turnip

Season 25: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League Well, that was certainly a month. We deserved to lose against Lusitania, but the defeat to Porto in the cup was a bit harsh. In Europe, Arsenal edged the xG courtesy only of a penalty that they missed late on. Diarrassouba, scoring from a corner, punished them for their profligacy. Lazio were a lot better and there was definitely an element of clinging on in that match. I do find it funny that we generally do better against English teams than Italian. Possibly that's a factor of the Italian leagues being active more than the English ones. Anyway, we've qualified for the Champions League Round of 16. So we only have a 'very' busy February, not a horrendously busy one. Transfers Out Confirmation that Mehmet Mandirali left for a meagre fee. Matar Kone also left us; his perceived potential dripped downwards fairly regularly and he didn't develop enough to balance it out. In 'I wasn't paying attention, but it wouldn't have helped me anyway' news, I let our backup GK go out on loan and recalled our next best backup to the club only to find that he'd played for two teams in the last year and couldn't be registered for league matches. Transfers In We now have money, so I took the opportunity to spend some of it. Mostly on pretty modest fees, but there are a lot of signings there. For those of you unfamiliar with the club names, most of these are 4th tier in Spain or lower. Most of the signings are prospects who were quite poorly rated by my scouts because they have low reputation. There are a few exceptions, though. James Bala is a player - and allow me to choose my words carefully here - whose talent as a footballer I have been tracking since he made his debut for the Nigerian U20 team at the age of 14. His contract is up this summer and if Lusitania don't extend his contract I'm hoping we can pick him up on a free. We also needed a new DR after letting Matar Kone leave, and Barden is in on loan to be a decent option until the end of the season while my scouts try to find a good DR. James Ocampo is probably the best young Target Man option within my budget. He also has the Mor Talla Traore bonus of being really good at shooting with his feet. He's still quite undercooked, but if there's potential there I think he could end up being really good. Kopanu Mohau is the mostly replacement for Mehmet Mandirali. He's not as well-rounded, but he does have a nice attribute distribution and if all he does is ping the ball around I'd be happy with that. Damir Kepcija was a U19 Croat international playing at a non-league German team. Already looks good and turn out to be anywhere between 'good' and 'amazing'. Vasilis Drosos has a very solid Technical base for a 16 year old and a bunch of attributes at 8/9. Another "how good could he be?!?!?" player signed for £75k. Angel Ferre could have the potential to turn into a very good player. An all-rounder, I guess. Or we could flog him in a year or two for a nice fee. Agustin Navarro is the best of the rest of the AMCs we signed. Again, lots of good attributes, but nothing amazing yet. How good could he get? Ooh, a mystery..!

There are still some pretty wonky animations in the game and probably not enough for "player loses control of the ball and an opponent collects it". Head-canon it as the ball was hit too hard or the player had to stretch for it, if it helps.

DLP, for sure. Good Passing/Vision and excellent Decisions. Work on Ball Control, as his First Touch isn't great yet and a bit of Dribbling never hurt anyone, then see about training him with a couple of traits to support his play-making. I'm all about promoting youngsters, so I'd give him at least a place in the squad next season, possibly make him the starter depending on how good my current DLP is. Rogue option is to get him to train as a Libero (S) and work on his Heading/Bravery; that way he'll develop as a playmaker and you'll also end up with a good centre-back. Plus, every team is better with a Libero - they're awesome!

What level of detail are you running those leagues at? At anything less than full detail, clubs in other leagues will be a bit weird in a range of different ways. Staffing is one of those ways.

Well if you're playing on Key Highlights, there's really no reason to show a throw-in unless something important happens, and there's a good chance that will be a goal. As to why there are so many, it's possible that if you are manager of a big club, that other teams will prioritise defending against you. In FM24, if you have a good Set Pieces coach, you're immediately doing better than most other teams, and if you delegate to them and they choose to focus on Throw-Ins, you may score more goals than usual from throw-ins. In previous versions, certain set pieces were quite buggy in that your players would sometimes do stupid things depending on where the set piece took place, and some of these included throw-ins. I don't personally see a lot of goals from throw-ins, so your tactics will likely be playing a part, but it can be hard to work out in what way, sometimes.

