Carambau Posted September 9 Share Posted September 9 (edited) No More Neverkusen July 2023. It is time. Time to prove we can emulate reality. Time to prove we can beat Bayern. Time to win the 1st Bundesliga title for Bayer Leverkusen. Time to add silverware to the UEFA Cup , DFB Pokal 1 and DFB Pokal 2. And more. Edited Saturday at 07:38 by Carambau Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carambau Posted Saturday at 07:54 Author Share Posted Saturday at 07:54 (edited) No More Neverkusen The Squad A light squad in terms of sheer number you might say but I like my squads compact so I can view them on one page. We have a lot of good players that can play in the central of defense, Tah is a good example of that and thats why we will play with a back three. But we also got good quality on both sides like Grimaldo, so we are going to use wing backs there. Xhaka is a great leader and will lead our team from central midfield, alongside Palacios. In front of them we will have two attacking midfielders and here we of course cannot overlook Wirtz who will be one of those two. In Attack we only have one place, so Boniface will have to battle it out with Schick, but the latter is injured for some months now anyway so Boniface will start the season there. The Tactics We will try something different in this save. A back three with wing backs and 2 attacking midfielders up front. This is how our first eleven could look. The Board Expectations Not too much pressure there. Edited 16 hours ago by Carambau 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carambau Posted Sunday at 07:58 Author Share Posted Sunday at 07:58 (edited) No More Neverkusen First Half Of The Season We are in 3rd after 16 games, Bayern are 6 points ahead already. We only lost 2 games though, vs Cologne and Dortmund, but had too many draws compared to them. But we also had some nice games like the win against Frankfurt. In the DFB Pokal we reached the quarter finals, after beating amateur side Oberachern comfortably, Hoffenheim after penalties and poor Frankfurt 3-0. Now we will face Bundesliga 2 outfit Karlsruhe. In the Europa League we got drawn in a managable group and surprisingly won it quite comfortably after hammering LASK and even EPL side Brighton. Next we are going to meet Serie A team Lazio in the 1st knockout round. The fans are einjoying the ride. We are playing with a solid first team with not that much rotation. Perhaps this is why a lot of players were unhappy with their playing time and we either shipped them out on loan or sold them in January to keep up the general happiness of tthe team. Maybe, just maybe we can still mount a title challenge with a good start into the new year. Edited Sunday at 14:16 by Carambau Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
warlock Posted Sunday at 14:06 Share Posted Sunday at 14:06 6 hours ago, Carambau said: a lot of players were unhappy with their playing time Before opting for Sassuolo in my latest save, I did play a couple of months with Leverkusen and found exactly that problem. There's a quite a big drop off in quality behind the obvious First XI. Pretty good start, though, and as you say, a run at the title isn't out of the question 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carambau Posted Sunday at 14:15 Author Share Posted Sunday at 14:15 8 minutes ago, warlock said: Before opting for Sassuolo in my latest save, I did play a couple of months with Leverkusen and found exactly that problem. There's a quite a big drop off in quality behind the obvious First XI. Pretty good start, though, and as you say, a run at the title isn't out of the question Welcome to the new save Interesting that you made the same experience... Well I hope to have it sorted a bit now by shipping them out, morale seems ok, no one is unhappy anymore Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carambau Posted Sunday at 14:44 Author Share Posted Sunday at 14:44 (edited) No More Neverkusen Second Half Of The Season We made it! We imitated life! We won the title with Bayer Leverkusen! We had a great unbeaten streak from February to April which was key and we beat Bayern on the way in a fantastic match where Boniface scored 4 goals. This of course helped him becoming the Bundesliga Topscorer and Player Of The Year. Bayern finished 3rd only and the table looks very very similar to the actual 23/24 end of season table when it comes to the top 7 Looking forward to playing in the Champions League next season! Yes, we also won the DFB Pokal, imitating what happened in reality again. Granted, we had a rather easy way to the final, defeating both 2. Bundesliga outfits Karlsruhe and Kaiserslautern on the way. Then we met mighty Bayern in the final. A Bayern team, that had just lost the Bundesliga title which has been theirs for 11 years straight. They were dying for bloody revenge. And then we beat them again. No, we did not win the triple. Our European campaign was rather a story of disappointment. We marched through the group stage unbeaten and won the group, just to go out in the first knockout round against a terribly mediocre but clinical Lazio after a goalless away draw and a home defeat. I mean, just look at the shots on goal in both games and tell me we have NOT been FM´d here. It was a successful season for our U19 team. They won the German U19 Division 1 West and qualified for the German Youth Championship semi final where they lost against Bayern. And the annual Youth Intake brought some new