turnip

I wouldn't say the transfer system is broken, but there are some AI behaviours that need a bit of working out. I wonder if the game would benefit from a member of the backroom staff (DoF or AssMan) chiming in with a bit of advice for some transfer offers you receive. Say you've got a player and there's been no apparent interest in him all summer and then just before Deadline Day you get a bid from a big club, the staff member could say "Lyon have tried to sign 4 centre-backs this window but lost out on all of them" which you could interpret as them being desperate and it's based on information the game already provides through the News items. Or you could get a terrible bid for a good player and the staff member says "this bid may be an attempt to unsettle your player". (This would not really based on information the game already gives you).

Season 6: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin July-August Transfers It feels weird, having all my incoming transfers fitting on one screen, without me having to scroll. Anyway. No big losses going out. Our captain Esteves' time with us had run its course - he had a year left on his deal and already said he wanted to leave. I was impressed someone paid £4.5m for him, to be honest. Weis was an easy sale - the board wanted more, but the board are idiots; similar deal with Diouck, where there wasn't much of a market for him so we took what we could get. Diouck was good, but we need to move to the next level. Roger Lopez was another steal from the Spanish kiddy leagues, who a few teams came in for; rated very highly, but I think it's an illusion. We'll get 50% ONS, and I might try to cash that next summer. Lots of players out on loan - 67 at the moment (2nd September). The biggest signing for us in terms of cash and importance was Amado Meireles de Azevedo. We needed a new GK, and with VdG getting relegated (not sure how; they had some excellent players) his asking price dropped from £40m (lol) to a more reasonable £8m. Gobble gobble, as they say. Alba was the best centre-back we could find who looked like a long-term option and Padilla is similar, but a bit further away from the first team (he's staying in Honduras for another season). Having said we had a bunch of options in midfield, after players went out on loan, I realised we needed another capable playmaker, and Bruno Campusano was the one we went for. With European matches, I should be able to give him enough game time to keep developing. The other big deals were tying down D'Alessandro and Traoré to new deals. Both are fairly chunky in terms of wages (£35k and £20k p/w respectively), but probably worth it in the long-run. D'Alessandro is our new Captain, too, so it was good to keep him happy. Most of the other players we signed are to fill out the youth teams, although Chambers, Salaun and Yahaya will make a few appearances. Bonus points for the ASPIRE academy in Qatar, for developing Suraj Singh to the point where he was worth taking a punt on. I doubt he'll ever be good enough for us, but a talented Indian centre-back is nothing to sneeze at. Fixtures Poor Porto, having to demean themselves by going through qualification for Europe, and then getting spanked by us on the first day of the league season (sandwiched by European matches). We played really well and deserved to win. Our final goal was :chef's kiss: and so nice I actually clapped while watching the highlights. Not much to clap about in the game against Sporting, though. We've got a bit of a task on our hands to progress in the Champions League, too. Not an easy set of matches. Just as well the board only wanted us to reach the Group Stages (and then were thrilled when we did, because they're idiots).

