santy001

Heading into the first international break it's probably the tightest start we've had in the league. A 4-4 draw between us in the league in which I really failed to capitalise on Real Madrid missing Courtois and not having a decent backup keeper, but both sides have won every other game. Sesko missed the first couple of matches of the season with injuries, but is pursuing Haaland for goals already.

Season 5 - Early Summer Business So after the previous seasons disappointing campaign resulting in losses each time Real Madrid turned up I knew really it was time to try and further add some variation to my side. Pedri despite being a genuinely good player didn't make the Best XI last year because he struggled to get a look in. With Osimhen and Roque on the left & right respectively of the central striker and Lamine Yamal starting to cement that role in the middle there was no space for Pedri and I couldn't see a viable retraining like I did with Gavi. I let him go in part to focus on bringing through youngsters as well. A couple other sales of Alex Valle for £30m and Milinkovic-Savic back to Saudi Arabia for another £50m have bolstered the clubs sizeable coffers. Another summer of mostly low profile hoarding youngsters for Real Madrid bringing in a further 6 young players. Barcelona Transfers: Real Madrid Transfers:

End of Season 4 - Nearly a Perfect Season and the Ghost of Gyokeres Past While @oliscott completed an unbeaten season in the league and finished with a 37 wins, 1 draw record the unbeaten season nearly extended to all competitions. While my Barcelona side put that to rest in the Champions League final former Real Madrid front-man Viktor Gyokeres put 4 past Real Madrid as part of a 5-3 win. My only trophy this year being the European Super Cup compared to the haul over at Real Madrid of the League, Spanish Cup and Spanish Super Cup my team are falling behind in the overall trophy race. Barcelona Best XI: Real Madrid Best XI:

Took a deep dive through his fixtures to look to see what teams he has struggled against, not just this season but in previous years too. AC Milan have always fared well against his side and they play a narrow 4-1-2-1-2. Not really suited to my side outright but I gave it a go and while my side faded away (6-2 at full time which took the game to extra time) and it turned up results. Once Oli changed formations mid-match I struggled again and the goals dried up, if Osimhen had his goal in the 68th minute count I'd have gone through 7-6 on aggregate. As that fixture list shows though, I've fallen up short in every other fixture this season. Overcoming the might of the squad @oliscott has assembled is now almost a case of waiting them out to retire rather than being able to identify genuinely better players.

My own January business consisted of me having a bit of a recognition that neither my striking options in Vitor Roque or Victor Osimhen could get much out of the Real Madrid defence. Haaland was always going to be a decisive signing once Man City were open to offers. Changing things around in my side I decided to give Nelson Weiper, a 6'4" forward I signed a couple of seasons back a run in the side. Osimhen with more space playing a little deeper and someone to run off of became more effective. With that in mind I turned my attentions towards signing essentially the target man style forward who could lead the line. I tried my luck with Sesko but Leipzig would not negotiate at all and when I looked at Ferguson at Brighton they were wanting close to £200m. I turned my attentions to 29 year old Tammy Abraham who I hope at £30m can help demonstrate across the remainder of the season whether this is an effective approach or not. My Transfers in this season proving quite costly, MIchael Sjoquist has already begun proving himself and I'm hoping the January additions of Suarez and Rodriguez can be ones for the future.

Season 4 - The Summer Business A pretty busy summer in terms of outgoings for my Barcelona side as a number of players were entering the final 12 months of their contract already on big deals. The choice between renew on higher wages for probably their last or main big contract or move them on made for a difficult choice. As Real Madrid procured Haaland there has been a couple of high value sales on their side and a whole batch of youngsters too it seems. Barca Transfers: RM Transfers:

As we're in the territory now where regens are coming through and beginning to look like they could feature soon here are a few of my top prospects. First of all is Soren Birk, signed for £17.5m during the second season scouts uncovered him early and rated him highly across 3-4 scouting missions. I moved quickly as I worried Real Madrid interest wouldn't be far behind. 42 goals and 20 assists with the under 19's and I'm retraining him to operate as an inside forward on the right hand side. I probably need to get him working on his weaker foot but during the next 18 months he will start to be integrated into the team. Alfred Delmas is a product of the club academy, came through almost looking ready to play for the senior squad but I've decided to take it easy and let him develop with the U19's once he turns 17 I might give him some limited first team exposure but I feel there's time to let him grow organically and no pressure to come in too soon. Antoni, another club prospect who may be likely to feature sooner rather than later as I consider letting Jules Kounde go. Very raw technically but has some good physical and mental attributes already, if he can develop the technical side this could be the kind of player who has a spot cemented 15 years from now. Josep Lluis Brugue is a little less impressive at first glance, but I like the mental attributes and both footed nature of the player. A couple of strong technicals to start him off and he could be a good player in the future, certainly one I'm keeping an eye on over the next 2-3 years.

Bit of missing transfer history from last season as we blazed through it without updates tonight: Barca Transfers In/Out: RM Transfers In/Out:

Unfortunately, following on from that immediately bad news strikes me hard... We both went in big with our summer budgets and Haaland picked Real Madrid over Barcelona. This makes that uphill task even steeper.

End of Season 3 - Another strong Real Madrid Year A fall off in the middle of the season from my Barcelona side combined with an even stronger performance from @oliscott and his Real Madrid team saw them comfortably win another league title. Meanwhile in the Champions League we met in the final and I won my second successive CL with a careful countering performance that saw me run out 3-0 winners really against the run of play. A lot of the youngsters signed by Real Madrid mean I'm staring an uphill battle to close the gap in terms of squad depth but the board at Barcelona are finding more money to try and compete. While I've been able to get the better in head to head matches a couple of times with Real Madrid recently season-long consistency has been a problem. Messi got to return for a swansong year with a CL win, department with 10 goals and 5 assists from 8 starts and 21 sub appearances. Barca Best XI RM Best XI

Even internally I doubt there is known minimum yet for release. A big part will depend on optimisation in the final stages. SI have done some fantastic optimisation on fm23 and 24 though with Unity things may vary a bit.

I haven't downloaded anything from the workshop for FM through steam, but with other games I've found I've had to subscribe while the game is open, close the game down and then the next time I open the game it is available then. If I do it while the game is closed then it doesn't work with games I've tried.

It's a huge reality of football that is a consequence of continuous 24 hour news cycles so SI has to reflect it in game really. Does anyone find press conferences in real life to be anything other than tedious though? Almost all managers are media trained, they rarely put a foot out of place and they're a relic of the time before managers had that training and there were potentially interesting things to find out. Most of the time its the media trying to make something out of subtle gestures, minor details or winding up a manager and getting an inadvertent remark. Chris Kamara on Soccer Saturday was the last source of finding out anything remotely interesting from pre-match conversations with managers and they weren't even press conferences. These days it's not even likely to get a Keegan-like interview again, the last on that front was probably Benitez. They're a huge part of football now because 30-40 years ago the less frequent interviews of non-media trained managers turned up cracking stories. They got some longevity out of it when it became adopted at lower levels and caught a new batch of managers without that training but now it's pretty much redundant. There is a little utility in doing them if you do them well, they're always a potential hazard which is essentially a reflection of what they really are.

Screenshots of the likely lesser known signings for Real Madrid: Chris Rigg Jesus Diez Jorrel Hato Bertrand Matip For Barcelona: Nico Gonzalez: Luca Lipani:

Season 3 - Early Summer Business A very busy start to the Summer for Real Madrid with some big money signings coming in and a few departures albeit most just loans: Over at my Barcelona side I've also begun spending some of the funds made available, with considerably more departures: