Ceching You Out

Oh aren't I clever [facepalm].

$450K? Deal! Suppose it's time to see if Vaduz will let one (or more) of their promising Liechtensteiner youngsters go then.

Such a bizarre turn. Signed a contract on June 4th, then three weeks later this: He's one of our most influential players (in fact, our captain) and I was already on the fence about re-signing a 30 year old who slightly regressed over the last year. Time to see what interest his agent can drum up. EDIT: Hmmm, Bitsche is unhappy now too after a similar situation. I wonder if our reputation reset from the end-of-season high and now they're regretting signing. Far less keen to let Bitsche go, however.

I'm humbled. But not that humbled, because I didn't actually win.

This is interesting. Vaduz is willing to negotiate for one of their high potential players, but the odds of getting to something within our $100K transfer budget is pretty negligible. That's all in wondering if we could, much less should.

Here's how our roster looks at the end of the season, with some work to do to keep a couple of our starters:

We finish the season in seventh on 44 points, four spots better and the same in points. It's less progress than it had felt like, especially considering last season I fully rotated to youth for the last three games essentially punting them. Looking at Goals For/Against, xG For/Against, and GD we're basically where you'd expect. I find that a little disheartening, honestly. At this rate it will be a slog to challenge for promotion and any thoughts otherwise might have been wildly off base. So let's go digging for some optimism... (1) We've seen significant development year over year is possible Not common (level of our facilities? Semi-pro?), but possible. 10-12 points isn't bad and gives us some hope that a 16 year old coming through with a CA in the 50s can max out at our current starter level (~90s). (2) Florian Dankert He's made the biggest strides we've seen so far, finishing the season at age 18 with CA 83. Florian started the save in our academy as essentially youth intake 2022. He may hit his PA ceiling at 107 with two more good years, plus he has a lovely personality. I'd love to see his physicals pop next. He's been called up to the senior Liechtensteiner team once already but didn't make an appearance. Still pretty cool. (3) We've managed the above without me really understanding U18 sides in Austria Okay maybe I'm reaching here but our U18s didn't play any matches that I can tell outside of a few friendlies. It looks like maybe I need to send players to our affiliate in the Austrian Youth Academy League? Not sure. If they're not playing competitive games it's hard to imagine figuring that out would hurt our chances. (4) Last but not least - we've upgraded both our Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment twice so far in as many years Hopefully this accelerates the contributions of our academy in the near future. So far we've been stretching to give youth opportunities despite ridiculously low CA, but if I squint I can see better and more players on the horizon. (I may just need glasses.)

He signed it. Too soon for regrets? I wouldn't have been too sad if he hadn't, although it would've been a minor setback. I think the phrase is something like "a fair negotiation leaves both sides hurting a bit". Hopefully he left something on the table to stay with us, otherwise we outbid ourselves like summer fools.

Well, our striker Fetahu had been uninterested in negotiating with us until we assured our stay in the division (which is all but a formality now) but before he'd discuss a contact this happened. Side note - realized I'd missed my planned mid-season update so suffice it to say we're about where we were last season on points but better in rank. Okay, let's discuss then. Oh no... that is expensive. Doubling our current highest salary. Don't think we'll be able to get a deal done. The good news: he agreed to the above. The bad news: I'm not sure he'll actually take this deal over the offer from Albania and it is a ridiculous overpay under any other circumstances. There's a pretty steep drop off after him, either to one of our STs from the academy or shifting an IF and then backfilling there the same way. If he does sign, we're going to need to make a hard push for promotion next season and/or get creative in finding an Liechtensteiner ST. Otherwise we're taking a big step back unless one of our young 'uns performs way over their head as a below caliber starter.

A couple CM-types to like here based on potential and decent-ish starting CA. I think we'll start only signing the youth above a certain PA since apparently you can't cancel a youth contract anymore? Either that or the club won't let me, or I'm too thick to figure out where it is in menus.

Before we get to see the spoils of our recruitment we did sneak in these, although my understanding is the effect is phased in over a 4-5 year period so impact would be marginal this year. Interesting that once again one of the requests (Youth Recruitment again?) required pushing the Board. Tangentially related, but more of a digression - I had already written off my ability to find any Liechtensteiner players worth signing (despite giving myself that latitude as part of this save). In a pique of brilliance, or really more an idea that should've already occurred to me, I started manually looking through FC Vaduz's roster. For the uninitiated they're a proper Liechtensteiner club based in the Swiss league, but limited in terms of European participation by hardcoded restrictions (no CL qualification via league, maybe not Europa either). That limitation was enough to prevent me from trying a similar save setup there, but they're potentially another (the only?) consistent source of Liechtensteiner players. My intention is not to use the editor to check the CA/PA of transfers since that feels a bit much. However, I'd forgotten that my baseline report with those attributes is applied when I look at other clubs. So since that genie is out of the bottle let's take a look behind the scenes and theory craft since the lack of an actionable path forward will become clear. Salaries for the first teamers pretty quickly dwarf our budget which is ~$900K per year in total and currently maxing out at ~$55K per year for our highest rated player. No real disappointment there since I'll naturally be more interested in the youth. But while at least one first team player is within my scouting range, but apparently the youth teams aren't. Strange. But I can force the issue at a few $K per report, which is worth at least a cursory glance since an Transfer Inquiry was immediately knocked back. I'd snap their hand off to take any of the top four, but likely Caroccia too. When I scout Maier, I see his transfer value is $180K-$550K. Woof. Moving every available dime from salary into transfer budget would give me a shot at the lower end of that (if accurate). That's technically doable but I'm concerned on the squad/board impact of paying a relatively massive fee (at the expense of future facility upgrades) for a player. Heaping pressure on a young kid who still needs to substantially grow to be a serious rotation player feels like a luxury move. Still, 130 PA potential means Bucher could be an average Premier League player and the others a little below. The next four would in our top five by PA as well. Actually, Bucher has an agent so I can ask there. No interest in joining us and he thinks Vaduz would want $230-750K. Another data point. We'll have to revisit Vaduz and the wider Liechtensteiner diaspora once we've got a little more cash to spend. Supplementing our academy with 120+ PA players could be an extra way to stock our youth pipeline.

If this doesn't get you excited... (then you can probably recognize the cognitive dissonance).

3 points better than last year at the halfway mark. Hard to decide how I feel about it. On one hand, we're clearly better and we've been more competitive in the games where we've dropped points. On the other, we've hardly clicked relative to the second half of last season. Our ST is sputtering for goals and we've not always been value for the points we've picked up.

As mentioned above, we've settled into this 4-2-3-1 for the foreseeable future. Most of our goals come from our IFs or WBs crossing or cutting back, creating a good number of chances for Fetahu. He led the league last season in xG so a lot to like there. Our two CMs generally will join the attack only after sustained possession which is exactly what I want. I want them to prioritize moving the ball around and winning second balls over getting into the attack. We're maybe fractionally too attacking with both WBs, but we struggle to get numbers forward otherwise given what I ask of our CMs. When you look at our best players by CA, you can start to see the logic here. Three of our best five players are defenders; the other two are CMs. These are our "leading" players for the division so as they go we go. During last season there was a question of whether we'd be able to hang on to a couple of the top five. Cavafe and Nussbaumer decided pretty early on that they wanted to explore their options. Ultimately they returned, which is probably the difference between us looking to consolidate at the top of the table versus trying to avoid the relegation battle. Despite being picked to finish 13th by the media, I think we have a realistic shot at the top third of the table. Then, depending on the player growth and our luck in retaining players (most have contracts for the year + another year option), we could push for promotion in the next 1-2 years if things break right. Over the last year Bitsche (our best player) grew by 5 CA points starting every game. That's not nothing, but it's sobering when looking at the relative distant but good PAs. Some of our young players won't reach anywhere near their potential if that's the growth rate we should expect. I'm blaming a lot of that on being a Semi-Professional club with average training facilities. Both are going to be reliant on cash that I don't expect to see until we get promoted, especially when I'm using any clout I build with the board to push for youth recruitment and junior coaching improvements. Players first, then the money should come.

Quick wrap on our season and then we'll do a little reflecting and strategizing: In the end, we were comfortably not in the relegation battle. We started the second half of the season (below the blue line) in solid form only losing three in twelve and piling up 22 points. At that point we were mathematically safe, so heavy rotation for the last three games means they weren't indicative of much. We scored the 6th most goals and allowed the 9th fewest. Those underlying numbers are better than our finish, and likely even a cause for optimism if you adjust for the last 3 games we punted for development opportunities Our striker finished second in the golden boot with 14 goals, largely because he tailed off over the last few games including a couple of 5.8 ratings in the home stretch. We played a 4-2-3-1 throughout the season with small adjustments here or there. I won't take much credit here since the foundation is pretty stock and my changes were generally to make it less aggressive or distinct. The starting lineup here is reflective of a nearly set first 11. We don't quite have the depth to chop and change, but more on that soon.

