Hajduk are no longer our parent club as the link has been terminated this summer.Originally Posted by Gray Fox
The Croatian top league is ranked 8th in Europe.
Hajduk are no longer our parent club as the link has been terminated this summer.
The Croatian top league is ranked 8th in Europe.
A quick update to the start of the season with Dugopolje. First game of the season against rivals and second favourites for the league, Hajduk Split:
And onto the Europa Conference League. We drew quite tough competition in near neighbours and two and a half star rep Maribor.
And walloped them (we drew the second leg). Meaning that if we could win our next tie, we'd be through to the knockout round, which would be pretty massive in terms of financial gains.
A tough one. A 3 star team that are a fair bit bigger than us, and would arguably be the best side in Croatia if they were in our league.
Again, dispatched pretty comfortably. We lost the second leg by the odd goal but the game was wrapped up in the first leg, like Maribor.
Two more big clubs meet us in the group draw, however with the other team being an also-ran, I fancy our chances of causing an upset.
Both 3 and a half star teams. A domestic update:
In my head, I have this as my final season with Dugopolje. I'm hoping for a title challenge given how well the early season has gone, and I'm open-minded about the Europe Conference League. With me studying for my badges, I now have a two-star reputation and hoping that will give me enough to be taken seriously for some 3-star jobs, possibly next summer.
Man, I wish I had as much time to play FM (or do anything, really).
I'm a twit
I've had a bit of a nightmare. Just realised that because I put some of the main leagues on 'view-only', they don't have the proper squads. All the top divisions do, but I had a quick look at the Championship squads in England and they're all made up teams.
Not sure I want to continue.
That’s surely not how view only works?
I didn't think so but not sure what else it could be. I'm carrying on at the moment but it's annoying that from the Championship down all the players are made up.
Strange question but have you pirated the game? Randomising the names of players was in a previous version of FM if it was pirated.
I'm a twit
Nope. Just started a new game again and can confirm that if I put England on 'view only' then only the Premier League players are real. When I change to 'playable' they are all there.
I might just start a new game with all leagues playable and hope it doesn't slow me down too much.
That seems very odd. When I set up my current game I had only England/Scotland as playable but Italy/Spain/Germany etc as view only and their squads seem to be fine.
I thought view only simply means that the matches/tables are generated superficially but the squads are as if the league was not loaded at all, i.e. high rep players are there but not others.
Maybe if you bring the league in as playable later it generates fake players to fill up the squads?
Did you check outside the top league?
Only very briefly but Parma had some of their real life players after starting in Serie B
What's your player database at? It could be the "view only" lowers it by default but you can adjust that?
I so sometimes play around with the database and tick aspects like 'current internationals only' and the like. However, I unticked all that today and it gave the same results.
I tried starting a new save with all the same leagues loaded on playable and gave it a pre-season but I didn't get into it, so I'm just going to return to my Croatian save. I've put England onto playable from next season so it might start sorting itself out. I've no intention of managing there for a long time anyway.
Seeking something different, I've started again in Uruguay which unlike the English game has actually been enjoyable so far:
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Except for the fact that my job is 'Insecure' because of this:
Have they even bothered testing anything in this game or do they just pump it out regardless?
Nacional have the cannibal up front who has scored 18 goals in those 13 games, if we somehow pip them it would be miraculous.
Uruguay has some weird placing system IIRC.
A second league phase or some bullshit with average points or something.
Is there not another table?
South American saves in general tend to be batshit in some way, regardless of country chosen.
Brazils season having about eleventy billion games is also quite something.
There is an overall table comprising apertura and clausura, but since we're in the apertura it's the same as that table. The average points table is just for relegation purposes but we're 2nd in that as well.
The number of cards and fouls is highly entertaining. I spend almost the whole time playing either with or against ten men.
In the end I decided to give it a go. The formation stayed the same, a 4-2-3-1, however I swapped from traditional wingers to inside forwards, while instructing the full backs to get further up the pitch and overlap. In terms of the actual football I think it was a good decision as we do tend to generally create a lot of chances, while still keeping it fairly tight at the back. In terms of actual results though, it wasn't as impactful:
I wasn't expecting us to mount a title challenge or anything, but we were miles off the pace this time around. We did score more and concede less than every other season, yet we somehow managed to finish 7 points off last season's tally. All that said, I think we were quite unlucky at times and the all important xPts table agrees, as it has us finishing 4th. In any case, we drew the last 2 games, where just 1 win would have been enough to guarantee us 4th. However, we missed a penalty at the 87th minute away at Chelsea and then proceeded to get held to a 1-1 draw at home to Aston Villa despite dominating the game. At least we did manage to win the League Cup for the second time in 4 years, comprehensively beating City in the quarters (4-0) and United in the semis (4-3 on aggregate but quite comfortably I would say), before limping our way to a 1-0 win over Leeds (who play in the Championship) in the final. Also made it to the Quarters of the FA cup where we lost away to Newcastle, after beating United in the previous round. All in all, I'd say knockout football seems to be our thing. Until this happened:
Easily our worst performance in the last 5 or so years, from start to finish. But then this also somehow happened:
And then this:
And finally this:
I don't quite know how this all happened, but it did. Something just clicked after the humiliating defeat against City and from there on we just dominated every remaining game and won the whole thing. To think that we entered the competition, somewhat by coincidence (City winning it last season allowed us in, despite finishing 5th), and ended up winning it is quite bonkers.
Stark contrast if you compare it to last season's stats, with the wingers bagging 32 goals between them (compared to just 10 last season), without "stealing" them from the attacking midfielder or the striker (in fact both of those players also scored more goals). Another important thing to mention is that every single one of those players was here last season as well. In fact we only really signed 2 players this season, both in a sort of rotation role too, while we mostly looked to trim all the excess fat and maybe give a few more opportunities to some youngsters and I think that will be of benefit in the future. That said, we have a lot of money in the bank and it might be the summer where I actually spend most of it. I will also be looking to get rid of Sadilek, a winger that's been a long-term servant of the club, having been a first-team player for the last 5 seasons, who didn't really adjust to our tactical revamp.
So for the future, the name of the game has to be to challenge for a title win and eventually win it. Our Champions League win massively increased the club's stature, so hopefully that means we can sign a few stars to help us get there.
2024 - Season 1 - Kedah FA
Despite the finances already looking fairly bleak, the board were happy to offer a huge wage budget surplus to afford me some dealings in the transfer market. I didn't go crazy by any means, but I was able to fill up our foreigner quota with the signings of Barcellos, a young Brazilian centre-back, and Roman Alles, a 5 star central midfielder from Argentina who was to play alongside Dechi N'Guessan, our club captain. We looked quite bare up front, so I stuck to a 4-3-2-1, with a DM sitting behind Alles and N'Guessan. To flesh out our attacking options I snapped up Engku Yacob to be our starting striker, and a couple of Malaysian internationals to rotate at the left wing spot. The youth teams looked quite strong, so I was able to call upon a decent batch of youngsters to fill out the subs bench and play the odd game when needed.
It turned out to be a very good window, as realistically, our league season couldn't have gone better.
We stormed our way to the title, sealing it with 2 games to spare with a comprehensive 3-1 victory over Johor Darul Ta'zim, the previous champions, a fitting way to confirm our place at the top of Malaysian football. We started the season with 10 consecutive league wins, mainly thanks to the incredible scoring efforts of our new signing, Engku Yacob. Once he picked up a fairly lengthy injury, we started to drop points and lack goals, but the rest of the team eventually picked up the slack - N'Guessan especially providing the output with 9 goals and 11 assists over the course of the league. Roman Alles was the perfect foil for him in that central midfield spot. His true box-to-box ability meant so much of our success came through him, be it winning the ball back, setting the counter free with the initial pass, or firing in an important goal from outside the area.
As it so happened, we were actually involved in the AFC Champions League, entering in late July. Unfortunately for us, it was a short stay with an immediate defeat to Macarthur FC, the Australian champions. We battled hard to get back in it after going 2-0 down early on but ultimately they had too much quality in attack.
Malaysia has two domestic cup competitions and we were strong in both. We needed extra time to make it through our first game of the Piala FA Malaysia (after conceding TWO stoppage time penalties), but we made it through fairly comfortably to the final, even dispatching JDT in the semi finals. And so we were matched up with Sabah FA in the final, a team from the second division, and I was confident of securing the cup.
But we faltered in an even game, gifting them a soft equaliser that dragged us to a penalty shoot-out where our usually reliable youngsters contrived to miss twice. We'd thrown away the cup and an opportunity at a domestic double (and a further rep boost!).
