[FM24] CDs, BOTs, and Unkindness – FC Isle of Man

[shd34_216_42]

Sell the clause, you want the money now with that much in consideration.

(You'll also need the money when you get promoted, because the staff will want more to work full-time and you have minimum wage requirements for full-time players.)

Nice to see that the U21 team actually gets in a league.

[erik45]

15 hours ago, shd34_216_42 said:

Sell the clause, you want the money now with that much in consideration.

(You'll also need the money when you get promoted, because the staff will want more to work full-time and you have minimum wage requirements for full-time players.)

Nice to see that the U21 team actually gets in a league.

Yeah, I agree selling the clause: guaranteed €15m now has much more worth for the club than uncertain ~0-60 millions somewhere in the future. 

[erik45]

Clause buyout. Hello €15,26m, welcome home!  When I saw the opportunity to get this amount of money for a clause that doesn't guarantee us anything I immediately decided to activate it. Yes, down the line there could've been possibility to gain much more, but that is very uncertain. Money in the current situation has much more value than some potential future money.

So, now we have crazy amount of money on our bank account: over €16 million! What to do with it? Spend as much as we can, of course!

Training facilities. Upgrade approved, nice! 

Youth facilities. Upgrade approved, nice!

Or I actually asked to move up a youth level, as there was no option for youth facility upgrade, but youth level move seemed to be the way to go.

What's even better, is that finishing the upgrades take just 3-4 months which leaves the door open for another batch of upgrades. I think I will try to do it, but that won't be decided until February. I also want to leave money for turning pro, but that's not an issue right now as we have ~€12m in the bank.

Edited September 15 by erik45

[erik45]

October 2044. The successes with the finances didn't carry on to the games. Okay, we did quite well in the cup games, but the month in the league was a flop. We had couple of really tricky fixtures, but winning only one from six is unacceptable. The 2nd XI actually played better than the 1st, gaining the only win and drawing one more.

Table. Now there's a real gap between us and the top, but we are still in the promotion discussion.

Finances. Stonks, we have money (check the previous post to see why)!

 

Upcoming fixtures. FA Cup replay and a busy league schedule, let's do better than we did on October!

[erik45]

November 2044. Great start, winning two in the league and the FA Cup replay. After that... I don't know. Bath City deserved their win, but the rest of the games...both against Shrewsbury and Fleetwood we had 2 goal leads that we blew. In the cup our 2nd XI dominated Tranmere (League 2) but just couldn't find the net. Tranmere had one shot, from a penalty, and that was enough for them to go through. 

Table. We slip down in the table, 16 points to the top is too much to catch up.

Upcoming fixtures. I don't care about the FA Trophy right now, the 2nd XI will get their chance to play there. I just really want to get our form in the league to the right track!

[erik45]

Youth intake preview. 5 star incoming, but with what kind of players? No grade A, only one B and rest of it C or worse. Hmm, I don't know how I feel about this preview, it surely doesn't excite me.  This is just the preview, maybe there will be a positive surprise in the actual intake in March!

[erik45]

December 2044. How do we draw so many games??? The Boxing day win was excellent and after that we continued with a solid win. Maybe this is a sign of better things to come...?

Yes, it has been frustrating.  6 draws...

Table. This is not looking great. My gut feeling is we need to be in top 3 to get promoted (so we skip the first round of playoffs), and the gap between us and the 3rd is already 13 points.

Upcoming fixtures. Usually January is much busier, but in a way I'm happy we have only the league left, no need to share focus with other competitions.

[erik45]

January 2045. If the end of the year was a struggle, same can't be said about the beginning of 2045. Not a perfect month, but still very good. Highlight of the month: 2nd XI scoring 6 past Forest Green Rovers.

Table. Back to playoff positions!

Youth facilities. Upgrade: done. Another upgrade: accepted!  It is a very expensive upgrade, but we have the money and I'm more than ready to spend it.

 

Finances. Still €7,7m in the bank, that's a lot of money for National League side.

Upcoming fixtures. This is going to be a difficult month. Stockport lead the league, Woking and Chester are in the battle for promotion. If we do well, we have a really good chance of making it to the playoffs.

[erik45]

March 2045. What the h*ll is this?  These draws are coming to haunt us. I kind of agree with the two losses, but we were leading in all the draws, by two goals against Woking. Players are more or less happy, so it is not a club atmosphere thing. The tactic isn't that demanding that players would be really tired at the end of the games, so it's that neither. As I don't know what is the problem I'm not too eager to change things yet.

Table. There is still a chance of getting to the playoffs, but I think the chances of promotion are ~5 %.

Training facilities. Last month we got our youth facilities upgraded and got a 2nd upgrade approved, now we did the same thing for training facilities. 

Finances. We are using a lot of money right now.  I want to get upgrades done (and I don't want to pay too much taxes on the profit we make this season).

Upcoming fixtures. March shouldn't be as tough as January. If we win 3 or 4 games, we are still in the mix for promotion.

[erik45]

Youth intake 2045. A good CB prospect, but what else is there..? The first view isn't too promising, but let's take a closer look.

Only four stars! 

Okay, this is even worse than expected. Not because of CA/PA of the players, but because of the personalities!  Only one positive personality and loads of bad personalities. Also the determination of these players is ridiculously low on average. I have excellent coaching and HOYD for this level with emphasis on the personalities of the coaches, but it hasn't affected our intakes. 

My favourites from this intake are Bruce 45a, Wassenaar 45d and Devlin 45i, their player profiles:

[erik45]

March 2045. Well, we got three wins and only a narrow loss against Bath City who still are in the battle for the title.