Season 5: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin April - May Rangers were too good for us in Europe. They're too good in FM generally, but eh. Both results against them were fair. Big wins against Chaves, Nacional and Vitória de Guimarães and some scrappy performances against Farense, Penafiel and Sporting (Traoré with the sneaky 90+4th minute winner, there). And then, of course, the elephant in the room. The elephant-sized 5-5 bonanza against Sporting in Lisbon. A great match, but we absolutely threw the game away from being 2-5 up with 30 minutes to play. So was this enough to win the league? Erm, no. Because Benfica had one of the most ridiculous runs of form in the league that I think I've ever seen from an AI team in FM. Between the start of January and the end of the season, they only failed to win 1 game - against us. As disappointing as it is to fail to win the league with a points total that's usually enough, I can't argue with a 50-ton steamroller like that. We also had a tricky run-in; Sporting and Porto have both been fairly bad this season, but they're still tough teams to beat. Benfica lost in the Allianz Cup final, were knocked out of Europe in the Quarter-Finals and then somehow lost to Penafiel in the Taça de Portugal Placard final. Does that make me feel better for them pipping us to the league? No, but i did laugh when I saw the final score in the Cup final. Token Silverware No idea what this competition is, but whichever member of staff was responsible for it picked a side with a few players from our U23s, U19s and U19-Bs and we beat Porto. Hurrah! The U19-Bs also won the Portuguese U19 Aveiro Division comfortably, and I think that means they get promoted? The U19s finished third in their Championship Group, while the U23s scraped into their Championship Group and then finished last (although I think half the players I'd put in there were out on loan after January, so there's no big surprise there). Random Player Showcase I thought we'd stolen this kid from the Spanish U19 leagues, but actually, we stole him from a 4th-tier team in Spain for the usual £10k sorry-not-sorry fee. He looked good when my scouts gave their "yeah, I suppose" report and lit the U19-Bs on fire when he joined in January. He got called up for the provisional Spanish U20 squad for the Youth Invitational, but picked up an minor injury and was replaced. I gave him his debut from the bench on the final day of the season (he'd played the day before) and he scored and got a pseudoassist (his shot got parried and then tapped in by someone else). One for the "if his potential holds, then holy balls" list, I guess. I'm very excited about this one. Summary Obviously, another good season. The signing of Masoud seemed to reignite our attacking options and the form of Traoré in the back-half of the season was incredible; he scored 25 goals for the season, and 19 came after Christmas. Defensively, too, we improved. I think Driss Pépé's time with us is up - after 3.5 good seasons, he seems to have reached his limit and we need another excellent DC to partner Mozafari. I'm looking for a new DL, but we've got plenty of options at DR. Midfield is already sorted - Dongmo just signed a new contract and we've got about 30 viable options to play whatever roles we need filling. Up front, I'm less sure about right now. I gave Traoré a new deal at the start of the season with a £7.5m MFRC in the hope that someone would come in for him (and I was really hoping someone would by Christmas), but with his recent form, I'm not really sure what to do. He scored lots of headers, but also is pretty good with the ball at his feet and the list of strikers who can do the same that I've found is vanishingly small. We also really need a new GK - Manfred Weis is Mr Inconsistency and it pains me to have to pick him week on week. Plus, the coaching team think he's hit his Potential and that's no good. We're steadily building up depth in the youth teams. We'll have another cull over the summer, get rid of some of the deadwood (hopefully for some cash) and bring in some higher-potential players. Our Technical Director has gone ham on signing youth team coaches, so we've got scope to keep on expanding. Number of players signed this season: 48.

Season 5: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin February - March A couple of months that felt pretty hectic. We've alternated between being excellent and incredibly mediocre. We thoroughly deserved the wins against Benfica, Rio Ave, Moreirense and Vålerenga, but were lucky to get anything from the games against Portimonense, Estoril Praia, Maritimo and Boavista (this one had me shrieking the most at my monitor). We should have lost to Braga by a lot more. In fairness, we struggled with players being unavailable through Asian Cup or injuries (if we can call a cold or the flu as an injury). We very much had to put out weaker teams against Vålerenga to accommodate the big games against Benfica and Braga, but it didn't cost us in Europe. A large part of the success we had in the period is due to our talismanic skyscraper forward Mor Talla Traore, who stepped up to the plate with some terrific form at a time when our Thai striker wasn't available. Squeaky bum time awaits Youth Intake A Preview that promised much and an Intake that delivered. The CA stars don't look quite as impressive as they might, but - genuinely - Shady Masoud is distorting that for everyone. We ended up signing all but I think 4 players. Shout out to Umaro Mané, who has quite possibly the worst set of physical attributes I've ever seen on a newgen at a professional club; I signed him, because he'll make games of piggy-in-the-middle easier for everyone, and you just can't buy that sort of utility these days. Random Player Showcase Albert Bucur - 2nd on the NXGN list - has been with us for a while now. We signed him when he was 16 from a team in the Romania Youth League on the back of him appearing in the Romanian U-18/9 side, and he's now 19. As you can tell, we've put a lot of work into his physicals over the last 3 years and he's now probably our 3rd choice DC. Ideally, I'd like him to have his physicals improve a bit more but I can live with them as they are; my coaches all think he's still got significant room to improve and I'd like to see that improvement coming through in his technical attributes. If he can develop those a bit more I think he could be a really good player.

