Football Manager 23

**Dquincy** · 05-01-2023, 09:55 PM

Gillingham : Pre Season Transfer Window - Season 2083/84

Having won the league, we needed to make enhancements to the squad to make more of a dent on our Champions League ventures.

One for the future. My scouts liked him, but this means i now have 3 decent teenage goalkeepers.

New right back from Seria A to compete with my young English full back.

My future star to play centre back. Will be on the bench for most of this season, but hope he comes good.

Purchased this chap for the future and thicken the squad. I play 433, so will retrain him to play striker.

Another one for the future. Paid over the odds for him, but he should be one to one in a few years. Currently in the under 18's.

New star holding midfielder. Highest valued acquisition this summer, but he goes straight into the first team.

New first team left back and yet another Argie to join the defence. Not the fittest, but a very good left back.

Another full back acquired in this transfer window. But i have sold 4 full backs in the summer so need to reinforce in these areas. At 16 yrs old, he's probably too young, but he is my back up LB this season as his potential is very good.

Signed this chap on a pre-contract and once he arrived, my coaches didn't like him quite as much as my scouts did. In the reserves he goes.

The season starts...shall update at the mid point.

**Sir Andy Mahowry** · 06-01-2023, 03:03 PM

We own the cunts.

Kings of Catalunya.

**Jimmy Floyd** · 06-01-2023, 03:04 PM

Why are the regen faces in 23 worse than they were in FM11, for fuck's sake.

**Gray Fox** · 06-01-2023, 03:13 PM

If you care for such a thing, there is a face generation mod available for the game. It's been out for a version or two and they look good.

**Sir Andy Mahowry** · 06-01-2023, 03:23 PM

Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd

Why are the regen faces in 23 worse than they were in FM11, for fuck's sake.

Not a fan of all the unibrows?

**Gray Fox** · 06-01-2023, 08:23 PM

@Jimmy Floyd

**Jimmy Floyd** · 06-01-2023, 09:07 PM

Thanks, I'll try that, see if the 9GB download finishes before the next 37 games of fight club / the Uruguayan league is over and the next batch of regens appear.

**Pleb** · 07-01-2023, 01:55 AM

Saved Mahow's arse by getting us out of the National League in the SAVE.

**Jimmy Floyd** · 07-01-2023, 03:03 PM

Peñarol - 2023 season
Having had a strong finish to 2022 but just missed out on the title to Nacional, there wasn't too much to be done for 2023. We have a decent financial position by Uruguayan standards so I was able to pick off some handy end-of-contract transfers - in came Nigerian winger Osinachi Ebere, midfielders Nicolas Fernandez and Bruno Veglio, Argie defender Barboza, and, as a special treat, flairy number ten type Bruno Nazario, a late 20s Brazilian who was once at Hoffenheim. Foreigner limits of 6 in total / 3 on the pitch meant that there was a bit of juggling to be done, although Ebere is on the way to qualifying as Uruguayan.

The main thing was that remarkable 20 year old goal machine Thiago Borbas attracted no interest from Europe or even Brazil/Argentina, so his dangerous £1.9 million release clause remained untouched. At the same time, Luis Suarez had left Nacional, and although they had replaced him with the best of the young forwards in the league (Borbas aside), they were clearly going to be way down on goals.

The championship. From the very first game it was clear we were now in a class of our own, and that sense didn't really lift all season. We won the Apertura, the Intermedio, and the Clausura each in their own right, and so the usual championship playoff was not even needed.

Goal difference should demonstrate the nature of our superiority. We were similar to others at the back, but we just had so many more gears in attack.

The Libertadores. This is very much the next world to conquer, but how to do so is something that is a bit of a head-scratcher. The Brazilians... they're just better than us. All of them.

The draw was kind-ish: alongside Sudamericana champs Sao Paulo (not in the top three in Brazil currently but probably in the top 6), we had Paraguay's Cerro Porteño and Bolivia's Oriente Petrolero, so it seemed a better chance to get out of the group than last year when we came bottom. We started with a 2-1 win in Bolivia, then came back to host Cerro Porteño and played them off the park but only got a draw (we will revisit this theme). Then it was a double header against Sao Paulo. They absolutely spanked us at our place, and really did so again at their place but somehow we spawned a 1-1 draw with a glitch goal in the 96th minute. That left us level on points with the Paraguayans and really needing a win there. We duly got that win, brushing them aside 3-0, and then beating the Bolivians last up to seal a fairly decent qualification to the last 16.

The draw looked decent, too - we avoided all the Brazilian giants and got Argentina's Belgrano, a side who had done well in the group stage but were no great shakes on paper. Unfortunately, we did not sink the bastards. We completely dominated both legs - and I mean completely ripped the arse out of them - but Borbas (more on him later) found himself allergic to goals and xGs of over 3 in each leg led to just one goal in total, in a 3-1 second leg reverse after drawing 0-0 at home. Our Libertadores xG underperformance of -4.82 topped the charts, and... yeah.

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You can see there just how dominant the Brazilians are. Palmeiras, Flamengo and Corinthians are a clear top three and are miles ahead of the rest. We will need to get some nice draws to get anywhere near winning this, but over time, who knows.

So, Borbas. Having bagged 48 times in 2022, this year he upped the ante still further and claimed no fewer than 52. The strange thing about this was that there were two stretches of the season where he completely went missing, notably around our Libertadores exit in the summer, but also towards the end. At other times, particularly with headed chances, he was completely rampant and could not be stopped, and was a large part of the reason we did well. I managed to give him a new contract with the release clause up to £3.3 million - MLS teams are sniffing so we'll see if we can hold onto him.

The off season will be about shifting some shite and adding where we can - a lot of squad players are needed as you do loads of games in quick succession here.

**Adramelch** · 07-01-2023, 03:46 PM

Done with another season at Wrexham (we're in 2036 for those wondering).

Let me start from two high profile signings that we made in the summer. Both were somewhat unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, but some opportunities you just don't let go that easily.

We already had a strong goalkeeper that we'd signed just six months prior, but when you can get this guy for just 57m, you don't say no. Let's all collectively laugh at Bayern for having him at such a low release clause.

Likewise, when you have a striker scoring 64 goals in a season, you don't necessarily go out looking for another one, but we only had to pay Brugge 32.5m for Mbombo so it was a no-brainer. He was also fine with not being a guaranteed starter week in week out which helped make the decision.

We also signed one more (very cheap) player for squad depth, so other than those three, the rest of the squad remained unchanged.

We managed to retain our title, spending most of the season on first place, but boy did we make it tough for ourselves. Do you want easy directions on how to potentially fuck up your title run? The trick is to only get 20 out of a possible 36 points against the bottom 6 teams. It's that simple. Still, we showed up in most of the big games, with 30 out of 36 points against the top 7 teams, which made up for it, but we did also require United slipping up towards the end (they drew 4 out of their last 6 games against mostly smaller teams). They did preemptively get some revenge against us, when they beat us in the League Cup final, but it has to be said that a) we were far better than them, but our finishing let us down, and b) we had 5 first-team players suspended and another one injured, so we fielded a heavily suboptimal squad. We nevertheless did manage to grab a cup win and complete the double, as we beat City in the FA Cup final. We also beat them in the Community Shield and both the league games, so we're starting to have the upper hand against them no doubt.

I think we actually did really well, but we got royally fucked by the draws. Real were just flat out better than us in the semis, so they deservedly went through, eventually winning the whole thing by beating United 3-0 in the finals.

Since I've been playing this save for a while, I thought instead of our best eleven, it was about time I showed you a picture of the whole squad, especially since we rotated an awful lot more this season.

The main thing to note was Davidson who was a lot more inconsistent this season and was actually out-scored by Mbombo. Not that the latter was any more consistent, but he remained uninjured so got to play a lot more games and have long stretches of form. I would say the team in general was quite inconsistent really. They were generally solid, but you typically get higher average ratings in a season as good as ours, but nobody really excelled. The ones that stood out a bit more were Rankovic, who was solid all around and made fairly few mistakes and Formalik who proved to be a creative genius from the right-back position. I was actually planning to buy a different right back initially, but I think he deserves to get a longer run of games and show us what he's made of.

