DomD

Ha ha, you have Berbatov too?! Hilarious. Maybe when Lewandowski retires, he can join too 😄

Great start to life in the Ekstraklasa! I can't believe that Zlatan has agreed to be a coach at Lechia. I thought retired players with his reputation usually go straight into managing a team of their own. Are you using something like Midjourney to create the graphics for these posts?

Season 1 - 2023/24 - January to March Our unbelievable run of results continued with only one blip. Even Paweł Tomczyk had a game where he scored 4 goals in the first half. I would think that our promotion is all but assured now and soon we'll be able to turn our attention to improving the squad for a bigger challenge. Hopefully promotion will bring with it some extra cash, because at the moment we are bleeding money every month.

Great to see another save in Poland! So many teams in Poland now have nice new stadiums, but aesthetically (from the outside anyway) the Gdansk arena must be the most beautiful one. During an FM22 journeyman save I took charge of Lechia for a couple of seasons. I ended up moving to a bigger league, but always thought it would be great to have regular Champions League games against European giants at that amazing stadium. I'll be following your career with interest.

The best thing that happened during the winter break is that I finally started my first coaching course and the club extended my contract by a year (on the same wages). I tried to sign an 18 year old Norwegian full-back on a free, but Ekstraklasa side Raków Częstochowa beat us to him. But it looks like he's been injured almost the whole time he's been there, so maybe I dodged a bullet there. Krzysztof Koton had his head turned when a bid was made for him, but talks broke down when I asked for a bit too much.

I'm thinking of doing this in France. Is there anything I should be aware of? Is there anything different since you can have 4 tiers running but only take charge of a team in the 3rd tier? Is that still the case after holidaying for a year, I take charge of one of the teams promoted into the 3rd tier?

Season 1 - 2023/24 - November - December More than half way through the season and we sit at the top of the table. Hopefully we can sustain this and get promoted in my first season. Now we enter the winter break and I need to decide if I should try to strengthen the squad at all. There are a few players available on frees that might improve us slightly, but most of them are rather old. The youth intake preview is not much to get excited about. Unfortunately this seems bugged at this stage of the game.

Season 1 - 2023/24 - October The great run of results had to come to an end, but hopefully this is just a temporary blip.

When I got to the club there were two strikers to choose from. 25 year-old Paweł Tomczyk (3.5 star CA) and 20 year-old Junior Radziński (2 star CA, 3.5 - 4.5 PA). It clearly seemed like Tomczyk would be the starter and Radziński would be getting minutes off the bench to help his development. But in the pre-season matches Radziński preformed better and I went with him for the first couple of matches. He didn't do very well so I switched to Tomczyk for a couple. I rotated them back and forth a few more times but while Radziński's performances kept improving, Tomczyk's didn't. So, Radziński has now been the starting striker for quite a while. But it was in the game against Arka Gdynia that he absolutely exploded. A first half hattrick. Four goals in total. And he was fouled for the penalty. He now leads the league with 10 goals from 10 appearances.

It was nice to see this: I updated the first post with some goals and challenges that I have set for myself.

Looks like one of the Welsh clubs would be easiest to get a job at. But going to Belarus might be interesting.

Wow! Congratulations on the Latvia job. You're building an interesting resume.

Season 1 - 2023/24 - September An amazing month in the league for us. We went on a run of 3 wins out of 3 with 15 goals scored and none conceded and went top of the table. My Assistant kept insisting that I should start young Krzysztof Koton in central mid and I decided to heed the advice. I am very glad that I did as he has been an absolute revelation. In the Cup we were drawn against Ekstraklasa side Radomiak Radom. But even though I had to rotate half the squad due to injuries and fatigue we held our own and had a higher xG, losing only to an unfortunate own goal in the 84th minute.

Interesting career so far! How are the youth intakes looking now?

@the_hdk congrats on getting promoted to J1. Are you using this AI face pack for your new gens? https://www.fmscout.com/a-ultra-realistic-newgen-faces.html Is it easy to setup?

Season 1 - 2023/24 - August We've had an excellent start to the season. We lost our first game, but that was against a Lechia who were relegated last season are are expected to go back up. The win against Resovia was a nervy affair, the only goal we scored was a penalty. We were creating lots of chances but we couldn't put them away. We had an amazing game against Wisła Kraków, scoring a very late goal to win it, and our good run continued from there. In the game against Tychy we had two players sent off, but somehow managed to still get a draw. I wouldn't be surprised if our results are less impressive next month, but we're in a great position to avoid relegation already. Our top performer was winger Wojciech Fadecki, contributing 2 goals and 2 assists in 7 games.

You should check out @Motlhen's career thread:

Cool, I'll have to check that out. In your graphs it is obvious what the x and y axis represent, but what do the size of each bubble mean? Is that the number of minutes played? How do you export the data from FM?

I like the premise of your save. What are using to make the graphs?

From Gibraltar to England This is a save idea that I have been thinking about that could potentially be turned into a challenge. The basic premise is to start managing a club in Gibraltar, win the league there, then start looking for a job in the next playable country up the UEFA Coefficients, so today that would be Wales (but it could change in your game world depending on how long you spend in Gibraltar). For set up I would load the bottom playable 5-10 European leagues based on the coefficients (this can be all playable leagues or just the top division in each): 1. Gibraltar 2. Wales 3. Belarus 4. N. Ireland 5. Iceland etc. Obviously you can load more leagues if your machine can handle more, then add/remove leagues as you move from country to country. Your manager should have no badges and have Sunday League experience. Take over one of the clubs predicted to finish in the bottom half of the Gibraltar League. The league is made up of a mix of pro and semi-pro sides, so that choice might affect the difficulty. Optionally you could holiday one season and take over the club that finished bottom. The goal is to win the league. Once you accomplish that in Gibraltar, you can start looking for a club job in the next country up the coefficient rankings. For example get a job in Wales, win the top league there, then try to get a job in Belarus, etc. No moving from one country to the next until you win the top league in the previous nation. An inspiration for this save/challenge was that I like to look up how clubs from smaller nations are doing in European competitions. So, when I do this I will be keeping track of how I do in Europe with each club. Bonus points for winning an European trophy with a club outside the top 5 leagues. But ultimately the goal of the challenge is to win a top league trophy from as many countries in Europe as possible.

It's frustrating that the game has this bug in it. Would have liked to see you be able to continue with the U19s. Is your plan to stay in Latvia for your whole career?

Season 1 - 2023/24 - Pre-season I haven't had much chance to play in the last week, so it took a while to get through the pre-season. Playing on real world mode, is a bit like some kind of DoF challenge (in the first transfer window anyway). I brought in a few players on trial, two of which I would have really liked to sign, but there is no room left in the wage budget. Pre-season results were good, but we did play some of those trial players, so we'll see how it is without them now. Media Prediction: 17th Odds: 50-1 (14th) Board: Avoid relegation (be competitive in the Cup)

Thanks everyone!

Some great results so far! How long do you think you'll stick with the U19s? I've never tried international management in FM before, how are you finding it? Especially the long breaks between games?

@Rikulec ha ha thanks!