I've posted this image before, in other threads, but it never stops being hilarious in these discussions: This goalkeeper was godly. An impenetrable barrier. A veritable one-man-army of goal-preventing carnage. Sorry, I lie. This goalkeeper (from a youth-only save) was rubbish. Absolute, unmitigated trash but the best of a completely awful bunch at the time. As a team, we were also absolute, unmitigated trash; our defense particularly so. As a result, we gave away chances like a Tory minister handing out PPI contracts to their friends. Chances for you, chances for you, chances for you. Soooo many chances. And so, Mr Soares up there on an entirely different graph from his peers, looked amazing. As others have said, goalkeepers get a bit of a rating boost for making a save, no matter how easy it is. So as the shots rained in - most of them very poor - he kept making the kind of saves I could make, and getting good ratings. Which gave him confidence, which let him save even more shots. And since our team was rubbish, teams played more attacking football against us which meant more shots for Soares to save (and more high-quality chances for our attackers, who were much better than our defenders).

You can see it on the Finances screen. For me it's in the top-right: So, if I sell a player for £3m, I get £3m back to spend. If it drops to 50%, you get half of that.

Season 5: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin January First up, the transfer window. The ever-beloved Promise module within FM had a 50% success rate this month. Wichai Wongsrikaew had a tantrum because I wasn't playing him as a Central Defender, and I wasn't, because the dude has 8 Jumping Reach. He requested a transfer, so I've sent him to Hoffenheim for a few months. Hopefully he'll have chilled out by the time he comes back. Ahmad Mozafari also had a tantrum because I wasn't playing him as a Ball-Playing Defender, except I was. Unlike Wongsrikaew, though, Ahmad is actually a very important player for our team - much more so, since my scouts were unable to find anyone I could replace him with if I needed to. He's spent the month off doing Asian Cup things, but hasn't really calmed down. He's not going anywhere, regardless. Ronaldo was my 2nd-choice ST last season, but the only competitive goals he scored this season were both in our 4-0 win over Nacional. A couple of teams came in for him and off he went. We signed 13 players. A DR came in to provide competition for whoever wants to take Xavier's spot next season. A couple of DCs came in for small sums - one from Nigeria, one from Bolivia - to provide some depth for our U23s. We raided the Spanish U19 leagues again and this time also picked up a youngster from a French National-3 team. Then there was the bigger stuff. Billy Stenberg was someone my scouts had been raving about for a couple of seasons. I've played FM long enough to know to pay attention when a player from [cracks knuckles] Brommapojkarna is recommended, so after 4 reports in total I decided they weren't yanking my chain and I pulled the trigger: Breakthrough Prospect, I just need to find game time for him. I'd scouted quite heavily (for me) specifically for a striker and Nahuel Ghisleni was the best candidate I found. He's listed as a Winger, but with teams sniffing around Traore, our Thai striker and Ronaldo, I wanted another option up front. And then there's Shady Masoud... Another player I'd been aware of for a while but had been put off by the high price and even higher wages. BUT, I'd identified that 'lack of goals' was the biggest concern (for me, at least) and Masoud was the option available who looked like he could contribute the most to that area of our game. The £10.75m fee was his MFRC and they weren't budging on that, and we had to haggle pretty hard on the wages because I almost threw up when I saw his demands. And then, after we'd actually agreed on the deal, I spent about an hour of real-life time mulling over whether to accept or cancel. I still feel a bit sick just thinking about it. Fixtures Shady Masoud had a debut to remember, with a goal and assist against Porto, and then did sweet FA for the rest of the month. We then re-engaged 'desperate final minute goals' mode to squeak through against Académico de Viseu. The game against Nacional (rock-bottom of the league) looks comprehensive, but all the goals came in the last 22 minutes. Seems redundant to say it was a good month in the league, but it was. We're top of the league with a game in hand over Benfica. Random Player Showcase: Guillermo was someone my scouts recommended a couple of times, but he'd moved from a 4th tier team to a 2nd tier team and then spent a year doing nothing with them before I decided my scouts might be on to something and we spent £200k to get him. He was on loan back in the 4th tier last season, and this season he's in the 2nd tier. His perceived PA has steadily moved up over time and now he looks like he could be really good.