As for plans for the next season, I've already agreed a massive (136m) transfer for a left-back from Atletico and I will be on the lookout for a defender and an attacking midfielder but noone of note has caught my attention just yet. Other than that we have a lot, and I mean A LOT, of young players that I signed over the years that won't make it here, so I will be looking to cash in on them. I will also be looking to cash in on Belda, our second goalkeeper, as I think it's too much of a luxury to have a player like that on the bench. I think we're looking at raking in upwards of 250m from all those players, so we'll have quite a bit of money to play around with even after the aforementioned left-back arrives.

**Sir Andy Mahowry** · 07-01-2023, 07:32 PM

Palamós CF 2029/30 Season Update:

Transfers Out:

Signed last year on a free to be a starter but he never really was a key player due to the loans I had in last year. This year he just wasn't good enough and after being told he was a backup he started moaning and in January I took £150k for him.

My 50 goal striker from last year, he was utterly busted that season and he was busted this year too but in the wrong sense. He just completely lost his scoring touch, he had 3 goals in 18 games. I even started him in a cup game against a third tier side in the hopes he could batter them and find his touch again, he missed a penalty and got a 5.8 rating.

Getting £1m for him with a further £500k to come and 50% of the next sale was too good.

Transfers In:

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League:

This season was one of the tightest and most tense I've experienced. I thought we'd be dead and buried with the way we started but we kept fighting. Our results against sides around us was poor but doing the double over Barca was insane, especially as we were 2 points from the relegation zone before the second and it didn't look great for us.

Cup:

Played the second string in the first game as they needed fitness but in the second I played pretty much our best 11 (I think I only dropped the keeper and a couple of defenders) as I wanted our confidence up and for our strikers to grab some goals. It didn't work that way.

Squad:

The squad is pretty shit, especially on current ability but I think we've got some good building blocks. Lizarazu was pretty good in goal (although he had some shit moments) and I think our frontline will be a lot better next year. I think our defence needs some work as does our DM's.

Thankfully we've got cash. Our wage budget was only £130k last year but this time they've given us the max that we can register. I've pushed it to £13m in transfer budget with £220k free in wages and I've got a lot of quality in our scouted players list.

**Dquincy** · 07-01-2023, 09:16 PM

Gillingham : Mid-Season Update - Season 2083/84

Normally, If I was to have 50 points at the half-way stage of the season I'd be pretty chuffed. But yet I find myself in 2nd place. Arsenal and ourselves absolutely storming it so far and it's difficult to see many weaknesses in either team.

Champions League group stage was easily dealt with. Last year, we scraped 2nd place so nice to take top spot and hopefully get an easier draw in the next round.

This is the squad currently. Whilst Rafa's is my main striker and top scorer, he's only scored 4 in the last 15 games. Not sure whether to stick with him or splash money on a new striker in the January sales.

Rafa

So that comment about getting an easy draw in the next round...

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**Gray Fox** · 08-01-2023, 08:18 PM

How does the game run that far into the future Quincy? It's mad to see how much more money is in the game now, just a decade later.

As for AEK, I've finally gotten into pre-season and there seems to be a lot more meat on the bone on this version(last played 19). My go-to has always been to get the coaching staff in order for the season and then use what we have to see who stays and goes.

However the board are only allowing a maximum of £850 p/w on any staff roles and have rejected all of my requests to increase this. In fact I've exhausted pretty much every option for a board request and they've rejected them all bar finding me a loan affiliate. Bastards.

**Dquincy** · 08-01-2023, 08:57 PM

Originally Posted by Gray Fox

How does the game run that far into the future Quincy? It's mad to see how much more money is in the game now, just a decade later.

It's quite good to be fair. Obviously the further I get, there is incremental slowing down but it's only minor. That said, on the few occasions I've swapped to a new laptop and carried the game over (or reinstalled it) it's lightning quick. Presumably it drops some historic data when I copy it over.

**Dquincy** · 09-01-2023, 11:33 AM

Keep the updates coming chaps. Enjoying reading them.

**Dquincy** · 09-01-2023, 10:07 PM

Originally Posted by Dquincy

For fucks sake.

