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.

2030/31 (Season 8) Another quickfire update to help catch up on where my save actually is. We were back in the Danske Bank Premier League at the first try, hoping to give a better account of ourselves than our previous campaign here! Again we weren't expected to do much other than attempt to survive. It looked like we were in for another torrid time as we 7 games without a win and only a single point to show for it. But we managed to find our feet in the games that mattered most after then, picking up important victories against our relegation rivals to give ourselves a fighting chance of staying up. Into the new year we really picked up some momentum and gave ourselves some much needed breathing room. It's a good job we did because we only managed the one win in our remaining 8 games of the season. Fingers crossed this is something we can build on. We had another half decent cup run, this time in the most important Irish Cup. We got all the way to the semi finals where we lost to eventual winners, Larne, in extra time. We were seconds away from beating them in the 90 minutes as well, so it was a gutting result! Best XI; Youth intake;

2029/30 (Season 7) We were hoping to bounce straight back after the disappointment of relegation from the top division last season. We started off brightly, only losing the first game of the season then remaining unbeaten for the next 13 games. Dungannon Swifts, who came down with us last season, were just on another level though, we couldn't keep pace with them and a poor November saw us lose our advantage over fellow play off hopefuls, Ards and the following pack were in touching distance. We recovered well until March rolled round as the league split in two when we had our 2nd poor spell of the season. Qualification for a play off place came down to the last day of the season, where we faced Ards, who had already booked their spot. Newington Youth held the advantage over us, just needing a draw themselves to qualify! Maybe having the league out of our own hands helped ease the pressure in that last game, or maybe Ards were already thinking about their own play off matches to come, but we flew out of the blocks, Michael Maher 26B, putting us into an early lead inside 10 minutes. We were on top until Ards equalised on the 25th minute, but we showed resilience to restore or lead ten minutes later when centre half Lawrence Vernon 27f headed home from a corner. We deservedly gave ourselves some breathing room in first half injury time as Michael Maher 26B doubled his tally. In the other game Newington Youth had put themselves in front inside 2 minutes but had gone into the break at 1-1. We managed the game well and Robbie-Lee Clingan 29A put the game to bed with a handful of minutes to spare! Attention focused on the result of the Newington Youth game, they'd actually conceded on the 79th minute to Carrick Rangers and couldn't get that draw to see them into the play offs! Our two talented strikers, Michael Maher 26B and Robbie-Lee Clingan 29A, amassed a total of 55 league goals between them. Our other young forward, Reece Byrne 29B, chipped in with 14 as well. So onto the promotion play offs where we'd face recent beaten opposition in Ards... Play Offs; We actually had a good cup run this season as well, making it all the way to the final of the NIFL League Cup! The poor runs of league form we had I'm happy to attribute to the run we had in this competition. We were fairly lucky with the draws we had up until the final where we were up against a Cliftonville side who we've not even so much gotten a draw against! Since this is a big season review I'll try keep the youth development side short and sweet... Intake;

@Weed07 excellent progress in N. Ireland. Well ahead of me! Just curious to see if theres much difference ability wise between a couple of your starting XI players and mine as I've struggled in the top flight and have a major issue with the number of goals I concede lol.

2028/29 (Season 6) Back to back promotions meant we'd managed to get ourselves in the top league in Northern Ireland. I wasn't expecting to stay here for long and the board was hoping we'd fight bravely against relegation. But we never expected the step up to be this difficult. Our first victory didn't come until January 23rd, the 25th game of the season! We were atrocious! We weren't helped by the fact that Glackin missed the first 4 months of the season through injury and then as he was about a month from returning, Michael Maher 26B suffered a similar injury and would miss 4 months himself, so without any firepower up top we were just being hammered left, right and centre. I wasn't worried at all about losing my job throughout the season as I thought I'd built up enough credit with the board and fans from the last two campaigns. The had both rated our season as a C- as well. But since my contract was up the board did pull me in for a chat. I basically had to beg to keep my job, which I wasn't happy about doing but fortunately I'm still here. I'd have been devastated to be sacked after one poor showing in the top division! Best XI; Youth;

