andydick

We'll start with Beverley Town ...

SACAVENENSE END OF SEASON 1 - 2024/25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Portugal Championship (League): Finished 9th of 14, one place above the relegation zone Portuguese Cup - knocked out at the first time of asking - Second Round A mixed start to the season, but it started to go south as injuries racked up and we dipped in and out of the relegation places. Just after midway though we put a run together which gave us hope of a play-off spot but a second injury (this time season ending) to our 'keeper meant we fell away. Finished 9th, 1 place above the relegation spots, but never in any danger of going down, 16 points clear of 10th and 8 points off the play-offs. Youth intake was described as a "golden generation" but we'll wait and see. Definitely a couple of decent players there including a good back-up 'keeper. Finances are a disaster, lost around 420K so far and we're only in April.

Looks good.

I spent some time re-rolling hoping to get Marske, Workington, or Whitby. Eventually Whitby appeared but no Marske or Workington yet unfortunately.

Info looks good. We need to change the league logos though - it's a long time since the leagues were sponsored by BetVictor. The Southern Central and Southern South use the same logo.

The minimum number of seats required at each step ... this is 2022/23 rules. For clubs where capacity/seating etc is not known, just set it to the minimum for the step.

Yeah, reset date for Portugal is 29th June. Not sure when the 20 promoted teams are decided but I had a save on 10th June (after the last game of the season) which generated the same 20 teams when I ran it forward a coupe of times, Did the same on May 1st and got different teams so it's between 1st May and 9th June. Currently with Sacavenense in Portugal Championship Group C. Reasonable start but the number of injuries is horrific ... this is from the first 6 weeks of the season with low/medium intensity training. One of the injured is my goalkeeper (Tomas) meaning a 2 youth star 16 year old is currently between the sticks. I assume it's accurate but I was surprised at how many teams are professional at this level of Portuguese football. 5 in my division of 14. I'm quite enjoying Portugal but I did roll Whitby Town yesterday when looking for English options (I wanted Marske, Workington or Whitby) so might move over there at some point.

Ahh ok, thanks - I was interpreting "You're allowed to keep any player that starts under contract, you can extend their contracts as often as you like" as only applying to players who have fixed contracts with end dates. I didn't think it applied to Amateur contracts. That is good news though and thanks for clarifying.

Having just returned to this save I'm not sure what I do in this circumstance. Apologies in advance if this has been covered elsewhere. All my players are on Amateur contracts, barring a couple of younglings. Daniel Pinto, amongst others, is in the middle of negotiating a (semi) pro contract. Current Contract Negotiated contract So, as per the parameters of the save, do I: 1 - have to withdraw from these contract negotiations, or 2 - can I let them play out and just accept the outcome (signs or rejects) with no further intervention I'm making the assumption that in no way can I change the current contract offer or re-negotiate it should he reject. Thanks.

Normally go with Hornchurch but the kits are wrong and that annoys me so will wait until the pre-editor is out to change them. Got a save for Berwick Rangers ready then saw someone else doing that save so have decided to go where I've never gone before - Portugal. Game resets on 29th June. Not sure exactly when the 20 promotions are decided but I had a save on 10th June (after the last game of the season) and ran it forward a couple of times but this generated the same 20. Did the same on May 1st and got different teams so it's between May 1st and June 9th. Anyway, rolled a random number between 1 and 20 and ended up with ...

Barrow Town - Season 2 - 2023/24 Winners of the United Counties League Premier Division North - 20 points plus a Trophy Awful cup performance (only played 6 cup ties all season): Fell at the first hurdle in the FA Cup (Extra Preliminary Round) Managed 1 win in the FA Vase before being knocked out on penalties in the 1st Round Managed 2 wins in the United Counties League Cup before being knocked out in the 3rd Round ---- Summary

I need to go for longer walks ... Season 1 summary.

Barrow Town - season 2022/23 Winners of the United Counties League Division 1 - 15 points plus a Trophy. Knocked out in the 5th Round of the FA Vase on penalties. Knocked out in the 2nd Round of the League Cup. --- I think we need to find a way of making this challenge harder, especially in the lower leagues. It's a real shame that all this effort is put into producing such a good database yet managers only ever seem to spend 1 season at each level before getting promoted. As I have said before, I never use the player search ("Players in Range") so consequently my player pool is reduced by around 95% because I can only ever use players my staff has found/recommended. And when you have scouts with 2 or 3 judgement ability (these are employed using job adverts, not "Staff Search") you get all sorts of players recommended. So, in my case, it takes time to get the squad right, but once there it is still relatively straightforward to win promotion.

I'm good too ... and my save is at the same stage as @caragreg i.e. still in the first season.