talent. Especially Matthias Gorski stood out. The future looks bright! Edited Sunday at 16:41 by Carambau 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carambau Posted Sunday at 15:58 Author Share Posted Sunday at 15:58 (edited) No More Neverkusen It is of course no question who was our best player last season. Boniface scored 41 goals in just 43 games, that speaks volumes about his finishing. Frimpong had 15 assists as a wing back, same goes for Grimaldo with 16. Hofmann had 17 assists and he is an attacking midfielder. This just shows how good our runs on the wing were. Wirtz is more a poacher than a passer and his 14 goals and only 7 assists clearly indicate this. Xhaka made sure we did not run into counters too often and Palacios controlled our game from central midfield. Schick scored 9 goals despite often coming on only as a sub. Our back three stood solid as well. We will try to make Stanisic´s loan a permanent one for next season. Andrich was the only player who disappointed a little bit. Granted, he played only half of the games but still he did not live up to our expectations. Mbamba, Milojevic, Pohl, Onyeka and Frimpong were promoted from the U19s in January to fill up the squad after the departures of the loan players and did not really feature often. 2. Bundesliga EPL La Liga Serie A Ligue 1 Champions League Europa League Europa Conference League Edited Sunday at 16:41 by Carambau 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
warlock Posted Sunday at 16:08 Share Posted Sunday at 16:08 Outstanding 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMartello Posted Sunday at 19:09 Share Posted Sunday at 19:09 Great season! Did you use the same tactic all season? And does it use player instructions? 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gee_Simpson Posted Sunday at 20:47 Share Posted Sunday at 20:47 (edited) Following this as I'm Leverkusen myself. Didn't do as well as you though! 1st season I finished on 71 points and 3rd place. Quarters of the Europa and I think I got put out the DFB Pokal early. Won the league 3 seasons in a row now but still not managed a Pokal. Lost in the final of the UCL and got to the semis twice. I won the league in season 2 and 3 with 75 points, but last season won it with 85 which was a nice improvement. Edited Sunday at 20:53 by Gee_Simpson 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carambau Posted Monday at 07:27 Author Share Posted Monday at 07:27 (edited) 15 hours ago, warlock said: Outstanding Thanks mate 12 hours ago, TheMartello said: Great season! Did you use the same tactic all season? And does it use player instructions? Yes and yes! Wirtz for example got "roam from position" and "dribble more" 10 hours ago, Gee_Simpson said: Following this as I'm Leverkusen myself. Didn't do as well as you though! 1st season I finished on 71 points and 3rd place. Quarters of the Europa and I think I got put out the DFB Pokal early. Won the league 3 seasons in a row now but still not managed a Pokal. Lost in the final of the UCL and got to the semis twice. I won the league in season 2 and 3 with 75 points, but last season won it with 85 which was a nice improvement. Nice to hear from a fellow Leverkusener Wow that sounds like great progress there with the team - I hope I can do the same Edited Monday at 07:30 by Carambau Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMartello Posted Monday at 09:57 Share Posted Monday at 09:57 2 hours ago, Carambau said: Thanks mate Yes and yes! Wirtz for example got "roam from position" and "dribble more" Nice to hear from a fellow Leverkusener Wow that sounds like great progress there with the team - I hope I can do the same Is it possible to share all the player instructions when you have time? 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carambau Posted Monday at 10:20 Author Share Posted Monday at 10:20 22 minutes ago, TheMartello said: Is it possible to share all the player instructions when you have time? I will do when I get home and have time Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carambau Posted Monday at 17:57 Author Share Posted Monday at 17:57 7 hours ago, TheMartello said: Is it possible to share all the player instructions when you have time? There you go Spoiler https://i.imgur.com/4jmM8NQ.png Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carambau Posted 16 hours ago Author Share Posted 16 hours ago (edited) No More Neverkusen Transfers We could not prevent Grimaldo from following the big money to the big league. We made Stanisic´s loan move permanent. We also needed a younger keeper for the future, so Meslier came in from Leeds. Our attacking midfield was strengthened with veteran Fekir and the talented Gloukh and Nakai. Alarcon comes as a backup, same goes for Mwene. Osterhage gets loaned back to Bochum for the season and Ukpeigbe, Natali and Aegerter go to the U19s because of their young age. The Squad Hradecky will remain our number one but Meslier will take his place sooner or later. Mwene and Stanisic add to our depth in defense. Alarcon provides backup in central midfield while in attacking midfield we got some more options now with Gloukh and Fekir. Nakai will need some more time to develop. Onyeka and Schlich join from our U19s. The Tactics The tactics worked wonders last season, so we will use them again this season. Edited 15 hours ago by Carambau 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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