noikeee

A signing. Likely the only one this first season. An upset we pulled on the 1st round of the cup!

Day 1 in Leizpig. This is the squad. Truly one of the squads of all time. Prior to this I was doing (off the forums) a career with Gladbach where I had recently settled on this shape, which is like, 90% Pep Guardiola's City. I'll start with this and then let's see. Some of our best players: 14 jumping at this level? I expect goals. ****ing nicely suited to libero. Not great for RPM role but that's where he slots in for now. The Regionaliga is brutal with just the winner going up. Could be worse - in some other divisions at this same level, winners have to go through a playoff, but weirdly not our division. Might be something off with the editor file I'm using, idk. Finances are not quite on par with city rivals RB Leipzig. Faciliites could take some work. Decently large stadium though - even if in poor condition.

Hi and welcome to something I’ve not done in a long time now, which is a thread. Once upon a time a guy wandered around these forums with a series of threads based on the idea of reviving previous Champions League/European Cup finalist teams, that had never got to win the trophy. These were the “Nearly Men” series by @ManUtd1 Since we are very creative people with lots of very original ideas and totally never ever copy each other, I have seen this concept a multitude of times ever since. In fact I think this isn’t even the first time I’ve done this myself. Looking for a spinoff that doesn’t just end up with the same old old list of teams as ever (Gladbach… Fiorentina… Malmo… Reims… uh Oostende?) I toyed with several different ideas: teams that reached European Cup semi-finals but never the final teams that won the Cup Winners Cup but never the European Cup same but for the Europa League/UEFA Cup teams that haven’t won their league in many years etc The one main issue is there were too many big or unlikable teams in each and any of these. I wasn’t super thrilled with the idea of managing PSG or Lazio. Until I finally found the (almost) perfect list. What about.. it’s time to revive… the teams that reached any European final… but never won any European final. Then exclude those that made the CL/European Cup finals just to make sure it’s some different clubs.. that throws out Reims, Partizan, Panathinaikos, Leeds, Saint-Etienne, Brugge, Malmo and Monaco. 1972 Cup Winners Cup finalists Dynamo Moscow are also excluded due to geopolitical reasons. We will therefore be focusing on the following 30 clubs during this career: AUSTRIA A surprising 3 different teams from Austria came close and never got there - in a different era where Austrian sides were more competitive. Viennese rivals Rapid Wien and Austria Wien reached Cup Winners Cup finals (Rapid twice), whilst Austria Salzburg - now Red Bull Salzburg - were close to the 1994 UEFA Cup trophy. BELGIUM 1982 and 1993 were the years when Standard Liege and Antwerp came close to lifting the Cup Winners Cup but came just short. ENGLAND Wolves are a relatively surprising inclusion in the list, after a presence in the rather distant 1972 UEFA Cup final. Middlesbrough and Clint Dempsey’s Fulham got there already in this century. An interesting feature is that Middlesbrough are in the Championship at the moment, of course. FRANCE Bastia, the biggest side in Corsica, reached the 1978 UEFA Cup final. Bordeaux did so more recently, in 1996. In modern times both teams are in the 2nd tier of French football, Ligue 2. GERMANY A whooping 6 different teams from Germany feature here, largely thanks to not just the power of German teams in the 1980s but also due to the fact Germany used to be 2 different countries and some now fallen East German teams went on long runs - namely Carl Zeiss Jena and Lokomotiv Leipzig, both now in the 4th tier of German football (which means editor files have to be added to the game). 1860 Münich (3.Liga) and Fortuna Dusseldorf (2.Bundesliga) are also below the main tier of German football, where we can find 1986 UEFA Cup finalists Köln, and also Stuttgart who reached and failed to win both the UEFA Cup and Cup Winners Cup. HUNGARY Some of the trickiest teams to complete the challenge here come from the now much weaker Hungarian football league, a force prior to the mid-1980s. MTK Budapest (with whom I had a long career back in FM18), Ferencvaros and Fehervar are the eligible Hungarian sides. ITALY Somewhat surprisingly there is just one Italian side eligible: Torino, 1992 UEFA Cup finalists. Thank the success of all the other sides, including Roma who just about missed out on inclusion by winning the newly created Conference League last year. NETHERLANDS With the big three (Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord) all including European trophies in their cabinet, Twente and AZ just missed out on honors despite reaching the 1975 and 1981 UEFA Cup finals, respectively. POLAND Another particularly tricky challenge appears to be to take a Polish team to glory. Gornik Zabrze have been waiting ever since their 1970 Cup Winners Cup final presence for just that very moment. PORTUGAL Much like the Netherlands, in Portugal the big 3 (Porto, Benfica, Sporting) have all tasted European success. Braga came closest to matching them - not that I was sorry about it, as the 2010 Europa League trophy went to my club Porto instead. SCOTLAND Another team that I had a long career with, Dundee United, appears on the list, thanks to their 1987 almost-success in the UEFA Cup. Currently they start from the 2nd tier of Scottish football. SPAIN 1977 and 2012 Europa League/UEFA Cup finalists Athletic Bilbao are possibly the most unique team in this whole challenge, with their restriction on Basque-only players transfer policy. Espanyol also featured in 2 finals of the same competition (1988, 2007) and have the handicap of starting in the 2nd tier in Spain. Mallorca and Alavés (of the 5-4 loss to Liverpool fame) complete the list of eligible Spanish sides. UKRAINE The final team in this list is a team that strictly does not exist anymore, Dnipro, weirdly disbanded shortly after featuring in the 2015 Europa League final. Dnipro-1, their spiritual successors, will be considered instead. What will be considered “completing the challenge” with any of these teams? To remove them from the criteria why they were included in the list, in the first place. This means either win an European competition (Europa League and Conference League are both good enough), or reach the Champions League final. Do you expect to complete it with all 30 teams? Ha ha ha. Have you guys ever seen my attention span. Hey look is that an elephant over there? Or how slow I play FM these days. Just… no. It’s just an excuse to have a thread. How often are you planning to post? Less than usual. I’m thinking like once or twice per season. I’d rather play than write. Where are you starting? It seems fitting to start from the bottom rather than the top. 4th tier of German football it is. A team that has been featured before here due to the rather obvious rivalry with a Red Bull team from the same city… it is time to revive Lokomotiv Leipzig.

