FM23 | A Compilation of Saves

[Fudal]

Oh and our starting GK, RB, CB, and ST are all on international duty for both legs!

[Fudal]

They did not belong in this tie.

[Fudal]

Now for a new save. I have been aware of FC St. Pauli for the past couple years, but only recently have I realized how good of a fit the club is for me. If you are unaware, the club is filled with left-wing ideals, and the club and its fans participate in lots of social activism. This is something that I resonate with, with myself being a young, left-leaning person. The supporters even fly a banner featuring a picture of Che Guevara at some matches, and having read Guerilla Warfare, I love this . The club also has a strong LGBTQ+ fanbase and culture around the club, which suits the way I grew up, having gay friends and sisters. The club is truly a perfect fit for me.

I've decided to go with myself as manager, although I can't put my true age, I will be 20 instead.

On the football side of things, tactically we will be playing extremely high pressing football, the German way. We're playing to soak up pressure, and counter fast and directly. We will be a team of runners, and will focus on bringing in physically gifted athletes to help us play the way we want to.

Goals of the Save:

We will also be tracking every goal and appearance to make sure these stats are accurate.

We will also try and make an appearance with a player from every country in FM:

These will be updated at the end of every season.

The Squad:

This means that the potential nations we could tick off include: Bosnia, Germany, Austria, Greece, Croatia, Kosovo, Poland, South Korea, Nigeria, Australia, Sweden, and Togo. Great Place to start.

Key player:

Hartel will be our roaming playmaker, and he has already gotten an assist in the first match.

[Fudal]

We've made a sale as Lukas kicked up a fuss, so he's off to Bologna.

[Fudal]

3.8m for the former LC Sailors and Benfica man. He'll be our AP(S) on the left. 

[Fudal]

We've been okay so far, plenty of CB goals, but we fall apart in the second halves, probably due to how intense our tactic is.

We will hopefully come top 5 this season, that's my goal.

[Fudal]

We have played very well, barring our lack of goals in October. Still conceding late goals, but I just found out I could make 5 subs so hopefully we should be doing better late in matches for the rest of the season. For now, we wait 2 months for the world cup to end and get our next match.

We're into the top 3 after our victory against Karlsruhe.

[Fudal]

Slight update from another save I've been playing aside from the St. Pauli one. The Gambification of Gyor in Hungary's second tier. 

[Fudal]

Also we have an Israeli and South Sudanese regen holding down the right wing from the CU Academy in Australia!

[Fudal]

Back to St. Pauli

Decent youth intake. I will sign all these up, but my favorite players are:

Nigerian/German Adam Ogbonna looks like a great winger. He needs to improve his off the ball, but if he does that he could be a first team player for us.

Klaus Frede looks like he could be a decent player, should he develop his passing, positioning, marking and vision. Very raw.

German/Turkish Recep Yilmaz looks like he could be the GK of the future.

[Fudal]

Rebuilding AJ Auxerre

AJ Auxerre is a football club based in Auxerre in the region of Burgundy. The club is known for its purple patch in the 90's-00's. They won a Ligue 1 title, and four French Cups in that time period. In FM, the club boasts excellent youth + training facilities, and play at the Stade Abbe-Deschamps, named after the founder of the club.

The manager:

Valter Kovacevic is a randomly generated person who I generated via behindthename.com. He is a 19 year old Slovenian who has been plunged into the deep end as manager of Auxerre.

The Save:

- Youth only

- Will allow players to pursue realistic moves for their career. If a bigger club comes in for a talented prospect, we will sell them. If a similar reputation team from La Liga or the Premier League comes in I will also allow them to leave. If they are not playing for us regularly, I will allow them to leave.

- Will not be giving any non trained at club players any contracts. This means I will not be extending any contracts for a majority of the first team. 

- I will be allowing myself to resign players, but only if it is realistic.

- This is a one club save, so all job offers will be turned down, which might ruin the realism for some, but this is the way I want to play.

The Squad:

Just the five homegrown players. I can't wait until we have a full squad of them.

[Fudal]

Youth Intake Preview:

I'm very excited for our first crop of players. We'll see how these players pan out.

