turnip

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League Domestically, the season ended much like the last couple had, with total domination. We could almost completely rotate between matches and still roll teams over, as poor Istra 1961 found in the last league game of the season. Europeanically, though, I was surprised at how well we played. Coming back from a first-leg deficit against Wolfsburg to smash them in Zagreb was tasty. Chelsea, I was sure would be another bridge too far, but after getting a couple of goals somewhat against the run of play in London, we controlled the second leg and were the better team by a fair margin. Man City were always likely to be too strong, but I'm happy that we gave them a bit of a scare, at least. And that's that for Dinamo. The save's in a bit of a weird place at the moment where there don't seem to be as many good young players around as I'm used to. Scouting - though better since the last patch - isn't really helping massively with that either, and when players do sign, there's often a bit of "Yeah, see boss, about that rating I gave him before...". Plus, as I've already mentioned, there's the whole 'developing' status for Croatia, which seems to be having more of an impact on recruitment than I'm used to. Anyway, one club had caught my interest as the season progressed. They'd actually brought in a new head coach in December, with things not going well in the league, so I wasn't sure it would be an option but there they are on the Job Centre list. I've applied and in my next update, hopefully I'll have some moderately exciting news.

I tend to praise a player if I get a news item that he played well. Otherwise, the top 3 players in training each week get praised (assuming they are rated more than 8.0. And then at the end of each month, I praise everyone who's got more than 8.0 in training - senior teams and reserve/youth sides. I've never found there to be any additional benefit to praising players for other stuff. For every player who seems happy with the praise, there's a player who thinks you just insulted him, his family, his fashion sense and his favourite Pokémon. So why risk it?

If you haven't already, have a look in Training --> Rest and tweak the intensity your players train at depending on how fit they are. This is easy to overlook, but can have quite a big difference. Also, if you've got players you want to play twice a week, either consider resting them from training, or make sure you're subbing them off nice and early in matches.

I think he's better than Morrison, although not as well-rounded. Play him as a DLF(A) and I think his Passing/Vision will increase over time

(47b) Smith should get first team game time He's 19, got excellent Finishing, reasonable physicals and remarkably good mentals for his age. I reckon a full season with the first team and he comes on leaps and bounds

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League A pretty quiet transfer window. Of the players who left, Hopland is a goalkeeper my scout and coaches all insist could be really good, but hasn't shown any evidence of that so far; Christopher Diaz hadn't really got into the team despite looking like a good player and Jimmy Bwalya is a Zambian MC who I think could be good, but was never close enough to the team (in terms of quality) to justify giving opportunities to. We received a few offers for first-team players, but didn't feel the need to accept any of them and they were all fine with that. Marius Disler was brought in to be a backup DL. He wasn't particularly cheap, but he's good enough that I don't have to be concerned about playing him, and should have a decent amount of improvement. Joep Van Der Valk, Marius Samake and Zahid Moran had all been on trial with us while they waited for their 18th birthday. Moran is the best of those three - released from Atlanta United as a 16-year old, but I think he could be a very competent full-back once he's played a couple of seasons. But, again, the biggest news was that Arsene didn't leave. Consider me very surprised, and very happy. Bayern came in with a couple of low-ball bids - the second was around £50m in total - which I rejected to no complaint from Arsene, and that was it. I warily kept an eye on the end of the transfer window in England/France/Germany, but it passed with no more bids. And, again, I think this is to do with his transfer value randomly changing - this time going up. Still, I took the opportunity to offer him a new contract, without speaking to his agent first. And I actually think this was the best idea. Because there were no demands in place. No non-negotiable clauses. I couldn't remember exactly what their wage/fee demands had been last time, so I just slapped down a pile of money, plus a Relegation Release Clause of £0 and they accepted. I mean, what's the point of having £200m+ in the bank if you can't use it to keep the players you really like? We do need to improve our Coaches, but that's fine. Fixtures We came out guns blazing against Nice and blew them away, and the scoreline against FC Kobenhavn is a poor reflection of how much we dominated that match. We ended up finishing 4th in the League Phase. This will probably be my last season with Dinamo. The ease of winning the league, combined with the difficulty I've had finding good players is a bit of a drag. I'm adding a bunch of leagues to become active at the end of the season and I'll see what my options are.

A Libero on Support will get forward a lot of the time if my experience of using the role is anything to go by. As in, get into the box from open play. I'm not sure what an Attacking role would do differently.

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League Winter Break Things are proceeding well. The league remains pretty easy - we've dominated possession in just about every game (usually 65-70%) and have the firepower to score goals even if we're not playing all that well. In the Champions League, we were deservedly spanked by Bayern, but the win over Man City was a pleasant surprise (albeit quite lucky). The wins over Roma and Watford were pretty emphatic, in performance as well as scoreline. In the cup, meanwhile, we're through to the Semi-Finals. The tie falls between league matches against two teams who've already been knocked out, so I can't easily predict who we'll play. Probably Hajduk. 4 points from the matches against Nice and FC Kobenhavn would put us in with a good chance of qualifying for the Last 16, but Nice are a pretty good team. Also, with the transfer window due to open again soon, it's pretty clear that Casian Arsene is going to leave. He's been professional enough not to say anything - letting his agent do all of that - but there's a lot of interest in him from teams much bigger than us. Somewhat counter-intuitively (and I'm gonna avoid going on yet another rant about the utterly stupid and broken player valuations in the game), Arsene's reputation went up to Worldwide and his transfer value dropped to £40m-£49m. I explored a new contract, but his agent insisted on a MFRC of at most £49m ( ) and with that level of interest from those clubs, if I can't get over £60m, I'm doing something very wrong. So no new contract. We did get Lamin Jammeh on a new deal, though, which is good news as he's both very good and versatile. Lastly, with the new patch, my scouts are now finding players again. So that's nice.

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League Transfers The most important transfer was one that didn't happen. Casian Arsene remains with our team. His reputation went up a bit before the transfer window opened, which took his in-game valuation to £62-77m, and I assume that was more than any of the interested teams were willing to pay. The outs first. Aymar Tchaoule had been signed for £250k from ASEC and spent last season on loan at Marseille; Antwerp won the bidding war for him, eventually (the little eejit turned down the first offer we accepted). Rafa Imaz isn't nearly good enough to be worth £6.75m + 50% ONS, but that's where that bidding war ended up. Stefano Russo played well for us last season, but would have been vexed if we'd turned down Man City - there's no profit on the main fee, but as usual there's the 50% ONS. Andrea Borrelli was another consistent performer but wasn't likely to improve. Zakaria Al Ayoud played fairly regularly for us last season, but not very well, and spent basically the entire season unhappy about his playing time - there are no clauses, but he wasn't great anyway. Sıddık Gültekin had been on my radar for a while without obviously being interested in joining us, but when another team came in for him, I thought I'd take my chances. That actually turned into quite the bidding contest - we basically outbid most of the other teams (including a couple of Premiership teams), both on transfer value and playing time. To say I was surprised when he agreed to join us is an understatement. There's a little debate about how much potential he has, but I think he's plenty good enough for his playing time anyway - if he ends up having full 5* potential, that would just be gravy. Yeiner Botero was why I was happy to let Stefano Russo leave. He's already better as a player in just about every way, and has a lot of growth potential. The only negative is the non-EU status, but I can live with that. Rami Hjalmarsson is someone I was really excited about. He didn't particularly want to join, which is why we've had to give Regular Starter and pretty generous wages, but I think he could become a fantastic player. Maicon, meanwhile, is our new DR. Again, someone we'd had an eye on for a while, but with good right-backs not exactly coming up every week in scouting reports, we went in for him. Has the bonus of Italian second nationality. A more defensive option than our first choice, but again, someone I think could improve a lot. Elsewhere, Roger Syvertsen is our new mentor, Nicolae Bratoveanu another striker we don't really need, Marcos Cabrera another another striker we don't really need, Walid Refaey and Chukwuebuka Godwin are talented MCs, as is Michal Stanislawski (who is at least spending the season on loan with his former club). I always love it when I get messages like this: Fixtures Without European qualifiers, we've largely been able to play the First XI in every game - although the Second XI were responsible for the dropped points against Sibenik. I said in the wrap-up for last season that I was looking to get the most out of Casian Arsene this season, and... I'd say it's worked so far. Tactically, we've switched things up again, with a couple of new formations. These are really for domestic matches, where the opposition teams typically park the bus and rely on Counters. We're retaining the 4-1-3-2 for European away days. Our fixtures for the Champions League aren't too this season. I think there's a point to be had against Monaco, Roma and Nice and wins against Club Brugge and FC Kobenhavn. Bayern, Watford and Man City seem like lost causes, though.

