Ceching You Out

Mid-season 2038/2039 This looks slightly better if we win our game in hand, but yeesh. Injuries brought us to our knees, including some to, well, our knees. Sending out our all-time league scorer was a move I was always going to make, but our attack just hasn't clicked quite the same despite moving our wonderkind (34b) Rinner into the starting lineup more permanently. I'd be happy with a third place finish at this point, honestly. We're just not clicking. With a set of European campaigns that look like only one side advancing past their respective group stage, this is shaping up to be a season to forget. Quite positive if you believe these things. A source of pride, bit funny, and also not at all the goal since most of these players were also eligible for Liechtenstein.

Europe 2038/2039 Well... that's not great. Two teams in the top 10 by coefficient, four in the top 20. We'll need some magic against Gala, Brugge, Basel, and Gent here.

Thanks! It felt like a fluke until we did it again. Even now I'm not sure we "deserve" it, but that's just looking at the vast difference in player quality. For example, this is RB Salzburg's current squad: They've got a lot of players in their primes, or just past. They're roughly comparable to a lower-middle English Premier League side. That's nothing to sneeze at for an Austrian side. We're an (aspirational) promotion-chasing English Championship side. Here's a similar view of our players: Good question on how they responded! They've changed Managers after each of the last seasons where they went trophy-less. They've actually been relatively quiet in the transfer market by their standards - $32M spent after their first season of failure. That's more than the $6M the year before, but dwarfed by the $102M the year before that. Going farther backwards, they spent $19M, $123M, and $78M. I'm still in the offseason after their second season of failure, and they've only spent $5M through mid-July.

Post-season 2037/2038 In the end it was blessedly anti-climactic. 11 points clear with 3 to play meant we clinched even before we played Rapid a second time. We lost our undefeated season with two matches to go, losing to a RB Salzburg that had fired their coach, lost the Cup Final, and just gotten blasted by Wolfsberger 5-1. I cared less than I thought I would. We heavily rotated for the final match two days later (against RB Salzburg again), picking up our second loss. Even that wasn't enough to boost them into Europa League, having given Sturm Graz one of the spots via their Cup failure. Eventually they fought off LASK for a spot in the Europa Conference, a competition they're frankly better than. They made it to the semis of the Europa League this season, only losing on a 120' PK in a game they'd had the better of. I expect them to be resurgent next season. Not much to see here other than our dominance in GF, GA, and GD. Our 2nd and 3rd reps here was a nice surprise, especially in the thick of the list rather than a late-ranked afterthought. Possibly the most impressive thing of the entire season -- our U19s, who don't have proper league fixtures, more than held their own against Europe's best academies in the CL Youth League. Easy qualification from the group. After advancing two rounds in knockouts, they go down in the quarterfinals to West Ham in a travesty of a match eventually lost on PKs. Still, vindication for our youth development here.

It's that time again... and things are a bit more interesting this year. 2 Romanians, 1 Norwegian, 1 German, 1 Congolese. Nice! Looks like our Affiliates are doing work, at least Farul Constanta and Stabaek. Maybe we'll see Uruguayans and Spaniards next year. The 2 players over 130 CA and 3 players over 120 make for a nice haul, and all sign the typical contracts. (38j) Buchner is the only other signee due to his promising personality (only 4 points off Model Citizen).

Europe 2037/2038 (continued) So we managed just about the most respectable point total I could dream, so I'm quite happy even if we finagled it a different than I would have drawn it up. Was it enough? To be honest, I'm not too bothered either way. Just. The famous draw to Bayern in the last match made the difference. Strangely AC Milan finished below us. But we're on to a knockout round. Who gets the honor of sending us packing? The current title holders! EDIT: It ended as you'd expect. No hard feelings and we kept the score respectable.

Mid-season 2037/2038 If it really is this bad an intake, I might throw something. Especially because take a look at the season we're having. I'm a lying liar, apparently. We should be repeating as champions this season.

~$1400 per seat to add roughly 3200 seats. We don't own the stadium so it may not be a fantastic financial deal, but my thinking is this -- I want our attendance as high as possible before we bite the bullet and build a new stadium that we'll (likely) own. That means biding our time for a bit. And frankly the money is a drop in our bucket at this point. Let's see if this does anything this year! What happened here? Ohhh for some reason we played this game at our actual home for some reason (as opposed to a borrowed location we'd used previously)... and we only have 1K seats, with the bulk standing. I think you may have missed something here FM.

Europe 2037/2038 I don't think there's any combination of teams we could draw that would make me feel confident here, but that's the deal when you go straight into the CL League Phase. Maybe we can beat Legia and/or Partizan. Besides that, we'll hope for lucky draws somewhere -- perhaps Feyenoord or Famalicao. We get Madrid and Bayern at home which certainly marks a milestone! That payout though. This takes our balance to a ridiculous $78M. Safe to say we're doing okay financially.

Minor rant: I think the nationality decision logic is poorly modeled. The tiny number of players from our Academy who are willing to represent Liechtenstein is silly. I understand most starting with a preference for Austria, but it's absolute delusion for most to not reconsider as they peak nowhere near the required level. Here's the current Austrian selection: The worst player is 131 CA, with a couple at 132 CA including (26c) Kaiser who only got a sniff after we sold him to Girona in La Liga. Okay sure, the players may not know exact CA but scouts and advisors would surely help them understand how they compare. Even if they can't figure out relative CA, let's look at the clubs they play at. Shock! 14/23 currently play in a prominent league (England, Spain, France, Germany), 5/23 previously played in a prominent league and are now FAs or took a payday in Asia, and 3/23 play for top half teams in divisions that have been better than Austria since the save started (Netherlands, Belgium). Literally 1 (!) player doesn't fall into those buckets -- Vienna's Ahsbahs -- and he had still made his international debut by 26. If you're 27/28 and you're at <120 CA, you wouldn't want to become the star player for a national team (even one as bad as Liechtenstein)? It raises your reputation, opens up sponsorship deals, lets you play against some of the great players across Europe. And most importantly, it should be at no cost -- the door for Austria clearly is never going to open. I definitely wouldn't expect the floodgates to open, but come on! Why in the hell would our old friend (23e) Hilti make 20 appearances for Liechtenstein and then switch his allegiance to Austria without any assurances he'd appear? He's frankly nowhere near good enough for Austria when he's peaking at 112 CA (out of 119 PA). I'd complain about him not switching back, but I'm not sure if that's technically allowed. Anyway, I've convinced myself to take over the Liechtenstein job and try to convince players to join as an experiment. If it works, I might consider running the team in absentia just to rectify this. Flipping nationalities in the editor feels a bit much when I'd be picking and choosing the players. EDIT: Well that was a quick but spectacular failure. After going 0 for 20, odds are not good. Don't think I'll actually be taking over the national team anytime soon.

Another sign that this title was a bit of a fluke: Despite that, I do think we were clearly the best performing team in the division (just in a down year, given RB Salzburg's struggles):

Here's our title winning side. Assorted thoughts: Appearances were highly concentrated in the top 18 players, although both (36a) Baydemir and (34c) Heeb didn't see the field all that much (31a) Jumabaev is our star and player of the season, hence the $20M+ transfer value (31b) Schmidt, (31e) Bischof-Hartwig, and (31i) Buchenauer are already tagged in my mind for sales this summer (34b) Rinner and (36b) Banzer are future stars who will surpass all but (31d) Starke who we sold to Villareal two seasons ago. Sidenote: (31d) Starke started on fire in La Liga but has seen his appearances and performance drop off since then. Unfortunate for a 22 year old who's still 20+ points off his max PA. No chance he returns to us, though, with a $6M per salary.

Very cool challenge and quite the marathon. Good work getting this far!

I've been contemplating where the save goes from here. Since the start of the game, RB Salzburg has won every title except for a brief purple patch for Sturm Graz in 2028/2029 and 2029/2030. I really didn't expect to challenge any point soon. The silverware is fantastic, but it does take the two lowest hanging fruits off the tree. And the next one is quite a ways up there. It doesn't feel like I'm done here, but I wouldn't expect to mount true title challenges every season (RB Salzburg is still a significantly better side) and we're so far off competing in Europe that we'll be in this liminal stage for what looks awhile. Our financials are secure, but honestly better than that with $40M in the bank and what would be only a ~$6M loss for the season if we had sold zero players. We're not too far off being the no-effort, only sell if we want kind of sustainable. I'm a little disappointed with how our Cult of Personality has gone so far, in a large part because: (29b) Kunz never popped to Model Citizen despite benching him for almost a season to keep him in a mentor-able range trying to pick up 1 Det and 1 Pro (32g) Sulzbacher has yet to pop despite needing just 1 Loy since he appeared as a youth; he's now 21 and the window is fast-closing In both cases mentoring with (27a) Hug has been less impactful than I expected given he's our captain and a Team Leader. That's dampened by enthusiasm although there are a fewer lower profile examples that bode well for the future. The B Team rising through the ranks would be exciting, especially if they hit a playable league in 3-5 seasons. Empire building could be exciting. The appeal of taking over the Liechtenstein national team just quite isn't there (yet), since they're struggling to convince dual nationality 110-125 PA players to join. If the (27a) Hug's of the world, a maxed out 120 PA player, stopped holding out for a low percentage Austrian call up, I'd be a lot more excited about grinding out some results. I do still wonder if I took over, would they be willing enough to join because I'm a favored friend? Maybe I should run an experiment there. So, not rushing into the next season in my usual manner. Pondering much of the above.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. After 10+ years they really should have moved up at least once, especially given the players I have stashed there to this point are all picking up ~7.0+ ARs. Meaning FM recognizes we've got the caliber of player that would perform in the 5th Tier, not that I had any doubt.