[FM24] many squads, some players

[turnip]

Šeašon 14: Dinamo, Croatian First League

Youth Intake

Not sure I'm a huge fan of the 'best' two players being wingers when I've just moved away from using wingers, but eh. I'm happy with this, for sure. 

  

It's hard to be annoyed at getting two wingers when these are the wingers you've been given. Nice personalities, too. Honestly, I'm not sure I could say which I prefer. 

  

Skugor has some gaps in his game, that's for sure, but I think there's a good centre-back to be developed. Bagaric, I think, is slightly better than the 4* rating he was given would suggest, given he's being compared to Casian Arsene. Physicals need some work, but that's a really solid technical base to develop from. 

I'm hoping that our new HOYD should start having an impact on our intakes from next season. Not, I should emphasise, that there's much to complain about here. 

[turnip]

Šeašon 14: Dinamo, Croatian First League

February - May

I forget at what point we clinched the league. Possibly after the win over Istra on 15th March - we had to wait a day or two for Osijek to drop points against Hajduk. Osijek actually spent most of the season in 2nd before Hajduk overtook them with a couple of matches left. 

No surprise that we weren't able to turn the Champions League tie around. We played pretty well and had much the better of the match, but despite an xG of 1.95 (to their 0.70), we couldn't put anything away. 

The combination of winning the league early and being out of Europe meant that we could actually ease up a bit towards the end of the season. A bunch of players got some useful game time. Maks Mitrecic was the main benefactor, albeit in part because of injuries to our centre-backs, but Lassina Gbane, Florijan Curic and Sreten Grbenic also got some games under their belt. We bossed both legs of the Cup Final, but obviously only managed to make that count in the second leg.

Grbenic also made two senior appearances for Croatia, which made me squint a little at my computer monitor. 

 

Analysis

I'm not one for staring endlessly at numbers to try to work out what's worked well and what hasn't, but despite bagging 26 goals in all competitions this season, I have felt that we're not really getting the best out of Casian Arsene. He's inarguably our best player, and doesn't really have a hole in his game when he plays as an Advanced Forward, so he should be flambéeing defenders more regularly than he does. So, having worked up the list of numbers below and stared at it for a while, I'm still not really sure. If we can fend off teams this summer (PSG are the one I'm worried about) we'll tweak our tactic again and see if that does anything. I do appreciate that he's not really bad at anything, according to those numbers. 

The numbers do suggest that I should be trying to find more game time for Vanja Macan, though.

Spoiler

There are actually three first-team players missing from this screenshot, but I only just noticed and can't be bothered replacing this one. 

Away from the raw numbers, it was a good season. We sold Traore in March to Botafogo, for £3m or so. His performances hadn't been as good with us shifting away from hoofball. Our Wing-backs played well; Stefano Russo in particular, although having taught him the mystical art of 'kick it past the other guy then run after it', he seemed to stop doing that as much.  Midfield seems stable - our two Croats are both wanted by other teams, but no-one great, and they've both been happy with me rejecting deals for them so far. I'm not opposed to selling Mauricio or Mokoena (who spends half the time injured) if it means I can give Grdenic more game time. 

We've also got a couple of new strikers arriving - another Romanian my scouts love (and I'm a bit more 'meh' on) and an 18-year old Swede from Brommapojkarna, who I think could be terrific - alongside the usual youngsters and a Colombian DL I think could be electric. 

In terms of the talent at the squad, it looks good. 

As usual, I would probably disagree on a few of these players (Abdalla, Hopland, Imaz, Rui, Ballo, Wilson, Vega and Almeida in particular) but it's good to have the depth. We are struggling to recruit genuine Champions League quality to the club - Croatia being flagged as 'Developing' doesn't help there - so being able to bring in cheap youngsters and grow them into quality is very much the way forward. That said, we'll probably lose a bunch of this lot over the summer, so who knows. 

I mentioned Maks Mitrecic earlier and he's developing really nicely.

He's weirdly prone to under-hitting passes and is still a "decent all-rounder" rather than being on a par with the rest of our centre-backs, but his performances have been respectable and I'm confident he'll turn out to be very good. We're training him in the Libero role, in the hope his attribute development is spread out rather than being hyper-focussed on the usual DC stuff. 

Edited February 25 by turnip

[turnip]

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League

Transfers

The most important transfer was one that didn't happen. Casian Arsene remains with our team. His reputation went up a bit before the transfer window opened, which took his in-game valuation to £62-77m, and I assume that was more than any of the interested teams were willing to pay. 

The outs first. Aymar Tchaoule had been signed for £250k from ASEC and spent last season on loan at Marseille; Antwerp won the bidding war for him, eventually (the little eejit turned down the first offer we accepted). Rafa Imaz isn't nearly good enough to be worth £6.75m + 50% ONS, but that's where that bidding war ended up. Stefano Russo played well for us last season, but would have been vexed if we'd turned down Man City - there's no profit on the main fee, but as usual there's the 50% ONS. Andrea Borrelli was another consistent performer but wasn't likely to improve. Zakaria Al Ayoud played fairly regularly for us last season, but not very well, and spent basically the entire season unhappy about his playing time - there are no clauses, but he wasn't great anyway. 

  

  

Sıddık Gültekin had been on my radar for a while without obviously being interested in joining us, but when another team came in for him, I thought I'd take my chances. That actually turned into quite the bidding contest - we basically outbid most of the other teams (including a couple of Premiership teams), both on transfer value and playing time. To say I was surprised when he agreed to join us is an understatement. There's a little debate about how much potential he has, but I think he's plenty good enough for his playing time anyway - if he ends up having full 5* potential, that would just be gravy.

Yeiner Botero was why I was happy to let Stefano Russo leave. He's already better as a player in just about every way, and has a lot of growth potential. The only negative is the non-EU status, but I can live with that. 

Rami Hjalmarsson is someone I was really excited about. He didn't particularly want to join, which is why we've had to give Regular Starter and pretty generous wages, but I think he could become a fantastic player. 

Maicon, meanwhile, is our new DR. Again, someone we'd had an eye on for a while, but with good right-backs not exactly coming up every week in scouting reports, we went in for him. Has the bonus of Italian second nationality. A more defensive option than our first choice, but again, someone I think could improve a lot. 

Elsewhere, Roger Syvertsen is our new mentor, Nicolae Bratoveanu another striker we don't really need, Marcos Cabrera another another striker we don't really need, Walid Refaey and Chukwuebuka Godwin are talented MCs, as is Michal Stanislawski (who is at least spending the season on loan with his former club). 

 

I always love it when I get messages like this:

Fixtures

Without European qualifiers, we've largely been able to play the First XI in every game - although the Second XI were responsible for the dropped points against Sibenik. 

I said in the wrap-up for last season that I was looking to get the most out of Casian Arsene this season, and... I'd say it's worked so far. 

Tactically, we've switched things up again, with a couple of new formations. These are really for domestic matches, where the opposition teams typically park the bus and rely on Counters. We're retaining the 4-1-3-2 for European away days.

  

Our fixtures for the Champions League aren't too this season. 

I think there's a point to be had against Monaco, Roma and Nice and wins against Club Brugge and FC Kobenhavn. Bayern, Watford and Man City seem like lost causes, though. 

[turnip]

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League

Winter Break

Things are proceeding well. The league remains pretty easy - we've dominated possession in just about every game (usually 65-70%) and have the firepower to score goals even if we're not playing all that well. 

In the Champions League, we were deservedly spanked by Bayern, but the win over Man City was a pleasant surprise (albeit quite lucky). The wins over Roma and Watford were pretty emphatic, in performance as well as scoreline. 

In the cup, meanwhile, we're through to the Semi-Finals. The tie falls between league matches against two teams who've already been knocked out, so I can't easily predict who we'll play. Probably Hajduk. 

4 points from the matches against Nice and FC Kobenhavn would put us in with a good chance of qualifying for the Last 16, but Nice are a pretty good team.

Also, with the transfer window due to open again soon, it's pretty clear that Casian Arsene is going to leave. He's been professional enough not to say anything - letting his agent do all of that - but there's a lot of interest in him from teams much bigger than us. Somewhat counter-intuitively (and I'm gonna avoid going on yet another rant about the utterly stupid and broken player valuations in the game), Arsene's reputation went up to Worldwide and his transfer value dropped to £40m-£49m. I explored a new contract, but his agent insisted on a MFRC of at most £49m (  ) and with that level of interest from those clubs, if I can't get over £60m, I'm doing something very wrong. So no new contract. 

We did get Lamin Jammeh on a new deal, though, which is good news as he's both very good and versatile. 

Lastly, with the new patch, my scouts are now finding players again. So that's nice. 

[turnip]

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League

A pretty quiet transfer window. Of the players who left, Hopland is a goalkeeper my scout and coaches all insist could be really good, but hasn't shown any evidence of that so far; Christopher Diaz hadn't really got into the team despite looking like a good player and Jimmy Bwalya is a Zambian MC who I think could be good, but was never close enough to the team (in terms of quality) to justify giving opportunities to. We received a few offers for first-team players, but didn't feel the need to accept any of them and they were all fine with that. 

  

Marius Disler was brought in to be a backup DL. He wasn't particularly cheap, but he's good enough that I don't have to be concerned about playing him, and should have a decent amount of improvement.

Joep Van Der Valk, Marius Samake and Zahid Moran had all been on trial with us while they waited for their 18th birthday. Moran is the best of those three - released from Atlanta United as a 16-year old, but I think he could be a very competent full-back once he's played a couple of seasons. 

 

But, again, the biggest news was that Arsene didn't leave. Consider me very surprised, and very happy. Bayern came in with a couple of low-ball bids - the second was around £50m in total - which I rejected to no complaint from Arsene, and that was it. I warily kept an eye on the end of the transfer window in England/France/Germany, but it passed with no more bids. And, again, I think this is to do with his transfer value randomly changing - this time going up. 

Still, I took the opportunity to offer him a new contract, without speaking to his agent first. And I actually think this was the best idea. Because there were no demands in place. No non-negotiable clauses. I couldn't remember exactly what their wage/fee demands had been last time, so I just slapped down a pile of money, plus a Relegation Release Clause of £0 and they accepted.

I mean, what's the point of having £200m+ in the bank if you can't use it to keep the players you really like? We do need to improve our Coaches, but that's fine. 

Fixtures

We came out guns blazing against Nice and blew them away, and the scoreline against FC Kobenhavn is a poor reflection of how much we dominated that match. We ended up finishing 4th in the League Phase.

 

This will probably be my last season with Dinamo. The ease of winning the league, combined with the difficulty I've had finding good players is a bit of a drag. I'm adding a bunch of leagues to become active at the end of the season and I'll see what my options are. 

[turnip]

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League

Domestically, the season ended much like the last couple had, with total domination. We could almost completely rotate between matches and still roll teams over, as poor Istra 1961 found in the last league game of the season. 

Europeanically, though, I was surprised at how well we played. Coming back from a first-leg deficit against Wolfsburg to smash them in Zagreb was tasty. Chelsea, I was sure would be another bridge too far, but after getting a couple of goals somewhat against the run of play in London, we controlled the second leg and were the better team by a fair margin. Man City were always likely to be too strong, but I'm happy that we gave them a bit of a scare, at least. 

 

And that's that for Dinamo. 

