WhiteCat33

FC Elazig Spor Hamburg Season 13 2035-36 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 | 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: Would this 12th year in the Oberliga be our time to escape? Elazigspor had a fantastic season, which included a 29 match unbeaten run that was only broken by the recently relegated Wandsbek during an injury crisis that saw both their star offensive players [AML Assist & Scoring Striker] out for 2 months resulting in an anemic 0-1 loss. Hamburg's Turkish squad bounced back and combined with some fortunate dropped points found themselves top of the table after 32 of 36 Matches played: Lots of high-goal results for us inched our GD up close to Hamm United's +69. With one more win we were left with the final 3 matches of the season. Whoever was in charge of scheduling for the Oberliga must have wanted a true title fight because we had to play ALL 3 other Title Challengers to end the season: Win and we are Champions [and then able to fight in playoffs for promotion], lose any game and its a likely additional year down in T5. Match 1 – Home vs Ottenen [4th] We give up an early breakaway goal to their league-leading striker early in the 18’ but we equalize with our captain Can in the 29. There was hardly anything of quality for either side the rest of the match we seriously failed to penetrate into their box and only had 3 shots all game. We have to do much better in the next match against Hamm and really win if we want to take the title. Match 2 – Away vs Hamm [1st] This is the game to win. If we don’t win this game we can’t win the championship especially with that draw last week. Everyone is available and fit so its up to them to put in a performance of the season. They score early in the 14’ off a short throw play where we didn’t mark the backpost properly. In first half stoppage time our LB makes an awful mistake fouling in the box to give them a penalty which they convert. Brutal they have scored 2 of their 3 shots on target. Second half I change my CAM to my SS instead of AP and just 50 seconds into the first half his speed makes them commit a defensive error in the box and gifts us a FK just at the top of the box but we can’t convert.53’ they hit us on the counter and just slice through like butter and score.62’ they get a straight redcard and I throw it all forward to see what we can manage. 92’ we get a goal on a corner, but its way too little too late from an offense that just wasn’t good enough and a defense that couldn't hold them back. Match 3 – Home vs Meindorf We get an early goal in the 20’, but Hamm are up 2-0 aggainst their soft opponents so it doesn’t matter. We coast to the victory in the second half but its hollow as we won’t get the title. End of season table: Can Hamm finally get themselves promoted: Yes! Only silver lining is now we won't face them next year and its one-less challenger to contend with. Cup: Quarter Final As you can imagine i prioritized the league so when we had a match against Meindorf in the quarters they dominated our reserves 3-1. Hamm won the whole thing to do a T5 Double with the big surprise of the tournament being Lower League Croatia Hamburg (which does generate Croatian players) making the Semi-Final Squad: CA & Overview: Big development this year was the improvement of our DLP Ilyas Altun translating into good performances finally. Also our WBL Bartu Bascar becoming 'too good' for us with his Bundesliga 3 Potential actually a possibility if he continues to train well considering he now he is a top 3 player for us. Naturally our GK, AML & STC are all still Data Hub: Statistics Excel: No need, the team is too-good for the league now so its pretty clear our stars are doing just fine. Transfers: The important loans are both my #2 & #3 GKs getting valuable first-team experience. Tunahan Senol played for the Bremen OL Champion squad (who you saw in the North Playoffs for Hamm) so that means he did very well. Then Adam Seman went to his native Slovakia to play in teh lower-leagues. His performances caught the attention of the Slovakian National team and he gets the award of being our first Youth International (even if it was a match to forget) Development-wise the Loans seem to have done their job as all 4 players improved this year even with some questionable ratings Youth Academy Youth Intake Preview: Well that’s not good... Youth Intake: Yikes... The fact we still have Poor Youth Facilities is readily apparent in this intake. YI Player Highlights: Academy Data: Using the CA Calculator we see this intake full top 5 average is still in the same range as usual however this intake continues the very obvious downtrend in talent of our top-intake player. That line is undeniable and is (IMO) the most important piece of data as we all know it is that 'star talent' that can make the difference. HOYD: He finally agreed to get an additional coaching badge and it improved his JPA/JPP again! I know my intakes aren't good right now and you can see the bad trend lines in the 'top talent' production but the club is broke and we still have essentially minimum facilities. Until we are flush with cash again and can consider upgrading I don't think I can find a natural HOYD who would be better than this guy who I think is slowly adapting to the HOYD role. Head Coach Club Finances This is grim we lost almost 600k dollars this year! And why may you ask? DEBT SPIRAL! This may be my first club to see administration... Manager Thoughts We absolutely need to get promoted. The new stadium, which I think will bankrupt the club, should be finished this summer so we will see what (if any) difference 5000 seats make vs 1000. Can't see it being a 6M dollar difference but what do I know. I am very happy that Hamm got themselves promoted and out of our hair combined with no Hamburg sides getting demoted so next year we have again one less strong competitor to topple.

Registration Bug Loses all my August Progress Well it's a good thing I haven't posted August yet because it's all getting erased. I'm furious. On deadline day I saw that Wolfsburg were willing to send Kevin Paredus out on loan for a reasonable amount that we had space for in the salary cap and I made the deal. However when he came in and it happened on deadline day for some reason it unregistered MY ENTIRE SQUAD and there is an issue with the end of the transfer deadline day in the MLS where you don't get the notification to finalize your roster. It just is what it is you can't adjust anything. It may be because the day after deadline day we played the Campeones Cup match so the game only thought to register players for that match (which anyone can play in so there is no registration) so automatically unregistered my whole squad? I really don't get it. And of course I hadn't saved the game since August 2nd. Like you shouldn't ever be able to have 0 players registered because there is a minimum roster size of 15 so this is a major glitch. And here is the solid month we just had. Yes, we got knocked out of the US Open but our league play was great and more importantly Austin absolutely crashed in the league this month. Austin's record was absolutely abysmal: Which set us up great for retaining the Supporters Shield: Maybe its the USA lower leagues mod that touches the cup competition and is glitching out the MLS transfer windows? Like should the MLS have the deadline day system, because I haven't had that all save. I'm almost positive @V50 your Continental additional file only touches the NACL cup and not any of the other continental competitions so shouldn't be causing something like this to happen. My last save point is on August 2nd; thank god I do monthly(ish) saves. Just pissed I didn't save before the September international break like I usually do. Instead I waited till the end of the transfer window which of course doesn't help me here.

If anyone wants to use my statistical spreadsheets, I've uploaded the current version: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/z6k77x3z9wj9z/WhiteCatStats Here is my post talking about it in my MLS Career Thread: I also attached a blank version of my YAC tracking sheet, which is super rough but if its helpful for you go for it. I haven't given up on Hamburg, just am swinging between the two saves right now depending on what kind of FM experience I'm feeling. FM YAC Blank.xls

Link to the Spreadsheet! Yes, I know I mentioned at the start of all this I'd make the spreadsheet available, and while I sort of did with a link back in the YAC I have procrastinated fully sharing it. Mainly it is because I am regularly making changes to it and trying to do better at making it less laggy. Because of all the recursive array formulas do expect there to be some delays when you change any of your selections like League, Club & Top 3 Clubs. Check the bottom of your excel spreadsheet and you'll see the % progress, if this keeps going up its not frozen just working. I've done most the building of the spreadsheet on a whatever laptop that's about 2 years old. Really, this should work fine as long as you're not playing on a toaster. For Excell compatibility this was built in Excel Home-Student 2019. In every instance possible I've used the legacy version of formulas so this should work for earlier editions and of course will be fine if you have a newer version / using Microsoft 365. Mediafire Link: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/z6k77x3z9wj9z/WhiteCatStats WhiteCatStats The spreadsheet I am using currently in this save is "WhiteCatStats". I've explained the parts of the spreadsheet at the start of this career story. I'll do my best to link them here to put this all in a convenient place. I've uploaded 2 versions of the spreadsheet. "STLC 2025" includes all of the exports and is set up how I use it to evaluate St Louis & MLS. "Big 5 2025" has only the export for the Big 5 Leagues Tiers 1 - 3 for the 2025 season. I have both loaded this into "data" and left the tab with the raw-export. First off here is one of the first paragraphs in the introductory post linking all the initial construction posts I made in Youth Academy Challenge Thread: Second, here are links back to the posts in this thread where I discussed how to use the tool. Setting up View, Import Data & Basic Overview of Summary Tables: Example of using Stats to Evaluate Year-End Performance (2023 Season 1) FM Stag Table Tab Secondary Scouting Data CA Calculations This is a secondary spreadsheet I made and use during my Youth Academy Challenges. This will calculate a reasonably accurate Current Ability rating for your players both including their Week Foot ability as well as if that was set to the minimum value. It also will create a flat ratings out of 100 for the highlighted abilities by position. It currently is just set up for a 4-2-3-1 but I'll go back and update it for all positions...eventually This will use my modified version of the "FMStats" view and has an identical manner of exporting and importing the data that I use in my Statistics Spreadsheet. Here is what it looks like. Note this squad is in the German Oberliga (T5) so we aren't dealing with world-beaters here.

At least you're at the big stadium so it should generate fat gate receipts

North American Gold Cup Here are some of the inbox messages for my players performances. Best looking was easily J Lowe who was a key part of Jamaica's group stage success, though Harper did his job in midfield as well. Henry got some games for Canada, but I didn't take the screenshots. He was just okay. In the knockouts Jamaica ended Martinique's magical run and then were stopped in a close game with the USA Like usual it will be Mexico vs USA in the final. And unless Dike or Tillman score in that match Jamal Lowe might be the highest scorer of the tournament and almost certainly will have the highest average rating! Potential for International Management? Now that I've won the NACL I believe its fair to allow Mr. Manager the opportunity to manage national teams. Before the Gold Cup started Martinique were without a manager, but because we hadn't won the NACL (yet) I didn't go for the job. Shame they filled it when they did as that could have been a really exciting adventure. However, there soon may be two very appealing Caribbean National Team Jobs due to poor Gold Cup Performances. Both Haiti and Trinidad & Tobago have reasonable talent playing overseas. Haiti especially have lots of dual-national players that could be fun to try and convince to play for their lower-ranked nationality. I'll keep watching these and will update if we pickup one of the jobs. Haiti have already been knocked out of World Cup Qualifiers (By Cuba of all teams), so just have friendlies to rebuild the squad for nations league. Trinidad on the other hand still have a chance in WCQ as they are in the group-phase, but have a big hill to climb after that 4-0 loss at home to Suriname Chances are they won't get fired until after the Qualifiers, but I can still declare interest! Apparently I'd be a "Leading Candidate" so we will see, its been so long since I've played a national team it will be yet another learning experience. Also will be a great time to test choosing players based on current form over ability. Update: I had to play our first game in August before the Gold Cup Final occurred and it seems none of the American strikers played well because Jamal Lowe is MVP & Golden Boot Winner! He also had the 2nd best goal of the tournament And made the Tourney Best XI. What a performance for our man!

July 2025 - Season 3 Month 5 This month we get our European Reinforcements midway through, so there will be some growing pains as we work at least 3 new starters into the squad. With the Chamberlain season-ending injury I'll also be looking at who else has been released by clubs overseas to pick up another offensive player. July Match 1: MLS Home vs Real Salt Lake Full strength squad today that are actually feeling fine. July Match 2: MLS Home vs LA Galaxy Rotated as many players as I could but the squad is super slim right now as I wait for my summer transfers to arrive. Here are the options to move matches because of the Gold Cup: I’m going to postpone the Seattle match for sure, but keep the DC Match (they are one of the worst teams in the league). I’ll also keep the US Open match as their star GK is on the Curacao team, and we can field a decent enough squad to start. Here are all our Gold Cup players: July 7th International Transfer Window Opens Can we make it work this time? Here is our Salary Cap And the transfers in face-cap are at 37k but I’ve done my best to make sure it is bought down with GAM (as we have a ton of it) but we will see if that actually triggers correctly Of course not 2 of 4 failed which is ridiculous, but thankfully the game is letting me fix the De la Fuente transfer. The issue with the MLS is even though it says in the transfer negotiations you can pre-buy down the contract with GAM for whatever reason that doesn't happen when the transfer goes through. Maybe its a bug? It's annoying either way because it limits how many free-transfers you can stack up coming in from Europe as they all hit simultaneously and will trigger this over-cap situation. Here is me Buying down the contracts as I intended to do to make room for Konrad De la Fuente who then I was easily able to complete the signing of. So all in all not nearly as bad as last year. Just will have to re-do the GK signing, who ended up costing me way more GAM/Cap space than I anticipated which is frustrating: why does he cost 7,750 p/w cap when he has a 2,100 p/w salary!? This just blew 450k of GAM for no reason which pisses me off. This means he will spend lots of time out on loan for us as I don’t want to be spending that much to register a reserve GK every season. Edit Note: When the transfer window happened I hadn't put Chamberlain on SEI yet. Had I done that there wouldn't have been any registration headaches as we would have had a huge amount of Cap-Room available and I wouldn't have needed to buy down Jean-Baptiste salary. Doh! Free Agent Backup CM With the Chamberlain injury we really need depth at CM and in Andre Fortunue I found a perfect backup player. He went to Estonia and was absolutely on fire in their league, which is lower level than us but he's coming off 2 great seasons and because of that has been getting callups to T&T. If we look at the scout report he has 4 awesome traits for us: High Consistency, High big Match, High flair and good speed. This fits perfectly for our CM-A role even if the scouts absolutely hate him Even better he will accept the Senior Minimum Salary Contract! (and has US second nationality so isn’t a foreign player). Just a 1.5 year deal is perfect for a cover midfielder is exactly what the doctor ordered. Remaining July Matches: Match 4 MLS – Away vs DC United Lineup due to international duty + Injury: Weakness here is in the CM as we will be already testing our new T&T signing as the playmaker as well as our other 3 new players. Let’s see how our acquisitions perform. Match: Now we get a 2 week break for the Gold Cup to return at the end of July to take on the league leader Austin FC who lucky us we get to play twice this year! Unfortunately, we lose Powell to injury while on Jamaican duty, guess he will be back for after the summer cup series. Here we get the League Cup draw which bumps our Austin Match so we will end the month against Colorado: July Match 5 – League Cup Away Colorado Lineup: Match: July Summary & Standings: Upcoming Schedule for August: Losing in the League Cup is honestly a blessing for our players as we are already congested enough in August. We have two matches against the top team in the league 10 days apart. Those will be our first team squads as I'd like to get another piece of silverware this year in the US Open. That will mean rotation against Seattle which is a strong team. We then end the month against the City Group NYC outfit who are doing very well this year in the MLS. 4th and Final Free Agent Signing: We end the month with a 4th free agent signing from Europe now that we have lost another player to injury. With a very low 4M Fee Release Clause Buchanan was willing to come in on a Senior contract instead of a Designated one. Tajon Buchanan (Canada – Main / Jamaica) He didn’t really succeed in his move to Europe especially since I don’t have Belgium loaded, but he is currently playing for the Candian national team and did well in the Gold Cup. Again, free agent signings I can be more loose on because I should be able to sell him for 4M considering its basically half of what he got to go to Europe the first time just a couple years ago. Similarly in 2023-24 he played 5 games for Canada and had 2 Assists and 1 POM, which to me shows some good big match ability This gives me another star AMR player who then can rotate with Konrad with J Lowe moving permanently to striker and my Curacao player being the 3rd rotational sub for all 3 attacking positions I had another option in the Trinidad International Levi Garcia but he has serious injury prone-ness issues specifically with his Hamstrings and the last thing I need is another injury prone player.

June 2025 - Season 3 Month 4 I've already played through June into July so there will be a lot of matches to update here. June Match 1 – MLS Home vs Montreal International Callups: Another strong window of callups for us with 2 US Under 19 players which is great. June Match 2 – Home vs Atlanta United Mostly rotated side here. Match 3: US Open Cup Away – Memphis You can only play 5 foreign players in the US Open, so this is a chance to play a lot of our younger backups to see how they can do. June Match 4: MLS Home vs Colorado Back to mostly 1st team players. June Match 5: Away Charlotte FC Rotation squad for this match with an international bent as we have a cup match right after this. June Match 6: US Open 5th Round – Home vs Sporting Kansas City (Rivalry!) I’m playing a strong side for this match (at least as much as allowed with max 5 foreign players) June Match 7: MLS Home vs San Diego Injury Pain This has been bad all season with the number of injuries but we really feel the pain here. Both of my 2 DP are out injured with the SAME AWFUL INJURY! That’s ~200k p/w in wages just up in smoke while they are out, which is almost half our payroll. Thankfully Chamberlain’s isn't totally destroying his ability like Bobby Reid's has. Reid's contract is up in December and I've already let him know he's leaving on a free, but will try and get a European side to take him early even if we have to pay half the wages as he can't be registered. That's 2 of my 3 star strikers/AMCs gone... What a downer to end the month of July on. We have now lost our 2nd DP to the same injury. Performance-wise it really is only the Away loss to Charlotte where we absolutely flubbed a match. Yes the San Deigo draw was disappointing, but we still got at least one point. How are we doing in the league now? We are doing well to make the playoffs but it seems Austin will be running away wit the Supporters Shield this year. Injuries are killing us this season. In the Cups, we have already won the NACL and have advanced to the QF of the Us Open. We will see how the League cup goes shortly as that will be the test of our new players. What’s in store for us in July? Honestly not the worst though we do have 3 games in 7 days to start the month. Also the Gold Cup is happening this year so I expect things to get re-arranged as well as there is the League Cup that will pickup at the end of July. No rest for the wicked! Youth Intake Preview: I've played enough YAC to know this is almost always a lie, but hey a guy can dream

