Slovakian adventure - SFM Senec

I have played through seasons with smaller clubs before, the smallest being Clyde from the 4th tier in Scotland (now enjoying the champions league group stages in 2020) but I fancy a tougher challenge. Found myself looking at the 2cnd tier of Slovakian football, lets see how it goes. Like many other people attempting small nation small club games I will try to maximise my use of my own youth products, though I won't exclusively be using them. I will not be using the editor (I don't even know how ) nor Geniescout or other such tools to make unrealistic wonderkid signings.

Nor will I always be able to churn out constant updates, I go through phases of the game (sometimes doing 5 seasons a week, sometimes doing 1) and also have exams and other things coming up.

SK SFM Senec

Nation - Slovakia

Year Founded - 1994

Status - Semi-Professional

Reputation - National

Nickname - SFK

Chairman Status - Loves the club

Legends - None

Icons - None

Favoured Personnel - None

Fierce Rivals - None

Other Rivals - None

Finances - Okay

Average Ticket Price - £4.20

Average Season Ticket Price - £25.00

Season Ticket Holders - 372

Estimated Value - £95k

Continental Competition - None

Media Prediction - 6th

Squad Personality - Ambitious

Facilities:

Name - Nardone treningove centrum

Location - Senec

Capacity - 3264 all-seater

Owned By - Club

Stadium Condition - Average

Under Soil Heating - No

Roof - No

Surface - Grass

Pitch Dimensions - Length: 105m, Width: 68m

Maximum Pitch Dimensions - Length: 117m, Width: 72m

Pitch Condition - Perfect

Corporate Facilities - Adequate

Training Facilities - Average

Youth Facilities - Adequate (Rented)

Junior Coaching - Adequate

Youth Recruitment - Limited

History

This post is simply just for code to show a collection of statistics I will gather throughout each season

European Competition Ranking

Year  | Slovak 1st Div | Slovak cup
2011  | 44th           | 140th
2012  | 49th           | 139th
2013  |35th            | 130th
2014  | 45th           | 134th
2015  | 53rd           | 149th
2016  | 36th           | 127th
2017  | 40th           | 130th
2018  | 31st           | 117th
2019  |  40th          | 129th                

European Qualification Coefficient Ranking

Year | 2011 | 2012 | 2013  | 2014  | 2015  | 2016 | 2017  | 2018 | 2019
Rank |   ?  | 23rd | 22cnd | 24th  | 22cnd | 20th | 22cnd | 20th |19th 

I can't be bothered to do a really neat code for the Qualification places, so I've just pit in a big long list

Year | Rank  | Places
2012 | ?     | ?
2012 | 23rd  | One in Champs second Q round. One in first, second & third round of Euro Cup Q's 
2013 | 22cnd | One in Champs second Q round. One in first, second & third round of Euro Cup Q's 
2014 | 24th  | One in Champs second Q round. One in first, second & third round of Euro Cup Q's
2015 | 22cnd | One in Champs second Q round. One in first, second & third round of Euro Cup Q's 
2016 | 20th  | One in Champs second Q round. One in first & two in second round of Euro Cup Q's
2017 | 22cnd | One in Champs second Q round. One in first, second & third round of Euro Cup Q's 
2018 | 20th  | One in Champs second Q round. One in first & two in second round of Euro Cup Q's 
2019 | 19th  | One in Champs second Q round. One in third & two in second round of Euro Cup Q's 

TV rights from Slovakian first division

Season | Amount
14/15  | £50k
15/16  | £45k
16/17  | £57k
17/18  | £57k
18/19  | £65.25k

First Glance:

Squad:

Squad Overview: Fairly decent squad, a lot of potential in there. A bit concerning 6 of our best players are on loan, hopefully they don't get re-called and leave me with nobody in the middle of the season...

Key players:

Martin Matlak (GK): Fairly young goalkeeper with decent stats, won't need replacing for a while

Akos Szarka (ST): Young striker on loan with us, high hopes for this player this season but sadly we'll lose him

Peter Polgar (CB): Club captain and aging rock at the back, at the age of 34 though and will start to decline quickly I imagine.

Youth Squad

Youth squad overview: Youth squad is barren, not much potential lurking in here but maybe some will graduate to rotation options.

The match below against our youth squad demonstrates how poor our prospects are, when it finished 5-0 at half time I thought it could get to double figures

Season Goals

I'm hoping for a top half finish, better than the 6th we've been predicted.

Finances:

Started with a £15k transfer kitty and £750 wages, changed to £0 transfer and £1k wages. £24k in the black, not sure how that will look by the end of the season though.

Transfers:

Will be browsing the free transfer market for any good value players but I'm not getting my hopes up...

Have a tough decision to make, my 2cnd choice goalkeeper is also my assman, but still not sure if this means he deserves roughly 1/9th of the wage budget

Definitely is a tough challenge, good luck

Great chellenge. All the best

Thank you for the early support, nice to see!