Season 25: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League A generally good few months. We have, bear in mind, avoided the big teams in the league so far except the one match against Porto. We deserved to lose against Estoril Praia, Porto and Famalicao in the cup. In Europe, our second goal against Inter flattered us hugely, but they do have ten players earning £300k p/w or more. If we've struggled to put other teams to bed , it's possibly the result of a few injuries. The loss of Mayoral in the summer also has probably had a bigger impact on the team than I expected. Porto leading the league is funny as I anticipate how many players they'll be forced to sell in the January window. Knowing how fickle the fates can be, the answer will probably be "none" combined with "billionaire investor takeover". We've been forced to sell Mehmet Mandirali, which is a shame. I wasn't paying attention in the summer and promised we'd sell him once we'd signed a replacement and that being considered a Promise, we then couldn't cheer him up enough to get a new contract signed. I've done a lot of scouting to see who we can bring in to replace him. The January window should be an interesting one.

Old club update, a quarter of a century in and not at all an excuse to get the next update onto the next page Lusitania Lourosa: still in the Portuguese Premier League, still paying a ton of players a ton of money, still pumping out really good youngsters, but falling off a bit in the league. Currently in 7th. Reggiana: have been a bit of a yo-yo between Serie A and Serie B. Currently in Serie A. Remarkably, they still have a player I signed for them, a 34-year old Manuel Puggelli, who is the all-time league appearance record holder, with 458. Dinamo: have won every league title except the last one, which Hajduk won. More money than sense, to be honest. 1860 Munchen: won their second-ever Bundesliga last season. The core of the first-team squad is still players I signed for them. Currently leading the Bundesliga. Jim Daly has become even more disgusting than I thought he would Partizan: have been reliably meh since I left

I doubt it's related to Newgan manager. Try the 'Verify integrity of game files' option in Steam to see if that fixes it.

My response was a bit short, so apologies for that. As a general rule, if you're doing well in the League and meeting expectations in other competitions, you don't need to worry about those Board Targets. The board'll be all "We're really disappointed" but the overall report card will be fine. The issue you've run into is an odd one. And probably has something to do with random dates in the background you have no control over. Overall, I do think that board expectations and goals are improving over time. At a glacial pace, maybe, but in FM08, I remember taking over a bankrupt Barcelona in the 3rd-tier of Spain and the board expecting European qualification. So this is at least better than that!

I'm assuming you didn't get fired, because you'd have mentioned if you had. In which case, who cares?

For reference, the budget was about £165k before.

FM is a complicated game, so it's hard to know why scouting isn't working for you in the absence of any details. I'm in my 25th season of my current save, and scouting is... fine. It's not as strong as it was in previous versions, and it seems to be over-impacted by Reputation (like I'd argue a lot of things in the game seem to be) but if you have enough scouts and cast a wide enough net it seems to do what it's supposed to do.

Ah, man, what an absolute shame

Season 25: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League As I said in the post for the end of last season, we had very little money available, so any transfers were going to have to be funded by sales. Thankfully, Leeds didn't keep us waiting too long. Dani Miquel is obviously a good goalkeeper and while a perfect deal wouldn't have included a % of Profit of Next Sale, the cash part of the deal is something I'm more than happy to live with. Adriano Chio was just massively undervalued by the game's broken-as-the-top-cracker-in-the-pack transfer value algorithm so when we received an anaemic bid from a Premier League Barnsley team and he wanted to leave, it was just a case of getting as much as we could. 50% ONS should help make up the difference (he's now worth £17m, and that's only because those idiots agreed a MFRC). Albert Mayoral was the other big sale. Having sold Miquel, I didn't think we really needed the money, but his spidey-senses told him a bid was coming in, he told me that he wanted to join a bigger club and - lo and behold - a bid from, ahem, Stoke arrived. O Presidente declared he was taking matters into his own hands when he accepted, and while I guess that's true technically (the best kind of being true), it's actually them agreeing to my negotiated bid. Again, 50% ONS is included and will presumably make it an expensive deal for Stoke. Youssef Nadrani was our starting DR but hadn't really improved since we signed him 2 years ago. A reliable option though he was, it was time to look elsewhere. Joao Marcos, Steve De Bruyn and Luciano Bundchen were all players signed for free who we've made a tidy profit on. And finally, Horny Scott left to go back to Mexico - with a change in our tactic, he went from being backup at AMR/AML and ST to being just our 5th-choice ST, so it was time to offload. Jose Manuel joins us after spending his whole career to date playing for Villarreal's B/C teams. He isn't fantastic, and we're paying him a decent chunk of wages, but I think he's a good option and if there's some potential there, I'm hoping first-team football will kickstart his development. Luca Rizzato was released after several years of first-team football in the Swiss second tier. My scouts and coaches don't particularly like him - and I can see why, even if I don't agree - but I think he looks like a very solid option to have while we either look for a long-term option or develop our existing backup. Youssouf Boni was brought in to help fill the hole left by Mayoral. This season, he'll mostly be a backup in the league and start cup matches (including in Europe, most likely). One of those players I can easily see developing into an excellent player or stagnating, regressing and finishing up his career playing second-tier football in Hong Kong. Paulo Mendonca was on the transfer list at Sporting and with pretty modest demands, it was a no-brainer to bring him in as backup. He looks like another who could really kick on with some first-team football. Zoran Macanovic is our new DR/WBR option. I could fill a First XI with good DLs and still have a couple left over, but good DRs are hard to find right now, so I'm hoping he can be developed into one. Good Physicals and a solid Technical base leaves me optimistic. Again, will likely be one for the Cups this season. Myles Legg popped his ACL in our second(?) friendly of pre-season. I initially brought in a forward from Milan (our senior affiliate) as cover, but was reminded of the existence of Joan - and his £2.9m Relegation Release Clause by... I assume one of our scouts. I had a big laugh when at the press conference announcing his signing, one of the journalists asked "How does it feel to bring Joan back to the club?" - I'd completely forgotten that we had him on loan in the 3rd tier. It's all about the details, you see... The flurry of signings on deadline day were me filling out the youth squads so they can be competitive. And Razak Souley is deep cover, filling the deep cover role Steve De Bruyn had. There was some interest in Mehmet Mandirali after the window closed and he got upset that I rejected some pathetic bids (from Brighton in particular) but he's the like-for-like replacement for Mayoral, and the free agent options for that role are very limited right now. His contract expires at the end of the season - I'm hopeful we can bring him around on staying with the club, since I really like him. Fixtures In the league, the Second XI scraped wins against Ac Viseu and Farense, and a draw against Arouca. Bad teams, all, but it let us focus our First XI on Europe. Dinamo in the Champions League qualifiers is much less of a gimme than it was before I spent a few years with them. Hardly a bad team even then, they now have enough cash to spooge a ridiculous amount of money on players. We comprehensively FMd them in the Away leg and then ground out a fair draw at Home. They deserve it for paying one player double our entire wage budget, imo. Emmen put 10 goals past Sogndal in the Third Qualifying Round, but their first appearance in the Champions League didn't make it past us. You could say that we benefited from their DL getting sent off 11 minutes into the first leg, but having dominated that match, we just about deserved our second leg win. That sets us up with a tricky - but I don't think overly tough - set of fixtures that the Second XI will be sent to with cries of "Good luck" and "Don't get smashed!" The club is now very much in the black, with £43m in the bank balance. I asked for - and got - upgrades to Training and Youth facilities, but the board refused to improve Junior Coaching, but I'm going to ask for better Youth Recruitment. We've already achieved my main goal for the club this season - reaching the Champions League League Phase - and anything else we get in Europe (I'm talking about money) is a bonus at this point, although I think we can beat Lech and Farul Constanta. In the league, I'm aiming for another finish in European places. For the next couple of seasons, I'm really looking for consolidation in the league and a furious rate of improvement in our Facilities - the next phase for the club is getting to the point where we can develop players really well in the Youth squads, and with our facilities at the moment, that's tricky. At some point I'm sure the board will start looking at a new stadium - 9k is simply far too small for a club that's in Europe.

Season 24: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League A generally very good end to the season, with some caveats. We got absolutely steamrolled by Moreirense - one of those matches where I clearly completely balls-ed up the team talk and the Moreirense manager clearly aced it. We were awful in defense and non-existent in attack. 4 days later, I rotated the team and we scraped, and I mean 'peeling overly-enthusiastically-applied wallpaper with a plastic ruler' scraped, the draw against Academica. The losses against Benfica and Porto were far more expected and neither really left the team that bothered. The 1-1 draw with Lusitania Lourosa, 1-0 win against Braga and 2-3 over Sporting were all fortunate results, too, but we weren't completely outplayed in those matches. All this meant that we went into May in 4th place, with two matches left - Lusitania Lourosa (A) and Farense (H) - and only a point behind Lusitana Lourosa. Add another lucky result to the list, I guess. Again, though, they didn't completely outplay us - we obviously dominated possession (as we have for most of the season, to be fair) but their xG was only a bit over 2. The Fran who got booked for them was signed by me way back when, as was their GK - Amado Meireles de Azevedo - who got the assist for their goal and has 163 caps for Portugal. He's retiring imminently and is a strong candidate for the best signing of this entire save. Having leapfrogged my former club into 3rd, that left us with a home match against Farense to secure Champions League football next season. A task we achieved with some drama, but the win was deserved. Eventually. Table Vitoria de Guimaraes came close to getting relegated again. How they keep sucking so hard, despite having really good facilities and a squad full of talent is truly remarkable. Porto wrapped up the league title quite early. Their youth system is responsible for seemingly half their first team, which is really good. Benfica are also very strong, as are Lusitania Lourosa, whose managers have preferred to spend big on players and let their youth products kind of rot - I'm a little concerned that the lack of Champions League football might hit them hard financially. I said at the start of the season that the league generally seems a lot stronger than it was the first time we got here. The standard of player is a lot higher and the finances generally more robust. Not ours, of course; we're still broke. We had a takeover, which was quite possibly the dampest of squibs, the wettest of farts, the most apathetic of shrugs imaginable: A couple of our players made the Team of the Year, which was nice to see and a couple of our other players made the NxGn list Youth Intake Not bad. Again, it's hard to see how good these players are going to be, since our training facilities are complete ******* and there's no money at present to improve them. Embalo could be a good DL. I'm not really seeing any gaps in his game that typical development won't fill out except Dribbling, and that's something we can work on easily enough. Luis, on the other hand, doesn't look like he'll amount to much. I see the attributes hanging around the 7-9 range but even if I mentally add 3 to all of those, I'm not seeing someone who'll play top-tier football in Portugal (shrugs apathetically). Next season looks like it'll be a challenge. Realistically, we have to sell a couple of our better players to make the kind of money we'll need to improve the squad. Even assuming we make the Champions League Group Stages, that money won't come through until the end of the transfer window and if we ask the board at that point to increase the budgets, I'm not sure that'll be approved before the window closes. I have re-added a bunch of leagues to be playable - not because I plan to leave (I got a new contract during the run-in) but because it should energise the transfer market a bit. With our woeful training facilities, we need our young prospects to be going out on loan to be able to develop. And hopefully some clubs with money will see our squad and see potential first team players. I have two shortlists full of players who I can bring in.

I think it's been confirmed by SI in the past as an intentional thing to increase drama or whatever. It annoys me because I tend to play long saves, often in the same country/league, so getting drawn against the same teams over and over again (the ones who do well in the league) gets old pretty fast.

Yeah, but then the first time someone forgot to change one of their defenders to 'push up' and still had them on 'drop deep' and the opposition scored from a through-ball when the DL was 15 yards behind the rest of the defense, they'd be here on the forums complaining about why SI doesn't make it so that all of your defenders change at the same time. We had 'with ball'/'without ball' instructions back in the day and people used it to make horrendously OP tactics. The same thing would happen again.

Actually, it's Ferencváros or Widzew Łódź because neither team is anywhere near either Italy or Spain and you can sign whoever you want. Just fill your team with bargain basement Asian and African players. And honestly, I just picked Widzew Łódź because I love that combination of diacritics.

It's also true that Wolves have a small squad because they have to pay everyone at least 3x what any other Premier League team would, so the players would come to Wolverhampton

It's probably because your players are lazy and don't track back, while Man City sign players who track back when they're supposed to because if they don't then Pep wi

Season 24: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League We were unlucky not to beat Estoril Praia - after going behind, we ramped up the pressure and dominated the second half but couldn't grab the winner. Against Famalicao, the match was going in the same direction, but the AI made some changes that killed the match off. We did get lucky against Arouca, though; we were bad and but for those late goals from Isah Bolaji would have deservedly lost. Transfers All of the signings that came through on the 3rd January were arranged before the board took action and slashed our budgets. With the club nearly £5m in the red I was keeping an eye on the interest in Isah Bolaji (Newcastle) and Carlos Ramirez (Chelsea, Juventus) but nothing was happening. On deadline day, with multiple clubs interested in Ramirez, I offered him out thinking that I could get a bidding war going. It's fair to say I wasn't expecting any bids from Paraguayan teams - I've been playing these games a looooong time and never seen a Paraguayan team drop more than a million or two on a player - but even though a bidding war never materialised, I'm happy to have got the balance back in the black by selling a player who'd only made a couple of substitute appearances since returning from a loan. We'll get 40% Profit of Next Sale, but I don't think that'll be very much: although the game now values him at £20-22m, at a club in a low-reputation inactive league, I expect that value will drop off pretty quickly. Bernard was a last-ditch signing, just to ensure we have a bit of barely-adequate backup for the DM spot I was expecting Ramirez to play in. With a couple of the big Portuguese teams also interested in Hermenegildo, we had to offer a reasonable amount of playing time to ensure he'd sign with us. He needs some work, particularly on his Physicals, but I think he'll be a useful player in the long-run. We've been tweaking things tactically and are sometimes using 2 strikers in matches. We have a lot of dribbly boys so I wanted something a bit different. Ignacio is quick and - judging by his two sub appearances so far - a bit of a bull-in-a-china-shop in the box. He scored by running onto a through-ball, and created a goal by slamming a header from a corner onto the post for Adriano Chio to tap in.

