WhiteCat33

Barbados YAC: Road View FC Start Post | Season 1 | League Performance: Amazing the difference one intake makes at the low levels. We were not troubled at all this season and were well ahead 2/3 of the way through the season so I just simulated the rest till the deciding game so I could get the trophy ceremony. Cup Performance: We beat our first top-flight Professional team in the 2nd round, but then couldn't beat L&R United who are in our tier. Matches: Squad: Still a lot of rotation, but less '2-line' strategy as we had some crucial star players who needed to be in most every game. Transfers: Best XI: Assistant is an idiot playing R.Browne as the winger and my trash 3rd striker up top. Head Coach: Starting my next coaching badge Club Improvements: Took arguing with the board, but since they love me right now I got both Youth Recruitment and Junior Coaching upgraded again. Also, being promoted to the next division bumps the club to Semi-Professional as well as gets us our first Uniform sponsorship! Youth Academy: HOYD: Youth Intake Preview: Youth Intake: Liam Weekes is absolutely killing it. 2 for 2 fire intakes! Only 1 top talent and 15 Elites. Top 3 Players: Omani Steele: Dude will be a perfect Segundo Volante for us. Can even become a free kick specialist (might directly train that). Amal Stanford: Since he's only 5'8" he will be my new DM-D Luther Lloyd: Another aggressive winger with speed. I like to press hard so my HOYD matches my focus to beat up the opposition Tyrell Trotman: bonus 4th who actually will be a good CB for this level and I have lots of mentors to fix the determination. Excel Tables: I may have trouble holding onto Omani Steele. With his Week foot he's actually over 56 CA, which is way higher than should be possible in such a backwater league. Great news for the Barbadian national team he doesn't have 2nd nationality English so I expect to see him very quickly make his mark! Statistics Manager: The big difference this season is our Model Citizen Striker. He has "good" attributes (10-12) in the skills you need in a lower-league striker: Speed, Height/Jump, & Finishing. Pair that with fast wingers that can feed him our front 3 broke behind and scored lots of goals. Even on an Amateur contract he is getting some development, but its still pretty poor as I had to retrain him. Maybe next year Semi-Professionalism will help? As he is our only Natural Striker (he's versatile, yay!) who played over 1000 Min it's easy to compare him. The surprise is the 1.09 Open Play Key Passes / 90, which leads to a pretty decent assisting for an Advanced Forward who is bagging 20+ goals. First half of the season I had "Shoots Often" checked in the player role, but dropped it for the back-half and I think that improved his conversion somewhat, but its still extremely low. Player breakdown and Percentiles shows he is the best in the league where it counts: Shots and Goals Awards: In a shock to no one Romario Browne wins player of the season and we get coach of the year. Handful of our players in the Season Best XI as well. Supporters: Summary

Barbados YAC: Road View FC Season 1 [2023] Start Post | Formation I went with a relatively simple 3-4-3 here due to the club being loaded with CBs. It did mean playing people out of position at WBs, but it's not like they would have been much better as FB anyways. This got tweaked during the season to be more offensive with Balanced/Positive mentality and a simple Poacher up top. Squad The key to Barbados lower leagues is to have 2 full squads to rotate players as the matches are on average every 3 days, hence such a large team. As you can see from the CA calculations, they are all terrible but at least I started with a lot of able bodies to throw onto the pitch. Best XI League The issue for us this year was our strikers. We had a good looking one in pre-season, but he got the dreaded negative development random event going from balanced to casual and failing to score a single goal competitively forcing me to test out some pretty poor alternatives. No one managed to score more than 8 goals, so its only with our strong defensive performances that we fought for the final playoff spot. Going into the final day of the season we just needed to win, and our GD would push us ahead of "Kick Start". Of course, in the 85' we concede a penalty, which our opponents convert resulting in a 1-1 draw. Matches: Cup We drew the best team in Barbados (which is Professional) in the 2nd round, so were bounced Head Coach Started and Finished my first Coaching Badge. Club Improvement: I got both JR Coaching & Youth Recruitment Upgrades as well as the original Chairman stepped aside for another director to take over. No financial boon though. HOYD: Youth Intake Preview: Youth Intake: Great Intake for this level No F’in way a Model Citizen in year 1?! First one I've gotten in FM23, and of course its too early in the save to really take advantage of it as well as plays the position of the best player in the squad. Top 3 Players: Jason Browne: another AML. He's just okay IMO. Ricardo Manning: both our 17 year old GKs did well this seasin, but are both unambitious so don't have a long future. Reflexive and tall with some jump and agility is at least something. Romario Browne: Mr Model Citizen. With the striker struggles he will be retrained as an AF as he can kind of shoot and has good movement. Youth Intake Tables: I like to track CA, Nationality & Personality in my intakes and use excel spreadsheets to do it. Being a Caribbean Island intakes will be 95%+ domestic players, but since its an ex-English territory a few players will get English nationality. I expect some American secondaries as well in time. I've hired exclusively Fairly Professional & Fairly Ambitious staff for the club, so hopefully that keeps our Positive personality % up. Statistics Manager We only had 1 standout performer and that was my AMR Jason Chandler. He was easily the best winger in the league, granted he played only half the games (as I rotated heavily). Thankfully he was a good goal-scorer because our strikers sure weren't. While his chance creation was low, basically everything else is as good or better than the league average & Top-3 clubs AMRs (though there weren't many in the dataset) His Percentile scores showed how he really did perform fantastically for the league. Best part about Chandler is that he has Perfectionist personality and is 23 so soon will be a great mentor for fairly professional youngsters: Summary Tables:

Barbados YAC: Road View Start Post It's been a minute, but I'm back with another YAC attempt. I've been playing a no-attribute save only allowing myself Caribbean signings, and ended up with 2 Barbadian regens + Jamie Bynoe-Gittens in my offensive rotation, so thought why not develop my own Barbadian stars! Aim is to best my St Vincent Run last year reaching the NACL Quarter Finals in 2044 and then losing the Semi-Finals in extra time the following season, before I abandoned the save due to lack of young talent / departing stars. Who knows maybe I'll actually complete the challenge for once? This time I've chosen a larger nation (250k Pop vs 110k Pop) with a much stronger domestic league which even starts with 2 Professional clubs in the top division (a rarity in the Caribbean). Hopefully this will lead to a higher domestic threshold than I had in St Vincent to prepare the team better for facing Liga MX and MLS teams in the NACL. I've played one season, and I think this one will stick, especially with the first intake! Because most North American leagues are on calendar year schedules you can start the game at 1/1/2022. The Barbadian season runs from February - July with Youth intake happening in Mid-August. In V50’s database, Barbados has 3 tiers with the bottom league not having relegation so the last placed team will be my club, shame Road View doesn’t have a badge or basically any digital presence. They share a field with a bunch of other Barbadian teams in a sport complex. Head Coach is my go-to American. Road View starts as an Amateur club projected to finish last again. Odds aren't with us, but down at this level good man-management and reasonable tactics can overcome a lot.

October: International Window, Bundesliga & DFB Pokal Next International Window: October I decided to put everything in spoilers this time as there are a lot of screenshots. Here are all 17 of our international callups: And these are the Match Reports: October Matches Bundesliga: Dynamo Dresden – Home 9’ in we see another player two foot Kamada and get a strait red card, we better make them pay! It’s a scrappy first goal after a long free kick, but it still went over the line. Hauge finally converts one of his many chances in the 34’ to get us 2, and salvage his rating from the 6.4 he was on. Promel makes it 3 with a header on a long free kick by Nicholson. With the lead I pull my international players at half-time to give them rest after playing matches during the window and we coast to victory. After this game both my FBs get injuries, which is annoying and then we lose Kamada as well! What the hell is going on in training this week? Bundesliga: Hannover 96 – Away With the injuries and some tired players I decided to do some rotation for this match for those players who have had a lot of games recently. They score a wicked goal from range in the 14’. We answer in the 23’ with Macon coming forward out of defense to score a long shot. Vargas makes it 2 with another shot from range in the 31. Taking off ‘work the ball into box’ has done wonders this game. We now play Schalke twice in 5 days first in the Cup and then in the league. DFB-Pokal: Schalke Away I’m rotating the squad a lot for this, but have the bench full of good players to come in during the second half. They get a breakaway over the top in the 37’ and find a first goal. Then a deflection gets them a 2 goal lead before the break. Pushing in the second half sees them get us on the counter. I bring Nicholson on in the 60’ and in the 66’ he already gets us a goal back. Sadly that’s all we can do, and they get a stoppage time penalty to seal it. Board is pissed as they wanted us to advance in the cup, I don’t really care as we don’t have the depth for it yet. Bundesliga: Schalke – Home All the best players starting right now that are fit. 3’ in is all it takes for Nicholson to intercept a poor buildup pass and blast the ball in the back of the goal. Hauge makes it two in the 33’ heading in a cross from a short corner play. Lindstrom gets a knock right before halftime so he’s replaced. 63’ Promel gets a second yellow and is our first ejection of the season. It doesn’t stop us though, a long ball forward by Willock to Bynoe-Gittens then gets slotted to Hauge who I have playing DLF-A and he makes it 3. Another longball to Bynoe-Gittens sees him take it himself and score to make it 4. November 1st Standings & Match Review Standings: Much better now with us in 5th in contention for the final Europa League spot. October Matches: Upcoming November & December Matches: RB Leipzig is the only top-6 team we will be facing in the next 2 months, rest are mid-table clubs. Little Loan Update: Devon Edwards is doing really well at Hansa Rostock, even if the club isn’t. 4 goals in 7 games is fantastic and is hopefully improving him with good ratings and lots of minutes. My current plan is to bring him back in the Winter and he will be my #2 Striker behind Nicholson allowing me to sell off/loan out my free agent backups.

