I have a Dream!

**Niebiescy** · 01-04-2012 20:11

I have never, ever had a career on FM even though I always want one when I start up new games. I always become too attached to the squads that I build and get to the point where I cannot bring myself to leave them and start over again. This time I am finally going to have a proper career!

As the title suggests I am working towards my dream job, which is to manage my favorite club, Ruch Chorzow of the Polish Ekstraklasa who I have never managed before on FM. I am however not going to start at this level. That would be unrealistic and wouldn't offer me a long-term challenge. Instead I will be starting in the Czech Second Division. I have chosen the Czech league ahead of the Polish one because the teams there are typically far smaller and poorer. Therefore managing at this level initially is far more realistic than in Poland. The reason for choosing the Czech leagues ahead of other smaller Eastern European ones is that up until the end of last October I lived in the Czech Republic. I lived there for five years and know the football leagues there very well and have been to watch most of the teams in person. Managing tiny clubs who you know well and have watched in person is far more exciting than managing a club that you know nothing about, where the players names are unpronounceable and where you cannot appreciate rivalries and the local football culture. I am hoping that this will give me the initial excitement that I need to get into this game.

The team I have chosen to manage is Slezska Opava. The reason for this is pretty simple. There are two teams who have any kind of fan support in this league plus another 14 clubs who range from 50 or so hardcore fans (such as Zlin or Most) down to just a couple such as Bohemians Prague (know by the fans as Strizkov after their real name) who have taken another club's indentity but have no real support. Opava and Brno are the two clubs who are easiest to identify with. Brno are one of the largest clubs in the nation and are the only professional team in the second biggest city in the Czech Republic. Usually they are a solid mid table first division club with a largish (but old and crumbling stadium) and a bit of money. For these reasons I didn't feel like they would be challenging enough to manage. Opava on the other hand haven't been in the first league for years and last year suffered the humiliation of having to play in the third division (Eastern Region) and this season in real life look like a mid table finish is the best they can hope for. This is their first season back in the second division and I like the challenge of trying to take them to their top.

Opava are an interesting club because their fan base is very large for a club from such a small town. The population of Opava is only around 60,000 but they do draw fans from the local villages also. Their biggest rivals by far are Banik Ostrava who are from the nearest major city, which has a population of around 300,000 and a history of being one of the three biggest Czech clubs along with the two major Prague teams (Sparta and Slavia). This is what happened last time the two clubs met in the Czech cup three years ago.

The reason for posting that video is to show how much these two teams hate each other because I am linking my initial aim to the rivalry here. I appreciate that managing such a small club that it will take me probably ten years to win anything domestically therefore I am setting myself the goal of finishing a season higher in the league than Banik before I am allowed to leave.

My long-term aims and goals are:

- Win promotion to the Gambrinus Liga
- Finish ahead of Banik Ostrava

My short term goals for the first season are:

- Finish in the top 5
- Strengthen the squad
- Stay out of debt

I am also going to set myself a transfer related rule to avoid the game being too easy:

- I can only sign players from the following nations CZ, SK, PL, AT, HU, HR, RS

My team are predicted to finish 5th in the league. I find this a little strange tbh. It seems like a very high aim for a newly promoted club that doesn't have a big squad or money. It's going to be a big challenge to meet this goal. It would've been much easier to take over a club with low aims but a similar reputation such as Zlin (established at this level and played in the top league only a few years back) or Usti (relegated last season and kept most of their squad) who have stronger squads than me, especially Usti who have a player worth £400k who if sold would fund a complete squad re-build at this level.

In my squad I have four star players (none of whom are particularly great):

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**Niebiescy** · 01-04-2012 20:11

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I have been given the task of finishing at least in the top half of the table. For this goal I will be given £80k to spend on players and a wage budget of £6k p/w. I currently have just over £400 a week in wage space currently. I have chosen to play it safe and select this option because the next is to gain promotion, which is next to impossible due to the top two only going up. Here are my aims:

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I am going to have to spend most of this budget because I only have two players who can possibly play on the wings and am weak and shallow at nearly every position.

I will post another update once I complete my preseason when I will know more about my squad and it's potential

Other details:

Manager reputation - Sunday League
Leagues loaded - Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Slovak

I will add/remove leagues in the future depending on which nation and level I am managing at

**deltablue** · 01-04-2012 20:45

Go get Ostrava!

**Niebiescy** · 02-04-2012 00:10

My preseason is now complete and my team is ready to start this challenge! The situation was not quite as bad as I first expected. I did lose two of my star players to bigger (or at least higher division) clubs. Zdenek Simek who was the best ball winning midfielder by far went to Dukla Prague. I couldn't turn down £100k how ever good the player is. From my experience managing in the Romanian lower leagues I have learned that money can disappear very quickly at this level with such small incomes so you have to sell your best players and then try and replace them with loans and free transfers. The other key player I lost is Zdenek Partys who I posted above as one of my star players. When Slovan Liberec agreed to pay me £100k for a year's loan plus £75k to make the transfer permanent there was no way that I could ever possibly say no.

With regards to signings I am actually very happy with what I managed to pick up. I agreed loan deals for four youngsters (two Polish, two Czech), signed a loan of older free agents and then added a star signing for £425. I actually found wheeling and dealing to be relatively easy due to the amount of talented older players playing for Czech amateur clubs and therefore not having contracts.

Here is my transfer activity:

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My star pickups were:

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**Niebiescy** · 02-04-2012 00:11

and my 38 year old

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On top of these signings I managed a real coup. I found this young lad advertised as being available for loan from Mlada Boleslav with them not requiring a penny in either loan fee or wages. I am not sure if he will perform as well as his stats suggest because he has been injured all preseason, but from the looks of things he could potentially be the goalscorer that I need to mount a serious promotion challenge. He looks like he could be awesome playing either on the left wing as an inside forward attack or otherwise upfront as a poacher.

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My preseason was pretty mixed in terms of games. I am not sure how the teams rate on FM because they are not playable mainly, so I will write based off their real life abilities. Zaglebie Sosnowiec are bottom of the Polish third tier (West) in real life but are a pretty big and well supported team. Also the town is only around 100km from Opava so a realistic -preseason fixture. The fact that we beat them so easily was impressive for a first game where I knew nothing about my team and hadn't managed to sign anyone. Rybnik are in the same division and not far from the relegation places so to draw with them was an awful result. Having said that they were pretty good last season and are a big club IRL so may be better on FM than in reality. It was also another realistic game with the towns being only 60km apart. Vitkovice are the second team in Ostrava (and a minor rival) and were Opava's main contenders for promotion from the third tier last season. Beating them only 1-0 at home was a concern, but it was still a win and we had more players to sign and were very much a team in transition. The result wasn't ideal but was acceptable. The next game was set up against Banik to see how far we had to go to get to my goal. It was at home, in a one-off game and a meaningless preseason one, but was still interesting to gauge where we're at. We managed to pull off a great result and draw with them after going behind early. We were actually the better team for most of the game and grabbed a late equalizer, which was extremely positive. The final preseason game was a reserve team fixture where I didn't play anyone likely to start in the league opener due to potential fatigue.

**Niebiescy** · 02-04-2012 00:11

In between the last two preseason games we played our first competitive game in the cup against Zabreh. Winning 4-1 away from is always positive, especially when your team isn't yet match fit.

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**Niebiescy** · 02-04-2012 00:22

I doubt you've heard of any of my players, but here's my squad.

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As you can see I have kept it was Czech as possible and followed the realism rules that I wrote about earlier. You may have noticed that Dremlyuk and Dembele are not EU citizens. The reason for signing them is that Dremlyuk played last season for Elbag in the Polish third tier while Dembele played last season at Slavia Prague in the Czech first division. Therefore the transfers were both from active leagues that I have knowledge of in the game. I have to admit that I could have a really insane squad if I was allowed to sign players from Non-EU leagues. African agents keep offering me youngsters who are probably better than anything I have, but I don't see these offers as being realistic so ignored them. I will maybe consider these types of players once/if I am promoted because then the club would have a larger scouting network.

I have set my tactic up to take advantage of the fact that my best players pretty much all play in wide positions. My starting full backs and wingers should be pretty awesome at this level while the centre of my midfield is my weakness. Because of this I am looking to attack from wide and want my wingers and WB to be running inside or otherwise drilling crosses in to my poacher. To help with this I chose the largest pitch size possible. As a fall-back I am using the same tactic but with a DMC/Anchor man instead of AMC/trequarista for when I play away from home against stronger teams or cup games against teams from the top division if I get that far. I have also trained my players to play 4-4-2 with wingers, but would prefer not to use that type of tactic unless losing because it would leave my weakness (central midfield) too exposed.

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I will post tomorrow or Tuesday once I've got stuck into my league games to let you know whether my optimism is misplaced or not.

**Niebiescy** · 02-04-2012 22:53

I am now at the winter break and am not sure what to do from here. The way things work at this level is that teams will typically sign players for a season and then they'll head off somewhere else for a season. Am trying to decide whether to go way over my wage budget to push for promotion (knowing that I won't be stuck with the players for years) or whether to play things safe and try and finish with what I have. The season's been interesting so far. Started dreadfully in the league winning only one of the first four games and were also knocked out of the cup. We were then on fire for the middle of this part of the season and then had an awful finish (especially away form) due to injuries.

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We've now played seventeen of our thirty league games and sit four points behind the top three (two teams go up). The promotion race seems as though two from the current top six will go up with the gap between sixth and seventh being five points with seventh being ten points off the league.

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In terms of star players I don't really have any. My two centre backs (Chleboun and Lysonek) have been pretty solid when they've started together and we don't really have a third worth playing. Both full backs have had problems. Kaufman has been out for pretty much the whole season so I've had to use players who are better at CB and have RB as their second position. Sedlacek at LB is fine for 60 minutes and then always is exhausted and has to be subbed. In midfield thirty eight year old Milan Barteska who I rescued from amateur football has been my most reliable player so far although he hasn't done anything special. Zahustel who I thought was going to be my star player keeps getting injured and has been extremely inconsistent. Vaclav Stipek has been my best striker playing as DLF/S. His statistics are pretty dreadful. He is rated only six for finishing and he seems pretty thick too but he can run for hours and is tough. Not sure how he's scored goals but he has.

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Now I have a four month mid season break to do nothing. I like playing in nations with short seasons, but without any continental competitions or domestic cup games to fill the space it's going to be an awfully long break. I know in real life that teams can (literally) sign a new entirely different first eleven during this time because contracts tend to be so short. I have no idea of what to expect from now on.

I also may have to change my goal for the challenge. My original goal was to finish above Banik, but it looks like they are going to be relegated this season so next season I will be in a higher division than them if I am promoted. I will have to re-think my goals during the preseason if this does occur.

Here's the first division table:

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**deltablue** · 03-04-2012 14:14

Could get in there, and might have a bash at Banik next year.

**Niebiescy** · 03-04-2012 16:33

Banik could be fun to manage because they are such a big club with so much potential but have been badly managed and therefore have some financial problems and a weak squad

**Niebiescy** · 03-04-2012 16:41

Just finished the season. Finished a disappointed third. It all came down to the last two games. We lost the penultimate game away at Znojmo after having a man sent off in the first half and then I didn't even try in the final game because we had nothing to play for. The amount of injuries that you receive at this level are insane. I am not sure if it's just that I've been unlucky or if it's typical but I've had to continually sign new players just to cover injuries.

Here's are the final table and my second half results:

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My goals for next season are:

- Trim the squad. The wage bill is currently too high at the club is in the red. I need to sell players and reduce wages to get out of this situation.
- Gain promotion. It's a tough ask, but the relegated clubs (Bohemians and Hradec Kralove) are not too strong or powerful so I like my chances. My main worry is that the CZ researcher has done an awful job of research for the lower leagues and Kladno usually come up into the second league and often end up in the first division after a season because he's made their squad and reputation strong for some uinknown reason when in reality they are tiny.
- Avoid signing so many players. I want to rely on loan signings from bigger clubs and trialists in order to avoid paying large wages and being locked into keeping players who can't operate at a higher level
- Start better. The first half of the season cost us promotion this year. We were the strongest team in the league for the second half, but it was too late with the leaders being so consistent.

I'll post an update once the preseason has finished and I have my squad assembled.

**Niebiescy** · 03-04-2012 17:15

This season looks like it's going to be tough with two very small clubs with mediocre squads promoted (due to signing awesome players on loan), two better squads being relegated and the researcher's two love children being promoted in place of two squads full of deadwood. Looks like I could end up being sacked for the second time in my FM career due to high expectations (Wolfsburg was the other team to fire me). It's going to be fun and a challenge if nothing else!

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**Niebiescy** · 03-04-2012 17:24

Looks like my concerns are justified seeing as the bookies think I have very little hope and am rated more mid table than promotion material

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**Niebiescy** · 04-04-2012 19:03

Thinks are going much better than expected at the winter break. We are 7 points clear with 13 games left. Also on another positive note we are more than £3,000 under the wage budget with lots (relatively speaking) of transfer money left over. My strategy this year was far more intelligent. I signed as many young loan stars as possible while building a strong core that can play in what will hopefully be a battle for survival at a higher level next year. I managed to make a profit of £440k in the transfer window which I will keep for running costs this year. Here's the table:

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I will do a proper write up when the season ends. I now have 4 months of clicking continue with a few weeks of friendlies at the end. The massive winter break is the main problem with this save so far. I hate playing long seasons, but there just aren't enough games currently. It does make the league much harder though because one bad run can end seasons like what happened to me last year. Both newly promoted teams from last year are struggling in the bottom four, which suggests the first division will be very challenging and more exciting probably.

Btw the main reason for my change in fortunes it changing my tactics to play a kamikaze type game which has led to me not drawing so many games, which is what ruining my season last year.

Here's my current crazy tactic (will obviously change to something more suitable after promotion for the big leagues):

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**deltablue** · 04-04-2012 21:20

I think you're probably heading up.

**Niebiescy** · 05-04-2012 14:53

Finally escaped the second division as champions. Was pretty easy in the end even though we had a bad run directly after the winter break. Karvina came up with us, which wasn't a shock because they qualified for Europe last year as cup winners and therefore had more money and a better squad than everyone else in the division, especially their two African strikers who were both among the top three scorers in the division. Here's the final table:

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Sadly our old adversaries from last season, Most were relegated. I expected it because all of their best players from the second division campaign were on loan rather than permanent signings. Sokolov who were the other promoted club did a great job and managed to finish in 12th. Banik Ostrava had a good season and finished 4th, which pleased me. I want them to do well because it'll give me a challenge to chase them down rather than being easy if they are near the bottom.

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I am not sure what my goals are for next season right now because I don't have my budgets yet. I am however very worried because the board just spent £1m on under-soil heating, which is not really needed urgently when we were already 375k in debt. We are now in debt by £1.375m and the amount is obviously likely to grow the longer it takes for us to pay it off. If there is not a big cash injection from the board it's likely that we will be in a major relegation dog fight and will probably go down. The reason for this is that most of my best players are loan signings with 100% wage contributions and I won't have the budget to continue to pay them next season if the board cut budgets. In real life the difference between the bottom half of the first division and top of the second is tiny. Newly promoted clubs often finish mid table without a problem, even tiny clubs with no fans like Dukla this season, HK stayed up the season before easily, Bohemians and Slovacko the one before that, Pribram the one before that etc... If I had some money I will look to solidify my position within the top division and really go after the cup as it's the only shot we will have at Europe because the big clubs don't tend to take it seriously. European money is obviously the only way for a club at such a low level to grow. It looks like Sparta and Plzen are way ahead of everyone else and then the likes of Slavia, Sigma, Banik, Teplice, Boleslav etc are so much bigger than us too. Having looked at the small clubs like Ceske Budejovice, Pribram, Sokolov, Dukla, Zizkov and Karvina I am confident of being stronger than at least two of them.

I'll write an update once I am aware of my financial position.....

**Niebiescy** · 05-04-2012 15:12

I am now extremely worried that my board have destroyed the future of our club for the sake of under-soil heating, which the club has done without for years. I would like to just walk away but I can't. First problem is that I have committed myself to this challenge and can't leave until I achieve my goals. Secondly I have not been mentioned when a single job has come up so if I were to leave I would just have to start from scratch all over again in the second division and I really Don't want to do that. Here's are my pathetic budgets for the year:

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And this is the financial disaster the board have created:

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It may not look that bad, but the Czech leagues are not like playing in England or Germany. Even if you win the league your prize money is only £436k. For a survival place near the bottom you are looking at being given around £70-100k. The cup also pays badly and tickets are priced at around £2 with only 2,000-3,000 fans attending each game so this obviously doesn't offer much potential for profit either. With my wage bill, the interest and lack of income I can see the debt growing to over £2m by the end of the season. I really need a miracle to make Europe.

I will set my initial goals as:

- Survival (I don't have any money to buy players so have to rely on free transfers and loans. Can't expect anything more considering our small reputation and financial constraints)
- Make a cup run (With a lot of luck we could potentially win it although it's an outside shot, but at least playing extra games vs bigger clubs can bring in more cash)
- Sign some talented youngsters who I can sell on to get the club back in the black

**deltablue** · 06-04-2012 17:22

Let see how badly things get financially.

**emgergo** · 06-04-2012 18:41

I always blame my board for not improving the facilities. I might be better off with that, looking at your example

**Niebiescy** · 09-04-2012 15:21

Haven't updated for a while due to visiting family for Easter. I have now finished my preseason and am about to play my first game of the season. My finances have got even worse and I'm worried about what could happen. I think we'll see a situation where my board will start selling players behind my back because I doubt my owner has the money to pay the debts off. The whole under soil heating thing is so frustrating because lots of Czech clubs don't have it and it's clearly an English element programmed into the game for us to be in so much debt because of it. Usually Czech teams will move their games to another stadium if the weather is so severe that they cannot play at home. For example IRL it wouldn't be unrealistic to use Vitkovice in Ostrava, which is a neutral athletics stadium with under-soil heating. The only time in recent memory where Czech teams have had a real problem with weather stopping games was the season before last where the winter was long and brutal. In that case teams whos towns didn't have a pitch with this facility had to play in other cities. For example Kladno played a few home games at Strahov in Prague (20km away). Usually it isn't an issue because the winter break lasts until March and by then most of the bad weather is gone.

Here's the financial screeshot. I still haven't used my maximum wage budget and don't intend to but have signed players to give me depth all over.

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The best news that I had was finding a parent club. I asked my board to find someone and I was amazed at how great the options were. I was offered Shakhtar Donetsk, Lokamotiv Moscow, Rubin Kazan and Parma. I chose Shakhtar. It only happned a few days ago so am yet to receive any players but the potential is huge.

I signed a couple of players who have the potential to play abroad who I hope to be able to sell on for big money at some point. Here's the best one. A young centre back who can start from day one.

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The second is a young midfielder that I picked up on a free last season and loaned out to my feeder club. There's already some interest in him from Slovan Liberec.

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My final prospect is a winger who I picked up on a free from Olimpic Donetsk. I've loaned him out to my feeder club because he isn't ready for the first team. He doesn't look amazing but the scouts like him:

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I am under a lot of pressure to have a very fast start to the league. My first three games are all against clubs I'd consider to be small and relegation rivals. Two of those are at home. I then have an extremely difficult away game against Mlada Boleslav before hosting Banik Ostrava which is massive not just because they're rivals but also because I can't afford a bad run to start. The next few games are against clubs bigger than ourselves, but nobody too scary before facing a murderer's row before the winter break. In consecutive games I will have to face Jablonec, Sigma, Ceske Budejovice (only easy one), Slavia, Slovan Liberec, Sparta and Plzen. The last four are probably the best four Czech teams on the game apart from Boleslav. I also have them as my last four games of the season so really cannot afford to be in a dog fight in the end. A fast start is key with my schedule being so unbalanced!

**Niebiescy** · 09-04-2012 22:38

I have now reached the winter break and have played 16 of my 30 league games. I am also in the 1/4 finals of the cup. I have to say that this is probably the best half season I ever managed on FM2012. I have one of the lowest wage bills in the league and am broke thanks to the idiotic board yet am somehow in fifth position in the league and within 5 points of a European qualification place. I think realistically my team will fall away in the second half, but our points total of 28 is probably enough to guarantee survival already considering the team in second bottom (two teams go down) only have 8 points currently. There are however now rumors being reported that my team are going to have to sell tons of players once the transfer window re-opens at the end of January thanks to the mess the board have put us in. The squad that I have managed to build during the summer is a mixture of unknown youngsters my scouts managed to find, veterans who were let go by clubs they were no longer good enough for and foreigners who were without clubs and had agents who offered them to me. In terms of numbers my squad is tiny compared to those of rival clubs and only has a few stars. However as always seems to be the case on FM my most valuable players are my youngsters. I imagine that they will be the ones that will have to be sold off first. I will post my finances, table and fixtures below to show how the season has gone so far.