Players have their own reasons for wanting to sign for, or not sign for, specific clubs. If you get turned down, there's often a bit of blurb explaining why (e.g. "Frank Bobson said it was an easy decision to make as he felt the squad at Doncaster Rovers was much stronger", or something like that). And just generally, the better the reputation of your manager and your club, the more likely it is a player will choose your club over another. Also, though, why would you offer a 2.5 star player (bang-average for your team) "Star Player" status?

Season 24: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League We were, unsurprisingly, distinctly second-best in our matches against Braga, Benfica and Porto in the league (although Porto had a lot of shots and we had barely any). The same would also have been true of the cup tie against Lusitania Lourosa, except I sacrificed the 2nd XI for that match. Most of our players have kicked on a bit, although a couple of players have stagnated - Cristiano Colaianni in particular has been very ordinary. Financially, we're suffering at the moment. Without any major sales in the summer the bank balance has been in the red throughout. Coming into December, the board finally seemed to notice and cut our wage budget by a quarter (meaning we're now outspending the budget - something the board were adamant we avoid ). We do have some interest in Isah Bolaji. Man City were initially sniffing around, but now it's Newcastle. We should be able to get £10m for him if I avoid clauses. We need the money, but I might be tempted to drag the upfront price down to try and get a healthy %ONS. Random Player Showcase Santiago was signed on a free a couple of seasons ago after he left his semi-pro Argentinian club and spent last season out on loan in the Argentinian Second Division. He's a bit of an odd one in that none of his Technical attributes are particularly great, but everyone seems to really like him. He's done pretty well in the appearances I've been able to give him, but I'd still sell him if we got a bid of more than £5m.

Season 24: Leixões, Portuguese Premier League We had another bump to the number of coaches we could hire. We now have a lot, giving us the best level of coaching in the league. Thanks to the club selling off the facilities to avoid bankruptcy, though, this training is taking place in awful facilities. Transfers As predicted, there wasn't a huge amount of interest in our players. Reputation, I assume. We did Cherepanov to Elche for £800k. They're in La Liga and he's a starting DC for them. Yikes. Quim Alago was rid of for £100k thanks to an intermediary. We floated the prospect of selling some other players, but no-one was really interested. That said, Seny N'Doye and Mehmet Mandirali are both out on loan with optional future fees - I like both of them, but with Mayoral, Ouedraogo, Bolaji and Schwindt in the squad, we had to make some space. We needed a backup DR and Matar Kone was suggested as a solid option and is comfortable at DC, too. Looks like he should be very useful. Hassan Bensouda was brought in to provide a bit of oomph up front. Broken Back Post Headers, and all that. Not exactly useless with the ball on the ground either. Came through the 1860 academy. Not amazing, but gives us something a bit different. Valery Vinogradov was a random agent offer on deadline day. Cheap transfer fee, cheap wages and looks like a solid plug-and-play option in the event we have a horrendous injury crisis. Josue Cardenas was brought in to fill the gap left by Cherepanov. I think he'll end up being much, much better. Not exactly cultured, but neither is the rest of the team. We let the second DC signing of the summer go out on loan, and after worrying about who I'd sign to be the 4th/5th choice, I decided to let Diarrassouba fill that role and sign Ambrosio Moises to be a backup to Diarrassouba. My scouts and coaches think he could be good; I think he could be brilliant. Horny Scott was signed to be a backup option at ST and AML. Again, the scouts and coaches made approving but not enthusiastic noises. Again, I think there's more there. Mostly profit, but also possibly some talent. The rest of the signings were largely chaff to fill out the youth squads. Normally I'd have slightly higher expectations, but our Training Facilities are really bad, so I'm mostly hoping they'll develop from getting game time in the youth leagues. A good start in the league, albeit Famalicao are the best team of the three we've played by some distance. Seriously, the strength of this league 20 years after we got Lusitania Lourosa to the top is scary. We're out of the League Cup, which I couldn't care less about. The goal for this season is very much consolidation. I think we'll be okay. We've got a few important players with contracts due to expire, and keeping them is a priority, because we still have a team full of players who'll be better at the end of the season than they are right now.

If I've got a couple of important players I want to hang onto, I will sometimes sign a couple of kids represented by their agent. It won't necessarily stop the agent being an idiot, but anecdotally it seems like you can negotiate a bit harder with them. God help you if your best players are represented by an agent who hates you.