Virtual Male

Previous Season Victor San Marino Season 4 2027/28 Manager Profile - Competitions - Facilities - Finances - Transfer History Competitions Serie C NOW Girone B (Past Positions) - It all came together this season! All season the top 3 were within a few points of each other after we opened a bit of a gap from 4th early on in the season, Going into the last game of the season we'd hit the top of the table for the first time over the season but there was only 1 point between the top 3 teams. Luckily there wasn't any final day drama for me as the team secured a 2-1 win and secured the automatic promotion place intro the Serie B. I don't know if we can stay up but I'm hopeful we will be able to put up a good fight, even if we do end up coming back down we should have put a little more money in the bank and will, hopefully, be able to return at the first time of asking. Italian C Super Cup - A little post season tournament between the 3 Serie C league winners saw the team end their year with a couple of lacklustre performances, only picking up a point from the games. I can't say it ruined my summer after the promotion though. Coppa Italia Lego Pro - A much better showing than we've managed in previous years ending in the clubs first silverware under Astley's leadership. This run really made me believe that the league form at the time was the real thing since we we're dominating teams from all 3 Serie C divisions, the two legs of the final were pretty straight forwards too with a 3-1 win setting up a more defensive 2nd leg that ended 2-1 to Catania with us winning 4-3 on aggregate. Squad The team continued from last season with everything starting to feel really solid and the majority of the youth prospects that have been getting minutes have developed really well over the year to the point that I think we've got a really good chance of staying up next season as long as I can keep on top of the morale. Francesco Gattuso who's been the first choice keeper for pretty much the entire save so far decided that he wanted to leave the club at the end of the season so I made the decision to move 17 year old prospect Mathias Pedretti into the starting team full time to help him progress a little faster. This move cost us some points over the 2nd half of the season for sure but there was nothing to regret about it in the end, I am a little worried that he seems to love a massive blunder though but I don't really have any other options with Gattuso leaving and no-one else worth the time at the club right now, fingers crossed for next year. The stand out player over the season was Nicolo De Prisco (the first academy product to do this), he grew into arguably the best midfielder at the club and was the first name on the team sheet by Christmas, I've locked him into a long-term contract so he'll be sticking around for a long time unless a ridiculous offer comes in for him. Youth Intake (Preview) The preview promised me an 'excellent' intake but the letters didn't really fill me with confidence. When they arrived I can't say I was filled with excitement if I'm honest, there will be a couple of players that can make it into the first team though I'm sure with my favourites being Alessandro Liguori and Simone Cecchetti. Cecchetti will get more game time initially than Liguori purely because we're well equipped in the midfield right now, I'm going to try to do something about their personalities though because unambitious while not being the worst definitely makes it much harder for these guys to hit their full potential. Transfers & Finance - The club lost about 300k over the season and it's starting to become a bit of a concern for me since we've not made any progress with upgrading the facilities but are consistently losing money which really isn't ideal for the future of the club and me being able to keep hold of any good prospects that come through with the club. Hopefully there will be some more money in Serie B than there has been in Serie C but I'll just have to wait an see. Nothing of note on the transfer front again with the biggest sale being for £13k, I might have to look at cashing in on what little youth talent we have next year if the financial situation continues to get worse. Other - The board have decided that now is the time to build a new 5500 seater stadium at the cost of £7.855m. £5.5m of which we've secured a loan for so that'll be another £600k a year I'd have to find just to break even. I get why the board felt like this was the right move since our current stadium didn't meet league requirements but it could really hold me back for this challenge as I feel like this might mean I have to just survive the next decade while we clear the loan before the money will be available for any substantial facility upgrades, hopefully I'm wrong though.

