If you haven’t tried a journeyman save before, give it a go! Having so much fun with it

[DoubleR]

So after years of watching Loki Doki (who has done a journeyman the previous years) I thought I would try it for myself.

Normally I would just pick a one club save and after 3/4 years I would have totally lost interest, often winning it all. I had one longer run starting in the vanarama south in England but for me after a while it feels like a drag. In the end I guess building a club / team and starting “from scratch” so to speak is what I like best. And with a journeyman save you get to experience that new thrill every time you join a new club.

Also it’s such an amazing feeling to get to clubs and leagues you would normally never pick and getting to know the league, the rules, the clubs. For example I started in the Ukrainian first division and they had a rule where you needed to have a certain number of Ukrainian players in your squad. Having to look for those players and having those kinds of “influencers” really tests your skill.

So obviously the real challenge is to start a journeyman without any badges or reputation as an ex-player then you really have to start from nothing. But for my first time I decided to start as an ex player but without any badges. This caused some big clubs to show interest from the start so it did ask some discipline to not go for the big fish right away. I remember marseille wanted me from start for example. But I liked it so much that I might do the above in a future try.

What I also love about the journeyman so far is that you are really able to sort of set out a career path for yourself or not and totally leave it up to faith. I had a goal of going to leagues I never managed in before and wanting to also manage in Scandinavia and in the end ended up in the Dutch league (which is my home league) and until now haven’t been able to go to Scandinavia. 

The best feeling about the journeyman: leaving a club behind much better than before your arrival and seeing it still do great after you left 

So far the clubs I have been to:
Lviv in the Ukrainian first Division
Vitesse Arnhem in the Dutch first division 
Dinamo Zagreb in the Croatian first division 
and currently with RB Salzburg in the Austrian first division. 

I loved Lviv because it was a small club and was suggest to be relegated. Now it’s a club that it structurally in the top 5.

Vitesse as I stated was in a league I know well, but normally I play with Feyenoord so it was still very interesting. When I arrived Vitesse did really really badly and the best players left because of it. So it was a total rebuild job 

I thought about staying another year at Vitesse but then Dinamo Zagreb became available which was one of those bucket list clubs. To be honest I think I liked the club least.. couldn’t really put my finger on it. I guess because even though it’s a good team, because of the league and the overall position people that were good constantly wanted to leave. And my board veto’d a few players to get sold even though we didn’t really need the money. 

Then RB Salzburg came up which maybe was the one club I had on my list that I really wanted to one day manage. The manager was there for ages and then left for Atletico Madrid so even though I was only for two years at Zagreb, I really felt like I should grab my chance. So far I really like it at the club. Because it’s a dominant force in the nation but making a step within the champions league is really tricky...

After Salzburg I’m thinking of going to the Portugese and after that French leagues because I have never managed in those countries and they feel sort of “end game” from the countries I haven’t managed in before ! 

Prizes won so far:
1x Dutch league, 1x Dutch cup 
2x Croatian league, 2x Croatian Cup
1x Europe Conference league 

Countries I have loaded up: Argentina, Brazil, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Ukraine, Finland, Croatia, Italy, Spain, Engeland, Scotland, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Czech, Switzerland

I’m already excited to start a new journeyman in FM22 and going to the countries I wasn’t able to manage this year

Hopefully this post has inspired people to also go for a journeyman save! Would love to hear so if you do and obviously would also love to hear from people who are currently doing a journeyman too or have some interesting stories from the previous time they have done