Table. I forgot to take the screenshot at the turn of the month, so this is after +1 game (which we won)! There are three teams we can overtake, but it will be very difficult.

 

Upcoming fixtures. So, only two games left. If we win both of them I'm quite certain we will be in the playoffs. But we would start form the first round (and away from home), so it would be a massive surprise to get promoted.

[erik45]

April 2045. We didn't make it easy for us to fight for the chance in the promotion playoffs. In both of the last two games we started by conceding two before we actually started playing. Two goals was too much for us and we only ended with 1 point from possible 6.

Table. Win in the last game would've been enough to overtake Shrewsbury, who had a total meltdown at the end of the season. But we didn't so we stayed in the 8th position. Next season will be the 6th season in the National League, this save is progressing veeeeery slowly right now. 

[erik45]

Season 2044/2045 review. The board is really happy and the media is talking positively about us. After being 3rd the season before and not really weakening after that, being 8th in the league is a disappointment for me. Yes, we had a totally new formation that mixed things up a bit, but we just couldn't be as good as we were in 2043/2044.

Final table. In the end it was Grimsby Town who took the 2nd promotion place, a bit of a surprise to me! Bath City were in the playoffs final for a 3rd season in a row - and it was 3rd time they lost the final!  We were only one win away from playoff places, but 27 points away from the top. Way too big of a gap.

xPts. This tells an even sadder story. Before this season, our worst season in the National League was 7th in xPts table. Now we are 10th. It is fair to say our new tactic didn't make us play better.

Best XI. This is the same as 1st XI. Nothing really stands out. Maybe our LB having only 6.74 avg rating is something to think about.

Players by minutes. Our defensive players were really well available, all but 1st choice LB clocking 3000+ minutes.

Players by avg rating. Only 5 players with average rating of 7.0, that's worrying.

 

 

Players by goals. Only two players with 10+ goals and none with 20+. Not good enough. Gomez 39f was really efficient with his xG and young Winter 44a had a quite good G/90. Could he be our new AF/P who scores 30+ goals?

Players by assists. If the lack of prolific goal scorers was a disappointment, so is this. Wingers got some assists as did our BWM Preece 42c, but the attacking midfielders didn't do well, not at all (7 & 3 assists).

 

Professional status change. The board surprised me with their request of turning the club pro. I don't know why they needed to ask me, but I happily agreed with them!  We have enough money in the bank to do this and it might elevate our player quality to a new level. On top of that, we finally get a set piece coach and some staff to sport science.

New contract. Two years + two more if we get promoted. 

Finances. Some more sponsorship money, but we need to pay quite a bit of taxes next year because of the profits we did. My estimate is we will have ~€4-4.5m in the bank at the end of 45/46 season. We have one clause worth of €700k available at the moment, but I'm not in a rush to activate it, as the player in question is worth €6m+ and the clause is 50 %.

Youth product in the ENG national team. Look at that! We have our very first youth product playing for the Three Lions!  Smith 40a has been on loan at Southampton in Championship. They got promoted as 2nd in the league and Smith 40a got 6 goals in 14 appearances (10 starts). The season before he got 18 goals in 33 games for Cardiff in the Championship.  I think there needs to be at least dozen better strikers for England, but I'm still very proud and happy to see him get his first cap! 

[erik45]

Season 2045/2046 preview. Last season wasn't a good one, now it's time to do some changes and get us back to the battle for the title.

Board expectations. Board is as boring as always, they just expect us to avoid relegation. This is our 6th season in the National League and the worst final position we've had has been 8th. So why is the expectation relegation? 

Media prediction. Last season the prediction was 13th, now 12th - progress?  Our odds for the title are also better than last season (15.00 vs. 21.00). Our right wing-back is considered our best player (I don't know if I agree) and our left winger (who was on loan last season) is considered the best prospect (I might agree).

 

1st XI. Yes, I have changed to an absolute classic formation: say hello to 4-4-2!  I had my first FM24 save in Japan and I had great success with this formation. As one can see, we have quite a bit of injury worries at the start of the season, missing three players from the 1st XI.

2nd XI. This is quite strong 2nd XI compared to earlier seasons. I would like to emphasise PA even more when choosing players, but right now it is more important to get results and get promoted.

Facility upgrades. Very happy with these upgrades! We had the money and as this is almost a youth only save we really need to do all the upgrades we can. 

 

Transfer out. This came totally out of nowhere! Guaranteed €900k for a player who played total of 0 minutes for us.  Aswani 41c had three full seasons on loan in National South/North and lately became a Kenyan international, but still... €900k is a lot of money! This is 3 x more than the next highest transfer fee. Chesterfield play in the Championship and my guess is he'll never be a starter for them. He was ready to be one for us, but even at this level I had questions about his quality (especially about his speed).

 

International call-ups. One new name as a player from the latest youth intake got immediately called up. Wassenaar 45d also has Dutch and English nationalities.

Injuries. Three injuries in one training session and one more in the game after that...  Okay, I sold one of the players after their injury, but still...

Pre-season friendlies. Not too many wins, but when you look at the level of our opponents, the results look much more positive.

Upcoming fixtures. New opponent alert! For the first time in a competitive game we face Preston! Let's hope our 4-4-2 system works better than the 4-2-3-1 we tried last season. If it doesn't work, I'm ready to go back to my classic narrow 4-3-3.

[shd34_216_42]

Now that you're professional, make sure that you meet the required wage minimums for full-time players in the future.

Injury rate seems to be way higher for professional teams for some reason (I think it's related to there being more training sessions), so you probably will want more depth.