KristianT

Just keep going and see how far you can go. The Middle East is a largely unexplored terroritory in FM for me and it is challenging with all the teams starting with Al and some teams in different countries share the same names. Just tagging along to your save is nice

Following this with great interest. Great to see someone playing in Iraq, a rare country to see a save in. Well done surviving, hope you will manage the second time as well!

Jeez, what a talent! Love these saves for the same reasons. You know there is just not a big chance to find a good 16-year-old in Botswana or Uganda, but you are always on the look-out and then there suddenly is one and then you really want him. If you don't mind I'd love to have your savegame file - either way I'll follow your story here.

Really exciting to follow. You inspired me to do an ASEC save once and I really enjoyed it. I love that Africa is such an "unfinished" continent and that you can get massive results and talents after a few years.

For what it's worth, @Rikulec, you inspired me to start an Austria Wien save. Played the first season now and honestly I have never played a save that is so cramped financially. Really excited by the challenge. Now, before the second season, I managed to improve the squad a bit while reducing the wage bill through the maximum allowed number of loans and making profits on transfers. Looking forward to your next adventure!

Like this... As you can see from the date on that screenshot I am now in July 2029. Real won again in 25-26 (me: runner-up), 26-27 (runner-up) and 27-28 (third), but in 28-29 I finally managed to win the league at the final matchday! Took me seven seasons! Many of the early youth intake youngsters are now in their early 20s and are taking their spots in the lineup, so I expect the level of the team will increase even further in the coming seasons.

Very annoying! In my save Real are getting 90+ points every season, so if you have four draws and a couple of losses you are out of it by mid-season.

I said earlier we were far of the pace, but this is the situation now... One of the remaining matches is El Clasico... Real ahead of me on head-to-head, I am ahead of Barca head-to-head and Barca beat Real 1-0 in the first Clasico of the season.

It is tough to break through and get ahead of Barca and Real. Good job getting into CL though. And some exciting prospects you got there. I'm about 3/4 way into the third season and I feel I'm in an in-between stage where the players originally in the game start to decline as they age and my many young prospects are not yet ready for first team football. The board is also incredibly reluctant to let me spend money, so it is a tight squeeze at the moment. Luckily we seem to be able to get top 4 again, we are in the cup final and we made it to the first knockout round in CL. We have wasted a few points against weaker opposition, but our losses are mainly against teams that are bigger so it seems pretty clear where we are quality-wise.

Congrats on the title in 1st season! Seems you could profit from Barca and Real having underwhelming seasons. And good to see Inaki in crazy mode. The issue with B team players' wages is a known issue it seems. But it also adds to the challenge of the save. You can't really go on a spending spree the first 2-3 seasons, at least not if you keep all your best players. But the squad is probably good enough to qualify for a CL spot within 1-2 seasons. When you get 2-3 years in CL your finances won't be a problem anymore and by that time you may not go out and spend 60-70++ for Sociedad's best players because you see that a regen will fill that need on two years anyway so instead of spending much on one of the few real Basques who can strengthen your squad you spend it on facilities and youth coaches to make sure your regens will develop. I have also experienced that the first team players have very reasonable wage demands. I have managed to make Herrera go down from 160k a week to 90k in one renewal. Inigo Martinez and Muniain have also accepted great wage cuts, and Nico Williams had reasonable demands when he renewed. Even Azpilicueta is far from being the best paid in my squad.

That's something to keep in mind. Aa I mentioned, both B and C team got promoted to L3 and L4 and one third into the season they are both battling for another promotion. We'll see how I handle this, it seems my regens are already making a massive impact on these levels. I find the feature where you make players available for B, C and U19 very useful in that the lineup is there and you can see whether the player will start if made available. At first I tried to move the players between the teams based on whether they started the last match or not, but now I have moved all of the 8-10 best talents to the first team and then make them available for the other teams on a match-to-match basis. A bit of work, but very useful as I know they get playing time.

Yeah, I also like to try and keep it realistic and do a step-by-step thing, although some players skip the Basconia step. Some of the players from my 1st intake are now 16 or turning 17 soon and are already better than the ones playing in the B team last season, so for the new season I've moved them up so they will play at L3. Some of them are even good enough for L2, according to my coaches, so maybe it is possible to get promoted once more. WIll be interesting to see their development. Also I'm happy I had the intuition to put in an extra file with lower division in Spain so that Basconia play in an active league before I started the save. In previous versions of FM I have just used Basconia as a storage facility for lost causes, but now it comes into play. Generally coaching in Spain is interesting because you have three or four squads you can plan for. It reduces the need for loans so you can guide the development more closely and make sure the players are helped by your good facilities and coaches. You basically get a 4-for-1 deal when you get upgrades on facilities.

Season 23-24 (second season) La Liga: Real Madrid were back in business and Barcelona following closely behind them. We managed to secure third place. At this point it is difficult to expect anything more than 3rd place. Real and Barca should be better and in any normal season they will be. Last year Real had an abnormal year and we came 2nd. So we confirmed ourselves as the best of the rest and that's ok. I can't help though feeling a bit disappointed because we got fewer points, scored less and conceded more compared to last season. Partly this can be explained by the fact that we never got to play the trio Williams, Williams, Muniain in attack. Muniain missed the first six months due to an injury, when he came back Inaki Williams played AFCON and when Inaki came back Nico broke his leg and was out for six months. Villalibre did his part by scoring 34 goals, but the level is slighty lower anyway. We also struggled in defense. I think it might partly be down to us playing a total of 10 more games this season between Supercopa and Champions League which teared more on the squad. Copa del Rey: we lost against Real Madrid in the quarter finals, they went on to win it. Supercopa: we beat Valencia and Real Madrid 2-1 to win our first trophy Champions League: we made it through the group, but absolutely not in an impressive way. We qualified with seven points ahead of Leipzig on head-to-head. Our goal stats of 13-13 in the group stage tells us we are not at all at the level we need to be defensively. We conceded three goals in four out of six games. We went to lose 1-5 on aggregate against Man City, which was to be expected. Youth intake: Well, I was not disappointed this year either. Looking forward to seeing these guys grow, some of the guys from the 1st youth intake might make their debuts in the coming season. All good news with the U19, B and C squads as the U19 became Spanish champions and both Bilbao Athletic and Basconia won promotion to level 3 and 4 respectively. Transfers: In a bid to mend some of the defensive issues I bought both Azpilicueta and Le Normand in January. Other than that nothing noteworthy happened.

Too bad you had to sell Nico. That is a really painful sale for an Atheltic coach. Hopefully you will be able to spend that money in a constructive manner. That is also a really harsh way to end the season, but hopefully you can do well in EL. Step by step.

Nico Williams did well for me last season in a similar role to that which you play him in, so you seem a bit unlucky to get so sub par performances from him. First season he played 38 games in totalt with 18 goals, 18 assists and 7.38 average rating. In the league he played 31, scored 14 and 13 assists. So far this season he has 11 games and 7 goals. Some thoughts on the B team as well. My B team got relegated last season and now play on level 4. (I have a file with Spain to level 7 so Basconia plays in an active league and they are rocking it at level 5). My first thought on B teams is always to have them as high up in the league structure as possible in order to give the youngsters the highest possible level of competitive matches. However, for that to happen you need a few things. You need to have a constant pool of players aged about 18-22 in that squad with the quality that is need to play at level 2 and given that these players are bound to be really good you probably need to spend a lot on wages to maintain this squad. Also, many of the players in that age group and of that quality are likely to be knocking on the 1st team door, many of which probably only marginally worse or may even be better than some of the weakest players in your 1st team squad. And for every player you promote, his replacement from the u19 team will be a lot weaker, which increases the relegation threat. If a player in the B team is too good for the B team, but maybe not good enough for your 1st team, do you sell him and replace with a 18 year old with potential or do you keep him around to keep the B team afloat at level 2? Is it worth his wages? Ideally the B team is only a team that the best talents pass by for a shorter period before they are promoted to the 1st team, so is it worth the effort to keep the B team at level 2? Basically you are looking at the need to have about 35-40 players of high quality and with corresponding wages and that the players are constantly being replaced or challenged by players coming from your U19 team I may be echoing thoughts of old here, but it is always interesting to hear what people think. I feel that to have the B team on level 4 is too low, I'd like them at least at level 3 and then Basconia at level 4 or 5, hopefully already from next season.

Thank you! I claim no credit for my tactic. As you can see from the label in the screenshot it is a Knap tactic downloaded over at FM Scout with some tweaks inspired by one of the tactics presented by someone earlier in this thread. I cannot remember who it was, I'll look it up when I have time. In my current life situation I don't have time to learn, understand and develop anything on my own and I prefer to get the game progressing so I also use instant result. I have got a lot of inspiration and learned a lot from this thread, but also from @twoleftfeet's thread The Eleven Villagers - Athletic Club [FM23] - FM Career Updates - Sports Interactive Community (sigames.com). Over the years I have more and more grown fond of saves with transfer restrictions. I used to hoard wonderkids and have 30 wonderkids out on loan all the time, but now I like the feeling of having to make due with what comes through the youth intake or players of a certain nationality etc, so an Athletic game really fits the bill. It also reduces the amount of information that both my computer and I have to process

Never made any update on this forum before, but will do one here. Inspired by this thread I have played the first season with Athletic in the last days. I'm a bit late to the party, but still is fun. In my first season I lost the title at the final matchday. In truth it was very unlikely given that after 37 games I was tied with Barcelona, but behind them on head-to-head. In the final game they had an easy home game while I was going to Real Madrid. For me to win I needed a better result than Barca, but that didn't happen. Also I lost the Copa del Rey final, but all in all I was pleased with the first season. La Liga - 2nd, 3p behind Barca Copa - lost the final to Valencia No real surprises in the team as this is still only the first season. I sold De Marcos and Balenziaga in January, but apart from that no one of any importance came or left. The Williamses were really dominating together with Muniain who impressed both as mezzala and inverted winger. It is safe to say I was pleased with the first youth intake which gave me both quality and quantity with five elite talents. Very happy to get fullbacks on either side and also a central defender. I also got the central midfielders with potential and one striker who has developed nicely since the intake (YP1G, listed as a right winger in the screenshot). TRANSFERS: As for transfer in the summer 2023 there won't be much coming in or going out. I renewed some contracts in the B team which everyone here is familiar with costs a lot of money. I also made some staff additions. So there is not so much room financially to go for any of the Sociedad players, for example. Also there are no real problem areas in the team, Lekue and Berenguer will hopefully be enough until the regen fullbacks develop to become first team players. I made a deal to sign Ander Herrera permanently very early in the season which I later realized was a mistake because he will have a huge wage, luckily only for one year. With Unai Nunez returning from loan I was planning on selling Nolaskoiain, but then Yeray wanted a new challenge and I sold him to Atletico. I also got rid of Yuri's wages and the Garcias (Dani and Raul) were let go on a free. I have decided to give Artola a chance for a rotation role both in central midfield and as a winger or striker in my 4-3-3. Imanol, Serrano and Zarrago have also been promoted.

How is this done?

Sorry if you've answered this before, but to you use instant result?

Fair point, hadn't thought of that. Doesn't really make a good story

I find that when I start considering moving clubs I have really already made up my mind, so I admire the ability to stay where you are for several seasons while waiting for an opening where you want to be, and supposedly already half-way are, in your head. When I feel finished at a club I usually can't stand staying there any longer and rather resign and sim forward to where some jobs open up (or have a pre-arranged deal).

RISC Takers. The names of these clubs are hilarious.

Very cool idea for a save. Following this.

Did you mix up the threads?

Tom Lund Park