Took a little persuading but we're off to the (improvement) races!

Time for the big day. Drumroll please... Liechtensteiners across the board, huzzah. I didn't botch my pre-game editing. A couple of promising players in (24a) Goop and (24b) Nickel. If things go well, they'll just about contribute by the time they're nearing their potential. (24h Agsten), (24l) Simon, (24n) Doerner, and (24o) Eppert are longshots given our worst starters are ~85 CA.

8 points from our next four games culminated in this, easily our best performance yet. Away at the league leaders and a wide open game where we filled our boots:

These have historically had little relation to the actual quality of an intake, but this earned a chuckle. Projecting our best players are Cs at best, but yet an "Excellent Intake"!

Much appreciated! It's the style of game I've always wanted to play but struggled to find the right set up. Let's see if I can shake off the cobwebs and do it justice. We're midway through the 1st season and game #15 about sums it up - not quite what I expected and still not sure what to make of it: We sit midtable, but with only four points separating us from being one of the three (!) teams that gets relegated. Prior to the barnstormer of a last match our defense would've been in the top 1/3 with our offense in the bottom 1/3, but now most signs align on midtable. Despite that, I'm a bit nervous because (1) I'm still shaking off the rust and don't quite know what I'm doing but (2) this picture painted by our form. We won our first three games which had me, in a moment of award-winning hubris, wondering whether we'd be in promotion contention this season. But then our form hit the skids and we picked us as many points in the last twelve as those first three. Not good, and likely more ominous given we lost a lot of points against the bottom of the table. Can't count on any "easy" opponents to buoy us if our form starts taking on water.

The media picks us to finish 15th (out of 16), having narrowly staved off relegation last season. That paints a picture of the task at hand. Our first goal will be to stay up. Our facilities are roughly comparable to our league-mates, but lots of room for improvement here if we can find the cash. Immediate wrinkle as the Chairman insists on a vision we have no intention of meeting: Well, quick fix since I've got the IGE fired up. So on to our squad. **WARNING/SPOILER for the remainder of the thread** You'll see the CA/PA of some real players here, albeit just those that play for FC Dornbirn in Austria. This will be limited to the starting squad, plus potentially Liechtensteiner players from the default DB in the future. Looks like our players range from 3 to 4 stars in PCA which maps to 80-100 CA. Our players with the highest upside mostly fall in the 110-120 PA range. For reference 130 is usually considered average for the Premier League. Not a bad standard and frankly that's about where my last two challenges peaked after a decade plus of success in making European competitions, so promising start at least relative to that low bar. More to come as we start piecing together a tactic that fits our players but we're young and do have room to grow.

Welcome! I'm dipping my toe back into Football Manager, returning a few years removed from a youth only challenge in Andorra and a similar one in Luxembourg in the more distant past. Those both ended when the inevitable became obvious - our youth intakes topped out far too low to compete in Europe despite a burgeoning league and club reputation. In the meantime I've daydreamed of other ways to build a fun youth only challenge using players from a European minnow. An outdated laptop and other life put those on hold ...until now. Our goal: introduce the newly evolved FC Liechtenstein to Europe while growing the national team from bottom dwellers to something more competitive. So what's different this time? Well, a lot. I've used the Pre-game Editor to change FC Dornbirn (chosen for the low reputation and proximity) in the Austrian second division into FC Liechtenstein. Outside of the updated name and some backend modifications to make sure we generate Liechtensteiner youth, the only other changes are tinkering with the Chairman's vision to be more youth friendly; from what I've seen so far, I'm not sure these are going to take anyway. FC Liechtenstein will operate with a focus on our own youth intake with two transfer exceptions: We can sign previous players from our youth intake We can sign players who qualify for Liechtenstein Whether either of those becomes substantially relevant is a question awaiting an answer. My hope is that a more reputable league structure will take the ceiling off our youth intake and allow us to (eventually) produce players capable of playing in top leagues. Because I want to better understand the quality of players we're creating and reacquaint myself with how youth development works, I'll also use the In-game Editor to watch the CA/PA and track a few metrics. No monkeying with attributes, but I do want to better understand whether this challenge is possible. Or ideally, something even more ambitious once I'm back in the FM groove.