I'll like it when it means Real Madrid, PSG or Man City fail to make the knockouts. Until then, I'll just assume it's rigged like always and ignore it.

Good luck with your save, @collisonmullan Season 5: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin November - December A fairly straightforward - if busy - couple of months. We've struggled to really put teams away, but a combination of decent defending and our Thai striker being on good form has meant it hasn't really mattered. The rest of the team has chipped in with goals, with Traore getting a hattrick against Shkëndija. I ended up sending a blended squad to Israel with the game against a pretty good Portimonense side imminent and it paid off. We finished top of the League Phase in Europe by one goal. Kinda meaningless, but a bit of extra cash is nice. Less nice was the board and players acting like complete morons when we dared lose in the Taça de Portugal Placard. The board had a bit of a tantrum, and feeling emboldened by this, so did the players: What's the Portuguese for "go stick your testicles in a blender you ****ing lobotomites"? Youth Intake preview Random Player Showcase Another player who, like Rios before him, we snapped up from the Spanish U19 leagues on a free. My scouts really didn't like him at first, but he's developed well and even if I'm not convinced the 4+1* potential is accurate, I think there's a very good playmaker in the making.

Season 5: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin September - October We've had to get good at scoring late goals in the last couple of months. We've scored winners at 83 (Braga), 90+1 (Benfica), 90+2 (Young Boys) and 90+3 (Žalgiris). I usually play with Instant Result, but having sent the kids to play Žalgiris, I thought I should manage it myself. I nearly had an aneurysm before our eventual 2-2-2-2-2 formation saw the Thai striker get through on goal to slot past the keeper with 5 seconds of time remaining. I'm still playing the kids against Shkëndija, though. We actually outplayed Benfica and deserved the win, although not as much as they outplayed us and deserved the win in the Allianz Cup. Random Player showcase: We picked Rios up on a free from a club in the Spanish U19 league in January. Half a season using our (by now) good facilities and he was good enough for Eibar to take on loan as an Important Player. Good performances, too, with Eibar 2nd in LaLiga SmartBank after 11 matches. We've got quite a few options for DR (just as well with Xavier leaving at the end of the season), and if he keeps developing he might get the spot.

Season 5: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin July-August 2026 Transfers We spent the entire transfer window waiting for the penny to drop with Jordan Knight, only for his MFRC to be activated with a few days of the window left. Fair enough, though; £37m is a pretty hefty chunk of change, especially for a middling team like The Tottenham Hotspurs. The loss of Xavier was worse. Mostly because it was my own fault. I'd forgotten his £3.9m MRFC until I saw teams were sniffing around on deadline day. I hurried to offer him a new contract and was glad to see the date tick over, only to find out that - for some ****ing reason - every major league's transfer window shuts a day after the one in Portugal. I guess the spice must flow. Faced with losing him for a pittance, I accepted a £2.9m + 50% ONS + a year on loan for free. That's a lot of players out on loan, by the way. I think it's 55 in total. While we waited to see if we'd need a new DC, I scouted a little bit. Henry Vargas was my eventual choice - although he's not quite ready to replace him. Ahmad Mozafari is actually his replacement (there's another Iranian on the list (Ali Izadi) - I agreed to sign Mozafari in January and only after he joined did I remember I'd promised to sign someone to 'help him settle'. Oops). I quite enjoy the Agent Offers section of Deadline Day - it's basically like browsing the world's best thrift shop; I found Godfrey Mfaume and Mohamed Dahab Yahia Mamoud Ishaq that way. I can't claim that either were scouted quite as thoroughly as I told the press, but I'm sure you can keep a secret. By the way, the £10k fees you see next to some players occur when I could get a player for Free, but I feel bad for just outright stealing them. A token gesture. A nominal fee. A sorry-not-sorry in cash monies form. On the other end of the price scale, Francisco Marques was brought in to help us in midfield and looks grand, Javier Pereira provides reinforcement a little further up the pitch and Pogiso Mari is an odds-and-sods forward who should develop quite a bit (according to my scouts and coaches). Fixtures I'd like to claim 'job done' in regards to Europe, but the board want knockouts. And since we seem to have been shafted out of our Europa League spot (not sure why), I guess I have little choice but to take it seriously. More seriously than either Fenerbahçe or Servette took it, anyway. In the league, we've had to suffer through. We don't have a competitive Second XI yet, and some of our players - particularly Diouck - cannot handle two games in a week. Honestly, I'm hoping we get some easy ties so I can send the kids and have a weekend of focussing on the league. Never mind, I just saw the matches - Young Boys, Zalgiris Vilnius, Shkendiya, Maccabi Haifa, Derry City, Apollon Limassol. Without wanting to jinx the team, I think that's 4 matches we can send the kids to.

