DaneBramage

NK Dornava - 2024 Youth Intake A golden generation! - Stayed the same as the preview. Seven elite talents and nine top talents. With everyone's PA rated at 5.0 stars it's hard to really pick out if anyone actually has any potential. So the standout is 24f Andraz Cukjati based on his 2.5 CA. For a second year in a row a goalkeeper is apparently the highest rated PA. Though I've always been of the opinion that players with the same PA stars aren't ranked individually. I think 5.0 star players are just grouped together, and not necessarily listed as the best 5.0 player, then the second best 5.0 player, and so on. ------------------------------------

NK Dornava - March 2024 Facilities After a bit of prodding I managed to get another upgrade approved. Still at a very low level, but it's a start. ------------------------------------ Departures During the four month break our starting goalie was stolen away. For some reason Dario Polegek thought dropping down a division was a good idea. He ended his career here with eight goals in 23 games (and 10 clean sheets). ------------------------------------ Goalkeepers We're now left with a selection of young keepers. All pretty similar in terms of PA and CA, so it will be 23a Nemanja Jeric getting the nod. Not just because he's one of my academy graduates, but also for being a couple of inches taller. ------------------------------------ Youth Preview ------------------------------------

NK Dornava - November 2023 MNZ Ptuj 1. Class We're smashing our way through the league again, battering (nearly) everybody who steps into our path. The one exception was against Trzec, and I can't really say we deserved any more, it was a pretty even tie. I'll put it down to it being the first game of the session today, and RNG not favouring me. 23e Dominique Burgher is the first of our graduates to turn 17, and he was thrown straight into the first-team against Makole Bar Miha. He responded with a goal on his debut. Darko Kolar is continuing his goalscoring form with 10 goals so far, averaging a strike every 50 minutes. With eight teams in this division we have two extra games this year, and that in part is why the opening of the season has been busier than last year. However, it is also because there's a massive winter break - it's now four months until we play again. When the campaign resumes in March we have six games remaining. It would take a full-on collapse to not get promoted. ------------------------------------ Pokal Slovenije Idrija are in the fourth tier, but we really should have won this game. We had far more possession, shots, and xG, but just couldn't get the ball in the net. It looked like we'd be dropping out at the first time of asking, but a penalty deep into stoppage-time put the ball back in our court. It just delayed the pain though. We didn't make the most of our second chance and lost 5-4 in the shootout. ------------------------------------ Goalkeepers Dario Polegek is in decent scoring form with three goals from nine games, made up of two penalties and a free-kick. ------------------------------------

NK Dornava - 2023 Pre-Season Finances and Facilities We're rich! Relatively speaking, anyway. Definitely a lot more money than expected for this level, but I'll happily take it. I'd been trying throughout the summer break to get our facilities upgraded without any luck, but on the eve of the season a first improvement was finally approved. ------------------------------------ Departures As an amateur club there's not much we can do if other teams come in for our players, apart from ask them to stay and hope for the best. For the most part we managed to keep everyone, losing just left-back Kristijan Ratek. I was fine with him leaving, he was the only real player in the squad but at 37 years old his time was running out and he'd have been taken out of the starting line-up this year anyway. ------------------------------------ Job Interviews I was in demand with seven different clubs inviting me to an interview. Most were from the fourth and fifth tiers, but the most high profile was Svoboda Ljubljana in the third tier. ------------------------------------

NK Dornava - 2022/23 Season Review History, Finances, and Facilities Promotion secured at the first attempt, lovely stuff. I've asked four times for upgrades to the facilities, and been knocked back four times. I thought after promotion was assured they'd change their minds, but nope, nothing. Apparently they're 'already good enough for a club our size'. ------------------------------------ Squad Stats A whole lot of great performances here. Darko Kolar is obviously the star man, top goalscorer, top creator, and highest rating. A shoutout to Alen Struna, making the most of his one silver star with eight goals in just eight hours. ------------------------------------