[Fudal]

A very good January puts us 6th in the league.

[Fudal]

A poor crop for our first season, in a year that would've hopefully been the backbone of our first team.

Here is the spreadsheet I will be tracking these players with. Only the 4 nationalities, and very poor personalities overall. After this intake I sacked our guy, and we are bringing in a Finnish Model Citizen.

The players:

A two footed attacking player. His new position for us is on the left as an inside forward. Hopefully giving him the following traits:

- Tries tricks

- Tries to beat offsides trap

- Knocks ball past opponent

- Cuts inside from both wings

This player will hopefully be our forward of the future. His traits will (hopefully) be

- Tries tricks

- Moves into channels

- Tries to beat offsides trap

This player is unfortunately another attacking player, who will be training his weaker foot before anything. He will be an inverted winger on the right. We will try to give him

- Runs with ball often

- Get rid of comes deep to get ball and replace it with tries to beat offsides trap

He needs a lottt of work.

Lele is a midfielder, who will be training as a DLP(D) and he will be running sprints for about the next decade to improve his pace. Traits:

- Tries long range passes

- Tries killer balls often

- Stays back at all times

Francois Pastor is a decent LB prospect, who will be training as a WB(A) to improve his attacking abilities. He will also be on endurance training. No traits for him, as he's not the most gifted footballer.

Yet another attacker who will be training on the right as an inverted winger, and he will be training his set pieces, so that we have at least one decent set piece taker. Traits:

- Runs with ball often

- Tries tricks

- Tries long range free kicks

Florent Dumont will be training as a Inside forward on the left to fit our tactic. He's never going to be anything special, but hopefully we can fix his personality.

[Fudal]

I've decided to do the classic VNLS/N to the Premier League save. My first ever experience with Football Manager was a FM 2017 mobile game with Concord where I got them to the Championship, and then gave up. I want to do one better in this save.

I'm going to do this with a big focus on player and youth development, taking lots of inspiration from @_Ben_'s great Guadalajara save in FM19? FM20 I can't remember. I want to build a team of great personalities to make development easier.

We've been hired on a 650 p/w one year deal.

The squad is very thin, and we only have one mentor with a good personality, Ryan Blackman, with a driven personality. Driven has high ratings in Ambition and Determination, and he will hopefully be a positive influence on these two prospects.

He's training as a CM(A) to fit in with the tactic I'm using. I want to give him the following traits:

- Gets forward whenever possible

- Tries killer balls

- Tries long range passes

This lad isn't good, but I needed someone to make the mentoring group 3 players.

 

[Fudal]

Signing number one for the save. He looks great for this level. He needs to improve his off the ball, but he looks like a solid left inside forward.

Jobson looks like a really good BPD for this level. Needs to improve his strength + personality.

Another young player for Blackson to tutor.

And our final signing of the window. He looks very decent, but his technicals could use some work.

[Fudal]

Match one down, Andrew with a hat-trick on his first ever career appearance!

Burwood with a decent first game. (6.7 AR, 1 yellow, 2 dribbles, 93% pass completion percentage)

[Fudal]

Our new HOYD has the best determination + personality combo I could find.

Match number 2 went about as well as anyone could have hoped for. A goal for Qureshi, Andrew, and Jobson, 3 of my new signings. Qureshi also had a great assist.

Match day 3 was a mid-week match and it went fine. We managed to get all 3 points, even with a poor match from our main man Elliot Andrew, who will be getting fined for poor performance.

Match day 4 was an extremely frustrating match as we lose top spot to a 94th minute goal. We had set up shop deep in our half, and a deflected long shot goes in. Jobson and Andrew played extremely poorly.

Match day 5 was our first loss. A match which we deserved to win all things considered. Half of their XG came from their penalty.

Triple their xG. 3 more clear cut chances. And they score their first 2 shots on target.

[Fudal]

My cat pressed my PC button mid update. 

We signed big Sam!

I instant resulted and we came away with a better scoreline, but still a win.

We unfortunately lost 2 points in the re-sim of this one. It is what it is.

