Motlhen

My first job is at Swansea university in the Welsh 2nd tier. As an amateur side, I am not getting paid and won't have to worry about anyone getting paid more than me whilst I'm here.. ..or so I thought. Rule 1: No one at the club can have a wage higher than me, the manager. Upon arriving I was introduced to the only other member of staff at the club who I found out was on £1.5kp/w!? [I think as he is our coach, but also Wales U19s Physio, the game accidentally has us paying his national team contract?] Rule 5: Finances first. Our bank balance of £45k has been immediately slashed in half, but I'm glad I could get him to agree to mutual termination otherwise it would have cost us a whopping £77k. And amongst all of the confusion, the departed Buchanan forwarded me an email at 16:48 to remind me about the club's intra-squad friendly that had already happened at 12:00. We have a thin squad and two players who look set to leave, so recruitment will be the focus as soon as we have some backroom staff to help out. Rule 2: Always have a player produced by the club's academy in the XI. The first thing I did was start to look at which of our players came through the academy (along with adding some nicknames). We have 2 goalies, two right-backs, a left mid and a striker* that are home-grown (HG) at the club. *The striker is Leigh Roberts, who was a greyed-out player. I was pretty surprised by how much better than the rest of the grey players he was and with not very many home-grown players in our squad, I've signed him up as a backup! Rule 3: Always have a player over the age of 30 in the XI. We currently don't have anyone close to their thirties in the squad, so we'll be looking to bring in some experience to adhere to this rule! Rule 4: Always have a player under the age of 20 in the XI. There is a slight addition to this rule in the Welsh league: So we need to bring in some youth too!

Rules: 1. No one at the club can have a wage higher than me, the manager. 2. Always have a player produced by the club's academy in the XI. 3. Always have a player over the age of 30 in the XI. 4. Always have a player under the age of 20 in the XI. 5. Finances first - football is a business! Starting with Sunday league reputation and no coaching badges, I am going to start managing in the worst league (judged by league reputation in the editor) in the game and work my way up. I've added Daveincid's increased realism megapack so eternal thanks to him for his incredible work If you have any other "rules" you play by, I would love to hear about them!

This is awesome, thank you so much for your work!

I have been continuing this save and idea, but without updating here for a while... (I lost a bunch of screenshots and didn't put the effort in to go back through and get them all again) We continued our great end of season form into the new campaign and ended up storming the league, only losing twice. We lost in the Welsh Cup immediately But had a couple of good runs in the other 2 cups Including a disappointing Final loss against Llanwit Major to deny us a double. After promotion and losing in the final, I resigned from Conwy and moved clubs: The club were newly promoted and favourites to go back down. We started terribly with 5 losses on the spin and only started picking up a few wins with a change in tactic. The transfer window didn't open until November, but when it did we had a complete switch in fortunes Which just about helped us stay in the league It's the start of my 2nd season with SP and 4th overall and I'm hoping our singings will help us avoid a relegation battle this season.

I use Google Sheets for the data, yep

Departures We have had a number of departures (which means some more attribute unveiling) some I am okay with and some I was really not expecting. The biggest departure was Iddon Price retiring without prior announcement and no chance to try and talk him out of it. After signing in January, he played 11 games, got 4 goals and a 7.11 average rating in his short stint with us and was integral to our change in fortunes. So what did Price's attributes look like? The other retiree was Paddock. He was part of the squad last season but his stats didn't make him appealing enough to feature in my squad. There have been 3 transfers out too. I'm gutted to be losing RWB Roberts who featured in two full seasons for us (despite what the text in the image below might say.) I know he won a majority of headers and was decent at passing & tackling too. Do his attributes match up? Another disappointing loss was our young, backup striker Davies. A decent backup option, but he didn't do enough to excite me too much for the future - I'm not expecting to miss him. The final departure was Kaminski-Kurlandt who played terribly last season and remained out of the first team squad.

Apr 2025 Youth Intake Day This is a lot harder to judge (without attributes) than usual. Am I going to have to start some of the top-rated prospects to see how they get on, or will I have to pay more attention to my U19s next season? Fixtures We finished the season with two busy games. Happy to finish 5th and without losing so far in 2025. Hopefully we can keep that up into next season!

Mar 2025 Bad news. Jones has been our best players this season and losing him for 2 months, including for the Semi-Final against TNS, is a big loss. Good news. The board are happy to upgrade & extend my contract. ...at the end of the month we have the TNS game and with the 3 new signings being cup-tied I've chosen to risk playing both Jones & Forbes despite them both still recovering from injury. I want to give us the best chance. A smash & grab here would mean we are one game away from Europe, which is incredible to think about. TNS showed us their quality. It could've and maybe should've been more than 3. In the league we are still unbeaten this year - and added a couple more clean sheets! We've crept up to 6th with 2 games to go.

Feb 2025 After the transfer window, this is how we're lining up: (Luckily, we managed to keep Marshall with a new contract) Apart from for our Welsh Cup Quarter Final match where (devastatingly) our 3 signings are all cup-tied. Fixtures We've remained unbeaten, with 3 big wins on the spin! Two clean sheets in a row after only managing 3 in total previously this season is a great sign too. Iddon Price has contributed at both ends with 3 goals in his first 3 games!!! Bishop is also off the mark! & we're through to the Welsh Cup semis after an emphatic win against Berriew, although we did concede two late goals at 4-0 up. But we've drawn the holders & Welsh Champions. We have nothing to lose in this game - but I'm not expecting to get to the final now. Awards This is a huge sign of how well our defence has played and the improvements we've made paying off!

Jan 2025 With the new signings being gelled in to the system and adjustments being made to the tactics to suit them, I'm very happy we've not lost!

Transfer Out Our first transfer out (of a player I've been using) means we are ready for our first attribute reveal. Morgan only started 3 of the 16 apps for us and from the stats he was only above threshold for both clearances and interceptions which made me think of him as a no-nonsense defender, which I wasn't a fan of using. Although he was young, I doubt he'll improve enough to get to the level we need him at so I didn't fight against the transfer. Will I be kicking myself for letting him go?

After repeating a similar process for other positions, I found new targets for LWB, AML, MC & ST but only two of them came off: Striker Bishop will play as our target forward in place of Forbes who has not been consistent enough. The reason I signed Bishop was because he has been a much more clinical striker than Knight. I am hoping for a lot more goals playing him alongside Knight in the more physically demanding role. With two decent strikers up top - it was time to find someone who could provide for them. We have Jones on the right flank with a few backup options, but we had no natural AML so I went on the search and immediately find a suitable candidate. He has created the most Clear Cut Chances and played the most Key passes in the league so far. & from these passes, he's hit a high assists per 90. The midfield and left back targets would not agree to suitable personal terms and/or moved to other clubs. I'm happy with the 3 signings we've made, but knowing it could have been more, I just hope we have improved enough to string together a good run of results.

We got our man! Although, he is 33 and only rated 2* by our staff. Here's his stats for the past 2 seasons & combined: Compared with centre-backs from the top 3 promotion candidates: If he keeps up his performances this season in a Conwy shirt, I'll be very happy!

Central Defenders We signed Glossop at the start of the season, so I want to check in on his progress as well as his centre-back partner Marshall. Over the past few games I have been using our other centre-backs more often to try to gauge their performance and whether they could be swapped in to the starting XI. (Remember we are comparing our defenders to the defenders in the teams pushing for promotion (top 3), the left chart is their average, the right chart is their individuals) Tackling Marshall is much better than the average we are trying to hit. Whelan has also impressed. Glossop has made more tackles - the most actually - but he is slightly less likely to win them. Morgan's tackling has been woeful. If I change my filters to look at all players (not just those from the top 3 teams) and then add in some new filters for Tacklers equal to or better than the promotional average (i.e. Tackles Won% > 80%, Tackles Won per 90 > 1.2 & playing at our level or above) I can start to see some potential candidates to scout (dark blue). This also highlights just how well Marshall has been doing in the Tackling department. Heading Now this first graph is a bit messy, but it highlights a big insight. Glossop's (lack of) heading ability. 35% of Headers Won is extraordinarily low for a centre-back. His number of Headers Won per 90 is also adrift from the rest of the players in our tier, team and the tier above - with his performance in this stat more in line with the Welsh 3rd or 4th tier. Reducing the comparisons to only comparing against the promotion-sides average (I really need a good name for this, any suggestions!?) we can see that Whelan is the only one to meet & surpass what we're hoping for. Marshall (& the 2 others) are not far behind in this department, but we can still see that Glossop is miles away. From Heading & Tackling it's pretty clear that Whelan may be a better choice as a centre-back over Glossop. Changing my filters to look at potential signings (Headers Won per 90 > 4.5, Headers Won% > 68% & playing at our level or above) we get another list of players to scout. Now to see if any of the players within my scouting range fit both criteria? And yep, we have 6 on the list that standout above the thresholds (represented by the dashed lines) we want to hit for both Heading & Tackling: Morgan Pugh-Bevan Craig Rogers Callum Humphries Aaron Hughes Tom Rawlinson Iddon Price I'm not done there with defensive stats though: Key Tackles & Blocks Marshall again showing he is important for us with high Key Tackles per 90. Millar's first positive against his name is a high ratio of blocks. What about the transfer targets we identified? (The light blue in this graph will be the players' performance from last season, whereas the dark blue is this season's performances.) Hughes, Price, Pugh-Bevan & Rogers impressive here. Clearances & Interceptions Morgan is very good at both of these, especially clearances. Glossop is one of the best at Interceptions, too. Whelan is the only one that is slightly below par in these stats. Transfer Targets: Everyone is above both thresholds here. Passing Both Marshall & Glossop show they are reliable ball playing defenders. Whelan showing that maybe he's more of a no-nonsense centre back. Transfer Targets: Rawlinson & Price are the best two passers out of our list of targets. And I think that means Iddon Price is our main target as he is the only one that met every threshold. Let's hope I can get him to sign! If I can, I think he will be paired with Marshall at centre-back - with Whelan our main backup/rotation option. Glossop will be moved into midfield (potentially as a BWM) as he has great tackling & interceptions, but his heading let him down. That was a lot charts, I am sorry.

Awesome, thanks! I'll add in those suggestions for the end of season review, although it doesn't seem like Mistakes is available? (Mistakes leading to a goal is though) I had noticed that there were stats for each of held, parried & tipped. I've added those together to calculate the number of saves in total - and then from that I have calculated the Saves% stat. I guess I am not too bothered about parried and tipped individually as they are incorporated into the Saves% stat and then I'm comparing that with the saves held% as I see that as an indicator for good handling.