Last season all over again. Hopefully with a different outcome this season. We shall see...

FOR FUCKS SAKE.

1 minute in...sending off and penalty to Atalanta.

**Dquincy** · 09-01-2023, 10:23 PM

1st Round Knock Out, 1st Leg : Full Time

Not happy.

**Dquincy** · 09-01-2023, 10:24 PM

Next game. Really not happy.

**Dquincy** · 09-01-2023, 10:53 PM

2nd Leg. Seriously, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!! Cunts.

Oh and we've had 13 shots to their 3 at H/T.

**Dquincy** · 09-01-2023, 10:54 PM

47 mins. We've now hacked down one of their players to give them a pen.

Edit: They scored it.

This can fuck off.

**Jimmy Floyd** · 09-01-2023, 11:26 PM

This lad is like having Pelé. Had a £3.3 million release clause for over a year and no one's partaken, ridiculous scenes.

Now somehow managed to up his release clause to £20 million by saving up for every other aspect of the contract. Can't see anyone coughing for that as he only has 12 for finishing. Might just try and run him into the ground and see how many goals he can score in total.

A lot of them come about in the air, he has 15 for heading, I have a great set piece taker on each foot, and set piece defending in the Uruguayan league isn't what it might be.

**Gray Fox** · 09-01-2023, 11:51 PM

Quincy, sounds like you need to get over to Italy and take care of business personally.

I also saw that Guido(remember him?) got a pretty good regen to in Colombia and stayed with him his whole career to get him to over 1000 goals, I reckon with enough time you could do the same there Jim.

**Baz** · 10-01-2023, 07:02 AM

I saw that. He provides some great FM content to be fair.

**Gray Fox** · 10-01-2023, 03:41 PM

Pre-season in the books in Athens. There were some loans already set up for when I took over and first transfer window is disabled. As such it's a smaller squad than I'd perhaps like with 22 men. 5 picked up injuries pre-season, so we're already depleted.

I'm really trying not to use downloaded tactics this year. So I've had three of the default ones from the game installed, the idea being to tinker as we go. 4-3-3 PRESSING. 4-2-3-1 and a 5-3-2 for seeing games out.
The 4-3-3 is what the staff recommended I play so we've been using that. It's been doing okay in pre-season though I've noticed a weakness to corners already. It could just be personnel but I've tried to fix that.

Just before the first game of the season, the Athens Derby no less, the board also informed me that expectations had slightly been lowered. A top 3 finish now the expectation instead of top 2.

3 wins and a loss from 4 games has us rolling at the start of the season.

As we're not in Europe this season we're reliant on the others to keep our coefficient up. Olympiakos got off to a great start with that and lost to Apollon Limassol in the UCL Qualifiers.
Thankfully they got Europa League group stages. PAOK and Panathinaikos both made the Conference League groups with Aris, just failing on penalties in the final round. They've already won a game in their first two, so it's going okay so far.

**Adramelch** · 10-01-2023, 05:05 PM

Well that's unrealistic already. Greek teams have been getting knocked out in the qualifiers for a few seasons now. We used to be like 8th in the coefficients about 10 years ago and now we're in a freefall.

**wullie** · 10-01-2023, 05:08 PM

That huge proper regen faces download in the video a page or two back really makes a difference, now the new players seem like people rather than haunted dolls or silhouetted sex victims.

**Jimmy Floyd** · 10-01-2023, 07:58 PM

Here's one for you all (or at least I didn't know this before this save): when you play in South America, there's often a text commentary line that says GOLAZO GOLAZO GOLAZO GOL GOL GOOOOOOL!!!! when you score. Must be one of the naffer things that Miles has put in.

**Dquincy** · 10-01-2023, 08:56 PM

Originally Posted by Gray Fox

Quincy, sounds like you need to get over to Italy and take care of business personally.

That's not a bad suggestion. I know this is going to sound bitter, but Atalanta are only the force they are because I developed a squad of young superstars with great potential, and then clearly left them just as they were ripening. Not bitter, honest.

**igor_balis** · 10-01-2023, 11:42 PM

I was reading the San Marino challenge thread on sigames forum, and one bloke has been regularly qualifying for the champs league group stages for years, then showing screenies of his league one at best "star players".

I'm staggered that nobody has accused him of cheating cus...I mean, cmon. Dunno if it's savescumming, fmrte or just downloaded tactics but fuck off.

**Gray Fox** · 11-01-2023, 12:43 AM

Originally Posted by Adramelch

Well that's unrealistic already. Greek teams have been getting knocked out in the qualifiers for a few seasons now. We used to be like 8th in the coefficients about 10 years ago and now we're in a freefall.

Greece has actually already surpassed the total that is set to drop off, with 4 match days left.

At the games start they are 14th in the coefficient list. This start already has us looking at 12th with potential for more.

**Gray Fox** · 11-01-2023, 03:15 AM

Things were going along swimmingly with the only negative being in the support section, the players had poor support of me because of my reputation being set at Sunday League.

Still we've motored on to the World Cup break and things look good:

However despite the great run in the league, I was approached before the 13th game by captain Sergio Araujo and 8 members of the squad to tell me I'd lost the dressing room...
Essentially what has happened is that because we've only played every weekend, there's been no need to rotate as we've both been winning most all games and everyone is healthy. This has lead to all of the fringe players approaching me at once being pissy.
I've now had to make promises to about 4 of them and one of those is to improve support in the dressing room. I'm going to be most displeased if I get fired because I started with the wrong reputation...

**Jimmy Floyd** · 11-01-2023, 08:19 AM

I nearly fell foul of the same problem in the first few months at Peñarol. Lost the dressing room despite being 2nd or whatever it was at the time and winning most games, and was 'Insecure' for quite a long time due to lack of dressing room support. It resolved itself via a mixture of moving players on and just persistent winning, so hopefully the same will happen for you.

**Adramelch** · 11-01-2023, 09:20 AM

Ye much like the previous similar discussion, as long as we're in reasonable form, I just mostly ignore them and the problem resolves itself eventually.

I guess not that weird in terms of Football Manager, but OFI being up there while PAOK being at the bottom is quite wild.

**Gray Fox** · 11-01-2023, 09:46 AM

The typical big boys have all suffered big time from being in Europe. Speaking of which, both Olympiakos and Panathinaikos made it out of their groups, both in second place. PAOK came 3rd in their group but with 10 points. They go out by virtue of beating Lech Poznan 3-1 at home, but losing 3-0 away.

We currently sit 12th in the coefficient list for next year, however Belgium and Ukraine are right there too. What spices this up is that in the next round Olympiakos have Shakhtar and Panathinkaikos have Union Saint-Gilloise. The Swiss and Austria are next above us, but both got too many teams through group stages to be caught I think.

EDIT: An issue for us is I'm sure the move in date for the new stadium was October. I'm in December now and I've had one media question about it a while ago that asked if I'm ready to move in. It's not even listed on the facilities page that we're due to move now either.

It's troublesome as we have 23k season ticket holders but the temporary ground only holds just shy of 15k.

**Dark Soldier** · 11-01-2023, 10:28 AM

Originally Posted by igor_balis

I was reading the San Marino challenge thread on sigames forum, and one bloke has been regularly qualifying for the champs league group stages for years, then showing screenies of his league one at best "star players".

I'm staggered that nobody has accused him of cheating cus...I mean, cmon. Dunno if it's savescumming, fmrte or just downloaded tactics but fuck off.

SI forums are great.

I posted last year saying how its a bit too easy. One guy challenged me to be Wycombe in the Championship and not get relegated. I got them to 11th. His response was that I'm using unrealistic tactics and I shouldn't use PIs or team instructions as that makes it too easy. It was a fucking 442 and I did what you asked ya dumb cunt.

Basically don't use tools the game gives you.

**Baz** · 11-01-2023, 11:20 AM

I sometimes post on sigames just to laugh at my avatar.

**Adramelch** · 11-01-2023, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by Gray Fox

EDIT: An issue for us is I'm sure the move in date for the new stadium was October. I'm in December now and I've had one media question about it a while ago that asked if I'm ready to move in. It's not even listed on the facilities page that we're due to move now either.