Previous Season Victor San Marino Season 3 2026/27 Manager Profile - Competitions - Facilities - Finances - Transfer History Competitions Serie C NOW Girone B (Past Positions) - 4th place for a 2nd year on the bounce, but it felt a lot more assured than last year somehow. I went into the Play-Offs feeling really confident after making the finals last season and I think that was our undoing only just getting through the first 2 rounds by a goal and then being dumped out in the Quarter finals by Perugia. Despite a somewhat disappointing play-off campaign I feel like next year could be the year that we can get promoted as long as the team continues feeling as solid as it has over the 2nd half of the season. Coppa Italia Frecciarossa - Won our first cup game of the save this year, that's where it ended though. Coppa Italia Lega Pro - The clubs first final under the guidance of Ryan Astley! Some good football and a little bit of luck saw the team get all the way to the final and faced Atalanta U23's but they were too strong turning us over 7-2 over the two legs of the final. The players footed the bill for the supporters who made the finals tickets after the heavy loss. Squad The players are really starting to come together now and the performances are showing it with games feeling much more convincing than they have been over the last couple of years, the players are being recognised for this too with Larrarulo and Sabba finishing 1st & 2nd for Serie C/B Player of the Year, as well as both named in the Team of the Season and winning defender and midfielder of the season. The club was given an award for being the best team in the Serie C/B too, so progress is being made for sure! Sabba hit double digits for both goals and assists in the league and was head an shoulders above everyone else in my mind, as shown above he was recognised and awarded for this too. Our top Sammarinese performer is academy graduate Matteo Berardi, honestly he didn't set the world alight averaging a little over a 6.7 but he made 25 starts over the season and has improved really rapidly to a point where he is one of the best players at the club looking at his attributes. The only things he needs to improve will come with age as he cuts little mistakes out of his game and becomes more consistent. Youth Intake (Preview) The intake preview was 'excellent' but the ratings didn't look too excellent to me when that e-mail dropped though in December. I'd have been a little deflated when the players came in April too if it wasn't for the fact the top 2 prospects were Sammarinese, the best of them being Andrea Casadei, the save isn't at a point where there's much to say about the players coming through the academy but I think Casadei will be in the team before he turns 18. Transfers & Finance - Nothing worth looking at on the transfer front. The finances are hopefully starting to balance now with a profit of £18k over the season, I'll keep an eye on it over next season but hopefully it won't become a real issue at any point. Other - The board continued sending me for licenses and gained the Continental A License and started working towards the Continental Pro License.

Yeah, it isn't ideal but I'm just happy to have some young players that could (but won't) have a highish potential.

@naterr Always love to see United dealing with some sort of hardship (the last decade has been full of fun for me!). On the intake note, I don't think I had one intake with Merthyr that didn't have a couple of players in it that looked like they could make the cut in all the seasons I managed with them, I figured it might be something to do with them being based in Wales but playing in England so there is less competition for the Welsh players... Probably not the case, but made sense in my head at the time.

Previous Season Victor San Marino Season 2 2025/26 Manager Profile - Competitions - Facilities - Finances Competitions Serie C NOW Girone B (Past Positions) - Coming off the back of a very mid table finish last season I was hopeful that we could do a little better and maybe creep into the lower play-off positions. I wasn't disappointed and we spent pretty much the whole season between 4th and 9th position and finished comfortably in the play-offs without ever threatening the automatic promotion positions. The post season was much lengthier than I was expecting and I lost a sizable chunk of the team to international duty towards the end but we still managed to make it all the way to the final! By that point the legs of the players that were still hanging around had gone and we never really posed a threat to Gubbio who beat us 3-1 over two legs meaning another season in the Serie C. I'm hoping for next season we can threaten for the top spot, so even if we don't win the league we can cut out some of the post season matches... 10 is too many. Coppa Italia Lega Pro - A non starter this season with a 1st round exit. Squad Much the same squad as the first season with only Matteo Berardi getting substantial minutes from last years intake but overall it's a much stronger team than last year. Riccardo Gramellini has again been the standout performer and was awarded a number of things at the end of the season including Serie C player of the year, Serie C/B player of the year, Defender of the Year and was named in the Serie C/B Team of the Year, I've got him signed onto a new contract so he'll be sticking around for the foreseeable future. Going into next season I hope to get a few more of the youth players blooded into the first team to enhance their development. Youth Intake (Preview) The preview looked like it could give us a couple of decent players, including a much needed goalkeeper. It didn't disappoint either with 3 players having over 4.5* potential, this pick of them being Goalkeeper Mathias Pedretti, he's not got awful attributes for a 15 year old and I think he'll come into the first team as the cup keeper while he's training with the U18's. The top Sammarinese talent is William Mularoni who can play both fullback positions, I think he's got something about him so he'll be coming in as backup to both fullbacks for next season so hopefully he'll develop fairly quickly. Transfers & Finances - Nothing to show on the transfer front since there's not really enough players to be letting anyone go at this point. The bank account is starting to cause a little concern but the board aren't worried so I'll continue to ignore this potential problem. Other - The board continued to accept any request I made to gain more qualifications and by the end of the season I'd gained a Continental B License and started studying for a Continental A License.

@libbyshuss massive well done for getting the job done in Belgium, made even harder by the finances being awful over there. @naterr Loving seeing some familiar names from the start of my Merthyr save, I've never found the Vanarama National a big step up so fingers crossed you'll be the top end of the table next season too!