September: International Matches, Bundesliga & More Youngsters Right after deadline day we go into the international window. Lots of our players were called up for their teams for matches that are a mix of friendlies and Nations League. Lindstrom got injured on international duty the week before we face Bayern Munich. I think I’ll drop Kamada back and give Byno-Gittens the start Friendly during International window: With all our new signings I wanted a game against a lower-opposition to give our bench players some fitness. We got a good first performance from Bynoe-Gittens even if its against a scrub club. Brought on Sargeant for the second half and he did well too as we build fitness for our backups. Unfortunately, we got a couple injuries here trying to build fitness and morale for the bench. Glad Baptiste is just a loan. And another training injury has thinned out our bench substantially Bundesliga Matches Bundesliga: Bayern Munic – Away My Jamaican striker is tired from a bunch of games so I am starting him on the bench, as I have little hope in this fixture. While of course we don’t have much possession, we actually start the match relatively okay until in the 34’ when Muisiala scores a crazy shot from 25 yards out at least into the top corner. Then a missed header in the 40’ lets Tel get an easy goal. It gets worse and is a night to forget for us as they pay us back for the upset last season in spades. Vargas gets a consolation goal at the end by chipping Nubel, and because of the assist Wilock actually gets a decent rating coming off the bench. Bundesliga Match: Away Borussia Munchen Gladbach Lindstrom is still injured so Willock gets the start. He gets a first chance very early and makes it count in the 12’ with Kamada and Nicholson combining to set him up. Then in the 32’ it is St. Juste dribbling forward who slots Nicholson making the run through who finishes it perfectly. Ngonge who has looked good all game pulls one back for BMG. Then out of nowhere after halftime there is a laser shot from range and its level 2-2. Then they score a 3rd to take the lead with an injured Willock leaving a gap. I make a sub to bring on Bynoe-Gittens and from the kickoff he dribbles and slots Hauge who gets us level again. We hold it there to end the thriller. Bundesliga Match: Mainz 05 at home [Derby] Lindstrom is back from injury and it only takes him 4’ to let Mainz know it! A true team goal where every midfielder & my striker were involved in the buildup. Nicholson is just offsides in the 13’ so we don’t make it 2. 31’ Kerim Aydogan two-foots Kamada from behind and gets a straight red! Quiet rest of the half. I sub off Kamada for Byno-Gittens as he’s hurting and playing poorly. Second half we have a few chances, but we are just off multiple times and they pack the box switching to a defensive formation. It takes until the 96’ in the final seconds of stoppage time for Nicholson to find our young Barbadian Sargeant making a run on the wing and his back-post header goes in! First goal for the youngster, in a big game. Bundesliga Match October 4th Before International Break: Wolfsburg Away Kamada isn’t training well so Byno-Gittens gets the start, otherwise it’s the normal 11. We do okay in the first half with some half chances while limiting them to just long distance shots that stay off frame. We get lucky when they miss a really good chance and go into the break 0-0. Then some end-to-end play sees them get a goal. Sargeant gets a chance up top to bring us level by Vargas and sadly he can’t pull the trigger and we end up losing to a well performing Wolfsburg. Bundesliga Table: It looks pretty poor from us, but with the last game we have already played the top 5 placed teams with only 7 games played, which is a brutal start to the season. We now will have a run of 12 games playing all of the weaker clubs before returning to the hard-hitters after the winter break. Hunting for Caribbean U-20 Talent This save will be a lot of hoovering up of low probability youngsters that may or may not develop. Having scoured Europe and North America I’ve been able to discover 7400 U-21 Caribbeans. That means the game is generating about 1250 Caribbean nationality players a year. I have scouted all the National teams both Main and Youth as well as hunted through English and USA clubs for the youngsters who are Caribbean. While there probably are a few players I've missed, this has to be over 90% of them and includes the high potential ones. I could check with an added head coach, maybe at the end of the season. Anyways, after scouting all those players only 5 have 5* Potential and most are already well onto developing into quality but very expensive players. My interest is for the next-wrung down players who are 3.5-4.5 PA and thus much cheaper. We aren’t at the financial stage to take a big swing on a single youth player with our whole transfer budget, like Gio Schwangie or S Stewart. However the last player Jamie Morgan is of interest to us if I can get him for a similar price to my other two strikers. Would give us one for each of the 3 roles. Looking at the next players down the list you can see we already own 4 of these players (D Edwards is our player on loan at Hansa Rostock) and I'll be looking to buy whatever bargins there are here especially those players with good personalities/attribue mixes. The next player I'll be adding is T. Afougou from Bordeaux. He gives me a natural LB, which is a position we don't have a high potential youth player in yet, and he comes already with speed and the all important left footedness! Could become a nice attacking Fullback. Additionally, there is a Trinidad & Tobago DM who has a Driven personality, who is essentially free that I’ll take a chance on. He will probably go on loan to an affiliate (hopefully). He has a lot of development to do, but with a good personality and already having experience playing in the T&T top flight he might have a chance as that’s the best league in the Caribbean. A few days later my scouts found an interesting Cuban in Cuba who developed in a MLS Academy, who I remember seeing when I was at St Louis but forgot about when I moved. Again, for free he’s worth adding into the growing hoard of Caribbeans getting trained in Frankfurt. I kind of like letting these clubs get a 30% sell on for these players as this is a way to funnel money into the Caribbean leagues without gaming the system.

Deadline Day! I'm usually not that active on deadline day, but this one is an exception. Kolo Muani Cash-Out? Even with him scoring a goal off the bench last match, the fact I see the best performing formation has him on the bench, that's a lot of player-value not being adequately utilized. Kolo Muani's value is between 30-35M and he has a 33M release clause, which then begs the question: is he performing as a 30M striker for us? 2025-2026 Striker Performance: You have to recall that half of this performance is from before I arrived. He also didn't play enough in 2024-2025 for him to exist in my 1000m+ statistics, which is really poor for your top-rated striker. This year he just played 1338 minutes just shy of 15 full matches equal to less than 50% of the available minutes in the season. I think he got more of those minutes under me and was starting to hit some form near the end of the season, but then had a 1-month injury. Rest of these statistics up here are very poor, but then again he's not a chance-creator, rather a finisher so this isn't surprising. With that said when he did play, he did have very good Gls/90 off a reasonable NP-xG and good conversion rate. So, he has performed adequately well when on the field. However, at 27 he is in his prime and if I have him as my sub-striker/winger he will get the game-time from my two new 18-year olds who I want to get valuable rotation minutes to develop them. If he was just worth 10M I wouldn't be bothered to replace him, but at 30M that's too high of a value to not be considered our first-choice. Moneyball play dictates I should cash in on his high market value and use the funds to build players to replicate his performance. Part 1: Adding Mid-Field Depth Ever since season 1 in St Louis a player I’ve been watching is Joe Willock of Newcastle. He has speed and a broad array of skills with adaptability for lots of midfield roles. When he was younger he was a 15M+ signing, but he’s become more and more out of favor there and is being sold at a bargain 3M now. His contract is pricy at 79k p/w but we have plenty of wage room right now. He gives us a direct 2nd string for either Lindstrom or Sow as well as can be a depth option for either Attacking Midfielder role if we have an injury crisis. He hasn't played enough recently for Newcastle to be in this year's data, and we will see how he does coming off the bench for us while we work to build up young Midfield talent. Part 2: Receiving a lucrative bid for Kolo Muani Roma are willing to pay me 30M straight up for Randal Kolo Muani. From a Moneyball perspective, this offer is too good to refuse I outlined why above. He also has a 33M Fee-Release clause, so getting 30 with a sell-on is basically maxing-out my profit. With 6 hours to go in the transfer deadline the deal is closed. I get 28.5M into the transfer budget, which was already flush to begin with due to us selling to equal all our big purchases. Part 3: Jamie Bynoe-Gittens! For some reason Dortmund are totally fine letting go of Jamie Bynoe-Gittens for just 17.5M, which I see as pretty much getting a younger version of Kolo Muani that is less of a striker and more of a fast winger. Even this far into the save he's still just 22 years old, so has a ton of career left in him. He has Barbados 2nd nationality for those that didn’t know: 2025-2026 Statistics I don’t have a natural AML in the squad right now, but he played pretty well especially with amazing amount of dribbles he did. He then combines that with top in the league shot conversion and very high open play key-passes, which is like a perfect 3 combo for an AML. He over-scored his goals by 2x (.34 on .16 xG). He has a surprising high conversion rate, which helps compensate for his low shooting numbers. His one big negative is his crossing is pretty poor, but he’d be the IW so I wouldn’t expect that of him. Will make it so I don’t depend 100% on Kamada in the AML slot. I need release clauses to get reasonable salaries because we are a smaller club, but at 40M we will make a tidy profit on him if a bigger club comes in before we can re-negotiate the contract. 5 hours to go in deadline day and he’s agreed and joins the squad: Part 4: Attempt at a big money Deep Playmaker Purchase! Even though they finished 4th Feyenoord have a very interesting DM in Quinten Timber, and I’ll have to pay to get him. I unfortunately don’t have him fully scouted, so all these bright highlights I’m sure will go down somewhat when I get him. He’s only 25, so will be the young replacement I need for the 32 year old Promel who is my current HB as well for Sow if he is underperforming. They want a DM on loan when I take him and really Marcel Wenig is the perfect one to go as he is the depth for the position Timber will play. Its within the “value” range that the market thinks and I do have the funds to get him with the Muani sale + the transfer balance. 2025-2026 Statistics He was an absolutely fantastic DM for them in the league both defensively and offensively. The question is, do I want to spend 35M for him. I think the answer is yes especially if I look at this as a swap for Kolo Muani, whose transfer is for a similar value. The other two I had the money in the transfer budget for already and this strengthens our defensive and playmaking side of the ball. He will be pushing the top earner with that 100k p/w I have a fight on my hands for his signature as RB Leipzig have thrown their hat in the ring as well. Unfortunately, that player exchange thing might have been a mistake as they couldn’t sign a replacement (though I thought my loan player would fill it?!) and the transfer is a bust. Live and learn I guess. Now we have 35M in the transfer budget for winter to play with. Additional Deadline Day Deals I need more CD Depth and something very interesting came up: Tyrone Mings [33] is available on a very cheap loan of just 19.5k p/w wage. He’s old, but if I just need depth for one season that price can’t be beat as they just want him to be a squad player. This way I don’t take on the risk of his contract in the long term with just an optional purchase which I just won’t do. Performance-wise just on a quick look he’s done fine for Aston villa and has played a good amount the past few seasons. Romario Smith (Bristol City): my scouts found a possibly high potential defender For just 900k I picked him up. With all these new attackers I decide to send one of my new strikers out on loan for free to Hansa Rostok in Bundesliga 2. He had a loan stint in League 2 last year that wasn't too spectacular, so hope he can do better in Germany. Transfer Window Summary With the break-down on our Playmaker purchase we ended netting-out more than we paid in fees due to the lucrative sales of stars Pfeiffer and Kolo Muani. We still have tons of money in the bank account as I look for that next star signing to make. January should be just as exciting of a window. We moved the most players in and out, but didn’t spend as much as Bayern who apparently really wanted Konrad Laimer and decided that Sane wasn't worth it to keep. Here are all our transfers we made after July 1st: lots of loans out for our players to get playtime. Current Lineups: Notice I've changed my mind on the FBs to go with the deeper-starting and simpler FB-A First Team: In addition to the FB role change, I've moved St. Juste to the wide spot especially since we now have Tyrone Mings as our backup CD. He doesn't have crossing skill, but has good ball-carying ability and speed but most importantly good defensive skills, which the loss to Bayer Leverkusin shows we need desperately at FB. With the sale of Kolo Muani I am all in on my bargain Jamaican Nicholson, so we will see if he can do it for us. Again, I have the transfer budget if a Winter move has to be made. Second Team: Here you see the vast majority of my transfer efforts. Literally only Kristijan Jakic is an original player when I took over the squad, so we have an almost 100% Caribbean lineup already!

August Matches DFB-Pokal Away 1st up is the DFB-Pokal match against a lower league side. I’m using a fully rotated side to be ready for the next match against BVB. Embarrassing defense saw them score on us with their first shot on target , while we absolutely struggled up top. Nicholson had a rare really poor first half missing all his chances, so I decided to give my other English pickup a halftime sub. Finally in the 56’ we got the equalizer assisted by Sargeant, and in the 63’ we get ahead. 3rd goal was a breakaway by Edwards so both my new strikers already doing great things (against easy opposition). 70’ they get a player sent off, so it is basically over. 4th goal was a nice combination between the two of them Sargent assisting Edwards. Look at them having the top 2 ratings on the side. Fantastic debuts! Match 2: BVB Dortmund at Home We had the dullest first half ever with literally just 1 highlight for us and the rest it just ticked over. Surprised we have held BVB to literally no attacking opportunities, granted we’ve just had 2 ourselves. 2nd half: Still very few highlights and both of us change out all our attackers to try and get something going. Nothing came of it for either side, which I guess says a lot about our defenses? A 0-0 draw is a good way to start against Dortmund. Youth Facility Upgrade And a training injury means we will get a first test of my Cuban Keeper League Match: Bayer Leverkusen Away Kamada and Trapp are out injured for this match against the 3rd strength team. A bad matchup by our winger saw them counter us for an early goal. We struggle to have possession and even with some halftime switch-ups they get a second goal off a Free Kick play. Not our finest match. There will be a number of fines for players. Season has just started and Hauge is complaining again even when he’s not doing well. I don't want his performance to drop again like it did at the end of last season when this happened so I caved to his demands. Salary bloat has already begun… League Match: SV Werder Bremen at Home: Kamada and Trapp are back, and I’m trying my Jamaican Nicholson up top with Hauge back as a winger. Also changed the defense a little. A totally botched FK defense sees them get an early goal due to Heintz trying to dribble in the 6 yard box. Thankfully we equalize with Hague finding Nicholson wide open in the box. St. Juste playing as a FB-A is wide open at the top of the box and blasts in a second after halftime. 73’ Hauge and Nicholson repeat their first goal exactly. Guess the experiment with Hauge up top is over. Right After the goal I sub him off for Kolo Mauni who picks up a loose ball and scores to give us a 4th.

Start of 2026-27 Season Squads Before I move into the intense first two months of the season, it's worth showing all of my squads and the players out on loan as there are plenty of new faces to watch this season. I have all the squads at about the right number of players to have full depth even if there is a good amount of junk floating around in the youth teams. I'm happy with the quality of my first team, and slowly I'm beginning to build the talent pipeline that will be necessary to develop European Competition quality players. Eintracht Frankfurt Squad New Starters: I've already shown above in the formation screen who my Starters & Subs are, but its worth highlighting the new starters, which is my entire defensive line. RB Yvann Macon: [France/Guadalope] Instead of the Tottenham loane, this budget acquisition at $6.5M from AJ Auxerre is definitely a stop-gap RB until I can develop/buy a high-quality youngster. He's a player that has nothing stand-out about him, and in general is stronger going forward than devending. LB Tyrell Malacia: [Netherlands / Curacao] My big free-transfer steal from Man United has the physicality to really compete at a high level in Germany. He's not the most skilled, and has English wage-bloat, but to actually be a left footed wingback that's only 27 I see him having 5 seasons with us at the very least. CB Jerry St. Juste [Netherlands / St. Kitts & Nevis] A quick CD, who we will see if he can step-up his game in Germany from years dominating in Portugual. He has a somewhat low bar considering Pfiefer's underperformance. And really for more defensive games I can see him moving into the RB position due to his much better marking/tackling than Macon. If he doesn't perform having $30M of value in a free player will do wonders for funding a potential wonderkid acquisition in the future. CB Marvin Friedrich: [Germany] The only player of the 4 who was in the squad last year. However with the sale of Pfiefer and the slow-down of Dominique Heintz [33] due to age, this 30 year old has taken up the 'big man' CD spot. He's 6'4" with excellent Strength, Jumping, Bravery & Heading so he fits the role perfectly and has done well with St. Juste in pre-season. Eintracht Frankfurt II Squad There are a couple repeat players here from the 1st team that are made available for fitness (notably Goalkeeper Christian Joel Sanchez, CD Martin Halabrin and Wide striker Ragnar Ache). There is a good amount of potential here, that are mostly below the quality to get loans to top-flight clubs. Hopefully the squad is strong enough to get promotion out of the Regional League into Liga 3, which will be a great level to develop young talent. Eintracht Frankfurt U-19 Squad Both my new young English Strikers are repeats here as they can't play for the 2nd team, and only for U19 Friendlies. You can see I have a number of random Caribbean players who are too old for the league, but don't have EU nationality to play for the second team. Once I get the Slovakian affiliate loan agreement I plan to send them there. Season Preview & Odds 9th is actually pretty low, but I guess we didn't really add any world-class players to take us up into the top group. World Cup Winners: I forgot to post the final tree of the world cup. I guess Norway can take some solace that they lost to the champions? still has to sting.

July Update: World Cup Part 2, Transfers, Pre-Season & a Real Madrid Friendly Like June we did a ton of transfer activity this month scouring the globe for Caribbean talent. But first we left off with both Denmark and Norway making it to the World Cup Quarter Finals. Did they advance?! World Cup Part 2: Can Denmark & Norway Make the Upsets? 120 Min’s for both Denmark and Norway as they take their big country oppositions all the way to penalties. Even better both of my players scored! How did the shoot out go? Sadly, Norway lost theirs 4-3 but Denmark advance!! The Norway coach subbed off Haaland in the 80th minute with Hauge and other well performing players who all had decent condition left. Then Spain got their equalizer in the 89’ to take the game to a goalless extra time. In my opinion he should be fired. They were so close! Sadly in the Semi-Finals the dream run ends for Denmark, however Lindstrom scores again! Don’t know how he managed to get a 6.6 rating with a goal. Regardless, he has performed fantastic in the World Cup and I can’t wait to see how he does for us this season. Club Affiliate: I asked for a youth affiliate and the list returned some blah Belgian and Portuguese teams, but Zilina in Slovakia is a really good affiliate. They have been 3rd place two years running so get Conference League matches with full 3* Reputation. They have great facilities with excellent youth recruitment. Slovakia is also a good place to get nationality for my Caribbean players as non-eu can’t play in the II team, so I’ll certainly be adding the loan-option on here so those and my English players can have a quality loan destination. Free/Cheap Youngsters out of the Caribbean/USA All of these players are total gambles that most likely won’t play out, but they cost nothing and have very low salaries (less than 1k) so I pick up Young National Team players who the scouts say might have some potential + current ability good enough to play on loan. Most have 1-2 year contracts with 3 year extensions, so they can be tossed back quickly without too much money risk. On exception was I found a Dominican Republic U20 player at Regeia who he helped get promoted from Serie C to Serie B. For 150k I could get him and I loaned him back to the club in the hope they use him again in their next campaign. Patric Pfeiffer Transfer: Trading a CB for 3 youth Prospects Some interest materialized from Aston Villa & Al-Ittihad for Patric Pfeiffer who is a high value, high wage underperforming CD. His specialty is speed and with the pickup of St Jude I have another fast CB, who I can easily swap in for him. He’s valued around ~25M and I was able to get two interesting offers agreed to. Aston has more up front, less overall but both have the 40% sell on which I should be able to sell for a good amount as his value should jump in either league. Sheffield United came in for a loan offer, but honestly its sell or play in my mind as I have plans for that transfer money if it comes in… he decided to go to the money in the Middle East instead of England. They are paying him $175k p/w so its true to life with all the transfers happening right now. 3 Youth Transfers: Selling him I want to convert this directly into future talent specifically because the only really high-potential Caribbeans come out of European nations, thus cost a pretty penny to acquire. I've earned us a very healthy transfer budget to work with here. Also remember I have 10M coming over 2 years as well through this deal. Here are the high potential youngsters with Caribbean nationality my scouts have found so I plan to buy up a few. Obviously, S Stevens at Arsenal is way too expensive, but the rest are options. A Bresil is super cheap at 1.5M due to Havare getting relegated down to French National. Pretty easy decision to gamble on even with us having a RB prospect and him having bad injury proneness and consistency. Worst case I should be able to sell him at a small profit if he never makes it into the first team. And as French he can play in the reserve squad for us. Also, this brings us in a CB even though we do have a couple great prospects in the 2nd team. Devon Edwards is an ex-Arsenal youngster Sheffield United bought for cheap and has now developed very well, is a Resolute striker with high finishing, which is something our team is missing. As its England there’s a high premium to get him for 11M total. 4.5 up front, 4.5 over 2 years, then 2 in possible add-ons isn’t too bad. Dalton Sargeant is another English striker this time at crystal Palace and they accepted an identical deal to the one I just gave above. Sargeant just has slightly higher contract demands, but they aren’t unreasonable so Its no problem to me. He’s got Resolute personality and is more a pace merchant player vs a skilled finisher so each provides a different potential player down the line. He is also either-footed so I intend to train him as an AML as well. Loan In Instead of buying him I’ve loaned Shandon Baptiste from Brentford. We have lots of wage budget and are light on defensively skilled midfielders, so he is to give us first team ready depth in case of an injury crisis. Transfer Records: We are doing big transfers setting records with an interesting one of the highest fee for a Barbadian player with our Crystal Palace Striker The number of moves in/out is pretty substantial, and we are still positive with a large transfer budget remaining if there are any deadline day deals to be had. Pre-Season Match Performance: We’ve had a pretty easy pre-season, though I moved up to Belgian sides to end it and our 2nd players actually beat Standard 3-2, which is welcome. Now Real Madrid Here is my new formation. It should function as a 3-4-3 in offense with the two CWBs pushing high up and Promel holding back with the CBs functioning as a higher starting stopper. The other big change is switching Kolo Muani and Hauge who is now playing as a CF-S instead of PF-A. I also decided to add 'Overlap Right' which should encourage Kolo Muani to hold the ball more and dribble looking for the slotted pass either to the WB coming forward or one of center options. Real Madrid Friendly Lineup: Posting to prove this is the true 1st team squad, with a lot of familiar faces still starting for Ancelotti in this match. Match Play-by-Play: 22’ we win the ball in midfield and Hauge tries taking on the defenders, realize he doesn’t have the odds and he slots a perfect ball through the box to Kolo Muani who is making a run in from the wing and he taps it in! Unfortunately, they notch us back on a short throw play that St Jude fails to clear properly and Mendy is wide open on the back post and he scores. 29’ Hauge proves to me he’s the CF I’ve been looking for when he makes the perfect timed run through the defensive line and Kamada slots the ball right into his run so he can place it in the far corner which Courtois had no chance of stopping. We make it to half-time without conceding. They dominate the possession (no surprise), but we are making our few chances count. They change a midfielder at half time and very quickly find the equalizer in the 51’ by Asprilla who beat our WB badly on the inside run. Kamada gets an open-play injury, which is worrying so Vargas comes on. 63’ our GK takes a fk short to Macon who sees Lindstrom making the run forward out of the midfield and he hits it over the top and he perfectly places his shot when 1v1 to give us back the lead! They bring on Rodrigo and I decide to change CB and DM as both are tired and haven’t done that well today. We are looking good, but in the 81’ we have a defensive lapse and Vini Jr gets wide open in the box and no surprise he finishes his chance. 3-3. 85’ Rodryigo gets a goal, but was offside so it stays 3-3. Have to say I’m very happy with this draw against a giant club like Real Madrid. The bad news: Was worried about this happening. Could have been a lot worse. Vargas will get into the starting lineup now and will play AMR and I'll switch Kolo Muani over to the left IW role to utilize his dribbling and scoring ability. August & September Schedule: We have a very tough start to the season, hence why I accepted a friendly with Real Madrid to give us a real challenge before the season starts. In the first 4 games we play the top 3 finishing teams from last season. With Kamada out, hopefully our offense can still hit hard like they did against Real Madrid.

