Finally got a save to stick after a couple tries that never really hooked me. So here we go...
Season 1 - Royale Union Tubize-Braine
Profile
Facilities Upgrades
The facilities was decent to begin with and we got two upgrades to both the Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment, bringing both to Excellent. Upgrading both have obviously increased the coast of the Youth Setup, which has really put a dent into the finances of the club. My board is not really helping on the financial front, so the finances are going to get squirrelly pretty soon. Good news though, as we completed a board takeover at the end of the season, so hopefully they will give us some much needed help in the near future.
Coaching Upgrades
On the positive side, the board has been more than happy to continue funding coaching badges, so that's a positive.
Youth Intake Preview and Players
Quite a good intake, with some great personalities and some real long term potential. Evrard and Arthur jumped right into the first team.
Unfortunately, I forgot to screengrab the intake message as I had to close the save the day it came in and didn't restart until a few days later. I did, however, get screenshots of all sixteen players (I signed the entire intake) and will make sure to get both the preview and actual intake in the future.
Zakaria Evrard 24A
Jerry Arthur 24B
Alexandre Gilles 24C
Firmin Kalokota Eleki 24D
Ismael de Doncker 24E
Victor Lebreton 24F
Romain Martel 24G
Pierre Lenoir 24H
Julien Chauvel 24I
Gianfrano Thircy 24J
Jean-Joseph Barbin 24K
Aboubakar Soumah 24L
Jawad Fischer 24M
Florian Menard 24N
Roan Wouters 24O
Carlo Simonato 24P
Season Results
The season went far better than anything I could have expected. We got out to a storming start and never really looked back, gaining promotion with six games left on the schedule. I mostly played a 4-3-3 defensive tactic, which helped with teams coming out and trying to batter us early in the season. I have tons of experience coaching teams far out of their depth, so this was relatively simple as we actually started with some solid talent.
Promotion was quickly followed by the first trophy of the save, which is quite exciting.
Future Goals and Plans
I would like to continue using the 4-3-3, as my HOYD is quite good and the best talents on the team fit the tactic well. I think a midtable finish would be a reasonable expectation, as many of the teams in the second division seem near our level or close enough where my morale, fatigue and tactical management should have a strong influence.
The financials are already looking pretty rough (I know it was mentioned multiple times in this thread, and boy you guys weren't kidding) so the hope is to repair some of that damage. Luckily, we seems to have leveled off at around a $100K monthly loss, which doesn't feel too bad right now and I'm sure we will see more income in the Proximus League next season. As a result, I'm not planning on asking for any upgrades for a good bit, and honestly can't see this board agreeing to more until the financial situation improves dramatically.
Just want to thank all you guys for posing your previous attempts, as this save has already rekindled my love for FM after losing interest in multiple other saves types over this past year.