The save's in a bit of a weird place at the moment where there don't seem to be as many good young players around as I'm used to. Scouting - though better since the last patch - isn't really helping massively with that either, and when players do sign, there's often a bit of "Yeah, see boss, about that rating I gave him before...". Plus, as I've already mentioned, there's the whole 'developing' status for Croatia, which seems to be having more of an impact on recruitment than I'm used to. 

 

Anyway, one club had caught my interest as the season progressed. They'd actually brought in a new head coach in December, with things not going well in the league, so I wasn't sure it would be an option but there they are on the Job Centre list. I've applied and in my next update, hopefully I'll have some moderately exciting news. 

Edited March 8 by turnip

[turnip]

Season 16: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

When I resigned from Dinamo, on the 29th May, 1860 were my first choice for next club to manage and I put my application in on that day. I did receive invitations to job interviews with Wolfsburg and PSG, but I was never going to accept those. 

Still, 1860 dragged it out a bit, to say the least, eventually appointing me on 22nd June. The club had just been relegated back from the second tier, having hired a visually-impressive head coach in December who (as it happened) had no previous experience as a manager, but they still gave £10k p/w to. Yeah, me neither.

They're paying me £3.7k p/w, for the record. That said, the board have only asked for a top-half finish this season, which is a more realistic request than you normally get in this situation. 

The first order of business was to get rid of some of the deadwood in the squad. 

I would have kept Mulenda, but apparently some moron at the club gave him a new contract in May with - you guessed it - a £475k MFRC, so that was that. 

We obviously needed to reform the squad into something reasonable. Almost all of these players had been on one of my shortlists at Dinamo, so it was just a question of working out who the priorities were. 

  

  

Axel Soumahoro is a striker who I think could become very good indeed, with an excellent set of technical attributes and plenty of time to develop the physical side of his game. 

Jose Ferraro has come in to be a solid option at centre-back. Already reasonable, so even if he doesn't improve much, he should be more than good enough for this league.

Ange N'Dri is another who I think could develop into someone excellent. He's got 5 assists in 6 appearances so far, which is nothing to sniff at.

Dominik Nojszewski will probably play mostly at centre-back, but can also fill in at DL if needed. Solid all-round for an 18-year old, just needs to work on his Strength and Jumping Reach a bit. 

The values of Soumahoro, N'Dri and Nojszewski have all gone up significantly from when I took the screenshots, by the way. 

  

  

Derek - what a name - is our new first-choice DL. Excellent Pace/Acceleration, combined with equally-great Work Rate/Teamwork, and his awful Natural Fitness means he'll struggle if we get any fixture congestion, but that's why we have back-ups.

Meanwhile, Miguel, Rocco Bernardini and Razmus Barsne are all a product of when you look at a team you've just taken over and think "Wait, how were you so bad?" A staggering lack of quality in midfield, is why. MIguel will mostly play Half-Back, we've promised FCK that Barsne will play MC and Bernardini will fill in wherever he's needed. 

Really, the biggest problem will most of our signings is that the players/agents only wanted 1-year deals. They've all got at least the option of a 1-year extension, so we shouldn't end up losing anyone vital for free. 

It's been a good start to the season. Heidenheim - who've had successive relegations from the Bundesliga - are probably favourites to win the league, with St Pauli and Arminia Bielefeld also rated higher than us with the bookies. 

We probably deserved the win over Karlsruhe in the cup, although we've got Bull Semen PLC in the next round, so lol. 

I'd like us to finish nearer the top than the board have asked for. As always, by recruiting young players, we'll probably finish the season with a stronger set of players than we have now, assuming the team play well and have the potential to develop. So if we can get to Christmas in 6th or above, I put us in with a decent chance of making the top 3. 

[turnip]

Season 16: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

An excellent start to the season. The guy who scored for Dortmund II was worth £62m and gets paid £58k p/w, which is why I really dislike playing in the same league as second teams. Other than that, we've obviously scored lots of goals and haven't exactly been rigidly sticking to the board's favoured culture of "play defensively solid football" (although they're apparently 'pleased' by that one  ). We're averaging 63% possession per match, which the board really likes. 

We are rotating the team fairly regularly, as we've probably got 16 players I'm keen to give a good amount of game-time to. 

The cup win over RBL was a surprise. We rotated more heavily than usual, expecting to get blatted, but they didn't exactly put out a strong team either, and a couple of "eh, I've seen 'em given, but still..." penalties later, we were through to the next round. 

Random Player Showcase

Kweku was at the club when I joined. The coaches don't think much of his potential, but he's been very good for us so far, with 5 goals and 8 assists. In yet another example of atrocious AI contract negotiations, he had a MFRC of about £750k and a clause that was set to increase his wages to around £2.2k p/w just a few games into the season. We negotiated a different deal, which gave him about £600 p/w more than he was originally on and no MFRC, but he does get to leave for free if we get relegated.

We don't have any particularly interesting signings lined up for January, but we'll see what happens. 

[turnip]

Season 16: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

We sent 3 players out on loan in January, but that was the extent of our outgoing business. 

  

  

Ramic was brought in to provide another option at DC. He developed nicely at Dinamo, without ever being good enough to break into the first team, but I think he could be useful for us in the back half of the season. 

Cristian is a winger we found who's just a bit... weird. We're training him as a Wide Target Man if only because of his Jumping Reach. Back-post headers are broken as **** anyway, so why not see what sort of carnage he can create. 

Farota and Ruben are both ones for the future that I'm optimistic about. Honestly, we could play Farota in the first team if we had to, and other than getting bullied by big strapping lads, I reckon he'd do okay. FM24 thinks an AMC is 'excellent' if he's got more than 2 attributes above a 5, so I'm keen to see how Ruben develops. 

We also brought in Tsikrikas from European humiliation-fetishists Olympiakos (no kink-shaming here) to provide a bit of backup at DR. He's okay; no more than that. 

The DFB-Pokal dream lives on! It wasn't a dominant performance against Oppenheim, but it was a very good team effort. The mighty Unknown awaits us in the Quarter-Finals. What fun!

We were a little unlucky to lose against Osnabruck, but we were luckier than that to beat the quite quite bad Lotte, so I can't complain. 

[turnip]

 

Someone's been polishing the seats to make them squeaky, I can tell

[turnip]

Season 16: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

With St Pauli having an excellent season, we couldn't afford to drop many points, and we managed that. The draw against Heidenheim saw St Pauli take over the lead of the table, but they faced Heidenheim themselves the day we played Jeddeloh and lost 2-0, allowing us to recapture 1st place. They didn't drop any more points, but obviously neither did we, so the league was ours. The game against Munster was absolute dross, but otherwise we played pretty well, even if the match against SV Meppen was a bit of an outlier in how hard we crumped them. 

In the Cup, the match against Werder was pretty even, but Mainz decided to play a full-strength team and played us off the park. Fair enough. The money from the cup run was very very nice indeed, though: 3x £500k for TV rights, plus £1.4m for the Quarter-Final, plus some more for the Semi-Final. 

Dortmund beat Mainz in the final and I guess the European place went to the league. 

I feel bad for Heidenheim - 85 points would have been enough to get promoted in literally any other season. They lost to Wurzburger Kickers in the Playoff. Ouch.

Our U-19 team, meanwhile, finished their season with a goal difference of +218.  One of our strikers (a signing of mine) scored 66 goals. 

Off the pitch, we also made a lot of progress. We got 2 upgrades to Junior Coaching, one to Youth Recruitment and one to Training Facilities. 

Youth Intake

An uneven intake, but it certainly looks like the upgrades to Junior Coaching paid off. 

   

Seriously. Ostheimer and Seidel both look amazing, and the biggest problem is that we'll have to wait at least a year before we can give them game time. Potzinger also looks like he could be really good. We're actually going to train Ostheimer as a Wing-Back because those are always a struggle to find and honestly we could probably train Seidel to be a Wing-Back as well (if we wanted to waste CA). 

There's not a lot to be excited about other than those 3, but that's fine. 

 

The plan for next season is to consolidate. I'm pretty sure the non-EU limits are basically removed in the second tier, which should let me hoover up all kinds of players for the team. We've got a decent squad, but more is always better (that is the theme of the save, after all). 

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

Transfers

Kledis Sulejmani was a holdover from when I joined the club - a decent player on high wages we didn't need, but I guess a mid-table Polish team did. [shrug]

Derek got a pitiful offer from BMG and had a hissy fit when I turned them down. It took a few more weeks of offering him out before we got something I was happy with. Signed on a free, and sold for £1.5m a year later - fine by me.

Carlos Camacho (our backup DL) was the subject of a surprisingly meaty bid, given how mediocre he is. It didn't take much thought to accept.

Axel Soumahoro got some truly miserable bids from Augsburg that he eventually became annoyed at me for rejecting and threatened to leave at the end of his contract. We couldn't find any decent bids, but we've got some potential add-ons. Better than nothing, I suppose.

Meanwhile, Mirko Dachs wanted a new contract, asked for ~£6k p/w, was unhappy when I laughed him out of the building and then Paderborn met his MFRC. 

  

I'd actually been keeping an eye on Tapsoba since he was 16. Which sounds really bad when I type it out. He's good already, and I think could make the step up to the Bundesliga if/when we get there. 

Yannick Walser is the replacement for Derek. I reckon £1m is a bit of a steal for someone who's as well-rounded as him. 

  

Joao Noronha was brought in to provide a bit of verifiable quality to midfield. HIghly-rated by my scouts, and even if I think he's a bit too highly-rated, he looks very handy for this level.

Mamadou Diarrassouba is an odds-and-sods player who's serviceable at DC and a good option at DM. Again, hard to know how good he could be, but - again - plenty good enough for this level.

  

Dibola Fidjeu Tazemeta is another DM, but one who is our new backup DR and can also play MC. Fairly cheap and another who looks like he could turn into a very useful player.

And then Abdoulaye Samassi is yet another DM, albeit one brought in to play mostly at DC. Probably won't be able to play every match, but should be good when he does get on the pitch. 

  

And, finally, a couple of loanees from Dinamo to round out the gaps in the squad. Bello will obviously play up-front and Maicon is our new DR of choice. 

We also loaned in a keeper from Utrecht to be a backup, but he's not good enough to bother showcasing. 

 

Fixtures

Two good wins, one lucky draw,  one fair draw and two comfortable defeats. A good start to the season, all told. We're now predicted mid-table, which feels fair enough. Our loanee GK was terribad against BMG. 

Again, the idea is that our young players will develop as the season goes along, so we should end with a stronger squad than we have right now. 

[turnip]

There isn't an "Oof" big enough for that. 

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, Bundesliga 2

The loss against Furth was very deserved. Our usual GK was out injured, so we played our loanee backup and he made bad mistakes to give them their second and third goals (the third one he rolled the ball out to a centre-back who wasn't looking and a striker just tapped it into an empty net). I put him in the 2nd Team squad straight after the match, only because I couldn't terminate the loan. 

We were lucky to get the draw against Dynamo Dresden, too. Otherwise, though, we're back to what we saw when we were climbing the leagues with Lusitania Lourosa - get our noses in front and then grab a goal or two extra as the opposition pushes forward. 

It's been a very stop-start season so far, though. There's been at least one international break every month, and when you try to rotate your squad, it mostly means that you've constantly got a squad full of players lacking match fitness. 