NK Dornava - May 2023 MNZ Ptuj 2. Class Three more big wins, and one underwhelming draw. I tried rotating the team a bit and give a few Under 19s some gametime, but probably weakened the side too much against Leskovec. Annoyingly it means we drew both games with them, the only side we didn't beat at least once this year. Easy. To be honest I probably could have given my laptop to my niece and told her to keep pressing continue for a few hours and ended up with much the same outcome. We won a whopping £862 for achieving promotion from the sixth tier. ------------------------------------ Goalkeepers Dario Polegek scored another penalty, making it a total of five goals for the season. ------------------------------------

NK Dornava - 2023 Youth Intake A golden generation! - Stayed the same as the preview. Five elite talents, and 11 top talents. Of course, that's probably all nonsense. At this level they're all rubbish anyway, and with everyone showing as 5.0 PA it's impossible to spot if anyone may be better than anyone else. No one can play until they're 17 so they won't make any appearances over the end of the season, it won't be until next year that they can be involved. 23e Dominique Burgher is the one that's caught my eye, though that's just because of the Jamaican second nationality. Everyone has been 'signed', though since we're currently an amateur club and contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on, it's more like we're just asking their mums to bring them along again next week.

NK Dornava - February 2023 MNZ Ptuj 2. Class See if you can spot the point where I got fed up with not winning games, and then switched to Instant Result? Of course it's the big win over Zgornja Polskava, and we've been flying since. It's not that we were playing badly before that, it's just that we weren't scoring. And before I smashed the Berate Team button one time too many, I decided it was time to hand things over to the AssMan instead. He clearly knows what he's doing as the goals have been flowing, in particular Darko Kolar has been filling his boots. Hat-tricks in successive games, and he's leading the way with 10 goals in 11 appearances. The fixture schedule is as annoying at it looks. We generally only have one league game a month, and a few friendlies in between to keep fresh. We're currently partway through a two month break (though other teams have played in February), and our next match is on 11th March. We then have one more in April, before two more in May to finish off the season. When I saw our odds at the start of the season were 79/1 on, I did wonder if it would be a walkover. Three draws in the first four games stopped that being the case, but we are now top and looking comfortable. I'd be annoyed if we dropped any more points. It would be fun to be the only team finishing with a positive goal difference too. ------------------------------------ Pokal Slovenije I didn't expect much of a cup run, the win over Hotiza in the preliminary round was surprising. They're two divisions above us (though in a different region), but when the draw was announced the news story referred to us as the bigger team. We handled them with ease, I suppose maybe the difference between teams in the fourth, fifth, and sixth tiers isn't that distinct. In the first round proper we drew Svoboda Ljubljana, from the third tier. There was a clear step up in class here, and going down to 10 men in the 30th minute didn't help. We certainly gave it a good fight, but it wasn't as close as the scoreline looks, we were just deadly with our striking. Our three goals came from 10 shots (three on target) and an xG of 1.07, while they managed 30 shots (10 on target) and an xG of 3.63. ------------------------------------ Goalkeepers I'm stealing borrowing a gimmick from @Jimbokav1971 here and going for a goalscoring keeper. Dario Polegek had a chance to open his account on the first day of the season, but had a penalty saved. He redeemed himself later on in the same game though, saving a penalty of his own at the other end. Since then he's been more successful with four goals in ten games, two coming from the spot and two from free-kicks. ------------------------------------ Youth Preview For what it's worth, bright things are currently expected from the upcoming batch. ------------------------------------

Probably not. I've never been in the habit of picking up the new one every year, and I think at this point the next one I buy will likely be the first with the WSL involved. I watch more women's football than men's these days, so that will be a big selling point for me. Steam tells me that I've 'only' spent 400+ hours on FM23 compared to 2,700+ with FM20 so there's unfinished business with this version. Mainly that I don't think I've had a single proper long-term successful career with it.