June 2026 Activity This is the first true summer transfer to begin rebuilding the squad with the "power" of Caribbean players, so there's a lot that happened. Also its the 2026 World Cup with the Group - Round of 16 happening this month. Lots to do! Scouting & Transfer Activity: Janis Antiste: Versatile attacker at Suassalo who hasn’t renewed his contract so I could get on a free and he’s 22. He’s basically average at everything, with only light gametime but my scouts really like what they see in him. I put on a tight 10 M release clause and he agreed to a cheaper 25k p/w contract compared to the 35-40 most of the Bundesliga quality Attackers want. It's okay if he gets sniped at 10M as it will go into the transfer fund to buy the real future star we’ll need. He might even improve with gametime being so young, so I'm happy to pick him up. With this, I’ve decided to send Weah out on loan as French and English clubs will pay his whole wage + a small fee to take him for the year. I accepted the 4 most lucrative one’s. He will get more gametime in England in the Championship, but we get paid less so I decided to let him decide He went with Montpellier: Additionally testing the waters with Paulo (my other underperforming winger) got us a nice 5M structured bid from FC Koln, which I was going to accept but then I saw we have to pay him 1.8M loyalty plus another 745k to him and A Madrid so we literally won’t get anything this year, just 2.5M over 3 years… While he was almost always a sub, he still didn’t make a single goal contribution in 24 appearances and he had an expectation of .2 assists p/G. Even though we don’t end up with much money its probably good to get him out of the club as his contract is till 2030 and takes a lot of wage. We bought him for 2.4M, so its at least not a loss financially. Hopefully our atacking transfers are better than what the AI did here. Defenders Still?? I’m still looking at RBs as I’m not sure who the best investment is for 4-6M. Livano Comenencia at PSV is another viable option in our price range: Sadly he isn’t that much better than what we have even playing on the 2nd best team in The Netherlands even though my scouts love him. There’s interest in him so the agent feels PSV will want between 11-14M, which is too rich for the performance he displayed in the league last year. The next is Yvann Macon who is the RB for AJ Auxerre who finished 12th in France Ligue 1, so very midtable. Interestingly though he has some very appealing attacking statistics as well as great Interceptions and Blocks. At 27 he’s right in his prime and I think is the man for next season. I fought AJ Auxere down on the transfer price from 8 all up front to 6.5 structured. I did a split 50% now 50% over 2 years and they accepted. Pay the same as what it costs for the loanee, but structured it so there is more room in the current transfer budget. And I think he’ll perform better especially offensively. Continuing at RB there is a player who fits just on a ‘cheap depth’ option even though he hasn’t played much is Shurandy Sambo who has been as PSV in Eredevesie but has his contract expiring this month, so is available on a free. You'll notice he is the 2nd choice to Livano Comenencia above, but instead of paying 11M I can get him for 0. He had a good loan season at Sparta Rotterdam and then in the B team the first two seasons of the save, but hasn’t seen any action in the PSV first team since. At 24 he’s young and even better will accept a very low salary and playtime request (Emergency Backup), so should provide cheap cover who will be happy enough as a rotation option for Macon until my 16-year-old intake players are ready to challenge for 1st team time. His 3 negatives are in the hidden attributes of: High competitive (cards), Injury prone & dislikes big matches. At least he’s consistent? 13.5k is higher than I expected, but still not that expensive in comparison to Macon and finishes our RB recruitment. At Left Back: I got some offers of 2.4M for Lenz (which I goosed to 2.8M) who would be our 31 year old #2 LB next year, so I went to the market to see what I could get for free to provide depth to make that little profit on him. Jean-Kevin Duverne is a CB who can play on the Left in a defensive role. Only a few matches last year, but has been a regular in Ligue 1 for years. And best of all with a low 5M release clause (his highest transfer ever was 2.8M so seems fair) he will agree to a low 19.5k p/w wage, which is half that of Lenz. So financially it makes sense even if his wrong-footed and lack of crossing will require adjustment tactically if I play him. I’ll watch for loans in the summer and probably bring someone in for depth as I don’t have a good LB prospect at the club yet. I’m being a little risky here, but we have lots of defenders to cover the gap. Potentially another Attacker? Georgino Rutter at Hoffenheim is a possibility for us and the scouts like him. Unfortunately, he didn’t play well for Hoffenheim last season and would be at least 10M to pickup, so I’ll keep looking. Just thought its worth putting him in here as he’s an example of one of the better options I’ve found from a scouting perspective, but he doesn't have the statistical performance to justify putting out that high a percent of our transfer budget. A better value is the Swiss international Ruben Vargas from Ausburg as they got relegated and he would only cost 6M to pick up as he’s pissed to be dropped down a division. Even playing for a bad team, he had a really high xG and Shots 90, but very low assist ratings and crosses. My guess is he played as an IF for Ausburg, which is what I plan to do next season, but best part is he's natural at both wide AM positions, so can be cover for both Kamada and Hauge. Only issue is the Game-Time. He will want to be an Important player and Hauge will get first choice in the hope he performs like he did when he was happy last year. This time I’ll give him a new contract if he wants the pay bump. 4.9M up front with a small conditional amount seems a good bargin for a Bundesliga caliber winger for either side. He surprisingly accepted “Squad Player”, which makes me much more willing to pick him up. He then accepted a 10k p/w wage cut to join us with a reasonable release clause and then the relegation clause, cause I’d be sacked anyways. Very happy with these demands. For those curious he has Dominican Republic 2nd Nationality: 2026 World Cup Part 1: Eintracht Frankfurt Player Performance Pre-Cup Friendlies: Some good performances out of my players with most of the nations they represent getting some wins in preperation. Group Stage: Yes, you saw that right Palestine made the World Cup! How did they do it? Next World Cup Match Day featured 3 of our players who all contributed to goals with great ratings! Shame Jamaica’s defense couldn’t hold out. And Switzerland upsets Brazil! Again Sow is getting poor ratings, but the team is doing well so he can't be doing that bad right? Final Group stage Games: Lindstrom is having an amazing World Cup and I’m very happy I just got him onto a new contract with a 40M release clause instead of the 19.5M he starts with. Nicholson couldn’t break down Poland’s defense, but man Norway smacked Argentina and Hauge got in on the action. Hauge and Lindstrom continue to do amazing work for their national teams in the 1st Knockout round helping both advance. 1 goal and 2 assists in just 66 minutes is amazing for Hauge. Wow in a shock, Albania defeats Switzerland 2-3. Bummer considering they did so well to beat out Brazil earlier in the tournament. Hauge has an absolute triumph as Norway + Haaland advance over Poland with an aging Lewandowski. Lindstrom picks up a small knock (bruised ankle 1-3 days) so comes off early but Denmark get the win and advance! Here’s the Quarter Finals Matchup, exciting I still have 2 players advancing at this stage and there is a chance both could advance yet. (Update with full QF after rest of games)

Part 2: Midfield 3 (DM & CM) To be completely transparent I have no intention of changing around my midfield 3 right now. The 3 I ended the season with had a good working triangle going and I have lots of depth in the squad here even with Kamada playing as a wide Attacking Midfielder. I have 3 higher potential U20 Midfielders already in my squad, who are ready for more gametime. Wenig was the rotation/backup this year, Pieper is Driven and improving fantastically in the 2nd team, and Geisler is from the most recent intake class and will be a great future attacking midfielder. I've selected them in the screenshot: Pongracic I under-utilized last season, but he could do well to replace the depth of aging underperforming CDs and right backs. He got the preliminary callup for the Chech World Cup squad, but was dropped from the final roster. In my spring between-window transfer activity I just found two prospective midfielders to add to the development pipeline. Joseph comes directly out of Jamaica, so a good chance he won't have the potential required but he played well and its a cheap risk to take. Defensive Midfielder Grischa Promel was the main starter at DM for us with Kristijan Jakic filling in if he was suspended / had a knock. Djibril Sow is a natural at DM, but he played exclusively as a CM as our playmaker so I'll ignore him here. this is skewed by Sow who was our main Assist generator. I'm not surprised both Promel and Jakic have low statistics here as both played DM-D and were really all about being that holding anchor between the defense and midfield. They did create some chances here and there, but not much really stands out. Center Midfielders Unfortunately Jesper Lindstrom doesn't count as a CM so we can't see his statistics here. Sow was a great playmaker for us doing his job creating chances for the strikers many of which are progressive passes showing he's looking for those balls forward. His defensive statistics aren't the greatest as well as his finishing, which is why he's the playmaker and not the Center mid Attack. Kamada isn't really fair to evaluate here as he played maybe 1 or 2 games in the midfield and spent the rest as the AML-IW. Center Attacking Midfielders Kamada and Lindstrom don't have natural ability in the position where I play them, so they don't show up in the statistics. It's a major limitation of my tool, but there's no other way get reliable statistics. Since both are really CAMs it makes sense to compare them here. The way I play both of them should give reasonable comparison to the CAM role. You just will expect Kamada to have higher crosses and movement being out on the wing. Lindstrom is really just playing as a deeper starting CAM with his CM-A role. Overall these are great numbers especially considering we ended up finishing 11th and my CAM players are in-line with the top 3 clubs. Interestingly both my players are low on their "Chances Created / 90", but from a scoring perspective they are right on target with the top 3 team midfielders. In my opinion the difference between xA and Assists here is not reflective of the skill of these two CAMs but the lack of conversion of our strikers. The fact that Kamada is creating 0.3 xA / 90 he is producing just a stupid amount of chances for our team. If we can get a striker to convert both of these players chances man we will be golden. Something to note the KP vs Open Play KP showcases how corners and free-kicks skew data. This is why i'm bummed OP-Crosses is gone. Lindstrom is putting up some great shooting numbers, which is what you want to see for a CM-A. Kamada is just okay, but that doesn't surprise me, he creates chances that I need Hauge to start finishing more like we were getting in St Louis.