The second cup, confusingly named the Piala Malaysia, was held after the league season and we were drawn in a weak group which saw us breeze through to the last 8. Unfortunately, international call-ups were causing us some issues, with our first choice goalkeeper, centre-back and left winger all away for the knockout stages, To make matters worse, Dechi N'Guessan's contract was up at the end of November, and yet the competition was to run until mid-December (if we made it all the way). He'd already agreed to return to the Ivory Coast before I could get a contract offer in and so we'd be without him if we were to progress in the competition.
We saw off Terengganu in a really close battle over two legs, before N'Guessan marked his last game for the club with a goal (his 20th of the season) in the first leg of the semi final. We also needed a late equaliser from our left-back to salvage a 2-2 draw. The second leg was incredibly close, and despite taking the lead in extra time, we gave away a 118th minute equaliser and penalties were once again going to decide our fate. We missed our first two, and that was it. Dumped out in the same disappointing fashion.
Despite this frustrating end to the season, all in all it was a huge success. An unprecedented league title, earned in stunning fashion. Two coaching badges, somehow sanctioned and funded by our board, who were leaking money all season long. But I think my stay in Malaysia is going to be a brief one. The finances at the club are poor, and I can't exactly do much better than I have this year. The continental football is not worth sticking around for, as I saw how over-matched we were in our one game this year. And my contract is officially up, meaning any club who wants to offer me a job will not have to pay a compensation fee. Back to the job market I go...
A 13-match unbeaten run in which we concede precisely one goal twelve times, and nine in a row. Absolutely bizarre game.
“Clean sheets? No.” (Jacobson, M. 2022)
I'm a twit
When creating a tactic at a new club, do you all have a template which you work from or just start from scratch each time?
I've created a few templates which I know are very strong, and tended to just work my players around them, making the odd tweak. However, I'm now finding that a bit boring and trying to create something completely from scratch, trying to get the best out of the players at my disposal.
My aim is to start with a clean slate in terms of team instructions and not add any extra player instructions unless I know I want them from the outset. I feel I've got a good idea on how to get the best out of shapes in terms of channels, half spaces, overloads and transitions. I also try to build tactics vertically rather than horizontally, for example trying to find partnerships between my left back, wide left attacker and left central midfielder in a 4-3-3.
I tend to get the low down on the team I've inherited and what they're good or not so good at first.
No point asking a team with CBs that while maybe competent, all have 5 for pace, to play a Liverpool type joke of a high line.
I make my tactic in beta then generally just vary roles and positions. Always ultra attacking regardless.
I beat my team into submission.
They will play my system or they will be sold.
Gillingham : End of Season Update - Season 2082/83
The season is complete. In the end we won it relatively comfortably.
League Cup = shit.
FA Cup = success.
Champions League = Emotional.
We progressed through the group stage, only just. First knock-out round brought us together with my old club, Atalanta. Could i show them what they're missing?
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Hi all,
As I'm playing FM11, shall I not bother posting updates? If you're not fussed, I'll just leave it, but happy to carry on if people read them.
Carry on.
I'm a twit
I enjoy reading all updates in here, so I'm in agreement, carry on.
There should just be a general FM thread instead of year by year tbf. It's not like we have hundreds trying to post through different versions.
Peñarol - 2022 season
I had a little go in Uruguay as I wanted something different. I thought I was enjoying the game for the most part but the vagaries of European high pressing were getting me down. As it turned out, this was a really enjoyable season and a breath of fresh air.
Peñarol play in yellow/black stripes and are one of the two historical giants in Uruguay, the other being Nacional. As the season panned out, this proved very much the case again. Our squad was, like a lot of South American squads nowadays, a mixture of old and young. Our highest earning player is ex Napoli midfielder Walter Gargano, now 37, on £8,000 a week. There is quite a lot of solid young talent in the squad but many of the players are physically not great, either because they're old or because they are just slow. The overall standard of the Uruguayan league I would say is somewhere between the Championship and League One, but with less physical ability and more technique.
There are two things that surprised me during this season. The first is that this is a violent league with plentiful red cards pretty much all the time. 5-7 yellows per team per game is very much run of the mill. I don't know if the players all have high aggression or the referees are mental or both, but you have to get used to the idea that your guys are going to get booked and sent off a lot, as are the opposition.
The other surprise was that when it comes to the Libertadores, or South American competition in general, Uruguay is absolutely miles behind Argentina and further still behind Brazil, to the point where to imagine we can compete with them is ludicrous. This can't always have been the case, as Peñarol are five-time Libertadores winners and Nacional won it as recently as 2011. However, these days our assaults on South America have a similar chance of success as Celtic and Rangers heading off into the CL. Brazil and Argentina get 8 clubs each into the Libertadores and it's Brazil who are completely dominant, providing 7 of this year's 8 quarter-finalists.