NK Dornava Finances It goes without saying that there's not much money at this level of the game, so a bank balance of less than £10k was to be expected. We're an amateur club (along with every other side in this league) so nobody's being paid, but I'm sure we'll still lose money from travel expense, ground maintenance, etc. ------------------------------------ Facilities Very much as you'd expect at this level. Upgrading them as soon as possible is a must. Poor training facilities, poor youth facilities, basic academy coaching, limited youth recruitment. ------------------------------------ Senior Squad As the only real player in the squad Kristijan Ratek appears to be the star. He's 36 though, so not someone I'll be able to rely on for long. There's not a lot of current ability in the squad, so it'll be a case of just going for it and seeing who stands out. The lack of determination and ambition in the centre of defence is worrying, and the less said about the personalities of the strikers the better. ------------------------------------ Under 19s A lot of potential apparently, though of course that means very little with this standard of player. And the lack of ambition makes me wonder how they even make it into training each session. ------------------------------------

I chose NK Dornava to manage, mainly because it's the easiest name in the division to type. Trying to remember Zgornja Polskava or Polskava avtop. Groblenik on a regular basis wouldn't have been fun. According to the Club Info page they were formed in 1954, and the play at Igrisce Dornava. And that's about all the info there is. There's no player or competition history, and Google isn't finding much easier. So I can only assume they've never been up to much previously. But there must be something about them, as the odds to get promoted are ridiculously short. I've suffered plenty of FM failures before, but screwing this up would probably be a new low. With expectations this higher the pressure will be on from the start. In addition to the six Slovenian tiers, the top two divisions from each of the neighbouring nations and main countries around Europe have also been loaded.

New laptop, new career. I lost my Swedish save with the demise of my old computer, but I enjoyed it enough to give youth only another go. This time I'm off to Slovenia, and upgrading to FM23. I know FM24 is just on the horizon, but I'm unlikely to get it any time soon. I never played FM23 much, going back to FM20 instead, so I should put some time into it. The Slovenian pyramid has three main levels, before breaking down into regional leagues from the fourth tier down. The Ptuj region goes down to level 6, so this seems like a good place to begin.

Nice idea. I've just got a new laptop and didn't have a solid plan for starting a new game, so decided to give this a go. It didn't start well. We went five league games without a win, and were knocked out of the FA Cup by Manchester United. Jamie Vardy only scored once in this time, and also put in a transfer request. A change of approach was needed, so I switched up our formation from 4-5-1 to 4-4-2. And unexpectedly this paid off straight away with a win over Arsenal. From this point on our form improved, winning four and drawing three of the next nine games. Vardy was hitting the back of the net on a regular basis, and we dragged our way up to 17th place. But then the players took their feet off the gas, and three successive losses put us back in trouble. A 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest on the penultimate day saw us pick up a much needed three points, and we rose back up to 17th. So it all came down to the final day. We hosted Manchester City, while Brentford travelled to Newcastle. We managed a very creditable 1-1 draw, but it didn't matter anyway as Brentford got battered. Jamie Vardy ended up as our top scorer with 12 goals, one ahead of Kelechi Iheanacho. Challenge: 1 User: DaneBramage Completing the challenge - 1 point Avoid relegation - 10 points Beat Arsenal, Man Utd, Liverpool, or Man City in the league - 1 win x 5 points Total points: 16 points Worst result submitted so far, but I suppose someone has to come last! And I'll use the excuse that this is my first time on FM23 for a while, after mainly going back to FM20. Next stop - Malaysia

Åtvidaberg FF - Season Review 2043 If I have one complaint (and of course I do), it's that we once more failed to progress past the Second Round in the Svenska Cupen. That's my aim for next year, especially if we're set up with an easy tie again. There's no excuse for being knocked out by a side in the division below. But otherwise, I'm very happy with this season. We spent some of the opening period in the bottom four, but soon pulled away and never really looked back, finishing fairly comfortably in midtable. £712k prize money for finishing 9th came in very handy, and has gone towards upgrading both our junior coaching and youth recruitment. Other improvements were were rejected, as was the request to go professional. --------------------------------------------- Otto Niklasson was our third-choice forward last season, but this year he came on strong and scored more than the other strikers combined. The other player to reach double figures was Reine Blomgren when the AssMan started using him in a more advanced position. My signings this season were a bit of a mixed bag. Vegard Hagen played well in midfield with an average rating of 7.34, and was voted fan's player of the season. Nils Björk in defence also ended up with a green average rating. But at the other end of the scale Sean Hyland contributed very little, an early season hat-trick being the only time he impressed. And Antti-Pekka Rahkola didn't manage a single goal. --------------------------------------------- Previous Clubs Both Rynninge IK and Tyresö FF had good seasons in Division 1 Norra. Neither bothered the leaders, but both were always comfortable for a top-half finish, eventually ending up 5th and 7th respectively. --------------------------------------------- Edit - 16th October This is probably dead. My laptop keeps crashing upon loading, I've tried a few things to sort it but without any luck. I'll see if it can be repaired, but I don't have high expectations. Thanks for reading.

Åtvidaberg FF - October 2043 A strong end to the season, with four wins from the final six, and four clean sheets too. Continuing on this theme, Reine Blomgren also scored four times too. I'd generally been using him as a midfielder, which I may have misjudged, as he's certainly got an eye for goal when the AssMan picks him up front. Apart from the final day, which was utterly abysmal. We got battered by bottom of the table, already relegated IF Brage. Losing to them is bad enough, but it could have been even worse as we were 4-1 down at one point. --------------------------------------------- Midtable, and nine points clear of the relegation area. Lovely stuff. We had the second best attack in the division, but also the second worst defence. Which is to be expected in our first of the year, but is something that will need to be improved on next time. ---------------------------------------------

Åtvidaberg FF - 2043 Youth Intake For the first time during this save, the new batch of players weren't described as a golden generation. Hopefully that's due to being in a higher division so being compared to a better quality of players, rather than the intake just not being very good. 11 of these lads have been signed. Three players have 5.0 potential, so hopefully there's some chance of them making it to the first-team in future. ---------------------------------------------

Åtvidaberg FF - August 2043 The good - A big win over GIF Sundsvall, by our largest margin at this level. Sofian Ben Salem has rediscovered his shooting boots with four goals this month, his first since October last year. We've averaged more than a point per game. The bad - We dominated each of these three draws. We should have managed at least one win from them, the worst offence was conceding a 95th minute equaliser against Östers IF. The ugly - Getting knocked out of the cup by Hässleholms IF, from the division below. The second-string were selected for this match and should have been strong enough to win, but again we dominated without taking enough chances, or even one in this case. --------------------------------------------- The scenario is basically the same as last month - midtable, but only a couple of points clear of danger. ---------------------------------------------

Åtvidaberg FF - July 2043 I have mixed feelings about this period. On the one hand, points have continued to trickle in. A couple of wins and a couple of draws gives us a point a game. It's possibly not enough over a whole season, but it's certainly not disastrous either. Coupled with the strong May we're still outside of the relegation places, so we're doing well. But on the other hand, some performances have just been awful. Our defence has collapsed and there were five games in a row when we conceded at least three times. We're scoring a lot, but we're being let down by the players at the other end of the field. Scoring 11 times against Norrby IF, IK Brage, and Landskorna BoIS and only coming away with two points is disgraceful. --------------------------------------------- We're currently midtable, but only two points separate us in 9th from Jönköpings Södra in 13th place. A few bad results could easily put us in trouble, especially having the worst defence in the defence. --------------------------------------------- At least receiving interview offers for higher ranked clubs makes a bit of sense now. I'm not against moving clubs now I've pivoted to a journeyman save, but I don't think I can justify attending an interview for a top tier team yet. BK Häcken - Allsvenskan (10th) ---------------------------------------------

Åtvidaberg FF - May 2043 A very nice month. Three wins is more than I could have expected and is giving me some hope that we've got what it takes to survive this year. My centre-back Erik Outzen already has eight yellow cards in nine appearances, and was suspended for the other two. --------------------------------------------- The lowest points record previously was seven, so we've doubled that already. Over the last few years anywhere between 31 and 38 points has been needed to avoid finishing in the bottom four. ---------------------------------------------

Åtvidaberg FF - April 2043 We sold one player, my second choice right-back who whinged about not playing enough. --------------------------------------------- Four players came in on free transfers. My scouts apparently don't seem to see much value in the local market as only one of these is Swedish. The others are Finnish, Norwegian, and Irish. Irish left-winger Sean Hyland impressed while on trial. It's probably fair to say his career hasn't really started yet, after coming through at Bournemouth he didn't make a single appearance and then spent five years underwhelming at Shelbourne. My scout sees something in him though, so let's hope he's right. --------------------------------------------- The media think we'll go down, the board want us to fight bravely against relegation. The bottom two go down automatically, while the next two go into play-offs against the Division 1 runners-up. Four out of sixteen teams being involved in the relegation mix certainly means we'll probably be caught up in this, I'll be happy if we're not in one of the automatic spots. --------------------------------------------- I was pleased that we didn't lose on the opening day, and the draw with Varbergs BoIS extended our unbeaten league run to 32 games. I was hoping for more from that tie though, they were runner-up to us last year, so we need to be winning these kind of games, especially at home. AFC Eskilstuna gave us our first loss of the season, but we bounced back very nicely with a big win over Helsingborgs IF. Our wingers looked great, Sean Hyland scored a hat-trick while Henrik Nilsson scored the other, and also provided two assists. The loss to Göteborgs AIS wasn't as bad as it looked, we dominated the game and really should have won. But we gave up a 1-0 lead, and two poor defensive mistakes turned the game against us. The loss to Mjällby AIF was as bad as it looked, I'm sure we'll be the victim of a few whoopings this year and that one was the first. --------------------------------------------- We're giving it a fight, we're not going down easily, but it's pretty clear it will be a struggle. Just got to keep chipping away and picking up points where we can. ---------------------------------------------

November 2042 Every year I see a message about the Division 1 Rookie All Star North v South match, and have no idea about the criteria. None of my players were ever called up. Until this year, when five of them have been selected, and they were all my new signings. So I guess it's players new to the league (explaining why no youth only players were selected). And I've been chosen to manage the North side. Bizarrely though, only three of my players are in this squad. The other two are in the South squad. So how are these squads allocated? And I won Division 1 Södra, so why aren't I managing the South squad? The manager of Varbergs BoIS, who were runners-up to us, is managing them instead. Just as many questions as answers. Anyway, 'we' won 2-1. We took an early lead and doubled-up before the half hour mark, and completely bossed the first 60 minutes. A red card reduced us to ten men, we were under the cosh a bit and conceded in the 85th minute, but managed to hold on for the win. It means very little, but as this is probably the one and only time (in any save) I'll ever take part in this game, it's nice to tick that box. And, rather generously, it counts as a cup in in my manager history.