How about making this game fun again, for whatever reason this version seems like the least fun I've ever had. Maybe it's because I've played this for literally over 20 years now and there are no more surprises but honestly, it's extraordinarily meh. Tactical 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 are king and gegenpressing is king. That's realistic, great. It's also extraordinarily boring. At this rate I'd almost prefer to get gamebreaking exploits like in previous versions, at least it was fun to have a wildly overperforming mezzala or something. Why is the game still utterly devoid of creativity in the central areas in the final third? Deep lying strikers or playmakery AMCs are all rubbish. This game is still suffering from something that's been here since 2 or 3 versions now, which is players can't receive the ball back to goal and then turn towards goal in the golden central zone in front of the keepers area. They're also often bypassed by players much preferring passing options out wide. This means emulating oldschool #10s of the likes of Totti, Rui Costa, Riquelme, Maradona etc or 2nd strikers like Del Piero, Raul, Bergkamp, Saviola is impossible, those players are rubbish in this match engine. Instead it's all about advanced forwards, attacking wingbacks (why are attacking wingbacks so dominant??), DMs running from deep and wingplay and crosses. For all the fancy playing-from-the-back patterns there's actually very little creativity in this game once it comes to the final third. Certain attributes are still massively overpowered and others dont see to matter at all. Pace and jumping being king is still a thing. Player power / dynamics / interactions They're all insufferable bastards. Look I know being a manager is hard and keeping a squad happy is tough and that's realistic, but I'd rather play paint drying simulator than deal with this insane soul-crushing ********. Why is half my squad given "squad rotation" status unhappy midseason when I'm literally starting them 50% of the matches (plus coming from the bench in other matches). Why are my players demanding "star player" status and not even happy with "important player" when there's tons of competition for the position and then expect to start 90% of matches (which would run them into the ground) Why are kids from lower level that I'm trying to sign demanding "star player" status and refuse to even consider "important player" Why does half my squad get pissed off whenever I can't appease a player Why are promises triggered for every half ****ing ******** Why do the players I want to leave the club, come ask for more playing time, I say well I want to sell you then, and then they decide oh that's ok I don't want to leave the club then I'll wait for more playing time (and get unhappy every x months again) Why are B team players knocking at my door asking for playing time, I don't even know who you are, **** off Chores Why do I need to click talk with agent before every single damn contract negotiation, or the game warns me they could get mad at me Why do I need to attend the Champions League group stage press conference, I literally couldn't give the slightest **** yet this one is still unskippable Why are there so many unskippable "meetings"???? I just click skip 5 times every single time. No I don't care about "deadline day recruitment meeting" If I don't handle transfer/contract negotiations myself for B team and U19 players the AI can sell promising guys at any moment, or give them dumb contract clauses. If I do I have to handle 550 transfer deal proposals per transfer window. Regens I've literally reported this back in FM16 or FM17 and regen fullbacks still come up lacking crossing and dribbling Way too many good CBs are no-nonsense CBs. Next generation of CBs is a bunch of Maguires. So many strikers are Haaland lite. Young regens still don't get called up to national teams or get nominated for world awards as their reputation still struggles to grow

I've just literally loaded FM24 for the first time, decided to start as Lille and in "your world" mode. The team still has Carlos Baleba (correct) but the transfer budget is a POSITIVE 36M€. Eh? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Looks like I have both the player and the cash for selling the player.

I get that it's easier to debug an issue with the specific conditions it happened in, but if this is a widespread issue as it seems like it's been forever, holidaying a game isn't very hard. This is a large game balance issue, it shouldn't need specific users to send savegames, it should be noticeable in any internal test savegames.

Let's try this again. I haven't played a single match of FM23, will start right now. Had to be Wolves, hadn't it? The most Portuguese side in the most Premierest of Leagues.

We've complained about this as far back as FM17 ffs.

Honestly that's crap, there's far too few regen players on those squads, which is a red flag given regens are everyone in the game world below the age of 25 at that stage. There's always this clear cut-off point between real players and regen players and how squads are built around them which just breaks immersion. The transition between them just isn't seamless enough.

First time I've been sacked in a while. The 8-1 was particularly amusing. I had hired 2 players, didn't even get to play Dewsbury-Hall as he picked up a bad injury just before joining us.

Ok, enough FM for today. I don't have any idea of a) how do I still have a job b) why has manager performance on the board tab IMPROVED from D to C- Also I think this is a bug. We were poor in the Champions League, but the playoff is before the group stage.

Oof. Somehow I survived the board meeting after this result, but this attempt at the challenge might be about to end soon...

Well, Any other season this would've been fine for Norwich but the board are expecting more after 3rd in the league last year. I just need to hope for a good one against Villa...

Uhh, this is not what I expected at all. Safe to say this beginning of the season isn't going to plan, our players' legs are struggling with the sheer amount of fixtures (this is the Qatar WC year, plus the addition of European football) and our defence looks as if it's made out of paper.

Keeping the Sir Alex theme, I swear this happened entirely by accident as I'm leaving staff signings to the AI: