ToMexico!!

Transfers - Summer 2024 Three more players in. Nils Schatzle in first from Meuselwitz who are in non-league, born in Magdeburg and came through at the same club, he moved on Kaiserslautern before playing for Bayreuth, Rostocker and Halberstadt. He joins to play at DM in rotation with last seasons signing Schmitt. We then signed Tim Siersleben who was released by Wolfsburg, again he came through at Magdeburg in 2015/16 before joining Wolfsburg, he will be first choice at CB. Last to join was Theo Ogbidi, as a back up player for the wing. Another player who has turned out for Magdeburg but this time he came through at RB Leipzig, after playing at our rivals for four seasons he dropped down the pyramid to sign for Chemnitz and then Lokomotiv Leipzig. Another £82k spent which doesn't help the finances but its something we must do to try and improve the squad, this improving the performances and hopefully improving the league position. The finances overall are dreadful but I'm going to ignore them for the most part, the board are providing us with a transfer budget and we're currently £8k under the weekly wage budget. Hopefully the board will provide some cash injections soon.

Pre-Season - Expectations Into season three in Germany and the 3. Liga and its much more of the same in my opinion, we're slowly intergrating to all Saxony-Anhalt team but the quality of the players compared to others who I could sign in those positions, is lacking somewhat. The Board More of the same from the board, avoid relegation is required and after 11th and 10th placed finishes I feel we could achieve similar if we start on the right foot. The Supporters The supporters are a little bit more pessimistic and feel we could go down. We also have a little bit more added spice for the season as rivals and Saxony-Anhalt based club Magdeburg have been relegated to the 3. Liga last season. The fans will be keeping an eye on fixture calender and gameweek 18 for the away game and gameweek 37 for the reverse home fixture. The Media Predicted 11th, a bit of a leap up the prediction table but away from the relegation zone. Relegated Magdeburg predicted 6th. 17th placed team Jeddeloh are a new team to me, they're based in Edewecht which is in the region of Lower Saxony, nearby clubs are Bremen and Meppen.

Sponsorship The 1 year deal in place at the start of the save was £2.1m, it halved last season to £1.2m (well nearly halved) and this season its halved again. Despite doing better than board and media expectations. This save could become unsustainable quite quickly as we will soon be unable to buy any players let alone ones to improve this squad.

2023/24 Season Review Through the second half of the season there was no consistency whatsoever, we managed to string two wins in a row together just once and our longest unbeaten run was three games, twice. The tactic we seemed to change to and intially did well, stopped being effective and we return to our previous 4-2-4 with wing play but then returned back to a DM, two CAMs and a lone striker. We did, however, better last seasons 11th placed finish with a 10th placed one. We mustered the same amount of points (53) as last season and managed to win more games (3) as we lost more games than the season before. We scored more goals with 64 (compared to 38 last season) but also conceded more (66 versus 34) as we were more open in attack and were succeptable to the counter. I now know that just the top four teams enter the Pokal for a reason as the competition is limited to 64 teams (All Bundesliga, Bundesliga 2 teams + top 4 3. Liga and 16 Lower League cup winners). It could be a while before we enter that competition. Benjamin Girth will almost likely have spent one season with us as his demands to renew are unacceptable, the forward however did score 14 goals and make seven assists in 23(3) appearances this season. He's currently on £3k p/w but wants in excess of £5k p/w as a regular starter. Biershchenk and Steczyk both notched eight goals whilst Damer got seven from the right. New signing Wosz scored six from a mix of MC and AMC depending on formation we played. The board are really happy with the job I am doing... Whilst the Supporters aren't as happy but content. The finances are wild, theres been no imput from the board but also no negativity around the loss of money although its not becuase of anything I am doing as we are £15k p/w under the wage budget.

I've just holidayed until intake on a seperate new save with the same club and the outcome is similar. All except one player has 2nd nationality as from Africa. I've commented this on my bug post.

Second season intake much of the same. No other clubs seem to have this "issue". I've created a second save and holidayed until the intake and this was the outcome.

Youth Intake Review - April 2024 Downgraded from Excellent to Good. Bodes well Two elite talents this time. Nyong Mamer & Eric Bwanakweri And again, every single German has an African second nationality. We do have a Bosnian national with German second nationality. Anyway, this is an poor intake overall.