Season 3: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal 2 SABSEG Ah, the second tier. Where I don't need to spend 5 minutes finding enough Home-Grown players for the match squad every time we play. I immediately took advantage, signing some young Senegalese players - a DL on a free and an MC for £60k up-front, along with a striker to fill the man-mountain-sized hole in our lives vacated by Tassiano. With the transfer window closing, we also signed a really good MC from Sporting for £325k. We did sell a couple of players: our German ST for £250k to Bayern and our promising home-grown ST to Udinese for £250k+, but both deals also involved them spending the season on loan with us. League: P:34 W:25 D:8 L:1 GD:+39 Pos:1st A tougher season in all, although the numbers don't really bear that out. The Goal Difference looks like a bunch of blow-outs, but we tended to get the first goal and then rack 'em up once the opposition started pushing forward. Cups sucked ass. The German was top scorer with 19 goals (not bad for free) while Traore got 14. Our Montenegrin playmaker crafted 15 Assists (he's got a £300k MRFC for clubs in higher divisions, so I spent most of the season worried he'd get poached). The Goals and Assists were generally spread around otherwise. We've started signing cheap young players to fill out our U-19s team; the plan is that some of these will just be to develop and sell on, but who knows - if some of them come good it's a bonus to the team. Youth Intake was a bit meh, with just a forward (with crap Determination) and a two-footed DM actually looking decent. Players signed: 23 Season 4: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin We had a mini-clearout of chaff. Last year's GK , one of our rotational STs and a backup DC were moved on for modest 6-figure sums. The Montenegrin playmaker went to Milan (lol) and our Saffer attacking midfielder kicked up a massive fuss over us rejecting a ****-poor bid from Bologna and I ended up shovelling him out the door, probably for a lot less than we could have got. In January, we sold our previously-first choice DR, Southampton signed a Danish youngster for [a fee] plus 50% of next sale. We also sent a bunch of kids out on loan. Our first signing of the summer was probably our best - an Australian international DC for £1.2m who was labelled a Wonderkid shortly after the season started. Bayern decided to let us take the German ST back on loan again, although we had to pay some of his wages this season (boo). Other important signings were a DR from Alverca and a GK from Bayern. On deadline day, one of the agent offers we received was for an 18-year old Cameroonian MC who was both free and very good. We had an excellent January transfer window, bringing in some great signings alongside winning all of our games in the month. Aaaaand then I accidentally saved over the file, and the second time around things were a bit more Lidl than Waitrose. We did sign a free Argentinian striker who some big English teams were after, that one Thai striker who's good at the start of the save and - to keep him company - a Thai defender (on loan, to sign permanently in the summer). Add in my usual few dozen youngsters and that was that. League: P:34 W:19 D:7 L:8 GD:+25 Pos:4th A very good season, albeit one where we were excellent at Home and pretty ordinary Away. We ran up some big wins, but as with last season, this was typically getting the first goal and then bagging a few more on the counter. We also got outplayed in a lot of games. We grabbed some good wins, though, including a 3-2(H) against Porto and a 4-2(H) against Benfica with the end of the season nigh. On the last day of the season, we were in 3rd, knowing that a better result than Braga would see us keep that spot. We didn't. We lost to 17th-placed (and relegated at the end of the game) Gil Vicente, while Braga drew with Estoril Praia and finished above us on Goal Difference; they get Champions League and we get Europa League. We lost in the first round of the Allianz Cup. In the Taca de Portugal, we actually beat Porto on our way to a 6th Round defeat to Sporting. The Aussie DC came in with a MFRC of £2.5m so he got a new contract halfway through the season, raising his MFRC to £37m. The German ST was top-scorer again - I'm not sure he'll ever be good enough for Bayern, but we definitely can't afford him right now. Traore had another good season, but when he does nothing, he does nothing. Assists were spread around. Amusingly the highest average rating was for a GK I brought in as Emergency Backup when we had injuries to our best 2; he got 7.68 in his 5 matches. We need to strengthen in defence - I suspect Knight will be off and our Malian stalwart's time is up. I also need a new tactic. Youth Intake: For the first time this save, something worth its own paragraph. The preview was promising; the reality... held up pretty well. I'm going to try training Suarez as a Libero - if he's got the potential I'm hoping he has, he could be great. Rebelo is learning all about the Segundo Volante - same deal with his potential. Players signed: 39

