down to 14 as two players were snapped up off of their non-contract deals. Greyed-out players can be used in this challenge but only when completely necessary, and their stats are so bad it's not worth it anyway.
The start was somewhat of a false hope - our 6-0 hammering of Chippenham had me questioning whether it was even going to be a challenge at all. The starting 11 is actually fairly good with a strong selection of strikers and wingers. But once the season got going, the fatigue and injuries hit hard and it's been tough sledding since.
Our goalkeeper tore his wrist ligaments in the 5-2 loss at Worthing, so he was replaced with a grey shitter for a month. Our left-back is currently out injured with a torn hamstring - this now means a veteran centre-back is filling in and gradually getting more annoyed at being played out of position. Ibrahim Olutade, a good striker for this level, refused to sign a deal with us, choosing to leave on a free midway through September. And arguably our best player of the lot, Andre Coker, has just broken his ankle and is out for 5 months. We did manage to scramble a draw despite bringing on a 16 year old centre-back to play on the right wing in his place.
Despite the awful run, I'm actually really enjoying it. There's not too much to worry about - the team picks itself, I don't need to scout anybody, I just need to somehow hold on and stay up. We're currently 2 points adrift, but we play bottom of the table Basingstoke Town next.
Not had a bad start to life in Serie A
Defence continues to be leaky at Folkestone. We did manage to win the crunch match against bottom of the table Basingstoke Town, holding on for a 3-2 win. We battled hard against professionals Maidstone Town but ultimately lost 3-2, before a hard-fought 2-2 draw at home to Bath City.
Our next game almost saw us pull off the quintessential 'fm'ing'....
Heard's 87th minute goal got me jumping around the room, but the late equaliser felt inevitable. Still, another valuable point away at the team in 3rd...
100% into this save. Loving it.
Last time I updated on my save was a while back and I was complaining about how the board won't give me more money to spend, pointing to our "poor finances", even though the club was quite healthy and every season we were making more and more money. This, coupled with my interesting in some other games, led me to dropping the game for a while, but recent internet issues prevented me from playing said games so back to fm24 I went. As a brief reminder, the situation at the club is as follows: After gaining an unexpected promotion to League One, I thought we would instantly be relegated again, but somehow had a great season, finishing fifth in the league, but losing in the playoff semis. We massively overperformed our stats, as the all-important xPts table had us finishing something like 13-14th. After such a solid first season, I thought we would have strong basis to build upon but my board disagreed. We would have the exact same wage budget and no transfer budget whatsoever. The issue was further exacerbated when we lost our star keep for 500k (his release clause), yet I was only given 100k to spend. I might add that at this point we had 2 million in the bank and the experience of last season, where we only lost 1m during the course of the year (before recouping more than that from prize fees and the likes). So definitely had enough money to spend, the board are just a-grade assholes. Oh well. What all that meant was that our squad ended up being worse than last season, as we only really managed to improve our depth in terms of quality. So I was bracing for a rough season, although I still thought we had enough about us to not be involved in a relegation battle.
I didn't expect us to do that good. And unlike last season where we sort of chanced our way to a playoff spot, this time we were proper good. We gave everyone a run for their money and we even had a great chance of finishing 2nd, but we (somewhat inexplicably) lost our penultimate game against relegation fodder at home. In the end it didn't matter as we breezed past Milwall (4-1 on aggregate) in the semis, on the way to our first Wembley trip where we would be facing Colchester. During the regular season we had both won our home games against each other so everything was up for grabs in terms of previous results. It was a tense game and although the stats would argue that Colchester should have won, I actually thought we were the better team. We took the lead twice, with them equalising both times through set-pieces, but a late goal from Randall gave them no room to respond and the rest was history. Once again our defense was shaky (part of that is due to my tactical approach, but a big part also came down to a massive downgrade on the goalkeeper position), but we made up for it offensively, finishing the season as joint top scorers. We also did pretty good in the FA Cup, making it to the third round, where we were drawn away at Leicester. The first game was a goalless draw that we should probably have edged, but the return game was a real spectacle. We went two goals down twice, but found a response, sending the game to extra time with a 90th minute equaliser. Two more goals were scored there, but it was one each, which meant after 120 minutes played the score was 4-4 and it would all be down to the lottery of penalties. Sadly we weren't as accurate as them, but it was a great performance so I can't really complain.
