[FM24] Many players, much squad depth

[turnip]

Old club update, a quarter of a century in and not at all an excuse to get the next update onto the next page

Lusitania Lourosa: still in the Portuguese Premier League, still paying a ton of players a ton of money, still pumping out really good youngsters, but falling off a bit in the league. Currently in 7th. 

Reggiana: have been a bit of a yo-yo between Serie A and Serie B. Currently in Serie A. Remarkably, they still have a player I signed for them, a 34-year old Manuel Puggelli, who is the all-time league appearance record holder, with 458. 

Dinamo: have won every league title except the last one, which Hajduk won. More money than sense, to be honest. 

1860 Munchen: won their second-ever Bundesliga last season. The core of the first-team squad is still players I signed for them. Currently leading the Bundesliga. Jim Daly has become even more disgusting than I thought he would 

Partizan: have been reliably meh since I left

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Season 25: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

A generally good few months. We have, bear in mind, avoided the big teams in the league so far except the one match against Porto. We deserved to lose against Estoril Praia, Porto and Famalicao in the cup.

In Europe, our second goal against Inter flattered us hugely, but they do have ten players earning £300k p/w or more.

If we've struggled to put other teams to bed , it's possibly the result of a few injuries. The loss of Mayoral in the summer also has probably had a bigger impact on the team than I expected. 

Porto leading the league is funny as I anticipate how many players they'll be forced to sell in the January window. Knowing how fickle the fates can be, the answer will probably be "none" combined with "billionaire investor takeover". 

 

We've been forced to sell Mehmet Mandirali, which is a shame. I wasn't paying attention in the summer and promised we'd sell him once we'd signed a replacement and that being considered a Promise, we then couldn't cheer him up enough to get a new contract signed. I've done a lot of scouting to see who we can bring in to replace him. The January window should be an interesting one. 

[turnip]

Season 25: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

Well, that was certainly a month. We deserved to lose against Lusitania, but the defeat to Porto in the cup was a bit harsh. 

In Europe, Arsenal edged the xG courtesy only of a penalty that they missed late on. Diarrassouba, scoring from a corner, punished them for their profligacy.

Lazio were a lot better and there was definitely an element of clinging on in that match. I do find it funny that we generally do better against English teams than Italian. Possibly that's a factor of the Italian leagues being active more than the English ones. Anyway, we've qualified for the Champions League Round of 16. So we only have a 'very' busy February, not a horrendously busy one. 

Transfers Out

Confirmation that Mehmet Mandirali left for a meagre fee. Matar Kone also left us; his perceived potential dripped downwards fairly regularly and he didn't develop enough to balance it out. 

In 'I wasn't paying attention, but it wouldn't have helped me anyway' news, I let our backup GK go out on loan and recalled our next best backup to the club only to find that he'd played for two teams in the last year and couldn't be registered for league matches. 

Transfers In

We now have money, so I took the opportunity to spend some of it. Mostly on pretty modest fees, but there are a lot of signings there. For those of you unfamiliar with the club names, most of these are 4th tier in Spain or lower. Most of the signings are prospects who were quite poorly rated by my scouts because they have low reputation. There are a few exceptions, though. 

James Bala is a player - and allow me to choose my words carefully here - whose talent as a footballer I have been tracking since he made his debut for the Nigerian U20 team at the age of 14. His contract is up this summer and if Lusitania don't extend his contract I'm hoping we can pick him up on a free. 

We also needed a new DR after letting Matar Kone leave, and Barden is in on loan to be a decent option until the end of the season while my scouts try to find a good DR. 

James Ocampo is probably the best young Target Man option within my budget. He also has the Mor Talla Traore bonus of being really good at shooting with his feet. He's still quite undercooked, but if there's potential there I think he could end up being really good.

Kopanu Mohau is the mostly replacement for Mehmet Mandirali. He's not as well-rounded, but he does have a nice attribute distribution and if all he does is ping the ball around I'd be happy with that.

Damir Kepcija was a U19 Croat international playing at a non-league German team. Already looks good and turn out to be anywhere between 'good' and 'amazing'. 

Vasilis Drosos has a very solid Technical base for a 16 year old and a bunch of attributes at 8/9. Another "how good could he be?!?!?" player signed for £75k. 

Angel Ferre could have the potential to turn into a very good player. An all-rounder, I guess. Or we could flog him in a year or two for a nice fee.

Agustin Navarro is the best of the rest of the AMCs we signed. Again, lots of good attributes, but nothing amazing yet. How good could he get? Ooh, a mystery..!

[turnip]

Season 25: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

A good end to the season. Not a huge fan of 4 out of 6 of our last matches being against the tougher teams in the league, though. Still, better to have most of those be Home games. It's just as well we scored lots of goals because our defense was pretty shambolic at times (a lot of the time, in truth). 