Having a slight problem that my moronic assman has treated me to 3 friendlies in one week during preseason, despite signing a fitness coach my players don't seem to be able to regain fitness. This makes managing in Scotland seem easy

Ah yes, the problem with too many games for a semi pro side.

For a while I've fancied going to somewhere like Slovakia sometime, interesting to see it getting an airing.

For a while I've fancied going to somewhere like Slovakia sometime, interesting to see it getting an airing.

Go for Slovenia or Finland, they were my other options haha! I wanted a bad league without doing something already done too much or having to use a downloaded league and Slovakia, Slovenia and Finland seemed the best worst choices haha.

First competitive game of the season (which starts in late July) with a 1-0 victory away from home, i'll take that

Will post a full update soon enough but this one made me laugh, apparently we shouldn't be doing so well on our travels...

Sorry for strange look, how do i get cropped images to stay cropped anyone?

Go for Slovenia or Finland, they were my other options haha! I wanted a bad league without doing something already done too much or having to use a downloaded league and Slovakia, Slovenia and Finland seemed the best worst choices haha.

First competitive game of the season (which starts in late July) with a 1-0 victory away from home, i'll take that

Yeah, I've already decided to start my next save in Slovenia.

Yeah, I've already decided to start my next save in Slovenia.

Sounds good, if you make a new thread about it be sure to post the link in here and I'll keep track, I like watching small unknowns rise up haha.

Mid-season update

Doing this in January inbetween our fixture break, no competitive matches between 06/11/2011 and 03/03/2012.

As you can see from the table it's quite tight at the top with 15 games left to play, definitely on track to finish above the predicted 6th but I don't think we will manage promotion this year, we will see...

We had a great run of form at the start but since then we've really dropped. Keen to fix this after the winter break and hopefully revive our promotion chances; though more performances like the 4-1 loss to bottom placed Ruzemberok B won't help.

Transfers:

Transfers were mainly to bulk up the squad which has been useful with the amount of injuries we've had (including 4 hernias at once?)

Matej Guzmicky: A relatively versatile 26 year old capable of playing DC, DM & CM.

Played | Scored | Assisted | MoM | Average rating
6(9)   |   1    |   1     |  1   | 6.84

Emil Lukac: A 23 year old wide midfielder on the left or the right, not the best but very much needed.

Played | Scored | Assisted | MoM | Average rating
11(3)  |   1    |   0     |  0   | 6.65

Radoslav Skolnick: A 32 year old right back signed when injuries were really taking their toll on the squad;

Played | Scored | Assisted | MoM | Average rating
6(1)   |   0    |   0     |  0   | 6.84

Tomas Durica: A 32 year old midfielder who can play LRC M/AM. Signed recently to sit on the bench when the midfield all developed hernia injuries together so as a result hasn't had too many games yet.

Played | Scored | Assisted | MoM | Average rating
2(0)   |   0    |   0     |  0   | 6.50

As you can see I haven't played the transfer market well and if we don't pull our socks up we can forget about finishing near the top.

You're challenging well.

The good old 'blip' eh! Let's hope you turn the corner and push for that promotion place.

I really do need to get promoted, the club is leaking money like a sieve. Our main monthly expenditure is the youth system which they say the club can support. Hopefully come youth intake day it's all proved worthwhile, but somehow I doubt that.

Updates may be slow this week but this is because I'm in the process of buying a new computer part by part (and getting a friend to put it together who won't blow it up like I probably would), will work out for the best in the long run when I'm not playing on my crappy laptop though.

So this years youth intake has just come through

Two exciting prospects in Marian Michalko and Radoslav Vyskoc

A very eccentric keeper here in Radoslav, should I be worried or pleased?

Looks like you have a Bruce Grobbelaar type goalkeeper!!! Eccentric maybe an understatement!

Looks like you have a Bruce Grobbelaar type goalkeeper!!! Eccentric maybe an understatement!

That would be awesome! Hoping to see some similar things from this kid

I'd be very happy.

Looks like you have a Bruce Grobbelaar type goalkeeper!!! Eccentric maybe an understatement!

I haven't forgotten about this or given up. Moving to a new computer but the CPU/cooler is very much not working. Idle temperature of around 65 degrees C means that playing FM would probably cause some form of explosion

Season Review:

As you can see it looks like Lucenec ran away with it, but in reality had we beat Lucenec and then won our last game and they lost, we would have one. For it to come down to 2 games and to somehow end up a 10 point difference is a little unfair in my opinion. We suffered another of our blips winning only 1 of our first 5 games back after the break but our good form after that turned out to be too little too late. Injury problems didn't help either.

Finances: Promotion has to be done in the next few seasons or we'll be in huge debt and I doubt our next sponsorship deal will be so lucrative.

Squad

As you can see form wasn't great but below are our top two players who aren't on loan at the club, only wanting to keep a track of people who will be staying at the club:

Martin Mikulic: Spent 15% of his season injured but somehow still managed to win the golden boot for the league with a huge total of 13 goals!!!

Martin Hromkovic: Solid full back and filled in at centre back well enough when he had to, a 6 month injury to my youth team centre back as well as several first team defenders made us somewhat reliant on this guy.

Marian Michalko YAMC1: He played the last 5 games of the season and looks to be a good prospect for the future, even better once the club adapts to utilise his AMC position.

Sorry to double post but WTF?

£113k + £79.73k = £192.73k

£230k - £192.73k = £37.27k

So they took out a £100k loan to cover that, £1.7k a month for 5 years. All for 900 extra seats to take it up to 4146. Our highest attendance last season was about 1200?

Not blessed with good sense.

Definitely not, I think my board is pocketing some of the extra money

You started in Slovenia yet Delta?

Season Preview

My goals for the season will be promotion, but our squad is still short in quite a few places so we'll have to see what I can pull out of the bag in terms of transfers and how badly injuries kill players off this year.

Current squad is team rating is below, though more additions could be added as the transfer window closes in mid September but the season starts in late July, lots of time for tweaking.

Key players:

Martin Mikulic: Last seasons top scorer and the best striker at the club, pressure is somewhat on him after last season the now departed loan signings chipped in to help.

Martin Matlak: The only decent keeper in the squad, had a good season last season hoping for some inspired performances this time round.

Marian Michalko YAMC1: Broke into the first team at the end of last season and had a good pre-season, hoping to see some development and has the potential to be the making of this squad.

Transfers:

I will still be making some transfers, I'll list the rest in the mid-season update or as I do them if it's a huge signing, the ones below are squad signings in areas we were short. Looked to bring in some decent players but not many liked the idea of joining the mighty SFM Senec Though there is one signing for the future in Tibor Bartko

So we take the lead, control the game (all our shots coming before their red card), they get someone sent off and win 3-1 whilst our players do nothing about it. Not a good start to the season I'll tell you that!

Definitely not, I think my board is pocketing some of the extra money

You started in Slovenia yet Delta?

Hope you can recover and go up. And not yet, still finishing off my current one so will be a few weeks yet, though save (including my club, the name of whom I've long forgotten) is all set up and ready to go. I do tend to plan these things a while in advance.

Hope you can recover and go up. And not yet, still finishing off my current one so will be a few weeks yet, though save (including my club, the name of whom I've long forgotten) is all set up and ready to go. I do tend to plan these things a while in advance.

I have the first round of the slovak cup against non-league opposition soon, I'm not optimistic League form is embarrassing.

Awesome, been meaning to read your long save for a while, will definitely do it before you start your Slovenian save which I'll be sure to follow.

If you can get a run in the cup this will be good for finances!

If you can get a run in the cup this will be good for finances!

Believe it or not we made it to the third round and made no prize money, also our tickets being £4 each means any extra tickets barely do anything to dent our monthly loss...

Ah bummer :/

Mid-season Update

As you can see Podbrezova are running away with it already and we're nowhere near the dizzy heights of the second place finish we reached last year, though after our early season form I would take our current 8th place without hesitation...

Looks like we're turning it around but the team morale is still terrible, I'm hoping some friendlies against weak opposition in the break will help to fix this. Getting worried we will be slow to start after the break and throw our progress away, finishing the first half of the season with a 3-0 victory to the runaway leaders shows we can compete, inconsistency is the issue.

Those are the players who've scored in the league, the best being a right mid and a lot being defenders, someone find me a goal scorer please :confused:

Are the images showing up ok to everyone?

So our first game back and all morale that was built is destroyed by some stupid tackling!

At least the new youth intake is here I here you cry?

They have potential yes, but thats now three goalkeepers in two years with over 4 and a half star potential...

Striker and DM could become useful though so I can't complain.

Peter Orsula Y3 GK:

Robert Orsula Y4 GK: Orsula brothers?

Marek Beno Y5 ST:

Lubomir Kovacik Y6 DM

Season Review

First off I'll show you the fixtures, only losing 2 of 15 games after the friendlies as it possible to make up the 14 point difference to go from 8th to 1st?

Sadly it wasn't to be, we finished with 2 less points than last year but closer to the top. I'm angry because our late season form shows we could have easily won it, hoping next season we have some consistency.

As you can see some of our players had terrible seasons, Plichta being one of them. 22 starts as a striker, 3 goals 3 assists.

Luckily we had some decent players rescuing our season.

Martin Kovac: Signed as cover around November I think, 4th choice centre back and on the decline but became our highest rated player after some great performances, the much improved defensive record I think may be down to him.