May 2025 - Season 3 Month 3 As reminder here is our packed May. Naturally the priority will be to win the NACL Final even though that will mean most likely sacrificing points against Austin who are league leaders this year. May Match 1 MLS: Home vs Chicago Fire This is almost full rotation with the exception of my CMs due to injury. Match 2 – Away Minnesota Match 3 – Away Houston Dynamo Full rotation as we prep for the first Tigres games. Match 4 – NACL Final 1st Leg – Home vs Tigres Lineup: Match: We are pressing great today keeping them on the back foot and that with our counter yields results in the 17’ with J Lowe driving down the right side and playing it for Harper making the attacking run out of midfield who gives us an early lead. However in the 23’ they come back with their own run from deep that catches Henry overloaded and they score. Chamberlain is having trouble getting his shots on frame but J Lowe isn’t with him sitting perfectly at the far post in the 37’ to get himself on the score sheet. We go into halftime dominating the match and I want to keep pushing to get us a better goal cushion to defend in Mexico. Our pushing finally pays of in the 73’ with our numbers in the box overwhelming their defense and J Lowe finding that final ball. We hold on at the end and they have one good chance, but hardly threatened us this game. Now to defend the 2 goal cushion. Match 5 – MLS Home vs Austin FC Full rotation for this game as next up is the NACL Final 2nd leg, so let’s see how the backups can do. I’m fully expecting to drop points as Austin are a solid team. Match 6 – NACL Final 2nd Leg – Away Tigres Lineup: Our going 1st Team. Why change what worked so well in the first encounter! Match They make a grievous early error giving us a penalty just 2 minutes into the match. Unfortunately Harper duffs it so we don’t’ get an even better lead. 18’ though Ainsworth makes up for it getting a wide service from our WB-L form the right side after a FK and finishing it perfectly. My WB-L Familo-Castilo is having a great game as he serves in a FK from wide to Henry’s head to give us a 2-0 first half lead in Mexico! We roar into the 2nd half with a deep service up to Bacuna making his attacking run out of CM to get us a 3rd goal. I make some subs which brings Chamberlain back to playmaker and John-Jules comes on and he gets himself a goal within minutes. 58’ we gift them a penalty and Burki comes up with the stop so its even on missed penalties for the match. 62’ they pull one back, but we still have a 5 goal lead. WE ARE THE NORTH AMERICAN CHAMPIONS! Unfortunately we get yet another injury for our small side with another player out for an extended period Match 7 MLS – Away vs NY RB Mostly a rotation squad again to recover some starters from the NACL fixtures. Match 8 – Away Toronto FC Lineup- First team even though they are all under heavy congestion right now. Match 9 – Away LAFC Mostly rotational squad here to save up for the big match right after this. NACL Awards & Such The NACL was the J Lowe show with 6 goals and 6 assists in just 8 matches, which is insane and a well-deserved Golden Ball. While Bacuna was the initial season first awesome acquisition, J Lowe is turning into the best free agent signing as he's the absolute perfect AMR for this level. I also got my coaching badge As well as am in the USA Head Coach Hall of Fame (seems early to me) Trophy Cabinet: June 2025 (Season 3 Month 3) Review: So another month down, how did we do? I mean lets be real we won the NACL while keeping up fairly good form in the MLS making this a fantastic month! Yes we lost against two strong teams but those were expected losses due to purposeful full rotation to be fresh to win the continental title. Really only the Minessota game stands out as a disappointment as we should have been better defensively to get the win away. How’s our league standing? Not bad at all as we are just 2 games behind the lead clubs in our division. I knew we would drop points during the continental fixtures thankfully everyone else did as well. What's our June look like? We start our US Cup run; Can STLC secure yet another trophy for the club!?

Striker Statistics Figured I'd update with Striker Statistics to round-out the above post. Here J Lowe gets included as he's a natural STC, but I play him almost entirely as the AMR because he just does so well from the wide position. You'll see in the comparisons. His providing statistics blows any other natural striker out the water, and he still puts up reasonable Goals/90 from out wide and actually has a lot of on-target shots. The lower conversion I take to the fact that most of his attempts are at a lower-quality angle as he's cutting in from the right. The surprise is his heading % is excelent for strikers in the MLS at 49%. AMR To really understand J Lowe's ability he needs to be compared against AMRs. Since he played so much for us and the other AMRs had injuries he is the only to get included in the full dataset so we can look at just the summary statistics table. One change I've made is to switch from the full crossing statistic to the open-play crossing statistic. This should remove Corners & Wide free-kicks from the data. Display Error: Top 3 OP Cross Attempts & Completes are backwards. Of all the statistics the only one where J Lowe is below the "Top 3" is his Conversion % that is just 21% vs the 38% for the other three top players. However if you look at any of the MLS groupings he is well above the league which is between 11-13%. Because he is so dominant as the AMR I refuse to move him up to striker and that is why I'm looking for a new player. AML Here we don't have the same situation of an out-and-out star and have done a lot more rotation especially since our young talent Ainsworth has high injury-proneness. Anoyingly, because J Lowe is also natural at AML he is included here as well, so we will have to look at the individual statistics to really get a sense of how the left wing is doing. Marshall isn't having a good season, but it's not entirely his fault. Due to the number of CM/DM injuries he has had to move into CM-A for a lot of those minutes where he can play, but is not nearly as good as he is up in the attacking third. Ainsowrth however is doing very well this year as the provider pair to J Lowe. His crossing is fantastic and he has good shooting accuracy, but just the lower-league average conversion rate of 11%. Left Wing Changes for Summer Transfers July 7th we will be getting 2 star upgrades for both positions on the left wing who I intend to play as my 1st choice pairing and it will change the formation slightly due to their strengths. Here are the 3 players, the CB will be my #3 choice, so we won't discuss him now. Jay Dasilva is fully capable of being an AML, so is skilled enough to be a Complete Wingback for us and probably will set him on Attack a lot of the time. Konrad De la Fuente is right-footed with the 'cuts inside from left' player trait so is perfect to be an Inverted Winger designed to be overlaped by the Welsh international winger coming out of defense. Here is my current main formation strategy. It is a balanced attack formation though the skill differences in my wingers leads to generally a left-service situation with the right-side being more dribble-shoot players. The "Personalized" roles denote the tweaks that I'll be making. I'll change my DM to Defend and add all the 'hold position' instructions as well as change my right back into a less aggressive FB-S with a couple more conservative player-instructions (take fewer risks, shorter passes). Then on the left I'll start with just the natural overlap of a CWB-A on top of an IW-A. I don't see the need to add the overlap instruction on that wing as that will push the IW-A starting position into the path of Bacuna running in from midfield creating a bottleneck for us. Also this way maybe we can see some short passing play between the CWB & IW. These changes will still make sure that J Lowe is getting his left-service but it will be coming from the defender instead and we should have an additional target crashing the box now. Ideally this should translate into more goals with now 3 attackers in deep of the box with 2 trailing CMs at the top of the box. Three holding DM/CBs with a less agressive FB should be enough to prevent the counter over the top. We will see when the new talent arrives.

Scouting for Goalkeepers it has been a never-ending quest for a young developmental goalkeeper to bring into the squad. With Burki's age [34] he has 2-3 more seasons before he retires and while Austin [26] is fine, he will never be a star GK for the MLS. Luckily for us both of these GKs have American Citizenship/Green Card and count as domestic players, so I don't mind hunting for a European player to bring over as a development target. I've played into late May so we have hit the mark for a spreadsheet update! While I haven't been playing the save much the past couple weeks, I have been tweaking the tool here and there with a lot being cleaning up earlier errors. One very visible change is adding additional statistics to my export leading to a major upgrade of what I'm showing for Goalkeepers. As you can see with the errors for the "MLS" bar and the "Top 3" not fully implemented there is still work to be done, but there is enough working here to better evaluate Burki and keep an eye on how his degrading physicals due to age impacts his performance. Roman Burki Compared to the other Top 3 team GKs I have to say Burki is still doing okay. He no longer is the master at xGP that he was, but he is playing more games than these other guys and is still showing comparable performance. Watching the red/green arrows he is improving his mental/skill game while his physicals are degrading. I'm also sending him on coaching courses and fully intend to transition him into the backroom staff when he decides to retire. Brandon Austin (USA/England/US Virgin) Unfortunately, with his injury Austin doesn't make the minutes threshold to get included in the data-rip. However, I can import all STLC players into the "Scouted" secondary dataset and view him that way. This part of the spreadsheet is very rough, but it has the data. I'm hiding rows/columns to make the screenshots useful here. With this data it suggests that Austin is playing on-par with Burki even if it is only for 7 matches this season. He is still out injured, and the plan is when he is fit he will get to see if he's good enough to get us some Cup trophies in the League Cup & US Open Cup. Domestic USA Goalkeepers Its very possible that Chicago Fire are developing yet another Slonina. My scout report on him is ancient, so I've lost all the details and will update when we get more info, but his performance for their academy team & that ability range has me very interested. He has US Vigrin Islands second nationality, so maybe if I took that national team job I could get both my GKs to switch! Naturally as a domestic & Home Grown player he would be the ideal target and very well could overtake Austin in a few years. I'll be watching him like a hawk to see if Chicago promote him and then look to do a major trade to get him into the club. European Young Goalkeepers There are 3 young GKs in Europe who have me very interested. Two are still too young to be willing to come to the US [17], but one is actually interested and would be a very reasonable acquisition. I'll start with the 'maybe later' guys first: Shurwendel Merencia (Netherlands/Curacao) - Sparta Rotterdam Currently still costly to acquire, but once he turns 18 and his contract begins running down I think he will be very cheap to get into the club. He is the lowest of interest to me especially since he is Unambitious Franciano Daunay-Cotellon (France/Martinique) - Strassbourg Either footed & Very Consistent are nice touches for a GK He's not valued super highly by Strausbourg (and isn't displaying the potential) but I could see that moving up especially if he gets gametime as a young GK. Romain Jean-Baptiste (France/Martinique/Guadalupe) - FC Metz This 19 year old is very interested in joining us and will take a MLS-Minimum senior contract to do it, which is perfect for a backup GK. Love the consistency and adaptability. He's "balanced" personality, but with two Fairly Professional GKs to mentor him I can see that getting improved. As long as Metz stay under 1M and are open to me staggering the payments this could be a very reasonable pickup for now while I wait for the American talent to get promoted into the MLS. Statistcs-wise he's only playing for the U18 team and hasn't gotten promotted to the B-Team yet so only unloaded-basic info to go off of. Negotiations Could I have gotten him a little cheaper? Maybe but 500 structured +100 when he makes league appearances seems fairly reasonable for a young prospect especially considering the dearth of GK options available for us with any kind of potential. A tight release-clause and unfortunately he didn't want to be locked into a long deal/contract extensions but 2.1 is just above the minimum for a senior contract so he's almost as cheap as possible for us. If he trains well then he can earn another contract, which should line-up with the sunset of Burki's career. English Backup Then there is Coniah Boyce-Clarke who has just finished a spell down in League 2 on loan to Crawley from Reading. He is older at 22 so has less up-side, but is actually 'game-tested' with a League 2 season now under his belt. Unfortunately for him he played at a poor squad that finished 17 of 24 with a -7 GD, so he was battered in the net. My data-set is only down to League 1 and I don't think I'll do a full England additional download just for him. Unfortunately, talking to his agent its likely Reading will want way too much for what he's worth. He could be a good emergency GK loan option though if things get worse with injuries here.

Scouting for Strikers With an injury that sadly signals the end of the Bobby Reid era at STLC I am on the hunt for a new development striker to bring into the club. Here I want a high potential U20 striker with the idea that I can sign them onto a U22 Development contract (off-budget) or if they are really good onto a Y-DP contract, which is a lower cap-hit than a regular DP contract. Issue is, no high-potential youngsters from Europe want to come to the MLS (go figure) and unfortunately even with scouring the Caribbean over and over again I have yet to find another Ainsworth hiding in one of the domestic leagues. Our Current Striker: Tyreece John-Jules First, we should establish our baseline striker, who has been a fantastic acquisition for us. I found him rotting in the Arsenal youth ranks, but showing that he could hit hard at those levels. As he was under 22 I could sign him on a U-22 Development contract which is an off-book contract thus he doesn't count against the salary cap. It helps you take these risks on young players. He has been a very good striker for us thus far this season and excels coming off the bench due to his speed and 'beats offsides' player trait. Where he really shines is in his development and its in the coach report. He's basically as good of a striker as you can hope for as a generic MLS player (non-DP) his one big drawback is he isn't reliable for big matches but his being either-footed makes up for it as he finishes chances form both sides. His contract is a slight issue as he only has till the end of next year on his U22 off-book contract. We will have to sign him to a salary-hitting contract soon, but I have to say he will be worth it. Striker Targets So, first the hunt is into the MLS academies for trade-targets for when the parent clubs finally decide to bring them up. With how the MLS drafts have been lately I'd much rather part with my picks for some of these academy players who actually have a chance of making it for us. The annoying part is that until the player is promoted from the academy we can't even make trade-deals on them so its a wait and watch situation. Rolland Bennet - Colorado Rapids Academy Here is my favorite option. Good personality & Fairly consistent as well as technical, which is good for a DLF. And, like we want to see he is doing damage against these youth defenses and really should have been brought up by the Rapids way sooner I have no idea why they have waited. I'll be back to update this once I re-scout all the academy players. I hate how you lose all knowledge of these guys after so many days, which is why I have a bunch of shortlists holding players indefinitely. If we expand the search to the whole range of players we have scouted there are 618 strikers we know about If I want to be a money-ball manager then what are our soon to be expired contracted players: For this I remove the '5 games' requirement as a lot of these will be reserve/youth players. Unfortunately diving through these none are really that interesting, so I'll spare the details. Looking at this another direction, I recently scouted all of the Caribbean national team players under 23 to see what new talents are being called up to represent the region. While some have been added to a shortlist, its easier just to go to my "Scouted" view and limit the search of players to an age range. This way I'll also pick up the other just general players with Caribbean nationality being scouted due to where I've sent all my scouts. Good number of these players are European and don't want to join us but let's take a look through the scouts favorites, specifically strikers: First interesting player is Jacen Russell-Rowe who is a backup at Columbus. He could be an easy domestic pickup and would be HG as he came out of the Toronto Academy. Nothing too crazy performance-wise here as he's just featured in a couple matches for Columbus He's got two of the key green traits I like to see, consistent & likes big matches. High bravery never hurts and having some speed is a good sign. A player who turned me down over the summer is Devon Edwards who opted for Shefield United over us. And then Omari Benjamin is at Arsenal and has no interest in joining us. Both are lower CA but higher potential as they are 18 & 19. Khayon Edwards is another "A rated" prospect who seems to have good ability and potential. Big issue is that red consistency, but the fact he has speed and versatility is valuable for us. And unfortunately he has done very poorly in League 1, which isn't a good sign for us even if we are looking for a development striker especially if he wants anywhere near that wage range. Jahmari Clarke provides a big-man option and he's been just okay for Reading this save in the championship. Mason Burstow hasn't done too well at Oxford, and is too highly valued with his Newcastle contract for us to make a move

April 2025 - Season 3 Month 2 I took some time off from the save after that last month. However, of course I couldn't stay away for long and am back with another month of STLC vs the MLS congested schedule - our true nemesis. Cruz Azul Away – NACL Lineup: Match Highlights: All my internationals return for the second leg thank god, but its still going to be tough to recover a 2 goal deficit even if it’s the home leg. Meanwhile my players are facing off against eachother in WCQ And against other nations, with J Lowe having a great game against Honduras Actually glad so few played in the match as they should be mostly fit for our game with the exception of J Lowe and Bacuna. Can we win our 100th game? Cruz Azul - Home NACL QF Second Leg Match Highlights: However we have some really bad news, D-Reid is out for the rest of the regular season. Means I won’t be able to sell him either as no one will buy a broken player. Question is what to do about it injury reserve-wise. I could try the disable 6, but hypothetically that has to be re-engaged every 6 games and can only be used 3 times per player per season [not sure if this is implemented correctly in game]. Or I can put him on Season Ending Injury (like I did for Burki for Year 2) with the intention of selling him over the summer. The key that I learned from that fiasco is that I haven't put the "Guaranteed Contract Clause" for D-Reid so I can actually benefit from having him on the disabled list. I opted for SEI with the intention of selling him back to England during the Summer Window as he should be recovered by the end of it. Luckily for us we didn't pay much for him (425k) so even if we end up having to let him go via domestic trade its not a big loss. Here is our Current Salary Cap with Bobby Reid before making him disabled: Here itis after putting D-Reid on SEI - remember he is a Designated Player so they take up a very large Salary Space. We get San Jose next in the NACL and fun times its in April so we have 4 additional games this month on top of the 5 regular season games. Nutso MLS Match 1: LA Galaxy Away Full rotation for this except for Chamberlain who was off early last game. Match Report: MLS Match 2: Columbus Crew Home This will be a full 1st strength squad to hopefully get a win against a good side with our home advantage. Match 3 MLS – Nashville Home With the San Jose NACL games around the corner we are going 100% rotation for this home game NACL Semi Final: 1st Leg Home vs San Jose Here is the big game. I’ve moved Chamberlain up top as a False Nine to start with the intention to bring John-Jules on as a substitute in the second half as late speed. Thankfully Chamberlain has just a bruised shin so will be fully back for the return-leg in California \ MLS Match 4 – Away Real Salt Lake Full rotation for this match with John-Jules leading the line NACL Semi-Final 2nd Leg – Away San Jose Here we go, big game, can we keep our two goal lead? Month of March Recap So how was our 2nd month vs our first month? So much better with only 8 games to contend with we did well. Our 5-2 win at home against Cruz Azul was for sure the turning point for the team morale. Remember I ended Month 1 with a bunch of defeats and that win just catapulted the squad and the goals began flowing. What a 100th game for Mr Manager! What does it look like going forward for May? Another crazy congested month. 9 games means we have over 2 games a week all month. ] Because we will be playing our first NACL Final! and it is against Tigres, so a formidable Mexican opponent (though perhaps not the scariest)

FC Elazig Spor Hamburg Season 12 2034-35 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 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: 2 of 18 [Preview – 07/18 (50-1)] Again Hamm United are just way too good for this league and I truly hope they get promoted in the playoffs. My losses came to them both fixtures and then one each to Ottensen and Mendorf. The draws came from rotation to prioritize the cups. I'm glad to see our defensive performance is getting better and we are scoring more goals recording our best GD all save. How did Hamm do in the playoffs? Sadly not good enough so we will have to face them again next season Hamburg Cup: Runner Up We had a very easy draw up until the final where the league champion Hamm had dispatched two opponents from higher divisions to face off against us. We had an awful game and they got a simple 3-0 victory. Disappointed in the performance, but Hamm ran away with the league this year, so its not too shocking. DFB Pokal: 1st Round I about jumped out of my seat when our AMR scored an early goal against RB Leipzig and we did great for 85 minutes of the game. Unfortunately, the 5 minutes we did poorly at the end of the first half they scored 3 goals and easily sent us packing. I know this is true-to-life, but it sucks financially that in the 1st round all the lower league teams are automatically the home side. Our puny stadium only generated 12k in Gate Receipts Squad: CA & Overview: Big improvement this year for my GK Kuru & LB Basar. Basar + AML Sengul gives us have a dominant left side at this level. Big drop-off to the rest of the squad sadly with DM being a notable hole in the team that I can't seem to develop star talent. Ilyas Altun is the only possible player and he is slowly developing as a DLP, maybe next year will be his year to shine. Data Hub: Best XI Transfers: Almost nothing this year Youth Academy Youth Intake Preview: Not good Youth Intake: This time the intake reflected the preview and was utter garbage YI Player Highlights: Academy Data: I don't like to see that our top-player CA has settled back down to what it was before the YR & JR Coach upgardes. We've gained reputation since then with the Cup win, so we should be seeing an improvement in our Top CA players. If next year doesn't reverse the trend I will begin the process of replacing my HOYD, probably with one who prefers HOYD as his job. HOYD: He gained .5 Reputation this year. Still won't do a coaching badge but his JPA has increased to 9 now. He started with no desire to be a HOYD so I think that is slowly going up. I'm torn if I want to stick with this guy for a long haul since he is so young and there is significant room for improvement if he can just begin to like being a HOYD. Head Coach No awards or anything to note. Club Board We had a promotion from within in April this year. No investment or change in anything until the end of the season where the planning finally finished for our new grass stadium. To me this is very expensive for the size of the stadium. Financially now the club is in a precarious state with that massive of a loan being added. Finances: The debt is scary now. Even though we made money this year with the DFB game prize money, our Youth Academy costs doubled this year and now with this stadium loan we have $4M Debt, which is nuts for a T5 club. Supporters: Manager Thoughts The team is ready now to play up a tier and we need to get their ASAP before the finances implode. Unfortunately for us next year Wandsbek will be back down with us, but to show how strong Barmbek-Uhlenhorst were they are competing for runner-up in the division above us so I really think we should survive if we get promoted and hopefully that with our new stadium should slowly aim to repair the serious financial problems that are developing.

The FM Gods are laughing at us:

I'm still trying to figure it out completely. One word of warning is be careful when using TAM for winter signings. It seems negotiations are locked to the TAM of the current year not your outatanding balance. This means the money pot linked to the transfer will get deleted before the transfer finalizes in January resulting in it auto canceling. This blew up my key CB signing which I talk about in the start of this post. Once you get players on TAM buys its smooth sailing as they auto-renew every year and you don't have to mess with it. Combine that with some player sales and GAM crunches become a distant memory!

FC Elazig Spor Hamburg Season 11 2033-34 Oberliga Hamburg (Tier 5) Past Season Updates: It's been a few weeks since I played my Turkish journey in northern Germany, but I needed a break from the MLS and this team is just rocking down in the lower leagues. Here are all the previous posts of the first decade in Hamburg: Competitions League: 3 of 19 [Preview – 10/19 (50-1)] We did very well this season, but ultimately couldn't match the destructive offenses of Hamm United & Barmbek-Uhlenhorst to claim the top spot in the league. We "only" had a +47 GD, which was 10 & 20 less than these two teams respectively. Fair play to them. I'll accept the 3rd on GD and 5 points off the champion for this season. Humburg Pokal: CHAMPIONS! We did it! We will get to compete in the DFB Pokal next season to hopefully secure some free money as a top-flight punching bag. This competition was my absolute priority of the season because of the dire financial situation of the club. The win gave us a direct injection of $100k between Gate Reciepts & Prize money. Some Match Screenshots Squad: As it's been a minute since I've updated on Elazig I'll dive into a little more detail for the top players in the squad. CA & Overview: Here are my CA & Position Ratings for the best players in the squad. Annoyingly we have 2 GKs in the top 5, so I'll have to look into loans for Senol to make sure he actually develops instead of riding the bench for 90%+ of the season while Kuru is between the sticks. Star Players: E Sengul: Attacking Midfielder Left. Sengul is rated as a Regional Division Standard player (4th Tier) and his CA & Stats absolutely confirm that. He's awful at shooting, but his 28 assists for the season and only under-scoring his xG by 3 (11 vs 14.35) shows it really doesn't matter he has 1 long shot & 5 finishing. I have him on a 3+2 Year contract so I just have to hope the board don't screw me over with a nonsense sale due to our horrific financial situation. Stats: Mehmet Can: STRIKER. 34 goals across the league & cup with 7 assists is fire for a DLF. Thanks to his severe lack of speed I've been able to hang onto a striker whose skill is way beyond T5 and as the target of Sengul's services he does fantastic at converting them. Because I rotate my squad more his total Goals was only 3rd his Goals/90 was first at 1.05/90 (across all competitions). He also had a great aeiral performance as well as reasonably good providing stats. Big downside to him is the dark red big match performance, but luckily he over-came that this year. Levent Kuru: Goalkeeper. I am very happy with Kuru's performance and development. He up'd his Det enough to turn Resolute this year and he has dark green consistency, which is ideal for a GK. He's actually fast, which is odd and works well for him as a sweeper keeper. 16 Shutouts in 34 league games is very good considering how young the CBs are in front of him. Ergen Turan: Central Defender. Turan is really coming into his own now turning 18 and showing how that Professional personality is OP for development. Granted he has a long ways to go skill-wise, but being 6'5" and either-footed with 15 jumping reach and positioning & 16 bravery makes him a big man in our back line. Hopefully, we can fix that awful consistency, but he still did well for us Denny Pepe: Central Defender. My German/Italian dual-national CB has put in a better performance this year than I expected and paired excellently with Turan. He performed great in the air with 14.7 Headers W out of 16.5 Attempts which was the best in the league, and his 89% Heading Ratio is amazing. He also was a stellar interceptor reading the game well for this level. Transfers: Nothing really important, I'll also be letting a few more go over teh summer on frees back to Turkey. Best XI: Youth Academy Youth Intake Preview: Dire Preview Youth Intake: This was way better than I was expecting after that preview. Also the Caribbean followed me back to Germany with a Dominican Republic YI Player! YI Player Highlights: Academy Data: HOYD: Head Coach Club Finances: The club is in a debt-spiral that I hope entering into the DFB Pokal can solve next year. We will spend ~80k this year in debt servicing costs which is over 15% of our total yearly expenditure. Without the debt-fees we would be a profitable club and be able to actually invest in things. This year even with the 100k boost from the cup we will struggle to break even, which is not good. Facilities: At the end of last season the board said they were going to look to build a new stadium as we sell out our tiny 1000 person ground every match. I'm still waiting for the board to come back from the planning stage with an answer. Facilities tab suggests it will be ~4700, which is a small improvement bud hardly worth the money. I'll miss our distinctive Clay Pitch [Yes its Orange for any game highlight], but I think the boys have earned the "privilege" of playing on a grass field Supporters: Manager Thoughts It was a lot of fun to return to Hamburg and battle for the biggest fish in the smallest pond down in the German 5th Tier. The club has a great foundation set-up and has a decent young pipe-line to slowly bring the average players in the squad closer to the few break out stars I've developed already. Feels good to update the trophy Cabinet!

March 2024 - Season 3 Month 1 So how did we do in our first month of the wicked MLS congestion? Match 1: Home vs Cinci Match 2: NACL Municpal (GUA) Away Match 3: Home NY Red Bulls Match 4: NACL 2nd Leg – Home vs CSD Municpal NACL Next Draw: Cruz Azul (Mexico) Match 5: Philadelphia Away Late March International callups: All backup/rotation players so I’m not fused. I’m really excited my CM prospect Leibman got a US Youth Callup! Match 6: Away San Jose Match 7: Away Kansas City (Rivalry!) Match 8 – Away FC Dalas Second Batch of International Callups: Okay thankfully MLS won’t totally screw me over with international duty and are letting me postpone the Start of April Match due to so many starters being gone Look at that Jamaican Representation! Match 9: Inter Miami Away End of March Review: A month of two halfs here, I'm not too thrilled with our start to the campaign. Granted we had probably 3 of the hardest games of the season right here, but still my rotation strategy backfired spectacular on me in the 3 key games where we dropped 8 of 9 points. With this loss of form and morale we continued to drop points in the final 2 games we should have won even though they were all away. 5 away games in 16 days is a cruel schedule and I don’t understand why we would get that many in a row but that's how it is sometimes. Luckily the boys have responded well to a 'pick yourselves up' team-talk after this and are mentally ready to take on our Mexican opponent during the international window. April at least has home games? Bad news is the Cruz Azul games are during the international window so I am down 11 first team players... that will be interesting. Club Improvements: As YAC player, I can't help myself improving Youth Recruitment even if we are only developing a player or two out of each year's intake. A third July Free Transfer: I am looking to pick up Konrad De la Fuente on a free. His salary is somewhat high, but it’s a free and as an American International he is very valuable. I’ll be looking to move on some underperforming wingers to make salary room. He struggles to do well for OM, but has rocked it for OM2 in an unplayable league. Could see this as an opportunity to try and cash in on Bobby Reid especially if he starts to pick up more injuries / degrade in speed. Hopefully this time I can get the salary cap sorted properly prior to all 3 of these guys arriving so I don't bounce another transfer.

I've found in my save when I've utilized Targeted Allocation Money to bring players into the league from Europe it has let me get over the 50% theoretical max write-down when commiting to the payments in the contract negotiation. With your player that is some next level accounting Magic. Expect a large chunk of your next year gifted TAM to go to his buyout. For me the cap butout system is also glitchy as some players it won't let me buy down even though we have the money in the budget still.

2024 North American National Team Performance 2024 is an off-year for the Caribbean international calendar with the only competitive matches happening in early June for the NA Nations League, but I still want to highlight how our internationals are doing for their country before we really get into the 2025 Season. Luckily ESPN+ is actually airing the HSV match today, so this is perfect for an 'extended' lunch break. A general comment: Due to the MLS Playoffs occurring during the October International Window my best players were withdrawn from their National Teams resulting in fewer CAPs than usual. To get the performance statistics I'm loading a December 24th save-point. Jamaica - World Ranking 58 This is the most important nation for our club as it is the majority nationality of our players. So much that our "Core Social Group" is defined as primarily Jamaican players. Sadly, I can't say they had a particularly good season with losses to all 3 of the major North American teams. Yes, they won against all the small islands but a draw to Curacao has to be considered a poor performance in a goal-less June Window. Lucky for them it didn't impact their World Ranking too poorly ending the year at 58, right in the middle of their 55 - 61 recent range. STC Jamaican Players: 9 Primary Nationality + 4 Secondary nationality Bobby D-Reid: Just 1 start and 2 sub appearances in 2024 he had probably his worst International performance to date without a single goal contribution. this all occurred during the only truly difficult window so he didn't get an opportunity to beat up on small nations. Kevin Stewart: No Callup in 2024 Rekeem Harper: His form with Blackpool was good enough to have him included in the early squad, and then his success in MLS kept him a regular feature in 7 of 7 matches he was in the squad starting in 5 of them. Even playing primarily as a Mezzala while he did get good ratings he really only created a few chances and didn't show the goal-scoring threat he does for us as an AP-A. Jamal Lowe: With B Reid Lowe features as one of the primary striker choices for Jamaica playing almost exclusively as an AF. Unfortunately, it wasn't a good year for him as he only managed 1 goal against Guyana in September. At least that 2nd window he got better Av Rat than the disastrous June window. Alvas Powell: Unfortunately even though he was called up in June & September he was only used in a single match and he didn't do particularly well there against Canada. Alex Marshall: No Appearances in 2024 Chris Ainsworth: At only 19, Ainsworth was active in the U23's this year where he had two positive matches though Jamaica failed in their Olympic Qualifying. Kai Thomas: Called up to the U23 as well, but was an Unused Substitute. Paul Banton: Never Called Up. Curaçao - World Ranking 79th [Game High] As they didn't feature in the NA Nations League Finals, this was a year of friendlies for Curacao until Novemeber when they faced St Lucia in World Cup Qualifiers. They almost let a 2 Goal Agg lead slip away, but the 3-3 draw on the road gave them the victory to advance to the 3rd Round. They have a tough year ahead of them facing Jamaica, El Salvador and Honduras with only the best team advancing. They held Jamaica to a draw in June, can they pull off the upset to advance for the first time?? STLC Curacao Players: Juninho Bacuna: Easily my favorite player of the save, he has been great for his nation as a DM-BWM with 2 goals and 2 assists this year with 3 of 4 games recording a 7.5+ Av Rat. The reason he only played 4 games is because he was withdrawn by us in most of the windows due to it all being friendlies. Jeremy Antonisse: It is due to his good games in the June window that I noticed this free agent when checking up on Bacuna's national squad and decided to take a chance on this winger. Because I only discovered him then not all his games show-up in the form with only the 2 when he was a trialist at the club being record. 3 goals and 1 assists in 5 games is fantastic - even if it's against poor oppositions. Canada - World Ranking 42nd The extra-time defeat to the USA in the Nations League final had to hurt. However, you can't fault it being a pretty good season though the loss to Guadeloupe has to be seen as a dissapointment. Doneil Henry: He played in 3 games, being injured for the fourth he was available in November. He did okay against USA & Jamaica but really showed his defensive leadership against the DR wining 11 of 15 headers. Anthrony Beaufort: In a shock to me, due to Beufort's stellar play for our reserve side (and Canada U20 last year) he got the call-up to the main team in March and he was totally solid against some easy opponents. Then when Henry got injured, he replaced him against St Vincent and again was excellent. These performances have elevated him in my depth chart and at just 19 he could be something special for us. Trinidad and Tobago - World Ranking 103rd Like Curacao T&T's only competitive fixtures came in November where they also beat their WC Qualifier opponent Guayana. This sets them up for a Qualification group next year with Suriname, Grenada & Costa Rica. I'd say this is a much better draw, but only time will tell. Even though it was a draw, I'd say their 1-1 result against the DR was a notable performance. STC Trinidad & Tobago Players Cordell Cato: His role in the squad has been reduced this year with him riding the bench in their competitive fixture after being their go to RB/MR choice for the 2 years previously. Ryan Peltier: Like Cato he was called up to the national team for the Guyana fixtures, but wasn't selected. Still has yet to make his international debut. Turks and Caicos Islands - World Ranking 207th With only a win against Monserrat it was the typical poor season for the tiny British Territory. Thomas Hayes: Our S0 Super Draft Pick actually played less than Smith due to being recalled to be available for us last season. His performances aren't too great considering he's on a loosing national side, but getting a 7.0 against the DR when they lost 3-0 must mean he did some good work. They play him in every one of his natural positions, which I find interesting. Rob Smith: Our recent Super Draft Pick played in every game this season for T&CI and actually managed to provide 2 assists of the nation's 5 goals all year. Guess he's their creative force? British Virgin Islands - World Ranking 206th A very ugly list of friendlies for this nation. Their best performances of the year came in their pair of competitive fixtures where they actually got a win at home against Antigua & Barbuda (Rnk 145th), which is their first competitive win all save & only second total. The other was a friendly against Saint Barthelemy in 2023. So certainly an upset, but sadly not a double-one to get them into WC Qualifying. Next year will be random friendlies. STC VGB Players Timothy Cawley: Our recent S3 Super Draft Pick I included his full VGB form for 23&24 shows he's been reasonably good for what is another low ranked British territory. He provided an assist against Antigua & Barbuda in a two-legged excellent performance. Puerto Rico - A brutal penalty loss to the Bahamas in their WC Qualifier by blowing a 3-0 Agg advantage is unfortunate for Puerto Rico. The wins are against micro nations, so we will see how they do in friendlies next year. STC PUR Players Wilson Saldana: Another recent S3 Super Draft Pick. Unfortunately, I didn't have him scouted in December so I just see his overall form with 2 starts and 3 sub CAPs for Puerto Rico and a 7.05 average rating. Not too shabby, but he's still not a very good player.

