Season Expectations

Morning all.

I'm currently immersed in a save with Walsall. After a solid first season where we finished 15th, I was disappointingly given no transfer budget for the next season and my wage budget was slashed by a large £7k p/w, despite me releasing several players and getting them off the wage budget and getting my keeper, Jimmy Walker, to take a pay cut from £7k to £1.6k.

My initial season expectations were 'mid-table finish'. However, the cut in my wage budget meant I had very little resources to bring players in. I've relied heavily on the loan market and bringing in youngsters on free transfers on low wages or 33/34 yr olds on one-year deals and my squad is numerically about 4/5 players down on what it was last season, meaning I've had to start relying on players from the reserves/under-18s.

Obviously, under these circumstances a struggle was always going to be on the cards this season and we currently sit 19th after 32 games, just 2 points above the drop zone, after a horrid run of 13 games without a win.

So my question is, whilst I know you can manually change your season expectations in January if you are performing above expectations, but under circumstances like these with Walsall, will your Chairman tolerate a season where you do not meet your season expections (i.e. a relegation battle instead of a safe mid-table finish)?

Also, on another point, up until this save I'd found FM12 rather easy and seemed to be successful wherever I went. But I'm really struggling to put any sort of form together with Walsall and I'm surprisingly enjoying the challenge of a relegation battle. Sometimes it's a refreshing change to struggle!

As far as I know expectations only ever go up.

How long you can go on underachieving depends on a lot of things but it sounds like you've had it.

My job status was 'Insecure' during the winless run but after picking up a bit lately it's changed back and it seems as though I'm safe for the time being.

The club has recently been taken over, so would a new Chairman assess the situation at the club and accept that a relegation battle is not exactly unacceptable under these circumstances, or does the game not go into this much depth?

Well the board confidence is made up of other things too. As long as those are better than average then you may get away with underachieving in the league. Depends how ambitious the chairman is I suppose.

yea, i got promoted from the championship with blackpool, they cut my wage budget and gave me a pittence for a transfer budget. lucky i had 4 retirements so wages fell.

second season i was shocked to see my minimum was top half finish...

I've had this.

First season we were expected to finish midtable.. We managed to sneak into the playoffs, finished 6th but got beat in the semi finals.

The following season, the minimum expectation I could choose was 'playoffs' (I thought we had over-achieved the season before, but hey ho, there is nothing I can do about it)

Anyway after a poor start to the season, we were in the bottom half of the table. No big deal to me, early doors (alot players have left, and alot of new players have come in.. so we need timeto gel. Plus getting over the playoff defeat from last season could be having an effect etc) and we are not as good as most of the teams in our league.

Then we start to go on a really good run (unbeaten in 12 games) and climb up to 10th in the League (still 3/4 points of the playoffs)

But even during this unbeaten run, I am constanly getting players coming to me complaining that the clubs is underachieving. 3 players have requested a transfer, and another is leaving on a free transfer now (he's out of contract at the end of the season)

A tad frustrating when players get unhappy (because of League position) they don't take into account your recent form/how many points you are off the playoff position.

We are on a really good unbeaten run and getting close to the playoffs.

I could understand if we were on a really poor run and drifting away from the playoffs.