It's all fairly close so far. Unless you're Wurzburgers Kickers, who seem even worse this season than they were last (when they needed the Playoff to stay in the league). 

Random Player Showcase

We signed Jose last season, to be backup up front, for £85k. He hasn't been prolific, by any means, but he's progressed quite nicely and provides a useful option as a Shadow Striker. His new contract puts him on more than most of our players, but it's a fair wage for someone as good as he is. 

Ange N'Dri

My scouts weren't huge fans of N'Dri when they made their report, and when he signed for us, my Coaches thought he was mediocre. There's a lot to like about how FM tells you about players, but sometimes the whole "this player has low reputation, therefore he's clearly useless" is kind of laughable.

18 months after signing for us, in no small part thanks to playing more or less every game, he's developed into a really good player. In a squad where most of our players are lacking match fitness, he's basically always ready to play. 

 

We've got a couple of transfers arranged for the January window: yet another DM from Africa, and a new DL from Brazil. We'll probably have some interest in our players, but I'm not too concerned. There's money in the bank and we've got a pretty large shortlist, so we should be fine with all but the most aggressive fire sale. 

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, Bundesliga 2

January and Transfer Window

  

Add Anthony Usman to the 'talented DM' stable. God knows how I'm going to give him, Tazemeta, Diarrassouba and Miguel the game time they want, while also providing opportunities for Potzinger and Ostheimer (who we can now register). Eh, whatever. He's good.

Guilherme Cardoso was brought in to be a more creative (read: defensively crap) option at DL and generally a reliable backup for Walser. I think he could be quite good, and if nothing else, getting called up to the Brazil U20 squad should give his value and rep a nice boost.

  

Barbosa looks like a bit of a weapon. Needs to work on his technical game a bit, but assuming there's potential there to use up, he could be dynamite. Wait, is dynamite a weapon?

I have no idea how Jim Daly ended up at Llanes. I mean, I do - he came through the academy at Atletico Madrileno and Llanes got him from them - but he doesn't have Spanish second nationality, so... ??? Still, as soon as I saw him, I knew I had to sign him. On top of solid physicals and a good technical base, he's got Evasive and Reserved media handling to go with his Resilient personality. And he's 16 years old. Again, assuming his potential holds up, this kid could be a superstar. 

Fixtures

We came back from the winter break and got slapped around by Hansa Rostock, then had to work hard to eke out a win over 16th-placed Ingolstadt. To say I was surprised that we followed those up with our result against table-topping HSV would be an understatement (it definitely wasn't a 3-0 game, though). 

The match against Hamburg was notable in another way. Our GK got sick a few days before the game so wasn't available, and I still haven't signed a backup, but rather than play the loanee (who was terrible in the Cup in August)  I put one of our development players in goal instead.

Go go Gomez.

Arrizabalaga is another DL. He came on as a sub for the injured Walser, because Cardoso is off playing in the SAM U20 Championship, because of course he is. 

 

The Youth Intake preview looks decent. We've got another upgrade to Junior Coaching (and Youth Recruitment) since the start of the season and that does seem to have some immediate pay-off, so I'm hoping we'll get a couple of good players through. 

Edited March 25 by turnip

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, Bundesliga 2

Youth Intake

  

Gabriel Kothny is this year's sole exception to the "abandon all kit ye of Low Determination" because I guess we can add 'Goalkeepers' to the list of positions I'm struggling to find good options for. Honestly, he doesn't look great, but needs must, innit?

Joel Krawczyk as presented for your viewing disdain looks a bit lame, but add +1 across the board and he looks pretty good. Add +2 to everything associated with being a Wing-Back and... well, he's still not making the German national team, but I wouldn't feel bad picking him in the Bundesliga. 

 

It's hard to get too excited about these two bozos. Partly because they both look kinda crap, but also because AMCs make up about half of my scouting reports, and the ones my scouts tell me about look better than these two. 

I'm actually going to train Tremmel as a Box-to-Box Midfielder, because he has reasonable tackling and he at least looks like he could break a Ryvita in half. 

Caidi, meanwhile, will train as an AMC on Attack until someone comes in and offers him a packet of Takis Fuegos and half a can of Diet Cola to play for them. 

 

The rest of the intake is fairly forgettable, but I wouldn't be surprised if one or two players end up better than expected. 

 

I did manage to persuade the board to upgrade Youth Recruitment, and I hired a new HOYD - the new guy's a Perfectionist, so we'll see if that brings any benefit. 

 

 

Also:

[turnip]

Vs bottom of the league:

 

[turnip]

Vs 15th in the table

Erm, hey guys, think about your manager's blood pressure, yeah?

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, Bundesliga 2

Fixtures

Some good performances in the run-in, but also definitely some nerves. Possibly the yips. 

We definitely struggled more once teams came to terms with how to play against us. And although our players have mostly developed quite well as the season went on, they were mostly third-tier standard to start with. And young, so pressure gets to them in a bigger way. 

So how did that affect things?

Well, it kept it spicy. Paderborn closed the gap to 3 points, but obviously fell off. We spent quite a large part of the season tussling with Hamburg for top spot, with Furth largely a few points off. Going into the final day, we were level on points with Furth and although our GK (actually our GK, back from injury) had a stinker, so did their's as they lost to Hannover 3-1. 

67 points is actually just about bang-on for promotion from this division. We have overachieved in a somewhat horrendous way. Our top goalscorer is an academy graduate who's basically a crap version of Mor Talla Traore (who's recently retired, RIP), has a contract that's running out and isn't really worth giving a new one to.

We've got quite a few players going into the final year of their contract who I want to keep. However, I've been relying on offering Relegation Release Clauses of £0 to keep wages low and that's a strategy that I feel comes with an element of risk. Y'know, as a small club promoted far too early into the top tier. 

Speaking of, the day after promotion was confirmed, the board announced our new budgets:

Which feels like something that should be raised as a bug, because only a couple of days later we got the next message:

I tried getting a couple of upgrades from the board, but they wouldn't approve new Youth Facilities because they want me to focus on signing players. And they wouldn't improve the Training Facilities because they want me to sign players who are ready for the first team.

With a transfer budget of £1.86m.      

No huge surprise that Noronha swept the board. He hasn't really improved this season, but he's still a good player. 

I really want a new Goalkeeper - our first-choice was a good player in the third-tier, but has been a bit of a liability at times this season. We also really need a new DR, as Maicon has been on loan and our backups aren't ready yet. 

We're okay at centre-back. Tapsoba is supposed to have a lot of room for development, but hasn't improved one iota, but Samassi had a good season and nailed down his spot as our Cover player.

DL is fine, with Walser and Cardoso two good options. DM is still probably Miguel's spot - the coaches thought his cap was third-tier when he signed, that went up to second-tier for the start of this season and now they think he could be Bundesliga-standard in future. 

We've got new players come in on both Wings. I'm unreasonably excited about the AMR, but the AML also looks very promising. Still, at 18 and 17 years old, it's fair to say that neither is going to be worrying defenders too much next season. 

I do think we're going to be relying on loanees to a heftier degree than I'm used to. 

 

Next season - pain.

[turnip]

Transfer retrospective

Season 1:

Two players stand out for me from this season. 

Mahamadou Diagola. Signed for basically a nominal fee from a club in Mali, Diagola was never a great player, but was a pretty consistently good one. A good career all-round, I'd say. 

Jaime Silvestre

Signed on the cheap from Sporting, Silvestre demanded to leave when we reached the second tier and went on to be on the losing side against us an awful lot for Ac. Viseu. Joined Dinamo for far too much money before finishing his career being crap in Italy.

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

Transfers

We let a few players leave at the end of their contracts. The only notable one was Janick Sieger who'd scored 34 goals over the last two seasons. A bad idea? Maybe, but sometimes you have to take the 6'5" training wheels off. Mboup was the only end-of-contract player we didn't release, keeping him on a month-to-month deal until ManUre came in and gave us £500k for him. 

Kwaku Sarpong wanted a new contract, but we didn't need him, so I offered him out and Pescara took us up on the offer. Muhlig - our former GK - also wanted a new contract but I try not to reward **** with actual money (which he wanted) so we got rid. Bernard Nnapere was one of our development DLs, so getting over a million for him was a laugh. Meanwhile, Rafa was a development ST who had a pretty meh loan in the Spanish 4th tier last season; some teams have more money than sense.

  

Delgado and Pablo were the two wingers I was excited about. The scouts and coaches prefer Pablo - and I can see why - but I still think Delgado will be a more interesting long-term option for us. The set pieces are the difference for me, for now. That said, Pablo should go on to be a phenomenal player. 

They'll both be second-choice in their respective positions this season, but neither is much of a downgrade from Cristian or N'Dri. 

   

The other Pablo we signed is another Spanish U20 player. And, obviously, another DM. (5th-tier) Toledo are getting some great players through their academy and although I don't think Pablo is quite ready for the Bundesliga, I thought giving him the playing time was a price worth paying for someone as promising as he is. 

With our DR's loan finishing, we needed a new player and Winai Sa-ngapol was our best option. Another who's probably not quite at Bundesliga-level yet, but can get up and down the flank at speed and should develop the technical side of his game a fair bit. 

  

As discussed, we needed a new GK and Rodolfo Dimas was - yet again - the best option available in our price range. At the press conference afterwards, we were asked if the age difference between him and the rest of the squad would be a problem. Yep, he's 25...

The need for another striker was something that came a little later in the window, when I noticed that an 18-year old who played 6 matches last season would be our second choice. Nicu Ispir is an upgrade over Janick Sieger in every aspect, including wages, and honestly looks great. 

The other signings are youth players. 

Fixtures

I wasn't sure how we'd match up to teams this season, and after edging a close-ish game against 3rd-tier Bochum in the cup, we utterly dominated BMG in the opening league match but still conceded a couple of cheap goals. Having then kept Augsburg at arms-length for 90 minutes, the game against Werder was just carnage all-round. They deserved to win, but as long as we have N'Dri on the left pinging crosses to the back post, we'll always have a chance. 

We probably have to go on the attack to get much out of the league this season. We'll have some good defensive performances, but I think we're just better going forward.

I was holding off renewing some contracts to see if any clubs would make bids for the players in question, so the wage bill will go up. That said, at £5.59m per year, our current salary spend is just over 2% that of Bayern's. There are just 7 players in their first-team squad on lower wages than our entire wage bill.  There are only two other teams in the league whose financial status is better than "Okay" - Frankfurt and Freiburg - and in the case of the latter, that's probably because they just sold a player to Bayern for £82m. 

 

We did end up getting an upgrade to Youth Facilities. Apparently the board wanted to take the credit for the idea, so they proposed it at the end of the season. Well done, lads, we're all very impressed. 

[turnip]

 

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

Fixtures

Things have gotten tougher as the season's gotten longer. No real surprise; man-for-man our players kinda suck compared to every other team. That said, there have been some good results.

The win over Dortmund - second in the table - was great: we changed tactics 3 times during the match, but managed to hold out for the win after Ispir scored his very funny goal (video above). Ispir got his second hattrick of the campaign in a very silly match against Koln.

On the flipside, we were crushed by Bayern, barely getting within a mile of a whiff of a chance. We defended well against Hertha (3rd in the league) but conceded to one of the derpy FM24 goals I hate: a goalkeeper long-ball that bounced off the head of my centre-back straight into the path of their striker, who finished. (Seriously, I don't even know what's supposed to be happening with those chances). 