A dominant performance, but we only scored twice. Into the third qualifying round, and hopefully making some money.

We've signed a new GK. Not the best determination or personality, but he's a quality SK for this level.

Our first fully played game of the update, and it was a great victory over the league leaders.

The league sees us in a great position. We have no business being here. Also go Morocco!!!

[Fudal]

A dominant win in the 3rd qualifying round of the FA Cup.

After going down to 10 men, and missing a penalty! We managed to win the match late. We go top with this win.

Their GK made 14 saves.

To strengthen our attack we've signed this lad to play CM(A).

Forgot to show the first match against Southend in the FA Cup 4th Qualifying round. But this is how the first half went in the second match. I gave the penalty to our GK as a joke and he hit a powerful strike into the top corner.

After we made all 3 subs, they just started kicking the **** out of us. We got 2 injuries, and were down to 9 men by extra time. Very unhappy, as we deserved to win this game.

[Fudal]

Our run has been nothing short of incredible for the last 8 games.

Top!

[Fudal]

I needed another save to run along my Finn Harps save, so I'm back to the nearly men challenge. As everyone knows, it's the save that never ends.

I wanted a clean restart of the save, so I've started a new save, and I'm using the workshop database that uses the old CL format.

I've spun a wheel to decide which club I will use, and as a reminder here are the 20 eligible teams at the start of the save.

And Leverkusen is the club we're using.

And it begins!

[Fudal]

This is a very good side, I'm aiming for this to take less than 5 years, so I can get off to a good start.

Going for the typically bat-**** insane Nearly Men tactic.

[Fudal]

Jonathan Tah leaves, so we had to bring in a CB.

[Fudal]

A very poor start to life in the Bundesliga, but we're through to face City in the CL. We're definitely losing to City, and I worry we won't get a CL place next year. This is looking all Neverkusen.

[Fudal]

Not sure how we've beaten them with a very weak side. They have Haaland ffs.

[Fudal]

[Fudal]

[Fudal]

This season has been so baffling. How are we so good???

[Fudal]

????

[Fudal]

Leg one to us. We foul so much, we're going to have so many players suspended for the next round.

[Fudal]

We could genuinely beat any side in the world right now.

[Fudal]

Note we just beat his team 1-0 in the home leg. Away leg is up now.

The luck has been insane this season.

[Fudal]

5th place is really poor, but we've been rotating for a while.

Two cup finals up next, the first of which is the DFB Pokal final against Mainz.

[Fudal]

11th minute: Florian Wirtz plays through Sardar Azmoun and he scores !!! 1-0 Leverkusen!

13th minute: Only two minutes later Azmoun scores his second from an indirect freekick!! 2-0 Leverkusen!!

44th minute: Diaby runs wide with the ball and crosses deep to the edge of the area and Palacios scores an incredible volley! 3-0 to the good guys!

At half time academy prospect Spilotis comes on for the injured Callum Hudson-Odoi.

70th minute: Charles Aranguiz sends in a corner. It's only cleared as far as the edge of the box, and they play it back to him and he scores!!

81st minute: Azmoun completes his hattrick with a chipped goal in the 1 on 1!

90th minute: Right as we make our subs to kill the game Konighaus goes through on goal and scores! 5-1 Leverkusen.

Up next is the CL final vs. Liverpool!

[Fudal]

The 11s are out, the form is inconsistent for both sides, and Anna Meybodi has no clue what they're talking about. He's 100/100 on fitness and sharpness.

[Fudal]

17th minute: A goal mouth scramble after a great Trent cross leads to Tapsoba clearing the ball off of Salah and it goes in . 1-0 Liverpool.

45th minute: A low driven cross from Hincapie lands on the boot of Schick and he dispatches for 1-1.

63-72nd minutes: A flurry of 3 goals in 9 minutes from Diaby, Keita and an Aranguiz penalty leads to 3-2 Leverkusen.

However in the 86th minute, Darwin Nunez scores a close range volley from a Salah cross and it's 3-3!!!

On to added time we go.

A red card for a two footed lunge in the 115th minute!!! Leverkusen are down to ten men!!

118th minute: After minutes of pressure from Liverpool and about a 30 second highlight of crosses coming in non-stop, Tapsoba finally clears. The ball finds its way to Diaby, who runs into the box and wins a penalty!!

Sardar Azmoun SCORES!!! 4-3!!!

[Fudal]

I've played this season in about 4 hours, instant resulting all but the final 2 matches. I IR'd the games, not expecting this season to be much of anything. Then we went and did the double .

[Vakama2619]

Congrats mate

[Fudal]

Just bought the in-game editor and decided to do a save with it. I want to build a Red Bull-esque system of clubs, under the brand of Coca Cola. I know, another drink brand so I am completely ripping off of Red Bull, but it was the first brand I thought of. Now, Red Bull's first foray into Europe was with RB Salzburg, so we're starting with a similar tier of nation, Switzerland. So, I've taken over Coca Cola Neuchâtel with our first manager. The second club that Red Bull took over in Europe, was a lower league German side, so I'm going with a lower league English side. This will be Coca Cola London, and we're replacing Dulwich Hamlet. The third club is a Portuguese club, in order to be able to get work permits for the other two clubs. This club will be replacing Beira-Mar, and it will be Coca Cola Aveiro.

Off we go!

[Fudal]

The club starts with only 8 staff members, including LeBlanc. He has almost two dozen slots to fill with young coaches, as will be the Coca Cola way.

The squad is decent, with plenty of young talent to work with.

We will work on training them to become more versatile, and become better suited to our style of forward-thinking football.

We've signed this lad on loan to be our striker for this season.

The same thing with staff applies here, and to Aveiro. We will hire as young as we can, to hopefully hit on some potentially great staff members.

For this level, it's a very good squad, and we also have plenty of great young talent that will be getting game time. Notably, Antonis Sotiriou and Shehu Ibrahim.

The defensive midfielder will be staying in the 6 role in our 4-3-3 and will be featuring heavily.

Shehu will be our #9 this season, hopefully bagging plenty of goals, but he also has some great playmaking to his game, so we're also training him as a winger.

We have 0 staff at the club, so we know nothing about our players star wise. But I saw this kid sitting in our under 19's and I think he could be special.

He's going to be our starting B2B this season. I could see him receiving a call up to Neuchatel very soon.

[Fudal]

Staffing has gotten underway at all 3 Coca Cola clubs, and we're hiring with a vision for the future. With this being said, I've set a guideline for staff. No one over the age of 45 will be signed as a member of staff. We're hanging our hopes on coaches with high PA to guide us forward.

After signing most of our candidates here is how the backroom staff looks now.

Here is our HOYD, great personality.

Here is our assistant. Hopefully he can be the first manager trained under the tutelage of LeBlanc.

And one of our coaches. Icon of two different clubs.

And here is our DOF.

And our staff here looks like this, albeit without a goalkeeping coach.

Another Professional HOYD.

And a very decent Ass-Man for this level. He looks like he could be a decent manager, should he choose to go that route.

And we have a pretty poor DOF.

Almost no staff wants to be here, because we can only afford around 200 pounds per week for HOYD and Ass-Man roles.

[Fudal]

July Update

We're top of the league.

We dominated our friendlies.

Nothing going on here. Season starts in September.

[Fudal]

August Update

We signed Oumar Niasse at the end of the month on a free. Way better than anyone we could've had up top.

Decent in the league, albeit an abrupt end to our good form.

Our goal difference keeps us top.

We finally have enough data to show who's been playing, and who's been playing well. Fatkic and Hammerich boss our midfield and will hopefully guide us to promotion this season.

We lost to a poor Eastbourne team. Not happy with that result, but at least we bounced back.

We should be in the top 3 at least after our next game.

Mills is making it extremely hard to drop him for Ibrahim. Sotiriou and Clayton are also getting good minutes.

Only two friendlies, a win and a loss.

[Fudal]

Bringing this thread back from the depths, with a journeyman save. For the beginning, it will only be these European leagues:

Job #1: Shakhter Petrikov, Belarussian 2nd tier.

First things first we get our coaching course started.