essien_5

Pushing on through the summer of 2023 trying to make some hopefully, positive changes. As mentioned previously, I've brought Marco Asensio in on a free transfer and 150k per week. On paper looks like he should be good value as is natural across the attacking midfield spots to give me some flexibility, although I'm currently looking at him taking up that right wing spot to play opposite Sterling. With this in mind, I'm trying to tie Pulisic down to a new contract as his is up in the summer. Not managed to yet, but will continue to push. If I don't manage to, I might look at cashing in later in the window. He would be the third choice winger behind the above two, which means I am looking to move Ziyech on this summer. He was unhappy however at being offered out and seems to be digging his heels in a bit so he might prove to be a struggle to sell. Thiago Silva left on a free to Madrid and I sold Chalobah in January to Man United so I've bought Andre Amaro from Vit. Guimaraes for £23.5m (a release clause in his contract for Champions League clubs). Looks very promising and carried an 'A+' scouting grade but at only 20 I might need to lean on Koulibaly for a little while longer whilst blooding him in alongside Fofana who is now the lynchpin in the defence. I've managed to sell Kovacic to PSG for £60m and RLC to Bournemouth for £14.5m, and bought in Moises Caicedo from Brighton for £37.5m on a relegation release clause. Pleased with this buy and for the price too, and gives me a really good youthful midfield alongside Bellingham, Gallagher and Mount to complement Kante. I've also signed Han-Noah Massengo from Bristol City on £1m compensation. Not sure he'll likely 'make it' at Chelsea but I'm looking to loan him out next season and try to make some good profit on him (a project so to speak!). Auba was allowed to move to Bremen for free to get rid of the wages. Still trying to move some players on. Hudson Odoi I'm hoping to sell, Bakayoko is a struggle, Kepa doesn't want to move, and Lukaku the best deal so far was £20m from PSG and he wants a £7.5m payoff to leave. Unfortunately, I'm thinking I might have to run with this as I really want to get this wage bill trimmed down significantly and some of these big undeserving earners out the club. Incoming wise, unless some sort of deal pops up, I'll probably look to bring in a couple more top young players if I can.

Ha, just finished first season and not quite as impressive as some of you boys but considering I haven't played FM for a couple of years, I'll take it. Finished 4th in the league on 71 points, 5 clear of Leeds with the position sewn up with 3 games to spare. Man City won with 93 points and Haaland scored 55 goals (80 overall)! FA Cup I went out early, but managed to win the Carabao Cup in quite remarkable style. I lost the first leg of the semi 4-1 away to Newcastle, but beat them 7-1 after extra time in the second leg, before beating United on pens in the final after a 1-1 draw. In Europe, as per an earlier post, I ended up third in a tight group so dropped down to the Europa League. However I ended up winning that too with a 3-1 win against Milan in the final. So not the biggest, but 2 trophies feels a reasonable starting point. Goals proved a bit of an issue throughout the season, although Broja (20 in all comps) and Havertz (16) both had streaks at different times to help me cope. Besides them, Sterling got 16 in all comps and Mount from centre mid chipped in with a respectable 9 goals and 11 assists. Chilwell had the most assists with 13. Transfers in the first season were Schjelderup for £7.5m, Bellingham for £88m and Hazard on loan all coming in January. Hazard was a huge disappointment unfortunately and I won't be looking to buy permanently. Outgoings were Jorginho to PSG for £60m, Chalobah to United for £31.5m and a couple of younger players moving for insignificant fees. Despite being £180m in the red (new season monies haven't come through yet), I have a £138m transfer budget for season 2. The current £4.9m wage budget is maxed so this is something that does need to be brought down and I'm hoping to do this by moving on fringe players like Auba and RLC. Kova doesn't seem to want to extend his contract so I'll probably look to sell him too for the right price and targets will likely be younger players to bring into the squad unless the right move falls into place. The new youth recruits overall got strong scout reports and the youth team won the academy league and europe so hopefully the future is bright. For the second season already confirmed, Sarr is moving to Monaco permanently for £13m due to a contract clause and Thiago Silva is moving to Madrid on a free. In turn, I've agreed a deal for Marco Asensio on a free transfer. One area I do particularly need to target in the summer is a centre back having sold Chalobah and now Silva. Fofana is a mainstay, and Koulibaly has done ok but does seem a little erratic at times and given his age I need to find a longer term option. I'll check Colwill in the summer, but will also likely need to target a transfer there too. One problem I do have is Bellingham. He's playing as a ball winning midfielder in centre mid in a 4-3-3 as apparently was requested in his contract (I can't remember doing this but oh well). He's handed in a transfer request already though because he's not being played in the right role?! Is this a glitch? Or does it matter whether he's on a defend or support role alongside the ball winning midfielder? If so, is there somewhere I can see exactly what I've promised him? I'm hoping playing him in the right role early on next season will have him withdraw his request and get things back to normal rather than risk losing him 6 months after buying him!

