turnip

I've seen my Set Piece coach arrange all kinds of stupid stuff - when he's supposed to be pretty good at his job. Like you, I don't really want to have to sort it all out myself, so it's just a source of frustration when my Target Man is allowed to stay up for Defensive Corners, or my covering defenders on Attacking Corners are aerial threats.

Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga Transfers No significant players left us, except Walser on loan (he wanted a new contract but unfortunately, his PA got dialled down to 'Good Bundesliga 2 player'). We tried to sell him, but no-one was interested. The biggest sales were all of young players we didn't need. Luke Hernandez is a crap American midfielder. Adonay Bercomo was signed from from an Amateur team, didn't develop last season, and is crap. Ilsinho I would have preferred to keep, since he's a Cayman Islands international, but he is also crap, so... Slavik and Shalonikov were both signed from Trencin, whose Youth Academy obviously got a lucky roll on the old Random Number Generator the year they came through. Slavik was actually the first one identified since he was in the Slovak national team, and when I had a look at the Trencin squad, there was Shalonikov. Shalonikov is the more obviously ready for the first team - probably alternating between AMR and ST - and the plan is that Slavik will get regular game time as injury cover and in our midweek team. Ally Sulieman (he has Eritrean second nationality) was someone my scouts found. Obviously very good but wasn't an immediate target for the summer until other teams started going in for him and I decided he was too good not to go in for. Will swap between DR and DC this season. We needed a backup GK but there's still a massive shortage of 'good enough' young players, so we had to pay a premium to bring in Gustavo. We probably could have brought the wages down if we'd promised more game-time, but Dimas was so good last season I couldn't justify demoting him. Baliko is a good, pretty flexible midfielder who gives us cover in 2-3 positions on the pitch (tactics-dependent), lively enough to be an issue coming on as a sub and should have plenty of potential for development. Meanwhile, with Walser having a tantrum over not being good enough to get a new contract, we needed a new DL. Berndroth only played a couple of times for Stuttgart as they got relegated last season, but I think he could be terrific. Finding good full-backs who can jump is hard. Alan Burger is another player I've been aware of for a while. He got a full season with Las Palmas' first team last year and looks to be a very solid DC, even if he doesn't develop (which my scout and coaches all agree he should). We needed another striker and without wanting to pay £10m+ for a backup for Ispir who'd probably just get annoyed when he inevitably doesn't get enough game time, we brought in a rare older player in Gaizka Albisu, who's had 6 very good seasons in La Liga with Cadiz. A good all-round player. Fixtures We had a good pre-season, with a nice little tour of Uzbekistan and - of course - were one of two Bundesliga teams to get drawn against second-tier opposition in the first round of the cup. A tough match, but a win for the second-stringers. Dortmund are up next; unsurprisingly, considering we play them 3 days later in the league. The matches against Furth and Hoffenheim were fairly straight-forward affairs, with us outplaying our opposition. We also arguably out-played the team whose name I always make fun of, with a penalty for them the only reason they had a higher xG than us. The Champions League looks tough, with Away games against Lazio, Man City and Sporting alongside Home matches with Nice, Juventus and Real Sociedad. A Home game against Celtic and road trip to Hammarby look to be our easiest games.

XaW is correct, but there is an issue where over time there will be a gradual shift towards more of those players being produced through the youth academies of teams in active leagues. Not a problem if you're only running one league, but most people don't.

No clubs have come in for your players because your players are happy. You just won the Champions League, after all. Once you fail to offer them acceptable contracts, they'll become unhappy quickly enough. Then clubs will come in for them. Problem solved.

If you're a small team, you have to sell players. And I don't mean 1 or 2 players, I mean you have to find at least £30-£40m of players to sell each season. Your money from being in the Champions League should be peanuts compared to the money you get from selling players. Once you're in that position, you're ready to win the Champions League and deal with the fallout. Otherwise, you are ****ed. In real life, every time Porto/Sporting/Benfica do well, their squad gets abused by big teams swooping in and signing anyone good. The difference - it sounds like - is that those clubs have a conveyor belt of players coming through the youth squads, who can replace the players they sell. And you don't. Your club's reputation has gone through the roof because you won the biggest - and hardest - club competition in the world. Jordan Henderson burned and salted what was a very good reputation with football fans for the promise of filthy lucre; it's not unrealistic that your mediocre players want to cash in on their success.

In Search of Incompetence 18 seasons into this save, and I've had every available European league running as - at least - VIew-only for the whole time. Some on Playable. That's a lot of opportunities for AI managers to battle it out for the title of 'most incompetent'. I'm not talking about big clubs failing to reach Europe; I'm talking about teams doing profoundly, impressively badly in their league. Spanish D2 - 2036; Tarancon; 2 points -------- 2037; Mirandes; 2 points. (Impressively, in 2030, Mirandes finished with 3 points ) Spanish La Liga - 2040; Ponferrada; 7 points Slovenian Second League - 2027; Tolmin; 7 points Slovak Second League - 2039; Spisska Nova Ves; 4 points. (Sered finished second-bottom that season with 5 points) Portuguese Championship - 2040; Bustelo; 2 points Icelandic First Division - 2037; KV; 4 points Icelandic Premier Division - 2035; IBV; 7 points Greek Super League 2 - 2026; PAO Rouf; 5 points Greek Super League 1 - 2025; Panserraikos; 7 points German Liga 3 - 2040; Jena; 6 points & 2037; Altona 93; 6 points French National 2 - 2038; EFC Frejus Saint-Raphael; 2 points Finnish First Division - 2032; Atlantis FC; 5 points Czech Second Division - 2037; Zapy; 4 points Belgian Jupiler Pro League - 2037; RE Virton; 7 points Austrian Premier Division - 2031; FAC Wien; 7 points and I've left the best 'til last Bulgarian Second Division - 2031; Svetkavitsa Targovishte; 1 point In mitigation, despite me running a gigantic database, for some reason Bulgarian second-tier teams really seem to struggle for players.

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga das spitze Ende des Stocks Against Stuttgart, we did very little until a backpost cross found Ange N'Dri exploiting the match engine's hard-on for broken back-post headers (BBPH). Our high press caused the panic and mistake that let us beat Hamburg. Bull ***** FC gave us a good game but also a BBPH. We had no recognised (good) strikers against Mainz, so played Cristian and N'Dri up top and the Great Dehumidified One lofted a delightful ball for one of the Pablos to finish. An arid BBPH and penalty saw off a spirited Furth before (we will utter no details of the atrocities witnessed against Dortmund) an error-strewn performance saw my delicate voice shredded by constant screaming, shrieking and profanities as we drew Hoffenheim. Freiburg can consider themselves unlucky to have lost against us, but we did whip out a BBPH against Eintracht Frankfurt as part of a deserved win. We lost convincingly against Hertha and Bayern but good performances against Koln and Wolfsburg left things pretty tasty going into the final round of matches. How tasty? So we were left with a match against Leverkusen, while Hoffenheim were playing Bull ***** FC, with whoever finished higher qualifying for the Champions League. Mind you, we weren't just playing Leverkusen, we were facing Wichai Wongsrikeaw, one of the most detestable little snots I'd managed at Lusitania Lourosa. A central defender we signed from Thailand, who thought he was hot **** despite having single-digit Jumping Reach, and who spent most of his miserable time under my management complaining about one thing or other and just generally being the kind of immense pain in the arse that you remember with hatred 12 seasons later. Now, according to the game, he's "one of world football's global superstars", with 124 caps for Thailand and commanding a regular spot as one of Leverkusen's centre-backs. However... The reason he was pissed off with me at Lusitania Lourosa was that I never played him at centre-back. Why? Well, because his single-digit Jumping Reach made him a liability. Leverkusen play him at DCL. So, theoretically, if Ange N'Dri - our AML, if you've forgotten - were to put a far-post cross into the box, aimed at Nicu Ispir... Yeah. Basically, get ****ed Wichai Wongsrikeaw. Obviously, I'm delighted (I'd say "astonished" but I'm not sure you can claim that at the end of a 34-match season) to have finished 4th, but arguably I'm just as thrilled that Hertha won the Bundesliga. The first time in 110 years. 1860 Munchen finished second that season. I'm just saying. Thing is, though, I've said throughout the season that we've massively overperformed. How badly? Genuinely, I think the correct response to this is: "lol, lmao". If you'd offered me 14th at the start of the season, I'd have been thrilled. Nicu Ispir is the best player in our squad and he's a "Good Bundesliga player". The rest of the squad ranges from "decent Bundesliga player" to "good Bundesliga 2 player". Our team stats are generally slightly better than the 14th the xG table has us at, but not by much. We finished 4th in the league and only 4 players had an Average Rating of over 7.00. This is so stupid it's hard to parse. I do love Nicu Ispir and he will need a new contract at some point in the next 12 months. Thankfully, I don't think he's good enough yet that someone will drop £54m to trigger his MRFC. Ange N'Dri continues to defy his modest CA by just being good at crossing and passing, and obviously knowing when to pull the trigger on a BBPH. Rodolfo Dimas turned out to be just the kind of keeper we needed - mostly reliable, but with a bad habit of hoofing the ball aimlessly downfield when he's nervous. Abdoulaye Samassi, meanwhile, is just a very competent centre-back; he rarely does anything other than defend and he's very good at that. We are going to need to improve in the summer, though, and in a big way. Thankfully, the board have decided that being stingy is somewhat uncouth: Also, the whole "sign 'em, play 'em, make 'em better" thing is - slowly - working out for us. Biagioni is worth about £170m, but I might be able to get Brard with our new-found wealth. That would be nice... We got £78m for finishing fourth, which is very nice.

Transfer Retrospective Season 2: The first one is the most blindingly obvious: Albert Bucur Signed at 16 year old from a Romanian youth team, it took him the best part of 3 years to make the first team but then he simply didn't leave until this season when the siren call of Saudi money sung him to a pre-retirement slumber. 12 Portuguese Premier League titles, 8 Portuguese Super Cups and 7 Portuguese League Cup wins, alongside solitary Champions League and UEFA Super Cup wins. Philip Behnke: We paid £250k for him, got one okay season of him as our player, then 2 excellent seasons as a loanee. RB Leipzip probably could have found a better striker in terms of raw ability, but it's hard to argue with that goalscoring record. The biggest shame/surprise [delete as appropriate] is that he only got 7 caps for Germany.

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga Youth Intake A good intake, by any reasonable standard. No strikers, but who needs strikers in the youth intake when the third, fourth and fifth tiers of Spain exist? I long ago gave up trying to work out whether a highly-rated goalkeeper at youth intake would be any good, and I'm not going to bother with Fiand. 3.5+1* Potential rated. Yay? Hocine Abdellaoui is a different matter, though. The kid's gonna get sick of working on his Stamina & Work Rate, but them's the breaks. Cyril Bessard isn't too impressive on first look, but does have the attributes to turn into a decent centre-back if he develops well. The slightly cro-magnon-looking Stefan Dietl is the pick of the bunch, though. Obviously. I don't quite know what to do with him, though. 15 Finishing is utterly wasted on a FB/WB, but with his Physicals, he could be a monstrous CWB. Maybe an Inverted Winger on Attack (from ML, rather than AML)? Hmm. A damned good problem to have, I will admit.

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga January We accepted an offer for Cristian from ADO Den-Haag, but having strung us along for the second half of the month, it fell through when it turned out they didn't have the money. Cheers, dudes; very helpful. That meant the only departures were some loanees (I'm ignoring Dzaferovic who was a useless U19). Rizzi, Daly and Bernardini should get the first-team football we agreed to; I'm sceptical that Balducci and Manuel will, though. Levi Phillips is your stereotypical English clogger DC, even if he is Welsh. We needed someone first-team ready to bring some stability and he looks capable of doing just that. Hamidou Gomis is the one I think could be excellent. An excellent technical base for a DC and the Mental/Physical side of his game should improve as he develops. Again, he wanted Squad Player... I can't wait until the club's reputation improves. We brought Dragan Pesic in as a replacement for Cristian... In fairness, I think Pesic is better as an out-right Winger and if his Potential holds, he'll be a bit of a weapon out wide. And Aitor Alonso is just our young Spanish SC signing for the window. Looks like he could be really good (don't they all) but needs to develop his Mentals a bit. We scraped past Leverkusen and Werder, which was to be expected - the performances, I mean, not the results, which were very much unexpected. We rotated fully for the cup game against Bayern and got what we deserved from that match. Nice to see Delgado getting himself a goal, though. No such dignities in the dismal display against deadly Borussia Monchengladbach And then, 3 days after getting schooled in the Munich derby, we utterly crushed Augsburg, with 72% possession and restricting them to only 0.6xG. So what have we learned? I have no idea.

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

There's a bug that happens very infrequently where what happens while you're watching a match isn't the same as the result afterwards. By "very infrequently", I've seen it happen possibly 3 or 4 times over the last 20+ real-life years playing the game. If you're having it happen several times in a season, I'd send the save to SI.

SI needs to give us the 'Sarcastic Applause' interaction option for during games. God knows my players deserve it a few times each match.

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga Fixtures Things have gotten tougher as the season's gotten longer. No real surprise; man-for-man our players kinda suck compared to every other team. That said, there have been some good results. The win over Dortmund - second in the table - was great: we changed tactics 3 times during the match, but managed to hold out for the win after Ispir scored his very funny goal (video above). Ispir got his second hattrick of the campaign in a very silly match against Koln. On the flipside, we were crushed by Bayern, barely getting within a mile of a whiff of a chance. We defended well against Hertha (3rd in the league) but conceded to one of the derpy FM24 goals I hate: a goalkeeper long-ball that bounced off the head of my centre-back straight into the path of their striker, who finished. (Seriously, I don't even know what's supposed to be happening with those chances). We've built up a good number of points so far, and although I suspect fixtures will get harder as the season progresses, our players are mostly improving, too. And with BMG and Hamburg stinking things up early on, I do think we're in with a good chance of avoiding a proper relegation scrap. Random Player Showcase We signed Rizzi at the start of last season from Serie C Carrarese and he's had a few sub appearances to date. With my deeply-stupid transfer strategy of signing every half-decent DM/MC I find and giving them Playing Time promises they don't really deserve, I've struggled to give him the game-time I wanted to. Still I think he could be terrific, so I'm going to try to find a good loan deal for him. We've got the usual rag-tag group joining us in January - mostly youngsters (again, as usual) but we do have some DC backup arriving in the form of a [sigh] 18-year old from Génération Foot. Look, they say the first step is recognising you have a problem, don't they?