kdavva74

e80c8893369bf8a5062f89ed5992b391.mp4 Not a bad way to score your first goal after having an all-time breakout season.

SV Austria Salzburg Season 2 | 2024/25 Competitions 2. Liga JULY TO DECEMBER | FEBRUARY TO MAY With some improved team cohesion and a more balanced squad we performed much better compared to last season, picking up an extra 8 points despite finishing in the same position of 7th. Up until the winter break we were a genuine promotion contender, sitting within 5 or 6 points of the top at all times, but after losing one of our best players in January we fell off a bit and kind of limped home. Considering we're using an increasing number of youth players though I'm honestly pretty happy with how the season turned out. Plus we were the highest scoring team in the league despite not really having a dominant striker. OFB Cup After missing out on a Salzburg Derby last season, we got what we asked for and were duly reminded just how far off we are. A 15th minute equaliser was probably still an amazing feeling for the fans. Personnel Transfers A couple of backups left over the off-season, but the main deal was for Fabio Trkulja, the best player at the club. He refused to sign a new contract throughout the save due to our squad being too weak, and eventually Serie A side Modena came in for him with a pre-contract deal. I decided to just flog him off early for whatever Modena were willing to pay as I wasn't too concerned about getting promoted and it opened up opportunities for other players in the squad. Squad Stats Best Eleven GK: Manuel Kalman: A pretty disappointing season from Kalman in all honesty, but there's not really any other options coming through just yet so we persevere. RB: Benedikt Erhard: Another reliable season from my trusty right back, I made him captain over the off-season and he's developed well, pretty much all I can ask for at this level. CB: Matthias Theiner: Continued his fine form from last season into 2024/25, having a no frills physical specimen at centre back has been a huge help, rarely ever puts a foot wrong. CB: Mathias Hausberger: Improved quite a bit in terms of his match ratings, became a dependable option as the left-side centre-half while Sandmayr had to be used elsewhere LB: Luka-Nils Sandmayr: He's quickly turning into something of a Mr-Fix-It for us, playing all across the back four but particularly at left back after injury and poor form ruined Florian Weidl's season. DM: Adem Oguz (23A): Stepped up big time when Trkulja left the club, and made the defensive midfield spot his own. Actually insane how far he's come in a year, now one of the best players at the club at 18 years of age. DM: Nico Schiedermeier: Another solid but not spectacular season from Schiedermeier, but I've never felt too let down and he's adapted to defensive midfield fairly well despite being a natural attacking midfielder. RW: Marinko Sorda: After a really disappointing season last time around, Sorda picked up his game a lot and ended up equal top scorer splitting his time between striker and right wing. LW: Alexander Schwaighofer: His start to the season was really good, tapered off after the winter break. Probably the weakest spot in the team, could see myself using Sorda here next year and giving a couple of young right wingers a shot. ST: Yannick Foschtl: Yannick's transformation from an average winger into an industrious target man continues to be a major factor in our performances, banging 13 goals in 26 games and developing really well thanks to our good facilities. ST: Din Rahmanovic: Last season's top scorer Hodl copped a major knee injury at the start of the season which gave Rahmanovic some more opportunity but to be honest he was fairly disappointing when given a shot. Accolades Youth Development Youth Intake Only four players I felt like picking up this season, a lot of the 'higher potential' ones were pretty lacklustre in terms of attributes, and while we only have an amateur reserve team that doesn't play any real fixtures, I'm just going to be picking up prospects that I think could play some first team football without massive development needed. Enrico Muller (25A): Pretty excited about this guy, he looks like a proper player although I will need to retrain him into a defensive midfielder to fit into my setup. He's got some great mentals and technicals to build from and should be getting plenty of minutes next season. Raoul Simmo (25B): Another very solid defensive midfield option, he's got fantastic passing, decision making and agility for his age, another player that should get quite a few minutes next season and could quickly become a very reliable player for the second division. Tobias Hagemann (25C): For some reason my two intakes have already produced three tall, skinny, left-footed centre backs who can play at full back, and Hagemann become the second I've picked up. He's a bit further off first team action than Muller and Simmo but I think he has some of the right tools to become a decent option in the future. Kerem Gulum (25D): Mainly signed just for some Austrian goalkeeping depth. Not sure if he'll ever feature heavily. Youth Players in the First Team Squad Adem Oguz (23A): It's been insane watching Oguz develop over the course of the season, from a 2 star prospect to becoming one of the best players at the club and by far the most valuable. He's still only 18, he'll be one of the first names on the team sheet every week next season and I'm very keen to see how far he can go. Hopefully we can keep him for a while longer. Aleksandar Zivkovic (23B): I was pretty disappointed with Zivkovic's development in comparison, especially considering he came into the squad with Oguz last year. His work rate has gone backwards despite some good mentoring, and he'll probably only stay until a better right back prospect pops up in an intake. Michael Juric (23C): Picked up some minutes after Trkulja left, but since we signed two good midfielders in the intake this year he's probably unlikely to feature more going forward. Marcel Heider (24A): Sat on the bench to fulfill Austrian squad quotas, that's about it. Moritz Dopatka (24B): Trained horribly all season, constantly fought back when I criticised him for it, and eventually wound up on the transfer list because of it. Got overtaken by Babic in the pecking order, and he's probably pissed me off enough to not have a future here unless he can do a 180 in terms of attitude next season Strahinja Babic (24D): Developed the best out of the class of 2024, and got some opportunities at right wing towards the end of the season. Didn't exactly set the world on fire, but I think he'll continue to get some good opportunities over the next couple of seasons. Max Elsebrock (24E): Due to some injuries and suspensions, Elsebrock was used off the bench due to his versatility quite a lot, but he's still a very raw prospect. He'll likely be replaced by Hagemann (25C) next season. Finances & Facilities We took full advantage of the Austrian FA funding this season and it means we're sitting in a pretty healthy position now financially. We're only spending €714k a year on wages, which is nearly €300k less than the next best and just 12% of the total wage bill of league winners Admira Wacker Modling. Thanks to these windfalls we were able to bump up our youth set up, getting Youth Recruitment up 2 levels to 'Good' and Junior Coaching up 1 level to 'Adequate'. Hopefully we can have a decent balance ready to go for when our training and/or youth facilities get downgraded. Miscellaneous Contract Extension Another year, another contract extension. Seems like the club can only offer one year extensions to both players and managers, wasn't even an option to ask for two years. Progression