Let me start from Luca Blake. Luca fucking Blake. For those feeling bad about not knowing who that is, don't, he is a newgen. We purely signed him because he was available and our scouts reckoned he had a lot of potential. They also reckoned he his current ability was at 1.5 stars so he wasn't expected to get any playing time. A few injuries later meant that he would actually be playing, but not even in his favorite position (played as a 10 behind our main striker). Well he grabbed a brace in his debut. Two games later he scored again, as he also did in the following two games. And all of a sudden he went from a nobody to being the first name on our team sheet. 9 months later, he has finished with the highest average rating in the squad with the most player of the match awards, and his current ability is at 3.5 stars. Pretty mental if you ask me. The other two people that stand out are Tavares and Hayder. The former essentially repeated his performances from last season, where he scored a fuckton of goals (finished top of the league in fact), while being wildly inconsistent. The latter was a bit of a panic signing (on loan from Stoke), to add some depth and while he really struggled in the first half of the season, he found his own after a while and was instrumental in some of our wins. The last person I would like to focus on is Seb Ferdinand who went from being our top player for two seasons in a row to being largely anonymous this season and I can't say I understand why. The only reason he played that many games is that our alternatives weren't any better.
So we somehow managed to make it to the Championship. I know I always say that when we gain promotion, but this time it's almost a certainty in my mind: we are getting relegated immediately. How can I be so sure? Well our squad largely consists of League Two quality players, our reputation means that I fully expect us to have players reject us for the likes of Carlisle or Fleetwood and to top all of that, we only have 82k p/w to spend on wages. While that's a decent 45%-ish increase on our current wage budget, it's still less than half the currently lowest wage budget in the Championship. On the bright side, we do have 2.5m to spend on transfers, but I do expect a big chunk of that to be converted to wages.
I am also in a bit of a dilemma. Tavares will be leaving in the summer if we don't renew his contract. I know I've said he's inconsistent, but the truth of the matter is that he has scored 76 goals in 2.5 seasons for us. The problem is he is asking for mad money, and I'm talking MAD money. His current wage is sitting at 2.2k p/w, one of the highest in the club in fact, and he's asking for 9k. Obviously I'm heavily leaning towards telling him to fuck off (that's one ninth of our wage budget for crying out loud), but it's still quite the difficult decision.
Last edited by Adramelch; 16-12-2023 at 12:28 PM.
Struggling to make a save stick this year. I've completed a season in Argentina, Italy and now France. Ideas welcome.
Hertha Berlin, Notts County, Real Murcia, Buriram.
Also depends on what type of save you generally like. I'm very fond of Journeyman saves for example, so that's my usual suggestion, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
On a different note:
I think we might be fine:
I'm actually really satisfied with the squad we've actually ended up with (even though as always good defenders were really hard to come by).
Some cracking teams/leagues to get into therehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Pioneers
The Club of Pioneers is a worldwide network of the oldest continuing association football clubs from each country.
The Club of Pioneers was founded in 2013 by Sheffield FC, the first and oldest association football club in the world. The Club of Pioneers aims to discover and connect the world's oldest existing football clubs, to build a global network of like-minded football clubs to promote the importance of football history and the grass roots and amateur game.
First season I went out in the playoff semis having married a ridiculous attack with an almost as ridiculous defence
Second season I've sorted out the defence but somehow scored so many goals I've beaten a 98-year old record with nine games still to come
Haemorrhaging money so promotion can't come quick enough
125 goals in just 36 is quite mental. Top work.
Just finished our first season in the Championship. As I mentioned in the previous update I was quite pessimistic going into the season as our squad was barely even League One standard to begin with and our budgets were less than half those of any other team in the league. Still with a lot of wheeling and dealing, we managed to assemble a squad that I was generally happy with, even if there were still glaring gaps that we couldn't fill. I won't go into much detail on the players we brought but among the 12 players that joined the club, Luke Cundle of Wolves' fame and former Nottingham Forest striker Dale Taylor were the most recognizable. Generally we mostly signed players that were already playing in the Championship which was quite encouraging.
