building a successful long-term save with one club- help needed

Hi all

I do love reading threads where people have taken 'smaller' teams and made them into dominant forces in England/Europe. However, I am struggling to do this myself and would appreciate any helpful pointers as to things to make sure I do/put in place.

Basically, I am managing Sheffield United (club I support) and I won league 1 first time of asking, won the championship playoffs second time of asking and now I am in the Premiership and really struggling. If it wasn't for a good start to the season that saw me 4th after 10 games, I'd be bottom by now as I have won once in the next 15 games. (I'm not here complaining about losing- I just want an idea of how to improve my game-playing ability/understanding).

I usually like to focus on finding and developing good prospects (worked great on FM11) but that's failing this time round. It didn't help that at the end of last season I didn't know how to go about building the team for the Premiership and kind of panick bought players with 2 weeks to go as I had a squad of 12 at that point!

What I'd like is if you could post a few helping points as to how you go about building your 'smaller' team into a great one to challenge for the title and in Europe and what sort of things should I be looking to do both short and long term to put the groundwork in to begin this process (staff, training, transfers etc)

Any help is much appreciated (and by all means, if you're willing to help, use it to show off how you've taken 'XXX' to glory!)

Thanks

Have a look in the Careers forum http://community.sigames.com/forumdisplay.php/151-FM-Career-Updates

Have a look in the Careers forum http://community.sigames.com/forumdisplay.php/151-FM-Career-Updates

Thanks Fraz.

Have had a browse through dozens of threads and have to say some people seem to be very very good at this!

That said, not really seen many threads where there are obvious pointers as to how to improve your chances at this type of thing. Maybe the people in those threads all know how already and therefore haven't needed to post how, they just update?

Anything to get me going would be great

I have the impression that the carreer forum concerns themselves more with the "what" than the "how" part. Still there's a lot of good info there, for those who have the patience to look

When you go up, don't ever panic buy .

Continue with the buying of younger players so you can mould them and help them and you improve but also add a few experienced players to the side.

Look for determined players and players who suit your tactic. It's easier to get new players to fit in to your tactic if they suit it. Don't go after the great pros that may come if they don't fit with your style or the club.

Don't be afraid to get relegated. You won't be expected to stay up, unless you've chosen it, so if you go down you shouldn't have anything to worry about as long as the board give you another chance. Don't offer big wages. Take the profits of the Prem each month, save the money and improve on infrastructure. Don't be afraid for a few seasons to be a yoyo club as the money you'll make, if you're sensible will eventually help you to stay up. Obviously I don't know how bad your board is and whether they'd let you be a yoyo club.

I'm in Championship with Tonbridge (When I start this save, they we're on Blue Square South) in 2020 and I'm trying to get promoted to Premier League.

I've signed only teh best players avaliable and inside the budget

When you go up, don't ever panic buy .

Continue with the buying of younger players so you can mould them and help them and you improve but also add a few experienced players to the side.

Look for determined players and players who suit your tactic. It's easier to get new players to fit in to your tactic if they suit it. Don't go after the great pros that may come if they don't fit with your style or the club.

Don't be afraid to get relegated. You won't be expected to stay up, unless you've chosen it, so if you go down you shouldn't have anything to worry about as long as the board give you another chance. Don't offer big wages. Take the profits of the Prem each month, save the money and improve on infrastructure. Don't be afraid for a few seasons to be a yoyo club as the money you'll make, if you're sensible will eventually help you to stay up. Obviously I don't know how bad your board is and whether they'd let you be a yoyo club.

Of course, as Tricky Trees, we have quite a lot of knowledge & afinity with "yo-yo" clubs, eh?

Of course, as Tricky Trees, we have quite a lot of knowledge & afinity with "yo-yo" clubs, eh?

We haven't been a yoyo clubs for years . I'd love to be a yoyo club.

Thanks for the replies people.

I have finished my current season and managed to survive in 15th in the Premiership.

Will be having a clean out of my squad and will buy the best players I can without overspending and lets see how next season goes.

If anyone else has any further tips, please post them.

Don't clear out your squad completely. Do it gradually. Too many changes in a short space of time can have a reverse affect despite the players possibly being better.

Really? What time frame would you suggest for the process?

My squad has about 20 players. I'd say I'd class 12 of them as good enough to keep.

Yeah, they'd have to gel, the new players and if they didn't, you could find yourself struggling and being below where you'd expect. Then morale would drop and before you know it, you'd struggle to get out of it. Don't spend excessive amounts. Like all of your budgets as if you do and don't do well the board may sack you. There is no timeframe, it'll be a continuous process until the players start to mature. Then if they did and all went well, you get down to 1/2 or maybe no transfers as you'll have players that you've signed previously coming in and settling.

When it comes down to promotions, most people seem to have a policy of clearing out squads every season and it's probably the best way to achieve sucess due to the high amount of quality free transfers that are available on the game, i don't like this policy so i normally use a different one, i consider that every player that was good enough to be a starter on the previous season, will be at least a decent backup on the next tier so i would normally only need to sign 11 players or so, also on lower tiers unless you have really good prospects with high potential(on England is normally easy to find a few since top clubs release so many prospects) it's generally better to make short-term duration contracts since players can be somewhat hard to transfer out, so making one or two year deals at most for your players will normally work well.

