Libertine13

2039/40 (Season 17) Making very slow progress still, but I haven't abandoned the save. No plans to buy FM24 so I'll be playing this save for the foreseeable! It was another title for Belfast Celtic, a third on the bounce. However we did finally lose a league game for the first time in god knows how long. We also managed to win the Irish Cup and League Cup to complete a hat trick of domestic trebles. Once again we qualified for the Champions League out right with two comfortable qualifying wins. Our CL campaign started brightly with a win over Viking, but as you can see we weren't blessed with any other winnable fixtures this year and crashed out of the league stage with only 3 points. I'm thinking we might be better off playing and progressing far in one of the lesser European competitions, but I don't want to throw any CL qualifier match and miss out on the CL proper. Youth Intake; We also had a second player make the NXGN list! We seem to be able to produce pretty good left backs!

2038/39 (Season 16) It's been just over a month since my last update, going is very slow at the minute. There's just not enough hours in the day to play any significant amount of time! Anyway, onto the update. We started the season without our NxGn star Maybin 36A. He signed for Newcastle in a £5m deal with add ons. I need to do a better job of keeping these youngsters with bags of potential! Despite this, it was another superb domestic season. Whilst we didn't accumulate as many points as last seasons 106, we did go unbeaten AGAIN! Table; Europe; Youth Intake;

Thanks! We'll need all the luck we can get trying to conquer Europe! The season in Northern Ireland really can be a slog, we're at a point where the reserve players can easily get us through the domestic cups until we face one of the big 3 and then I can't be throwing those matches away. The current season I'm playing I've had 4 matches in a week, including a league game followed by a European fixture the following day! I do like the idea of being able to whizz through the seasons somewhere where you end up playing under 30 games!

It's been a long time since I've had any significant time to play the game and post in here, but I've managed a season or so since the last update... 2037/38 (Season 15) Our first Danske Bank title win last season was fantastic, but now we had to establish ourselves as the dominant team in the country and put in consistently good performances in whichever European competition we find ourselves in. But first we had to deal with the potential sale of our star forward, Adam Gorman 34A... European Competition; Domestic Campaign; Youth Intake; I've finally had a player make the NXGN list! A lowly 43rd place but I'm delighted.

@HanziZoloman Use the 'Spoiler' icon for hiding text or pictures, the symbol is of an eye.

@Neo_Geo you'll be surprised at how quickly that bank balance will increase with a little Europa Conference Play Off run. Don't even think I'd made it to the Danska Bank PL inside 5 seasons, well ahead of my progress there! Keep up the top work.

2036/37 (Season 14) The season started off on a sour note as I failed to get our best defender to sign a new deal. Daryl Polden 32D eventually signed for rivals Cliftonville on a free. This left a massive hole in my defence that I wasn't sure we'd be able to fill. I had a decent prospect in Dane Brennan 34K who's coming back from a decent spell with a club in the Championship 2, but the level there isn't very good at all. I also had Trevor O'Conner 35B, who had been our back up centre half the previous season but hasn't really got any stand out attributes. Europa League; Domestically we were very good, only losing to Linfield and Larne before Christmas. We'd filled the void left by Polden 32D as Brennan 34K and O'Connor 35B stepped up to the challenge. The two Irishmen rotating to line up alongside Conor Gracey 33A at the back. However it was our frontmen that had given us such a good first part to the season. Adam Gorman 34A had put behind him his below average season and had hit the ground running, he was unstoppable up top, with Robbie-Lee Clingan 29A having his best season from the right. All this good form brought with it major interest from a good handful of top clubs... Adam Gorman 34A interest; Without the distraction of European football and the added bonus of our first full season as a professional club it looked like our previous issues with player fatigue and having to rotate heavily every so often were a thing of the past. We never let up, in fact we went on an unbeaten run all the way to the league split where we found ourselves in one hell of a position, not even a broken leg for Gracey 33A and damaged cruciate ligaments for last seasons breakout youngster Grant Dorman 35G knocked us off our stride... Title push; Youth Intake; The Team;

2035/36 (Season 13) It's been a while since I've been able to put any significant amount of time into this save, let alone update my progress. But here it is. Off the back of our best season to date we had an issue with retaining a couple of our first choice defenders. Brendan Moore 32A and Daryl Polden 32D were both refusing to sign new contracts unless the squad was strengthened. Moore's contract was up at the end of the previous season and Polden's had one year remaining. Brendan Moore 32A contract saga; Europa League Conference Play Offs; Europa League League Phase; (If applicable) Europa League KO Phase; (If applicable) Domestically we had another very good season, we managed to win one of the many domestic cup competitions. The County Antrim Shield was brought home with a brilliant 1-0 win over Linfield. We went deep in the other cup competitions, semi finals of the Irish Cup and quarters of the NIFL Cup. Add our European adventure in the mix and we ended up playing a ridiculous number of matches this season, meaning we dropped some silly points through having to rotate our tiny squad or playing through tiredness. The fact we were only 4 points off Linfield at the top come the league split was incredible! However the run in was 5 games too many for us, we only managed one victory in the remaining games. We still held onto 2nd place and we actually got Europa League football next season as Linfield completed the double, meaning the spot wasn't given to the Irish Cup winners. Our success in Europe this season earned us plenty of money, we were able to upgrade both the Training and Youth Training facilities for the coming season and we FINALLY went Pro! This has got me all kinds of excited, I'm looking forward to players being able to reach their actual potential now! . Best XI; Youth Intake;

Looks to me like he's closed the winger down, then got drawn into following the long ball and then he's closed the winger down again after his team mate has won the header. Without knowing his decision making attribute amongst others it's hard to say it's unusual behaviour for a player.

2034/35 (Season 12) I'll start with our European adventure again, where we qualified for the European Conference League, League Path Qualifying Round for the second time running. First Round; Second Round; Third Round; Fourth Round; Europa League; Our domestic season didn't start so well, back to back draws against teams we need to be beating to have any chance of closing the gap to the top 3 teams. In fact we only won 3 of our first 8 league games. With the emergence of Adam Gorman 34A, we'd been resting Robbie-Lee Clingan 29A and we'd struggled for consistency. I didn't like the idea of one of these forwards being benched and it wasn't really doing us any favours, so I decided to give Robbie-Lee Clingan 29A a good run of games on the right, as an inside forward, just to get both players in the team. This propelled us up the league as we started to score more goals. In fact we managed to put ourselves in an incredible position for when the table split. The two lads mentioned each had 26 league goals, which has been the foundation to our form. After the league split we managed a goalless draw with Larne, then beat Coleraine and Glentoran. We were actually in with an outside chance of winning the league as Linfield going into the game against the league leaders. Needing a win to take it to the last day of the season, we decided to have one of our worst performances of the season. 4-0 down before half time! Our keeper returned a pathetic 5.3 rating as we eventually lost 5-0. After this thrashing we only needed a draw against Cliftonville to secure a top 2 finish. There was no Linfield hangover as we ran out deserved 1-0 winners to achieve our best ever finish! Though if we'd have finished above Cliftonville in the previous 6 seasons we would have won the league and to top it off, they went on to win the Irish Cup meaning we were relegated to the Europa League Conference instead of the Europa League! Youth Intake;

2033/34 (Season 11) The season kicked off with our first ever venture into European football with the European Conference League, League Path Qualifying Round. First Round; Second Round (if applicable); Third Round (if applicable); Fourth Round (if applicable); European Conference League (if applicable); Our league form was fantastic, winning every game bar the matches against the fully professional sides up until November, where we picked up a couple of unlucky draws. With Cliftonville and Linfield competing in Europe we were actually sat top for a good while as they had games in hand. We even picked up a couple of positive results against the big boys to give us some hope of finishing inside the top 3, including a first ever league win vs Cliftonville. However we just fell short, 4 points off Larne in third place. I'm desperate for our club to turn professional as I know we struggle with fitness around Christmas. We managed to get to two semi finals this season as well, losing in the NIFL Cup to Larne and in the Irish Cup beaten by Linfield. We have a couple of big issues within the squad. Our right back Brendan Moore 32A and centre half Daryl Polden 32D are refusing to sign contracts as they want to see the squad improved first. I have no way of discussing this with them and they're not even unhappy or come to me about this issue. They're both still on youth contracts despite turning 17 but the former has one year left on his. Both would be easily poachable if anyone was interested in signing them. We'll be significantly weaker without them. Youth Intake; Finances/Facilities; With the prize money from our European matches we saw our balance hit over £1m for the first time and the board duly and finally agreed to update the training facilities which we completed in February at a cost of £760k. They refused my pleas to turn professional though, citing that the club hasn't ever been at this level of football before and want to become established here first. So another slog of a season with little improvements and no chance of catching the Professional Clubs.

