Neo_Geo

Definitely needs a bit of tweaking, I can't remember ever having a keeper injured during a match in FM23 which is the other end of the scale.

Ok two saves now and I've had a keeper injured 3 times, all catching the ball So we have broken hand, broken lower arm and torn ligaments Anyone else have their games played with a concrete ball?

Really solid first season there.

Just realised I signed in my new PC with my email address account rather than screen name, so just to clarify its me thats doing this save: So I had been flying high in the Vanarama North in FM 23, sitting 3rd in season 1 then I transfer over and its injuries galore, form drops off a cliff and I can't help but be paranoid that its moving the game over (not necessarily the process but perhaps the formation and tactics I've been playing are no longer effective). Coupled with the lack of achievements I'm parking England for now (again) I'm going to try out Bulgaria New Teams Date: 24th May New Season Date: 17th June My team for this challenge will be Vihar Slavyanovo: 12 man squad but a couple of standouts if I can keep them fit enough and available.

Didn't know my team had such a fitting kit for this being my main save over the next few months until the intra squad friendly started Maybe I can get them to wear hats as well! I should have made Buddy the Elf the manager

So I had been flying high in the Vanarama North in FM 23, sitting 3rd in season 1 then I transfer over and its injuries galore, form drops off a cliff and I can't help but be paranoid that its moving the game over (not necessarily the process but perhaps the formation and tactics I've been playing are no longer effective). Coupled with the lack of achievements I'm parking England for now (again) I'm going to try out Bulgaria New Teams Date: 24th May New Season Date: 17th June My team for this challenge will be Vihar Slavyanovo: 12 man squad but a couple of standouts if I can keep them fit enough and available.

Took my FM23 save over which means no achievements but I liked my start with Nuneaton Boro and didn't want to start over again in England First intake preview looks half decent. Found my first annoyance with this version, they frequency and severity of goalkeeper injuries is insane. Lost my first choice keeper for 7 weeks for a broken hand attempting to catch the ball and then my back-up keeper is out for 10 weeks with a broken lower arm trying to catch the ball......how the hell do you break (not just fracture) your lower arm trying to catch a ball unless you arms are made out of paper.

So for my Croatia save I won the second division but I felt zero connection with them (I think the fact after 2 seasons I hadn't been able to play a single match with a newgen was bugging me). Still struggling to game time however I have a new laptop (finally on the i9 train) and with the news that FM23 saves can be continued on FM24 I am thinking now is the time to go for England (I'll most likely spin up a Japan save when FM24 hits as I always wanted to do one there). So, here we go with Nuneaton Boro England has been a save I've wanted to do for a long time but never committed to it, probably find I'll lose interest due to the long seasons.

NK Sesvete - Season 1 (CRO) First season finally completed and what a heartbreaker it was. At the mid-season break I was top of the league and whilst I hovered around there I lost to the 1-91 favourites Varazdin 3 times out of 3 and that cost me dearly. On the final day the league standings were as follows: I was away to Cibalia with a W1 D0 L1 record against them at this point whilst Varazdin were at home to 7th placed Orijent. As you can se my goal difference was far superior to Varazdin but this league separates teams based on results between the teams (I had lost 3-2, 2-0 and 3-2), so I needed to better Varazdin's result and as you can tell from the opening line I didn't manage it despite an impressive 3-1 away win to third place Cibalia: So its another season in the bottom league and still having the restrictions around U21 players (which will be more difficult as some who are currently U21 won't be next year and there are only two players currently at the club who will now be eligible next year as they are 17 or over at some stage during next season and they aren't great). Best XI Youth Intake Transfers Evidence I haven't been able to do one coaching course as we have never been out of the red (despite numerous cash injections) and one of my key players wants to leave at the end of his contract next season. It probably would have been too early to get promoted but its never nice to lose out like this but maybe in the long run it will be for the best to allow some of the youth players to develop (when I can actually play them!)