2025 - 2026 Season Statistics for Eintracht Frankfurt Weird Variable Changes by SI since the April Update: I'm not sure why but in the most recent update some statistics have been dropped by SI as well as names changed for some of the variables. This is why I have been getting #REF! errors in my spreadsheet as the variables I set for each position summary table is hardcoded. I have to go back through and change these if I want this missing data / replace it with similar data. Lost Statistics: This year SI added Open Play Cross Attempts & Completions / 90 Min, which like open play key passes is key to evaluate open play performance of players who also take dead balls. For whatever reason this statistic has been removed as far as I can tell. Not the end of the world, as I will just revert to using Cross Attempts & Completitions / 90, but it will skew the crossing data for players like Kamada and Hauge who also take some wide free kicks and corners. Hdrs L/90 seems to be gone. It was the 3rd variable in the set: AER A/90 ; HDRS W/90 ; HDRS L/90. It also is the denominator in the Hdrs% variable, which is the ratio of Headers Won / Headers Lost. I can easily recreate this variable: Aerial Attempts - Headers Won = Headers Lost. I will be doing this as I like having this number to see the aerial liability of a player. Shts Blckd/90 was a more specific sub-statistic of BLK/90 to show which of the blocks would have registered as shots vs just pass/crosses. I liked it for CBs. Renamed Statistics: Crs C/90 --> Cr C/90: Weirdly they removed the "s" from just the created but left "Crs A/90" as is. Pres C/90 --> Pres C: Another weird inconsistency as this is for all I can tell still the per 90 statistic, but it has lost the /90 part of the name. Even more bad (from a data perspective) is that Pres A/90 was left unchanged, so now they aren't matching variables. Conv % --> Conversion Rate (%) : Okay, didn't see an issue with the abbreviation but whatever. Data Setup As a reminder my filter for players is just: 1) Club playing for (will include loan players) is in Tier 1 - 3 Leagues in Germany, France, Spain, Italy Or England ; 2) Played 1000 Minutes. This table shows the breakout of players. Important to note here I only get 14 Eintracht players who hit 1000 minutes across the season. I have a way to get the statistics for the full squad with a secondary database, and might showcase that in a follow up post. Pretty simple I select the League and Club as well as what I am setting for the minimum values to take for selective sample averages. The two are "Minutes Played" and "Average Rating". With this setup "Minutes Played" isn't any different than the whole sample of players as 1000 minutes was my selection criteria. *Note that the "Position" is what gets cycled for each summary table & players in position to be pulled to the master page. These are what I screenshot. I break out average statistics for the Top 3 teams in the league as well as I like to head-to-head compare players from the top 3 teams to my teams and this will color code them for me for easy visual comparisons. Part 1: Defense I've already done a lot of free-transfer activity in January when the 6-month player steal window opened. Most importantly I found 2 new starters in Jery St. Juste and Tyrell Malacia. Watching his performance & development Rico Browne was a mistake, but the others all represent young talent that my scouts rated with high potential & did decent playing in their respective leagues in North America. Right Back: Determine if Djed Spence is worth the $6.5M USD optional fee to purchase from Tottenham. If he isn't worth the money then I need to decide if I want to give Cedric Brunner [32] a contract extension for FB Depth. St. Juste is fast and could play RB if I need him to. Center Back: I have a big deal free-transfer CB coming in from Portugual so I need to decide who is the best CB to try as the starter to pair with him. I'll have 5 CBs after this with 3 over 30. Might look to sell one or two of these to begin featuring younger talent in the rotation. Left Back: No real choices here, my other big free-transfer will be my starting LB, we sold Bello already for a nice 7.5M and my current LB Lenz [31] has 1 year left on his deal, and will be fine as my backup. Spence wasn't very good. His only positive statistics are in winning Possession and Interceptions and dribbles. However I do remember him losing the ball quite often when he was dribbling so that makes me think I should have the Possesion/Loss variable up here, which is missing. Brunner wasn't much better, only additional statistic he had was Blocks/90. My Decision: Toss Both RBs Back into the Sea! What to do: ??? [I'll table this and come back] The statistics for our 3 must used CDs look pretty good. Below the Top 3 teams for the most part, but above the Bundesliga average. Freidrich was our 3rd choice and least used CB so most of his statistics come from his time with the previous manager. He still did okay aerially with good progressive passes, key tackles and interceptions. Pfeiffer is our most expensive CB, who has speed on the others. Unfortunately, he is very poor at tackling, pressing and blocking. For playing as a BPD he did surprisingly poor in Progressive passes, which I thought that would be encouraged in that role. Heintz is getting old at 31 and it shows with a pretty lackluster performance this season. Even with the large depth at CB we have a staggering underperformance here from what are fairly expensive senior players. I want to make changes here. Of the 1500 natural Carribean natural CDs 27 or younger there are a few that are liked by my scouts: I only have 20M total transfer budget, so I need to be careful on how much I spend on CDs especially considering my much-needed Striker upgrade. Two of these players were in the Bundesliga: Reece Oxford (Ausberg) and Killian Sildillia (Freiburg), so are easy to look at in direct comparison to my CBs as they both played over 1000 minutes for their clubs. Important to note that Ausburg was relegated, and Freiburg is in the relegation playoff, so it's questionable if I want to "strengthen" my defense with players from teams that failed in our league. But its also possible I can get them for cheap if the clubs need to make sales to balance budgets in Bundes 2. Kiliann Sidillia lost a crazy amount of possession, which makes me think he was played as a RB or maybe he just really sucks with the ball. Reece Oxford seems just okay with his standout statistic being winning possession a lot, much better than our CBs. Otherwise he doesn't seem to be an upgrade. Neither qualify as upgrades Jorrel Hato played in the French Ligue 2 and is under contract with Ajax. The most expensive player, he also has the highest potential. He played almost 3000 minutes this season so his statistics will be robust. Even better Troyes were the champions this year, so he was on a successful defense even if he ended up with a low average rating. French Ligue 2 CD Statistics: An important comment here is to remind that here we have comparisons at the Tier 2 level of the Big 5 European leagues, so its somehwat of an 'apples and oranges' to compare with how my players did in the Bundesliga. Better to see how he ranks among the French T2 and overall T2 CDs. Jorrel Hato: Honestly, he didn't preform that well on a relative basis to the other Ligue 2 CDs. Not enough to justify such a high transfer fee hoping he will reach that potential. We strike out again at Center Defender upgrades. Time to head back to Bundesliga to finish our Defensive Statistics. If someone comes in with a decent offer for Lenz I'll take it. I'd rather play an 18 year old who will get similarly bad statistics but at least improve his abilities and value than a sub-par 31 year-old. I'm thinking about the youth intake players I have a high potential RB who could learn to play on the left who comes with good mobility attributes.

End of Season Summary What do you know, my Jamaican Striker gets signing of the season, 4 goal contributions in 11 matches is okay. Only player who competed with him is Promel, who is a better player and admitidly we were much more vulnerable when he wasn't available than if Nicholson wasnt. Board didn't really like our transfers out, but we needed the funds. If FC Twente don't activate the option to buy Ragnar Ache he might get the bump up to our bench to sell off Weah and Paulo who really weren't that great for us. Borre is doing well in the MLS and will be on loan through December, but will provide good cover when he returns in the winter. The end of season losses and draws mean we finish just midtable at 11th getting 50M in prize money. We really struggled at the end of the season to close out games. For our games in charge we had a 5-6-6 record, which is disappointing. Really thought I could do better than 50%. Shocked that our home win against Bayern Munich isn't the highlighted game, though the win in Berlin was a good one I guess. Squad sorted by Minutes Played. No player had better than a 7 avg rating, which makes sense when you look at our record for the year. Still not happy about it. Supporters Budgets Luckily, we get almost 20M to play with for the summer window all of which I will be using towards signing a striker as I've managed to get my depth players already for mostly free. Might try again at Marital, maybe even on just a loan deal if Man U will accept a partial salary. Club Vision

April Matches During the international break we lose our striker who has finally started performing. With Kolo Muani injured my Jamaican striker Nicholson gets the start, otherwise it's our regular first team for this big night Derby match. ' Match 2: BMG at Home Unfortunate injury to our playmaker. I’ll use Jakic to replace him and dropping him into a DLP roll due to his more defensive abilities. Other change is for my right back Buta instead of the loanee, who struggled recently. Match 3: Hertha Berlin Away Sow is back from injury so he is back in the starting lineup with Nicholson still up top. Match 4: Home vs Bayer Leverkusen No changes to the lineup. Even worse than the draw we lose Kamada for the final two games of the season May Matches Penultimate Match: Brousia Dortmund – Away We have Kamada out injured and Kolo Muani only partially fit, so we are using our Brazilian M. Paulo as the AML with the rest of the regular starters. Only formation tweaks is to make my midfield less aggressive and defense take less risks. Final Match: Home vs SV Werder Both my CBs have to serve a suspension for yellow card accumulation as well as Hauge for his red card last match so a good amount of rotation to end the season. Let's me give the retiring Mustafi a final game, ended up being a mistake.

March Matches Match 1: VFB Stuttgart Away We head to 5th place Stutgart to start the month before any intake. Match 2: Bayern Munich Home Net we have our home game vs Bayern. I didn't expect to get much out of this match. Boy was I surprised! Match 3 RB Leipzig Home: Youth Intake As a YAC player I always get excited for the Intake, and actually this one was very good for us arriving mid-season. We have a potential star player in Simon Geisler accompanied by 5 good talents who are primarily all offensive players to form a good domestic base for our next generation development. Due to how bad the Caribbean is for generating players our youth academy will be critical for generating our future talent. Thus, I will be doing everything to maximize the facilities. This year I was able to do both Youth Recruitment and Junior Coaching one level. Both will need many more upgrades. Geisler: He’s a CAM who is right footed, but he seems to start with high Bravery and okay finishing, flair and speed. Could play like Kamada as the IW-A especially if I can make him a lethal finisher. Tom Balsfrenser: Sadly he’s slower but seems very technically skilled and has great consistency. David Geisler: A small high flair and teamwork Wingback. Will need serious work developing his defensive abilities as well as his dribble/passing, but has the speed I like on the wings. Ben Hagner: Not the greatest mix without finishing speed or consistency. Albert Adams: Can’t finish but otherwise has an appealing mix of attributes and mentality for a Pressing Forward. Hopefully he gets a little taller as well. And finally Mertin Arslan: A reflexive Goalkeeper. Transfers Looking around the best GK I can find who is reasonably young is a Cuban GK in the Spanish 2nd Division Christian Joel Sanchez. He has a 2.1M Release clause, which I will just be paying as after the GK debacle when Tropp got injured I need a good quality backup who should be able to take over in the near-term till I can develop a young GK. He has performed well in the Spanish 2nd division especially considering his club was never top 3. Last Year Performance in Tool: Unfortunately for whatever reason when I took the data snapshot even though it has the seasonal data the league change has occurred so the top 3 teams aren’t in the 2nd division but in LaLiga so the Top-3 part of my analysis wont work. Instead, the better comparison here will be against all Tier 2 leagues in the Big 5, a few of which are loaded. Since each team generally has just 1 GK in the database this gives a large pool of 92 GKs. Part 1: Even with lower minutes than the average he does pretty well in the ratio of Handle to Parry showing decent hands. Most importantly he has a very good xGP of .25 /90 showing good 1v1 and shot stopping ability. 8 Shutouts is very good for 1112/90 = 12.4 matches. Part 2: As you can see there are some data-issues here as we are missing Blocks & Saves/90. However his low Allowed with good Clean sheets is great to me. Only downside is he played in a lower division, but at least he seems to be a totally dominant GK in said division. This year Performance: Looking at his seasonal statistics for this year we see he’s continued to dominate with an astounding 50% shutout record domestically. And then even with Cuba he managed a shutout and their team isn’t very good in my save. No surprise he is their highest rated player. He chose us! International Window Even though it is against weak opposition I love to see Hauge & Nicholson having a good game or two for their countries. The real surprise is Sow has gotten some good time for Switzerland setting up an assist against Korea. Jamaica: I forgot to highlight how well Jamaica has done this year as they are the lone Caribbean Nation to qualify for the World Cup! They lost to the USA 1-0 in the Gold Cup Semi Final last summer, which was their only loss of the year. I the fall they came out big to finish top of the WCQ group with El Salvador, Honduras and Curacao which is no small feat especially going undefeated. You'll notice in how many games S. Nicholson scores this past year in the international matches, this was the key reason I chose him as my short-term 2nd choice striker. Even though he didn't do so well in Russia this level of consistent scoring internationally (even against North American teams) is impressive.