A Decade In! I've not posted much about the club facilities, finances etc in my updates so I'm going to post a few bits now, 10 seasons into the save. My Profile; Finances and Facilities; Fan and Board Support/Vision; Notable Players;

2032/33 (season 10) Our 10th season in charge was looking to be a very challenging one. After last season's very respectable finish we had a handful of players looking to destroy the positive atmosphere around the club by wanting moves to bigger clubs. Left back, Albert George 27A, had been a constant problem for me with missing training on a number of occasions and kicking up a fuss when calling him out for poor performances and decided he'd see out his contract. Jonathan Johnston 31A, our 17 year old 5 star keeper, was adamant he was better off elsewhere. As was our other 5 star player and star player, Robbie-Lee Clingan 29A. Luckily for me the latter two had at least 4 years on their contracts, what with them both having a couple of decent extension clauses so I was prepared to power through their discontent. Despite this we started the season well (if we ignore the opening loss against relegation tipped Institute) and found ourselves amongst the fully professional teams half way through the first part of the season. Once the matches started to come thick and fast we tailed off, we haven't got any depth at the club at all and our main players were pretty much always playing through tiredness! We got to the point where the league split for the remaining 5 matches of the season in 4th place, just a couple of points ahead of perennial 4th placers, Glentoran and an absolute mile off the top 3 pro teams. Our record against the top three has been abysmal over the years so the games against Glentoran and Coleraine would be vital. Up first were our rivals for 4th place, Glentoran. It wasn't pretty but we ran out 1-0 winners, that man Robbie-Lee Clingan 29A grabbing the winner in the second half. That gave us a 5 point cushion with the top three teams to play within a week. We actually lost each of those 3 games by a single goal, but in truth we were woeful in each game. In fact, we didn't even beat Coleraine in our final fixture who we were 20 points clear of. It was a good job we'd already wrapped up 4th spot by then! Robbie-Lee Clingan 29A had an absolute nightmare end to the season, last four matches he went 6.0, 5.7, 6.0 and 5.7! I've never seen anything like it. European Places Play Offs; Best XI; Youth Intake; Bit of a word dump on this one, apologies. Think I'll do a ten season review with other bits of the club development etc next. I've not once mentioned finances or facilities!

2031/32 (Season 9) Having survived relegation fairly comfortably last season we were hoping for some minor gains this time around. Whilst the board and supporters were both happy for us to just avoid relegation. It ended up being a season of bad spell followed by a good one, mostly because of how the fixtures fell. We struggled against the better teams and beat the worse ones. As you'd expect with form and results like those, we ended up midtable, or "best of the rest" if you want to put a very positive spin on it. The good news was that finishing in 7th place meant we'd get a free hit at qualifying for one of the European places. Our main man, Robbie Lee-Clingan 29A, had a very good campaign personally. He ended on 32 league goals in 33 games (only good enough for third place for the golden boot) and he also won both the Danske Bank Young Player Of The Year and the Audi Belfast Ulster Young Player Of The Year! European Places Play Offs; Best XI; Youth Intake;

The interactions with players are so poor and I think most could be remedied by you, as the manager, being able to issue ultimatums/targets for players. For instance, when you bring up the fact a player has trained poorly a second time and the player insists they've made an effort to improve (when they clearly haven't) you should be able to tell them you expect a certain training rating in the next training update or you'll be dropping them. Another would be when a player comes to you for a new contract and you can say something along the lines of "nothing is handed out for free" and they ask what they can do. Instead of learning a new role or whatever rubbish is there you should be able to tell them you expect an average rating of X in the next 5 games or so and you'll get down to negotiations. I think there's potential to be hand in making the player interactions more interactive.