The finances in Belgium are apparently still completely borked, so this isn't a huge surprise. Holland is different, though, and I haven't heard a huge number of complaints about the finances there.

I stared at this for quite a long time before it made sense. There's a reason capital letters are a thing, I guess

Šeašon 14: Dinamo, Croatian First League February - May I forget at what point we clinched the league. Possibly after the win over Istra on 15th March - we had to wait a day or two for Osijek to drop points against Hajduk. Osijek actually spent most of the season in 2nd before Hajduk overtook them with a couple of matches left. No surprise that we weren't able to turn the Champions League tie around. We played pretty well and had much the better of the match, but despite an xG of 1.95 (to their 0.70), we couldn't put anything away. The combination of winning the league early and being out of Europe meant that we could actually ease up a bit towards the end of the season. A bunch of players got some useful game time. Maks Mitrecic was the main benefactor, albeit in part because of injuries to our centre-backs, but Lassina Gbane, Florijan Curic and Sreten Grbenic also got some games under their belt. We bossed both legs of the Cup Final, but obviously only managed to make that count in the second leg. Grbenic also made two senior appearances for Croatia, which made me squint a little at my computer monitor. Analysis I'm not one for staring endlessly at numbers to try to work out what's worked well and what hasn't, but despite bagging 26 goals in all competitions this season, I have felt that we're not really getting the best out of Casian Arsene. He's inarguably our best player, and doesn't really have a hole in his game when he plays as an Advanced Forward, so he should be flambéeing defenders more regularly than he does. So, having worked up the list of numbers below and stared at it for a while, I'm still not really sure. If we can fend off teams this summer (PSG are the one I'm worried about) we'll tweak our tactic again and see if that does anything. I do appreciate that he's not really bad at anything, according to those numbers. The numbers do suggest that I should be trying to find more game time for Vanja Macan, though. Away from the raw numbers, it was a good season. We sold Traore in March to Botafogo, for £3m or so. His performances hadn't been as good with us shifting away from hoofball. Our Wing-backs played well; Stefano Russo in particular, although having taught him the mystical art of 'kick it past the other guy then run after it', he seemed to stop doing that as much. Midfield seems stable - our two Croats are both wanted by other teams, but no-one great, and they've both been happy with me rejecting deals for them so far. I'm not opposed to selling Mauricio or Mokoena (who spends half the time injured) if it means I can give Grdenic more game time. We've also got a couple of new strikers arriving - another Romanian my scouts love (and I'm a bit more 'meh' on) and an 18-year old Swede from Brommapojkarna, who I think could be terrific - alongside the usual youngsters and a Colombian DL I think could be electric. In terms of the talent at the squad, it looks good. As usual, I would probably disagree on a few of these players (Abdalla, Hopland, Imaz, Rui, Ballo, Wilson, Vega and Almeida in particular) but it's good to have the depth. We are struggling to recruit genuine Champions League quality to the club - Croatia being flagged as 'Developing' doesn't help there - so being able to bring in cheap youngsters and grow them into quality is very much the way forward. That said, we'll probably lose a bunch of this lot over the summer, so who knows. I mentioned Maks Mitrecic earlier and he's developing really nicely. He's weirdly prone to under-hitting passes and is still a "decent all-rounder" rather than being on a par with the rest of our centre-backs, but his performances have been respectable and I'm confident he'll turn out to be very good. We're training him in the Libero role, in the hope his attribute development is spread out rather than being hyper-focussed on the usual DC stuff.

There are already plenty of women physios working in men's football, and plenty of men physios working in women's football. If you're a footballer and you just got punted in the balls, I'm not sure you care who's got the magic spray as long as someone's got THAT ****ING MAGIC SPRAY RIGHT NOW

Šeašon 14: Dinamo, Croatian First League Youth Intake Not sure I'm a huge fan of the 'best' two players being wingers when I've just moved away from using wingers, but eh. I'm happy with this, for sure. It's hard to be annoyed at getting two wingers when these are the wingers you've been given. Nice personalities, too. Honestly, I'm not sure I could say which I prefer. Skugor has some gaps in his game, that's for sure, but I think there's a good centre-back to be developed. Bagaric, I think, is slightly better than the 4* rating he was given would suggest, given he's being compared to Casian Arsene. Physicals need some work, but that's a really solid technical base to develop from. I'm hoping that our new HOYD should start having an impact on our intakes from next season. Not, I should emphasise, that there's much to complain about here.