Marian Michalko Y1 AMC: Our first youth product had a great season, at just 17 years of age he popped up with 10 assists and 5 goals from 26 (9 as sub) appearances, should be a key player in next seasons promotion bid.

Martin Mikulic: Last seasons top scorer equalled his tally again this year with another 13 goals, most of them coming in crucial games in the latter half of the season, forming a formidable partnership with Michalko (Y1 AMC) in a injury provoked 4-1-3-1-1 formation.

Good to see the boards expectations match my own. Hope the players cope with the pressure well and that I make wise transfer choices...

Always good to see people in these sort of countries.

Decent start so far, hopefully you can push for the title this season.

Pre-season Report

Squad:

Managed to assemble a good squad, with depth and potential. Hoping it's enough to secure the title and promotion.

Finances: It looks good but it's only because of injections from the board, losing money every month so promotion is needed to profit and eventually turn professional.

Transfers:

As you can see a lot came in and a lot left, total rejuvenation of the defence took place and we now have a lot more cover should injuries strike.

Key Players:

Lukas Sebec: Plichtas replacement, doesn't look much but I am hoping for big things.

Lubos Chmelik: The new rock at the back, hoping for consistent good performances but I'm not holding my breath, had to be done after our best defender wouldn't re-sign

Marian Michalko: Again his potential gets him a place here, this season he will be used much more, whenever I play with a AMC. Hopefully he can score more and keep the assists going. I want to see good development from the first team action too.

I wrote this after our first game, we went down after 3 minutes and I though we'd throw the season away...

Sebok has more goals after the first game than Plichta at the end of last season and the rock at the back enjoys heading in corners, lets hope he stops us conceding as many as we did last season too

Got a repeat fixture of that 6-1 win for the first round of the cup, not banking on another 6-1 win, I'd gladly take a 1-0 win!

Well, the game had just as much drama as the first one...

Goalkeeper pulled off an 8.8 performance keeping out a huge 11 shots on target.

What do you do to get sent off in the second minute? And to still win 3-0 with 2 guys sent off is pretty impressive.

What do you do to get sent off in the second minute? And to still win 3-0 with 2 guys sent off is pretty impressive.

Both players got sent off for violent conduct and have since been fined a couple of weeks wages.

How we win with 9 men but then make playing with 11 men look so difficult really baffles me!

Mid-Season Update

Well, it seems we're doing as well as I hoped we would so far this season

Only losing 1 game ensures we're at the top but we're drawing far too many for the league to be safe, Dubnica will push us hard for the last 15 games in which we play them twice...

Kind of feel sorry for Pertzalka, we've played them 3 times already and the aggregate score is 13-2 to us

As you can see our only other loss was a 3-2 to defeat in the 3rd round of the cup, the minimum expectation of our board. 3-2 shows how close the game was and with better finishing we definitely would have gone through to the fourth round.

Sebek and Chmelik have both been amazing at getting on the score sheet and despite a slow start to the season Michalko is on a 7.32 over his last 5 games and is really starting to give me a problem by wanting to play him when I really should opt for a more defensive formation.

I'm just hoping we can keep it together and get the promotion, we play dubnica (2cnd) twice more but also play 9th, 10th and 12th twice more too, meaning that some of the harder double fixtures were done before the winter break.

Transfers:

Will edit in here any transfers I make, but with promotion looking likely I will only want to sign long term prospects who will develop into the league above or emergency cover for any injuries.

Well...

I didn't think I'd move for anyone in the transfer window but when one of my scouts came back with this guy I had to. Cost £50k so if we don't get promoted this season he will be sold or it will cripple us. This guy could be amazing:

so he has a great mid-season-pre-season? 3 games, 5 goals and 3 assists against weaker and equal opposition.

then we get this ahead of the news that the next game, at home to second place Dubnica is a fan day. Quite a nice time to get our new star player injured...

Notice it's the third time this has happened, he's 18. oh dear

Well, we needed someone to step up to the plate and wow did Sebek do his job. New star striker signing gets injured so our current striker scores a first half hat-trick in the promotion battle fan day game...

15 goals in 18 league games for this chap now.

Youth Intake:

Favourite day of the year...

2 more 5* potentials, pity they're both in AM positions. May re-train both as Midfield if it makes sense with their stats...

Go Sebek! Great stuff.

Promotion!!!

Only two more losses and Dubnica seriously messing up saw us run away with the title at the end of the season

Players:

Dinu got homesick and so had to take a month out, hoping he has a good pre-season and starts to develop next season. Sebek got a huge 23 goals and 10 assists, we owe him for this promotion...

Finances:

Finances are absolutely terrible, hoping to really take control of them next season and eventually a European push will sort them out, ironically the thing costing the most is the youth system, coming in at around £50k most months!

Well hopefully promotion will help a bit.