Staying at a club for a long period of time

Anyone got any tips on how to stay at a club for a long period? I get bored after 1 season but i would love to do 10+ years.

How do you guys do it?

Actually I find harder to leave a club after I've spent time and effort to turn it into a more successful side.

There's always a goal to achieve, be it promotion, the breakthrough of the next batch of talented youngsters, more silverware etc...

It does help if your managing your favourite club, so you should not get bored of seeing them win, even if it's just a game and you've won trebles a plenty.

Otherwise go for a journeyman career in nations you have little or no knowledge of... Load some odd leagues and see where it goes from there.

Personally the only times I get bored is when I'm walking away with silverware without even having to field the best eleven possible, or when I've just won all I could with my favourite club.

Otherwise a nice career with plenty of new challenges and new jobs should stay fresh long enough

Yeah, as soon as I start actively bringing decent youngsters to a club I know I'm going to be stuck there for a while, so I make sure never to do it unless I'm somewhere I can see myself staying for the long haul.

The nearest I've had to a journeyman save was a 4 1/2-year stint at Sporting Lisbon followed by 2 1/2 years at Fiorentina, at which point I stopped playing. It was very enjoyable as they are two of my favourite foreign clubs, but I always prefer one-club saves. You can build the club exactly to your needs in terms of youth an wage structure, and if you're constantly moving about it's hard to establish that. Developing youth is my favourite aspect of FM and sticking with one club helps with that I guess.

I would like to do another journeyman save as Sporting/Fiorentina was extremely enjoyable (was also my first ever FM save) but I just don't know where I'd start.

The secret for a long term save is long term planning, especially with youngsters. How will I turn this promising 17-year old into a key player?

Eventually, you reach a point where it becomes "your" team and the previous managers' influence has been obliterated.

I suppose you just have to have the mentality for it.

To be honest i always start a save expecting it to be a long term career with one club but it rarely is. I had a save that went like this:

Forest Green - 2years

Crewe - 2 and a half years

Huddersfield - 5 years

Sheff Wed - 4 months

Derby - 7 months

Ipswich - 2 years

Newcastle - 3 years

Chelsea - 2 years.

The start i wanted to get Forest Green as high as possible but the cash flow was so awful it turned the save into a chore so i left for Crewe who by then were 22nd on the BSBP. Won prmotion and finished just outside the play-offs when Lge 1 Huddersfield came calling. Although did not get promoted with them i did win the Lge Cup and had a good european adventure so when Prem side Sheff Wed came for me i wanted to mix it in the big league. Straight away i regretted it and last just a few months before resigning. I wanted to find a club that i could spend a few years with so when Derby offered me the chance thought they were the one. They weren't. Left in November when they were 4th in Championship but was really getting no enjoyment from the save. Was considering quitting the save altogether. Decoded to give it one more club and led Ispwich to the Prem in my second season after losing play-off final the previous season. In came Newcastle and really didnt know if leaving was the best thing but again the lure of a Prem side with good budget attracted me. After finishing 11th, 9th and then 7th plus an FA Cup win Chelsea offered me the chance. This was a club with only 1 Lge title, 2 FA Cups and 1 Europa Lge success so i set about bringing them to the top of the tree again. Finished 4th then 2nd, winning the FA Cup both years before a stupid bug affected the save meaning i could not get past the 27th July for some reason.

My point is although i set out to manage a club for years, the best kind of saves are when you really agonise over moves! I agree with other posts about needing a mentality for a long term save as i much more enjoy bringing small success to many clubs. My current save has seen me harshly sacked by Championship side West Ham, win promotion from Lge 2 with Leyton O and now winning promtion from BSBP with Luton.

So i am 4 years in but still only in Lge 2 with my third club but Leyton O are now better off than when i took over and my current Luton side look good for a second promotion on the spin.

I was at Arsenal for about 60 seasons.

I continually give myself long term targets and records to beat. I'll try get in a really good youth Striker and see if I can get them to break the all time scoring record.

I also set season goals. For instance in a current save at Arsenal - I scored 114 league goals two seasons ago. And I got 116 league goals this season. And I'm going to try break that record.

I'll find the best 16/17 year old defender, or goalkeeper and try to play them in every single game possible. It's actually easier to do with a goalkeeper and you can get more years out of them. If you're scoring over 100 goals a season it doesn't matter that you don't have a brilliant (yet brilliant goalkeeper). Playing a 16 year old in goal until 36 or 37 and see how many league appearances you can get them.

I also find getting more involved in the youth and reserve leagues helps a lot. So building a good youth squad. I usually take the best of the 15-21 year olds and have them in my first team and make them available for the reserves.

But I also keep a healthy youth team with potential of at least 2.5 - 3.5 stars. Anyone with potential of over 3.5 stars is in my first team.

Another good way to stay interested is by selling good young players and putting a "50% of next transfer fee". I sold many 21 year old brilliant prospects, but they would not fit into my squad at the time. Sell them for €20m with a "50% of next transfer fee" or "10%" or whatever you can get. When they reach about 28 or so they might get sold for something like €60m and you get a bit of a cash windfall from a player that hasn't played at your club for 6 or 7 seasons. I find the best way to do this is to keep loaning out really good youngsters. I had a player that at age 23 had played on loan for his entire career at Atletico Madrid, he was worth €40m and never played a game for me. I sold him for €60m with a "10% of next sale" clause, and I got €10m when he moved from At Madrid to Barcelona a few seasons later.

But I'll do the above with players that are crap too. Every couple of seasons I get a couple of million from players that I sold that had no chance of playing for me.

For me, on a long term save, match day is the most boring part. Because I've already taken a team from the bottom of one league to the top (I try to start with a "Hero" save) and then I get offered a job at a top club. And it's really easy once you have your players bought and tactics, I literally have no problem winning any game. Match day just gets in the way for me lol.

I much prefer spending lots of time scouting players, hiring scouts, searching leagues, competitions. And I spend a lot of time in the transfer window wheeling and dealing for youngsters, and also loaning out some youngsters.

I sign a lot of players under 20 so I'm always trying to get the best out of them and making them stars. When you have exciting prospects, it gets too hard to leave them. I also seem to fall in love with my best players and find it too difficult to leave them because the AI wont get as much out of them as I do.

My ultimate goal is to always end up at Forest.

In my FM11 save it never actually happened, I got Farnborough to the Championship but with a 40k per week wage budget I didn't think it was possible to take the club any further. I ended up at Sheffield United and within 4 years had won an FA Cup and in the final season won the Premierleague on a pulsating last day where in the 90th minute it was still possible for the title to go to 3 teams (nearly had a heart attack, was relying on other results and couldn't lose to Arsenal, got the draw, United didn't win so got the title. If Arsenal had scored against us they would have won it and if United scored a single goal they would have won it).

Anyway got the job at Barcelona and was very successful with them, I never ended up at Forest because they were stuck in the Championship and I couldn't bring myself to take such a big step down.

Thankfully in my current FM12 save I ended up at Forest straight after Farnborough. I'm continuing the club record of being the only team to have won the European Cup more times than their domestic title. Currently Forest have 4 CL wins (2 of them mine) and still only the one league victory lol.