Šeašon 14: Dinamo, Croatian First League Transfer Window Luis Andres Ariza was a young MC we picked up from Envigado who was happy for about 5 minutes after we signed him and then revealed himself as a loathsome diva without the talent to be bearable. Lazio can deal with that ***** now. Leonardo Melgarejo's value actually went up to £33m-£37m at one point, but dropped back down as the window started. Still, we're very likely to get the £27m and there's always the 50% of Next Sale as well. We've got a couple of other centre backs who can play as a Libero these days. With our departure from Europe looking likely, I didn't feel the need to strengthen the squad much. That said, we were in desperate need of a new goalkeeper, with Tocci having been mediocre. Jaja was the best goalkeeper we could find who was interested in joining us and still has the option of making us a profit down the line. He's good, though. The only other notable signing was Diaz, on deadline day. He's someone we'd been tracking for a while, and with less than a year left on his deal and a firm (A) rating from the scouts, that seemed a no-brainer. A slight miscalculation on my part meant that Tocci left on loan before Jaja joined, and before we'd played Genk and Neverkusen. So 19-year old Moussa Soyinkou played the last two league phase matches for us (and did pretty well, to be fair). Maybe it was for the best, considering how bad Jaja was against Osijek, although it was a pretty bad performance all-round. Much swearing from me, and some emphatic double-fist-pumps when micro-Mauricio with the 3 Jumping Reach and 7 Heading looped a back-post header over the keeper and into the far corner with almost the last kick of the game. Back-post headers are stupid overpowered in this game, so it's nice to get the benefit for once. We just about crept through to the Play Off Round, which was good. Losing 1-2 to that bunch of bums is annoying, and I don't know if it's made better or worse by the scorer of their 2 goals being Phil Behnke, who played for me in the 3rd, 2nd and then top tier of Portugal. He's had a decent career. It's still not as funny as a couple of the teams that didn't make the Play Off Round. Let's all just point and laugh at Barcelona, shall we?

Yes, the AI does scout players. Is it the same? I don't know. I doubt they have the "Hey, go scout this guy" functionality that the player has, because they don't need it.

If nothing else, Negotiate gives you more time to make a decision. Could be useful if you need a player for an important game. Or, could be useful if the transfer window is coming to a close. Drag out the negotiations with them and they may feel they have to agree to your increased demands because they don't have time to negotiate a deal for another player. It feels like 'Suggest Terms' has a higher likelihood of being rejected if your suggestion is too far from what was initially bid. If a bidding club offers me, say, £1m in cash, plus 30% of profit from next sale, and I 'Suggest Terms' on £1m plus 50% of next sale (basically my standard clause these days), it feels more like they'll reject that than if I click the 'Negotiate' button, where they might come back with the 50% of next sale but, say, £850k.

It's probably the opposite, to be honest, given how long SI have been developing the database. I assume the first female people in the database were board members (Karren Brady and the like), so SI had to put in the 'male' and 'non-male' identifier (pretty easy; just batch-assign everyone 'male' and manually change the ones who aren't). Then as new people are added to the database, the researcher chooses the relevant flag. You do need the flag, because the game has to generate portraits for anyone who doesn't have a photo, and female staff members get assigned the 'female' options. I'd be interested to know if SI are exploring how to implement non-binary identification into the game, as that seems like something that'll be more of a mainstream thing in gaming over the next few years. And is also the right thing to do in general.

I agree that AI transfers are - at best, really annoying; at worst, random-number-generation garbage - but in your situation, you've got a player who's told you he's going to run down his contract. Why would the AI not offer you significantly less than he's worth? Your choice is either to lose him for nothing at the end of his deal, or get a bit of money now for him. That's just good business sense. The thing is, a lot of the time you can just not sell the player. If his contract runs another couple of seasons, he'll be angry but a lot of the time they will eventually calm down.

I hadn't actually realised that there were female staff for other job roles. Just eyeballing the lists, though, there's hardly a lot of women in the game as scouts, coaches or analysts (and I play with fake players). If it's more than 0.5%, I'd be surprised.