My longest-running save ever, in FM08. It lasted 38 seasons and I packed it up for FM09 just after we'd won back-to-back league titles for the first time and made the semi-finals of the Champions League for the first time ever. Thinking back, it would have been awesome to stick with it a couple more seasons and see if I could have pushed on to actually win the Champions League. Particularly since I remember FM09 being a bit of a wet fart (in fairness, probably because I'd just come off of that save).

"Your honour, I think you will agree that MaguireHater69 is an impeccable judge of player's performances and that the comments he made on YouTube - which you have informed me I cannot read out in court; or indeed within earshot of any children - meet the threshold of 'qualified expert' status, given that the individual in question claims to play at centre-back himself in Sunday League football to - and I quote - "a good standard". Therefore, I'm sure you will agree that fining Harry Maguire a week's wage for every minute of the match that he played in which MaguireHater69 gave him a 0.0 rating out of 10 is, in fact, thoroughly justified."

The grammar isn't perfect, but I agree with the name in general

If attributes can change that much, then there's no point having attributes. Which I get is your point, but you are talking around it at times. What you're talking about is Form affecting how well a player is performing in matches (and Training as well, as far as I can tell). There could be some more clarity from within the game about when - for example - a Defender has had a poor game because of 2 horrific mistakes that led to goals rather than just generally being crap; or a Striker who had a bunch of good efforts saved by the keeper compared to a Striker who couldn't hit a barn door. And even a player in poor form will have moments where they show their class; they're just fewer and further between. Form is a tricky one, though, because you only know whether a player's drop in performance is related to Form or Ability if it picks up again. We've all seen players whose performances have dropped off for a long time, only for them to move to a new club and 'rediscover' their form. Dele Alli is just the obvious counterpoint here - at his age, there should be no way it's a drop in ability; more likely it's a lack of self-belief and persistent criticism from everywhere affecting a young man whose neurodevelopment has only just stopped (and who has had suffered some appalling man-management).

Remember that in FM terms, an attribute of 10 is still incredibly good in relation to the average person. A player with 10 Pace is going to out-pace basically anyone who isn't a professional athlete or sportsperson. On the other side, though, an attribute of 20 on its own doesn't mean very much. If I'm in League 2 and have a midfielder with 20 Passing, he's probably got major deficiencies elsewhere in his game. Maybe his Technique is rubbish, so he struggles to hit the ball well enough to make the pass. Or his Vision sucks, so he never sees a through-ball. Or he has terrible Decisions, so he rarely chooses the best pass. Or his Composure is appalling, so as soon as an opposition player gets within 10 feet he panics and hoofs it anywhere. Or his First Touch is awful, so every time he receives the ball, he accidentally punts it halfway to Arkhangelsk. Could be his Pace/Acceleration are woeful, so he can never get in a good position to get the ball. Mayhap his Consistency sucks rancid donkey balls and on any given day his Passing is more like a 5. Whatever. If all of these other things are good, suffice it to say that the player isn't slumming it in League 2; he's probably in the Premier League.