We've built up a good number of points so far, and although I suspect fixtures will get harder as the season progresses, our players are mostly improving, too. And with BMG and Hamburg stinking things up early on, I do think we're in with a good chance of avoiding a proper relegation scrap. 

Random Player Showcase

We signed Rizzi at the start of last season from Serie C Carrarese and he's had a few sub appearances to date. With my deeply-stupid transfer strategy of signing every half-decent DM/MC I find and giving them Playing Time promises they don't really deserve, I've struggled to give him the game-time I wanted to. Still I think he could be terrific, so I'm going to try to find a good loan deal for him. 

 

We've got the usual rag-tag group joining us in January - mostly youngsters (again, as usual) but we do have some DC backup arriving in the form of a [sigh] 18-year old from Génération Foot. Look, they say the first step is recognising you have a problem, don't they?

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

January

We accepted an offer for Cristian from ADO Den-Haag, but having strung us along for the second half of the month, it fell through when it turned out they didn't have the money. Cheers, dudes; very helpful.

That meant the only departures were some loanees (I'm ignoring Dzaferovic who was a useless U19). Rizzi, Daly and Bernardini should get the first-team football we agreed to; I'm sceptical that Balducci and Manuel will, though. 

  

Levi Phillips is your stereotypical English clogger DC, even if he is Welsh. We needed someone first-team ready to bring some stability and he looks capable of doing just that.

Hamidou Gomis is the one I think could be excellent. An excellent technical base for a DC and the Mental/Physical side of his game should improve as he develops. Again, he wanted Squad Player... I can't wait until the club's reputation improves. 

  

We brought Dragan Pesic in as a replacement for Cristian... In fairness, I think Pesic is better as an out-right Winger and if his Potential holds, he'll be a bit of a weapon out wide. 

And Aitor Alonso is just our young Spanish SC signing for the window. Looks like he could be really good (don't they all) but needs to develop his Mentals a bit. 

We scraped past Leverkusen and Werder, which was to be expected - the performances, I mean, not the results, which were very much unexpected.

We rotated fully for the cup game against Bayern and got what we deserved from that match. Nice to see Delgado getting himself a goal, though. No such dignities in the dismal display against deadly Borussia Monchengladbach

And then, 3 days after getting schooled in the Munich derby, we utterly crushed Augsburg, with 72% possession and restricting them to only 0.6xG. 

So what have we learned? I have no idea. 

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

Youth Intake

A good intake, by any reasonable standard. No strikers, but who needs strikers in the youth intake when the third, fourth and fifth tiers of Spain exist?

  

I long ago gave up trying to work out whether a highly-rated goalkeeper at youth intake would be any good, and I'm not going to bother with Fiand. 3.5+1* Potential rated. Yay?

Hocine Abdellaoui is a different matter, though. The kid's gonna get sick of working on his Stamina & Work Rate, but them's the breaks. 

  

Cyril Bessard isn't too impressive on first look, but does have the attributes to turn into a decent centre-back if he develops well.

The slightly cro-magnon-looking Stefan Dietl is the pick of the bunch, though. Obviously.  I don't quite know what to do with him, though. 15 Finishing is utterly wasted on a FB/WB, but with his Physicals, he could be a monstrous CWB. Maybe an Inverted Winger on Attack (from ML, rather than AML)? Hmm. A damned good problem to have, I will admit. 

[turnip]

Transfer Retrospective

Season 2:

The first one is the most blindingly obvious: Albert Bucur

Signed at 16 year old from a Romanian youth team, it took him the best part of 3 years to make the first team but then he simply didn't leave until this season when the siren call of Saudi money sung him to a pre-retirement slumber. 12 Portuguese Premier League titles, 8 Portuguese Super Cups and 7 Portuguese League Cup wins, alongside solitary Champions League and UEFA Super Cup wins.

Philip Behnke:

We paid £250k for him, got one okay season of him as our player, then 2 excellent seasons as a loanee. RB Leipzip probably could have found a better striker in terms of raw ability, but it's hard to argue with that goalscoring record. The biggest shame/surprise [delete as appropriate] is that he only got 7 caps for Germany. 

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

 

das spitze Ende des Stocks

Against Stuttgart, we did very little until a backpost cross found Ange N'Dri exploiting the match engine's hard-on for broken back-post headers (BBPH). Our high press caused the panic and mistake that let us beat Hamburg. 

Bull ***** FC gave us a good game but also a BBPH. We had no recognised (good) strikers against Mainz, so played Cristian and N'Dri up top and the Great Dehumidified One lofted a delightful ball for one of the Pablos to finish. 

An arid BBPH and penalty saw off a spirited Furth before (we will utter no details of the atrocities witnessed against Dortmund) an error-strewn performance saw my delicate voice shredded by constant screaming, shrieking and profanities as we drew Hoffenheim.

Freiburg can consider themselves unlucky to have lost against us, but we did whip out a BBPH against Eintracht Frankfurt as part of a deserved win. 

We lost convincingly against Hertha and Bayern but good performances against Koln and Wolfsburg left things pretty tasty going into the final round of matches. How tasty?

So we were left with a match against Leverkusen, while Hoffenheim were playing Bull ***** FC, with whoever finished higher qualifying for the Champions League.

Mind you, we weren't just playing Leverkusen, we were facing Wichai Wongsrikeaw, one of the most detestable little snots I'd managed at Lusitania Lourosa. A central defender we signed from Thailand, who thought he was hot **** despite having single-digit Jumping Reach, and who spent most of his miserable time under my management complaining about one thing or other and just generally being the kind of immense pain in the arse that you remember with hatred 12 seasons later. Now, according to the game, he's "one of world football's global superstars", with 124 caps for Thailand and commanding a regular spot as one of Leverkusen's centre-backs.

However...

The reason he was pissed off with me at Lusitania Lourosa was that I never played him at centre-back. Why? Well, because his single-digit Jumping Reach made him a liability.

Leverkusen play him at DCL.

So, theoretically, if Ange N'Dri - our AML, if you've forgotten - were to put a far-post cross into the box, aimed at Nicu Ispir...

Yeah. Basically, get ****ed Wichai Wongsrikeaw.

Obviously, I'm delighted (I'd say "astonished" but I'm not sure you can claim that at the end of a 34-match season) to have finished 4th, but arguably I'm just as thrilled that Hertha won the Bundesliga. The first time in 110 years. 1860 Munchen finished second that season. I'm just saying. 

Thing is, though, I've said throughout the season that we've massively overperformed. How badly?

Genuinely, I think the correct response to this is: "lol, lmao".

If you'd offered me 14th at the start of the season, I'd have been thrilled. 

Nicu Ispir is the best player in our squad and he's a "Good Bundesliga player". The rest of the squad ranges from "decent Bundesliga player" to "good Bundesliga 2 player". Our team stats are generally slightly better than the 14th the xG table has us at, but not by much. 

We finished 4th in the league and only 4 players had an Average Rating of over 7.00. This is so stupid it's hard to parse. 

I do love Nicu Ispir and he will need a new contract at some point in the next 12 months. Thankfully, I don't think he's good enough yet that someone will drop £54m to trigger his MRFC. Ange N'Dri continues to defy his modest CA by just being good at crossing and passing, and obviously knowing when to pull the trigger on a BBPH. 

Rodolfo Dimas turned out to be just the kind of keeper we needed - mostly reliable, but with a bad habit of hoofing the ball aimlessly downfield when he's nervous. Abdoulaye Samassi, meanwhile, is just a very competent centre-back; he rarely does anything other than defend and he's very good at that. 

We are going to need to improve in the summer, though, and in a big way. Thankfully, the board have decided that being stingy is somewhat uncouth:

 

Also, the whole "sign 'em, play 'em, make 'em better" thing is - slowly - working out for us.

Biagioni is worth about £170m, but I might be able to get Brard with our new-found wealth. That would be nice...

 

We got £78m for finishing fourth, which is very nice. 

Edited April 13 by turnip

[turnip]

In Search of Incompetence

18 seasons into this save, and I've had every available European league running as - at least - VIew-only for the whole time. Some on Playable. 

That's a lot of opportunities for AI managers to battle it out for the title of 'most incompetent'.

I'm not talking about big clubs failing to reach Europe; I'm talking about teams doing profoundly, impressively badly in their league.

Spanish D2 - 2036; Tarancon; 2 points -------- 2037; Mirandes; 2 points. (Impressively, in 2030, Mirandes finished with 3 points )

Spanish La Liga - 2040; Ponferrada; 7 points

Slovenian Second League - 2027; Tolmin; 7 points

Slovak Second League - 2039; Spisska Nova Ves; 4 points. (Sered finished second-bottom that season with 5 points)

Portuguese Championship - 2040; Bustelo; 2 points

Icelandic First Division - 2037; KV; 4 points 

Icelandic Premier Division - 2035; IBV; 7 points 

Greek Super League 2 - 2026; PAO Rouf; 5 points

Greek Super League 1 - 2025; Panserraikos; 7 points 

German Liga 3 - 2040; Jena; 6 points & 2037; Altona 93; 6 points 

French National 2 - 2038; EFC Frejus Saint-Raphael; 2 points

Finnish First Division - 2032; Atlantis FC; 5 points 

Czech Second Division - 2037; Zapy; 4 points

Belgian Jupiler Pro League - 2037; RE Virton; 7 points 

Austrian Premier Division - 2031; FAC Wien; 7 points

 

and I've left the best 'til last

Bulgarian Second Division - 2031; Svetkavitsa Targovishte; 1 point

 

In mitigation, despite me running a gigantic database, for some reason Bulgarian second-tier teams really seem to struggle for players. 

[turnip]

Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

Transfers

No significant players left us, except Walser on loan (he wanted a new contract but unfortunately, his PA got dialled down to 'Good Bundesliga 2 player'). We tried to sell him, but no-one was interested. 

The biggest sales were all of young players we didn't need. Luke Hernandez is a crap American midfielder. Adonay Bercomo was signed from from an Amateur team, didn't develop last season, and is crap. Ilsinho I would have preferred to keep, since he's a Cayman Islands international, but he is also crap, so...

   

Slavik and Shalonikov were both signed from Trencin, whose Youth Academy obviously got a lucky roll on the old Random Number Generator the year they came through. Slavik was actually the first one identified since he was in the Slovak national team, and when I had a look at the Trencin squad, there was Shalonikov. 

Shalonikov is the more obviously ready for the first team - probably alternating between AMR and ST - and the plan is that Slavik will get regular game time as injury cover and in our midweek team. 

  

Ally Sulieman (he has Eritrean second nationality) was someone my scouts found. Obviously very good but wasn't an immediate target for the summer until other teams started going in for him and I decided he was too good not to go in for. Will swap between DR and DC this season. 

We needed a backup GK but there's still a massive shortage of 'good enough' young players, so we had to pay a premium to bring in Gustavo. We probably could have brought the wages down if we'd promised more game-time, but Dimas was so good last season I couldn't justify demoting him. 

 

Baliko is a good, pretty flexible midfielder who gives us cover in 2-3 positions on the pitch (tactics-dependent), lively enough to be an issue coming on as a sub and should have plenty of potential for development. 