Very Nice! I'm hoping to give an end of season summary over the next couple of days as I'm now just into April but I'm doing nowhere near as well as you as I'm clinging on to 4th place with 8 games to go (Leeds of all teams pushing me all the way). The budget issue as you alluded to is certainly a concern as I'm over £120m in the red currently. Although I bought Bellingham for £88m in January, I have sold Jorginho and Chalobah to pretty much fund that. The wage bill definitely needs to be brought down and for me, I have a number of players like CHO, RLC and Auba sat in the stands collecting huge wages. There's a couple of areas in the team I could do with strengthening in the summer and I'm a little concerned due to the financial position that a transfer budget will be pretty scarce in the summer. Who are some of the coaches you've found?

Not been able to play too much so far but managed to get through to the World Cup break and it's carried on being a mixed bag. We got knocked out the group of the Champions League which wasn't ideal. Beat Marseille twice, won and lost against Napoli and lost twice to Madrid, the second time playing with 10 men for an hour and losing 3-2 with a late goal. Napoli matched our results but managed a draw at home to Madrid to get a point more than us. So, we have a Europa League play off in February with Real Sociedad. In the league, currently have 31 points from 16 games and sat in 4th. 3 points clear of Newcastle and 5 clear of Arsenal and Leeds. 1 point behind United, 6 behind Liverpool and 11 behind a rampant Man City. Haaland has 30 goals from his first 16 games. To put that into context, we've managed in total 20 goals from 16 games. That goalscoring is clearly the issue currently with the inconsistencies I feel I'm suffering and probably need to look to address for the second season. Broja and Sterling have the most goals so far for the team with 6 each in all comps - it's just not enough. I'm likely going to recall Schjelderup from his loan spell in January as Hudson Odoi is out long term with an achilles injury. I think this season is all about top 4. I'll be happy with that, and then the opportunity to start putting a stamp on the side.

So I've managed to get to the end of August (transfer window) and so far a bit of a mixed bag, albeit amongst a tough start with regards to fixtures. Currently 5th (level on points with Arsenal in 4th) with 10 points from 6 games, but really should have been more. So far beaten Spurs (H) 1-0, Villa (H) 3-1 and Arsenal (H) 3-1. Lost to City (A) 2-0 and admittedly well outplayed, drew with Leicester (A) 1-1 and lost to West Ham (A) 1-0. The latter two games we dominated and conceded late in both. Just writing this out now I realise all the dropped points have come away so far so this is definitely something that needs addressing. Havertz got injured in pre season and has only just returned which I hope will help improve the attack. I'm not a fan of Aubameyang on the game and think I'll look to try and move him on in January or next summer. Broja is raw but I'm far more willing to sit him behind Havertz and get minutes to develop. In Havertz absence, Sterling and Ziyech have stepped up and carried the attacking workload. Sterling has 3 goals in 6 games so far with an AR of 7.43. Ziyech has 2 goals and 2 assists from 6 games with an AR of 7.27. Champions League I've managed to draw Real Madrid, Napoli and Marseille so a tough group to try and progress out of. Transfers ended up a bit of a disaster. I sold Jorginho to PSG for £60m, and in the meantime got Kante extended by another year with a £75k per week wage drop. My target was Bellingham who I finally managed to broker a deal for with the potential value just above £100m only for the owners to pull the plug as they weren't willing to pay that much (this would never happen under Roman!). His release clause is £88m which they won't let me go above so I'm going to wait to try and trigger that clause next summer when I hopefully have a bigger budget to work with. I looked at a couple of others, Caicedo in particular, but Bellingham is the one I really want to replace Kante long term. It does leave me a little thin for now though. I also tried to bring Hazard back on a loan, but just couldn't quite get the numbers to work, especially with his wages. In the end I've had to settle with recalling Hudson Odoi back from his loan just to beef that area of the squad up a bit. I did make one signing - Andreas Schjelderup from FC Nordsjaelland for around £7.5m, although he's been loaned back for this season (I can recall him if needed in January so we'll see). He does look a real talent though with very strong stats in some key areas already despite only just turning 18. The scouting reports had him as an A+ and priority signing for the future so happy with that one. So far reasonable, but this side doesn't fill me with great confidence!