The improvement of the squad was evident in terms of results. We didn't set the world alight or anything, but we were solid and outside some exceptions (7-2 and 5-1 losses to Southampton and West Brom respectively spring to mind) we more than held our own. Even though it became obvious that we weren't going to be in the relegation battle, I definitely didn't expect us to finish 9th. Our cup runs were nothing to write about, as we beat Bolton and Sheffield United between getting (narrowly mind you) eliminated by Crystal Palace in the League Cup, while we fell at the very first hurdle in the FA Cup, losing to Barnsley at home in the third round.
Nobody really that stands out, but a lot of people contributing to a great season. Obviously Wilson-Brown has to be mentioned as he's the only one with average rating above 7, but that's typical for defenders that score from set-pieces. Still his goals got us out of some awkward situations and he was generally solid defensively as well. Our main problem (apart from the full-backs which I just can't get right but at this point, with our success, I'm wary of changing things tactics-wise) was the striker. Tavares wanted mad money (which we ended up paying his replacement anyway, so maybe he was right), and I thought with Curdle joining, he could play behind the striker and Blake could play at the top, which is his natural position anyway. With that not working for the first few games I decided to go for another striker. Dale Taylor came in, but he was underwhelming (scored 6 goals this season), so we ended up mostly playing Ballard who was just as bad. That said, the rest of the team picked up the slack, so it never really quite felt that we were struggling for goals.
The board are essentially giving me no money for next season (same wage budget and 1.5m for transfers). I would usually bitch and moan about their lack of ambition, but they've decided to build a new stadium, which we desperately need, seeing as our current one has a massive 5.600 capacity and they've also agreed to improve our facilities and networking across the board. The good thing is that we'll only be losing a few peripheral (at best) players, so we could essentially make no transfers and still be in a decent position for next season. The name of the game is for us to survive in the championship for a few more years so we build our profile and finances up, and our current squad seems to be more than capable of doing it. I will look at potential solutions at the front, but, other than that and a few squad depth signings, I'm not quite excepting many changes.
Last edited by Adramelch; 22-12-2023 at 11:14 PM.
Just discovered FM Mobile 24 is only available via Netflix Games so you can only play it if you have a Netflix subscription. What a load of shit.
I was wondering why it was free in the Play Store this year, I just see the Netflix on it now. In fairness it was always a waste of time compared to touch anyway.
After a surprisingly strong first season in the Championship, the name of the game was to have more of the same while slowly but steadily improving our squad and our finances. With very few people leaving us in the summer, I wasn't expecting big changes. Those plans changed somewhat, as Burnley came knocking for Luca Blake. I told them I wouldn't settle for anything less than 7.5m, they came back with 500k, I said "fuck off, I want 10m now", so what did they do? They gave us 10m and offered to loan him back to us for the season on their own accord. Well that's not something you say no to, even if Blake has been our best player for two seasons straight. So I took the money and ran. We only signed 3 first team players in the summer, David Watson from Kilmarnock and Sebastian Hausner from Sunderlandm both on a free, as well as Dennis Kunze, a newgen from Eintracht, who cost us 4.5m, with about half of it spread over 3 seasons. It was a risky move, but he came with tons of potential so I thought that at the very least we'll be able to make some profit even if he doesn't perform well. More players joined in January, but only two of them (both newgens) would be starting for us, Kemal Osmanovic from Hajduk for 1.8m and Jesús Peña from Caracas for 800k. Those transfers, along with the various youngsters and squad players we also signed meant that we ended up with a solid squad, albeit still not necessarily a Championship level one.
We started well and basically repeated last season's form but there was something in the way we played that always left me wanting for more. A lot of the goals we conceded came from our own shitty passes and our attacking generally felt somewhat unorthodox at times, so with 9 games to go and us on course for a midtable/top half finish, I thought I might as well experiment a bit. The main changes were switching from a more direct style to shorter passes, abandoning my beloved "pass into space" instruction and ensuring that our backline took little to no risks when passing the ball. This had an immediate effect and we went on an 8-game unbeaten run, with 5 wins and 3 draws, which led to this:
With one game left in the season, pretty much everything was up for grabs. We were playing 14th-place Reading away, and with our form we really were in control of our own destiny. But then we just played bad and lost. Thankfully Barnsley and Brentford also did so we still managed to make the playoffs. There we met with Sheffield United and even though I'd argue we were slightly better than them over two legs, they beat us 4-2 on aggregate, courtesy of their better players really. Still, another great season with an ending that fills me with hope for next season.