Meanwhile, with Walser having a tantrum over not being good enough to get a new contract, we needed a new DL. Berndroth only played a couple of times for Stuttgart as they got relegated last season, but I think he could be terrific. Finding good full-backs who can jump is hard.

  

Alan Burger is another player I've been aware of for a while. He got a full season with Las Palmas' first team last year and looks to be a very solid DC, even if he doesn't develop (which my scout and coaches all agree he should). 

We needed another striker and without wanting to pay £10m+ for a backup for Ispir who'd probably just get annoyed when he inevitably doesn't get enough game time, we brought in a rare older player in Gaizka Albisu, who's had 6 very good seasons in La Liga with Cadiz. A good all-round player. 

 

Fixtures

We had a good pre-season, with a nice little tour of Uzbekistan and - of course - were one of two Bundesliga teams to get drawn against second-tier opposition in the first round of the cup. A tough match, but a win for the second-stringers. Dortmund are up next; unsurprisingly, considering we play them 3 days later in the league.

The matches against Furth and Hoffenheim were fairly straight-forward affairs, with us outplaying our opposition. We also arguably out-played the team whose name I always make fun of, with a penalty for them the only reason they had a higher xG than us. 

The Champions League looks tough, with Away games against Lazio, Man City and Sporting alongside Home matches with Nice, Juventus and Real Sociedad. A Home game against Celtic and road trip to Hammarby look to be our easiest games. 

[turnip]

Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

Fixtures

After an excellent September, we had a tough October. We were lucky to get anything out of all of our draws and deservedly beaten in the defeats. We probably edged the league match against Dortmund on fine margins, ground out the dullest of 0-0s against Juve and got spanked by Man City, but the back-to-back 3-0s against Koln and St Pauli (bad though both those teams are) were as dominant as the scorelines suggest. 

And then we had a great December, with some exciting, albeit chaotic football. We got very lucky against Leverkusen but our kamikaze counter-attacking worked much better against Hertha. 

We are trying to stick to having almost fully-rotated teams for midweek matches, so we could be performing better in Europe. It has given useful game time to our stable of rotational DCs and AMRs, though, along with giving Stefan Dietl 6 starts. And honestly, player development is more useful than flogging ourselves to be successful in Europe, failing (because we're still not that good) and also harming our chances domestically. 

 

Off the field, we've continued to improve, too. An upgrade to the training facilities was completed in October (I think) and we managed to set up what could be a very useful Affiliation with Pohang Steelers:

It's ostensibly a First Option arrangement, but I do like the potential extra money, too.

 

Finally, something very weird happened with our game against not-Socieded:

Huh?

[turnip]

Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

A decent round of fixtures. The draws were fair enough and we absolutely passed *** **** ******* off the pitch. In Europe, Baliko continued his good season with a couple of nicely-taken goals; and Seidel signed off for us for the season by nicking the late winner against Sporting. He's now on loan with Cardiff. 

Transfers

I was a bit cavalier when choosing who to send out on loan. "Everyone" is not the right answer, turnip. 

Rodolfo Dimas was the 'big' sale. He wanted a new contract at the start of the season, but I was able to fob him off with a "Hey, how about you get some clean sheets first" promise, and once he'd completed that, a few clubs were interested in him. I was hoping for a lot more money, as were the board, but either no-one wanted to spend more than the £6.5m America ponied up, or had other targets they could go after instead. Still, we signed him for £425k, so that's a nice bit of profit. 

Joao Noronha is also leaving, moving to Legia, but that goes through on the 1st Feb and I took these screenshots on the 31st January. They're taking him off our hands for £3.9m. Again, profit. 

  

Morganti probably isn't quite as good as Dimas yet, but he should get there and then surpass our former keeper. He looks very solid already. 

Sun-burned Kapuscinski was a late signing once the scale of the loan exodus became clear to me. His MFRC of £2.9m was very welcome, what with us having a transfer budget of £3.2m left. Will rotate at DL and DR. 

  

Bradi Maclean comes in to give a bit of backup up front, with Hernandez going on loan. Not amazing, but should have a goal or two in him and with the low transfer fee, we should be able to flip him for a good profit in a season or two.

Valentin Ardelean was signed from the same club we stole Nicu Ispir from, albeit for more money. He's a bit of an odd player right now, but I'm hoping with some game time and his technical attributes developing a bit he should turn into a very creative, very talented player. 

 

Speaking of Nicu Ispir, we received a pretty hefty bid for him from Newcastle - up to £70m over the next couple of seasons - but we turned it down to no complaints from Nicu. I don't have another good striker target at the moment, at least not one who can slot into our tactic, so it would have been a huge gamble. 

[turnip]

I only just realised that we're not playing our Home European matches at our stadium. 

My keen eyes noticed this fact when I saw that a session of training was being lost to 'Travel' the day before, well, a Home European match, rather than the fact we've been getting more than our max attendance for those games. (Although not the match against Sociedad, for some reason. Weird.)

 

I is good at the Football Manager.

[turnip]

Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

A ridiculous second half of the season that barely let up. In the league, we only dropped points against Bayern (we played them off the park), Hertha Berlin (we were the better team, but not by much) and Dortmund (who gegenpressed us to hell and should have won by a couple more). On the final day, we comprehensively out-played Freiburg but the trophy presentation was nowhere to be seen. I get that the FA are probably fed up of taking the trophy to Munich, but I where's my moment of glory, goddamit?

I actually felt a bit sorry for Dortmund, who won their final six league matches 4-0, 3-1, 5-1, 8-1, 9-0 and 4-0 but finished a point behind us. St Pauli, meanwhile, were utter ******* all season. Shout out to the Koln goalkeeper, who despite conceding 5 goals against us, still got a 7.4 rating - I counted 3 genuinely world-class saves amidst the carnage. Overall, we were a lot better in the league this season and although we weren't the best by every metric, the all-round performance feels well-earned. 

 

In Europe, meanwhile, we were basically armed savages. Rennes dominated the first leg, but after getting the injury-time equaliser to take the second leg to extra time, our fresher legs took the game away from them. The mugging we gave Man City, though, was obscene, with our only two moments of quality (honestly, they could have been the only 30 seconds we had the ball in the entire second leg) giving us - and Ange N'Dri, in particular - two goals. We completed the process of pissing off an entire city by getting another very fortunate injury-time goal to win back-to-back ties in the least deserved way possible. 

After those two ties, getting Benfica in the Semi-Final was a pleasant surprise. A more pleasant surprise than that was seeing quite how bad Kgotso Malgas (a former signing of mine, way back for Lusitania Lourosa) was in goal for them. Of the 5 goals we scored, he probably should have saved 4. Fun matches, though.

And then there was the final. I was - again - pleasantly surprised to find us up against Inter. Almost more surprising than that, though, was the news article I got a couple of days beforehand:

A "fitting moment", indeed. I umm-ed and ahh-ed over the team selection for quite a while, for one very particular reason: we've been playing effectively a team of backups the entire season in Europe. With a couple of exceptions:

- Nicu Ispir is a 'Star Player' and started to get a bit antsy about all these games he was missing towards the end of the season

- Gustavo (backup GK) had his PA get rated downwards, and at that point you're basically just chum for the sharks, so Morganti got swapped in

- I let the Assistant Manager register the squad, and Shalonikov was the only AMR he registered

What that meant is that we'd be going into the final of the Champions League with Stefan Dietl at DL and Leon Ostheimer at DM in the starting XI - both academy graduates, 17 and 18 years old, respectively. Still, in real life a player would be understandably hacked off if he'd helped the team reach the Champions League final, only to get benched for the big day, so we stuck to the planned XI. (It did help my decision that Sulieman and Sa-ngopol were both injured, mind). 

Spoiler

Inter had a couple of good early chances, and got in some decent shooting positions, but were a bit wasteful with their long shots. Meanwhile, we hit the woodwork twice in regular time. 

Shalonikov's goal - as deserved as it was - was hardly a thing of beauty. Inter's 24-year old World-Class DC dawdled with the ball on the halfway line, Shalonikov nicked it off him and ran through to smash it into the top corner, via a slight deflection. 

 

As our players have improved across the season - and they really have - we increasingly just used our 'home' tactic in matches, with the more gung-ho 4-2-4 reserved for Away games against teams who weren't strong enough to flatten us (e.g. Benfica). 

And in terms of player development, while last season we only had a couple of players finish the season with average ratings above 7.0, this season it's very different, with 10 players hitting that milestone. Goals-wise, we were heavily reliant on Ispir, whose league form towards the end of the season was excellent, with 14 goals in his last 12 starts. Other players did chip in, with our two AMLs - N'Dri and Pablo Marques - in particular taking advantage of BBPHs to get 17 goals between them. I feel a bit bad for N'Dri: he broke his ribs in the first league game of the season, forcing us to play Pablo Marques, who played really well, and then N'Dri struggled for form when he was fit again. 

It's worth pointing out again that we have a really young team. Even by the standards of the squads I normally put together. Albisu is the only player to get regular playing time (aside from Dimas, who left) over the age of 21. We're mostly a team of 19 and 20 year olds. 

Speaking of, not all that glitters plays for the first team. 

The U19s won the UEFA Youth League, beating Newcastle, Benfica, Nice and Sturm Graz on their way to a win on penalties against Club Brugge. 

We managed to get another upgrade to the Training Facilities approved by the board, but the president was very rude when I asked about upgrading Youth Facilities. Odd behaviour, considering bringing academy players into the first team is still a board objective (although I'm pretty sure that's broken - Dietl and Ostheimer each played over 15 games for us this season and the status for that objective is still "Very Disappointed"). 

We have plenty of money in the bank, now, and were the only team to break even across the season, as if that means anything. 

 

Youth Intake

Looks good. Dertwinkel is obviously the jewel in the crown, with 17 Tackling at 15 years old, which is just nuts. Keles could be good, too, but being Either-footed has quite a large impact on attributes, making it hard to tell at a glance. 

 

Now it's time for a bit of a break and to think about next steps for the save. 

[turnip]

Season 20: FK Partizan Beograd, Serbian SuperLeague

I resigned from 1860 the day after the Champions League final. A few days after that, the Partizan job became available. 

Spoiler

Truth be told, I dropped a save here and went forward a month or so to see if the job I actually wanted became available, but it didn't. 

Partizan haven't been particularly good in this save, only winning the league a couple of times - the last time back in 2028 - and finished in 5th last season, outside of European spots. 

As usually happens if you take over this kind of side, the squad has a bunch of pretty mid cloggers, who've been around the club for ages. Not bad, but not really the kind of quality that lets you kick on, and often on fairly high wages. Still, there's a solution to that:

Transfers

Brkovic left the club before I joined (it still annoys me it takes basically a month for a club to sign a manager in this kind of situation), and I probably would have kept him, but we didn't have much of a transfer budget, so that sale did help. The other players we sold were ones I wanted rid of.

Jaime Soria was a GK on loan last season with a mandatory fee. Annoying, since he isn't very good (and is performing horribly). Harm de Bruin is his backup - a reasonable old player I won't be embarrassed to put on the pitch. 

  

Ahmed Gamal was brought in to provide a good option at DR. He missed the first couple of league matches with international duty and the incumbent in that position played like an arthritic, blind, husky. Gamal isn't great yet, but if nothing else, we should be able to flip him for £12m-£15m next summer.