Sesvete - Croatia Season 1 (Mid-Season) Struggling to get time on the game still but trying to persevere with the save. It's not without it's challenges: Minimum of 3 players under 21 in the starting line-up Can't play players under 17 I'm £258k in the red Can't start a coaching course due to finances However, I've somehow managed to climb to the top of the league by the mid-season break Here's my intake preview for Season 1 I play a 4-2-4 wide counter attack with a false 9 so as far as the B and Cs are concerned it fits in fairly well (assuming the DMs can easily retrain to CM). I'd say at the moment the biggest concern is the finances as I don't see where the money is going to come from as nearly all of my attendance is covered by season tickets (and the season ticket sales are at 417). It's the wages that are killing me and with the rules around not being able to field 15/16 year olds my usual approach of blooding the best youth at the expense of the more costly established players isn't going to work until at least season 2 at the earliest (depending on how many 16 year olds come through the intake and of course if they are any good). Still it's nice to be back

Thought so, shame as he was far better than who I have currently

Been a while, what are the rules about pre-contract signings at the start of the save that were arranged before taking over and can't cancel? Do I have to not play them and try to sell them?

Hi everyone, I've been away from the the game and also this forum for quite a bit. Had a look at the hall of fame to see who I missed completing the challenge, so congrats to @grff for multiple completions, @leyrtj for South Africa, @Dr Pepper Man on the gruelling marathon that is England and of course @libbyshuss for the success in Germany. I had been doing the ultimate challenge but I don't like managing big teams, I like to build my teams up from the ground and I enjoy the restrictions of the challenge meaning you need to adapt formations rather than buying players to fit your formation and to be quite honest the ultimate challenge forum is like a graveyard, no one seems to talk about their successes or issues they are facing at their club, certainly not at the level of this forum. So I'm back for an attempt (or a few) before FM24 starts to emerge, starting with Croatia and ... Nice to see the club vision aligns nicely with the challenge Probably going to shy away from infographics this time, I do enjoy them but with reduced time on the game I want to just focus on playing and then posting smaller updates.

So I progressed the save looking for opportunities to either win domestic cups or potentially have a crack at the big 5 and I think I might have just done that..... I am very much looking forward to this one as for the first time in the save I think this could be a multi-season team building job (that is assuming I don't struggle and get the sack!)

Been away from the game a bit and the number of nations and leagues loaded took its toll in processing time but I'm delighted to say it was well and truly worth the wait. I wasn't aware when I took over that CD Guadalajara have a self imposed transfer restriction in place since 1908 to only be able to sign Mexican players or Mexican-American players who have chosen to represent Mexico. Luckily this didn't impact me much as I had an excellent raft of talent available (of which I sold 2 of them to keep the squad happy) and I managed to get a couple of excellent additions in the January window (though my best central defender was cup tied in the NACL). I romped home to winning the Opening Stage and the Closing Stage (neither of which count towards my progress since I have won 5 top divisions) but the one that I was really after was a bit closer. I had injuries and a cup tied star defender ahead of taking on America at their own ground. It wasn't pretty but my older 3 star CA striker stole the show with a double with the winning goal coming in the 116th minute. I really had a superb front line and I was fortunate enough that I was able to snag a right winger come striker to fill the gap when my star striker left to join Porto for £12.5m. Before him Diego Lainez left for Al-Ain for £11.25m potentially rising to £14.25m. I spent most of that money plus another £10m from the transfer funds when I arrived (was a nice £22m) brining in a direct replacement for the striker and strengthening defence and central midfield with a loan deal for a Spurs youngster (again Mexican nationality). That said the one player that really carried me through the season was this guy who I had to turn down £18m from Juventus on deadline day to keep a hold of him: 34 goals and 15 assists in 36 starts and 11 sub-appearances as well as being missing for a month and a half leading up to the latter stages of the NACL. Depending on where I end up next I may look to bring him with me as he was an outstanding finisher and is still just 21. Anyway, as is tradition now that I have achieved what I set out to achieve here it's time to move on: Progress EDIT: Forgot the graph Not many jobs on the go at the moment, Hertha Berlin are there who finished 10th in the Bundesliga which might not be a bad shout however I have only been this successful so far down to picking good teams to go for (as well as my 4-2-4 wide wing play tactics working particularly well) so I may just resign and see what happens over the next few months. No international jobs of note given its 2029 so I'd expect some decent jobs to become available next year when the 2030 World Cup takes place.

I almost feel bad for how easy Wales was with TNS. Treble secured in an unbeaten season where the only game lost was against Tromso in the Europa Conference Qualifiers I made 2 key signings up front from the Vanarama National and North as well as the previous manager agreeing to sign Kyle Wootton. 4-2-4 was the favoured formation with Wootton bagging 47 in 44 starts, Skett with 30 in 19 starts, Williams with 28 in 21 starts and Dackers 24 in 9 starts (32 sub appearances). Under normal circumstances I'd love to have stayed on and worked on the facilities to get youth players through and try to get into Champions League proper but once again I have all I can achieve realistically at the club (now Continental Pro License) so its time to move on after 303 days in charge. Not sure where I'll end up next, I've probably got to think about getting my reputation increased at a job in one of the big 5 or go elsewhere and look for a potential champions league winner (South Korea, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil are now selected to be active). I also have Holland selected as I still have to win 6 other domestic cups so if one of the better jobs appear there I might make my move there instead. Progress EDIT: So an unexpected turn of events sees me take over at Chivas where I think I stand a really good chance of challenging for the NACL title but it might take a few seasons. Chivas won the tournament in 2018 but the last 2 seasons have seen US winners. There is no national cup in Mexico so this is all around the NACL. The season has not long started and they are in the NACL with an expectation to reach the semi-final.

So I ended up winning the A-League Finals as well therefore winning all possible domestic trophies in Australia in less than 100 days (even though only one counts towards the challenge). I was starting to plan for the new season and the 5 foreigner rule is a pain (especially when you have 5 foreigners already that are hard to shift) but then I found out about the rule that you cannot sign players from the same division, you have to exchange players or loan them. Furthermore I looked into this years Asian Champions League to see how the Australian sides faired......the answer was badly with none of them getting out of the group stage. I believe South Korea will be the best route to securing that particular title. Then I get informed that one of my followed clubs, TNS, have sacked their manager after finishing second in the Welsh Premier. If I apply I break my promise to the board that I won't apply for another job which would result in instant sacking but if I stay I reckon I waste a season not really getting anywhere. You can probably guess where this is heading right? At least it made a change from me resigning all the time so the press can't get on at me for that It was a decent squad but I can't see me being able to complete in continental football with the registration rules as they are and given its not the strongest nation in the tournament. Again, no time for sentiment in the challenge, I got what I needed and got out! Before I applied I got a hold of the stats at Newcastle Jets and updated my save overview: I immediately applied for the TNS job (again since the first time I applied I got sacked and it didn't seem to register it) and got the interview and the job offer shortly after. The Glentoran job had also been available but given TNS' dominance of Welsh football it seemed like a sure thing to add the last of the 5 league titles outside the big 5 and another trophy. Given TNS have a transfer budget of £1.24m and a decent squad to begin with I'm confident I can win a double. Visually this is how the trophy count is progressing. Progress

Off down under with Newcastle Jets. They were sitting joint top at the time of taking over when the previous manager stood down with 6 games remaining of the regular season. It's a pretty solid squad but unfortunately its at the 5 foreign player limit already. Nevertheless I won 5 and drew 1 of the remaining games to win the regular season: Thats the Asian Champions League qualification secured, now its down to the Final Series to see if I can get the league win that will count towards the challenge. Unlike my other jobs so far I am going to stick around and work with this one to see how I fare in the Champions League. The last Australian team to win it was Western Sydney Wanderers in 2014 but the last two times were South Korean so if I can't do it here I will try to get a job there (Ulsan job was available whilst I was unemployed but I didn't get an interview )

Icelandic season now complete Vikingur are celebrating a double winning season! It ended up as a title win with a 14 point gap and in amongst this we qualified for the Conference League putting out AEK Athens 5-3 on aggregate. Naturally as I had just got my coaching course approved (for the Continental Pro) and I had won a cup and the league (got knocked out of the FA cup in the quarter finals by Valur) I resigned shortly after the final game of the season. First time I've had the board try to convince me to stay and I'd have loved to have made a full blown save with this club with a youth academy first approach but this challenge leaves no room for sentiment. I've ultimately left the club in a much better position than when I started and I've got everything I wanted out of the job in return so its back to the job centre to wait for the next opportunity. I now need to decide if I want to wait it out for another targeted league (Northern Ireland or Wales) , add more lower reputation leagues and wait for a top job or go for one of the jobs in Australia or South Korea to target the Asian Champions League and spend a few seasons trying to win it. Progress

