Football Manager

Im in my first season in the Premiership. 30 games in holding 6th place. I had to sell my world class left winger because he spent 2 years bitching about joining a bigger club. He's only 20 or so years old and I sold him for $40MM. Not bad when I rank dead last in salary and turnover. Flipped that $40 mil into 5 or 6 high quality prospects. Still haven't gotten a new stadium. Currently playing in a 5000 all seater and the board is okay with it.

 

Has anyone gotten really attached to a club through this game? I started off with Bristol Rovers in 2012 and now I use them in every iteration since and also use them in FIFA. I really want to go to one of their games when I'm there in October

 

How's the match engine? I'm still running 14.

 

I started a save with Wolfsburg- have won the Bundesliga three years in a row and just did back to back champions league wins.

Team is absolutely filthy with Lincoln, Sane, Leon Bailey, and Felice D'Amico forming my core. Sane won the Ballon D Have some silly wonderkids that I poached from German teams and South America that are all 5 star potential kind of dudes.

Now that I mention it, it's kind of boring and I might do a new save.

 

Lincoln, the Brazilian striker?

 

Yup. He's filthy as a complete forward. Year before he had 30 goals and 20 assists. I have a Croatian regen that is more highly rated than him and scores some real thunder bastards, but I like running out the real dude

 

Yep. Bought him at Atlanta United when I started my FM 18 save. Incredible talent.

 

I'm in the EPL now so most my scouts are at 19/19 with 15+ determination. I have one guy from Sierra Leone with full knowledge of one or two countries over multiple continents. He has a real high adaptability rating so I send him around the world on weird assignments.

 

Ned Yocho I also manually assign scouting lists around regen dates. My staff can prepare ~85 reports per day so I do the math and load up the list around the regen days. On regen day itself, I assign one scout to prepare reports on all players with at least 10 determination below the age of 18 in that country. I try to never leave my scouting department off cooldown.

 

I'd had all my scouts in the important regions - South America East and West, Africa West and North, and all of Europe. And then some doing specific countries. Had them all looking for u21 with at least a 4 star rating.

But then I felt bad that I never said yes to the assignments they asked for, so now I just let them do those unless it's a really shitty/dumb request.

 

I have a low determination scout with 20/20 and full knowledge of nearly a dozen European countries. He's been on my staff for 9 years and I have him set to roam the UK. I get a message every month from him asking to see the Caribbean, South America, and Spain. I think the dude promised his wife a vacation and he's stuck taking her on mid week trips to Brighton.

 

Boy, a lot has happened since this.
He finished with 19, 13, 4, 7.67 in 29 apps.

A good season for sure. However, Ousmane Dembele put up: 21, 24, 9, 8.02 in 32 apps. Obviously set some records with that.

Even with those numbers, we just barely edged out Real in the league by 3 points. We also beat them on pks in the Copa del Rey and triumphed in extra time against City, 5-3. The latter included a 90+3' equalizer by Dembele.

This was all for the 21/22 season, which is the first I've had where I legitimately could and did sub out all 11 every other match. That's been great for resting players and developing younger ones. I gave two academy/domestic players regular time, which is the most I've ever given to domestic players (0 English when I managed Hereford and 1 German when I managed Unterhaching). Of course that doesn't include Spaniards I inherited.

The Pogba/Martial transfers left my bank pretty light, and I went quite a bit negative to bring in a star LB to replace Jordi Alba in the window.

My Barca transfer history:
20/21 - Spent 390M (Ben Henrichs, Sergej, Pogba, youths), Made 124M (Cuadrado, Manolas, Alcacer)
21/22 - Spent 89M (Martial), Made 41M (Mario)
22/23 - Spent 111M (Alex Grimaldo, Fed Valverde), Made 80M (Jose Gimenez)

And that doesn't include 218M in additional clauses cor Henrichs, Pogba, Martial, and Grimaldo. Half of that is Pogba.

With those added players and my academy, my talent and depth were just amazing for the 22/23 season. The highlights of the season were beating A Madrid 2-0 away with my backups, losing 4 matches all season (1 la liga, 1 Copa del Rey, 2 UCL), and winning the league by 24 points (over A Madrid). Finished with 34-3-1 in league with 96 GD and 105 points. Will maybe be my best season ever as Messi and Biscuits retired, Rakitic went to NYCFC in the winter, and I'm expecting Suarez to drop off this coming season (he's 36).

I hired Messi as a coach, so he's there with Henry now. And I have at least 4.5 at every training category.

Pogba finally had a breakout year for me. I'd been playing him as an AP, his natural role, and thatd gotten me 4 G/9 A, 7.50 in 48 apps over 1.5 seasons. Well I did some reading online and it turns out that the natural role isn't really always a player's best role. So I switched him to Mezzala for this season, a little more attack-minded, and he responded with 11/9, 7.71 in 33 apps. Magical. Actually 1 G/2 A from those first 48 were as a Mezzala too, cause I did it at the end of that season.

Both Martial and Dembele had a little less production this season, though Dembele did net 30 assists. Previously my LB and RB had been FB role, but I switched them to CWB for the season. So I'm going to switch them back to FB for the upcoming season.

On the transfer market, I'm really just filling depth this window. So looking for a RW, CM, and maybe ST. La Masia is being a fucking dick so far and in my 3.5 seasons has only given me two 4+ star players, both keepers.


Lastly, I have a bit of big news. For some time I've been itching to get into the international game. I wanted USA obviously, but it hasn't come close to being up. Recently France's manager got to the Insecure standing and I was able to declare interest in the job. But he stalled out at Very Insecure. But, during that time, Argentina came open and I've taken it. And I'll be getting a fucking Messi regen next youth intake. So I'm looking forward to that added challenge as there seems to be a fair amount of depth to it and I know Argentina has fallen off somewhat (only 16th in the world currently).

PS, My feeder clubs are now Freiburg, Servette, Velez, Deportivo Cali, Dinamo, Partizan, and Atlanta. Will probably cancel Servette soon cause they're shit.

 

Jesus. I went into that intending to do like 2-3 paragraphs.

 

Bruh you need to call Earnie Stewart up and ask for a job.

 

When is the last time a young Dutch player actually lived up to a fraction of their hype?
Their highest profile player that isn’t about to retire from Nederland is Virgil Van Dijk and he hardly had any hype around him as a youngster.

 

I'm dying at them having VAR in it.

 

Normally, I'm not on board with replay shit in a video game because... it's a game, get it right. That said, FM has had a rating system and variance built into the game refs for as long as I can remember. VAR is just an extension of that.

 

Beta is available to play. Going to be fun relearning everything again.

 

Thinking of jumping in for this one (maybe a Black Friday deal?). I hear they've added expanded training options, is that cool?

 

what's the cost on this bad boy?

 

I've gotta just hold out until Black Friday.

 

I've driven Barca to such poor financial standing that Messi just covered the cost of his own coaching course.

I didn't even know that was an option.

 

Just got my youth intake. Highest player has 3.5 star potential and only two players have at least 3 star potential.

I'm absolutely devastated. At Barca with the best facilities possible, a top head of youth development, and some of the best affiliate clubs possible. Can't believe it.

 

Did just clinch the title with 8 matches to go though.

 

This is 20% of the season left. I've dropped 7 points all season.

The board is 64% pleased with my winning the league.

 

I started a save with London Tigers and after a couple promotions we are in the Isthmian Premier league just one step away from Vanarama N/S and only a bit further to get to league football and one day the biggest club in the world.

Fun save for sure.

 

Does anyone have FM19? It's currently $33.49 on Steam.

Watching videos now and my word the training is so detailed.

 

Oh Lord, Attack, Transition, and Defense tactics.

I'm in.

 

I've been using an old lenovo that crashes every 2 matches running 18 because it has like one gig of memory since my normal computer died a few months ago. Been playing as Sunderland. Went undefeated in the championship, won the FA cup my 2nd year and Champions League in year 3. Team is stupid good already.

 

Big, big news tonight.

For my FM 19 save, I've taken over Hereford FC of the Vanarama National League North.

Many of you will remember I brought Hereford United to glory in FM 11, on the backs of players such as Robbie Brady, Tom Thorpe, and Emmanuel Frimpong.

Sadly, upon my departure to Germany's Unteraching in FM 14, the club collapsed.

It has since been reborn as Hereford FC. And I, Hereford's favorite son, have returned to lift it up out of the ashes and into glory.

 

A little overview as I take charge:

Hereford is a semi-pro club with 1 star rep. It has a 5,200 capacity stadium, with half that seated. It's in poor condition and owned by the council. Training facilities, junior coaching, and youth recruitment is basic. Youth facilities are poor.

The squad has four players with at least 4 star ability, two of them are on loan. My most valuable non-loan player is 100k. He's also my highest wage at 575p/w. Annoyingly, he also doesn't fit my desired tactic.

The tactic I'm going to attempt is a 4-2-3-1 Wide with tiki-taka. I've always been a fan of the short passing game with a high press on defense. My players are pretty well suited to it, with only one player less than accomplished in their role and only one other player using a role not fitting with the tactic (my striker is a target man). Eventually I want to run something crazy like a 3-2-5.

I plan to use parent clubs significantly during my tenure, with the hope of getting talented youngsters loaned on the cheap. On that note, I'm currently spending 452 p/w over my budget. I've actually already gotten that down from over 1k (my total payroll budget is just over 8k). I canceled all my shit friendlies for money making ones in hopes of helping with this.

I have no head of youth development, no physio, and no chief scout. As I'm a semi-pro club, I also can only train like 2-3 days a week.

My expectations are a top half finish and the bare minimum for the domestic cups. The media has predicted I'll finish 12th.

That's all for now. Please do mention if there's anything else you'd like to know about.

 

Just beat EPL side Cardiff City in my second preseason friendly. The lowest earning person in their 18 makes over twice much as my entire squad.

Ho hum.

 

It's because Cardiff is shit.

 

Bought a new laptop. Took the dive. Bought 19. Gonna run it out with Hamburg at first

 

It's amazing he can get up and down the pitch

 

This match nearly gave me a heart attack