erik45

April 2027. This month was...perfect?? I thought we had very difficult fixture list, but the guys didn't care! We weren't as dominant as the scorelines suggest, but we were really good! Only worry is that our poacher Kian Reddy has stopped scoring, but this month we had surprisingly many players contributing. Table. Winning all the games meant we made it to the playoffs!!! Our position is the same as in the beginning of the month. Home advantage for playoffs would've been nice, but I really can't complain too much. Playoff semifinal preview. Away against Clitheroe has not been an easy fixture for us. A lot of goals is to be expected, hopefully we can find the way to score more than they!

March 2027. Bad start, good end. Buxton game was tight, but Bootle absolutely kicked us out of the park. They've been near the top for the whole season but it looks like they've known found another gear. I was getting a bit worried what would happen after that game, but the team responded magnificently! Three wins and a good draw against a team that last season beat us 3-0 on their home turf. Table. We are very much in promotion contention! Four games left and we need to keep points coming. Probably we end up being somewhere between 4th and 7th. Youth intake update. I just couldn't post once about the intake, because it was so good. Here I want to show just how good the new players are. These are all the players who have CA of 2 stars or more. 55 % of these players are from the latest intake. Four of them made their debut already in March. McCrory 27a got to take a penalty against Padiham which made him the youngest goalscorer in FC Isle of Man history! Upcoming fixtures. Four difficult games, we need to keep on getting points. I would guess that anything north of 8 or 9 points is enough to get us into playoffs, but we want to win every game to make sure we get there. it isn't easy, as we only play once at home, but it shouldn't be impossible.

Youth intake 2027 I was planning to post this after March update, but I just couldn't hold my horses. LOOK AT THIS: 15 players with five star PA is amazing (but not unheard of), but I've never had a youth intake with all the players having at least 1,5 CA?!?!?! McCrory 27a, Scott 27c and Morris 27g might be starters straight away - and theoretically ALL the others have a chance of making it to the first team. (In practice I think the five players last in the list won't make it as they have lower CA plus bad personality). I'd expect about half of the players getting minutes already this season. The challenge is that if I introduce that many players in such a short time, the team cohesion will take a hit. My favourites. McCrory 27a will challenge for the starting spot for the P/AF role straight away. He has maybe the best player in front of him in the pecking order, Kian Reddy, but I bet McCrory will get his chances. He has amazing pace for this level, his personality is okay, although his mentals considering goalscoring need to get better. Draper 27e is ready to fight for the BWM spot in the starting line-up. Jamie Doyle has been playing there quite well, but as he is taking a lot of yellow cards, Draper will get his chances to show what he is made of. Morris 27g is our new starting keeper. We lost our star keeper earlier in the season. His backup (Blackmore 26f) has been okay, but he is nowhere near the level of Morris. I think Morris is the only player who will actually start in the first XI straight away, others will get chances from the bench. Youth intake tracking. Better facilities gives us better players - who would've known? Remember, our JC is now excellent and YR Average, the stats in the spreadsheet are from the start of each season. I also have added youth intake date column to the spreadsheet as I want to see how it changes as seasons go by. Even if we had the best youth intake in regards of CA & PA that I have had in years, the key attributes are actually worse than in the last season's intake. I'm not sure why I follow just these stats, but it's fun to have some attribute tracking going on. I'm happy that we have 9 players from Crown Dependencies (all from club's hometown Douglas, Isle of Man)!

February 2027. This is good. This is very good! Leek Town game was a thriller. HT were were trailing 2-0. Then they stopped playing and we scored three. But they decided to go and score two more and won the game (as they deserved to). Every other game was ours, even if just in the game against Hanley Town we were dominant. Table. Now it starts to look like we really are one of the teams that have a chance for playoff spot. The five point gap is nice, but one or two losses and there will be multiple teams catching us. Player stats. I'm showing this just so everyone can see why we are doing so well as we are now. Reddy and Jones are on a hot streak, long may it continue! We now have three coaches! I used the additional spot to hire a GK coach. Job interview. This is not realistic. We have been playing a bit over the expectations for couple of seasons, so it is understandable that other teams would be interested in to interview me. But a team that is fighting for promotion in League 1? Hell no... I declined the interview and informed the press that I don't want to leave my position as I enjoy it here. Finances. We are now past the half a million mark! At least for now, we haven't needed to have long cup runs to keep doing profit. One important factor in this is the fact that we are getting home crowds of ~1000. I've been asking for youth facility upgrade, but the board keeps saying that we are not in a financial position that would allow the upgrade. Upcoming fixtures. Six games. Bootle is second in the league, so I'm really looking forward facing them at home. Other than that, we just need keep grinding points to stay in the playoff spots. Winning at home, drawing away would be perfect, but I don't know if we can be that consistent.

If I remember correctly, he was one of the few who made over 100 €/game (most players get 20-30 €) and he was starting all games, so I would say the income difference is not big. But on the other hand, the semi-pro contract protects you from injuries and other absences. I'm also wondering when we are able to offer those semi-pro contracts. We have very good bank balance and it has been that way through the season, so I would guess we are close to the point when we can offer better contracts.

January 2027. We were trailing 0-2 at half time against Workington, but somehow scored four in the second half?! Then a boring loss, but a good draw against Clitheroe, who were leading the table at that moment. Same can be said about Wythenshawe Town, who we surprisingly won! Of course, after couple of good results, we lose to a team well below us. Table. We are in pack of 9-10 teams who fight for the playoff spots. Our team is not ready for a promotion, but you never know what happens next. Award. I criticised our attack in the last month's post, they took it personally. Target forward Jones got 6+1, but Reddy was even better with 6+4 (although one missed penalty). Upcoming fixtures. Almost a relaxed month as we have only 5 games. Hanley Town is in the relegation zone, all the others more or less mid-table. Three wins is the goal.

December 2026. ...this is not what I wanted. We scored more than once only against Stalybridge - and we didn't anything from that game. In the first two games we were all-around better, but just didn't know how to score. I feel like we play well when we have mid-table sides against us. We play badly when it's a team in relegation battle. And against top teams, it's just random. Table. We lose our position in promotion spots, but we are not far away. Transfers out. We loaned out one youth player, but to my great surprise we lost two players from the first team. Camrada loss hurt, but he was more of a cover than a first team player (for WBR and BWM roles). But losing Neil Parker can be a disaster. He was one of our absolute bests + the only keeper who had more than 1 star in CA. He decided to move to Newton Aycliffe where he gets paid, good for him. But the team is a league below us, feels weird that 1) they can pay money and 2) Parker would want to move to a league below us. At the moment we are managing the goalie situation as we are not conceding too many goals. Bigger problem is on the other end of the field. Finances. Money keeps coming in. Upcoming fixtures. Six games in January, only one mid-week game (which is good for us as we don't yet have good rotation options). In December we got only 1 win, now we need many more. I'd be happy with 12 points or more.

Youth intake preview. Yes, yes, yes! 5-star intake with three categories with A-rated players. This looks better than the previous two intake previews, in March we get to see if it actually is.

Nice that you like it! It's a very chaotic spreadsheet, I counted I have 125 columns for different things I want to follow as seasons go by. I started it back in FM18 and have added things every time I start a new save. So there's no perfect logic of what things I follow and what I don't. I would like to automate some things (as I do everything manually), but I'm a rookie when it comes to using Excel efficiently I think I don't have the energy to clean the spreadsheet and make it understandable for anyone to use, but here are screenshots of all the topics of the things I'm following in my saves. (In all the saves I have some variation, for example in this save I focus on players from Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories so there are some stats about those as well.) Maybe these will help you to get started with your own tracking spreadsheets. The first screenshot is from my "performance spreadsheet" and the last two are from "development spreadsheet". If I have time to make this available for others, I'll let you know! I think some people have shared these in their stories, but I can't remember who have done it. And here, as a bonus, is a little sneak peek how things start to look with long-term saves. Heres the development spreadsheet from my Africanos Bragancas save in FM22 after 30 seasons (I needed to zoom out a lot to get most things visible in one view ).

November 2026. Vauxhall Motors somehow demolished us, but we controlled all the league games. The Ashton United game should've been three points to us, but they scored from their only chance and while we put the ball into the net only once from dozen chances. We are playing on a really good level and it feels like we are more consistent. League table & awards. We are in a very good position at the moment (we even led the league for a week this month), but let's not get too excited. Me and our target man Jones were both awarded as the best of the month. This was exactly what I wanted from Jones after his injury! He is now 5 goals behind Kian Reddy in all time goalscoring charts, they're going to have a good battle from the top position! Facility upgrades. Board didn't want to upgrade youth facilities, but after some further discussions they were happy to put more money into junior coaching and youth recruitment! Excellent academy coaching at this level is crazy, hopefully it will bring us excellent players for years to come. Upcoming fixtures. We start the month by hosting league leaders. Last season we won 6-0 at home and lost 3-0 away, a lot of home team goals to expected. If we want to continue in playoff spots we need at least 12 points, which I think is achievable from these games.

October 2026. We made it to the proper 1st round of FA Trophy before Slough Town demolished us (we scored to consolation goals in the very end). In the league cap we had an even game against Dudley Town, but we just happened to be the ones scoring the goals. In the league, 10 points from the possible 15 is something I'm very happy with. League table. It seems like the top half is where we belong (for now), even if the odds were against us. Finances. We are getting closer to 0,5 m€ every month. The board has twice denied youth facility upgrades, so next time I will be asking something else (just because I need progress for the sake of it ) Upcoming fixtures. We still have one cup run going on, but I don't care too much about the league cup. There will be some rotation in that game as the main focus shifts to the league. All of these fixtures can be won, but let's not get too hopeful yet.

September 2026. Cup run, cup run, CUP RUN! FA Trophy is almost ours! Okay, we still have 9 more matches to win to actually get the trophy In the league results are just okay, not bat, not great. In the Mossley match there was one highlight, very interesting game, Injury & record. Robert Jones and Kian Reddy are everything for the team when it comes to scoring goals. Last spring when Reddy got injured, Jones took over as the record goal scorer. Now Jones injured and in the next game Reddy took the record back Hopefully this will push Jones to score loads of goals when he gets back to the field! New personality. Yes, that happened. I love these messages, doesn't even matter if the change is positive or negative. It just adds a layer of realism that sometimes (a part of) personality can change quickly because of some major life event. Hutchings has been a regular for us ever since Mateus Paulo injured (and eventually left the team for a pro career in Portugal). Upcoming fixtures. It is going to be a busy month, seven games. If we get through in the cup(s) there might be even more games. Stafford Rangers are leading the league above us, so we really need to be at our best to beat them. The highlight of the month might be the home game against Leek as they lead the table (and I like their name).

August 2026. Cup run in the FA Cup is over... but on a positive note, the replays gave us almost as much match day income as the games in the next rounds would've given. We should've won against Ilkley Town, who are one division below us, but it just wasn't meant to be. Win against Nortwich Victoria was a surprise, whereas we dominated against Workington and deserved to win by more. Six points from three league games is a good start! Transfer. We lost our best player from 2025 intake to a professional side in lower divisions in Portugal. He was playing mostly in DLF (s) role, but after his injury last spring he has had troubles gaining back his place in the starting XI. Finances. We made a nice profit because of 4 cup games. I asked for a youth facility improvement earlier this month. The board said they are not willing to consider due to the club's financial situation. I think this means that the next upgrade will cost at least 300k€ Upcoming fixtures. It looks like a quiet month in September, but if we go through in FA Trophy, I think we'll have more games. Ashton is in the same division with us, so I would put us as slight favourites because of our home advantage.