As you can see we really really struggled with goalscorers. The only player to hit double digits was Dom Ballard, who was our main striker until January, with 11, and Blake also grabbed 9 goals so we at least had a plurality of scorers, but you really need someone to lead the line and we had none. I had hoped Osmanovic would fill that void but sadly it wasn't to be. In fairness to him, he initally started with 7 goals in 6 games but my pc crashed and on replay he only scored one goal in his first 10 games or so. He did benefit from our tactical changes, grabbing 6 goals in 11 games, but even so he was inconsistent. I am going to give him another opportunity next season so hopefully he reaches the level that his stats suggest he should be playing at. Kunze was also very mediocre, if not downright bad. When I signed him he insisted that I bring someone else to help him settle (I always found that thing a bit unrealistic, but FM seems to love it) and the couple I tried to sign that would fit our squad didn't want to join, so he threw a hissy fit. I am looking at one of them to hopefully join us this season, so we'll see if that changes things.
My board are once again very stingy with money. They've given me the exact same wage budget plus 1m for transfers. I also have the common issue of our reputation going up way too slowly (we're still predicted to finish 24th, after having finished 9th and 6th), so I keep losing players to practically lower teams, for lower money even. So yeah, it was nice that we fluked our way to the Championship faster than I expected, but from here on out it will be a case of slowly but steadily raising our profile, before making a charge for promotion I think.
Last edited by Adramelch; 27-12-2023 at 09:07 PM.
I can sign this guy for £2mil but going to £7mil over instalments... worth it?
What's your overall budget? The issue with goalkeepers that have such low current ability is that if you don't manage to loan them out, they end up never reaching their potential.
It's march, so spent most of it already, got £4 mil back. I'm edging to no, as my number 1 is only 22 and much better currently.
Anyway, ten games left in my first season in the top flight, and it's going well
So when @Baz did the Club TTH stuff last time out, I got to simming it all to see how it went a few different times. To see if say, one set of attributes always ended up doing well and one always ended up doing badly.
And you are correct. The years of 18-21 are vital in development. This applies to keepers too. You really need first team football in this time. By the looks of his mentals, he hasn't had much, if anything of that and he'll be 21 before you get to play a competitive game with him next season @Mike
There's a chance he gets up to most of that potential, but once players hit over 21, the rate of them getting better slows down massively. Besides, compare him to your current number 1. Not even close. If he were 18 I'd say go for it, but not this time. There's surely a better option available.
I left him in Portugal in the end.
Had this seasons youth
Panariello needs to hit the gym ASAP.
He’s going on strength and complete forward training.
He's one of those that will be good, maybe not great, but will be in your squad until he or you retires.
Having been promoted with new all-time Championship records for points, wins and goals scored I'm largely sticking with my first team, complementing them with James Trafford for £750k and the following, all signed as squad players
Not only avoided going too mad with transfers but have somehow made £30m by shifting reserve players inferior to those I've brought in in Brad Collins (£4.2m), Oli McBurnie (£10m) and Tarique Fosu (£17m). Could all backfire and I quickly realise I've just kept a very Championship team together
Klemens / Clemens
It’s like AEW
I'm a twit
I always say I'll do that when I enter a new division but can never resist all the juicy opportunities for wheeling and dealing. It is a risk you took (though not very big given you dominated the season), but even if it backfires it will work wonders finance-wise so it might even benefit you in the long term.
The end of the season is getting a little exciting in Italy, picking up 6 points against the two Milan teams in the process!
Celebrated this goal like it was a real life match, pulling the game back to 2-2 and keeping us in the European places, only to conceed a 95th minute goal to throw away the game. Last game of the season when I play tomorrow, need results to go our way to get into Europe now.
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