Massive database and a bunch of leagues (read: all of them) on View-Only to start with except Portugal, where I decided to start. I'd love to say I looked around and found a cool team to take over and then and then and then... but I didn't. I'd heard Lusitãnia Lourosa have a Sugar Daddy and the fact they have decent facilities made my mind up for me. Season 1: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Campionata Nacional Prio A few loanees came in as important signings and once the owner chipped in with a few (million) quid, I splashed out. £25k in transfer outlay by Christmas turned into £360k in total by the end of February. Money well spent? League: P:26 W:22 D:3 L:1 GD:+35 Pos:1st We also won the championship tie. So yeah, money well spent. We did nothing in the cups, which I was fine with. Having spent the first half of the season bringing in foreign players to improve the team, I spent the second half of the season bringing in Portuguese-trained players to meet the league requirements and still be good. Our best player was Tassiano, a Brazilian man mountain of a Target Forward who got 23 league goals. We also picked up a cheap Malian DC who looks good and a solid Senegalese MC. I managed to persuade the owner to upgrade Youth Facilities and Junior Coaching at the end of the season. Players signed: 25 Season 2: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga 3 Going through contracts at the end of the year, I was astonished to find this kid , who'd been playing for our U-19-B team for the season and gone from a "yeah, he could be good in the future" to "yeah, he's pretty good now". I did my usual rummage through the bins and found a Spanish U18 outcast DC from Barcelona and a German U18 ST from Unterhaching. We also picked up a bunch of other homegrown players. I supplemented these with a few other signings as the season progressed - the best probably being a Montenegrin playmaker who'd been without a club since the summer. League: P:18 W:14 D:1 L:3 GD:+18 Pos:1st As with last season, we won the Promotion mini-league (despite some quite tricky games) and then Sporting's B team had two players sent off and we walked the championship tie. Cups were forgettable. Around Christmas, we 180'd on tactics, pivoting away from hoofball towards something more possession-oriented. But with Tassiano still up front; so not completely away from hoofball. Speaking of the telegraph pole, after scoring 27 goals in 26 appearances this season, he left at the end of his contract. He'd originally done the "I'm going to be exploring my options" fandango, only to transition into the "I really want to stay at the club" twerk once we secured promotion; but while there may be a pair of delightfully-proportioned buttocks in the world worth spending £8.5k p/w on, Tassiano isn't in possession of them. Our Malian DC wanted a new contract, in contrast, but also was happy with £750 p/w and resigned with no fuss. There's a lesson there. (He also got his first senior cap in the summer). He had a really good season. So did quite a few of our players, to be fair, but we'll have a bit of a cull in the summer and try to get some of our players out on loan for development. Youth Intake initially looked like trash; a second glance was a bit better, but still a wet fart after the improvements we've spent a lot of money on. Players signed: 25

If you've got 3 games in a week that your player needs to start in, just give him a week off training. It won't harm his development and unless he gets injured, he'll be more then fine to play each game.

Yes, you can improve the standing of the league. You can also improve the Youth Rating but it's really slow. I coached Poland to win the Nations League and the Youth Rating didn't improve at all.

Accusations of big club bias in Portugal are completely unfounded

There are some rather niche options in Player Interactions that come up from time to time so you might have the option to say "I tried offering you a contract but you weren't interested" if you don't end up selling him, but I wouldn't put money on it.

The factors working against you here. 1) You're trying to sign good players 2) Those players probably have 2+ years left on their contracts 3) Those players play for big teams 4) Those teams have lots of money 5) You are managing in Israel, which is a smaller league than the ones you're trying to sign players from. Points 1-4 all add to a player's value (including how much a team will want to sell him), while point 5 just means the player will be less interested in joining you. You're not really on to a winner there. Unless you've got buckets of cash, in which case those players will cost even more because of the Man City Tax.

That screenshot is from July 20th. The transfer window doesn't close for another few weeks, so Porto can afford to keep those demands high. After all, the fact that you can't to pay it doesn't mean another team won't. The closer you get to deadline day, the more likely it is that they'll accept a rubbish bid for a player, particularly if they really want him to get game time. If you can get away with playing the one-legged nags your team actually employs for a couple of games, just spend your time scouting anyone you think might be willing to join you on loan. Then, come deadline day, put in offers for 0% wages. There'll be a few players the clubs refuse to accept that for, but you'd be surprised how many they accept and how good the players can be.

This is with Fake Players, so you won't recognise anyone, but this all seems... fine? Not exactly horrendous.