Šeašon 14: Dinamo, Croatian First League The league progresses well. The biggest challenge at the moment is making sure the players in the squad with the highest playing time expectations actually get enough game time to stay happy. A bit of a problem given that they usually have 3 training sessions per day, minimising the time they have to recover from matches. Sometimes I remember to give them a few days off training. Sometimes. Josip Alghoul is having a good season so far. He's getting a decent amount of time from the subs bench to supplement the weekend matches he starts. He's still behind Arsene and Traore in the pecking order, but he's developing really nicely. Koscak and Valkovic are the other academy graduates playing well - I don't really consider Regetas and Karacic in the same way, since they've both left and come back. We're in with a chance of making the Champions League Playoffs and a result against Genk should be enough. Knowing our luck, we'll probably get a really hard team, though. Random Player Showcase I spotted Gbane after he left Ivoire Academie and was unattached. My scouts didn't think much of him; neither did my coaches when I trialled him. I saw enough to pique my interest, however, and although we had to wait a year for him to turn 18 and be able to sign a contract, he stayed with us on trial and his development has gone really well. He's not really a classical DC, so I've started training him as a Libero. He scored a hattrick as our U19s beat Genk 7-0 in the UEFA Youth League - two back-post headers and a neat finish from the edge of the box. Speaking of centre-backs, another player I picked up in the summer is 16-year old Victor Cidoncha. Again, my scouts weren't impressed when they looked at him, but he only cost £10k (my usual sorry-not-sorry fee for signing players I could get for free) and his defensive attributes were - if not in full bloom - at least slightly germinating. Six months with our squad and facilities and his improvement has been remarkable. He's still not much of a defender, but that's the kind of development I expect to see over a couple of years for players his age. Amusingly, he demanded Emergency Backup playing time, so he's been in the first-team squad (but has played most U19 games), so maybe he's benefited from the punishing training regime I inflict on first team players. My coaches have changed their rating of his PA from 1+1 to 3.5+1, which I find funny. Around the world I'm mostly including this just to point out that not only is Lusitania the 10th biggest club in the world, but that 4 of the top players in the world were at the club with me when I left. Madureira, in particular, is now pretty disgusting. Belgium - Oudenaarde have risen like a phoenix from non-league to the Jupiler Pro League this season, but are playing like ******* and doomed to relegation. Capellen also made it all the way up before coming down the Pro League last season, where they're in a relegation fight. England - no real surprises in the Premier League. Woking are in their 3rd season in the Championship, but look like they'll go down this year. Eastleigh are in League One and having a good season. France - Dunkerque have made it to Ligue 2, but look like they're going down this season. Quevilly-Rouen are in the National-2, as are AC Ajaccio, Niort. Ligue 1 has been the usual PSG procession. Germany - Heidenheim have gone from the Bundesliga down to the 3rd tier and then back up to the Bundesliga. Everything else here is boring. Italy - other than my former club Reggiana (still in Serie A), no club from Serie C has gotten further than Serie B, and vice versa. Yawn. Norway - Rosenborg haven't won the league title since 2023. Vard have gone down to the fourth tier but rebounded to now be in the First Division. Tromsdalen made it up to the Premier Division and after back-to-back relegations are going down to the Second Division. Portugal - my replacement at Lusitania has won every league title since I left. Oriental have made it up to the top tier twice, but are currently in the second division. Vit. Setubal have also made it all the way up, but only once. Spain - literally nothing of interest. I guess Sevilla might go down this season? World Cup. Switzerland won in 2030, beating Senegal, Kuwait, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Mexico, Ecuador en route to a 2-0 win in the final over Germany. Otherwise, it's been England and Spain. The Euros, African Cup of Nations and Asian Cup have been boring. Shout out to New Caledonia for lifting the 2033 Oceania Nations Cup.

It can be hard to improve a team if your club is 'smaller' than the others in your league. Go and look at some other squads to see if any players are unhappy. A player who is unhappy because of lack of playing time is more likely to join your club than they were before they got upset. The other important thing to remember if you're a small fish in a big pond, is to use loans. Go and check out anyone in the big teams who's available for loan and see if they're interested. If you can't afford them, shortlist them anyway, because you can sometimes get them for literally nothing at the end of the transfer window. The last tip - because you're managing in Denmark - is to go and look abroad. The game is telling me that all African nations are treated as EU (meaning you can pay them poverty wages), so go and check out the U20 squads of some of the bigger African nations* for players still at domestic clubs, scout them and see if any of them are interested in a move. * - with your transfer budget, you probably can't afford players from Egypt, DR Congo or Tunisia.

Maybe once SI implement female staff for other roles, I could see it working. I can't really see the point while it's just Physiotherapists.