Season 2026/2027. New season awaits, and this time we are predicted lower in the table than at the beginning of last season. Since then, we've lost one starter and two back-ups, so it is understandable we've seen a bit weaker this time. Fortunately, we have quite a bit of youth player options to take those back-up roles, so the situation ain't that bad. This is so stupid: my preferred formation is 4-3-3 Narrow and I've been using only that from the start of the save, but projected line-up is still shown as 5-3-2. I think that's because I chose that as my preferred formation when I created the manager. Below you can see the profiles of our key player and hot prospect, both probably mostly playing in the CM (a) role. Board expectations. Last season was somewhat a success, but it's a bit surprising that the board has lowered expectations. I'm aiming to finish in the top half of the table. This season the important thing is to start getting more minutes for youth players, as we have some positions (CD, TF) where players don't have many years left of their career. New contract. My contract was until the end of the season, but as board and fans were happy with me, I asked a renewal already. The board gave me a 3 year contract! (after I accepted a 25 €/week cut). Transfers & finances. There wasn't much happening on these fronts. Mendes and McGilligan Oliver are not good players, but they are both young and good enough to be benchwarmers and at this point we do need those players. Also, nice to get first players with Bermudian and Montserratian nationalities World Cup 2026. No teams from British Overseas Territories, but that's not surprising. What is surprising, is both the winner and the teams in semi-finals. Austria went all the way, beating Jamaica, Czechia, Mexico, USA and Brazil in the knock-outs. The fourth team in the semis was Canada, a great success from two of the three host nations! Pre-season friendlies. AssMan took care of these. Good wins, although most of the opponents were much weaker than us. Last summer we lost to Guernsey so it was nice revenge against other team from crown dependencies. Upcoming fixtures. The usual start: pre-pre round of FA Cup, and we didn't get lucky with the draw. Consett plays at the same level at us (but different division). Both the board and the fans are expecting us to lose. I'm aiming for win, but would be happy to get a draw. We really need consintent good runs in the FA Cup to get more facility upgrades. After the cup game we have four league games, all against teams predicted above us. 6-7 points would be a good achievement.

A promising wing-back with high CA, I didn't know this was possible in FM?!

Season Review. League. 8th place, three spots above the prediction. (At the end of the season the prediction had changed and now the season preview said we would be expected to finish 16th). Avro won the league and Runcorn Linnets won the promotion playoffs. xG-wise we over-performed a little. Scoring more, conceding more and gaining more points than expected by the stats. The aim for the next season is to be a bit more consistent, concede less goals and maybe get fewer yellow cards I'm a bit surprised that we hade the second highest average attendance. I can't complain, very happy with it as it keeps our finances in a good condition. Cup performances. This season was not the season of long cup runs. We did okay in FA Cup (although lost to a team in division below us), but we were not good in FA Trophy or League Cup. Players. We had quite solid core of players in the first team, but one transfer out and couple of injuries during the spring gave us problems. We heavily rely on Jones & Reddy scoring and O'Connor assisting. I think I've never had a defender to assist 27 goals in a season! Mateus Paulo 25a and Adam McCaffrey are important members of the team, but they need to get more things done. Debuts. Seven new players made their debut this season, four from the first intake and three from this year's. I think these are quite good numbers at this point, as we haven't had any real gems from youth intakes. Liam Hutchings 25i was the biggest surprise, as while he had the worts CA of players making their debut, he scored four goals when he took the place of injured Mateus Paulo 25a.