Quick mid-season update: Ivory Coast Qualified for the World Cup winning all games in my qualification group with Nigeria, Niger and Madagascar. World Cup saw Ivory Coast drawn with Holland and Paraguay so I thought second place was most likely and thats what happened. 4-1 win over Paraguay before narrowly being beaten by Holland (where we hit the woodwork 3 times during the game). Finishing second meant I drew Group G winner Portugal which was a difficult draw and once again it was a tightly contested match that Ivory Coast ultimately lost 2-1. Portugal went on to finish 3rd but the Ivory Coast FA thought it was a miserable performance in the World Cup and I have been sacked meaning my plan of trying to win the African Cup of Nations will have to be shelved. I was losing confidence in being able to win the African Cup of Nations with Ivory Coast anyway as the squad lacked in ability in goal and up front with no real signs of great prospects coming through at this stage in the save. Vikingur The first part of the season was a League Cup A campaign which consists of a group stage of 5 games followed by Semi Final and Final. We topped our group with 5 wins and a +12 goal difference. A 4-1 win over Selfoss in the Semi Final set up a final against FH which we managed to win 3-2 AET. Another domestic cup won making it 3 out of 10. I used my knowledge of Ivory Coast players to sign a left sided utility player and a striker on loan from Zilinia, Eric Bille, who has to date has scored 26 goals in 19 starts and currently I am sitting top of the league by 2 points with FH pushing hard. The Europa Conference games have just started and given I purely want to win the league here I don't want to go particularly far as again I'm not winning the champions league from Iceland. During the World Cup there was some hectic scheduling and the squad was tiring quite badly which meant the early form where I was beating teams comfortably started to wane a bit. Hoping to hold on and get the 3rd of the 5 domestic league titles required for the challenge. Next Steps See how the season pans out with Vikingur and see if we can win the title. If we can win the title I'll leave at the end of the season, if we don't and its close then I'd probably stick around to try and win it next year. If I do end up leaving I'm still planning on trying to get the 5 top leagues completed so I will look to clubs where it looks likely I can easily win the league before then looking for a club to work with for a while to try and get continental success (South Korea or Australia for the Asian Champions League perhaps). I'm absolutely loving how this challenge has given the game a new lease of life for me before FM 24 later in the year following a lot of months solely doing the Youth Academy Challenge however I think that challenge has really helped because I choose tactics to fit with the squad I am given to try and get short term success. So for example at Vikingur I play a 4-2-4 Wide and at Ivory Coast I was playing a 4-1-2-2-1 as that was a great fit in terms of the squad available. Will post another update at the end of the season

Having qualified for the 2026 World Cup I have now taken over at Knattspyrnufélagið Víkingur in Iceland in addition to the national job. For a brief spell it looked like the TNS manager may have taken over at Chelmsford which would have left the door open for another 2 easy trophies but it wasn't to be so I joined Vikingur after they narrowly missed out on the title by 2 points to Valur. Haven't managed in Iceland before (neither had I managed in Indonesia or Malaysia) so I am looking forward to the challenge.

59 days in charge and 2 more items off the list and now I've resigned Iceland and Latvian leagues now loaded in so keeping an eye on these and Cavalry FC manager is insecure so that might be a possibility. I had no interest in staying with Celtic any longer than I needed to and with all that I can realistically do (coaching course started for Continental A as well) it was best to leave to give myself a better chance of getting another job (not looking to step up the ladder at the moment, just looking for opportunities to win trophies and fairly quickly too). To have 4 trophies 3 years into the save is much better than I had hoped (especially since I haven't been signing players in the game for a good while due to the restrictions of the Youth Academy Challenge). List of Competitions I'll post an update when I have my next job EDIT: Time for an international job with Ivory Coast. Target will obviously be the African Cup of Nations in 2027

Sabah FC do the double! So that's my first two trophies taken care of for the challenge in the shape of the Malaysian Premier and the Malaysia Cup, unfortunately I missed out on the Malaysian FA Cup after losing to Johor DT on away goals after a 5-5 aggregate draw (1-1 followed by 4-4 after being 4-1 up at half time). The key to the success for this team was getting a solid formation (4-1-1-4 DM Wide Asymmetric) and having 2 fantastic strikers (one of which I had only signed mid-way through June but scored 37 goals in 29 games). Johor DT were with me all the way until about 9 games to go where we started to pull away before finishing 16 points clear of them I managed to get my Continental B licence so it was a really worthwhile job and one that I enjoyed and would have stayed at in a normal save but given I have won the league and a cup the only thing left here would be the Asian Champions League which would take an exceedingly long time to do (also the finances were appalling as I was always at the -£300k mark with the board injecting funds on a regular basis). I left the job on the 15th of December and waited patiently for jobs to appear that I thought would be of value to me and the save. First up was Western United FC in Australia, second bottom of the A-Leauge and a 2.5 star reputation (my reputation is 2 star at this time), didn't make the shortlist. Next up was Dundee Utd in the Scottish Premier, sitting bottom at the time and a 2.5 star reputation. I got an interview and I thought I was going to get offered the job but instead it went to Scott Brown. Mid-January and the majority of the jobs were lower league English clubs, no sign of TNS manager moving or Linfield sitting third to sack Grant McCann and give me a chance there. Then in March a flurry of jobs became available with a number of EPL jobs (didn't bother applying for any of these) but also the Hearts job (sitting 6th in Scottish Premier), Kaizer Chiefs (sitting 3rd from bottom in South African Premier) and shortly after the Celtic job with Ange Postecoglou taking over at Brighton. I applied for all expecting to not get an interview, but I got an interview for all 3 including Celtic. At the Celtic interview I decided to say I would drop out of the other job applications (not that this would make any difference right?)...... As a Rangers fan this doesn't sit well with me, but here is why I've opted to take this job: Within 1 month of taking the job I may have completed Scotland for the challenge with a title and cup win and then can move freely with 4 out of the 32 competitions ticked off the list. This was just not an opportunity to turn down and I have no issues with it being labelled as a shortcut or a hack (unless of course its in the rules but I didn't see anything saying you had to be in charge for a certain number of games).

So it's a little alien to me with regards when to post updates in this challenge however I have had my first job and also left it so it seemed like a good time to summarise my time there (and I will need to keep it brief as this is a long challenge) and detail whats next: So I took over at Indonesia League Two club Persegres Gresik United for the first appointment of the challenge. The board wanted me to get into the play-offs (that required finishing in the top 2 of my group after 18 games) which we did as we topped the group with a 3 point gap for second place. It wasn't all smooth sailing however as initially my plan of a 3-4-3 was sucker punched by losing the top 2 current ability players in the squad (both strikers), one with a broken ankle (4 months) and the other with a damaged achilles tendon which resulted in the 34 year old retiring from football.....nice. I opted to change from the 3-4-3 to a flat back 4 after signing the clubs only right back on loan (the right backs available at to me at the start weren't worth it and my strength was up top so I wanted to focus in outscoring opponents). Having made the play-offs you are drawn against two teams from the other groups, play each other twice and the winner of the group plays in the final (where both teams are promoted) and the second place plays in the third place play-off (only the winner is promoted). By this point we had gone from £500k in the black to around £150k in the red, so as far as my planning for this club was concerned it wasn't something I felt I could meaningfully take forward to try to win a major trophy or title (made the quarter final of the national cup) so it was about getting experience, getting 2 coaching badges and maybe get promotion. I topped the play-off group in the last game beating the then leaders 3-0 after they had a man sent off (they had beaten me 4-1 in the first game), so we went off to the final match against Persekat which we won with an 88th minute winner from my replacement striker signing that I had signed 2 months earlier. The board had FOUR separate cash injections at the end of the first season to try and help the club so at this point my mind was made up, I wasn't going to be able to challenge in a season to win the League One or the Indonesian Cup. This is where I think this challenge is so different to the likes of the youth academy challenge in that if the club you are at currently has no further benefits to the save then you need to move on. The board wouldn't fund any further coaching badges given the financial position and like I said the league and cup seemed too far out of my reach to think I could come close to challenging......and there's 32 trophies to be won! So when my contract expired I left the club as a 1 star reputation manager with a National B Licence and the following stats over my time at Gresik and I also made it into the Indonesian Hall of Fame in 10th place: At this stage in the save I have the following nations: Indonesia Malaysia Australia South Africa Canada England Scotland Wales Northern Ireland My thinking was either using a major nation lower league to get coaching badges or take a top division job in one of the lesser nations..... Off to Malaysia it is after 4 months of being turned down for a lot of 2 star reputation jobs.

I've been mainly in the Youth Academy Challenge in the last year or so playing the game and it's time for something different where I experience new countries and get back to scouting and signing players again (so I'm going to be rusty to say the least!) Here is my manager profile For those that have seen my posts in the Youth Academy Challenge you'll know I like to use infographics to summarise the save. For this challenge its a split between details of the current club and the progress checklist, it'll probably change a bit over the course of the challenge as I figure out what I want to share about the current club or the save.