Domestic matters first. The Uruguayan championship has a three-part structure: the Apertura (1), the Intermedio (2), and the Clausura (3). 1 and 3 are mirror image leagues of 15 games where you play each team once. The two winners of these qualify for the season-ending finals. The Intermedio, meanwhile, sees the league split into two groups for a further 7 games. While all this is going on, the games from 1, 2 and 3 all count towards an overall table (4) of 37 games. The winner of 4 is fast-tracked into the Championship Final. The winners of 1 and 3 play off for the right to face the winner of 4 for the national title.
Nacional have Luis Suarez. Fortunately, they won't have him in 2023, as he has buggered off to Lazio. However, this year, his toothy presence made life difficult for us.
This was the Apertura table:
The Intermedio saw us in a different group from Nacional. We both won our groups easily and then played each other in the final in a typically lol game of Uruguayan football:
The Clausura went like this:
And the overall final table thus:
We therefore entered the brief playoff system. First up we (as Clausura champions) played Nacional (Apertura champions) for the right to play off for the title against Nacional (who topped the overall table). In effect, we had to beat Nacional to earn the right to play them again for the championship.
The initial playoff went like this:
We were by far the better side, referee completely bent and desperate for a Nacional win. Fortunately that will be Suarez's last kick for Nacional.
As for the Libertadores, expectations were low and we met them. We had two Brazilian sides in our group and although we played pretty well in 5 of the 6 games, four points was probably as much as we deserved.
The challenge in the future will be to work out how to do better in a competition and one day hear this theme tune ring out in the final:
Until then, it will be about trying to establish domestic supremacy over Nacional. It's pretty clear how things are going to work managing in Uruguay. If you get anyone really good then Argentina/Brazil or even Europe will come in for them, so you need to keep the production line of talent going, either from within or from poaching the best from other Uruguayan clubs. I made a start on this after the Apertura by signing 20 year old stiker Thiago Borbas from River Plate (not that one) and goalkeeper Lentinelly from Liverpool (not that one). Borbas made a wonderful impact. In fact, he was better than that, as his 41 goals in those 37 league games (11 for River Plate, 30 for me) beat Suarez's puny 37 goals to become the new all-time record. He isn't rapid or a lethal finisher, but he is so busy, very good in the air and puts his chances away when he gets them. Hopefully will be able to hold onto him for as long as possible, but not holding my breath.
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Me next in the succession save where I had the first half of our season in the National League.
It started really well but then in September/October we got into a rut and it didn't look good, thankfully I managed to plug the leak (hopefully) near the end of my stint before handing over to @Pleb.
The goal was to be in the playoff spots before the handover so as to reduce the damage that Pleb might do.
As stated in my previous update (been going through the seasons since I'm off work due to the Coronas), I planned to finally spend our warchest™ and I did just that. I only really signed one player that would go straight into the first team:
whom we paid a massive 105m euros for (a bit too much maybe, but it does include the home-grown tax). Other than that, the name of the game was to improve our bench as our main issue last season was that injuries meant we were fielding heavily suboptimal options (for the most part) and, even more importantly, we didn't quite have players that could come off the bench and make a difference. That was especially true for our wingers (or inside forwards rather), where, after our 2 main choices, it was just chaos. So with 70m spent to bring in 2 strong backup options there, as well as another 22m for a backup option for the attacking midfielder position, our squad looked a lot stronger. And it showed:
We actually had a very rocky start, with home losses to City and United and away losses to Arsenal and West Ham in our first 15 or so games meaning we were already 6 points off the pace by the time December came. But December did come and with it a favorable schedule and a strong run of form from us which saw us going on a 26-game unbeaten run across all competitions (17 games in the league), with just 2 draws and the rest of them being wins. That, combined with the fact that all other clubs around us just faltered, meant we came ahead with a 8-point lead and from there on the title was all but guaranteed. It was all the more impressive seeing as we had the most goals by some margin (94 to City's 79) and the least goals conceded (just 28). In the cups we did just ok. We won the UEFA Super Cup against Tottenham, got eliminated in the fourth round of the League Cup by Wolves and the quarters of the FA Cup by Liverpool. The Champions League was a different story:
That's a singular loss in 15 games, but unfortunately it came when it mattered the most, i.e. the final. It wasn't the most exciting of affairs, but truth be told Real were marginally better so they deserved it. Not to mention that they had to go through City, PSG and United to get there, while we had a much more favorable set of knockout games. Still, I am very happy with our performance since it shows that last season was not a fluke.