Šeašon 14: Dinamo, Croatian First League I expected a bit of a fire sale, but although it looks like carnage, I'm not sure I'd describe it as a "fire sale" as such. A 'toast sale'? Doumbia, Vega, Melendez, Willian, Pereira, Valkovic, Martykan, Lecocq, Munic, Onur Demir, Karanka, Jose Ricardo and Chitiyo... they all have 50% of Next Sale clauses attached to their sales. I reckon there's an easy £150m in that. The fans were predictably horrified by the sales of Melendez and Vega in particular, because of course they were - they're morons. Doumbia was actually a bit of a surprise - we'd rejected a couple of low-ball bids during the window, but Bayern obviously had a gap in their squad as the window closed and we massaged a good deal from their bank balance. It's worth noting that Garcia, Pereira, Lecocq, Onur Demir and Karanka were all U-19 players signed purely so we could flip them once they'd developed a bit. The highest fee we paid for any of them was £50k for Karanka. The club now has £148m in the bank. Thanks, guys! Most of the players we brought in (there are a couple who joined before July) were youngsters. Y'know... develop and flip. You could argue it's borderline-game-breakingly easy money, but eh, it's kind of funny at least. Stefano Russo had barely played for Reggiana in the last couple of seasons. My scouts still rated him very highly, and with Melendez going, it left space for an ahem 'attacking full back' in the squad. £5m is genuinely cheap, as long as he plays well and/or develops. Mauricio was out of contract in January, so after we agreed terms with him, we paid the £1.2m to bring him in early. Far from the best midfielder on our shortlist, but with the scouts still struggling to find players who'll improve the team, he did at least have the benefit of a Portuguese second nationality. Doumbia's late exit from the squad left a hole in the squad for someone who can play AMR/ST and Vega was that player. Honestly, £5m is an absolute steal even if he doesn't improve a jot (my scouts/coaches agree that he should improve a lot). Garat was brought in largely to be a Half-Back. We're working on his Strength/Jumping Reach, and if we can get those up 3-4 points, I'll be delighted. If not, he's a freaking Model Citizen who's a very reasonable Half-Back and can fill in at DL if we need someone who's a competent defender. Elsewhere, Craig Evans was signed from Lusitania to be a versatile player further up the field, and Philani Mokoena should be a consistent AMC. Giandomenico Tocci is our new GK, with Martykan leaving. My scouting team reckons he's got 4+1* potential and although I've always struggled to judge GKs, that seems possible. Nerman Hendija - from Season 12's youth intake - has played a couple of matches and seems like a pretty handy backup An imperious start to the season, in terms of results, at least. We have got a bit lucky with xG - we've been quite clinical and our opponents quite profligate. We've still at least had the best of every match, but the scorelines are somewhat flattering. The goals have been spread around, which I always enjoy seeing. We've got a tough draw in the Champions League, so it's likely we'll be making full use of the squad as the season progresses. Getting Genk and not-Sociedad as Pot 4 teams is harsh, as is getting Nice and Neverkusen as Pot 3 teams. I guess Rennes and Ajax as Pot 2 could be worse, but still. Sheesh. Huge praise to Glenavon for making the league phase, though. They're going to get annihilated, but £12.5m is massive for a club like them. They beat TNS, Sarajevo, Elfsborg and Sheriff Tiraspol to qualify (I leave the commentary to you readers, there). With the new season, we have a new tactic. Fun though it was going full Hoofball last season, it didn't really play to our strengths as a team and there just aren't enough players available who we can sign, who can play well when the opposition is set up to counter our general approach. Therefore, we actually have a couple of new tactics. This is our new default. With Melgarejo staying at the club, we've got a very capable Libero, which means we need to use a Half-Back to stay secure defensively. Additionally, we have the personnel to have an excellent Inside Forward on the right (Arsene, or new Vega) as well as an excellent Striker (Arsene, Alghoul, Traore, new Vega). We've already had one goal from Melgarejo getting into the box during open play - hot damn, I love Liberos these days - and although it gets congested in the middle, we have enough players to cause a bunch of problems. Our secondary tactic is a 4-2-2-2(DM), for when we want to build a bit more. Ironically, this one is a bit more vulnerable to being countered, so the personnel to make this work needs more effort.

To add to that, what a clause is worth depends heavily on the situation you're in. If a player is likely to get better at your team, and there's a good chance of selling him for actual money, a % of Next Sale clause you agreed to sign him is a problem because you won't get all of that money. But, if including that clause lets you bring the overall cash value of the transfer down to a point where you can sign the player, and he will be an important part of your team, then the clause might be incredibly good for you.