Miguel Paredes had been on my radar for a few years, without ever being good enough to sign at 1860. We were short of an outright striker (lots of 'Forwards', though) and Miguel was a cheap option. 

  

I'd been trying to sell one of my DCs to raise extra transfer funds when that guy picked up a 2-3 month injury. Sergio Gil was brought in as a first-team ready option who can also play at DL. Again, someone I'd had my eye on for a while. I think he could be very good.

Paulin Ellon got an unexpectedly excellent report from one of my scouts (he'd been on my shortlist before as a 'eh, could be good' option), prompting me to put an offer in. Saint Etienne also went in for him, so he was able to negotiate a better contract than he initially asked for. Shades of Christian Dongmo, who was one of the best playmakers in the world for almost 10 years. His potential isn't rated a full 4+1 stars, but he was at a small club even by Cameroonian standards, so I think he'll be better than that. 

  

We were a little light on creative options in central midfield. Nelson Serna looks like he could be fantastic after he gets a couple of years of first-team football.

Achraf Rehani, meanwhile, was on a free after he broke his foot at the end of last season. He's not amazing, but gives us another good option at MC, AMC and ST. And, again, if he plays well, should be someone we can flip for a few million next summer.

 

Fixtures

With no distractions in Europe, we've been able to focus entirely on the league. We've had a fairly settled team, although have had a few injuries already. 

The match against Indija was chaotic - we went attacking, with a 4-2-4, and although we looked dangerous going forward, we practically drew them a map to our goal whenever they attacked.

We play some nice football, but the players' approach to closing down is to wander over to the opposition player, shout "hi there" from about 20 yards away and then show a healthy respect for personal space. Some work to do there, methinks. 

[turnip]

Season 20: FK Partizan Beograd, Serbian SuperLeague

October - Winter Transfer Window

Other than the loss at Red Star (fully deserved; we were crap), it's been going well. We played essentially a backup XI in our two cup matches, which almost didn't work against Cukaricki, but we've mostly stuck with our best XI (according to me) other than rotating for injuries. Performances have been... fine, I guess? The pressing still doesn't remotely work, which is proving to be frustrating since every other team appears to manage it against us, and some of our passing would make amateur teams cringe with embarrassment, but as with earlier in the season, when we sync it is just smashing to watch. 

We're top of the league and have a healthy lead. Our expectation is only to reach the Conference League, and I think we're going to surpass that at this point. While we're definitely living an Economy lifestyle right now, it's fair to say not every Serbian team is. Our total wage bill is £147k p/w at the moment - Red Star spend £137k just on their top 3 earners. Their manager is a complete loser, though; they haven't made it out of the Champions League League Phase and had to go through 2 rounds of qualifying to get that far. Thankfully, it looks like we'll be taking some of that money off their hands next season. They clearly don't know how to use it.

Transfers

Rumours that I also don't know how to spend money are also hard to disprove. We grew the club's coffers with sales of our backup DR to the MLS and our 3rd-choice DC to Palermo. Arrieta is an old DC who was out on loan at Rosenborg last season and I gave away to Salernitana to get rid of him. A couple of loans to other teams in our league to give young players some game time.

  

Ibrahim Camara is another talented African MC we picked up for not very much. We don't really need him at the moment, but I think he could be excellent. 

With Bressan leaving the club for actual money, we needed a new backup DR and Yan Chia-ming (who came through Ulsan's youth academy) looked like a cheap and cheerful option. Can also double as an AMR if needed (although we did sign another of those as well).

Similarly, with our 3rd choice DC leaving, a spot opened up for a young DC in our squad. Diego can play DL, too, although really only as an IFB; but we sometimes use them, so it worked out nicely.

We also needed a 3rd-choice GK in the squad so that I've got someone I don't hate when our first two options leave in the summer and the scouts can't find anyone to replace them. Munoz will hang out with our B-Team and hopefully develop a bit with them. 

I also made a few cheap signings on deadline day to fill out the U-19s and B-Team with a bit more actual quality. I wouldn't say any of them are amazing, but Kazaryan could be interesting and my coaches don't immediately hate Guruzeta, which is unusual in its own right.

The loanee we brought in is a DL because our backup was being bid on by a Saudi team and I don't like him anyway. There were actually 2 DLs I wanted more than the one we brought in, but both had agents whose negotiating tactic was, put simply, to compete to be the biggest ***** imaginable. 

 

Squad players

Rade and Velibor were with the team when I took over. Neither had played a single game for the club before then, though.

Rade has been our first-choice Half-Back since the start of the season. He's a bit limited, technically, but he does a decent job. I might start training him as a Ball-Playing Defender, since I think he's got the attributes for it. 
Velibor has mostly played as a Striker, despite not being as quick as I normally want. 5 goals and 3 assists in 11 appearances is really good, though, and I'm hoping he's someone we can keep around for a couple of seasons at least. 

[turnip]

Youth Intake

The facilities here are good - well, the description says "Excellent" across the board, but if it ain't maxed-out, I ain't calling it Excellent. 

I've made a bit of a point in this save not to sign youngsters with crap Determination, and I'm not changing that now, when I'm only likely to be at the club for a couple of seasons (probably).

 

Clearly, the academy staff consider attacking players to be worth spending time developing, and everyone else essentially worthless. Still, 17 Finishing on a 16-year old striker is very tasty and although it's clear that 90% of Nikoloski's CA is propping up his Finishing, Dribbling and First Touch, if you're going to have lopsided attributes, I'd rather those three than, like Long Shots, Free Kicks and Long Throws. 

Karanovic is a more well-rounded player, although the gaps in his mental attributes are big enough to drive entire continents through. A fair amount younger than Nikoloski, though. 

Trajkoski looks like he could be a good Box-to-Box Midfielder when he's developed. Ideally, he'd have some actual ability with a football right now, though. He can head the ball. Whoop-de-freakin'-do. With his Jumping Reach of 2 I'm sure that'll come in handy.

Dimitrijevic is marginally my favourite of these 4 players. In no small part because he can play AMC and AMR (ST, too, but I doubt he'll play there any time soon). It's a bit of flexibility that's helpful if a player's on the bench in a game, and he actually has the attributes to potentially be useful even now. 

[turnip]

Season 20: FK Partizan Beograd, Serbian SuperLeague

We won the league.

Better than that, though, was the manner in which we did it. We spanked Mladost GAT 6-1 on the final day of the regular season, before the Final Stage started. That win meant that the league title was claimed without having to play any of those 'bonus' matches. Nice.

Even better than that, though, was that the Head Coach of the club I'd wanted to join last season was fired before that match kicked off. Meaning that I could resign from Partizan as soon as we lifted the trophy and apply for the job I'd wanted all along. Sorry, babes; it's not you, it's me. It's nothing personal. Still friends?

[turnip]

Season 21: Leixões, Portuguese Championship

To kick off my 3rd decade in management, I left Serbia and headed back to Portugal. 

So why Leixões?

Well, two reasons. Firstly, one of the things I've noticed is that developing youngsters at the club is much harder when you have - at most - two squads additional to the First Team squad. Now, granted, I haven't really spent a long time at any club since leaving Lusitania Lourosa, but even just keeping an idle eye on how players are getting on with a B-Team or U-20s, the progress hasn't been great despite having good facilities. Leixões have B, Under 23, Under 19 and Under 19-B teams. At the moment, only the U-19s and U-19Bs are in an observable league, and we've barely got the players worth filling those squads with, but it's something to work with.

And the second reason I chose Leixões is that I think they were the first Portuguese club I ever managed in a CM/FM game, or at the very least the first Portuguese club I enjoyed managing. I got through a few seasons with them, perhaps my fondest memory being of a B-Team player who got a 6-9 month ban from professional football for headbutting a referee during an U-21 international tournament. The player wasn't very good, so it wasn't a great loss; it was just very funny. I also managed the club in Championship Manager 4, where you could have the unique experience of starting in the 3rd tier of Portugal, but also in Europe (due to their exploits in the cup in real life). 

So yeah, Leixões it was. 

 

In this save, time has not been very kind to the club. As I alluded to in a previous update, they were relegated back to the Portuguese Championship a season ago, but couldn't afford to pay off the loser coach who took them there, with the club in a poor financial position. At some point between then and when I took over, though, the club went into administration --> something happened --> oh look, no money problems any more. Just debt. This also apparently took the club Semi-Pro, which is where they were when I took over.

For 2 days.

At which point the board decided that as the club had avoided relegation out of the Championship (they finished 5th ), they could justify taking the club Pro again. Which let me sign some of our better players to new contracts with a sigh of relief. They also gave me a transfer and wage budget far bigger than most other teams in the league. I think I can see how the club got into the financial poop. 

 

Portuguese Championship

I made good use of my existing shortlists to find a few new players to sign on either permanent or loan deals. A little juggling was required to ensure that our best players got enough game time to make a difference - the 14 Home Grown players rule is still a doozy - but we achieved that without anyone really getting upset. 

With our new signings we were, honestly, the best team at this tier by a fair margin. And the results bore that out. A comfortable league stage win, followed by a less-convincing but still fairly comfortable Championship Promotion Stage Group. Which was in turn followed by a 2-0 win over Imortal in the Champions Playoff Final, in which our GK got Man of the Match. Yeah. 

Our U-19 and U-19B teams also had fun:

I don't know how they're allowed in the same division, but it's funny anyway. 

 

Important Players

  

Dani Miquel was the best of a few different GKs I had on my shortlists and when I saw he was willing to sign for not much, it was a no-brainer. Has MFRC of £275k for clubs in a higher division, so I may need to give him a new contract over the summer.

Roberto Inverardi hasn't really developed over the course of the season, but sometimes you just need a centre-back who has no aspirations of being anything else. Solid and dependable. 

  

Renato Joana was signed on a free from Coimbrões (recently relegated out of the playable leagues) and I can only assume I was either drunk or tired when I did that because I apparently promised I'd play him as a False Nine. He had a stonking season in any event, with 16 goals and 4 assists in 32 league appearances.

If you look at Guillermo Hernandez and think "wow, he's too good for the 4th tier of Portuguese football", you'd be right to the tune of 15 goals and 11 assists. Wanted by a host of clubs, and with no MFRC, I'm hoping we can get a fat payday for him if he wants to leave.

  

Nimo Casinhas was a Benfica cast-off who my scouts at Partizan were convinced had high potential. A bit older than I usually go for when signing with potential in mind, but has improved a bit and I think he might be a late developer. 

Soares is the sole member of this list who was already with the squad when I joined. He spent most of the season considering his options, and his form was so good that I spent most of November and December praising him for just about anything. In January, Boavista offered him a contract, and I guess that persuaded him/his agent to listen to a new contract offer from me. 

 

Youth Intake was very mid. Also hard to judge, given that our best player is considered a 'Good top tier player'. There are some germs in there that need a bit of time on a petri dish. 

 

The plan for next season is to make as much money as possible from anyone we have to sell and try to find all the talented young players my scouts have been utterly incapable of finding. 

[turnip]

Season 22: Leixões, Portuguese Third Division

Transfers

We sold Guillermo Hernandez. To Lusitania Lourosa... The up-front fee wasn't terrific - £825k going up to £1.2m - but they did agree to a +50%ONS clause. Which we sold in January for £4.5m. Nice.