In Europe, our mostly second-string team were competitive against Ajax, but that's where our 'fun' ended. The same in the cup. But cups suck ass. 

We went into the last 4 matches level on points with Benfica, who had a game in hand over us. Our deserved, but slightly silly, 6-2 win over them moved us clear, a situation compounded when they lost unexpectedly to Academica. We were never going to have as jolly a time at the Stadium of Light, and did well to escape with only a one-goal loss. That meant we went into the final game of the season against my former team, with Benfica playing Away to Braga. We eked out the win over Lusitania - Kopano Mohau scoring the best of the goals - and Benfica got a more convincing win. So where did that leave the league table?

Gotta love Goal Difference. 

I feel a little sorry for Maia Lidador, who've now twice been up to the top tier in their history and finished dead last on both occasions. They got a point more this season, at least. 

Ac. Viseu were the next club to go into Administration, a few others are at 'Insecure' and Famalicao are "In Debt". Porto's financial black hole seems to have improved without anything happening. Lusitania are the only club besides us considered "Rich".

 

A good season from the players, with no-one particularly stinking it up except Sipilante, who somehow won the NxGn in the midst of being faintly **** a fair amount of the time. Honestly, I'm hoping someone comes in for him in the summer - he's not good enough at any of the positions he's allegedly a 'Natural' in. 

Luca Rizzato had an okay season, but I've already agreed to sign his replacement - he was the best we could get at short notice for this season, but he takes some of the blame for us leaking goals like a damaged colander. Cardenas, too, is like a deer in the headlights wearing rollerskates on ice whenever the ball's at his feet and I reckon him wildly hacking the ball 'anywhereogodjustmakeitgoaway' cost us between 5-10 goals, so I'll sell him if someone wants him. Which may cause problems, considering Jose Manuel is also wanted, Diarrassouba's contract is up and Macanovic (who ended up playing DC) is more of a stop-gap than a long-term solution. 

In midfield, Schwindt and Ouedraogo got new contracts, the latter on a pretty steep £38k, but with no MFRC. Schwindt's my bro, though, and is on £3k. . James Bala came in, got injured, came back, got injured and then played well enough on his return from that to get a contract with us for the next 3 seasons. 

Up top, Ocampo was a surprise package - he's very good at finding the net. Joan also justified my decision to bring him in to replace Myles Legg, who decided to keep his options open - while out with a ruptured ACL. What a dick. 

 

The board announced at the end of the season that they're expanding the stadium. 3.7k seats doesn't sound like a lot, but that's more than a third of our existing capacity, so that's nice. 

We also pushed through a couple more upgrades to the facilities. Training still leaves a lot to be desired, but the Youth setup is a lot more promising. Speaking of:

 

Youth Intake

I think I ended up signing a couple of the other players, too; from the ones with 10+ Determination. 

We're still waiting for our previous prospects to amount to much of anything, but this looks like a decent intake. 

To Sala looks like he could be good, but has some work to do to get there. Still, I'm a fan of any striker who comes through the intake being able to Shoot and Head, and his physicals don't suck. So that's something.

Lino Oliveira also looks useful, although I'm hopeless at identifying good GKs when they're this age. That said, he's got a good base to work from.

Joao Costa is my pick of the intake. All the important stuff I want in a DC is already 10+ (well, except Strength, but he is only 15)

Joao Alexandre, meanwhile, takes To Sala's "I can Shoot and Head" and runs with it. Weaker Physicals and Mentals, but I can live with those as long as his potential is where my coaches think it is.

 

Random Player Showcase

Carlos came through the youth academy and was with the club when I joined. He's one of those players who was rated as having good potential, but that potential kept getting rated lower and lower. His contract was due to expire last season, but with the European campaign, I gave him a new contract so we'd have an extra Home Grown player. 

Now I know what you're thinking - he's crap. And yeah, he is. My coaches still think he could become a Premier League player, but I have my doubts - he's considered a Good Portuguese Third Division player and while I think he's a bit better than that, he's not someone you'd want starting in Europe if you could avoid it. However, 3 Goals and 4 Assists in 9(3) Appearances is nothing to sniff at and reinforces that even players of modest ability can make a difference if you're sensible about what you do with them. 

[turnip]

Season 26: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

Transfers

Oumar was the biggest sale of the summer. The first time Inter came in for him, I rejected it and he didn't seem to care. I assume his Agent had words with him after that, though, and when they came in the second time, Oumar made it clear he expected to be allowed to talk to them. They had improved their offer in the meantime, too.

Selling Hermenegildo Sipilante was - in the eyes of the fans and seemingly half the squad - the most heinous thing I've done since taking over. I even had to persuade the board to allow me to accept the bid, since they considered it significantly below his market value. A player, let's remember, who was pretty crap last season.  and we'd signed on a free. It's quite literally infinite profit, guys!

Phillip Seidel's sale also irked some within the squad, but I'd given up giving a **** at that point. I hadn't planned on selling Mendonca or Solomun - both DCs - but the former wanted to leave (to be a Fringe Player??  ) and the latter was in the last year of his contract and I didn't think he was good enough to get a new one. 

Good DRs are as rare as the proverbial leavings of rocking horses, so faced with a paucity of good options going into Deadline Day, I splashed out on a good young player. It's a fair chunk of change, but as long as he develops over the season I think he'll be well worth it.

The lack of pace at the back last season was an issue, and Ivaylo Kostadinov was brought in to try to remedy that. My scout and coaches are distinctly unimpressed by him, but then they loved Hermenigildo Sipilante so what do they know?

With Ouedraogo leaving, I needed to sign another first-team-ready midfielder and Carlos De Los Santos was who I went for. A playmaker, but one who can run around. The Mexico premium is definitely a thing, but we had just received £30m+ so it was easy to justify it.

Alan Francisco Alejandre was brought in to be a flexible option in the defensive half. Is most at home as a DM, but can also play DC or MC. A more or less straight replacement for Diarrassouba, who left at the end of his contract and a definite upgrade on the same.

David Cantwell was signed for more or less the same reason as Alan Francisco Alejandre, albeit earlier. Cantwell isn't quite as first-team-ready, but for less than half a million it was a complete no-brainer. 

Julian Sanchez is our new GK. He's already made his mark as a whiny little **** in the dressing room, annoyed at my decision to sell Sipilante and Seidel, but his performances so far have been a lot better than we got with Rizzato. 

Mateus Tierradentro is our new defensive DR option and rotation/backup DC. He's got a way to go before I stop crossing my fingers whenever he plays at DC, but as a development option I'm happy with him.

Pogisho Mchunu comes in to be the new guy who can play at AML without complaining about it (Joan) and elsewhere when we need him to (Colaianni). A bit raw, too, but I like what I see so far.

 

We also signed the usual raft of youngsters of various description, to fill out the squads. Emmanuel Ally is an interesting player I'm going to try to give game time to - we signed him when I thought Thamer Al-Nefaie was leaving (but he turned down the move to Germany, the maroon) - while Andrea Coco is a promising-looking striker we got on a free from a Belgian non-league club.

 

Fixtures

Good in the league so far, although we got lucky against Sporting. VTSC were also well in the game until they had a man sent off after 30 minutes and we walked the rest of it. The friendly against CD Coria - part of the transfer deal for Juanjo - was the kind of match you'd tear your hair out over if it had meant anything, with their GK playing a blinder, and our backups and youths getting a run-out.

The Champions League fixtures have also been drawn and I can't help but feel we've got a little unlucky:

 

Away from the pitch, we've got upgrades for the Training and Youth facilities underway. The board also decided to expand the stadium by around 30%, which will take us up to a 12k capacity. Nice!

Financially, we're looking healthy, with £80m in the bank. The board are still being stingy with transfer revenue retention - it sits at 58%, but I can't recall a single season of this save where I've needed to spend my entire transfer budget (we're also spending just over half of our Wage Budget) so that's a point of pride more than anything else.

[turnip]

Season 26: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

September - October

Drawing to Academica is no particular shame - they were really good last season. It was a fairly even game. Drawing to then-bottom Vitoria Setubal is a different issue - they suck and the fact they took us to the cleaners every time they came forward was frustrating. The win against Estoril Praia, by comparison, was serene. And that's your league action for 2 calendar months. 

The more I gaze, balefully, at the Champions League draw, the more convinced I am that if the Home/Away matches had been flipped my complaints would have been fewer. I could have happily sent some teenagers to get ritually sacrificed in Manchester if we'd had Home matches against Bilbao and Nice (both of whom drop more on wages for one player than we do for our entire squad). We deservedly lost against Bilbao, mugged Nice and ran away before they knew what had happened, and scored from our two decent chances against Man City. 

In the domestic cups, a very developmental XI were very fortunate to beat an Alcochotense team that mostly matched us for 90 minutes, while a more considered team comfortably beat Feirense in the cup no-one cares about. 

 

Pointless trivia

I post this screenshot of some Champions League fixtures for a couple of reasons. Firstly - as indicated by the exquisitely hand-drawn red outline - the 4 scorers for 1860 Munchen are all players I personally signed for the club. Secondly, check out Raith Rovers getting a draw against the synchronised diving club of Real Madrid (they play in Spain, in case you're unsure). 

 

Random Player Showcase

Laszlo Kusztor was someone we picked up from a team in the 3rd tier of Romania in the summer. We paid £150k for him in November, with him seeing out the remainder of the season in Romania, and I genuinely wasn't sure whether that was the right call. Happily, I'm confident now that it was. Great personality, very solid set of attributes for an AF and can also play as an AMR. We gave him his debut in the Portuguese Cup the weekend after he made his international debut and he bagged two very good goals. Nice!

[turnip]

Not sure what to say about this other than 

 

[turnip]

Season 26: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

November - December

On paper, this looks like a great couple of months. And, well, it's not like they can take those results away from us, so sure - great couple of months. 

Let's caveat that, though, shall we? 5 league matches against not very good teams - I mean Estrela da Amadora have been over-achieving so far this season, but they are pretty mid. The wins against Moreirense and Farense were helped by penalties, if we're being generous to the incompetence of our attackers in those matches and while we were certainly the better team in the games against Penafiel and Feirense, it wasn't exactly dominating stuff. In the cups, we - again - deserved to beat second-tier opposition in Chaves and Boavista (faint praise alert) and only the performance against Braga was what you'd call "good".

In Europe, we were distinctly second-best against 1860 Munchen, although much better against Monaco. The match against Inter was horrifying, though, a real 'hide behind the curtains' game as they racked up over 5xG (including a very soft penalty). We only had 3 good performances - Sanchez in goal, who deserved a much higher rating than a mere 8.0, Ali Chibane who set up our first goal and Pogisho Mchunu who did well to finish our first and then burgled their DR before bending a sumptuous shot into the top corner for our second. We had a good chance to win it in the last 10 minutes, but then they had about 8 in the same time. I spent the entire match alternating between screaming at my players and putting my hands over my eyes. Good grief that was stressful.

I've definitely mentioned before how much I hate that you get to Christmas having played all of a dozen league matches in Portugal. We've had a rash of injuries in December; I'm hoping that'll be including some of the ones we'd normally get in January - we have a relatively small first-team squad and although there are dozens of players in the youth squads or out on loan, there aren't many who could fit right into the team. 

 

Random Player Showcase

One of the many youngsters we signed in the summer for not much money, Sergio has been doing really well for our U19s and is the top goalscorer in the U19 First Division. His Physical attributes leave a little to be desired, but I really like his Mentals for a kid who just turned 17 and I think he could be a really good player. 

[Jimbokav1971]

Only just started to catch up with this, but you are signing players like a madman! 🤣

Love it! 👏 

[turnip]

Season 26: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

January Transfer Window

A very silly month on the pitch and, for once, we deserved to win most of these matches. Braga is rarely an easy match, but we stomped 'em and Zoran Macanovic (who is now formerly of this parish) had the best match of his career against Maritimo (2 Assists and a Goal). The cup match sandwiched between those two was another that threatened to make me anxious before Alvaro Cortes - on debut - grabbed a couple of good goals. The trouncing of Kolos in the Champions League was sublimely serene stuff that secured our spot in the Playoffs, which meant that I sent a mostly-rotated team to Lyon with a shrug, only to see them inflict our hosts' second 4-6 loss in a row in Europe, the other coming against ZTE (ouch!). That match coming 2 days (!) after our Beer Cup Semi Final against Sporting seemed a bit harsh. But then we've got 10 matches in February, so let's just get started on the 

 

Transfers

A fairly sedate month on the transfer front, with a couple of notable exceptions.

Zoran Macanovic had been a useful DR/DC rotation option, and was having a good season, but he wanted to leave when Vigo came in for him and with his Potential dropping, it was time to let him leave. We also received an offer from Leeds for Santiago Schwindt on Deadline Day, but it was a crap bid and even though he's hardly indispensable I wasn't going to sell him for less than the lower-end of the value the game slapped on him. He wasn't impressed. 

Our two Sudanese captures this window. Ahmed Bakhit Ali Malek (who I might just call Bam) has a good overall level of attributes for a just-turned-18-year-old DC. He was going to ride out the season in our U23s, but Ligue 2 bottom-feeders Amiens wanted to take him on loan, which suits me just fine.

Abdalla Ali was the one of the two I'd been keeping an eye on for the longest. He's another I wasn't planning on doing much with this season, but Sanchez was out for most of the month and our backup is rubbish, so Ali has already made 3 appearances and done pretty well. 

Facundo Silva is a player whose agent approached me after his contract with River expired. I'd been interested in signing him when he left Ferro 8 seasons ago but when he chose River I just wrote him off. High wages (for us) but he's an excellent all-round option in midfield and gives us a player who's actually competent at taking Free Kicks.

Marcello Ontiveros is the replacement for Macanovic. Another we've had to shell out for, but I do think he'll be worth it. Physicals are a little low for the price, but he's still only 18 and should develop into a really good full-back/centre-back option. 

 

Off the pitch, we can now get over 10k fans to home matches, which is nice. I do enjoy the mental image I had of the board/architects brainstorming what to do with the 9 square metre bit of space they had left after designing the upgrade, with one person finally saying "How about we let some people stand up in there?" and everyone erupts into applause and they go off for a drink.