April 2026. Good month, but maybe not good enough? Stalybridge Celtic showed us we are not ready for a promotion battle. Then we decided not to score against Wythenshawe so we could score even more against Ashton United We are not being consistent at all, but it's not something team at this level would be. Records. A few records were smashed this month. We had our and league's youngest player in the field as Borja Herrera came fresh from the youth intake to get some minutes. Then Robert Jones took advantage of Kiam Reddy's injury by surpassing him as the record goalscorer of the club Final league table. Even if we were quite good this month, is was not enough to make it to the playoffs. But, first season in this league and we achieve very respectable 8th position. I'm very happy with this! Facility upgrade. As a thank you from a great season, board accepted to increase the budget for junior coaching! We have now good academy coaching, which is excellent for this level. If we could get one (or maybe even two ) youth facility upgrades next season, our setup would be set for many years.

Youth intake 2026 Preview. As it often tells us in the lower division, this could be a golden generation! It is a five-star intake with five "elite talents" who are shown in the picture Full list of players. Six players with 5 star potential, but only two players who have more than 1 star in their current ability. There aren't many positive personalities, but (almost) same can be said about the negative personalities. Six players from Isle of Man, but also three from Llandough - why? It's right next to Cardiff in southern Wales, not very close to Isle of Man Anyways, I'll be signing everyone from this batch of youth. I think about 6-8 players might get minutes in the first time at some point, but we also just need more players for the youth teams. (Especially now as U18 team is in a league for the first time). My favourites are: Joe Harris 26a, Borja Herrera 26c and Dale Charlesworth 26g. Youth intake tracking. I have a lot of excel lists about my saves, here's one about facilities and youth development. I don't have a major reason why I follow these specific stats, I just think they are important for any player. I keep all kinds of tracking lists just for myself to see how far I go (or don't) in my saves. (Ps. the facilities are listed at the start of the season, so for example training facilities got upgraded during this season but I will make update when new season starts. From now on, I will also keep list of all the players from youth intakes who have made it to the first team. I will publish it in season review.

March 2026. Wow, we won against Avro?? And then lost 3-0 to the team we won 6-0 in the home fixture. I love the randomness of this month! I expected to get wins from home games and one or two draws from away games, but I was certain we would lose to Avro. So, this month was a better than expected! League table. Wait, wait... 5 points to the last promotion playoff spot?! We surely can't make it... or can we? Transfers. Our player gets signed by team in Vanarama! He was our backup keeper and even made 4 appearances in the league, but I didn't think he would've ever been a regular for us. I was surprised to see Aldershot snatch him, but I'm happy for him as he actually gets some money now Injury. Last month we lost one starting striker to injury, now we lost another one... Mateus Paulo 25a hasn't been too efficient, but he is a youth product of ours, so he gets the nod before the 35-olds. The average age of our current attacking trio is over 33, let's hope they want to show people one more time why they've had such long careers Upcoming fixtures. Somehow we still have a (marginal) chance of making it to the playoffs, let's do it! As we have 2 out of our 3 starting attackers injured, but maybe somebody else will take a bigger role in the final third..? Who it could be, I really don't know. I think we need 15 or at least 13 to make it to the playoffs, so the chances are very slim.

February 2026. Okay, this is better. 8 points from 5 games means we are no longer fighting for the playoff spots, but I feel like we have steadied the ship. Leek Town loss was very much deserved, I don't think we created any good chances in the game. Also, leek is one of my favourite vegetables, so if I had to lose to someone, I would lose to Leek. In the last game of the month the team gave me a nice gift for my 100th game in charge of the club. League table. We are right where we should be based on the team's performances. 11 points to playoffs, 13 points to the relegation zone. Injury. We lost the spearhead of out attacking trio. At this point Kian Reddy was leading the goalscoring charts as he had scored stunning 22 goals in 27 league games. His back-ups are both 35-olds who are planning to retire at the end of the season, and they didn't score in any of the four games they played in this month... Finances. Financially, we are stronger than ever. The upwards trend on bank balance seems to be even stronger this season than on the previous one. A bit surprising, isn't it? Upcoming fixtures. Now we just need keep grinding on. Avro game is definitely the most difficult, they look like winners of the league already. It's also the first time I face an old player from our team, as they signed Dean Pinnington from us earlier in the season. I would be happy with home wins and an away draw or two.