Previous Season Victor San Marino Season 1 2024/25 Manager Profile - Competitions - Facilities - Finances Competitions Serie C NOW Girone B - A solid first season in charge for Astley. His game plan was clear from the off with little attention paid to the defensive side of the game and clearly fully embraced a Luis Enrique quote 'If they can score 4, we can score 6', there wasn't any real consistency over the season either with one run of results being a 5-5 draw, 6-0 win, 4-4 draw then a 5-0 loss, a game with less than 4 goals was an anomaly but more often than not San Marino came out on the right side of the result. Come the end of the season his team were one of the few in this league that didn't have any post season responsibilities coming home in a respectable 13th place. The aim for next season will be to make the play-offs, after that anything is possible. Coppa Italia Lega Pro - Wasn't prioritised and resulted in a first round exit to FeralpiSalò. Squad The inherited team had some pretty large gaps as expected but on the whole was fairly easy to work with and quite young too so early retirements and having to fit youth players into positions they're not familiar with or before they're at the right level shouldn't be a problem, which I'm sure we're all too familiar with. The stand out performer of the season was our right back Riccardo Gramellini who lead the league for assists and at only 21 looks like he could grow into a mainstay for years to come. Youth Intake (Preview) A promising preview with A's in 3 positions left me a little disappointed when the new players came around, by no means is it a bad bunch but only 1 5* and 1 4.5* player in the first intake might cause a little bit of a headache a few years down the line. The personalities are pretty good overall though, so that's a win! Matteo Berardi is the top prospect and he's Sammarinese too! He made a couple of appearances over the back end of the season and didn't embarrass himself so will continue to play a roll in the next season and we can see how he develops. Transfers & Finances - Nothing of note on the transfer front, just a couple out at the end of the season who hadn't played any part to help trim the wage bill a bit. We finished the season with the bank balance a little in the red and with the loan taken out for a stadium expansion being paid back at £10k p/m I don't see this improving over the coming years if the team remain at this level of the footballing pyramid. Other - At the end of the season the board had to expand the stadium to meet league minimum requirements and took out a £1.1m loan to enable us to do that. They also agreed to expand the youth recruitment and were very generous when Astley was asking to start new coaching licenses, by the end of the season he held a National B license and was studying for his National A license.

Victor San Marino 2024/25 Pre Season 1 After what he judged to me an unfair dismissal of his former manager fan favourite Ryan Astley tore up his contract with Merthyr Town and moved across Europe to pursue his own managerial career. At Victor San Marino he'll aim to follow in Hiemann's footsteps by refusing to use any player who hasn't been developed by the club from an early age, he's also determined to prioritise young talent from San Marino over Italian youngsters where possible. Can he make his mentor proud?

It all happened so quickly too, 5/6 losses on the bounce, new board in and I'm out of the door the next day. Oh, well! Gives me an excuse to start a new save doesn't it.

Merthyr Town Season 14 2037/38 A very short one here. A run of bad results at the start of the season and a board takeover has cost me my job, very disappointed after so many seasons at the club and the growth I've overseen. But, we move! To Italy (hopefully), there's a team in my mind that have pretty slim odds of coming up to the playable leagues so I'll be spending the next few days reloading a save to try to grab them. Hope to get a new starter post up soon.

Season 14 2037/38 Manager Profile - Competitions - Facilities - Finances Competitions Premier League (Past Positions) - Another strong start to the season saw us sitting in the top 6 for a few weeks before there was a bit of a reality check but we came back into some form and sat between 9th-14th for the rest of the season. A couple of results at the back end of he season saw us close the season in a comfortable 9th position. The Emirates FA Cup - Another year of nothing happening in either cup competition, exiting both at the earliest opportunity. Carabao Cup - A really disappointing result against a lower league opponent, not overly bothered at this point though. Squad The starting squad has developed well over the season with some of the players even being rated as Premier League quality players by my staff! They should carry on the same path next season so I'm hopeful that will lead to another quite comfortable season next year too. Robert Jones - The star of my team and currently refusing to renew his contract so I've got a big decision to make over the summer. Keep Jones for another year and face the possibility of losing him for nothing in a year or look to cash in on him and take what I would expect to be a fairly sizable transfer fee even with him not having long left on his contract. Alun Duckett - A tweak to the formation left Duckett playing as a pressing forward this season and he seemed to be a big fan of this change! Another 13 league goals this season but he was much more involved in the overall build-up play and his 7.10 average rating reflected this. Youth Intake (Preview) An incredible youth intake preview lead to what is looking like a very good intake with 6 4.5*+ potential players coming into the club, some pretty good personalities in the higher potential players too so I'm hoping they'll be able to get up towards that potential ability. Lee Williams is one of the stand out players both in terms of ability and also because he's Gibraltarian, a new flag is always welcome! Josh Gruffydd - Looks like he'll be the pick of the bunch in the coming years though, fairly solid attributes for a 15 year old and a model citizen too!! I think he might be the first to come through at the club since I started the save. He's going to spend a few years in the youth teams to develop into hopefully a player that can be an important part of both the Merthyr and Welsh national teams. Transfers & Finance - Not much on the transfer front again this year, just a few loans out that didn't really do much and a couple leaving at the end of their contracts. £150m in the bank now and the board aren't allowing me the opportunity to upgrade anything at the moment so it's just going to sit there for the foreseeable future I think. Other - We had 2 players in the NxTGN 50 this year so that proves we're on the up in terms of youth development I suppose. I also managed to convince the board to allow a Stadium Expansion bringing the capacity up to nearly 8,000 seats... Still nowhere near what we need though. We'll be playing in the Millennium stadium in Cardiff while the work is being carried out..