Åtvidaberg FF - 2042 Season Review Super chuffed with this, obviously. I sometimes shake my head and lose interest when I see saves with instant success, including my own. But given the 20+ years of mediocrity prior to this I can forgive the first season promotion here. I think I can put it down to inheriting a good team, and also with the increased reputation and attendances, this is probably a club that should have higher expectations. Next year will be the real challenge, seeing if we can cope in the Superettan at all. We'll definitely have to strengthen in a few places. I've taken a look at the rules and they actually have prize money on offer, roughly £750k for relegation, so even if it's one and done the financial boost should be good. --------------------------------------------- I used a 4-4-2 tactic throughout the season, basically the same formation that I always use with a few tweaks. I knew it could win things (my last long-term save before this was with Katowice, where I won the Polish Ekstraklasa 15 times in 16 years), but the limited player pool I had at Tyresö FF and Rynninge IK never suited it. Sofian Ben Salem was our top scorer with 15 goals, and was also the division's top scorer. He was also voted our fan's player of the season. Impressive work for a free signing. His strike partner Emil Johansson also finished in double figures with 13 goals. On the left-wing Martin Hjelmberg was the main provider with six assists and eight goals, though the contributions from the right side were disappointing in comparison to this. Midfielder Christer Nygren-Ström started more games than anyone else, but was the only outfield regular not to score even once. New goalkeeper Oscar Bernhardsson conceded just eight times in 12 league games, and also managed an assist from a long clearance. --------------------------------------------- 42d Lukas Borg was the only academy graduate to see any gametime, but made the most of it with a goal in his second sub appearance. --------------------------------------------- Previous Clubs Tyresö FF (Division 1 Norra) had a comfortable year, never being near the top or the bottom, and finishing 7th. Rynninge IK (Division2 Norrland) had a very similar season to us, going the whole year unbeaten and winning the league by five points. ---------------------------------------------

Åtvidaberg FF - October 2042 We go into the final month with a six point lead - can we finish the job, or will we bottle it? Short answer - we finished the job and it was easy. A comfortable victory over FC Trollhättan guaranteed at least a play-off spot, then we destroyed Skövde AIK to clinch promotion with two games to spare. Look at the times of those goals, we just blitzed them in stoppage-time. The final two games were about getting through the season undefeated. We didn't play hugely well in these games, but we made it. A late equaliser from Emil Johansson scored us a point at Eskilsminne IF, then 42d Lukas Borg struck his first goal to pull off the late win at IS Halmia. --------------------------------------------- Wahey! Although I did get promoted during my time at Rynninge IK, it was through the play-offs. So it feels good to pick up the first silverware of my career (and justifies the decision to continue with this save on a non youth only basis). We rose to 1st place in week 10, and never left this spot. There was a rocky spell during August when a bunch of draws saw us drop a lot of points, but during September and October we won 20 points from a possible 24 to finish the season strong. I think switching from Instant Result to actually watching the games was key in this final period to make sure we kept going and ending up unbeaten is the cherry on top. ---------------------------------------------

Åtvidaberg FF - September 2042 I had some harsh words for the team at the end of August, and they set out to prove me wrong. We blew Utsiktens BK away and both previously misfiring strikers grabbed a brace, as well as putting on an assist for the other. This saw Sofian Ben Salem reach double figures for the season. We then followed that up with another couple of wins, inspired by constant use of the Demand More button. We had 36 shots against Kristianstad FC (17 on target), only scoring twice was disappointing. The huge game this month was away at Varbergs BoIS, in 2nd place. We'd drawn out our lead from one point at the end of August to six points now, but this was a big opportunity for them to claw back half of the deficit. We took an early lead and had the lion's share of the efforts, but were unable to take them and let Varbergs get back into the game. We kept giving them chances and they took advantage of this and went 2-1 up. It was looking bad and we went ultra attacking for the final 10 minutes, and it paid off when substitute Otto Niklasson grabbed an equaliser. --------------------------------------------- Both of our nearest challengers had a ropey month and we now have a six point lead, with four games left to play. Take a look at the bottom of the table, I hope Hässleholms IF find a way to stay up. ---------------------------------------------

Åtvidaberg FF - 2042 Youth Intake A golden generation! 11 players were signed from this batch, five were ignored due to their low determination. Nowhere near as much potential as I'm used to, but that's obviously to be expected when the facilities are starting at square one again. A player from Cape Verde is interesting, though also a bit annoying. I've learnt how to type the extra Swedish letters (ä/Ä/, å/Å, and ö/Ö), I don't want to learn more accented letters.