Our 34-old back-up defender started making noises earlier this season about his playing time. I asked him to settle for the role of a squad player, he wasn't happy about it. Now I got a message about "pressure building on Ramsey". As he was not too important for the team and on a non-contract, the easy decision was to release him. I did it so quickly his "revealing interview" didn't get published until the next day, when he was already a free agent The story in three screenshots:

Nice start to the new year! January 2026. Clitheroe game was crazy fun even if we lost it. After that it was much more boring, but I'm relieved our losing streak didn't get any longer. Table. Six points from six games is not good. We are saying bye bye to promotion playoffs. Transfers. We get bids to our players all the time, but I've been ignoring them as about 95 % are rejected by the players. They're free to leave as they are on non-contracts, but it would be very nice of them to stay with us Losing Dean Pinnington was a real shock, I hadn't even noticed Avro offered him a contract. Pinnington came to the during last season and conquered the starting position as CM (a), playing 41 league games in total. I can't be mad at him, I might jump the ship if league leaders came offering a starting position in their team. On a more positive note, we had our first loan deal done. Reed 25o is a 2,5 silver star striker with low PA, but it's nice to see loans happening at this level. Facility upgrades. We have better facilities than ever before, woohoo! From poor to basic, we are moving to the right direction! Upcoming fixtures. February is the month we steady the ship. Top half finish is what I'm aiming for, so we need to start winning (and drawing) matches to stay there.

December 2025. 5 games, 9 goals, 10 conceded...only three points gained We apparently decided to use all the goals and saves in the first game of the month. Lancaster were bottom of the table, so win was to expected, but so were wins against Uttoexeter and Ashton, who also were in the relegation zone. Table. We lost a lot of ground in the battle for the playoff spots. Couple of wins and we go up by one position, couple of losses and we might be 14th. Finances. No upgrades asked yet, but we are doing steady profit so I will be meeting with the board in the second half of the season. Youth intake preview. It's not looking too rosy. 4,5 stars is excellent, but on the other hand one position with C and everything else E or worse is...bad. I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the preview, but this tells me not expect players who would go straight in to the 1st XI. Upcoming fixtures. Six games, but only one midweek game Clitheroe is 2nd in the league, so away game against is going to very difficult. Mossley and Widnes are in relegation zone and both games are at home, so we should be winning them. The last three games are more balanced in regards of expectations, but let's see what happens.

November 2025. All-in was the theme of the month. League leaders Avro were too good for us, but the all the other games were much more even. We even had our first big win as we beat Atherton Colliers 6-0! League table. Even if the results were all over the place, we steadily stay in the last playoff spot. Pointwise, the top is further away from us than last month, but so is the relegation zone. One reason for varying results was the injury of Neil Parker, our best goalie. Losing the starting keeper is bad, but what makes it even worse is the fact that the back-up is 17-old, who's CA is 1 star... although he did keep clean sheet in his last game before Parker returned. Finances. It's all looking good. Let's see if we can afford more improvements. Records & Awards. Kian Reddy was on fire in October! He scored 8 goals, four of those in one game. The 6-0 game was also our biggest win so far Upcoming fixtures. In December I'm hoping we find some stability (and points.) We are now out of all cup competitions, so league is the only focus.

October 2025. Well, well, well, this is looking much better! We are still conceding, but we also scored 2 or more goals in all our wins. We keep our last cup run alive as we won a scrappy game against Mossley. League table. This looks nice. I'm quite sceptical, but if we can keep up getting on average 2 points per game, we are playoff bound. The more important thing is that the gap between us and relegation zone is already 11 points. Finances. Nice, nice. Let's hope this is going to be the trend for years to come. I might be dropping finance part off from the monthly update if it is going to be like this every month Upcoming fixtures. Next month is going to be tough. We face league leaders Avro + 5 other teams in the league. We also have league cup game against Wythenshawe who are second in the league.