@XaW you're flying through the divisions!! I'm always jealous of the variety of nationalities you get in your intakes, are you doing anything special or is it just a case of crossed fingers?

Season 13 2036/37 Manager Profile - Competitions - Finances - Facilities Competitions Premier League (Past Positions) - It's a bit difficult at the top isn't it! We got off to a great start to the season winning 4 of the first 5 games and I foolishly thought what's all the fuss about? I then got 6 points between the beginning of November and the middle of March, A run that included some less than motivating results like a 7-0 loss to Newcastle and 10-1 to Chelsea. A bit of an easier run in saw the team pick up a few much needed wins to drag us out of the relegation zone and into 15th place at the end of the season. Honestly, I don't really think we deserve it but I won't say no to another season in the Premier League, I need to sort the defence out though, we conceded 50 more than the team that conceded the 2nd most goals! Still, at least the 116 scored against us wasn't a league record. The Emirates FA Cup - Another 1 game FA Cup run, I didn't pay it any attention. Carabao Cup - Another short one, I played a heavily rotated team to keep my better players fresh for the league. Squad - A lot of player development again this season given the higher level of competition, we're still well out of our depth and I think we only have 1 player that is actually the right quality for the league. Something must be working though for us to stay up, hopefully the development can continue and next year will be slightly easier. Robert Jones is our stand out player, clearly has more ability than anyone else on the team and is refusing to even enter contract negotiations, so not ideal! He had a solid year with 17 G/A in 34 league games, he's got 2 years left on his £300p/w deal so I'm hopeful we can get him to talk with us this season but if not I'll have some thinking to do nest summer. Youth Intake (Preview) A fairly promising preview followed by what looks like a pretty good intake, A couple of much needed fullbacks and a DM that has something about him and all good personalities too! I think there are 3/4 players in this years intake that will find themselves in the first team in a few years and will likely stay there for a long time to come. Lamine Mendes (2037YP9) has already been improving massively and has been called up to the Senegal U18's over the summer so that's really promising. Ben Davies is probably the pick of the bunch though, one of the much needed full backs and not far from getting into the rotation of the first team as a right back, I think I'll let him play a season with the youth groups before he moves into the senior team. That could all go out of the window though, we'll see. Transfers & Finance - Not much to talk about with transfers, a few out on loan to either try to develop them a little or just so they stop complaining about not getting game time. The bank balance is looking really healthy now thanks to the massive Premier League TV deal so just over £80m in there now, It shouldn't be a concern from here on out unless the board decide to so something ridiculous. Other - On the back of out newly found riches I got the board to agree to a few things, We'll be a level 1 academy soon which while I'm not really sure what it actually does in game I'm sure it's a good thing. We also upgraded our training facilities at the start of the season before some technological advancements meant we had to do it all over again at the end of the season. They're also expanding the stadium by a little over 3000 capacity but only 750 of that will be seated, every little helps though. Something that I have noticed this season that doesn't make sense to me is the board have been putting pressure on me because they're disappointed I'm apparently not using the clubs youth system to develop players.... I'm not sure they've been paying attention for the last decade plus of the clubs existence!! Is this something anyone else has been experiencing? Or are my board just talking nonsense?

I've been lurking again for the last week or so and getting caught up on what's been going on since I burnt out of my save a few months back. Some massive completions and @XaW deciding the challenge isn't hard enough for him in its standard form! I'm getting back into my Merthyr Town save in their first Premier League season. I'm just hoping to not get embarrassed every weekend, This Newcastle game is definitely one to forget.

If you're not a fan of keeping clean sheets then give it a whirl. I assume it's something to do with the central attacking mid and one of the strikers being offset, I could well be talking nonsense though.