2027/28 (Season 5) Sorry for the back to back updates, I'm a couple seasons ahead of updates and thought whilst I'm here I'll try catch up on a couple. Back in the Championship following our promotion after a play off win last season, hoping we'd fare a lot better than last time at this level. The board weren't expecting anything other than a struggle and hoped we'd give survival our best shot. Little did they expect what was to come. Michael Maher 26B, with a whole season under his belt as a regular starter, was phenomenal! He finished the season with 35 league goals in 37 games. Whilst we still haven't been able to address the defensive issue with conceding bucket loads of goals, we still managed to run away with the league. Only 6 points seperated us from 2nd place in the end, but the league was wrapped up early and we only managed 9 points out of a possible 24 at the end of the campaign. We might as well not have turned up for the cup matches as rotating the squad in the early round saw us knocked out comprehensively each time. Oddly this season we really struggled against the worst teams, I'm not sure if it was a tactical issue because we were still dominating the chances and XG stats, but it was frustrating at times. I wasn't rotating much at all in the league so it had nothing to do with a drop off in ability amongst the starting XI's either. Best XI; Off the pitch we again made zero improvements, we've never been in the red but our finances have yet to reach 6 figures. Hopefully the promotion to the top division will help convince the board to invest in some facilities! We're producing decent youngsters in every intake but most of their development has been a slog, if at all! Youth;

2026/27 (Fourth Season) I was pleased to have been given a chance to carry on here despite the disappointment of relegation last season. The board were happy for us to achieve a mid table position but I had higher aspirations than that, especially with our fire power. Unfortunately we lost Bob Robinson 25A before a ball had even been kicked, he went to Southend on a free which really annoyed me, he was destined to be a very good player for us through the leagues. Our early season form was a little patchy and we were still having problems with conceding goals, but with Brendan Glackin up top we were able to mostly outscore any opponent. We just couldn't quite keep up with Balllymacash Rangers and finished 2nd, in the play off places where we'd face Dundela. Bob Robinson transfer... So on to the play offs... Best XI; At the beginning of the season I put in a request to improve the youth recruitment and got this back. Pretty handy considering the team is made up of around 95% youth products. First time I've seen or been given this requirement. Youth; Hopefully we're at least in a better position on the pitch next season, off field we've barely been able to make any progress. We just don't have the finances available for facility upgrades and I highly doubt we'll get any upgrades any time soon, it'll have to be through qualifying for Europe that we get any sort of cash injection. I think as long as I keep hold of the HoYD we have we'll keep getting very good intakes for the level we're playing at though.

2025/26 (Third Season) (Decided to leave the infographics behind for now, thought I'd be inclined to post more info each update this way) First season in the Bluefin Sport Championship was one to forget, early form wasn't too bad and we had a decent chance of survival but only because we were scoring plenty of goals, but the goals dried up and we actually lost our last ten games before the split. By then we had no hopes at all of staying up, despite winning 3 of our final 5 games. It's clear to see we weren't the best defensively! Our talisman Brendan Glackin actually ended the season as the leagues top goalscorer. Our intake was very good yet again, obviously we're lacking quality in more departments so there's a good chance one or two youth players go straight into the starting line up. I wasn't expecting such quality as Newberry and Maher though, Maher even managed 6 goals in his first 5 appearances at the end of this season. Michael Maher - Will challenge both Glackin and Murray for a starting spot, especially the latter as he is approaching the end of his career. Stephen Newburry - I'll have to retrain him as a full back I think, I don't fancy changing to a back 5 with wing backs to accomodate. He brings much needed quality in defence! Our best XI for this season;

Jumping on the infographic bandwagon very late in the day, though I'm not sure it's my cup of tea. I'll persist until I become impatient with creating them lol.

I've been desperately trying to get a save to stick, they've either seen me sacked within the first two seasons (Serbia, Switzerland, England, Denmark) or I just or they just feel like a complete slog (FC United), a save which I might end up going back to. So many hours put into the game this year and nothing to show for it so far, probably haven't even had a proper chance to get to grips with what even works properly yet lol. Hopefully this is the one for me though... I'm a couple seasons in but I've kept screenshots for updates... Manager Profile; Supporters Profile Day 1; Facilities;