We also sold a young, crap, player we'd signed on a free last season for £250k. Odd, but okay.

We needed a new striker, with Hernandez leaving, and Fernando Santos was on the transfer list at a quite-broke Gil Vicente. Did he want to join us? No, not really, but he did and he played really well for most of the season. A tad prone to going missing in games, but sometimes all it took was shifting him from one wing to the other, or to Shadow Striker, and there he was again. Far too good for the league.

We sold one of our DCs in the summer, which meant we needed a new one. Mikhail Cherepanov had bounced around the lower leagues of Spain and was available for just £58k. Gobble gobble.

A new DR was required, and Andoni Ochoa had just left Eibar on a free. I don't know why we were the only team after him, but we were. Probably just as well, since I (probably drunkenly) accidentally gave him a £0 MFRC rather than the Relegation Release Clause I'd intended. Thankfully, I noticed by the end of October, when he was happy enough with me to accept a pay cut as well. Nice!

I wanted a bit more quality on the wings, so Rodeia came in from Braga for the season. Had a good season, but probably not as good as he should have done.

Oumar Ouedraogo had been on my radar for a while and the end of the January transfer window was a good time to bring him in. Hasn't had much game time yet, but I really like him and think he could be excellent.

Thamer Al-Nefaie was an odd signing. Released on a free by Al-Ahli of Saudi on the back of 4 seasons of consistent improvement and regular football, and he was happy to come to us for £2k p/w . Should be flippable for a million or two at some point soon.

 

Fixtures

A good season all-round. Lots of wins in the league against a fairly modest group of opponents. The Promotion group was a little tough; including the only team we'd lost to in the league, but it turned out okay. We won the Promotion group with a game to spare, crushed the final match with a heavily-rotated team and then snoozed through the Champions Playoff Final.

 

Off the pitch we made some progress as well. With a healthy bank balance, we were able to persuade the board to make some upgrades. We're still a long way from having facilities I'd be happy with (as another wimpy youth intake demonstrated) but progress is progress. 

We are getting into that funky part of progress where players start to look at joining your club in a somewhat unexpected way.

 

[turnip]

Season 23: Leixões, Portuguese Second League

Transfers

We sold Andoni Ochoa after a bit of back-and-forth with Bilbao. Andoni got to practice his sad face as we rejected their first few bids for him, then got to use it once more after he pretended to be sad he was leaving. +50% ONS sweetened the deal of the modest upfront fee. 

Fernando Santos was a late sale. Not surprising we got a couple of bids for him. He's a bit older, so we only slapped a +30% ONS clause in there. 

Gerson Cervantes would probably have played a fair bit this season, but instead he's gone to not play at Famalicao. +50% ONS. 

Albert Mayoral was the player we snagged from under the noses of Barca and Real Madrid. Good, if not spectacular, the plan is very much to get a good season from him and then squeeze every last cent out of a sale next summer. 

Isah Bolaji was a popular enough kid to demand regular playing time during contract talks. A slightly weird set of attributes that look a bit less exciting on a second view, but should have plenty of growth to turn into a very useful player. 

I wanted a new CB for the rotation and Adriano Chio was, if not the best option we had for that spot, the most Portuguese-speaking one. A fairly expensive signing, but he looks like he could develop into a very good centre-back and - at minimum - have good resale value.

Youssef Nadrani came through the Atletico Madrid academy but was let go for some reason. Hasn't played a whole lot of first-team football, but I think he'll be a very solid option once he's settled in.

Myles Legg came in as a direct replacement for Fernando Santos. We're paying him a fairly hefty salary considering we're in the second tier, but even though the scouts and coaches aren't wild about him, I think they're wrong. He's got a pretty low rep for an ex-ManUre player, so I think as that changes, my staff will like him more.

And finally (for now) we needed a replacement for Gerson Cervantes and Cristiano Colaianni was right there on my shortlist. Along with a couple of other AMLs, and it took me a long time to decide who I wanted, but he's the one we signed. 

Fixtures

A very straightforward couple of League Cup matches, the league itself was trickier. We probably should have beaten Alverca and Amora, but were very bad against Chaves. 

One could argue that selling Fernando Santos after he'd scored 6 of our 8 goals in the league was a poor decision...

...

...

...

Yeah, we'll see.

[turnip]

Season 23: Leixões, Portuguese Second League

September - January

A good run in the league. Maia Lidador were relegated from the top tier last season and were just quite a lot better than us. The win against Maritimo was quite possibly the worst game I've ever managed in Football Manager, full of complete dross right up until our goal (which was actually very nice). I feel sorry for the 6,228 people who paid money to watch that. We played better than Oriental, but when two different players miss complete sitters from about 5 yards out, I don't think I can claim we deserved to win. The win against Porto B was weird - they had some really good players in the team, but played like absolute goobers. 

The cups were progressed right up to the point where we faced Sporting and I was never going to select any good players for those fixtures. 

Transfers

No-one left the club, except a few players on loan. We did sell our sell-on clause for Fernando Santos, for £800k or so. 

A bit of a grab-bag for our transfers. We did have a couple of million in the transfer budget, but there's not a lot in the bank at the moment and there wasn't anyone who would obviously make a big difference to the team, so freebies were the order of the day.

Juan Jose Bueno comes in as a backup striker who will hopefully develop a bit. He got a goal and an assist on his debut, while Myles Legg was injured, then promptly got injured himself and missed the rest of January. Oh well.

Jair is a fairly archetypal DLP who's already pretty good in the role. Has had a full season with a non-league Brazilian team and will be a useful backup for the rest of this season.

Tylor Freestone has already played 90-odd games for St Albans senior team (including 48 in the VNN) which explains his excellent Mentals. Still has some holes in his game, but I think he could be a pretty good player.

Speaking of excellent Mentals, Carlos Ramirez is the player my scouts and coaching staff are the most excited about. Needs to get quicker, and I'm hoping a loan back in Paraguay will help with this. If his potential is what my staff think, he could be a first-team player in the future. 

[turnip]

Season 23: Leixões, Portuguese Second League

February - May

With no real changes to the First XI in the transfer window, the Team Cohesion remained excellent alongside excellent Club Atmosphere. FM24 isn't nicknamed Morale Simulator 24 for no reason and although we worked some squad rotation in, the performances remained - again - excellent. We were top of the table at the end of January and never looked likely to drop from there. The draw against Maritimo was another pretty desperate match all-round (whatever the scoreline might suggest) and the win over Academica wasn't much better than that. 

Maia Lidador - who'd been up near the top of the table in the autumn - lost 12 of their 23 league matches between the start of November and the end of the season. It's funny to see the two B Teams getting relegated, given how strong their line-ups had been when we played them, but I guess that's another consequence of Morale Simulator 24; good players mean very little when morale is in the toilet. 

Maritimo, meanwhile, surrendered 2nd place to Academica with 4 matches remaining and then lost to Academico de Viseu in the Playoff. Harsh. 

 

Colaianni gets the highest average rating for us. Impressive, considering he started the season in pretty mediocre form. A lot of those assists were corners, as were Seidel's. Seidel also had a pretty modest open to the season, which is when most of Quinones's starts happened. For both players, there's probably a healthy element of them adapting to the league/country. In fact, you could extend that to Myles Legg who had a decent season all told - we usually play with one striker, and you've got to be a very good striker relative to opposition defenders to be prolific when you're the only one they're marking. Albert Mayoral's 11 goals looks impressive, but is inflated slightly by him grabbing a few penalties towards the end of the season. 

Cherepanov wants to explore his options at the end of his contract, like a fool. A lot of our players have their contracts expiring at the end of next season, so I do need to decide who to keep and who to allow to leave. Finances aren't great at the moment, although the board have given me almost £4m to spend. I'm not sure quite how much interest there'll be in our players to add to that, and I'm not sure I've got the players on my shortlist to improve the squad for only £4m, so we'll have to see how that goes.

Youth Intake

Another distinctly modest intake, but it's worth bearing in mind that we've got a fair amount of talent in the squad right now, so those stars are hard to read.

Another right winger - the easiest position to recruit for at the moment, if my scouts are anything to go by. Hard to judge him from this, but I like the Physicals and if he's got potential he could be useful.

I'm much more excited about Miguel Paiva, for obvious reasons. Other than his size and a couple of Mentals, there are no gaps in his game. Good personality, too. 

[turnip]

Season 24: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

We had another bump to the number of coaches we could hire. We now have a lot, giving us the best level of coaching in the league. Thanks to the club selling off the facilities to avoid bankruptcy, though, this training is taking place in awful facilities. 

Transfers

As predicted, there wasn't a huge amount of interest in our players. Reputation, I assume. We did Cherepanov to Elche for £800k. They're in La Liga and he's a starting DC for them. Yikes.

Quim Alago was rid of for £100k thanks to an intermediary. We floated the prospect of selling some other players, but no-one was really interested. That said, Seny N'Doye and Mehmet Mandirali are both out on loan with optional future fees - I like both of them, but with Mayoral, Ouedraogo, Bolaji and Schwindt in the squad, we had to make some space. 

We needed a backup DR and Matar Kone was suggested as a solid option and is comfortable at DC, too. Looks like he should be very useful.

Hassan Bensouda was brought in to provide a bit of oomph up front. Broken Back Post Headers, and all that. Not exactly useless with the ball on the ground either. Came through the 1860 academy. Not amazing, but gives us something a bit different. 

Valery Vinogradov was a random agent offer on deadline day. Cheap transfer fee, cheap wages and looks like a solid plug-and-play option in the event we have a horrendous injury crisis.

Josue Cardenas was brought in to fill the gap left by Cherepanov. I think he'll end up being much, much better. Not exactly cultured, but neither is the rest of the team.

We let the second DC signing of the summer go out on loan, and after worrying about who I'd sign to be the 4th/5th choice, I decided to let Diarrassouba fill that role and sign Ambrosio Moises to be a backup to Diarrassouba. My scouts and coaches think he could be good; I think he could be brilliant. 

Horny Scott was signed to be a backup option at ST and AML. Again, the scouts and coaches made approving but not enthusiastic noises. Again, I think there's more there. Mostly profit, but also possibly some talent. 

The rest of the signings were largely chaff to fill out the youth squads. Normally I'd have slightly higher expectations, but our Training Facilities are really bad, so I'm mostly hoping they'll develop from getting game time in the youth leagues. 

A good start in the league, albeit Famalicao are the best team of the three we've played by some distance. Seriously, the strength of this league 20 years after we got Lusitania Lourosa to the top is scary. 

We're out of the League Cup, which I couldn't care less about.

 

The goal for this season is very much consolidation. I think we'll be okay. We've got a few important players with contracts due to expire, and keeping them is a priority, because we still have a team full of players who'll be better at the end of the season than they are right now. 

[turnip]

Season 24: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

We were, unsurprisingly, distinctly second-best in our matches against Braga, Benfica and Porto in the league (although Porto had a lot of shots and we had barely any). 

The same would also have been true of the cup tie against Lusitania Lourosa, except I sacrificed the 2nd XI for that match. 

Most of our players have kicked on a bit, although a couple of players have stagnated - Cristiano Colaianni in particular has been very ordinary.

 

Financially, we're suffering at the moment. Without any major sales in the summer the bank balance has been in the red throughout. Coming into December, the board finally seemed to notice and cut our wage budget by a quarter (meaning we're now outspending the budget - something the board were adamant we avoid  ). 