Mid-season progress report has Barrow leading the UCL Division 1 and still in both cups. We struggled at first, but that's generally down to the fact I don't use the staff search (for added realism) so it took me 4 weeks to get my coach in via a job advert. We had also played 3 friendlies before I knew the ability and potential of any of the squad. Once I'd hired a couple of scouts - I don't use the player search either (or "Players in Range" as it is now) - we started to improve the squad but because the scouts judgement is around 3 it's a bit of a revolving door of signings and releases. Not uncommon for Amateur clubs but I suspect our 28 signings to date is a little more than you would expect. Hopefully a more settled side for the remainder of the season.

What was the thinking behind the "Professional Status" for clubs at level 10? In reality nearly all clubs, even down to level 10, will be semi-professional but the game is set up so that all level 10 are Amateur. My only issue with that is that some of my players are paid Appearance money which conflicts with the Amateur status of the club. I'm really just mentioning this as a discussion point. Personally, I don't think you should change anything, I like the way you have set it up - the Amateur status at level 10 will make the game much more of a challenge as it will make player contract renewals harder and also stop managers diverting their huge 95K scouting budget into transfer budget.

OK, so off we go. Generally go Northern teams but thought I'd mix it up and go nice and central so we're off to Barrow Town. Set up below. Just gone with the home nations in the early stages, add additional players (if needed) and don't add key staff. Player attribute masking is on, otherwise the game is far too easy, especially at lower levels.

The thread I originally posted has been updated with a spreadsheet of all winners, runners-up and scores for the Western League Cup Final. Post #8 on the below thread: https://www.nonleaguematters.co.uk/forums/index.php?threads/western-league-cup-finalists.9222/

I've posted a thread on one of the more popular non league forums ... https://www.nonleaguematters.co.uk/forums/index.php?threads/western-league-cup-finalists.9222/

HORNCHURCH End of Season 1 (2023/24) With a squad consisting of only 12 first team players, a 16 year old with a 1 star youth rating and a bunch of grays whose names seem to change throughout the game, we weren't hopeful. But with 5 points from the opening 3 games things started well, but it wasn't long before the 'chins started dropping down the table and the next 7 months were spent mainly in and occasionally out of the bottom 4. The youth intake did look very promising though, should we avoid relegation. We went into the final game 4th bottom with Chelmsford one place and 3 points above. We had to win, they had to lose .. and that's exactly what happened though we did leave it a tad late ! Youth intake did look promising but it didn't really materialise .. but at least we have some players we can hopefully develop and promote to the first team. So, on to season 2.

That's the simple issue .. we need to be able to set the scouting budget for each lower league club. It doesn't seem to be linked to the scouting package because you can change the scouting package (from 'none' to 'world') and the budget stays the same. I can't see anything in the editor (other than scouting package) and it's not in the finances section (as an extra source of income). Very frustrating. Perhaps it's just not a maintainable value within the editor or it's calculated from a number of other values

Not done a youth challenge before so here goes .... I can't imagine I'll be manager for too long given the initial squad of 15 was soon whittled down to 12 after 3 players departed. A quick peek into my U21 squad reveals just the one player, a somewhat poor quality 16 year old. Nothing in my U18s. So I'll be running this with 12 adults, 1 youngling and the rest of my bench made up of greys.

Re "I started with a Level 10 team and their scouting budget was 95k but no scouting package. holidayed a couple of months and nothing went out of the finances for scouting. i started a fresh save with a Level 8 save and their scouting budget was 95k but their scouting package was regional 1st divisions £17.5k (1.5k p/m)" That makes sense, and the default packages look correct, but since you have a ridiculously high scouting budget, what's stopping you simply selecting one of the much larger packages instead (and therefore getting a much larger player base) or transferring some of the 95K to your transfer budget and walking through the league that way. This is the issue (as Mars_Blackmon raised) .... the scouting budget doesn't seem to change. Taking Bromley as my example, it doesn't matter what package I select in the editor the scouting budget is always 27K but I can't see anywhere where that value can be changed.

I'm not sure you do ... I've done a bit of digging. The scouting package seems to determine the scouting budget but once the game is running the scouting budget can be changed (by either adding transfer budget to it, or reducing it by allocating to the transfer budget). As an example, I had a budget of 97K and the England scout package (cost 87K). I re-allocated 50K of the scouting budget to my transfer budget (meaning my scouting budget was now 47K) but I still had the England package. If they were linked throughout the game the package should have dropped to one that I could afford. If you don't set a scouting package then the game defaults to 'All of England' and you get around 95K - this explained why Dover (in one of my earlier posts) had such a high budget yet Bromley had 25Kish. Dover had no scouting package set. Bromley had 'Own Division'. For the purposes of the save, I'd probably go with Own Division for tier 7 and none for tiers 8-10. It's your call though.

Re my last statement "If, as Messi suggests, we set the scouting budgets of T9 and T10 to 0 then (presumably) the only package selectable is the 'none' package. If we set T8 to say 5K then they'll be able to select the lowest package (17.5K) but the budget will run out after 3-4 months." I haven't checked this but even if a club has 0 scouting budget they may still be able to select a scouting package other than 'none'. It just means the money to pay for the package must come from elsewhere which I'm guessing is the transfer budget first and then club funds.