End of January & February Transfers after Jan 23: I brought in the Jamaican National team striker Shamar Nicholson who I have been following for a while in St Louis as he played in Russia. He pairs up top with J Lowe from my previous team for the Jamaican national team. Together the both of them have been fire in North America succeeding in getting Jamaica into the 2026 World Cup! Hopefully he can be a cheap backup striker option for now while I look for the real big striker. Jerry St. Juste is just crushing it in the Portuguese league and we can pick him up on an end of contract free. With one of our CBs 33 he will be a direct replacement there and being able to play DM he can move between the two as well as cover RB. He is fast, which I really like. I tried to go for Marital from Man United, and though I could get a transfer financed his salary demands were just too insane for us to set up. Unfortunate as he would have been the answer to our striking problem, but hopefully I can limp through this season with my cheap Jamaican pickup. February matches: Match 1: Wolfsburg at Home Wolfsburg is first up. Same team from the last match just switch Kolo Muani into an AF instead of DLF and turned my playmaker into AP-A so hopefully that pushes more offensive. First half didn’t have very many chances or possession. Changed some of the position instructions and dropped us back to balance. Second half we played better with a few chances but most of my attacking players got tired and needed replacing. By the 75’ I had brought on Lindstrom and my Jamaican striker Nicholson from Russia and what do you know in the 79’ he breaks the deadlock and scores just minutes into his debut! We hold out for the last bit of the match and record our first win as Eintracht manager against the team who were in the final conference league position when we took over. We travel to Berlin to play 14th play Union. Before this match I've tweaked the formation to be more offensive with a Mezzala-Attack and AP-Support as well as a Pressing Forward to push harder on their back-line. Here is the current formation set up: And it shows pretty good coverage across the pitch in what is a very balanced system. Match 2 Union Berlin Away: Our LB gets injured early, so has to get substituted. Then in the 39’ Kolo Muani finds himself wide open on a counter attack by Hauge’s cross and he puts it away to give us a 1-0 lead going into halftime. Was literally the only attacking highlight for either team. With the lead I gave Kamada and Sow our two key players who are tired and brought on the more defensive Jakic and will give Paulo a chance at AML. Then in the 65’ their defender makes a clumsy challenge in the box gifting us a penalty! Hauge steps up, and buries it in the corner. 2-0! 75’ they pull one back when we leave a midfielder unmarked at the top of the box and he scores a long shot. We tighten up for the final 15 with some fresh defenders. And they almost find an equalizer in the 84’ but luckily he was a hair offsides and its disallowed. We hold out and win a second game! Bad news is we lose our LB again who seems to be real injury prone. Will have to use a RB on that side for now, luckily my sub played well actually. And it gets worse when in training I lose my veteran GK for the rest of the month. And then my playmaker is out with a virus. Will give a lot of depth players a chance in a relatively easy game against Koln Match 3 - Home vs FC Koln To handle the missing players I move Kamada into the Mezzala role and give Weah a chance at AML. In the 15’ Kamada breaks free from midfield and beats the GK 1v1 to give us an early lead. However, Koln equalize in the 22’ due to a poor clearance by Pomell combined with him letting his mark run past him gave them a clear chance. Sadly our young backup GK failing to make the stop. 54’ again they got a 1 v 1 chance from an inadequate clearance and my young backup did not do well in stopping it. He has made some saves today but not enough. I need to work on my corner set plays because we had 14 corners and couldn’t get a goal out of any of them. Another minor knock adds to our short term injury list. While it's not an issue long term it will make our game against Shalke difficult. Match 4: Shalke Away Head to Shalke with Kamada again as Mezzala and trying my other backup GK. Both these guys will be getting replaced probably over the summer. They score in 30 seconds… thankfully its disallowed. They have more chances and finally in the 34’ they get one in. My RB just didn’t’ mark his man sitting on the far post. Then another play dribbles 5 players who never tackle him and he scores… Second half isn’t much better with another FB mistake this time on the right letting them in uncontested to goal. Very poor defending today combined with a lethargic attack. Match Summary: We've played our first 2 months in Frankfurt and have a very average 2-2-3 in competitive fixtures. We won't get fired for this performance, but its not good enough to challenge for European positions. At least I can say only the Shalke game was a true disaster, we were in it for the other games even if we didn't have the lethal final third required to get wins.

January Matches There are 4 matches this month to ease us into our new role. We start with an easy friendly, unfortunately it’s the only one before the league starts back up so the team is still learning my formation First match in charge of Eintracht is away at Hoffenheim, which is actually a pretty reasonable first match. They play a defensive 5-3-2, so should match up well with my wingplay 4-3-3. LB is still injured (with Bello gone) and my DM is suspended otherwise its my first choice team. Still trying Kolo Muani as the striker, but he was bad in the friendly. He proved me wrong scoring inside 5 minutes assisted by Kamada playing as the AML. A defensive issue between my GK and FB results in their equalizer. Another defensive issue gets them the 2nd goal. Gave Pfieffer a chance as he’s worth a ton and supposably good, but I think I’ll move back to the two I like better next match. We had an easy matchup against Ausburg, but I couldn’t get my offense going. Kamada is a beast but his services are to strikers who can’t finish. Good to see my new FB had a great combination with the BPD. Third match away at Freiburg Kamada shows why he’s the star of the squad getting a goal 10’ in when he beats his man. We dominated the first half, but they scored a long range FK to bring it level. In the second half we were creating chances generating 3 clear cut opportunities but we don’t have a natural finisher up top to put them away, so it’s a second draw.

2024-2025 Performance Analysis With all these players, it was important to see how they performed last year when they actually did okay making to a European Final. and to do this I used my excel analysis tool. Since it helps me to write it out I'll just attach the pdf of the word doc I wrote up for myself. Because of this I had to add another post here due to it exceeding the attachment size. 2024-2025 Bundesliga Statistics.pdf Squad Strengths: Center Defenders: Even though some have under-performed transitioning from a 5 at the back formation gives us lots of depth of CBs. This is where 2 of their big money signings contribute to the team. Only issue is a lot are over 30 so we will need to begin building a development pipeline. Defensive Midfield: Another big transfer the club brought in Promel and again he's old at 31, but looks like a great DM. We also have Jakic who will be a good alternative as well as a second BWM. Playmaker: Djibril Sow is the only player who is rated high by the league and is the key assist provider for the team. Slots in perfectly for my AP role. Wingers: Kamada and Hauge are the true star players of the team and both are top quality and totally flexible attacking midfielders who are naturals for the winger positions I want to use them in. Squad Weaknesses: Wing Backs: Both Left & Right wingbacks are totally underperforming with the only good WB having already been transfered out by the club before I joined. First priority in the transfer window is to replace these players. Goalkeeper: Our starter is 35 years old and while he is fine for this year, this is a ticking timebomb especially due to the restriction of only Caribbean players. Natural Goal Scorer: The difficult task is to find that #9 who just lives to score goals. We have great midfielders, especially for our playmaking and midfielders, and a few older Strikers who have failed to score for multiple seasons. The starter is Randal Kolo Muani, who really hasn't had a good career for Eintracht after the initial season. I will give him a chance because its really hard to find Bundesliga leading caliber Caribbean strikers that we can afford.

Eintracht Frankfurt Hire Stein! This year has been rough on the 2022 Europa League Champions who languish down in 12th place in the Bundesliga. However, there is only a 4 point gap to Wolfsburg in 6th place, so making it into Europe for next year, though ambitious, is totally possible. Thankfully the board put forward a super easy requirement for me to 'avoid relegation' with the target of mid-table. And actually 2 of those 5 wins came from their interim manager who changed to a more offensive 4-2-3-1 from the previous managers 5-3-2 and it seemed to pay off. Bodes well for me coming in the morale isn't totally shot at the club. Surprisingly it's really just this season that they are struggling as last year Eintracht reached the Conference League final League losing to Marseille. They still have a good core of the squad together and are objectively better than St Louis (who I will try to make an affiliate btw). The AI really hasn’t done much transfer damage to the club and most of the 2022 Europa League winning squad is still together. Looking at their transfer activity its been pretty mild with their acquisitions with the only surprise to me is the two Americans Timothy Weah & George Bello. (This Year) (Last Year) So how big are the Squads? Like always the AI has a very large team of an almost unbelievable 87 players across all 3 squads! First team has 29 players lots of whom are older players. Second Team is full of Useless players bloating out to 29, of which at most 1/3 are worth keeping. And then the U19 squad has 30 players with 3/4 being totally pointless! Let the Purge begin. Transfer Activity by January 23rd: It will take a few transfer windows to clear out the bloat but I made a dent with the easy releases and cheap sales that can be made. Notable Transfers Out: In addition I was able to sell or loan-out with optional sales a number of first team depth to build up wage and transfer budget: Also out of nowhere OM came in with a 7.5M up-front fee for the underperforming George Bello. Considering I wanted to upgrade wingbacks anyways that was an easy decision as he has a 10M release clause so there’s not much more upside on keeping him. And then everyone wanted Rafael Santos Borre on loan, but man Sporting KC in the MLS took the cake with offering to pay his whole wage + 133k p/m. Yes please. Transfer offers were only for like 3M so getting about half of that in a loan is pretty good. Nice little factoid there with his winning penalty. Another loan out this time with an optional future fee is a young winger Faride Alidou. Again another lesser right footed winger which we have a ton of. We will get almost 3M if he sells which is not bad And got a nice random 1.3M for an old signing Transfers In: Tottenham have a WB-R Djed Spence who Chicago had on loan as a designated player last year, and even with them barely making playoffs he played well in the league with a team that had a pretty lackluster offense for him to combine with. My hope is he can play well for us as an attacking threat this year. We have an optional 6.5M buy option on him, which is reasonable enough that if he performs I’ll be doing it. He qualifies as he has Jamaican 3rd nationality At LB my first choice is a Man United player who I can get as a free agent in the summer instead of paying 12M for him. He had a couple options and chose us! He will have a 19M release clause and a high salary (for us) of 70k but he should be a fantastic wingback only issue is he will be for next season and we just sold one of our 2 LBs. So I need to find a loan for the other wing.

I have my most recent Youth Academy Challenge save with Elazig Spor Hamburg using this database. I'm about 15 seasons in, and if I return to it I'll update here too. Took me a long time to get out of the Oberliga into the RDN. The finances are indeed absolutely murder in the lower leagues, its all about winning that regional cup to get the DFB: Pokal payday to slightly balance the books. Just one Hamburg Pokal and the 2 Division trophies in the Cabinet:

St Louis City Final Squad Summary Before I move on to Eintracht Frankfurt and really dig into the statistics of a truly underperforming team I want to take a minute and highlight my almost entirely Caribbean squad that has become back-to-back MLS Champions & North American Champions. For attribute screenshots I'll switch back to the vanilla skin to show the attributes as moving on to Frankfurt I'll be looking for fresh players. As an overarching comment it seems that if you can get players with 12-14 avg ability in the key attributes for their position they will be a leading player in the MLS. This fits with my assessment that if I could find average players in the English Championship they would easily be good enough to be starters in the MLS and put in better performances than they did in England. Once you begin signing ex-Premier League players their wage demands out-strip their ability and in Salary-Cap league its hard to make a good pickup. Full Squad: Original Players: 2 Roman Burki (GK) & Joakim Nilsson (CB). These two players are leading MLS players and out and out stars for this league. Roman Burki: He really has become inconsistent this final year at the ripe old age of 35. He still was good enough to stop the caliber of attacks faced in the MLS, but the decline is real and he probably would have been out had I decided to play on in the MLS. Part of that inconsistency are the two major injuries that have really slid-down his physical ability from his prime at the start of the save Joakim Nilsson: At 31 he is at his peak as a BPD and really was as good of a CB as one could hope for. The abilities are very balanced for a BPD without any real weaknesses. Players by Caribbean Nationality: Jamaican: By far our most common nationality with 12 of our 1st team players having either 1st or 2nd Jamaican Nationality. I’ll split them between those who play for Jamaica and then the rest who are secondary Jamaican. One general comment is I got a lot of these players from England with 4 English and 1 Welsh player. Alvas Powell was my best trade acquisition as he was already in the MLS, and then Alex Marshall I actually found in the Canadian Premier league and he just gained his Green Card when I left SLC. All of these guys have been actively playing for the Jamaican national team. Kevin Stewart is a good holding DM who has the physicality to win the ball and the mentals and skills to then act as a DLP to start our lethal counter attacks. Jamal Lowe: he is having a true late career peek both for us and the national team. 6 goals in 5 games this year for Jamaica has gotten them up to 47th rank in the world. He is the perfect wide attacker for the MLS. Christopher Ainsworth: He is the only player I found in Jamaica and he is my starting Left Attacking Midfielder. Found him at 17, waited till 18 for him to join us and he’s had 2 great seasons in the MLS and has the potential to develop into a quick dribbling winger. He is the only player I would have considered bringing to Germany specifically because they have a major gap at his position but I'm glad to leave him in the US to see what kind of career he can have and if he can break into the national team. Rekeem Harper: This was a surprise cheap young pickup form the English Championship. He has developed and trained fantastically and was crucial when Ox-Cham got injured and didn’t play the back half of the season. As you can see he's still improving and I would not be surprised if English clubs come back in for him when I leave. Second Nationality: 3 Canadians all of whom weren’t first choices this final season. To be fair to Donneil Henry for my first 3 seasons he was a great efficient CB, he just declined too much physically this year to keep up. Buchannan came in just mid-season on a free so he never fully took over the first choice at AMR. Beaufort was a trade player that I picked up to begin building up cheap CB depth. Oxlade-Chamberlain: The Ex-English international who is our lone remaining Designated Player. Considering he spent 30% of the season injured he never really fully delivered on what was promised. Easily the worst transfer I made all save as he is a huge wage cost and not delivering. Hopefully the next manager can get more out of him. Jay Dasilva: Another of the Summer Free-Transfers he is a great Complete Wingback that is probably too good for the MLS. He will be a great asset for the next manager. Haiti: Just 2 with one being on loan. I picked Fuente up for free this summer and he never really became a first choice as none of my wingers got injured this season and I have a ton of them. Dominican Republic: Again just 2 with one being a loane. Famila-Castillo really over-performed for his ability for us having constantly great seasons the whole save. I really think that speed saved him in our league. Curacao: Only one played with us for the whole season, but he’s my favorite player of the save Juninho Bacuna and he gained US 3rd nationality now so he counts as a domestic player. His skills are the MLS average across the board plus he's crazy adaptable so coudl fill lots of roles, but was a great CM(A) for us. The other Curacao player was Jeremy Antonisse but he is in the glut of wingers we have so mid-season I sent him to the Netherlands on loan: US Virgin Islands: Our Backup GK Austin, who was crucial for us last season when Burki was injured. This year he only played 10 games when Burki hurt his wrist at the start of the season. It has been really hard to find Caribbean GKs and he was the only one I could get into the club from the Tottenham youth program. He was fine, but nothing special. Dominica: Our critical striker T John-Jules. He led the line expertly and has signed a great new deal for himself graduating from his development contract for a full deal. 24 goals in 32 games is all you can ask for from your striker. He came out of the Arsenal youth system and really found his league in the MLS. St Lucia: Joel Felix was a great mid-season pickup and I credit at getting us over the line in winning this season. He picked up for a failing D. Henry. Great find player in the Danish top-flight who has a much cheaper salary than the French CBs. He's got the same balanced ability that is the theme of these players I brought in.

Season Review: 4 Trophies – 3 Domestic & The Continental Trophy And here’s my total Haul Post Season: Marshall Gets a Green Card! And Bacuna gets a green card! We’ve added the Haitian club AS Capoise as a Youth Affiliate to bring in the Caribbean Talent as Home Grown! I had the choice of Jamaican and Haitian clubs and looking back I should have picked Jamaica considering that's the ethnicity of the squad and would really fit the story better here. Hopefully this will help build up a really struggling Caribbean nation who didn't even make World Cup Qualifying. Transfer Targets Honestly the only spot I’d look for a true improvement would be at Striker as we are light there. Other than that, if a good deal on a CD appeared I’d go for it but unless people buy up my players I don’t see that active of a winter market. I’ll keep my eye out for expiring contracts to get people to join in June. 2026 MLS Draft FINALLY one of the Caribbean players in the amateur divisions is coming through and is actually rated well in the draft. He’s a player I’ve been watching literally since year one a LM from San Francisco and look at that we traded perfectly to have the 1st pick this season so we will get him! We also have the 17th pick so there’s a high probability we can pick up the Jamaican Striker as well. Attempt to Move to Europe: Applied to job adverts for top flight gigs in England, Spain Germany & The Netherlands. Most decided not to shortlist me, but Eintracht Frankfurt offered an Interview! Interview went well, and thankfully SLC didn’t sack me for it though they “hope I stay”. Honestly, if I don’t get Eintracht I probably will for another season as this team is set up really well for the MLS. 2 weeks later I get the message that I get to pick my staff! Looks like I can move to Germany. Almost wish I could draft, but honestly this will be better for the club. They will get to pick the best player as well as the 17th which should give them some young talent. \ They let me take a lot of my Caribbean specialty scouts with me and some random coaches, so here we go: And I accepted onto a fresh journey to really be the restart of this save and a real test of my statistical skills in picking players without seeing full ability values. Funny I beat out Wayne Rooney for the job who moved to Barnsley pretty early in my save where he's continued coaching:

Finishing the 2025 Season: It's been a few months since I've played in St Louis, but with the summer transfer window heating up I found the interest in picking up the save for a run at another MLS Title. Basically I had to re-do the month of August and make sure not to make any major transfers this time / save often to keep from having a repeat disaster. August: Start with a drab 1-0 win against Seattle where they just held the ball all game and never attacked Then it was the Semi-Final US Cup: We Won this time! John-Jules came out to play in the second half but it really was my Jamaican AML Marshal who I moved to the Right at the 60’ who created both the goals. Followed it up with a league win 4 days later against bottom table Orlando Then we visit Austin for a top of the league showdown as we are tied on 53 points right now. Start in dream land with a 2 min goal off a corner goal by Marshal our AML who I last minute rotated in for the start. Disaster in the 19’ as we have a defensive meltdown and they get an easy equalizer. Opportunities at both ends but it remains a draw. I’ll take the point away from home keeping us still level at the top of the league Then we host Portland just 4 days before the US Open final, so it’s an almost full rotated squad. And my persistence with Konrad at AMR is rewarded with him getting his first goal in the 3’. John-Jules sets up Leibman perfectly to make it 2 inside 15 min. I rest players and coast the whole second half to a 3-0 win. What follows is our US Open Cup Final away at Atlanta United. Gave up an early goal which is not good. It was a crazy first half that saw us go down 0-2 and then pull it back to go into half time 2-2. We each had a goal dissalowed and it was their 3rd goal that went unanswered even though we put all the pressure on them the second half. My strikers didn’t show up tonight I gambled on them both and not one of my AMLs and I think that backfired. I really need to get more of my players USA nationality. We just didn’t have it in us after that game and just absolutely fell apart in NYC losing 3-0. So many defensive errors coupled with our strikers both failing to finish again. But at least now we have a 3 week break before the Campeones Cup. Month Summary: September: After the busy August we get a much needed 2 week break to start September. This is the transfer window that killed me last time. But this time I made sure to save before I did transfers and I was able to get Parades without unregistering the squad. Also brought Ricardo Wagner in on loan a striker from Wolfsburg as we only have 2 forwards and could use the cover. He only costs what a SMS is and we have a free international slot so its no risk. If he does well he has a 625k release clause so that’s actually a price we could consider paying. Campanoes cup we lose to Monterey 2-0 with both goals being headers off long free kick plays with both Burki and Nilsson really letting down the team. We came back for a mid-week game against bad New England and we held onto a our lead to win 3-2 with some significant rotation Next was Minnesota at home. We had a couple minor injuries to our Welsh LB and Jamaican international DM, but both of their backups played great in the last game so I wasn’t worried. Both made their presence felt each setting up a goal in the first 2 minutes! Our defensive pressure on their buildup was unrelenting as we made it 4-0 in 18 minutes. In the second-half I tested some lesser used players and we held our margin to end up winning 5-1. October-November: October starts with a nice easy win against Vancouver before all my players head back to the Caribbean for World Cup Qualifiers End of Regular Season Standings: We played before the final day of the season so we had to wait and see what Austin FC would do. If they won their game against San Diego they would win the league. We repeat the Supporters Shield as well as get top-seed in our conference for the playoffs! MLS Playoffs: Semi-Final Since we won the division we enter in the Semi-Final round as the home side. We end up with San Jose, which used to be a big rival of ours, but we started the season knocking them out of the NACL and they didn’t have the dominance they had in the past. We get off to a great start as they register a straight red card in the 14th Minute! A great tackle by Stewart started a counter attack where he found J Lowe on the wing to get us a first half goal. A mistake by a defender got us an own goal in the second half for a very easy 2-0 win against 10 men. Onto the Division final! Funny the day after this game San Jose fired their head coach. Brutal. MLS Playoffs: Division Final We get Colorado in the Final, who were the lowest ranked of the playoff teams. Looking at the matches it seems Austin had a surprise 4-5 defeat in the first round to Portland losing in extra time. Happy days! We start the game with a major defensive error that gives them the first goal, but my main-man Bacuna comes up big with an equalizer just minutes later. Then in the 24’ James-Jules, who broke his hand the day before the match and is playing with a cast, shows why he’s the clubs leading goal scorer to give us the lead. He makes it a brace in the 40’ with the same wing combination from Aimsworth who is developing like crazy easily becoming one of our best players. Again a defensive lapse lets them pull one back. Their midfielder just dribbled through the whole team… They have 2 shots and 2 goals. But John-Jules don’t care dude pulls off his second first half hat-trick in the past month. But he doesn’t stop there as he finds a fourth in first half stoppage time! Monster. Even with his 4 goals I am pulling him at half time as I want him okay for the Final and he’s carrying an injury. I moved J Lowe up to striker and he showed he could work with Ainsworth making it 6 in the 51’. Again our defense is leaky as they pull one back right from kickoff. They are scoring about every shot they take. Our St Lucian CB Felix makes it 7 with a near post corner header. Geeze they get a 4th. 6 shots on target and 4 goals with 1.43 xG… It got even worse with them scoring every shot in the second half with 2 of their players getting Hat-Tricks. I kept trying to adjust but they just scored everything. We won 7-6 in what was a shambles second half. Highest scoring MLS Playoff Game on record. MLS Cup Final First half we were having all the chances and then their GK dribbled out and booted it long and apparently my 2 CBs and DM all couldn’t handle their solo striker who beat them all to score their only shot of the half. The stern halftime talk gets them fired up and in the 49’ J Lowe brings us level! Lots of chances for us in the second half with 2 headers going off the bar and out which was unfortunate. It ends 1-1 at full time so we go onto added time. 25 shots with 3.25 xG and we can’t get any to go in so we have to go to penalties, which is not our strong suit. Harper misses his 2nd kick so we are behind, but thankfully their 3rd taker just duffs it right to Burki so we are back in it! Our 4th and 5th takers both make it so it comes down to their final man who is carrying an injury. And Burki comes up huge with the stop and we win!! Clearly we should have put this away during the match, but our injured striker just wasn’t making it happen and I had to pull him in the second half and my chosen RW option didn’t deliver Summary:

FC Elazig Spor Hamburg Season 15 2037-38 Regional Division: North (Tier 4) Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 | Season 6 | Season 7 |Season 8 | Season 9 | Season 10 | Season 11 | Season 12 | Season 13 | Season 14 Statistics: Intro & 2030 (S8) | 2029 (S7) & 2028 (S6) | Master Sheet | Percentile Rankings (S9) | 2056 POR & BEL | Table Rebuild |GK Add & V.03 Link Competitions League: 11 of 18 [Preview – 17/18 (100-1)] We were a midtable team from start to finish of the season. We struggled to keep clean sheets, but were dangerous in attack. Because of this combination we managed to have a surprising 10 game unbeaten start to the season however 7 of these were draws. We ended the season badly with my striker just completely losing his form dropping us down to 11th, but all in all this is perfectly acceptable for our first year up with the 2nd teams. Matches: It's worth noting that the team that won the league, Barmbek-Uhlenhorst, is a team that has climbed up like us from the bottom of the pyramid and unfortuatnely is a team we have to beat in the Hamburg Pokal to get those valuable opportunities to play in the DFB Pokal. Cup: RUNNER UP! We blew it, and potentially this botched cup final could come back to haunt us if we can't turn the finances around. 20 minutes into the game we are up 2-0 off two defensive errors by Hamm United. I do my best to reduce our risk-taking and keep numbers behind the ball to protect the lead. The first goal they get back is a near-post corner that was out of our control. Second goal though comes form some abhorrent defensive play by our two CBs. The errors by one of them and our striker pile up so they both had less than a 6.0 rating and I was forced to sub them or risk them bringing more disaster. and then in the 88' another missed header by the CBs and they get the 3rd goal to win 3-2. Squad: CA & Overview: Our top players are still improving, but we are still a very unbalanced squad with completely unnecessary Goalkeeper depth. Big issue is that Bartu Basar has refused for years to negotiate a new deal and will be in his final year next year. I do have a couple very raw youths to try at WB-L, but it will be a major step down when he leaves. Luckily all my other star players have agreed to at least 2-3 year deals many with additional extensions. While slow, we've developed two reasonably dependable DMs in the playmaker Ilyas Altun & DM-D Alperen Turk as well as have a promising Shadow Striker in Feridun Altintas. Altintas may get switched to a CM-A though to try and bring back our starting positions of players to be better defensively in a 4-3-3 vs a 4-2-3-1. Data Hub: Team Defending is a real issue but we did fantastic offensively even with our end of season slump Statistics Excel: Because we had issues in the back, the real focus I had was on our CB performance with the question: was it the formation or players? Because a lot of my players can play both CB and a FB position the summary shows more than our starters: Denny Pepe & Ergun Turan so I'll jump on to individual performances. Our two starters: If we look at the isolated players it becomes very clear that we have a major aerial issue with Turan when he only wins 66% of headers. The last two players Duran & Matic were our rotation CBs who you can see didn't fare any better with 64% header win ratio. Toplu and Kose are backup FBs, so mainly played there. Moving onto ground statistics Turan isn't much better here failing to break out of the middle on any statistic. Denny Pepe on the other hand looks to be a very good CB for this level with an impressive 34.5 Possession wins / 90 as well as good key tackles, interceptions & clearances. So it looks like even though Turan is driven and seems to be developing somewhat I really should take a chance on a youngster CB next year if we have a prospect. Transfers: This summer I'm purging a lot of 22-24 year old high wage low performing rotational players to give a chance for the youngsters who only will develop with gametime. Here are all the ones that are already headed out (just haven't fully agreed to a deal yet) Completed transfers: Youth Academy Youth Intake Preview: its not total trash for once! Youth Intake: Lower quality personalities, but higher rated players. I'm okay with that tradeoff. YI Player Highlights: Academy Data: At least we reversed the CA Trend! HOYD: Still sticking with him. He is improving his HOYD Role ability and is finally into the Yellow now and still is only 30 years old. Again club is spending pennies on the youth setup with poor facilities so he can only do so much. Head Coach Apparently getting promoted to the T4 of Germany hits the bar to manage Luxembourg Club Finances Good news we lost less money than last year! Bad news, its still over 300k... This is where our botched cup final might kill the club as that's a guaranteed 300k for just being in the DFB-Pokal that we will miss out on next year. Removing the 100k bonus Gate Reciepts for the cup final we only saw a bump of ~300k in Gate Receipts and Matchday income by moving into our new ~5k occupancy stadium. Unfortunately the debt servicing is just getting worse and is double what we are earning from the stadium, which shows just how bad of a move it was for the board to build it in the first place. Manager Thoughts So far the creditors haven't come knocking, but it almost seems like its inevitable. Next year again I'll be pushing for the cup but we have a real problem with B-U getting promoted to the 3-Liga and probably going Professional. We were exceptionally lucky to beat them on penalties this year in the cup and if they keep strengthening their squad repeating that will become a big role of the dice. Again, I'm planning to play this till the club goes into administration as we have a great offensive combo, decent CMs & great GKs. If we can fix our defensive issues maybe there's a chance?

FC Elazig Spor Hamburg Season 14 2036-37 Oberliga Hamburg (Tier 5) Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 | Season 6 | Season 7 |Season 8 | Season 9 | Season 10 | Season 11 | Season 12 | Season 13 Statistics: Intro & 2030 (S8) | 2029 (S7) & 2028 (S6) | Master Sheet | Percentile Rankings (S9) | 2056 POR & BEL | Table Rebuild |GK Add & V.03 Link Competitions League: 1 of 20 [Preview – XX/19 (X00-1)] We were our own worst enemy this season dropping points against random teams to force it to come down to the final game to secure the title. Our 81 GD in 34 games speaks for how lopsided some of the games were. Playoffs: 1 of 4 WE ARE PROMOTED! Compared to our league the past few seasons the playoffs were a walk in the park. None of these teams dominated their respective Oberliga with 2 actually being 2nd place teams with the chance to advance due to II & III clubs ineligible for promotion. 3 wins in 3 games with 7 GD tells the story. Cup: 2nd Round We got an early matchup against Ostensen who we just can't seem to beat and got knocked out. Fine with me less games helped us in our promotion run. Squad: CA & Overview: I'm still frustrated that 3 of my best players are GKs, two of whom I have been sending out on loan their whole careers. Data Hub: We did well offensively (of course) but our defensive performance wasn't the greatest. Didn't help we lost our RB to a season ending injury early in the season so had to play the much poorer backup. Statistics Excel: Yeah this will mater again next year when we actually have to work on fighting teams better than us week in and week out. Transfers: Youth Academy Note: Because of our financial situation the Academy is basically dead right now. The board slashed the investment into the Youth Academy from 160k p/y to less than 50k p/y and since we have Poor facilities there's very little hope of anything resembling talent being generated. Youth Intake Preview: Youth Intake: YI Player Highlights: Didn't even bother they were so bad. Academy Data: I was so furious at the intake I didn't even export it into the CA calculator so I just have Country & Personality data for this year. HOYD: Can I really blame him for this mess? Best XI: Head Coach Club Still think we will be going into administration even though we will be in our new ground next year and hypothetically will make more money up a tier in the pyramid. Honestly, kind of curious what administration is like in FM as I've never managed to implode financials this badly (even in Belgium!) Almost 100% of that loss is due to the debt payments which have ballooned to over 50% of the annual expenditure. This new stadium better be worth it… Supporters: Manager Thoughts We finally did it. I have been slowly chipping away at this save as I knew it was just a matter of time before we could finally break through the insane bottleneck that is the Oberliga down in the German Lower Leagues. Next season I'm more worried about financial club failure than relegation. As a reference, this is what the Regional Division we will be joining looked like. Notice our old foes Hamm United & Bambek-Ulhenhorst are doing very well and mostly competitive with the B-Teams. And for the Season Preview the bookmakers hate us, but we easily beat Neumunster to get here so I'm not quite as worried Finally get that T5 trophy. Good riddance Oberliga!