Kante and Jorginho only have a year left, so at worst you can move them on in a year. As mentioned above, you should be able to sell Jorginho immediately for big money. Lukaku is on loan so no idea how easy he is to shift the following season, I would assume it's doable though. It's probably a save that will take a couple of seasons to shape the squad to your preference, but like you said there are some very good younger players that can act as a spine for the long term.

Nice how much was he? I like the look of Rice for a genuine defensive midfielder but he's going to cost a fortune.

It looks like Jorginho can be sold for £60m at the start of the game. I usually like to start with the usual squad and go from there, but for someone 30 years old with one year left on their contract, it feels a move that probably needs to be made!

There was talk of the ownership taking a significant credit facility for cash flow in the summer so I wouldn't be surprised to a degree if the finances were reflective of that argument. The key, theoretically, would be whether the board during the game are keen to inject money at intervals into the club for transfers, infrastructure, etc as per what they are obligated to do in real life per the terms of the purchase of the club. To be honest though, it just adds to the difficulty factor for me if this is not the case, as it might take a couple of years to get the books balanced for the club.

Going to get into this save tonight. I think on initial reflection with the squad at hand, my first thoughts are a 4-3-3 with a vertical tika-taka approach. One of the harder aspects I think is finding the best role in the team for Havertz and Mount who are two players that I should be looking to somewhat build around long term but probably don't have obvious defined roles. The easy option would be to just try and fit all the best players into the team which would mean pushing Mount out to the left and Sterling subsequently to the right, with Kovacic, Kante and Jorginho in midfield. But I think I'm going to look at a midfield initially of Jorginho or Kova as the deep playmaker, Kante as the ball winning midfielder and Mount as a box to box. Sterling I'd be looking at playing wide left in an inverted role and Havertz up front, probably initially just as an advanced forward. It does however mean the right-hand side is a weakness as realistically I'm looking at either Pulisic or Ziyech to fill it. If I'm looking for someone to play an inverted role then Ziyech on paper, probably looks the better option for now (god help me). It looks like Vale and Hudson-Odoi can both be recalled from their loans so I may look at recalling one of the two, just to give me an extra option in the wide areas over the course of the season. In defence, realistically I need to look beyond Thiago Silva and start to phase him out over the season. The aim is to build around Fofana so if I can keep him fit I think I'll be looking at him + one of Silva or Koulibaly this season. James and Chilwell I'll look to operate as offensive full backs to provide the width for the wingers to cut inside. Contracts are going to have to be a big consideration relatively early too. I want to see if Silva shows any early signs of decline before whether to keep him another season. Kante seems like he would be willing to take a bit of a wage drop on a 2 year deal, which seems like a decent deal to tie him down for a further year and allow surgery to be carried out in other areas of the squad. Jorginho on the other hand seems to want a sizeable bump in wages so would need to have more thought on this one. Perhaps it would be better to see whether I cash in immediately?

Didn't play last year's game, but my son has the Gamepass now for his X Box so might as well have a go this year and see if I can get into it. Just having a brief look, the financials look a bit worrying. Already in the overdraft, and some big wages now compared to previous years (Sterling, Koulibaly, Kante, James, Fofana, etc). I agree with the initial comments on here, the squad overall looks weak as **** which probably runs in line with real life to be fair. Ironically though in game, our midfield looks the strongest position which needs a major revamp in real life. In game, I think goalkeeper, attack (probably a winger depending on formation) and maybe left back are the areas I may look at first. Will likely not bother buying anything first window for the realism factor though so will soon see who can and can't perform. However, there are some excellent young players to build around - James, Fofana, Mount and Havertz in particular but there's also a number of other very promising players. I think Chelsea could be quite a difficult job short term, but potentially a very attractive job longer term.