Ceching You Out

We got to test ourselves against Vienna (2nd in Premier League) in the Cup Quarterfinals and it was a mixed bag. A late penalty for them made the score line look worse, but it also wasn't close before that.

Another twist in the tale (before we even push for promotion). Altach banged down our door for (26f) Voigt and it became unavoidable. Pretty moderate sum for an 18 year old who's 91 CA / 121 PA but feels realistic given our finances (terrible). NOTE: I do play around with transfers when the Board accepts an offer over my head. I think the way FM implements owner logic here is poor - I'd much prefer they tell me "We've decided we're selling this player given the fee; you're welcome to try to beat it." In this case, they accepted a $400K fee. I reloaded a save from shortly before and tried different variations of upping the fee, changing the structure, etc. knowing that I'd always make sure the outcome was a sale. Ultimately I got a friendly and sell-on clause which makes everyone happy. There were a couple ways to ensure (26f) Voigt stayed, like continuously offering him out for an excessive fee until the deadline passed or agreeing to a fee then cancelling the deal. But I'm not looking to game the system, just maximize in a way I'd expect the Board to actually do.

I'm beginning to think this is, once again, not very informative. Reads like my favorite kind of Amazon Review. "Terrible product. Too many sharp edges, my child lost a finger. 5/5 stars."

What a difference a year makes. Last year we'd slumped into the halfway mark on 8 points and were deep in the middle of a losing streak. This year, slightly better I think? We are a free-scoring, free-defending side. Best and worst in the division respectively. I don't think we're tactically set up for end-to-end affairs but apparently we are. One contributor, that frankly I just need a place to vent about, is our defense on corner. We're not a massively tall side but each of our seasons I've winced whenever we give up a corner. We seem just so disproportionately vulnerable. I had tweaked our balance between Aerial and Markers, tried Zonal vs Man, and it was all deck chairs on the Titanic. Lo and behold, I check who has been assigned to Aerial category and the coach responsible for set pieces is a lunatic. (24b) Nickel, a DM-type at 5'9" is one of our top 3 Aerial Defenders. Ostensibly because he's Strong and good at Positioning. I didn't see an option to grab the coach by the collar and shake him. Madness, absolute madness. I suspect that will help our leakiness. Fetahu, our last representative from our initial squad, realized no further offers were coming in and dropped his concerns. I re-signed him for an extra year + option; he may very well not be our first choice by that point but at a minimum I'm hoping to lock in value for an eventual sale. Our Board seems to have taken the unexpected option regarding our finances - do nothing. We're racking up quite the bill, but no panic selling either (yet). The back half of the season sets up an interesting title race that, on least on paper, we're firmly in. Liefering is ineligible for promotion as a B-side so we're only 3 points (and a substantial GD) back. We've historically been better in the back half as we capitalize on in-season player growth. I don't think we can quite pull it off - we're playing a bit over our heads and we don't match up well with either side above us, losing to both already. Even if we do get promoted, our time in the Austrian Premier League would likely be incredibly short. Just not enough quality, although we would only have to be better than a single team to stay up. I'm assuming the money and reputation boost would mean a sale or two would more than fix our budget woes. EDIT: Two other notes: We went until match week 14 before drawing our first game. Swingy. 28 points for the leader is about even with the worst league-winning pace we've seen (54 by SV Ried in the first season). Since then the winners have been on 64-68 points.

I'd mistakenly thought Covafe was on an expiring contract in earlier posts. Not sad that he's not. That makes this an interesting decision point. How much is enough to part with him? Same club that significantly overpaid for Bitsche last summer. EDIT: I decided to ask for $1.2M which they promptly refused. That's an okay outcome.

Board leapt at this offer, although to be fair to them it's quite fair. My only annoyance is I'd just set up a mentoring group for Fetahu! EDIT: Well that's a surprise. Must come back in for him, right?

In light of all that, this feels... wildly aggressive. I appreciate that they're largely rolling over our transfer budget but we wouldn't survive a nearly $4M transfer outlay.

2026-2027 Season Reflections In FM I have, generally speaking, always prioritized improving the possibilities several years down the road. I sell veterans and start youngsters too soon, I make long-term prudent but short-term aggressive financial decisions, I look for a tactic that can be maintained versus recreated. You know the type. This season I did too much and our margin for error was razor. Now we're in an absolutely fascinating spot. A few of our young players, over their heads at the beginning of the season, turned into quality players by the end. More, I genuinely think, spitting in the face of any aforementioned hubris, that we're now a promotion-challenging team in the next 2-3 seasons because their trajectory is ridiculous. These PAs are absurd. For reference, players like Bitsche and Santin who we sold reached CAs of ~100. We've got a whole page of players that could reach that. I think ~110 is solid Austrian Premier League level. For example, Altach dropped down to our league in the 2024-2025 season, won 2025-2026, and now finished comfortably midtable in the Premier League. Their players are all between 100-120 CA. The top of the table with RB Salzburg is a different story, but we're not dreaming anywhere that big yet. We've got a couple gems that I'll share mostly without comment. These don't even include any of our class from 2027! (26a) Behm - 90 CA / 131 PA @ 16 (!) (26f) Voigt - 85 CA / 121 PA @ 17 (25a) Klinger - 84 CA / 118 PA @ 18 Easy to look at those players, hear the optimism, and think "Sure, 'exciting' maybe but 'fascinating'? Really?" Here's the other part of the equation. Our financial hole has gained gravity, threatening to suck everything into it. Our Academy is triple exclamation point expensive. We ended up spending nothing on transfers, excised our payroll of several $100Ks versus expectations, and yet we're heavily negative. If we take out the facilities and Bitsche's transfer, it's closer to a $200K loss. But that includes ~$900K of player sales. Simply put, we're generating crazy quality youth but we can't afford it at this level without sales. Sell some players then surely? The type of gems mentioned above would put a dent in that gap. Well, here's the wrinkle - they're not worth much at all. We fought off derisory bids for our players in January that capped out at $50K. Capped out at $50K! That's nothing. Some combination of our financial state, reputations of both club and players, and contracts means the AI just will not value our young players appropriately. I received a dozen $0 offers for our best youth that made me want to call up a Board Chairman and yell. I think in a roundabout way it's a double edged sword. The players can't be sold to shrink the event horizon of our financial black hole, but the Board also hasn't stepped in to force the issue (largely because I think they're not worth enough to even make the slightest dent). In real life, I'd expect a player like (26a) Behm to get sold for a few million to a top league side. But in real life, it's incredibly unlikely a Board would sanction the kind of profligate spending on our Academy in the first place. Where it gets fascinating, at least for me - I have no idea how the Board will approach our finances. Will they eventually force austerity measures or desperately start selling players for pittances? We have one original player (Fetahu) under contract for next season and he'll fetch maybe $400K. That strategy probably won't actually help unless they "sell off" facilities. Will they try to paper things over with a hefty bank loan? Not sure where those payments are coming from unless we get promoted quick-ish. Can we actually get wound up? Are there other options? We're about to test the FM financial module in a unique way.

2026-2027 Season Review My days of religiously creating season reviews is likely over, but I think this one deserves special attention. It may genuinely be my favorite season I've ever played of FM - both humbling and vindicating. We were projected 11th, which would have matched our finish last year. That felt accurate, insomuch as we were very unlikely to challenge for promotion. Given our more tenured players were already a struggle to keep and our youth intakes had come a long way, I decided to bite the bullet and treat it as a transition year. You can find the post above where I hemmed and hawed on how deep to cut. Ultimately I landed on keeping Mathis, Fetahu, Cavafe, Marceta, and Bitsche (at least for the season). The latter was a bit of a surprise but his value on the market peaked early in the cycle at $500K and I thought he was worth more. We agreed he could leave if we received an offer of $1.2M; waiting it out only led to lower and lower offers. I was not heartbroken. We win two and draw a third we really should've won. "I've nailed it," I thought, conveniently forgetting that hubris is my toxic trait. DSV Leoben then decides to throw money at us for Bitsche. $400K doesn't move the needle, so I counter with $1.2M. They raise their offer to $600K. I laugh and counter with $1.4M, shrewdly negotiating them into giving up. Then they pay it. I stared at the screen for five minutes contemplating which kind of right I want to be - as I'd originally planned with an absurd fee or with Bitsche in the team another year. Because of the promise, I ship him off. We are now thin in terms of depth, but where I'd originally targeted. Flush with $1.4M cash, I negotiated with Vaduz for Julian Otto. Otto is very talented with some room to grow (~95 CA at the time, 123 PA), which would immediately make him a top 3 player for us. Lovely personality too. After a few attempts, we're able to settle on $350K. But now, two months later to be fair, Otto is no longer interested in the $75-100K salary range I'd talked his agent into. Now it's $20K more when even $75K would make him our highest paid player by $5-10K. We're tough negotiators so I decide to wait for another option to talk his agent down. It doesn't come. After a month he signs a new contract with Vaduz. Now he costs an extra $100K because he's signed for another year and even less interested in a lower salary. "Opportunity missed, but our balance sheet is important." Is probably what someone who is getting a normal amount of sleep and not playing in between feeding a newborn would say. Fearlessly, I fire off two requests to upgrade our training facilities. "They won't say yes to Youth, so let's ask for both," I reason, in a very unreasonable way. I am stunned when the Board drops $2.2M on both, throwing us into a financial hole. A paltry offer comes in for Marceta, one of our starting DCs. I am uninterested in losing him. After flat refusing a few offers on deadline day, the Board says I am indeed very interested in losing him for $425K to throw into our bottomless pit that is supposed to resemble a bank account. Now I know we're in trouble. We have youth defenders to very loosely bandaid one starting spot between a couple of options. We do not have two. At least not on top of the other glaring tranches I carved into our midfield and attack. This is where our form absolutely craters. I would've once considered myself very tactically adept, but those years have like the hair on my head - both mostly receding at this point. I try more defensive, more offensive versions of our 4-2-3-1 but our defense is always the weak link. If we try to outscore it, we give up more goals. If we try to lock down, our attack is non-existent and we're still vulnerable to crosses lumped into the box against our relatively short defense designed to play higher up the field. As far as I recall, for the first time in my FM career I'm expecting to get the sack mid-season. You simply can't employ someone who's still gleefully adding to a ten match losing streak. That's executive malfeasance. The Board wants to talk to me. "I'm turning the ship around," I lied to them. "This squad can still stay up." We lose again to Stripfing by 6-2. The Board wants to meet again, reiterating that I will be fired if I don't show up. Showing up is all we've been doing this season, so let's just see the thing out. The Board is easily convinced by claims that the easier part of our schedule is coming up, so they give me another month. To be fair, we do play a couple teams in the bottom five. We draw the first after not seeing the reward for generating lots of xG and then conceding in stoppage time, take a long holiday break to eat up the rest of that month, lose the other when (1) Broemer, our GK punches a corner, (2) breaks his arm and collapses, (3) they volley directly into the net. Somehow our Board looks at those results and decides "Yeah, this is the guy. He's got this." I'm not taken out of my misery. I begin speeding through, match to match, unable to quite quit but reading the 98 point font Comic Sans on the wall. Youth intake looks great, sure. Every tactical tweak fails, why not? In desperation and not at all in anyway a coherent tactical change, I swap our AML/AMR to Winger and DR/DL to IWBs because they match the skillsets of the players. Do those DR/DL instructions make sense when neither of our CMs leave that space and, in fact, our initial set up was designed so they would nearly always occupy that space to win second balls? I think you know it doesn't. It doesn't at all. We beat Steyr in a relatively low xG affair, Fetahu scoring 2 minutes in and suffocating (but controlling) the rest of the match. A drowning man will grab any branch, so we stick with what feels a nonsensical tactic through the rest of the season sparking a mini-streak of form. Once we smothered Poelten to climb out of the bottom three and saw how wretched form was around us, safety felt inevitable. Liefering punched us in the mouth late, but earlier in the season it would've been a disaster class hiding. Our GD reflects how many games where we simply capitulated. This time we battled, and results elsewhere were as good as a win. Just a draw was needed for safety and struggling Stripfing were in no shape to defend themselves, only suffer.

Honestly, it was a ridiculous escape. We figured it out with very little time to spare. That's 17 weeks in the relegation places! We finished the last five games with top 3 form, and that was needed to stay up.

Live Commenting Match Day 30 - relegation on the line 10' - Tattermusch wins a header from a corner. My heart climbs up my throat - we've given up a lot of goals like this. The ball loops harmlessly over. 20' - (25b) Draxler chops the ball back and lays it off just outside the box for a charging (25a) Klinger. His low, powerful drive can't be stopped. LIECHTENSTEIN 1-0! 43' - (26f) Voigt drives a free kick to the far corner of the 6 yard box. (26g) Bender, an injury enforced starter, heads goalwards. The keeper Kretschmer flaps at it over his shoulder, keeping it out of the goal but pushing it into the dangerzone. Dankert stoops for a tap-in header. LIECHTENSTEIN 2-0! We've done it! Wait, no... called back for offsides. Halftime - we finish the first 45 with momentum solidly in our favor, a decent advantage in xG (.90 to .34), and 66% of possession. Stripfing's risk-adverse 5-3-2 isn't causing too many problems. 50' - (25b) Draxler plays Fetahu through in the final third and he fires confidently back post. Has our offside king has gone too early yet again? The linesman hesitates... and then retreats back the line. Fetahu knee slides. Replay shows he was a step onside. LIECHTENSTEIN 2-0! 74' - Cavafe, our captain who's already made a huge fuss about leaving in the summer, subs off for what could be the last time. (25b) Draxler also makes way. 83' - Mathis picks up the ball from a few yards outside the corner of the box, accelerates towards the middle, and bends his shot towards the top bin. Put the cherry on-- nooo, it hits the post and comes back out. The man who's carried us this season perhaps the most doesn't add his name to the goal scorer's list in this de facto final. 85' - Mathis and (26f) Voigt make way, although tired legs are littered across the pitch. (26a) Behm also joins them on the bench as we use the full complement. The rest will have to see it out. Fulltime - job done. We've somehow, someway salvaged our season. More analysis to come!

A win versus fellow relegation contenders Poelten and a loss to Liefering, RB Salzburg's B Team, and we enter the final match week like this: Other results went our way, leaving us a very simple scenario. Win or draw versus Stripfing and we miraculously survive a season with a 17 game losing streak. I'm feeling confident, and that feels strange.

(26f) Voigt strikes in stoppage time to lift us to victory over the 4th place side in a game with few scoring opportunities. What does that mean for us? Well, somehow, between the terrible performances by clubs around us and a mini-run of form (two win and a draw) we're 1 point back from safety. Stripfing has a game in hand, however, and the GD advantage. We play them on the last match week in what could be a very consequential match.

Not a bad intake at all, although maybe my expectations had been higher. I'm this close to just not labeling them - ready for the Board to put me out of my misery here. Let's come back to this if we stay up. In more important news: WE DID IT! Against the team that kicked off the losing streak. Now we've got 10 games left to catch a team 6 points ahead of us (more like 7 given GD) and 2 games in hand. Surely we've left it too late.

Well, a draw (versus #15, above) and a loss (versus #11) is apparently enough to restore the Board's confidence? If only it was enough to restore mine.

I could laugh or cry... stoppage time equalizer off a needless free kick. After we'd only converted 1 of 2 penalties and won every other metric. I don't think we'll be around to appreciate this, but... yay?

This makes for grim reading, and to be completely honest I'm absolutely shocked I've held on to the job this long. Hanging on by my fingernails now after two meetings with the board. We are short on quality but it's more than that. Once we started losing we simply couldn't stop. Solidly midtable in attack but not nearly good enough to overcome our defense which simply can't stop leaking. Selling Marceta was cruel. If we could just win one, there's a chance of rebounding. Next game is against 15th place Bregenz so we either take a step the right direction or it'll be time for v2 of this "challenge".

The hits just keep coming. Quite the battering to ensure we only take 1 point from our next 4 games, despite starting the season with two wins and a draw. We're in trouble.

Maybe those upgrades weren't the best idea... because now we've got ownership stepping in to do this, leaving us incredibly short of quality at the back. Woof.

That money (and more) quickly becomes training facility upgrades, both youth and senior.

I'd decided to keep Bitsche after the market dried up quickly in the summer, leaving expected offers of <$300K. We started the season hot, 7 points from 3 games. Leoben made a paltry offer (well, actually decent - $525K). I got cute negotiating it and they agreed to $1.4M. Still tempted to cancel but I'd promised him he could leave if my valuation was met. Not sure where to check that figure but needless to say it was less than this fee. I wouldn't be sad if he turns them down. Looked like he would require some persuading by Leoben. EDIT: He gone. Although for a 10x pay increase I can see how he was convinced.

Laughable for a fresh youth player with (relatively) high CA and PA. But I think it's a result of our Liechtensteiner players in general being valued very low relative to other Europeans. Maybe a quirk of how reputation works?

After sleeping on this (as much as you can with a newborn) and further pondering, I've decided that #4 above is the key factor. I want to focus on better cultivating the personalities at the club. We'll likely take a hit in performances in the near-term but I'm expecting that we'll stay clear of the relegation battle and, crucially, get our squad personality moving while we're still pretty flexible. So that means: SELL Mandl - 84 CA / 98 PA @ 22. Solid contributor but he'd likely be demoted next season regardless, and that low Determination is a problem. Nussbaumer - 96 CA / 113 PA @ 26. One of our locked on CM starters to this point. Unlikely to develop further and getting eclipsed by others in PA already; CA might follow. Want-away and I think I can get towards the higher range of his value. Adequate Professionalism (9) and Determination (10) at best and a big voice in the locker room. Moosbrugger - 86 CA / 101 PA @ 21. Backup DC with okay CA and a PA that's definitely getting eclipsed. Adequate Professionalism (9) at best. Bitsche - 101 CA / 118 PA @ 23. Another huge locker room influence and a player who I'd slightly rather keep since he's adequate in Professionalism (10), Determination is good (13), and there's a significant drop off to his replacement. He's already asked to leave if we receive a significant bid; I pushed it to $1.2M but will likely take what we can get so we don't start another season with him spreading bad vibes because he wants to leave. KEEP, unless circumstances change Fetahu - 96 CA / 114 PA @ 23. Starting ST although he's been very inconsistent outside of the first year. May be down to my tactics, honestly. I rather like the look of him too. Determination and Professionalism are both 9, so barely adequate. It would take him asking out or a significant bid for me to let him go next season, but he's likely on the chopping block after that. Marceta - 101 CA / 117 PA @ 26. Starting DC and a good player but another one whose performances don't quite match his ability, although not to the same extent as Fetahu. Good Determination but Professionalism is 9. He'll stay another season unless he asks out or a sizeable bid comes in (I've got an extension clause). Mathis - 94 CA / 108 PA @ 22. I've been happy with his performance all three years, especially as a converted CM played AMC. Determination is good (13), Professionalism is adequate (9). Low value for some reason so I find it hard to believe we'll see him leave, plus I'd rather hold on to him anyway. Cavafe - 97 CA / 116 PA @ 27. We'll keep him another year since he's a good player, our captain, our best "mentor" for other bad personalities in the squad (being very generous with that word) now that I'm paying attention to that, and I'm loathe to disrupt both ends of the team at the same time. We'll need either our attack or defense to keep us out of relegation. Good Professionalism (13) but borderline Determination (8).

Squad by PA: Squad by CA: Given: Our morale woes from wantaway players Our influx of high potential kids which should only get better with the next round of improvements We are in need of small amounts of cash to stay positive Our personalities aren't the best, especially in our influential players I'm considering clearing out many of our non-intake players if I can get reasonable sums. Our CB pairing of Cavafe, Marceta, and (maybe) Mathis will likely be the only non-native survivors of the bloodletting. I'd have kept Rush too but he's already leaving us on a free after refusing to even negotiate a contract. That means shopping Bitsche, Nussbaumer, Fetahu, Moosbrugger, and Mandl. I extended most of their contracts where I could in anticipation that this summer I'd be trying to maximize a fee. Not sure it will work. As far as players I'd still consider buying, that list has shrunk knowing the type of quality my academy can produce now. But there's still Otto, whispering sweet nothings with his CA 97 out of 123 PA. He'd cost a bit more than the $400K deal that fell through due his disinterest at the beginning of the season but manageable. My hang up is his request to more than double his salary from $52k to $124k on the low end. Disrupts our wage structure a bit,

Missed the typical update at the halfway mark because our internet connection stopped working for a few days. In the meantime I'd finished the season so let's start with the end result: We finished 11th with a GD of exactly 0. We were a top 4 sides on Goals For and relegation material on Goals Against. That's a change, I suppose. There were no changes to tactics or radical personnel shifts but I'm going to chalk it up to what I think was the story of the year. Santin and Popovic, two starters, left us before the season started and despite feeling clever I couldn't buy any of Vaduz's youngsters that I had my eye on. But more importantly our starting CM pair Nussbaumer and Bitsche both went through periods of significant unhappiness at remaining with the club. They're significant figures in terms of morale and I think that left us a bit frayed. We flirted with the edge of the relegation, but obviously had enough quality to not (quite) get sucked in. This however was [chef's kiss]. Labels are missing because I had load a bookmarked save for the screenshot, but 8 (!) players over 105 PA and 5 (!) over 120. Some decent personalities sprinkled in too. We may just have to raise our expectations now. Finally convinced our Board to upgrade these at the end of the season. Turns out I just need to say it's very important to me rather than arguing logic. That might hit a little too close to home!