Having said that you are already on the top-tier, and despite Sheffield United having some reputation and history on England, most teams will be really attacking against you for a few seasons so the best bet would be to get some good pace upfront and sign solid defenders(even if they are veterans they can be useful since you are sitting deep and it's more important for them to have great mental attributes than pyhsical ones) so you can be a threat on the break, it should work greatly for a couple of seasons until your reputation increases and teams starting to have more respect for you so by then you need to change your approach specially on the home games where they will be more defensive and your tactic or shouts will need to focus more on breaking teams down, by then you should have more quality players anyway to make your task easier.

The great thing about England is that the TV Money is so huge that a club can grow very fast, still you will be on a financial disadvantage for many years so to compete financially with the other teams the best bet is to find young raw gems and try to develop them into top players since it's a lot cheaper than spending on established players that will also have larger wages, i don't know how many leagues you have loaded but assuming you have some smaller leagues(in relation to England) like the French or Dutch, it's also a good place to look since those players will be wanting to join a bigger league and will generally be cheaper and demand less wages than established premier league players, of course the bosman ruling also helps a lot though in England you can only approach players from that country when they only have one month left.

Since you just finished your season it can also be good to have a look at the teams that just got relegated, they will look to move some players or have some players that won't renew their contract, so you can have a quick look at those relegated teams to see if there's anyone available on a bosman or transfer listed that will improve your squad.

Agents are also great, i'm someone that doesn't use the player search(only as a mean to index all the players my scouts find) so i rely on them a lot, remember you can always have a look at all the players the agent have so you can see if some the young prospects are good or some of the players that are transfer listed by request.

My priority is always to improve the training facilties, the youth facilities can generally wait unless you want to rely specially on youth prospects but i will always gladly spend most of the TV money on new facilities or stadium instead of improving the squad.

Hope you found any of this helpful.

Brilliant reply Coentrao

Much appreciate you taking your time to help. I shall follow the steps you have outlined, see what young players I can find/my scouts can find and scour for some veteran defenders (I had the worst defence last season in the Premiership).

My board keep rejecting my requests to upgrade facilities- in your experience, is this something that may change if I keep mithering them?

It's a money, reputation and board's ambition thing. Hopefully as time goes on, they'll be more open to the idea. So yeah keep pestering them but change the requests eventually.

I think that normally depends on the board though most times they will be convinced by the option "after all i've done for this club by raising it's profile it's the least you could do for me" if it's available so i would just keep insisting on that and they should give in eventually.

It's a money, reputation and board's ambition thing. Hopefully as time goes on, they'll be more open to the idea. So yeah keep pestering them but change the requests eventually.

Ahh I see- thank you! Hopefully then as I get more money in the bank they may agree.

Surprisingly not seen that option yet Coentrao- will keep a look out for it and keep mithering them for upgrades. Would love to see a real talent come through my youth academy.

When it comes to board requests, I've also had great success with "if you don't grant this request I see us being left behind by our rivals".

Do not panic buy, unfortunately premiership success is usually a slow process. first couple of season expect some awful results as well.

i have managed one or two saves going up in premiership and doing ok (the reputation annoying issue has always killed my saves).

Do not clear out your squad. as it was said previously new players need time to gel. ideally you need to be buying a LOT of talent on your 1st season in premiership (as you have spare money) so you can build the team for the future. (that's what i normally do).

first season is always about improving squad with couple of players (usually the weakest positions) and talent. if you bring in talent then on the 2nd season you will have some that you can use to improve the team further so you will need only few established players. second season and afterwards for me is always buying talent to provide players for the future. unfortunately the way i do it means you spend all your premiership money on players pretty much BUT after some point you will be selling some of you previously bought talents which you do not think they will make the grade and you can recoup money.

Do not panic buy, unfortunately premiership success is usually a slow process. first couple of season expect some awful results as well.

i have managed one or two saves going up in premiership and doing ok (the reputation annoying issue has always killed my saves).

Do not clear out your squad. as it was said previously new players need time to gel. ideally you need to be buying a LOT of talent on your 1st season in premiership (as you have spare money) so you can build the team for the future. (that's what i normally do).

first season is always about improving squad with couple of players (usually the weakest positions) and talent. if you bring in talent then on the 2nd season you will have some that you can use to improve the team further so you will need only few established players. second season and afterwards for me is always buying talent to provide players for the future. unfortunately the way i do it means you spend all your premiership money on players pretty much BUT after some point you will be selling some of you previously bought talents which you do not think they will make the grade and you can recoup money.

Thanks Blade

I have bought a few experienced players but spent most of my 15 million budget on young prospects who are already good enough to slot straight in. Board have said they expect a mid-table finish so gonna have perform a lot better than last season to achieve that.

On a far more positive note, did you go to the game tonight Blade- was an absolute cracker!