It's troublesome as we have 23k season ticket holders but the temporary ground only holds just shy of 15k.

Yeah that's probably a bug. If I recall correctly we did actually play our first game there in October. I've also happened to play against AEK in my Wrexham save and they were in the new stadium.

**thommo** · 11-01-2023, 01:51 PM

2025/26 - Season 1 - Kitchee SC

When joining the club I was under the impression that there were no foreigner restrictions or rules for the squad registration in Hong Kong, and while that is technically correct, I didn't realise that each competition has foreigner restrictions for the matchday squads.

Unfortunately, I only noticed this after the transfer window, which meant a number of new signings would have to be left out for each match. The league allowed 6 foreigners (5 non-Asian) and the domestic cups 4 foreigners (3 non-Asian), but thankfully no-one came to me at all throughout the season to moan regarding their playing time. The reputation of the club is such that the foreigners that I was able to sign drastically improved the squad and really pushed us to be the main contender for the domestic competitions.

Key Signings

Gelli was my first signing as manager, picked up on a free transfer after he left Lazio. He was instrumental in the attacking midfield role throughout the season.

Travis Clark was just one of a number of really enticing signings I could have made from the American amateur teams. However he did lock-in a training facility upgrade as a promise during negotiations, and has since thrown his toys out of the pram as I wasn't able to get it approved by the board. If he continues to be unhappy, I might cash in to free up a foreigner spot.

Tobias Guddal is up there in the conversation for best signing, along with Gelli. He was on the transfer list at Bryne for £16k and I was more than happy to part with the money to bring him in as our first choice centre-back. With his height, he was deadly from set-pieces too, chipping in with key goals all season long.

We started the season with the preliminary round of the Confederation Cup and we saw off Mongolian opposition in a high-scoring 2-legged tie. Up next was a North Korean team, Rimyongsu. Despite being favourites, we had to scramble a late equaliser in the first leg to remain level, and we missed a host of chances in the 2nd leg to lose 3-2 and miss out on the group stage. We surpassed them in xG in both legs but poor finishing let us down.

I was expecting a challenge from Lee Man for the league but in reality, it was an absolute breeze. We were head and shoulders above the competition, starting the league season with a 10 game winning streak, and only dropping points on 2 occasions. It was really remarkable how comfortable it was.

With 3 domestic cups, we had a chance to make it a quadruple of competition wins. Both the Hong Kong FA Cup and Hong Kong Senior Challenge Shield had us entering at the quarter final stage, with only 3 wins separating us from the trophy. We came unstuck at the first hurdle against Lee Man in the FA Cup, but strolled to success in the Senior Challenge Shield without too many issues.

And finally, we had the Hong Kong Sapling Cup, with a quite bloated 8 game group stage. The aim of the cup seems to be to promote youth involvement, as you're required to have 3 Under-22 domestic players on the pitch at all times. It didn't hinder us in any way as we strolled through to top the group, before comfortable wins in the semi-final and final. Gelli recorded an average rating of almost 9 in this competition, such was his dominance.

And this is the squad that led us to success. Valerio Gelli was brilliant and definitely too good for this league. He formed a really good partnership with Mamadou Bah; don't be fooled by the poor star rating for the Guinean striker, his key (and only) attributes were his pace and finishing, and that's easily enough to have success in Hong Kong, as it brought him 25 goals. I was pleasantly surprised by our domestic wingers Poon Pui Hin and Kong Chin Man, who rotated in and out and were able to chip in with assists and goals.

One thing to note is that Charlie Scott, our captain (and highest earner), is leaving in the summer on a free, along with a few other first-teamers. We also have a lot of the unused domestic players leaving, which opens the door for a bit of a rebuild, be it through some domestic additions, or utilising the youth team (our U18s also won a trophy this season).

So it was a Hong Kong domestic treble to add to the CV. My only regret was bottling the continental preliminary rounds, as it would have been nice to have had a group stage to contend with, purely for the finances and potential of a reputation boost. I have a year left on my contract and I'm happy enough to stay as the team is young and good, and I do think we will be clear favourites next season to sweep the domestic scene. However, our finances are troubling; we lost approximately £600k over the course of the season, despite me not using all of the available wage budget. I'll keep an eye on the job market just in case something enticing becomes available over the off-season.