Saint Louis City FC: 2025 Pre-Season, First NACL Matchup & A/B Lineups 2025 Pre-Season We played a good mix of friendlies against USL Championship & MLS teams (going away as well to challenge the players) and put up great performances with the exception of a late collapse against Tampa Bay that had me questioning my rotation defenders. NACL First Round: Necaxa (Mexico) While we did get a Mexican team, we certainly got one of the easier ones with Nexaxa so I wasn't too upset at the draw. They got the Home slot, so we had to go to Mexico first for the first competitive game of the season. Thankfully I didn't make any major 1st Team personnel additions, so the squad is already jelled and ready to go! First Leg - Away [Goals] Second Leg - Home [Goals] March Preview: After beating Nexaca we were entered into the lottery draw for the Second Round and really lucked out with a Central American team instead of a MLS or L-MX team. However, whoever designed the MLS+NACL schedule is a sadist. We currently have 9 games scheduled for the month of march and if we beat Municipal (Guatamala) - which we better - then we should get 2 more games to make it 11 in 4 weeks. And you may notice we play San Jose (the team we beat in the Final last season) right in the heart of that with Philadelphia (who should be a good squad just had a disastrous campaign last year) and our rival Sporting Kansas City sandwiching that game. This is about the hardest 3-match window we could have and they are all away to boot! With this insane congestion its basically required to have two full team lineups to keep the players performing well in all these matches. So here are my two full 11 rotational lineups: A Team: B Team: Depth Commentary: After last year's performance in goal I have total faith in Austin to anchor our rotational defense. He did so well last year he, and my full starting back line, were in the MLS Best XI: With that said, we are still very shallow when discussing defenders and I'm taking a risk waiting for my two first-team ready players to arrive from Europe on free transfers. It would have cost me 5-7M to buy them now, so in my moneyball estimation it is worth the point drops now (in the league) to wait for increasing the player value by that much in July. The key is I am less fussed about getting the Supporters Sheild again, so we just have to qualify for the playoffs at the end of the year. When our two new signings arrive we should have a very good 2-squad rotation system with a second team that should be able to beat all but the top-teams in North America. My current B-Team should be good enough to hold onto Aggregate leads against lesser Continental Opponents as well as secure us the points against bottom-table MLS teams. It comes down to choosing opponents who aren't particularly dangerous in attack as the defense is where we are exposed here. The Midfield and Offensive trios are all seasoned players whose stats back-up they are above average players for the MLS. After our summer arrivals we just have a question mark at RB if Gray underperforms. Worst case, I can drop Cato back to RB and bring Antonisse up to Starting AMR as he's the new Curacao player I picked up on a free this winter who can play all three attacking positions like J Lowe. He is just untested at how well he can do outside of the national team. Ledbetter is technically a DM/RB out of our S0 Youth Intake, but he is questionably skilled and I will be looking to find a new player to fill his role. In offense we have a surplus of AML players with that being the most plentiful Super Draft position (go figure). We also have a spare 3rd striker in McGinty, but I would love to find a new prospect there. I have tried to pick up some young English academy graduates but they all decide to stay in England rather than come to the US. We have the transfer-budget to actually spend to bring in a Young Designated Player who actually costs less against the salary cap, but we will expect to pay it in transfer fees. The only remaining transfer objectives are 3rd string (development) RB, DM/CM & Striker Finances: With the Willock sale we are flush with just shy of $30M in the bank. You can see with the steep recline though that our wage-bill will eat lots of that. We have a high for the league payroll at 410k p/w with over a quarter of that going to Chamberlain and half of it for our 6 star players. If you look at the season preview it will tell you the Salary Per/Year of every team and we are at: 21.32 Million Per Year Player Salary. While not the highest in the MLS (Toronto is paying 32M) this is in the top-group of salaries with a handful of teams at or above 20M. The average/poor teams in the league seem to settle in around 15M Per Year Salary. Importantly with the Willock Sale we have enough money in the bank to comfortably survive the seasons salary obligations

Season 3: Pre-Season Transfers & Super Draft End of Season House-Cleaning Releasing/Waiving Players I let go most of my draft-picks and the players from my academy I had signed who either had no potential or wanted stupidly high salaries for their ability. with the way the MLS works I can always sign these players back because I have indefinate Player-Rights on them. Burki Green Card A mechanic in the USA is that after ~1000 Days players can apply and get a Green Card, which gives them a temporary USA 2nd Nationality so that they don't count as international for you. If they leave the country though they will lose that Green Card [Which is what I messed up with my Chinese Youth Player]. I doubt any more of our players will get one this year, but starting next year some of our early signings might start acquiring them and become domestic players. (This is taken in early March so ~90 Days since he got the Green Card) Chris Willock Sale Willock has played really well for Middlesbrough, but he doesn't fit into my plans at STLC. He is at that awkward ability where he is too good (and too ambitious) to accept a Senior Contract, but he's not so much better that I can use cheaper players to produce his statistical performance on the field. I'll also own up on the fact I paid too much for him, so the objective is just to get our money back-out. Thankfully Middlesbrough are so happy with his loan deal they are willing to try and buy him again. Last year they were willing to pay 10 M, but not pay the contract he wanted. Because I just wanted him gone I took a pay-cut and a very modest sell-on just to get close to even on his transfer. The small sell-on might net us a fee in the future. Willock wasn't a jerk this time and took the contract, so his loan move has become permanent. Cheap LB Loan Found that Getafe generated an 18-year-old American LB in their intakes who is as good or better than our HG youngster and they will give him to us on loan for just his wages so that’s a no-brainer #2 LB. The loan is so cheap his salary will get boosted to meet the senior-minimum contract amount for the salary cap and it lets us delay signing a permanent additional LB. Super Draft Caribbean Players: We have 7 Caribbean Players this year that aren’t all that exciting. We have a ton of picks that we won’t be using again this year so I’ll be looking to trade them ideally for 18-20 year-old Caribbean Academy Graduate player rights. Trades of Surplus Super-Draft Picks First Trade: 3 Picks for the Player rights of 2 19-Year-old HG players from Montreal. One LB One AMC/STC Second Trade: Return San Jose their first-round pick + 50k GAM for 2 years of an International Player slot Third Trade: A 2nd Round pick and 73k GAM for Player rights of a HG player & 1 year of an international slot The HG Players whose Rights I Acquired: Jacques Bennett (Canadian/Haitian) Sainvil Pitton (Canadian/Haitian) Courtney O'Keefe (Jamaica-U20/USA) Free Transfers To Arrive in July: International CB Mid-Season Acquisition: Joel Felix – St Lucia-MAIN / Denmark Initial Scouting: Found a St Lucian good Aerial CB in the Danish top-flight who has a contract expiring in July. Because of this I was able to pick him up on a free transfer and with a tight release-clause and large sell-on to send him back to Europe if he does well he agreed to a reasonable salary of 9k. I wanted 7.5, but this isn’t bad and is a short 1.5 year deal. Idea is he will provide rotation for the playoff half of the season and I’ll be testing new HG CBs in the rotation in the first part of the season to see if any can stick around to pair with him as the development CBs. As I need to start really looking to the future as my current CBs are 30 & 31. It was hard to find a CB that provided a good rotation option for Henry that wasn’t at a salary closer to Nilsson, as that is what all the European CBs want. Here was our only real option, and he is scouted as being particularly good in the Air, which is where we are weakest as defenders. His performances are just okay in the Danish Top Flight, but he did really well in their 2nd tier last year so plays on a yo-yo team (in this universe). Second End of Contract Defender: LB Jay Dasilva (Swansea) Wales-MAIN / Jamaica Initial Scouting: Here we have to pay the English Wage Premium, but he is a really good Left Winger who is natural at FB, WB & AML and who could become better than any of our current players who play on the left wing. Also the fact I was able to scoop him up on a free is a huge coup considering it would realistically cost 5+M to buy him from Swansea. Worst case scenario (if he doesn't perform) is we should easily be able to sell him at a profit. For Performance I just used the in-game as he seemed to be consistently good in the championship for Swansea. As a free-transfer I am more lenient because we are acquiring player-value here. Looking at his movement I really like the 55 Sprints / 90 with a high number of dribbles/90 at 3.4. He has good pass completion (83%) with a good number of progressive passes to regular passes ratio (18/35). Again, here is an example of a player that is cheaper on the cap than Willock and provides more utility along that left wing. For Wales he plays as a DL, but for Swansea he has been playing as a WB primarily, but also has done well as an AML. He will be our first current European International. Hopefully Wales will still consider him in the MLS. At 26 he has plenty of years left to run and to get him on a senior contract is a big deal as we can pay that down to just a 7k Salary Cap hit (out of 115k now). I take it as a successful negotiation when the scouts thought he would be 15-20k wage and with Sell-on & release clause we got him down to 14k. If he plays well for us there is a high probability that fee triggers. Mutual Termination of Labeau I couldn't find any club to buy him, and he would reject any loan offer so I was forced to terminate Labeau's contract to free up his large salary-cap room. It was expensive at 350k, but we have the money to spend it. 2024 Transfers Transfers In: Transfers Out: 2024 Trades 2025 Super Draft & Pre-Season transfers: We ended up with still 3 picks in the Super Draft and we added Courney O'Keefe from the trade as well as the only high potential prospect from the 2024 Youth Intake Lucas Munro to bring in 5 new youngsters into the team. We then finally let Ondaan move permanently to Higashiosaka Rosa (where he's been on loan all save), sent some development players out on loan and finalized the Willock sale. Super Draft Players: You may have thought the players I traded-for were pretty poor, but here are the 3 best of the 7 Caribbean players (performance-wise in NCAA + scout reports). These guys are not good. Maybe mentoring will give Rob Smith the boost he needs to actually become decent cover on the wing, but I have little hope of them ever becoming relevant. Lucas Munro (American - Casual CD) Awful personality here, so I'm rolling the mentoring dice to see if my Professional CBs can fix this guy. He has 4-5* Potential and is either footed so if he can be fixed he could be our long-term CD solution. In the first month after signing him up mentoring already fixed Casual to Low Determination, which is excellent. Hopefully that continues:

New Arrivals is bugged. If I let them play for the B team at all it shows that's where they came from not the club I actually signed them from. But here are all the Letter grades and how much they played for us. Shame I have Germany unloaded because Lowen didn't even play for Hertha yet this year. I can get 1.56 to buy now his 2M 50 Apperance clause, and might do that if we need funds next year. Again we lose supporters? SI really need to explain what is the deal with the Social Media Following numbers. One would think winning 3 titles would increase this but instead it goes down like 10%? In Game Data Hub: Analytics: It is hard to see with it being a Blue Dot, but we are essentially off the chart in a good way on all of these statistics. I expected the low defensive rating in this, but the high Goalkeepeing is plesasnt surprise. Crossing seems we are just more accurate while being on the line for number. Attacking Efficiency is Shots / Conversion Rate so its excellent to see us with the double-high here. Interesting how Possession actually fits a trendline. We did better here than I expected. Passing is no surprise because I use "run with the ball" so we do a lot lower passing than many teams. Defensive Efficiency is the inverse of Attacking so Shots Faced / Opposition Conversion Rate. The fact we are good here helps to counteract the bad defensive statistics we are showing. Still want to upgrade defense Pitch Tilt is Final Third passes against & For, so very good this is in our favor. Aerial I knew would be bad, but isn't in the full red I expected. And of course Passing dynamics won't look good for us as we aren't a possession team. The field graphics are interesting. Not sure how to fully interpret them as its hard to see how it compares to the league, just shows where we did our best/worst. Formations: It's important to recognize that we switched to the 4-3-3 with only a few regular season games left and then played all 4 Post-Season Games with that tactic against the best teams in the MLS. Because of that, it is to be expected that it will have more chances against. What is impressive to me is that we actually had a slightly increased rate of chances for us at 42 min instead of 48 min. Player Visuals: Goalkeepers Defenders: Midfielders: Forwards:

MLS Playoffs Eastern Conference Semi-Final: Orlando City (Home) Lineup: Same as the last regular season game Match Highlights: [Imgur for Goal Vid(s)] MLS Eastern Conference Playoff Final – Toronto FC (Home) Lineup: Only change is Chamberlain into the starting lineup. Even for only 6 days and playing the full 90 min I’m playing the same 4 wide players as they are all still fully fresh. Match Highlights: [Imgur Goal(s)] Training Catastrophe: Even with light training going into the big game we lose both our Central Defenders Going into the Cup Final as well as our GK (even though he's not playing this year). I was absolutely livid at this many players getting injured. And this was my training I set up: Like does Free Kick training give higher injury chance to CD or something? because i though it would be just light training for everyone. We have awful CD depth so this is a major problem. We have Cornelius who has ridden the bench all season and isn’t even game-fit right now because the B team finished their season weeks ago. I am torn to go with Hayes or him, neither has been good for us MLS Cup Final: San Jose Lineup: With both CD out I changed my WBs into FBs with ‘Dribble less’ & ‘take fewer risks’ as well as switched my DM to defend. I just can’t trust these two CD to win against a star striker on a fast break. Additionally Harper is back in the starting lineup as he is training amazingly well and I’ve pushed Chamberlain over to replace Bacuna who had an off game last week. I’m saving John-Jules as a sub again even though he got a brace last game. Also Marshall gets the start this time. Match Highlights [Imgur for Goal(s)] What's Next: With the season completed now we will move into a lot more transfer market action and player scouting to prepare for the Draft in January. Also there will be a lot of players leaving on Waivers and Frees in the next two months as we free up dead-weight on the wage bill. Again the priority will be defensive acquisitions as we are very thin there compared to our Midfielders. The secondary priority will be to see if we can get good money for our DPs and if so look for a potential young strike-prospect to bring in, ideally American second nationality. Next season we will have the NACL games in addition to the MLS so squad depth will be essential so we don't fall apart. Also hopefully some of the exciting youngsters I've been watching in the NCAA finally declare for the draft so we can begin the domestic-caribbean pipeline. Future is bright for St Louis City!

Saint Louis City Regular Season Player Statistics Like last season I have put all the screenshots of my positional Summary statistics with my players into a word document where I discuss my thoughts on the player performances. Rather than Copy-pasting the whole thing here I'll give a bullet point tl;dr and attach the pdf so those who are interested can view the statistics. Overall: Even if we got the Supports Shield due to other teams not performing properly, across the board our players were in-line with the other Top 3 teams in the vast majority of statistics. Central Defenders: We need to improve our Aerial Defending. Part of it is we need to replace our backup CBs, but also Henry under-performed in his heading even with all his attempts. I still want to keep Henry as he is HG at a nice salary/performance price point. But ideally, he will become CD #3 and we find a new partner for Nilsson who excels in the air rather than a BPD, which has been my previous focus. Full backs: While both starters were fine, especially offensively, our new RB U-22 Development player is too new to be evaluated properly. For LB I just have a youngster so a second LB is a priority (again) in this winter transfer window. Hayes, while I like his nationality (Turks and Caicos), really underperformed. Then Barry is too old and needs to be released. Defensive & Central Mids: I put these together because I sign players who can play both. Issue on evaluating here is we signed 3 new starter/star level players here 2/3 of the way through the season. What I can say though is Bacuna is an absolute beast! I will be really sad to lose him to his release clause and he is probably one of the only players on the team who I wouldn't' agree to any transfer willingly for. Leibman is my 17 Year old high-potential Academy graduate, so his low performances are acceptable as he continues to develop being mentored by some of the best CMs in the MLS right now. I think he has 2 seasons at least more of development till he is challenging for a spot in the lineup. Wan Kuzain was a reserve player at the start and he continues to put in way better performances than I expect out of him. He plays our 2nd string DM and is a great anchor for the midfield three. Again, with 3 new signings I'll have to spend time lookign at them in-game to evaluate their starting performances. however, I can say Harper really has impressed and makes me even more concrned of what to do with Chamberlain now that he's fit. AML & AMR: We play our wide attackers in a 'provider-converter' pairing so it makes more sense to talk about the two together. Both got fairly equal playing time, though the first pair was Ainsworth & J Lowe with then Marshall & Cato being the rotated option (generally playing against the easier teams in the league). What I really like strategy-wise here is we switch the direction of the service when we do a substitution here. We have an age problem on AMR with Cato turning 32 and slowing down, but I've already signed a new free-agent Curaçao international who will trial till he joins in December. (will discus in a follow up post). Ainsworth & J Lowe - This is Left to Right service with Ainsworth being our only young first XI player and his movement is amazing for a winger which he converts basically best in the league into assists. J Lowe then pairs being a great converting/scoring wide attacker even though I play him in a Winger role. Marshall & Cato - We flip the script with the ever over-performing Cato who even with constant downgrades to his speed is still putting up very good providing statistics for his fellow attackers. Marshall is a more accurate & younger version of J Lowe who is left footed. At 26 he is into his prime and his succesful performances is why our DP Willock went out on loan back to England & I'll be looking to sell him in the winter. AMC & STC: With the formation change 2/3 through the season we collapsed these into one category. When we used a 4-2-3-1 Marshall, Willock & D-Reid played in the AMC role and John Jules, & Labeau played as the STC. With the switch to a 4-3-3 Willock & Labeau were dropped out of the playing team and Marshall moved to AML to make room for the 3 new CMs. Labeau has played his part for STLC and will be released in the winter. He did his S1 job, but now we have the scouting & player depth to find better options. John-Jules I'm very happy with the development of this young player. He is on a U22 Development contract so isn't currently in our salary cap. However, when Labeau leaves he will most likely get a senior contract and I'll look again for a new youngster to develop for the role. D-Reid his movement and assisting/providing statistics are fantastic. It's hard to judge his converting ability because he played primarily in a deeper role. At 32 and playing excellent for Jamaica this might be a prime opportunity to cash in on him. His value is between 3 - 5 M and we acquired him for under 500k. If sold, this would move Chamberlain up to a false-nine role like I contemplated when signing him. Willock - he isn't in the statistics because he was loaned to Middlesbrough. I'll discuss him in a follow up because I plan to cash in on him. Goalkeeper: I need to revamp the GK statistics substantially, but at least our backup this year has played reasonably well. He won't be challenging for the starting spot next year, but as an American he will keep in the team for an emergency and to continue developing. 2024 STLC Player Evaluations.pdf