Yes, you are reading that correctly. Davidson finished the season with no fewer than 64 goals, comfortably finishing top scorer in both the league and the Champions League, even breaking an all-time record in the latter with 23 goals in 15 games. Apart from him, both Geiger and Grabowski were in top form again, with the latter being a key contributor to our change of pace in December. Escalante also found some ridiculous form in the closing stages of the season after a very slow start. The only somewhat negative aspect was Crothers' form, which was much worse than last season (or the two seasons before that even), but I do feel he's been punching above his weight for a while, so perhaps it's time for a change? Talking about Grabowski and Geiger, I guess they do deserve a screenshot:
Grabowski is the longest-serving player in the club at the moment, as he joined us back when we first made it to the Premier League and has stayed with us since (this was his 8th season at the club). He was a bit of a part-time actor in the first few seasons, before emerging as our "power-sub", but he really came up big when I changed our tactic to include inside forwards.
A player I signed 4 seasons ago, mostly because we had to pay just 12 million for him and his stats were already really impressive. When I first signed him, I didn't quite know what to do with him and even tried to retrain him to a striker. He ended up being the first indication that inside forwards might work for us, as that was his role when he came off the bench even when we played with traditional wingers and he usually managed to be an impactful sub. Since our tactical change, he was the obvious choice for the right wing and he's never really looked anything but great.
Holy shit, we've put Barcelona in the fucking mud already.
Edit: Just checked and it's their first loss of the year
Last edited by Sir Andy Mahowry; 02-01-2023 at 12:37 AM.
my fm 22 game is proper stagnating, in the 3rd tier of italy with livorno (start in the 5th tier). always the way with those LLM games - bosh early promotions then it gets annoying.
Newport County 2028-29 Season
Having won the National League and League 2 back to back, the board wanted us to avoid relegation this season.
We started our transfer business early in June, signing Aaron Ramsey (not that one) on a free and paying out a massive £30,000 to secure Brooklyn Lyons-Foster from Blackpool. Both players would mainly play off the bench. We then trialled all of the released Premier League youngsters and struck deals with James Simmons, a fantastic looking winger, and Crossley Oatwell, a LB who wasn't ready and would be loaned out.
When the new season ticked over officially we broke our transfer record signing Will Reddie from Bolton for £175k (rising to 250k) who we had had on loan the previous season. We also secured Abu Kamara from Norwich on a free transfer. The rest of our business, aside from a new back up goalie who never got a kick, was done in the loan market the most significant ones being Alexander Hofmann (LB from Middlesbrough) and Luis Santos (Striker from West Ham). Thomas Riley and Griffiths who we had on loan last year had already renewed their loans.
No one significant left the club although some high earners we weren't using moved on. This meant our team for most of the season was:
GK- Evan Watts- Signed on a free in our League 2 season and eventually won the job. He improved enough towards the end of the season to enter this one as our number 1.
LB- Hofmann, on loan from Boro.
CB- Same pairing as last season- Declan Drysdale who was here when I arrived and Will Reddie who was now our player.
RB- Griffiths, renewing his loan from Coventry.
DM- Sam Bowen and Jack Jenkins- this has been our pairing in the national league, but Jenkis was upgraded to Francois in League 2. Francois did not want to return for another loan spell and we couldn't find anyone else so Jenkins was reinserted.
LW- James Simmons, the new youngster from Chelsea who looks a bit special.
RW- Ross McCausland, who we signed on a free from Swansea last year and was great for us in L2.
ST- Thomas Riley, now in his 4th season on loan from Lincoln, and Abu Kamara our new free agent from Norwich.
Brooklyn Lyons-Foster served as first reserve for the entire defense and DM positions. Aaron Ramsey saw a good amount of game time from the bench at LW and players like Nathan Moriah-Welsh, Ryan Wood and Luis Santos all appeared frequently from the bench.
Our first game of the season was away at Oxford and we had no way of knowing how big this game would be. We were 2-0 down after 42 minutes but Jack Jenkins justified getting his place back with a screamer just before Half Time. Goals from Simmons and Santos in the 2nd half sealed a thrilling comeback to win 3-2. We would end August with 4 wins from 4 and top of the table, though we surrendered the lead in September following back to back draws with Swansea and Bolton. We then beat Salford 4-2 before I suffered my first loss of the season in my first ever game at Stadium:MK, losing 2-1 to my own team MK Dons. We took 7 points from the next 3 but a loss to Rochdale saw us fall to 3rd. We then won 6 of our next 7 games (with a draw at Sheffield Wednesday in there) which moved us back into the top 2 heading into December. December was a mixed bag as we lost to Posh and our title rivals Barnsley while also drawing winnable games against Forest Green and Colchester, but we did beat Lincoln, Luton and Plymouth, smashing the latter 5-1 on New Year's Eve.
Our unremarkable FA Cup run ended in Round 3 again, this time at Bristol City. However a 3-0 win against Rochdale and a 1-1 draw at lowly Walsall was somehow enough to see us move ahead of Barnsley who had been the runaway league leaders at one point. And having got our noses in front, we weren't about to let it go as we then won 6 on the bounce. The streak ended on 13/02/29 when Oxford came to town. They were 3rd in the table and thus the team we were most keen to stay ahead of. We got a 1-1 draw in a game we should have won, but it kept our lead over 3rd at a whopping 11 points. And this was lucky because our next game saw us get battered 5-0 at Wrexham out of the blue and we followed that up with a 2-0 loss at home to Wednesday. Something clearly had to change so our captain, Declan Drysdale, was dropped for the next game against Posh. The physio was constantly telling me both Drysdale and Reddie needed a rest and I couldn't get it to stop even by resting them here and there so I made the decision to drop Drysdale for 2 games and then drop Reddie for 2 games. This paid off against Posh who we smashed 4-1 but facing Birmingham 3 days later and with our LB suspended meaning Lyons-Foster would need to play LB instead of filling in at CB made me tempted to recall Drysdale but I knew I would just prolong the issues. In the end we took our medicine and lost 2-0 at Birmingham with a makeshift back line and Declan returned for a massive 1-0 win at Stockport where all our rivals (Barnsley, Oxford and Plymouth) dropped points. We then battled to a 1-1 draw at promotion chasing Blackpool before beating Tranmere and Lincoln at home, the latter of which sealed our promotion as everyone else kept dropping points. We followed this up with a 3-2 win at Luton which combined with Plymouth losing sealed the title. Ironically it was Oxford who lost to help us deal promotion and Plymouth who lost to help us seal the title but Barnsley who eventually finished 2nd behind us.
Newport- 96
Barnsley- 87
- - - - - -- -
Plymouth- 85
Blackpool- 83
Birmingham- 80
Oxford- 78
- - - - - -
Peterborough- 75
Oxford pushed us so close for so long and then completely collapsed and nearly missed the Play Offs.
We also made it to the Semis of the Pizza Cup before losing 3-2 to Everton U21s.... Fun times.
Player wise our highest average rating was Abu Kamara who scored 41 goals in 54(1) games and got an AR of 7.36. Sam Bowen and Will Reddie both finished on 7.20 from over 50 games and Drysdale, Jenkins, Watts, Santos and McCausland were all over 7, along with a loanee called Wahlstrom who filled in at DM/CB towards the end of the season after joining in January.
Goals wise Santos was 2nd with 15 goals in 7 (44) games and Riley was 3rd with 13 from 52(2). He's not really a League 1 striker it seems... lucky I've renewed his loan again for the Championship..... 5 years at the same team on loan!
James Simmons, the Chelsea youngster, was our top assist maker with 14 (to go with his 12 goals). Bowen (11) and Riley (10) also had double figures for assists.
We're.... going to get fisted in the Championship.... but oh well.
What a career he's had.
City: Left at the end of his contract (2023)
Spain: 2024-2026 - Sacked
Tottenham: 2026-2028 - Sacked
Gladbach: 2029-2030 - Left to take over Southampton
Southampton: 2030-2031 - Sacked
Switzerland: 2032-2032 - Left to take over QPR
QPR: 2032-2033 - Sacked
And he's just been signed as a scout for us in 2035 after two years without a job. Won the league in 2023 with City and a Supercup with Gladbach and that's all his titles since the start of the save.
I didn't last the week as I got absorbed looking into the Club TTH Universe, then Christmas came and yeah... Anyway, back to it!
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The linked post covers AEKs background, time to move more into the present. Here are the current lads(sorry if this image is huge):
What you'll immediately notice is a problem I'd like to get to fixing quite soon. Firstly the squad is quite old. This is to be expected in a "lesser" league, as the level is not quite as high, so playing careers can go on a bit longer.
Secondly, the 30+ guys make up a fair amount of my wage budget. I have the first transfer window disabled for a bit more realism, but the wage budget I've been given is £360k p/w.
There is £6m in the clubs coffers and we currently spend £344k p/w on wages. I imagine come January there is scope for a signing or two.
As I've not played a league game yet I can't see everyone else's wage bill in comparison, but I can view their squads and it would seem that ours is in line with that of Panathinaikos and PAOK, but we all fall way behind Olympiacos, who have James Rodriguez and Marcelo on 50k a week.
Panathinaikos' best player seems to be Bernard, formerly of Shakhtar and Everton, mean while PAOK have FM legend Andrija Zivkovic as their top guy.
As for our lot, there's some recognisable names in there but our best player is either Sergio Araujo or more likely is Levi Garcia:
For those wondering the game thinks this league is around the level of the Championship or Swiss Super League.
As for the league itself? There are 14 teams in the Greek Super League. Everyone plays each other twice before going into a Championship(top 6) or Relegation Group. Once there teams will carry over 100% of their points and will play each other once, if in the Relegation Group, or twice if in the Championship Group.
At present Greece is 14th in the coefficient list, this means that in the Championship Group there are currently no spots for automatic European group places. 1st and 2nd go into the UCL Qualifiers, 3rd into the Europa League Qualifiers and 4th-5th into the Conference League Qualifiers.
The Greek FA Cup also awards a Europa League Qualification spot to the winner.
In the first year, AEK have no European football at all. They didn't qualify from last season, so it's a clean slate. However this will impact finances slightly and we'll now need to rely on our fellow Greeks to do well for coefficients sake, as we currently project to fall to 15th.
The only other thing to be wary of is that Greece imposes a max limit of 5 non-EU players in any match day squad. That also applies in the Greek Cup. This means no mass raiding of South America.
A maximum limit of 12 non-EU players in the entire squad, with that being further restricted to 8 over the age of 23. It currently takes 7 years to become a Greek National, so that'll likely not happen very often to save me.
As for expectations, I'd just like to get to club back into Europe first. The board and supporters however both require me to finish in the top two places in the league. The board require me to work within the wage budget and would prefer if I played attacking football. The supporters themselves apparently have a 4/5 influence on the board and they require me to finish above PAOK and Panathinaikos and their desire is to finish above Olympiacos and become the most reputable team in Greece.
Let's see what I can do I guess.
You'll need to do an Alexander the Great, hoover up all the good young Greeks and use them to your advantage. Though he only really won the Asian CL and a couple of Egyptian titles.
Started a new game at Nordsjaelland... literally 10 days into the job half the squad are pissed because I rejected a $750k bid for our 2nd best youngster.
This game used to be fun.
You lost me there.
@John Arne: Just ignore the fucks. Been working well for me.
I'm finding that anyone who doesn't start most games will end up in a bitching and moaning vortex, and the only way to satisfy them is to give them 100% of what they want.
Even had someone with their squad status set to 'Fringe Player' demanding a move away because a bloke averaging 7.7 was starting ahead of him.
I think it has to be some personality trait (hidden or otherwise) cause I've had plenty of regular starter status players not complain about only really starting cup games, while I even had a breakthrough prospect complain about starting games. Nevertheless I just tell all of them to fuck off (unless I was planning to sell anyway) and after a couple months they have forgotten that it even happened.
Yev with a 13 minute hattrick.
I'm a twit
10 minute.
11 minute. I'm Ross Perot.
Palamós CF 2028/29 Season Update:
Transfers In:
A natural CB who can play at RB, I probably paid a bit too much for him in terms of wages (especially considering the cap which I didn't know about at the time) but he's fairly solid.
My Boy
Transfers Out:
He was my first choice CB in the fourth and third tiers but Spezia came in with a low offer, I then countered with his release clause and they took him for some reason.
Our backup keeper, he went for 55k potentially rising to 94k with a 50% of next sale transfer clause. I wanted to keep him but he wanted to go and I felt that 50% could yield a lot of money.
League:
At one stage I thought we might run away with it as we were 4 points ahead and looking really good. I then stopped playing for a week or so due to Christmas and doing the Dulwich Hamlet succession save. When I came back we lost to Sabadeil and we went on a really bad run.
We set a team record for most games without a win, dynamics were stating to sour and we went 3 points behind Zaragoza. Thankfully they stumbled as well and we managed to sort ourselves out and had the league won with a game to go as we had the best H2H against Zaragoza and Granada.
RIP to Valladolid btw, they got relegated from La Liga last season and are going down to third tier.
Cup:
When we drew Las Palmas I thought we had a good chance at beating them, they're one of the worst sides in La Liga and looked likely to go down (they did) but I did not expect us to follow that up with wins against Betis who finished 7th and Barcelona who won La Liga on H2H. They actually finished the league with 0 defeats and their only other loss this season was in the Champions League to Liverpool who beat them 3-1 in the semi-final.
A bit annoying to then lose to fucking Huesca but I can't be mad at that run.
Squad:
Elorza was incredible for us. 50 total goals with 46 of those coming in the league (the next closest scorer in the league was Granada's Adam Armstrong with 28), he was a man possessed and he wanted to play in the big leagues.
Our strength lies in our attack with Sors on the left, Ormaetxea on the right and Campillo behind Elorza. Obviously we lose 2 of these next season and a whole lot of others in the team.
Plan is not to rely so heavily on loans next season and I'd like to improve our defence and keeper (who was incredibly suspect at times this year).
We've been given £8.6m in transfer budget and our wage budget is going from £30k (we were spending 26.7k with our first team salary cap at £22.5k) to £65k a week. I wont be signing players early this time to make sure I know how much we can actually use on the first team.
We're also 9k seats short of the minimum in La Liga (lol) so we're having to move somewhere for now although they haven't found a home yet. We are also building a new stadium for next season:
Which is dead on the minimum, would have liked something a bit bigger as we can afford it seeing as the parachute payment if we get relegated will be £11.75m plus TV revenue should be huge so the £15m stadium seems a bit cheap.
So after winning the Malaysian title in my first season, it was time to move on and explore pastures new. Kedah had a good team and were poised to challenge for the title again, but with debt rising to around £500k at the start of the season it seemed like the right time to go. Once my contract expired, I was still at the club on a month-to-month deal, and I decided to stick around through the 3 months off season while I applied for a new job. By the time March rolled around I was still in Malaysia, with only 2 job interviews to speak of.
I had no real intention of slogging through the busy domestic months of April and May, and so after a few early-season league and cup matches (one of which was my first league defeat in charge of Kedah), I decided to officially resign and allow them to have someone a bit more committed at the helm.
It was still slim pickings on the job front for a few months, but once June rolled around, the vacancies piled up and so did my job applications. Despite winning a top level title, my reputation is still quite poor - the next step was undoubtedly going to be a sideways one at best. As we entered July, the invitations for interviews increased. If I was turning up in person, my air miles would be through the roof as I attended meetings with clubs in Mexico, Chile, Slovakia, Slovenia, Belarus, Russia, China, Hong Kong, Wales and Northern Ireland. And from that glut, there were inevitable job offers. I turned down a couple of options in Belarus, and one newly promoted team in Slovakia, and decided on....
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Looks like my time at Newport County is at an end.
After winning League 1 and moving to the Championship the budgets I was given were quite frankly sickening. We were given £2m to spend on players and about an extra 20k a week in wage budget... nowhere near enough to survive at this level (we spent the least on wages in all of League 1 last year.... that 20k probably wouldn't have even put us in the top half of League 1 sides, Luton, who nearly went down, spent about 9 times what we did...). Nonetheless I could only try and we did a lot of shopping and honestly I feel I strengthened the team significantly, including signing the current Finland #1 keeper from Ipswich for about £200k, but I feel like the team I was building was one that would have pissed League 1 even easier than last year but I have my doubts it would have stayed up. A large part of that was that fact that Simmons, Reddie and Kamara, my 3 most important players, all only had 1 year left on their cheap contracts and thus most of my additional wage budget had to go on renewing them. I was somewhat looking forward to the season but fully expecting a relegation and probably another easy League 1 win the following year.... instead, before the game even officially recognised us as a Championship team, I was offered an 8 grand a week pay rise to move to recently relegated to Serie B Lazio....
Now Italy was on "view only" for my first few seasons so I'm not sure what state it is in, and one of my objectives is to repair financial damage.... so I have zero clue how this is going to go.... but going from a £400,000 transfer budget (after I chucked so much into wages) to £28m at another 2nd tier club with a much higher rep and a much bigger wage feels like a no brainer. Bye Newport.... it's been great. 3 League Titles in less than 3 years.... but I do truly feel that's as far as they can go.
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