**Dan** · 11-01-2023, 03:52 PM

I've been playing the console version of FM but after starting at Uruguay, making two WC semi finals with a Copa America title in between, then moving to Porto & winning three title in three years & heading off to Newcastle just to win the league there too, I'm definitely convinced that the console version is easy mode. As such, I've decided to pay up for the real thing & probably get the absolute shit kicked out of me.

Loaded up all the main European leagues & a bunch of the middling ones, then started unemployed at the end of December to see what jobs came up. I applied for a few jobs - Ibiza in the Spanish second tier, Ascoli in the Italian second tier, Fatih Karagümrük in the Turkish Süper Lig & a couple of League 1/2 gigs like Crawley. After a few interviews I ended up getting offered the job in Ibiza, but with a few other jobs still pending I delayed for a week & ended up getting an offer from the team that I thought was probably the least likely to actually hire me.

FC Groningen are currently sitting 14th in the Eredivisie & have a very weird squad that's mostly made up of attacking midfielders & full backs, with hardly anything everywhere else, but they're big on youth, with superb youth & training facilities & a squad that's extremely young. I've knocked together a few tactics to get started with, but we have no money & we're already £6k over our wage budget, so I'll probably have to move on a few of the seven thousand attacking midfielders we have so that we can get some strikers & defenders in.

I've not played full fat FM in several versions, so it'll probably take some time to get used to all the squad dynamics & stuff like that which has been introduced since, but hopefully we'll have enough to hover around mid-table & I can start to figure things out properly in the summer.

**Sir Andy Mahowry** · 11-01-2023, 04:34 PM

Palamós CF 2030/31 Season Update:

Transfers Out:

I did not want the Polish/French lad to go but he was angry that we didn't upgrade the training facilities like he wanted (cheers board) and my efforts to appease him didn't go well. I then told him if he wants to leave it will have to be for his release clause of £19.5m which he was fine with. Early bids were shocking but with a week to go he decided he wanted to stay then out of the blue Cardiff paid his release clause and off he went.

He was here as a backup including his loan spell but this year he was annoyed at that so I let him go with St Patty's (alright, Giggles) offering the most.

Transfers In:

A lot here due to the WARCHEST, I also did a lot of business early which is why some of them are listed as last season.

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League:

The goal for this year was to never be in a relegation battle and sadly we failed. We were actually in the relegation zone for 4 games straight which is a longer period than last season IIRC. We started ok but November and December were atrocious which made me panic and go spend in January, thankfully our signings had an immediate effect as we won 5 of 6 conceding 0 in those 5 wins. The Valencia result was because we had 3 of our back 4 out so struggled massively. Sadly Barca beating us cause a poor run of form which we suffered with again at the end.

Cup:

Annoying to go out earlyish especially to a team in a lower division but I think it helped us during January/February.

Squad:

I'm fairly happy with the squad, I want to shift some of the 22/23 year old crap that I signed for bench options in my first season but I think the starting 11 is fairly good. The worry is that the Costa Rican striker (who finished third in the golden boot) is wanted by Frankfurt. We need another striker as we don't really have one and struggled when he got injured but I do not want to lose him.

**Jimmy Floyd** · 11-01-2023, 06:26 PM

You seem allergic to players older than about 25.

Never seen this one before in all my long years:

Toggle Spoiler

I would be seething if I was on the wrong end of that.

**Baz** · 11-01-2023, 06:39 PM

Gamebreaking negotiation bug found on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/footballman...tm_name=iossmf

**Sir Andy Mahowry** · 11-01-2023, 06:56 PM

Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd

You seem allergic to players older than about 25.

Never seen this one before in all my long years:

Toggle Spoiler

I would be seething if I was on the wrong end of that.

I have 4 of them, 3 of which are keepers. That's plenty.

**Sir Andy Mahowry** · 11-01-2023, 07:01 PM

I've made my first two signings of the season and I'm going to share now as I'm pretty excited about them.