I genuinely had no idea I was picking possibly the ideal team for this challenge!

It's basically impossible to lose money, I'm loving it. I don't think I'll be good enough to get promoted for a while yet so I should be able to build quite a nice piggy bank.

SV Austria Salzburg Season 1 | 2023/24 Competitions 2. Liga We survive our first season pretty comfortably in the end, which is great considering we were considered to be the weakest team in the league heading into the campaign. After a shaky start we went on a bit of a run in September/October which saw us briefly in the conversation for promotion, but then a horrid run of form after the winter break saw relegation become a real possibility. We shipped plenty of goals, which meant our GD was generally awful all year, but 4 narrow wins in our last 4 games had us finishing in an extremely respectable 7th. OFB Cup Our cup run was extremely frustrating, because we got given a very favourable draw in every round. However, an early red card against Regionalliga team SC Wiener Viktoria saw us succumb to a penalty shootout loss, I'm not sure how long it'll be before we get another crack at a quarter final. And tragically, Wiener Viktoria were drawn to play Red Bull Salzburg away, so we were denied an opportunity for a Salzburg Derby. Personnel Transfers Only one transfer this season, our wingers have been pretty poor all-season so I was happy to dump a backup's wages off the books, with Bosnian Gavrilo Foniga getting a chance to head back to his home country. A number of players are set for release as I try to trim down the squad a little, including Christoph Bann, Johannes Zottl and Alessandro Hetzer. Moritz Hutt has agreed to deal to join German lower division side Eilenburg when his contract runs out. Squad Stats Best Eleven GK: Manuel Kalman: I usually avoid short goalkeepers like the plague, but honestly he didn't do too bad considering the strength of the team. Actually has surprisingly good aerial reach for a man of his stature. RB: Benedikt Erhard: One of my favourite players at the club, he led the squad in assists and his attributes are actually fantastic for this level. Absolutely terrific on the training ground too, I already want him to play until he retires here. CB: Matthias Theiner: Probably the best player at the club right now, even when the rest of the team had a poor day he would consistently pump out 7+ match ratings, I've never had any issues from tall, strong and determined centre backs and Theiner is no exception. CB: Mathies Hausberger: Didn't have the best season in the left centre back slot, and rotated a lot with our other option, Luka-Nils Sandmayr. Hausberger doesn't have much going on technically but he is tall and quick which can make up for other deficiencies. LB: Florian Wiedl: As the only true left back at the club, I was very reliant on Wiedl and he started nearly every game. Had to put him on the highest wage in the squad to keep him around but he'll be needed to hold down that left back spot for a while yet. DM: Fabio Trkulja: Right up there with Theiner in terms of our best players, although didn't quite live up to expectations in terms of his performance, he's still comfortably the best midfielder in the squad. He actually came to me at the end of the season saying he's too good for this squad and he's probably right. DM: Nico Schiedermeier: I envisioned him as more of a 'Mr Fix-It' who could plug holes but to his credit he made the left DM position his own. Technically pretty able, not the best defensively. RW: Marinko Sorda: I was pretty disappointed with my wingers this season, and Sorda was pretty poor. While his technical ability and pace is up to par, he's just atrocious in terms of mental attributes and I'm glad I have some youth intake players who could start filling in for him. LW: Manuel Krainz: Left wing was another area where I struggled to find a good option, Krainz is probably more suited to playing centrally as a playmaker but I don't use those in my current tactic. 4 G/A contributions is probably indicative of his crossing and finishing ability. ST: Yannick Fotschl: I use inside forwards so Fotschl wasn't need on the left wing and instead I utilised his height as a target forward as the season went on. I was honestly pretty impressed with how he did despite having 6 strength, and at 21 he can definitely continue to develop into the role. ST: Marco Hodl: Finished as top scorer with 14 goals for the season, had some incredibly quiet patches especially through the middle of the season but all things considered he scored some important goals and will need to score plenty more over the next few years. Accolades Youth Development Youth Intake Nothing too spectacular in our first intake, we've picked up a few players who potentially pinch-hit as backup options next season plus some youngsters that might not ever play for the first team but will at least flesh out our B team. Marcel Heider (24A): will probably act as the backup keeper next season Moritz Dopatka (24B): my favourite of the intake, got some good technicals and physicals to build from Simon Bier (24C): has some upside as a centre back but needs to put on a lot of muscle; Strahinja Babic (24D): solid mentals, I'll need to retrain his position to fit this team, can definitely see getting some minutes next season Max Elsebrook (24E): another tall, skinny, weak centre back but at least he can play at left back as well. Youth Players in the First Team Squad Adem Oguz (23A): The first youth player to break into the first team, his match ratings were pretty lacklustre but he did develop a bit this season and he's at the point where I don't feel like I'm playing a man down when he's on the park. Has a couple of caps for the Turkish national youth team as well. Aleksandar Zivkovic (23B): Zivkovic joined Oguz in getting some more opportunities as the season went on, his work rate is quite poor which definitely hinders him as a full back but I think he's got a good technical and physical base to work from. He'll probably be my backup right back from next season. Christian Deppe (23D): Mostly just sat on the bench so I could have more Austrians in my matchday squad as the first team backups are all German and Romanian. Nothing really special and probably doesn't have a long term future at the club. Finances & Facilities We lost money pretty steadily as the season went on, but I'm trimming the wage budget quite a bit this off-season and I have discovered the Austrian FA gives out free cash for playing Austrians, so I'll be taking full advantage of that next season. The lack of funds did mean we had no upgrades to our facilities this year, but I am pretty blessed to have good training and youth facilities already. Will be mainly focusing on improving the junior coaching and youth recruitment. Miscellaneous Contract Extension New contract inked over the winter break which locks me in until June 2025. Austrian FA Funding I had absolutely no idea this was a thing until it popped up for the first time in early March. Gonna be super conscious of this moving forward. This should be an amazing source of income going forward. Does anyone know if they have to be Austrian as a first nationality, or does second nationality also count? Progression

I've enjoyed reading through some of these updates, and I especially enjoy the concept of using a 'fallen giant' that is languishing in the lower leagues somewhere around Europe or a club with some other kind of special geographical or historical importance. With that in mind, I've decided to take over SV Austria Salzburg, who were founded in 2005 in response to the original club being bought and renamed Red Bull Salzburg. The club starts with some pretty decent facilities and I was surprised to see the game actually assigns them the history of the original club which means we have a pretty sizeable trophy cabinet already. It's a decent squad with a lot of depth, and with most of the best players being relatively young. Definitely an emphasis on defensive talent which should help us stay up in the early days.

C.D. Santa Clara - Taking Moneyball to the Mid-Atlantic Now that we're in place at Santa Clara, it's time to get the club set-up and ready to tackle our first season in the Portuguese top flight. For the first season, due to a lack of data, I won't be focusing too much on transfers and scouting, and instead I'll be looking at my own players' data to get the most out of what I have at my disposal right now. Santa Clara have been challenging for European spots for the last couple of seasons, but due to the departure of a couple of key players, they're expected to finish mid-table and possibly even be threatened by relegation. I'd like to think we can outperform the newly promoted sides like Rio Ave and Casa Pia and push into the top half of the table though. With an average age of about 25, we're in the middle of the pack but I'd like to bring that down at some point. A Determined squad personality is great to see as well. These will be the players I have at my disposal for the first season; as you can see there are a lot of Brazilian players including a few on loan. In future, I don't want to focus too heavily on loans, unless we can get a really top level player for a cheap wage. I'd rather stick with cheap transfers that I can then sell-on for a larger fee in the future, and build the club's balance that way. Our best player is the club's big summer signing, Xavi Quintilla, from Villareal and originally a La Masia product. He's highly rated by the coaches, and according to them he's a fantastic technical player that lacks strength and height, so he'll be our starting left back for a while. Victor Bobsin was also signed in the summer, from Brazilian club Gremio, and he looks like our main playmaker at the moment. He's a dedicated and committed player and the coaches have noted his passing ability. Anderson Carvalho meanwhile has been at the club for a while, and is the current captain. He's less adventurous than Bobsin, but has a harder edge to him, and looks to be a good ball winning midfielder according to the coaches. Throughout the season I'll be able to show you some more of the players, but considering there's no attributes to glean from, there's not too much to look into at the moment. Tactics have never been my strong suit in this game but I'm going to try to build one from scratch to accentuate my best players. I've decided to try and stick to some football 'archetypes' that will make it easier for me to identify key stats and KPIs, and fortunately most of my players fit into these and it forms a relatively cohesive tactic. I'll go into the archetypes and their KPIs in more detail later on, but here's the quick list of archetypes covered by the tactic: GK (D): Goalkeeper FB (S): Full Back CD (D): Stopper WB (A): Wing Back DLP (S): Creator BWM (D): Destroyer IF (A): Wide Striker IW (S): Wide Provider DLF (A): Forward Provider AF (A): Goalscorer It's a pretty well-rounded squad according to my coaches, but there'll be plenty of rotation early on as I try to find my best team. The players were predictably apprehensive of my lack of experience, but were all on board with my expectations of a mid-table finish, so it's good to have the player, the fans and the board all on the same page. We also promised to improve the backroom staff, which I'll show below. I left the coaching staff largely alone, aside from bringing in my own assistant manager and a couple of performance analysts, since it's pretty hard to gauge when there's no attributes. The scouting department in comparison was largely empty, so I brought in seven new staff members there to make up my scouting and recruiting teams. Again, with no attributes I mainly aimed for scouting knowledge across the world, and I have some good coverage now across Portugal, the rest of Europe, South America and Africa. Finally, here's a look at our finances at the moment. The club sold a few players in the off-season but Xavi Quintilla was a sizeable outlay, so we have a balance of £1m at the moment. The projection is that we'll be about £4.7m in debt by the end of the season, so we'll need to be frugal and potentially sell some players if we can afford to lose them. We're spending within our means in regards to wages, and although there's a decent transfer budget to use I'm not going to touch it until we get some solid data points.

C.D. Santa Clara - Taking Moneyball to the Mid-Atlantic The statistical side of Football Manager has improved massively in recent years, with the introduction of recruitment and data analysts and the Data Hub. It's now much easier to play FM using the 'Moneyball' technique and that's what I will be attempting in this save. Moreover, I will be attempting the challenge without the use of any attributes, and it will all be based on statistics, scouting reports and my staff's opinions of a player's ability. Moneyball is of course a well-known and arguably overused term nowadays in sport. The concept started in baseball, and largely involves using key statistics and performance indicators to sign players that may be undervalued due to traditional scouting methods, in order to compete with teams on a higher budget. The Oakland A's were the first notable proponents of the Moneyball system, before the Boston Red Sox won the World Series using a similar system. Now, clubs like Brentford, Brighton & Hove Albion and Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium have become notorious for utilising advanced statistics to uncover 'hidden gems' from across Europe and the world and have profited both financially and competitively from the venture. Essentially all elite teams and the vast majority of professional clubs use advanced stats in some capacity to inform their transfer dealings. When choosing my club, I was inspired by Union SG. They are owned by Tony Bloom, who also owns Brighton & Hove Albion, and the Belgian side almost won the Jupiler Pro League on a much smaller budget than their rivals thanks to their willingness to look further than just the top leagues in Europe, with some of their signings coming from places like the Sky Bet League Two, German 3.Liga, French Ligue 2 or even more far flung locations such as Israel or Japan. I decided to choose a club that didn't play in the top 5 leagues or their respective league systems, but rather one of the 'secondary' European football leagues, which basically boils down to Portugal, Netherlands and Belgium. Due to USG already being the 'Moneyball' team in Belgium, and the Netherlands only have two tiers, Portugal was the go. The team I ended up choosing was C.D. Santa Clara, based on the Azores Islands some 1,400km west of Lisbon in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. C.D. Santa Clara are the biggest club in the Azores. They have had two stints in the Portuguese first division, most recently getting promoted in 2017/18, and are the westernmost top-flight club in Europe. They also competed in the UEFA Conference League last season, making them the westernmost club to play in a continental competition as well. They play out of the Estádio de São Miguel, a 13,277 capacity stadium in Ponta Delgado, which is the biggest city in the Azores. Their main rivals are their Azorian neighbours CD Operario, and they also have derbies against Madeira's two major clubs, Nacional and Maritimo. Aside from their interesting location, the board expectations at Santa Clara are pretty conducive to what I want to achieve. They want us to work within our means, which is a key component of the Moneyball strategy, as well as grow the club's reputation, which is something that we should be doing if all goes to plan. Offering long contracts to old players won't be a part of my philosophy anyway, so that's fine, and a minimum of two-year contracts for first team players is certainly something I would be able to adhere to. In terms of the board culture, signing players from the lower levels of the domestic game will 100% be a key component of my transfer dealings, especially in the early parts of the save. Signing players under the age of 20 can be slightly more difficult, as many of the 'value' players will not be getting that much first team action and it will be a lot harder to gauge their ability without attributes and with them playing in junior leagues. Fortunately this is just a 'favoured' thing from the board, and it won't be the be-all and end-all of the save. The supporter's culture wants us to play entertaining football, which I plan on doing, as well as signing players from Brazil. Signing players from South America is definitely going to be an aim of this save, as Portugal is a traditional gateway for talented players from South America to get to Europe, thanks to the lax registration laws. I am by no means a gifted football student, nor am I a mathematical genius or statistical savant, but I have done a bit of research into Moneyball itself as well as how you can implement it into the game. My main sources of inspiration for this save, were The Cult of FM's new FM series on YouTube attempting the same challenge (Moneyball w/ no attributes) but with Paris FC, as well as FMStag's blog post What does “good” look like in FM23? Thanks to the advancements in statistics and data in the game recently, I'll be using the philosophies espoused by these two players as well as some of my own in order to implement a Moneyball system. I have a fair few leagues loaded, but not too many that my laptop struggles. There's of course the four divisions of Portugal, along with the top two divisions in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. I've also loaded the top leagues of Belgium, Netherlands, Brazil and Argentina, which should give me an excellent scouting base to find players. Finally, I have included editor files for the Angolan, Cape Verdean and Mozambique leagues. Although South America will be a major focus, I'd also like to find some hidden gems from the Lusophone nations of Africa, as they have always had a big part to play in Portuguese football. The Cult of FM and FMStag utilise similar scouting techniques, and I'll be drawing on both of them to find players for the first team. I'll be identifying the board expectations and my own expectations of where we should be finishing, and comparing the data points of key players from clubs that have finished in those positions to give me an idea of what level of player I should be aiming for. FMStag's analysis has also provided some 'baseline' statistics that I should be aiming for when I look for players, depending on what level I'm currently playing at. I want to be identifying players who are achieving a number of key performance indicators for their position and role, and then finding the best value out of that potential shortlist of players. I will also have scouting reports and agent inquiries to help guide me, but the main port of call will always be the Data Hub and my recruitment analysts.

Is it okay if I attempt this challenge in Football Manager 15 but post it in here?

I have always been fascinated with Merthyr Town as they're by far the smallest of the Welsh clubs competing in England. They're a really proud and historic club though even in their new iteration and I want to try this challenge with them, and only use Welsh players.