Youth Intake Preview - December 2023 Another apparent excellent intake. Will we get an intake full of players with African nations as second nationalities?

Season 2023/24 - 1st Half Got majorly carried away yesterday watching the football and played the majority of the first half of the season. No win in the first four games of the season was a concern but we did play Freiburg II and Holstein Kiel amongst them. We needed the win against bottom side Erfurt to kick things off followed by the win over Bayreuth. Relegated Sandhuasen soundly beat us as did 1860 Munich. A little winning run against Viktoria Koln, Elversburg and Mannheim who were all below us in the table settled things down. We then played three of the then top six, losing all three. I then decided to change tactics, one up top, two CAMS and a DM, three wins from four albeit not against the best opposition. We find ourselves in a respectable 9th place with two more game remaining before the winter break. Financially we're in the mud, we're losing between £200k and £300k depending on how many home games we have a month.

Transfers - Summer 2023 Despite the poor financial situation we needed to spend some money to recruit some Saxony-Anhalt players. We've already mentioned the top two; Girth and Hackethal but we made a further three summer signings to boost the squad. I had also mentioned that we were looking at brining in Joscha Wosz from Verl who were relegated last season from the 3.Liga, the Saxony-Anhalt born midfielder came through at RB Leipzig before joining Verl on a free. Initially after enquiry Verl wanted £275k but I plumped for a bid of £100k and they accepted. We then trialled and subsiquently signed Niklas Kastenhofer who had been released by Lubeck, not the greatest addition but a former player of ours who came through the academy in 2014. We then plumped for another lower league player in Alexander Schmidt from Halvelse, again another former player of ours, he was snapped up from Halle 96 after coming through their academy in 2011/12. He's then bounced around some lower league teams including Saxony-Anhalt clubs Sandersforf and Halberstadt and a brief spell in Denmark. We now have 10 Saxony-Anhalt born players in the squad.

Thanks for following! It was a good season, performances were rubbish but we ground out the results. Finances are awful at the moment, we're losing £300k a month.

I've not really looked at scouting due to the geographical limits like you said. I've manually searched for players myself and then scouted them for a report etc. Familiarty with the tactic definately dropped due to the amount of players that were in and around the first team leaving. Although I haven't changed anything in it yet, I'm going to play a more settled side this season, well hopefully barring injuries as I think I changed the team so much due to having enough players for three XIs.

Searching for Players Using scouts to find players is pretty useless in this save, we can't narrow down the search enough to warrant it. I've moved a fraction of my transfer budget over to the scouting budget to ensure we can see the range I've selected throughout the season. With this range we can see that there are interested in signing for us and overall to scour through. At the top of the interested pile is.. Joscha Wosz is Halle/Saale born but came through the RB Leipzig academy, he spent the 2021/22 season on loan at Hallesher. I've made an enquiry with his current club Verl after having guaged his contract demands with his agent already. I've got a shortlist set up of Saxony-Anhalt born players to keep an eye on.

Early Transfers We've knocked something like £25k per week off the wage budget by allowing the below players to leave the squad. We did however managed to renew the contracts of Halangk (SA), Loder (SA) and Deniz. Two players have joined so far. Benjamin Girth joins from Duisburg, the Magdeburg born striker will be first choice and offers experience at 31 years of age. We've also signed Pascal Hackethal from Halberstadt, the 23 year old left back came through at local club Sangerhausen before joining Magdeburg and then Werder II. After these two signings we have the below budgets remaining.

2022/23 Season Review Going back to the beginning season expectations were to avoid relegation, we did that fairly comfortably in the end. The media predicted 16th place but we managed to deliver an 11th placed finish. We struggled to score goals and that was our downfall this season, 38 goals in 38 games is not enough but we were hard to beat as shown in the draw/loss columns. 17 draws in huge, most of them 0-0's I think (yep counted up there were nine 0-0 draws). Also just single digit losses in an 11th placed finish is good. We didn't enter the DFB Pokal which was strange, not sure if thats a bug or not as only four teams from 3. Liga entered the competition; Ingolstadt, Aue, Dresden and 1860 Munich. We'll see what happens next season. We didn't make any signings this season, not for the lack of looking. Remember we must only sign players born in Saxony-Anhalt. Squad Highlights There aren't too many standout players at the moment. Dominic Steczyk top scored with just eight goals whilst on loan Sebastian Muller notched one less with seven. With Muller leaving once his loan ends that will give me more chance to start Tom Bierschenk who is from Saxony-Anhalt, he made more sub appearances last season that starting games but did only score four goals. Leon Damer made seven assists from right wing but only managed 22(4) games this season due to fitness issues, hopefully he can kick on next season. The main issue we have next season is players leaving the club. The above six players (excluding Muller) are all waiting for their contract to expire before decided what to do. Zimmersheid has already signed for Admira Wacker in Austria so he's not a concern. The two standouts are Halangk and Loder both of whom are from Saxony-Anhalt, whilst neither are first choice options at the moment in their positions they're players I don't want to lose for the sake of the region. The only other player I would want to keep on from above is Nietfeld who would be first choice CM. There's actually another eight players with their contracts expiring in the summer who I don't want to re-sign. Off The Field Finances have dropped like a stone, we're £700k into the red at the moment. We have three sponsorship deals that are due to end this month, so hopefully we can get similar sized deals to recoup our losses. We managed to secure our first affilation with another club based in Saxony-Anhalt. Bitterfeld is to the east of Halle. The partnership is for loans only but I will look to renegotiate to being able to bring players in from their youth academy.

May 2023 A disappointing month to end the campaign. Although I can't be too disappointed can I? Two goals in two minutes downed a freefalling Ingoldstadt, we were then pummeled by a title fighting Saarbrucken. Essen came to town and left with a point which was a good result as they are battling for promotion also. We probbaly could have got something out of the Wiesbaden game but another draw was probably the right result. I won't show the league table in this update. Will do it in the season review, coming up next.

They were pretty normal when I had a quick look through. I’ve reported it but we’ll continue on!

There’s two Zimbabwe second nationalities in there so I don’t really know what’s going on. I’ve reported it so SI can take a look and I will see what happens in the 2nd seasons intake. If it is legit then you’re right it’s a thing of glory!

I love a second nationality on most players but every player and only from Africa it can't be a coincidence. I've reported it in the bugs forum, although theres no specific youth intake section. Thanks, its been a middling start for sure. Yeah something I completely glossed over, youth intake players will be exempt from the rules of Saxony-Anhalt only. Its going to be a struggle as is without the help of intakes, so I need to make the most of them when good players do start to come through. I'll tag newgens with the (YP23a) etc tag and any Saxony-Anhalt players I sign or shortlist will have (SA) beside them. I'm not sure if they did, I could holiday to the next intake and see if it happens again but I don't think I want to do that. I've reported it and SI have the save game, so they can take a look.

April 2023 We started the month with a loss but things got better after. A late goal again saw us draw against Aue. On loan striker Muller netted twice to down Bayreuth who have really slipped down the league recently. We then made it back-to-back wins as we hammered Osnabruck 3-0. We ended the month with draw number 15 of the season away in Mannheim. We're safe in this league for another season. There's four games remaining, can we stay in the top 10?

Thanks! Yeah I should have tagged him in the post.

Youth Intake Review Still an excellent intake but it harbours just one elite talent. The thing that hits me first is that every single player has an African second nationality. I mean have I missed something here. I wonder if anyone else has this in their saves but I will take a look in the bugs forum. Anyway, i'm not overly impressed but we need to remember where we are. Houari Saadoune is deemed the best of this bunch.

March 2023 Another five games this month. Back to back goals for Bierschenk as we seal a 1-0 win away at Meppen. Then it was back to back draws, disappointingly against Verl who are in the relegation zone. The 2-0 win over Elversberg was pleasing as another Saxony-Anhalt player Elias Loder scored his first goal of the season. Duisburg was a tough end to the month, they are currently 4th a hold a play-off place due to the current 3rd placed team being Freiburg II and they can't be promoted. Up to 9th. Next up is Dortmund II in another five game month.

February 2023 Another mixed month but some vital points gained. Over thirty thousand spectators witnessed a drab nil-nil against Dresden before we won our 7th game of the season against a then 4th placed Freiburg II. We then undid all of our good work by losing to 15th placed Oldenburg, an awful result. We ended the month with another draw (11th of the season) against 1860 Munich with Saxony-Anhalt born Tom Bierschenk scoring his second goal of the season, 19 games after his first one. Up to 10th at the moment but its a tight middle group in the league.