Both are Serbia and from Red Star:

He's the more expensive of the two at £6m but he's more of a project. A natural CB who I will be training at AMC henceforth (handy that he's already accomplished there tbh), I have no idea why he thinks he's a CB with his tackling, marking and positioning. He compares very similarly to my current starting AMC and I think he could be really good there.

At £3.7m I couldn't believe my luck and had him signed before the season had finished. This kid could be absolutely World Class.

**Sir Andy Mahowry** · 11-01-2023, 07:02 PM

Originally Posted by Baz

Gamebreaking negotiation bug found on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/footballman...tm_name=iossmf

wtf.

**Gray Fox** · 12-01-2023, 01:35 AM

It's still hovering at poor now though.

Still we've made it to the league split:

What you will notice is how much Olympiakos have caught up. In fact, after we beat them in a game before the World Cup, they went on a run of 14 wins and 2 draws in their next 16 games.
Still though we're all but guaranteed a top two finish. We've have to lose pretty much half of the games and Panathinaikos win almost all 10 to catch us. It's also head-to-head rather than goal difference as the tie breaking procedure here, so should we not come out of that against Olympiakos worse, then their task is even greater.

I'll be quite disappointed if we throw away the title from here. From research it may also fix this squad mutiny business as winning a competition will up my reputation somewhat.

I was also given £800k to spend in January and set to signing Toni Lato. He's not outstanding but it was a good price (£400k ish) and he is an upgrade on our current LB, who is both at his peak and a non-EU player, so this is a bonus all around. He's not spectacular but he should bring profit down the line too.

**thommo** · 12-01-2023, 11:03 AM

Just got to mid-June in the off season and got a message in the inbox stating that Hong Kong U23s (a team who finished 5th in the division last season) are taking 4 of my (under-23) players on loan. No negotiation, just a statement that they'll be off for the entire campaign. It seems to be an arrangement in the league to allow younger players to get more first-team football but 2 of the players they've taken played key roles for me last season.

**Gray Fox** · 13-01-2023, 01:39 PM

The season is done.

Olympiakos only won half of their championship group games in the end, so it wasn't such a worry.

Unsurprisingly I won Manager of the Year and Araujo has gone from telling me I'm unfit, to dedicating awards to me. We also dominated the seasonal player awards:

You can really see who was trusted and who wasn't. My unsung player of the season is Jens Johnson. He's sat at the base of that midfield with a composure rating of 16 and it's really showed. He receives the ball a lot under pressure and stays calm to move it on.

In fact the midfield 3 is what I attribute our success to. It's just better then the rest of the leagues, bar Olympiakos. I'd like to keep Pineda for next year at least, but they just quote me his release clause of £19.5m which we cannot do.
We will be losing all of the guys whos contracts end this year. This should save us around £50k p/w in wages. 3 of them are also non-EU players, which helps free up spots for potential others.

As for next seasons budget:

Combined with losing the players above, that's about a spare £140k p/w in wages I have floating about. I reckon I could get 5-6 quality players in for that, if they'll come to me of course. A top player for us is on about £30k p/w.

Financially we're okay. The club did lose about £5m over the course of the season, but I sit here after the end of season awards still awaiting any prize money. The main reason for that deficit in cash is the stadium issue.
The temporary stadium holds just shy of 15,000 people. We have 23,000 season ticket holders and a further 15,000 on a waiting list. The stadium we were due to move into has completely vanished and now on the boards list of objectives for next year is to build a new stadium. Really the club needs a 40k seater. What happens next, I don't know.

We go into next seasons Champions League at the third qualifying round stage, with Olympiakos in the 2nd qualifying round. For a club with currently £600k in the bank, getting to that group stage would be mega. I've no idea how much you get for failing at that stage, but I do know getting to the final play off round at the least is crucial. You either go into the group stage and are showered with riches, or get paid £4m for losing and also go into the Europa League groups for even more cash.

For now free transfers and bargain bin shopping is the order of the day.

**Baz** · 13-01-2023, 02:04 PM

Let's see Levi Garcia?

**Gray Fox** · 13-01-2023, 02:11 PM

His pace solves those first touch problems.

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