We do have some interest in Isah Bolaji. Man City were initially sniffing around, but now it's Newcastle. We should be able to get £10m for him if I avoid clauses. We need the money, but I might be tempted to drag the upfront price down to try and get a healthy %ONS. 

Random Player Showcase

Santiago was signed on a free a couple of seasons ago after he left his semi-pro Argentinian club and spent last season out on loan in the Argentinian Second Division. He's a bit of an odd one in that none of his Technical attributes are particularly great, but everyone seems to really like him. He's done pretty well in the appearances I've been able to give him, but I'd still sell him if we got a bid of more than £5m.

[turnip]

Season 24: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

We were unlucky not to beat Estoril Praia - after going behind, we ramped up the pressure and dominated the second half but couldn't grab the winner. Against Famalicao, the match was going in the same direction, but the AI made some changes that killed the match off. We did get lucky against Arouca, though; we were bad and but for those late goals from Isah Bolaji would have deservedly lost.

Transfers

All of the signings that came through on the 3rd January were arranged before the board took action and slashed our budgets. 

With the club nearly £5m in the red I was keeping an eye on the interest in Isah Bolaji (Newcastle) and Carlos Ramirez (Chelsea, Juventus) but nothing was happening. On deadline day, with multiple clubs interested in Ramirez, I offered him out thinking that I could get a bidding war going. It's fair to say I wasn't expecting any bids from Paraguayan teams - I've been playing these games a looooong time and never seen a Paraguayan team drop more than a million or two on a player - but even though a bidding war never materialised, I'm happy to have got the balance back in the black by selling a player who'd only made a couple of substitute appearances since returning from a loan. We'll get 40% Profit of Next Sale, but I don't think that'll be very much: although the game now values him at £20-22m, at a club in a low-reputation inactive league, I expect that value will drop off pretty quickly. 

Bernard was a last-ditch signing, just to ensure we have a bit of barely-adequate backup for the DM spot I was expecting Ramirez to play in.

With a couple of the big Portuguese teams also interested in Hermenegildo, we had to offer a reasonable amount of playing time to ensure he'd sign with us.  He needs some work, particularly on his Physicals, but I think he'll be a useful player in the long-run.

We've been tweaking things tactically and are sometimes using 2 strikers in matches. We have a lot of dribbly boys so I wanted something a bit different. Ignacio is quick and - judging by his two sub appearances so far - a bit of a bull-in-a-china-shop in the box. He scored by running onto a through-ball, and created a goal by slamming a header from a corner onto the post for Adriano Chio to tap in. 

[turnip]

Season 24: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

A generally very good end to the season, with some caveats. We got absolutely steamrolled by Moreirense - one of those matches where I clearly completely balls-ed up the team talk and the Moreirense manager clearly aced it. We were awful in defense and non-existent in attack. 4 days later, I rotated the team and we scraped, and I mean 'peeling overly-enthusiastically-applied wallpaper with a plastic ruler' scraped, the draw against Academica. The losses against Benfica and Porto were far more expected and neither really left the team that bothered. The 1-1 draw with Lusitania Lourosa, 1-0 win against Braga and 2-3 over Sporting were all fortunate results, too, but we weren't completely outplayed in those matches. 

All this meant that we went into May in 4th place, with two matches left - Lusitania Lourosa (A) and Farense (H) - and only a point behind Lusitana Lourosa. 

Add another lucky result to the list, I guess. Again, though, they didn't completely outplay us - we obviously dominated possession (as we have for most of the season, to be fair) but their xG was only a bit over 2. The Fran who got booked for them was signed by me way back when, as was their GK - Amado Meireles de Azevedo - who got the assist for their goal and has 163 caps for Portugal. He's retiring imminently and is a strong candidate for the best signing of this entire save.

Having leapfrogged my former club into 3rd, that left us with a home match against Farense to secure Champions League football next season.

A task we achieved with some drama, but the win was deserved. Eventually. 

Table

Vitoria de Guimaraes came close to getting relegated again. How they keep sucking so hard, despite having really good facilities and a squad full of talent is truly remarkable. 

Porto wrapped up the league title quite early. Their youth system is responsible for seemingly half their first team, which is really good. Benfica are also very strong, as are Lusitania Lourosa, whose managers have preferred to spend big on players and let their youth products kind of rot - I'm a little concerned that the lack of Champions League football might hit them hard financially. 

I said at the start of the season that the league generally seems a lot stronger than it was the first time we got here. The standard of player is a lot higher and the finances generally more robust. Not ours, of course; we're still broke. We had a takeover, which was quite possibly the dampest of squibs, the wettest of farts, the most apathetic of shrugs imaginable:

A couple of our players made the Team of the Year, which was nice to see and a couple of our other players made the NxGn list

 

Youth Intake

Not bad. Again, it's hard to see how good these players are going to be, since our training facilities are complete ******* and there's no money at present to improve them.

Embalo could be a good DL. I'm not really seeing any gaps in his game that typical development won't fill out except Dribbling, and that's something we can work on easily enough. 

Luis, on the other hand, doesn't look like he'll amount to much. I see the attributes hanging around the 7-9 range but even if I mentally add 3 to all of those, I'm not seeing someone who'll play top-tier football in Portugal (shrugs apathetically). 

 

Next season looks like it'll be a challenge. Realistically, we have to sell a couple of our better players to make the kind of money we'll need to improve the squad. Even assuming we make the Champions League Group Stages, that money won't come through until the end of the transfer window and if we ask the board at that point to increase the budgets, I'm not sure that'll be approved before the window closes. 

I have re-added a bunch of leagues to be playable - not because I plan to leave (I got a new contract during the run-in) but because it should energise the transfer market a bit. With our woeful training facilities, we need our young prospects to be going out on loan to be able to develop. And hopefully some clubs with money will see our squad and see potential first team players. I have two shortlists full of players who I can bring in. 

[turnip]

Season 25: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League

As I said in the post for the end of last season, we had very little money available, so any transfers were going to have to be funded by sales. Thankfully, Leeds didn't keep us waiting too long. Dani Miquel is obviously a good goalkeeper and while a perfect deal wouldn't have included a % of Profit of Next Sale, the cash part of the deal is something I'm more than happy to live with.

Adriano Chio was just massively undervalued by the game's broken-as-the-top-cracker-in-the-pack transfer value algorithm so when we received an anaemic bid from a Premier League Barnsley team and he wanted to leave, it was just a case of getting as much as we could. 50% ONS should help make up the difference (he's now worth £17m, and that's only because those idiots agreed a MFRC). 

Albert Mayoral was the other big sale. Having sold Miquel, I didn't think we really needed the money, but his spidey-senses told him a bid was coming in, he told me that he wanted to join a bigger club and - lo and behold - a bid from, ahem, Stoke arrived. O Presidente declared he was taking matters into his own hands when he accepted, and while I guess that's true technically (the best kind of being true), it's actually them agreeing to my negotiated bid. Again, 50% ONS is included and will presumably make it an expensive deal for Stoke. 

Youssef Nadrani was our starting DR but hadn't really improved since we signed him 2 years ago. A reliable option though he was, it was time to look elsewhere. 

Joao Marcos, Steve De Bruyn and Luciano Bundchen were all players signed for free who we've made a tidy profit on. And finally, Horny Scott left to go back to Mexico - with a change in our tactic, he went from being backup at AMR/AML and ST to being just our 5th-choice ST, so it was time to offload. 

Jose Manuel joins us after spending his whole career to date playing for Villarreal's B/C teams. He isn't fantastic, and we're paying him a decent chunk of wages, but I think he's a good option and if there's some potential there, I'm hoping first-team football will kickstart his development. 

Luca Rizzato was released after several years of first-team football in the Swiss second tier. My scouts and coaches don't particularly like him - and I can see why, even if I don't agree - but I think he looks like a very solid option to have while we either look for a long-term option or develop our existing backup. 

Youssouf Boni was brought in to help fill the hole left by Mayoral. This season, he'll mostly be a backup in the league and start cup matches (including in Europe, most likely). One of those players I can easily see developing into an excellent player or stagnating, regressing and finishing up his career playing second-tier football in Hong Kong. 

Paulo Mendonca was on the transfer list at Sporting and with pretty modest demands, it was a no-brainer to bring him in as backup. He looks like another who could really kick on with some first-team football. 

Zoran Macanovic is our new DR/WBR option. I could fill a First XI with good DLs and still have a couple left over, but good DRs are hard to find right now, so I'm hoping he can be developed into one. Good Physicals and a solid Technical base leaves me optimistic. Again, will likely be one for the Cups this season. 

Myles Legg popped his ACL in our second(?) friendly of pre-season. I initially brought in a forward from Milan (our senior affiliate) as cover, but was reminded of the existence of Joan - and his £2.9m Relegation Release Clause by... I assume one of our scouts. I had a big laugh when at the press conference announcing his signing, one of the journalists asked "How does it feel to bring Joan back to the club?" - I'd completely forgotten that we had him on loan in the 3rd tier. It's all about the details, you see...

The flurry of signings on deadline day were me filling out the youth squads so they can be competitive. And Razak Souley is deep cover, filling the deep cover role Steve De Bruyn had. 

There was some interest in Mehmet Mandirali after the window closed and he got upset that I rejected some pathetic bids (from Brighton in particular) but he's the like-for-like replacement for Mayoral, and the free agent options for that role are very limited right now. His contract expires at the end of the season - I'm hopeful we can bring him around on staying with the club, since I really like him. 

 

Fixtures

In the league, the Second XI scraped wins against Ac Viseu and Farense, and a draw against Arouca. Bad teams, all, but it let us focus our First XI on Europe. 

Dinamo in the Champions League qualifiers is much less of a gimme than it was before I spent a few years with them. Hardly a bad team even then, they now have enough cash to spooge a ridiculous amount of money on players. We comprehensively FMd them in the Away leg and then ground out a fair draw at Home. They deserve it for paying one player double our entire wage budget, imo. 

Emmen put 10 goals past Sogndal in the Third Qualifying Round, but their first appearance in the Champions League didn't make it past us. You could say that we benefited from their DL getting sent off 11 minutes into the first leg, but having dominated that match, we just about deserved our second leg win. 

That sets us up with a tricky - but I don't think overly tough - set of fixtures that the Second XI will be sent to with cries of "Good luck" and "Don't get smashed!"

 

The club is now very much in the black, with £43m in the bank balance. I asked for - and got - upgrades to Training and Youth facilities, but the board refused to improve Junior Coaching, but I'm going to ask for better Youth Recruitment. 

 

We've already achieved my main goal for the club this season - reaching the Champions League League Phase - and anything else we get in Europe (I'm talking about money) is a bonus at this point, although I think we can beat Lech and Farul Constanta. In the league, I'm aiming for another finish in European places. For the next couple of seasons, I'm really looking for consolidation in the league and a furious rate of improvement in our Facilities - the next phase for the club is getting to the point where we can develop players really well in the Youth squads, and with our facilities at the moment, that's tricky. At some point I'm sure the board will start looking at a new stadium - 9k is simply far too small for a club that's in Europe. 

Edited September 8 by turnip
wrong image linked

[turnip]

 

Ah, man, what an absolute shame

[turnip]

For reference, the budget was about £165k before.