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Hopefully I'll get some good bids for some of my less needed players. I will write an update before the season resumes in March with regards to finances if there is anything to report. I don't care if I lose half of my team during the summer because I can easily replace them with free transfers, but to lose them at this stage of the season would truly be a disaster.

**Niebiescy** · 10-04-2012 16:51

My season didn't end as well as it started and I resigned three games before the end. My favorite team Ruch were relegated and their manager was fired so I felt like I had to step in to save the club that I love. I left Opava in eight spot one point behind our rivals Banik. We went out of the cup on away goals against the best club in the country (Mlada Boleslav) and had nothing left to play for apart from pride and a few Crowns worth of prize money. I didn't leave just because the Ruch job became available although it was obviously a factor. I left because I had taken Opava as far as I could. The club will never challenge for the Czech title and the squad has to be weakened in the summer because of the debt from the under-soil heating installation left us broke. The board would put £600k in ever now and then but it would only cover the interest. We wouldn't have been given money to improve the squad and the wage bill needed to be cut even though we were under the board's ridiculous budget. I seriously feel for the future of Opava. It will be interesting to see what the new manager chooses to do with my players.

I have now taken over Ruch with them in an even worse position than Opava. The club is basically £4m in debt, the squad is dreadful and we have a massive re-building project ahead. The club are so broke that I had to resign from Opava because the board couldn't afford to pay the compensation to hire me. To go from a club that were good enough to finish mid table in the Czech First Division (top tier) to a club in the Polish First Division (second tier) may seem like a backwards career step to some but I can assure you that it isn't. Ruch are basically the Polish version of Liverpool. Until the recent emergence of Wisla as a superpower Ruch and our biggest rivals Gornik Zabrze were always the two most dominant clubs in Polish football history with 13 (Ruch) and 14 (Gornik) league titles (it was like a Man Utd - Liverpool situation up until the end of the 80s) respectively. Nobody else is even close to those three clubs with Legia next most successful with only 8 titles. On top of this Ruch also now playing in Silesia Stadium (will do IRL from next season) which is probably the best stadium in Poland and has a capacity of 44,731 (according to FM). This just shows the potential of the club compared to 7,758 capacity of the City Stadium in Opava. I have a huge mess to sort out here because of the debts and the pitiful level of the squad, but I think it's no tougher than it was at Opava. I see more potential to grow the club because the Polish league has four continental qualification spots compared to the Czech league's three. On top of this the top Polish teams are weaker than the top Czech ones at least on this particular save.

I am actually considering contacting SI about the awful job done by the Polish researcher for this game. I genuinely believe that he is biased against my club and this is clearly reflected in the game. In real life Ruch are challenging Legia and Slask for the league title with only a few games left to play. We are also most likely going to be facing Legia in the cup final. We are 3-1 up after the first semi final with the second final away in Krakow. It's very unlikely Wisla can come back from this. Last season we also weren't far from qualifying for Europe yet Ruch are relegated on pretty much every save I ever play on FM and at the start have one of the worst squads and lowest reputations in all of the Polish top division and are projected to be relegated the first season. This is just ridiculous considering that it's a club back on the up with the move to the new stadium planned for the summer, a great manager in place and a successful squad that has performed excellently on the pitch. On top of this it is claimed that the new Silesian Stadium is in awful condition, which is insane considering it is currently being re-build and will be modern and as good as any stadium in Poland. On top of this the researcher has made obvious errors in listing rivalries that don't exist. There are similar problems with the Czech league with regards to rivalries also. I am not sure who researches the game and who finalizes these issues, but really the amount of mistakes that were made is awful.

**deltablue** · 10-04-2012 18:52

Sounds like a bit of a mess to sort out.

**Niebiescy** · 10-04-2012 22:51

I decided against writing an initial report about the task ahead of me because the majority of my senior squad either had their contracts about to expire or were going to be leaving the club so I didn't feel that they were worth writing about. I have basically had to build a whole new team apart from the starting keeper, my captain and best centre back, my left winger and two strikers. I lost my star striker for £375k on a relegation release clause although I didn't mind too much because his contract was due to expire at the end of the season and he'd have never agreed to extend even if we were promoted so it was best to take the cash. Also his salary was too high for a broke club in the second tier. I also lost my star young centre back who looked amazing. His youth contract had expired and he refused to sign a professional contract with us (probably due to the relegation) so I lost him for the huge sum of £525k to Slask. Due to the abysmal financial situation the club is in (debt now down to £2m thank God!) I couldn't re-invest the large sums I received and instead have had to sign bargains and free transfers. Here's my summer's transfer activity:

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I doubt you've ever heard of any of the players on that list, but I am extremely happy with what I managed to put together. I am pretty strong and deep at every position now apart from both full back positions and on the right wing. The star signings are probably Oliver Agbo (who amazingly wasn't getting a game for his old Nigerian club and was desperate to leave) for the massive fee of £2k:

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and also Predrag Randjelovic whos agent kindly contacted me offering his services. Was ecstatic to pick up such a good looking player for free. His wages are a bit high, but I think it's worth paying for because not getting promoted is not an option and he should be a machine at this level.

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So far I have found Polish clubs to be far poorer than Czech clubs both financially and talent-wise at this level. Czech second division clubs still have the money to pay £100k for signings and can afford wages of £1k per week while in Poland teams are really scraping for pennies because they are so broke. That really show in terms of the quality of squads they can put together. For what I have seen so far there appears to be a massive gap within the league I will be playing in. You have the big clubs who have relatively good squads and can sign players (e.g. Cracovia, LKS Lodz, Ruch, Pogon, Arka, Gliwice) and then you have the tiny clubs with no budgets whos squads are quite pathetic and their players are worth basically zero (e.g. Otwock, Sokolka, Gornik Walbrzych etc...). This will most likely show in the final table although like always on FM there should be a few shocks along the way.

I was amazed to see that I have been projected to finish 4th in the league. I was expecting to be the favorites and most likely winners, but because of the mistakes made by the Polish researcher the club reputations are unrealistic and my goal is to push for a promotion place instead. We had an awesome preseason beating Bytom and drawing with Legia when both are top division clubs and Legia are probably the biggest in all of Poland.

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Based on that form and the easy win over Gaz Metan (who are also a higher reputation club with a stronger league) I think we should win the title this year. I Will set my season's objectives as follows:

- Win the First Division title (Promotion is the key, but I want to set the bar higher)
- Win the Polish Cup (This is probably ridiculous and unrealistic, but I need to aim for Europe ASAP for financial reasons. Big clubs do tend to rest players for cup games and I do not fear anyone outside of the five or so truly big teams).
- Find and sign some talented Polish youngsters who I can sell on down the line at a large profit (Opava have sold on some of my bargain pickups and seem to be getting over their financial crisis and I need the same from Ruch)

I will write an update most likely around the time of the winter break to let you know how this goes. I just hope that my confidence is not misplaced and my squad really is as good as I think.

**endtime** · 11-04-2012 06:00

Originally Posted by Niebiescy

I am actually considering contacting SI about the awful job done by the Polish researcher for this game. I genuinely believe that he is biased against my club and this is clearly reflected in the game. In real life Ruch are challenging Legia and Slask for the league title with only a few games left to play. We are also most likely going to be facing Legia in the cup final. We are 3-1 up after the first semi final with the second final away in Krakow. It's very unlikely Wisla can come back from this. Last season we also weren't far from qualifying for Europe yet Ruch are relegated on pretty much every save I ever play on FM and at the start have one of the worst squads and lowest reputations in all of the Polish top division and are projected to be relegated the first season. This is just ridiculous considering that it's a club back on the up with the move to the new stadium planned for the summer, a great manager in place and a successful squad that has performed excellently on the pitch.

Ruch came 12th in the league last season, you were 9 places off European qualification and not "not far from Europe". Stadion Śląski's condition is set to "very good" in the database, so either you're playing an edited db or you're confusing stadium condition with pitch condition. Your squad and reputation I feel is fairly researched, except for Maciej Jankowski, who is overrated for such an unproven player and always becomes a regular in the Polish NT and scores hatfuls of goals. If anything, it's the other clubs in the Polish db that are overrated. Rivalries aren't set by researchers.

Oh, and you were very nearly kicked out of the cup yesterday by Wisła, way to jinx yourself.

**Niebiescy** · 11-04-2012 10:10

Originally Posted by endtime

Ruch came 12th in the league last season, you were 9 places off European qualification and not "not far from Europe". Stadion Śląski's condition is set to "very good" in the database, so either you're playing an edited db or you're confusing stadium condition with pitch condition. Your squad and reputation I feel is fairly researched, except for Maciej Jankowski, who is overrated for such an unproven player and always becomes a regular in the Polish NT and scores hatfuls of goals. If anything, it's the other clubs in the Polish db that are overrated. Rivalries aren't set by researchers.

Oh, and you were very nearly kicked out of the cup yesterday by Wisła, way to jinx yourself.

Ruch finished 12th because they played badly during the last few weeks of the season once Europe became impossible and lost the last four games. Still they only missed Europe by 11 points. Losing your last few when you have nothing to play for doesn't mean that you are miles off of Europe when you spend most of the season in the top 6 before a late fall. For example if Ruch now fell apart after losing in Warsaw last weekend and finished in 5th or 6th (not impossible) would you say that they didn't contend for the title? I'd say Ruch have been contenders because they went to Warsaw with only 6 games left and if they won they'd have gone top. Either way there is no justification for them being projected to be relegated and having one of the worst squads in the league even on the update when they proved to be not the most talented team, but one of the best. That would be enough to give them at least average level players for the league they are in.

Is squad reputation not different to club reputation? I find it strange that a club like Ruch could have a lower reputation than clubs like Belchatow or Polonia which they appear to have. Having said that Polonia are made to be one of the biggest clubs in Poland when in real life are tiny and laughed at by most people as a club that has very few fans and is very much in Legia's shadow. There are similar issues on the Czech version where Plzen are made to be as big as Sparta or close when they won the title for the first time ever last season and have now sold or agreed to sell their best players.

The squad may not be as strong as Legia or Wisla if we analyze it man for man, but it is basically pathetic compared to those clubs, Lech and the other clubs the person who researched the DB has rated as elite. I think most people can see that it's a league with a lot of parity and where a squad like this shouldn't be so far behind the top ones.

I am not sure if the other teams are necessarily overrated either. Based on recent European performances, stadium improvements and crowd sizes the top Polish clubs should be rated close to the top CEE clubs such as Sparta Prague, Partizan Belgrade or Dinamo Zagreb yet they are miles behind these clubs on the game.

Who sets rivalries then because there are lots of problems here and it would be good to give them some feedback. Simple examples:

- Opava are not listed as a rival of Banik Ostrava on Banik's info page when the clubs hate eachother and Banik probably only hate Sparta more
- Banik are only listed as a minor rival for Opava when in reality Opava only really care about Banik and hate them more than anyone. Their other listed rivals are tiny clubs with no fans who are not close to Opava's size and stature.
- It lists Gieksa and Widzew as a "fierce" rivalry which I find a bit weird. Maybe the fans are fierce towards each other if they bump into each other at a Ruch vs Gornik game, but the clubs are not massive rivals that live for beating each other.
- It lists Legia and Polonia as fierce rivals, which is ridiculous. Legia fans couldn't care less about them. Their fierce rivals are Widzew, Lech and Wisla who are listed as "other rivals".
- Slavia Prague and Bohemians 1905 are listed as rivals when in real life they are known for their friendship
- Same as Timisoara and Rapid Bucharest
- Sparta and Banik are not listed as fierce rivals when it is probably the most heavily policed game in Czech football
- Sparta and Zizkov are listed as rivals when Zizkov's only fans are basically Sparta fans who go to watch them because of the 10.15am kickoffs and cheap ticket prices. Zizkov are more rivals of Bohemians than Sparta or Dukla

I could list more but I'd probably bore you....

Maybe the stadium probably was only on my game then. Ruch had a whole stand closed for health and safety purposes and the stadium condition is listed as being "very poor" and you can see the amount of seats closed off for games. How could this happen if it is set to being very good? Btw I don't use any patches and am playing off of the standard SI made DB update. Here's the screenshot:

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I probably did jinx myself by being so arrogant lol. Was lucky in the end but a place in the final's a place in the final

**endtime** · 11-04-2012 15:57

Originally Posted by Niebiescy

Ruch finished 12th because they played badly during the last few weeks of the season once Europe became impossible and lost the last four games. Still they only missed Europe by 11 points. Losing your last few when you have nothing to play for doesn't mean that you are miles off of Europe when you spend most of the season in the top 6 before a late fall.

Ruch may have missed Europe by 11 points, but on the other hand they finished 10 points in front of Arka, who were relegated. In that sense you were closer to relegation than to Europe.

For example if Ruch now fell apart after losing in Warsaw last weekend and finished in 5th or 6th (not impossible) would you say that they didn't contend for the title? I'd say Ruch have been contenders because they went to Warsaw with only 6 games left and if they won they'd have gone top.

Title contenders, no. Contenders for Europe, yes.

Either way there is no justification for them being projected to be relegated and having one of the worst squads in the league even on the update when they proved to be not the most talented team, but one of the best. That would be enough to give them at least average level players for the league they are in.

Well, I agree they shouldn't be rated so much worse than other teams. That being said, I think their biggest asset is their manager, they lack any really outstanding players and don't have strength in depth.

Is squad reputation not different to club reputation? I find it strange that a club like Ruch could have a lower reputation than clubs like Belchatow or Polonia which they appear to have.

I meant squad ability, not squad reputation, sorry if I caused any confusion. While I agree they shouldn't be rated lower than Bełchatów, it was Ruch's best player who moved to Polonia, and not the other way round

However, if you look at Ruch's recent history, you'll admit that the club hasn't been very successful in the last decade: your last trophy came in 1996, you quite spent 4 consecutive seasons in the second tier, twice avoiding the drop to the third tier by winning the playouts. Things like these hurt reputation as it is understood in the game.

Having said that Polonia are made to be one of the biggest clubs in Poland when in real life are tiny and laughed at by most people as a club that has very few fans and is very much in Legia's shadow. There are similar issues on the Czech version where Plzen are made to be as big as Sparta or close when they won the title for the first time ever last season and have now sold or agreed to sell their best players.

I think you're being unfair to Polonia. They may be riding high only thanks to Wojciechowski's riches at the moment, but I wouldn't call them "tiny" or "laughed at by most people".

The squad may not be as strong as Legia or Wisla if we analyze it man for man, but it is basically pathetic compared to those clubs, Lech and the other clubs the person who researched the DB has rated as elite. I think most people can see that it's a league with a lot of parity and where a squad like this shouldn't be so far behind the top ones.

I am not sure if the other teams are necessarily overrated either. Based on recent European performances, stadium improvements and crowd sizes the top Polish clubs should be rated close to the top CEE clubs such as Sparta Prague, Partizan Belgrade or Dinamo Zagreb yet they are miles behind these clubs on the game.

I'll stick with my opinion and say that it's the other clubs that are overrated. Polish clubs may have put in some decent European performances in the past few years, but they were one season wonders in the Europa cup, which isn't taken entirely seriously by big European sides. When transferring to foreign leagues, most Polish players struggle badly to adapt and find themselves out of their depth even if they were standout performers in the Polish league, and don't even get me started on our national team.
I think many FM researchers should take a reality check when rating their players, but that's a topic for another rant.

Who sets rivalries then because there are lots of problems here and it would be good to give them some feedback. Simple examples:

- Opava are not listed as a rival of Banik Ostrava on Banik's info page when the clubs hate eachother and Banik probably only hate Sparta more
- Banik are only listed as a minor rival for Opava when in reality Opava only really care about Banik and hate them more than anyone. Their other listed rivals are tiny clubs with no fans who are not close to Opava's size and stature.
- It lists Gieksa and Widzew as a "fierce" rivalry which I find a bit weird. Maybe the fans are fierce towards each other if they bump into each other at a Ruch vs Gornik game, but the clubs are not massive rivals that live for beating each other.
- It lists Legia and Polonia as fierce rivals, which is ridiculous. Legia fans couldn't care less about them. Their fierce rivals are Widzew, Lech and Wisla who are listed as "other rivals".
- Slavia Prague and Bohemians 1905 are listed as rivals when in real life they are known for their friendship
- Same as Timisoara and Rapid Bucharest
- Sparta and Banik are not listed as fierce rivals when it is probably the most heavily policed game in Czech football
- Sparta and Zizkov are listed as rivals when Zizkov's only fans are basically Sparta fans who go to watch them because of the 10.15am kickoffs and cheap ticket prices. Zizkov are more rivals of Bohemians than Sparta or Dukla

I could list more but I'd probably bore you....

I think rivalries are set by the clubs themselves, like the legends/icons/favourite personnel. I can only comment on the Polish rivalries, but I think that GKS and Widzew have a fierce rivalry set because of the friendship between Ruch and Widzew fans (and as far as I know, there's a "kosa" between GKS and Ruch). As for Legia and Polonia, well, a derby is a derby, whatever Legia fans may say.

Maybe the stadium probably was only on my game then. Ruch had a whole stand closed for health and safety purposes and the stadium condition is listed as being "very poor" and you can see the amount of seats closed off for games. How could this happen if it is set to being very good? Btw I don't use any patches and am playing off of the standard SI made DB update. Here's the screenshot:

Yeah, I loaded the editor to check the state of the Śląski and it's listed as very good in the database. It probably deteriorated quickly in the game due to Ruch's debts (which also caused the closing off of stands). It seems to be a bug / research error, because as far as I know Ruch don't own the stadium and don't pay for its maintenance.

I probably did jinx myself by being so arrogant lol. Was lucky in the end but a place in the final's a place in the final

Eh, I hope you actually win the thing and the Ekstraklasa in front of Legia. Good luck to Ruch from a Widzew fan and I'll stop derailing your thread

**Niebiescy** · 11-04-2012 18:41

Don't apologise for hi-jacking the thread. I find it interesting discussing this with another fan because not many people play the CEE leagues and any time I give feedback or opinion it seems to be ignored due to the lack of people who play them on these forums.

With regards to last season I can see where you are coming from. I just remember dreaming of going back to Europe like the season before and the big trip to Vienna and wanting something similar to happen again. The team seemed to be legitimate contenders for third until near the end with that great run of games around Easter time before the late collapse. I am biased but I find it frustrating to see my club rated so low by the game when we finished in third two seasons ago, finished 12th last year but competed in the top half for most of the year and are contenders for the title (or at worst Europe) again this season. I know that since the fall of Communism the club has struggled (kind of like the region with the industry) but it is still one of the great clubs in Poland and in recent years things have definitely shown signs of improvement. This is why I am a little unhappy because Gornik Zabrze were in the second tier more recently and have looked weaker yet are a much stronger squad and seem to be a bigger club according to the game.

I find the whole rating of club reputations to be quite interesting with regards to the game. There should maybe be a separate rating for how attractive a move is to a player with the way football has changed and how money rather than a club's real size seems to be more important. With clubs like Anzhi and City this is particularly important. I think most people recognize Arsenal, Liverpool and Man Utd as the three big English clubs and the Moscow clubs being the biggest in Russia, but now things have changed and these traditionally smaller clubs have money they can sign foreign players who do not care about the size or reputation of the club that they play for and want mainly money/potential success instead.

For example in Poland in terms of fan base and following the only massive clubs are Legia, Wisla, Lech, Ruch, Lechia and maybe Widzew. You then have the smaller clubs who have money and can attract good players relative to the competition such as Kielce, Polonia, Slask and Zaglebie. Then you have the traditional clubs who are big but not quite as big as the first clubs in terms of fan base such as Gornik, LKS, Cracovia, Arka and Pogon Szczecin. Then in terms of Ekstraklasa clubs you have the smaller clubs such as Belchatow, Podbeskidzie and Jagiellonia who aren't that big or rich but are doing well to play at such a high level. On FM it uses the word "reputation" which to me suggests how well known, supported and successful a club is. This is why Liverpool can sign top players IRL even though they haven't won a league title for as long as Ruch. I am not going to claim that Ruch should be top of this rating. At the moment Lech, Legia and Wisla are the clear big three from this point of view. However after these clubs I would put Ruch somewhere near the top. Definitely ahead of clubs who have no history of success and small fan bases. On my game for example Ruch are rated as smaller than Piast Gliwice when we are in the same division. This is just crazy. There are probably more Ruch fans in Gliwice than Gliwice fans. Same with Polonia Bytom being ranked higher. When large amounts of people there support either Ruch or Gornik.

Your stadium comment makes sense. The stadium will be rented to Ruch and not owned by the club. I believe that when the move takes place Ruch won't have to pay to play there. It will just mean the stadium owners taking some of the gate receipt money.

Thanks for the kind wishes. I would wish Widzew well but I guess it doesn't matter with them safe but too far from Europe and stuck with nothing to play for. I heard there will be lots of Widzew fans at the cup final and it's always good to have their support like for the game in Gdansk which was epic with so many people from Elana and Widzew. Sadly I am in the UK now so can't go so often.

**Niebiescy** · 11-04-2012 19:10

Forgot to respond with regards to the Europa League. I agree that definitely that teams from the major leagues (apart from Spain and Germany maybe?) haven't taken it seriously. I was thinking mainly about CEE leagues and have SI have made the top teams in Serbia, Croatia and Romania far superior to the Polish ones as well as Sparta Prague. I admit that the Romanian league is a tiny bit stronger currently, but Poland is very close to being as good with the money from the new stadia making the big clubs much stronger and more successful while Romania hasn't moved on financially. I guess the Balkan clubs have their money purely because of player sales due to their clubs producing far better youngsters than we see in Poland. The Polish league however is far better than either of the big Balkan ones. Serbian clubs have been dreadful recently with Partizan this year humiliating themselves against Shamrock in qualifying and Zvezda being mismanaged and having financial problems. Dinamo made the CL group stages this year but were way out of their depth and they haven't been good in previous years while the rest of their league is a joke. Bulgaria also is pretty wealthy on FM when in reality their clubs are even poorer than ours.

I think that as you said the finances need to be looked at strongly because the researchers are well out of touch from reality.For example I have regularly seen Partizan Belgrade for example pay more than £1.5m for single players, often from Western European clubs which is extremely unrealistic. Them, Zvezda and Dinamo basically sign the top young players from small clubs in the former Yugoslavia and then sell them on abroad at a profit. I have seen Sparta (I'll comment on them more because I know them best out of the Non-Polish clubs due to living there for 5 years and regularly watching them) pay more than £5m for players which is insane because IRL they are a club who buy off all the top Czech and Slovak clubs for relatively small amounts and then sell to anyone who bids from Russia or the West (even minor clubs such as Vitesse buying Bony last season) at a profit. They don't have the funds to be spending big money because Czech crowds are tiny (due to ice hockey being better and more popular) and the league is declining and definitely such weakner than the Polish league. This is also unbalanced for the second tier where in Poland crowds are often as good as those for Czech top division games yet in Poland the second tier clubs on FM are so poor that they can't sign anyone while the Czechs all have money to spend. Even the smallest clubs such as Trinec, Strizkov (Bohemians Praha) or Znojmo (average attendances of way less than 1,000 which is unheard of in tiny) can sign players for £100k and pay around £1k per wages week while in Poland you're lucky to be able to pay a free transfer £500 per week even as one of the bigger clubs at this level (Arka, Gliwice, Pogon etc).

I hope SI look into this because a lot of clubs are out of touch with reality due to biased fans researching them. Plzen and Mlada Boleslav are the other Czech examples that string to mind. Two tiny clubs with tiny fan bases who have done well recently but are not big clubs or talent factories yet consistently challenge for titles on the game when IRL Liberec, Banik, Teplice, Brno and Slavia are so much bigger.

End of rant

Will post a mid season update soon. Things are looking good so far.

Btw endtime have you played the Polish league on the game? I am interesting in your thoughts or experiences. This is my first season and I am finding it different to the other leagues I played such as Cz, Romania, Ukraine and Germany.

**Niebiescy** · 11-04-2012 21:07

Game update time....

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So I am now just over halfway through the season and it looks like this will be an easy title to win. This league really is dreadful on FM it has to be said, especially considering there are some really big clubs in here with me. I am also in the quarter finals of the Polish Cup after knocking out two top tier sides in Warta Poznan and Gornik Polkowice. I genuinely think that I have a shot of winning it and qualifying for Europe like I did when I started in the Romanian second tier with Timisoara before. What makes this stranger is that my club has one of the smallest budgets in the league. We have a wage bill that is less than half of the largest and our net transfer spend is by far and away the lowest out of anyone due to losing our best players and not being able to replace them due to the financial problems that the club has.

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Right now I am thinking ahead to next season because this one is pretty much over apart from the cup. I have decided not to sign anyone else even on free transfers (unless they are youth team players) due to the step up in class and the fact that we will be able to attract better quality players in the summer. I expect to be able to challenge for Europe next season immediately after promotion and escape the financial chaos that is stopping the club from growing. My expectation for this year is still the same. To win the league and to win the cup. On top of that I want to go undefeated the rest of the way, but doubt I won't because I want to blood youngsters as soon as we are mathematically promoted. I have picked up a few youngsters but have no idea what they'll be worth in a few years, but hope they have re-sale value. Opava have made more than £2m from re-selling my free transfers so hopefully Ruch can do the same. For what it's worth here's my results from the first half.

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**endtime** · 11-04-2012 21:12

I played the Polish league before the 3rd patch, moving from Piast to Podbeskidzie to Widzew. It wasn't a great experience, mostly due to the unrealistic transfer market. At the start of the game, foreign clubs bought up all the best players for huge fees, which caused an inflation in the market, and after a few seasons Legia would spend £5.75 on a player from Zagłębie Lubin. I edited the db and lowered the reputation of all the competitions in the game by 20 points, and it has resulted in a somewhat more realistic game. Players from the Polish league no longer command such high transfer fees, although they are still overpriced and there are too many foreign transfers in general. Apart from Polonia, who probably have a sugar daddy set in the db, clubs haven't been spending such outrageous money and the game seems much more playable, although I haven't managed in Poland with this setup yet. I think the issues you mention with Sparta or Partizan spending huge amounts of money on transfers partly stem from the reputation problem, and are partly caused by the fact that the entire financial side of the game is lacking. I took a look at Sparta transfers in my game, and even with the lowered reputation they still make over 10 million pounds in player sales every season. Add CL money to that and you can see why they can splash the money on players in the game. In this sense it's not something that the researchers can influence.

I think it would be hard for SI to have such close control over the research in all leagues present in the game. I doubt they have any detailed knowledge of Eastern European leagues, so apart from really obvious cases where obscure players are vastly overrated, they have to trust their researchers. Another problem is that people who play the game often don't want realism, but "fun" - and they find the game fun when they can sign the best players and accumulate cash. Throughout the years I've read posts made by people on the Polish FM forum where they complained that it was impossible for Polish clubs to sign good players, and I guess some of the researchers finally caved in and made clubs better than they really are. I can imagine that people playing other Eastern European leagues are similar in that regard.

I don't think that FM will ever accurately simulate the realities of smaller leagues, there are too many variables, too many details specific to certain countries, that creating an accurate representation of each league would take a disproportionate amount of work. You would have to virtually code a separate game for every country, and Poland and other Eastern European countries aren't big enough markets for SI to give special attention to them. Especially since there don't seem to be many posters from this part of Europe registered in the official forums - most Polish players, for example, post on the Polish forum, and it's hard to raise issues with SI if it seems like there is no interest in a given league from a wider player base.

**Niebiescy** · 11-04-2012 22:24

Managed to get rid of my biggest disappointment this season. Was so happy because I picked him up on a free and managed to receive more than ten times his listed value. Funniest thing is that he went to Gornik Zabrze and their fans are really pissed

Also managed to loan out my best goalkeeping prospect for a 100k fee so am getting closer to financial stability. Maybe sell some of my other best players or loan them out if I can get big fees because I think I can replace them in the summer if I invest some of the income on scouting.

Bad buy but looks great:

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**Niebiescy** · 11-04-2012 22:29

Originally Posted by endtime

I played the Polish league before the 3rd patch, moving from Piast to Podbeskidzie to Widzew. It wasn't a great experience, mostly due to the unrealistic transfer market. At the start of the game, foreign clubs bought up all the best players for huge fees, which caused an inflation in the market, and after a few seasons Legia would spend £5.75 on a player from Zagłębie Lubin. I edited the db and lowered the reputation of all the competitions in the game by 20 points, and it has resulted in a somewhat more realistic game. Players from the Polish league no longer command such high transfer fees, although they are still overpriced and there are too many foreign transfers in general. Apart from Polonia, who probably have a sugar daddy set in the db, clubs haven't been spending such outrageous money and the game seems much more playable, although I haven't managed in Poland with this setup yet. I think the issues you mention with Sparta or Partizan spending huge amounts of money on transfers partly stem from the reputation problem, and are partly caused by the fact that the entire financial side of the game is lacking. I took a look at Sparta transfers in my game, and even with the lowered reputation they still make over 10 million pounds in player sales every season. Add CL money to that and you can see why they can splash the money on players in the game. In this sense it's not something that the researchers can influence.

I think it would be hard for SI to have such close control over the research in all leagues present in the game. I doubt they have any detailed knowledge of Eastern European leagues, so apart from really obvious cases where obscure players are vastly overrated, they have to trust their researchers. Another problem is that people who play the game often don't want realism, but "fun" - and they find the game fun when they can sign the best players and accumulate cash. Throughout the years I've read posts made by people on the Polish FM forum where they complained that it was impossible for Polish clubs to sign good players, and I guess some of the researchers finally caved in and made clubs better than they really are. I can imagine that people playing other Eastern European leagues are similar in that regard.

I don't think that FM will ever accurately simulate the realities of smaller leagues, there are too many variables, too many details specific to certain countries, that creating an accurate representation of each league would take a disproportionate amount of work. You would have to virtually code a separate game for every country, and Poland and other Eastern European countries aren't big enough markets for SI to give special attention to them. Especially since there don't seem to be many posters from this part of Europe registered in the official forums - most Polish players, for example, post on the Polish forum, and it's hard to raise issues with SI if it seems like there is no interest in a given league from a wider player base.

You make some good points here. Even the top leagues are completely overvalued in terms of transfers with German and English clubs receiving so much prize money and spending sums that they would never be able to bid in real life. I am not sure if there is a way to deal with the transfer situation, but it is too easy to sell players for large sums of money and then find better players on free transfers which allows you to build up a strong squad. I only buy players that I have scouted or who are in the search function yet I still find some many bargains every season even with crappy scouts like my ones at Ruch who have around 8-10 in judging ability and potential.

Can you please tell me the link to the Polish site. I would be interested to read it.

**endtime** · 12-04-2012 17:03

The site is http://forumcm.net/. It used to be a pretty good community, but I haven't visited there for ages and have no idea what it's like now.

Good luck with the promotion charge!

**AK22** · 12-04-2012 20:20

A great start in the league; only one defeat is excellent! Keep it up!

**Niebiescy** · 12-04-2012 20:45

Thanks for the link to the site endtime.

AK22 thanks for the kind words. If I have small squads like this with a bit of wage budget room I always seem to find the game quite easy. My major weakness is playing in Europe with strong teams where I never seem to win knockout games which drives me insane. Hopefully I can try (and probably fail) at that level with Ruch before I move on to a tougher league challenge such as managing a small Ukrainian club and trying to overtake the massive teams at the top or doing something with a small Russian club.

Will post a season update later today probably. Have 10 games left in the league and am still in the cup. Have lost a league game though when I played my youth team so my starters would be fresh for the cup.

**Niebiescy** · 13-04-2012 02:07

The season has finally finished and it turned out to be a great one. We won the cup quite easily. I imagine that none of the top clubs took it seriously because the best team I had to play the whole tournament was Zaglebie who finished 6th in the top division. I did check and the best teams I played did field strong teams. Lech and Jagiellonia seem to be far better than everyone else at the moment and I avoided them luckily. We obviously won the league with ease but did drop far more points after the winter break due to playing the youth team ahead of cup matches and also selling a few players to raise funds which left me with far less squad depth. Here's the results I had after the break:

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And here's the final table. I think the two highlights for me would be Gieksa getting relegated and also Arka & Pogon both dropping points on the last day of the season to be overtaken by Gornik Walbrzych who are obviously relative minnows.

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I actually have a lot of problems currently. My team is slightly over the wage budget and the board are getting really pissed about it. This is a major problem because my star striker who was the league's top scorer is complaining about wanting a pay rise, but I can't afford to really give him one. Here's the only forward that I have who will be even remotely effective at the next level. Without him I think I'll be doomed to a relegation battle. Currently he won't even discuss a contract and is demanding to leave due to my stalling tactics. Hopefully something can be done to keep him. The success we've had this year plus player sales and cash injections have got the debt down to less than £1m now which is a major positive' Providing we can qualify for the 4th round qualifying stage for the Europa League I can confident of being in the black very soon. The 4th round normally has quite a few famous clubs and would offer the chance to make a lot of money from tickets. Would also give us more prize money.

Right now I have no idea whether I can afford to keep any of the players whose contracts are expiring or do anything to turn my striker around. I will write another update once I have received my budgets for next season and my reputation has been increased.

Two positives:

1. My reputation is finally at a good level. I am receiving regular messages about being linked with jobs. They are not massive clubs, but it's still nice. I've had three links to Czech first division clubs, two with Romanian first division clubs and one to Chornomorets Odessa, which is the perfect type of club I want to move to in a couple of seasons once I have got Ruch to the level I want them to be at.

2. I have two star youth players who will bring in some big money In the future. One was in the youth team when I arrived and I signed the other on a free transfer after Olimpic Donetsk strangely released him. Here are the profiles:

Not bad for a 17 year old

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**Niebiescy** · 13-04-2012 02:07

My best player:

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Update and preseason stuff to follow either tomorrow night or Saturday depending on how much free time I have to play the game

**Niebiescy** · 13-04-2012 02:09

Just as I was posting that message my budgets appeared. It looks as though it's going to be a very long, hard season.

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**deltablue** · 13-04-2012 10:49

Wow, will be a great achievement to survive.

**Niebiescy** · 13-04-2012 19:32

It seems as though everyone thinks my team is doomed. I have never ever been such long odds as this (1,000/1)

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**Niebiescy** · 14-04-2012 02:49

I will write an update tomorrow to explain how the preseason went in general and what I have done with the squad and our domestic aims. Just thought I'd write about my European adventure before going to sleep seeing as it has just ended. I have to say that for a newly promoted club with a tiny budget, debts and no experience at this level we really performed excellently.

We drew Sparta Prague in the third round. The were one of the strongest teams in the round. We were sadly unseeded due to a lack of recent European games which made the draw very tough. I knew from my Opava days that while Sparta have lots of talented players and a huge budget they are currently underachieving and are very beatable. In the first leg I made a real mess of the first half an hour. Basically every shot they had against me that you can see in the stats happened during this period. I was foolish and naive and went for my usual 4-2-4 suicidal tactic rather than taking the time to think about the talent differential and due to a lack of numbers in midfield we couldn't keep the ball and were over-run. I think changed things to go to 4-5-1 playing on the counter and it worked brilliantly. I sat an anchor man infront of the defence to protect them and went one up with two attack minded wingers. Now we had three central midfielders we closed them down better and kept stealing the ball and hitting them on the break. Our goal that won the game was a result of a fast breakaway.

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I started out in the second leg playing my 4-5-1 counter tactic that I finished the previous match with although I did tweak it a little and once again it was deadly. I let Sparta have the ball and shots from distance while keeping plenty of men between the ball and the goal. My lightening fast wingers and striker once again allowed me to break on them at will. It probably worked even better than the first leg due to their need for a goal. As soon as we scored (another breakaway goal) the game was basically over. I probably could've won the match outright but was too lazy to change my tactics to play defensively and waste time because the away goal meant they needed three so we were through. They nicked their goal at the end but were never a threat to go through.

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The draw for the fourth qualifying round was a disaster. Instead of drawing some medicore Turkish, Danish or Austria club from the seeded pool we ended up with Twente who were one of the top seeds in the whole draw. We had to play the away leg first so the strategy was simple. Don't even think about attacking and try not to let them put the tie out of sight in the first leg. I played 4-5-1 but with time wasting on the max setting, a defensive strategy and slow pace. We were completely outclassed and deserved to lose for sure, but the way it happened was very unfortunate. The scored early on from a penalty that occurred right in the corner of the penalty area as far away from the goal as possible. I didn't even notice the foul until I saw them going to the spot. They then nicked the second just before half time. We did amazingly well to kept a second half clean sheet and limited them to a total of only three clear cut chances. We even had a great chance of our own to steal an away goal but my striker missed from six yards out.

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I have quite a few regrets from the second leg to be honest. I sent my team out with the goal of not losing the second leg rather than trying to qualify. I'd seen other smaller teams get destroyed and didn't want my morale damaged. I assumed I was out facing a two goal deficit with no away goal. I expected them to score and didn't believe I had a shot at scoring four. I left my team playing on the counter with quite a few attacking players up until the sixtieth minuted but didn't really go after them. At this point I went 4-2-4 and created my two half chances and on top of that had other great positions that could've turned into goals. I wished I'd started off with an aggressive tactic like this at home because when I went after Twente they looked vulnerable.

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I have to say that on the whole I am ecstatic to have got through to the fourth qualifying round considering how much stronger Sparta are than us. I just remember playing as Timisoara and knocking out Fiorentina and had a glimmer of hope that I could've done the same here. It wasn't to be but my team will learn for it and hopefully be back next year for another shot at a big side. I am sure next season we will be far more ready and will have a much stronger squad.

**deltablue** · 14-04-2012 10:26

Painful lesson in Holland.

**Niebiescy** · 14-04-2012 12:23

Originally Posted by deltablue

Painful lesson in Holland.

Yeah we were just completely outclassed. It's what makes managing in these leagues so much fun. If you qualify for the Europa League as an English club for example you will probably make at least the 1/8 finals in your first season because you are so rich compared to clubs from other countries. However playing as a club from a small league where your opponents starting 11 are all individually worth more than your whole squad combined and also earn more than your squad combined makes the challenge so much more fun and victory (on the rare occasion that it happens) so much more exciting and sweeter. Can't wait to return next year and receive another beating from someone else!

**Niebiescy** · 14-04-2012 16:44

Because of my bad habit of playing the game a night rather than during the day I didn't have the chance to write about my league goals due to being too tired and more focused on my mini Euro adventure.

I am actually quite sad about what I've had to do to my squad. I have had the same problems that I had when I was playing the Czech league in terms of domestic players being far too expensive due to my financial state so I've had to sign mainly foreigners. I managed to find some good (by the standard of my squad) defenders and defensive midfielders who were Polish but had to go abroad for higher quality attacking players who were either free or close to. My squad is one of the lowest valued in the league, but is quite young and I have some players who I should be able to sell on for a large profit (like Opava did after I left) that will allow me to start paying money for players rather than relying on my scouts (who are not very good) to find free transfers or bargains.

I think that the step-up to the top division is not too big. I can see my team having a similar season to my Opava team who were promoted. I imagine that we will finish around mid table and have a long cup run.

I am setting my objectives for the season as:

- Finish in the top 3 in the league (this is a really tough one, but only the top three qualify for Europe so I need to aim high for financial reasons)
- Retain the cup (we are far weaker than Legia, Jagiellonia and Polonia so won't win the league but the cup isn't an unrealistic goal. it also offers the European place that I desperately need)
- Discover another 2-3 youngsters who can be sold on at a profit

Last year we managed to achieve all of our objections (although only one youngster with massive re-sale value is Polish) after aiming high so we will do the same this year.

The transfer window is now closed and we have played six games so far. We lost to the two teams who were expected to outclass us and have played well against everyone else.

By niebiescy84 at 2012-04-14

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My aim is to continue beating (or at least not losing against) the non-elite teams and pray to the good Lord when we face the rich clubs who have players worth more than all of mine combined.

Here are my main hopes for bringing in finance in the not too distant future:

The first lad signed on a free transfer after being released by Obolon Kiev. He looks awesome compared to my other central midfielders but did say in his interview that Ruch are a stepping stone to bigger things, which is a slight concer. I don't mind though if I can make some big money quickly from him. The only concerns are his high salary and the fact that he has already been injured twice.

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My second signing has performed below expectations so far, but has good stats and has been watched by the Serbian national team manager. If he does manage to win some caps I imagine I'll be able to sell him on to Zvezda or Partizan for a large profit.

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I'll post some sort of update at the winter break.

In other unrelated news I am making arrangements to fly back to Poland to go to the cup final against Legia a week on Tuesday. It's going to cost me all of the money that I have but should be worth it. I will fly to Poland on Monday and leave on Wednesday. Me and my friend I am travelling with will sleep in our friend's allotment shed in Piekary so will be a very cheap trip once I arrive. Game is on Tuesday. Hopefully there will be a great atmosphere and an exciting game. I expect we will lose but it's not too often you get to see your team in a cup final.

**Niebiescy** · 15-04-2012 21:04

I doubt anyone cares because this isn't a Polish forum, but there were big problems at the Ruch vs Gornik game today. Gornik took their top hooligans without Ruch hooligans knowing and stopped their train 200m from the station at Chorzow Batory and then attacked regular Ruch fans who were waiting there to watch. Ruch's hooligans heard about this and wanted to attack Gornik before the game but couldn't get to them. During the game both sets of fans threw flares back and forth and then they tried to get to each other to attack. Game finished 0-0 and was boring, but off the field it was crazy. Here is a photo from outside the stadium that shows how crazy the policing was

Here is the Ruch choreo using the word "gangbang" with the Gs from Gieksa and Gornik as an insult

Here is the video from Ruch's fan club of the game. It gets crazy at 7:32

I am now very worried that we will be banned from the cup final maybe. There will definitely not be fans at the next home game. This is what the Euros will probably look like. Shows that Polish football has not moved on.

**deltablue** · 16-04-2012 20:20

I wouldn't mess with those police.

**Niebiescy** · 18-04-2012 14:36

Sorry for not updating much recently. I've had a busy week and haven't had the chance to play FM. I have finally made it to the winter break of my first season back in the top division. There appears to be a massive bug in the game that is destroying any hope I ever have of getting my club back on a stable financial footing. The database has us down as owning Silesian Stadium, which has somehow managed to be in a poor condition for a long time. Because of this it is costing the club an insane amount of money and stopping us from every getting back to being secure because of the costs of maintaining what in the database appears to be a massive crumbling mess. More than 10,000 seats are still closed and stadium maintenance has been by far and away our biggest expense this season. Without it we would be back in the black already and in a position to grow the club, but instead we just end up in more debt regardless of how many players we sell. According to the financial stats maintaining the stadium has already cost more than £1.5m this season, which is almost twice the amount we have earned in gate receipts even with the European qualification games, which both broke our home attendance record. Match day income was another £250k, but even with that added to the ticket income we have lost 400k so far this season and we're only in January. I am seriously considering leaving the club if something doesn't change soon. I know that the whole point of this career was to make the club that I support great again, but I really don't want to stay around if we are in an impossible situation where we are haemorrhaging money due to a bug in the game and have no chance of ever becoming financially stable again. I think I am going to finish the season and then see who wants me. The only other option is to wait and see if I quality for the group stages of the Europa League. This is obviously incredibly unlikely but if it were to happen it would make the club sustainable for one more season providing I can sell a couple of players.

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This season has actually started pretty well to be honest. We are 2/3 of the way in with 20 games played from 30 in the league and are also in the quarter finals of the cup. I am surprised to be doing so well because I have played the game so lazily compared to usual. Because I've been busy I've been playing in the background and not really watching games. Just check at HT and then maybe make a few changes if I can open it at the right time when the game is playing. I've found the step up to not be too hard. Legia and Lech are way ahead of anyone else talent wise most of their first team players being valued in the millions while mine are in the tens of thousands but the other clubs haven't been too hard to compete with. We have managed to play our way into third by beating or drawing with (if away from home) the teams that we have a good shot against and losing the toughest games with the bad loss against Widzew being the exception.

Here's the current table:

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Right now I am not sure what to list my aims as for the rest of the season. My top aim is to retain the cup. I really couldn't care less about winning the trophy. I just want to win it because I need to qualify for Europe again for financial reasons and the cup is a far easier way of making it than through the league. My league fixtures are really tough. My first two games after the winter break are against Lech and Legia. I would be ecstatic to take 2-3 points from them combined, but doubt I will. I hope I can beat Lech, but going to Legia is an impossible task with such a huge talent disparity. I then face the bottom two at home (Gornik and Gornik Walbrzych) in what are must win games. I then have tough away games to Widzew and Zaglebie. Winning one of those two would be a fantastic achievement. I then finish with three winnable games. I'd expect to beat Kielce at home for sure. I think we can beat Polonia again too. Going to Warta Poznan isn't easy but we should expect a draw minimum. I am aiming for 17 points from the 30 available. I think that would be enough to give me a top 4/5 finish although it depends on how other teams perform. if I add 1/2 of everyone's current totals (20 games gone now so +10 gives a projected finish at their current rate) then I'd finish fourth with the total I expect, which isn't bad. I have to aim for top three though purely because it guarentees European football. I see no way of chasing down Legia who have a six point lead with ten games left so have to aim to finish second of third. I have also sold quite a few players during the winter break so have to work with a smaller squad now. I will post another update when the season finishes.

**Niebiescy** · 18-04-2012 15:23

Just lost my only good player to Vorskla after the chairman accepted on the club's behalf. We will receive £2.7m but it's mostly over 18 months and I won't have a penny of it to spend. I'm confident we could've got far more for him if I was allowed to offer him out in the summer and also having him would've pretty much guarenteed European qualification, but now we have nobody of starting quality on the right wing, which is a key position in my tactic. I'm becoming really fed up with this financial bug related to my stadium and how it's ruining my game. I think I'm gonna run off to the Ukraine and find myself a small club that I can try and build into something that can compete with the giants there. I really see no future at Ruch with the way things are and have no interest in managing another Polish club. The only other club I'd be interested in managing here is Widzew but I really can't be bothered to leave Ruch for them because I'd have to start the re-build all over again with the same tournaments, goals etc..

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**endtime** · 18-04-2012 15:35

Eh, come on, none or few of these hooligans will make it to the stadiums for the Euros. Maybe they'll meet in some forest or field and have a big international fight together with their pals from abroad, but I don't think the regular folks will be bothered.

**Niebiescy** · 18-04-2012 15:47

I know most are boycotting the Euros and won't be in the stadium but I am worried that there will be big problems on the streets in the cities where the games are. I have a friend who is a Legia hooligan who told me they will be out looking for trouble and the other cities (apart from maybe Wroclaw) all have big hooligan followings. I know Lechia aren't the most active group at the moment (in terms of causing problems), but I think Lech and Legia will cause trouble (especially Legia now their ultras are being forced out of the club by the owners) and some of the other Polish groups who travel to the cities where the games are will do too. The stadiums will be full of middle class people from Poland and the other countries based there and will be safe but I think that the streets will be dangerous even for normal fans in some places if the wrong people are out looking. I think fans of countries like Russia, CZ, Croatia and maybe Italy could make some problems with the hooligans because Russia and CZ are rivals countries who Poles don't like too much while the Croats and Italians have hooligans and ultras that the Polish groups will want to meet. I think that not every city will be bad but people from different groups have all said there will be trouble.

**Niebiescy** · 19-04-2012 00:04

The season is over and it basically finished as expected. We retained the cup and finished 5th in the league. I am a little disappointed in a way because the top five clubs we clear of everyone else and were all such strong teams that were far better than everyone else. With our points total of 55 we would usually have finished in a much higher position. For example in 2011/12 we'd have finished 2nd, 2012/13 2nd, 2013/14 1st and 2014/15 3rd. The most important thing was that we finished high enough in the league to receive a reasonable amount of prize money and won the cup so are back in Europe. Here's the final table and my fixtures:

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Right now I am not entirely sure what to do. The club has no future because of the bug that means the stadium costs me more than £200k per more in a league where we have next to no income, but at the same time the aim of this save was to manage my favorite team and at least win a title with them. I also want to have the excitement of playing in Europe again. On the other hand we are going to lose most of our star players again due to interest from other clubs and the debt that we are in. None are worth good amounts of money, but I guess they will still be sold. Our defence was one of the worst in the whole league this season and we don't have money to replace players. Our best young right back is leaving for a Ukrainian second division team while our best centre back will have to leave also because he's getting older and wants too high a wage. As of right now there are no good jobs available so I will have to keep checking the job boards and see what because available. I doubt I'll resign because I'd like to play the Europa League qualifiers so will probably only leave if I'm offered something.

Currently the managers listed as "insecure" or "very insecure" who's jobs I'd like are Metalurg Donetsk, Steau Bucharest and Slavia Prague. Hopefully one of them will get fired soon. Ideally I want the challenge of a small Ukrainian club but if none become available I'd consider other leagues. My priority is to work somewhere that doesn't have a financial crisis as I'm sick of being in debt and unable to improve the teams that I manage. I'll write an update once I have an idea on where I'll be next season.

**Niebiescy** · 19-04-2012 00:55

It didn't take long. I have left Ruch and taken the Steau Bucharest job. I have to admit that this wasn't an ideal situation or result, but I wanted to make a move during the preseason where I'd get the chance to build a team for myself rather than coming in mid season and having to work with someone else's squad. I just didn't see the point in staying at Ruch any long with the financial situation being such a mess and there being no way to sort it out regardless of how many players I sold. I have not taken this job as a long-term project as there isn't anything I can do for a club of this size in the long run. All I can do is win them the title (which is what they should've been doing before I arrived), maybe have a go at Europe for one season and then move on somewhere else where the challenge is a longer one. I have wanted to manage in the Ukraine for a long time, but there just haven't been any jobs coming available the last few months. The best was Metalurg Donetsk, but they were relegated to the second tier and I really couldn't be bothered to play a season down there with them where I'd win every game easily due to their squad being so much better than anyone else at that level. I still have the long-term aim of managing a Ukrainian club (not any of the big four who I consider to be Shakhtar, Dynamo, Metalist and Dnipro) and that is where I really want to go once I'm done with Steau.

I doubt I need to write anything about the history of my new club as they are so well known. Right now the only objective for a club of this size is to win the title. The team isn't in Europe this season due to finishing 4th and failing to win the cup. I have no idea about whether my squad is any good because I haven't played this league for three months. Considering the £3.2m transfer budget I have been entrusted with I have no excuses for not delivering success. Even though I've been given this money I will be a cheapskate like usual and look for bargains rather than aiming to spend big.

**Niebiescy** · 19-04-2012 13:25

Today I am in a good mood

1. Ruch fans will be allowed to attend the final. The ticket package is a wrip off at 130zl but I've already paid for a plane ticket from England to go to the game so am happy to be able to see it instead of having a one day holiday doing nothing with my friends in Piekary, which is the most boring town on earth.

2. Steau are not in debt.

3. Steau have never finished higher than fourth since I begun this save game so I may actually have a challenge this season after-all.

4. Romania actually has good home grown players compared to Poland even though my club's academy really sucks. I always prefer buying local players and am finally able to do it.

5. I am going to the cup final

Update coming later once preseason is finished and I have an idea of where my squad is at. Currently all I know is that I am in desperate need of a right winger and two strikers. Right now my team looks unlikely to concede many, but I don't know where the goals are going to come from. No matter where I look I cannot find a striker who looks like he can score 20 goals in a season. I guess I'm just going to have to look even harder

**Niebiescy** · 19-04-2012 18:58

At the end of the preseason and about to start the first game of the season. My format for this thread was dreadful and hard to read before so I'll use bullet points to make it easier to take in. Here are my thoughts and experiences:

1. Steau had the worst youth team I have every seen in my life. Every player in the team was rated as not good enough apart from two who were rated 1 1/2 stars and decent. I therefore had to fire the whole team and find a whole new group of youths. The result of this is my youth team being full of Germans, Czechs and Poles, but at least they have some future prospects at my club rather than it being completely pointless even having a youth team.

2. I have also upgraded my youth facilities and youth coaching budgets. It's amazing that a club of this size that has produced some good players over the years has minimal youth facilities. I have chosen to upgrade this immediately. I have also upgrade the youth recruitment to fair basic, which is bad, but not as bad as before. The coaching budget allows me to try and improve these Germans I managed to find and hopefully make some money selling them on in the future.

3. I did something really stupid. I didn't bother renewing my player contracts until the last week before the season starts. I have just realised that my two best central midfielders are due to expire next summer and both want extortionate salaries, especially one who is 31 years ago (he wants 4k per week more than I can afford to offer). Because of this I have had to offer both of them to other clubs. The advanced playmaker is easy to replace because I signed one of my old youths from Opava who is now good enough to do a job at this level. I am however without an adequate ball-winning defensive style player now and it is all my fault. I am hoping to sign a 17 year old Spaniard from Auxerre who looks like a really special players. Only issue is that he will cost me my entire transfer budget. He would however give me a massive long term profit.

4. My squad isn't actually too bad. Eight of my starting eleven were at the club before I came along. Although I have signed quite a few players most are for the future rather than as impact players from day one. The three starters I picked up this preseason are:

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And finally the young lad I signed as a child for Opava. Always nice to have one player follow you around a little

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**Niebiescy** · 19-04-2012 18:58

The striker looks like the star from the three. I'm not sure how long he'll stick around in Romania for. The other two are both very young and have lots of potential so are more long-term players at this level rather than the types you imagine to move on to Spain, England, Germany, Italy or Russia.

On top of these I just wanted to post a few of my favorite prospects also:

I'm particularly happy with the first one as he's actually Romanian.

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The second is also from Romania. My only concern is his lack of speed, although he should be incredibly solid when I eventually lose my starter to a big, foreign club.

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I also signed a few of foreigners that I particularly like. Both are currently at my feeder clubs. They are not on youth team contracts obviously. The wages I can offer to them is the difference between being here and at Ruch.

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This lad is obviously African but was signed from another Romanian club and always speaks the language fluently, which is a massive bonus:

**Niebiescy** · 19-04-2012 18:59

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I changed my preseason expectation from challenging for the title to winning it because I am very confident in that. The main reason for this is that I am not playing in Europe this season and therefore have a massive advantage over my rivals in terms of the number of games I expect to play. I imagine at least one qualifies for the group stages of the Europa League. Maybe more than one will.

I am setting my goals for the season as:

- Win the title
- Win the domestic cup
- Find more youngsters who have re-sale potential
- Sign more Romanians if possible

I will report back with an update at working towards these results during the winter break

**Niebiescy** · 19-04-2012 19:15

I doubt you've ever heard of any of my players, but I will post my team and tactic so you can see how we're playing because it's slightly different to my previous teams. I have decided to go with one upfront with a man sitting behind him in "the hole" between midfield and attack. Playing against a much higher level of forward than I did in Poland I have had to play with two deep midfielders one tasked with defending and winning the ball back and one sitting and starting moves. I can't afford to be as gung-ho as I was in the past. Once again I am using wingers as they are my two best players. I will probably change things slightly to focus passing down both wings soon providing their form continues. I think this area is much stronger than the centre where I will be losing my two stars soon. I will probably have to tweak things soon as I don't know my players very well. I'll update if I do.

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**Niebiescy** · 19-04-2012 19:36

My spending has now ended with a young African LB I agreed to sign ages ago and the young Spaniard. My only concern is whether he's ready from day one as a 17 year old. My LB is my best player so the African is here to learn from him and play occasionally until the star leaves for abroad eventually.

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Now let the games begin!

**Niebiescy** · 20-04-2012 23:10

It's been a weird season. I've finished the first half of the season and am well clear of the chasing pack and am also in the cup semi finals, but in a strange way it's also been kind of a struggle. We started the season struggling to score goals and even towards the end of the first half where we have been such improved have still had problems finishing teams off and breaking them down. I tried multiple tactics and formations at the start of the season and eventually settled on playing a 4-5-1 where we play on the counter even against weaker teams. The reason for this is that we don't really have any consistent and productive forwards or attacking midfielders but we do have great defenders and are able to name two back fours that would be great at this level. I also signed quality defensive/ball-winning midfield types who can protect the defence. We use mediocre wingers and rotate the strikers based on form.

Here's the main formation/tactic I've been using:

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Because we play not to lose or make mistakes we have been extremely solid. Almost the opposite of my Ruch and Opava teams. In the league we have only conceded goals in seven out of the eighteen games we have played. On the other hand we have only scored thrity goals in these games, which is pretty bad.

As of right now our targets are the same. Win the league and cup double. I'd expect that to not be too much to ask.

I am looking ahead to next season right now. I don't want to leave Steau after only one season as that would be completely pointless. I am trying to think of some good goals to work towards. I have already built a legacy in terms of youth players. On top of this I want to do something in Europe. I want to either qualify for the Champions League group stages and finished at worst third in my group or otherwise get through the group stages of the Europa League. That should be a good challenge seeing as not a single Romanian team qualified for either tournament this season. As of right now the other thing that could stop me from taking my team into Europe with that goal was be the right Ukrainian job becoming available. After thinking about it I've narrowed down the choice of clubs I'd consider to challenge the top four with. Right now I'm thinking of Vorskla, Tavria, Karpaty and Arsenal.

I will keep you updated with things and post some more info when the season is finished.

**endtime** · 21-04-2012 13:37

Good luck with Steaua! Win the title and it might just go hand in the hand with a title for Ruch in real life!

**Niebiescy** · 21-04-2012 14:42

Originally Posted by endtime

Good luck with Steaua! Win the title and it might just go hand in the hand with a title for Ruch in real life!

I hope you are right. Last night was an amazing result and then Legia were unlucky to have to face Lech without Bakero and now playing to their potential although these things do even themselves out of the course of a season. To be honest I am just happy that Ruch will play in Europe next season and can hopefully have an amazing adventure somewhere and maybe beat a big club. If we win the cup or league it will be a massive bonus. Hopefully now Ruch will be better on FM2013

Btw yesterday I was stupid and forgot to post the table

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It's a bit easy because the AI has destroyed the big clubs with bad managers

**Niebiescy** · 28-04-2012 15:05

I finished the season before going away to Poland but didn't get around to posting anything due to being too busy. I won the title easily but lost the cup final on penalties. Was happy to win the league so easily but was a little annoying not to win the cup. Having said that it isn't a big deal as my team have proved to be way better than anyone else domestically. My game has been ruined by the bug where you add and remove leagues and the DB becomes too big and slow. Because of this my plan is to suffer my way through until I am knocked out of Europe and then I will start a new career as a small Ukrainian club as I had planned to move to one on this game. It will almost be like a continuation of this game apart from having to start with the original DB rather than with all the re-gens that I now have. And of course I will sadly lose my manager reputation and history. The reason for carrying on with this game now is all about seeing how far this team that I have built can go. I wouldn't have bothered finishing the season even if not for Europe. None of the other clubs I managed on this save had the potential to do anything at this level, but I believe this Steau team can cause some upsets with the right draw. Here's the final table from last season:

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My fixture lists illustrates how easy it is to win domestically with such a strong club:

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**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 00:57

I know I wrote earlier that I wanted to quit the game due to the slow speed because of the add/remove league bug. I think I am actually going to suffer through this and try to continue with this save. This season has been far tougher than last and has made the game very exciting. I qualified for the Champions League group stage and received the £6.5m payout, which has put my club in a great position and have drawn Arsenal, Lyon and Rangers. I genuinely think we have a shot at finishing above Rangers and qualifying for the Europa League knockout stages, which is currently my goal. The good thing about playing in a crap league is that you have an easy draw vs another small nation's champion rather than having to face the lower qualifiers from elite leagues like you have to in the Europa League qualifiers. I was unseeded in both rounds but didn't have too many problems getting past Zeljeznicar and Zurich both of whom I outplayed in both legs. I have actually had a load of injuries though and am doing terribly in the league due to having to rest players for Europe and having no depth for health reasons. I am really excited to see what happens from here. Here's my fixtures and my awful current league position (the reason it's been great is because the league is so much tougher when you're playing two games per week while all of your rivals are playing one):

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I'll post an update at Christmas. Hopefully the slow speed doesn't ruin the game too much further!

**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 14:18

Seeing as I'm going to continue this save I'd might as well introduce you all to my team. Sadly not many of them are Romanian. The natives just aren't good enough to improve my team so I've had to buy Africans and South Americans because they are cheap and have big potential and re-sale value.

I'll start with my 'keepers

Here's my starter. Just picked him up for £975k. I doubt he stays with me because he's too good for this level. His wages are ridiculously high, but that is fine providing we qualify for Europe again next season. Can't comment too much on his performances as he hasn't yet played many games:

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Here's my best young RB. My starter is a little bit better and also Romanian, but this lad is very much the future of my team/club:

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I'm going to post both of my left backs because one is one of my star players and the other is a youngster with huge potential. The starter is getting older and will be sold next summer I imagine. He's worth too much money not to sell considering I have a ready-made replacement and his value will decrease if I keep him into his thirties. The kid is going to be insanely good, but probably will want to leave the club in the not too distant future due to being so good. Think I can make a big profit on him though. Hopefully my African scout can find more like him.

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**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 14:22

My starting centre backs are the two who were at the club originally when I took the job. Both are Romanian, which is positive also. My youngsters are foreign. The Vietnamese lad was picked up on a free transfer and Castano was signed for £1.8m but was worth it. He's been used more as a ball winning midfielder or anchor man due to being strong at CB and needing midfield depth due to injuries. I love his versatility.

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As well as these lads I have quite a few others out on loan at other clubs who I picked up on free transfers. I won't post their profiles yet as they are miles away from first team football.

**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 14:26

My midfield was one DM/Anchor man position. The lads I use for these roles are Castano (posted above) and those I'll post here. They also can all play in the centre as a ball winning midfielder. I use one role as D and one as S depending on which players I use.

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**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 14:29

Alongside my A/DM and BWM I used an AP. I sometimes use a DLP and AP in the CM positions against weaker opponents. These are the players I use in these roles:

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This lad is one of my favorites. I found him when I was managing Opava and picked him up again for Steau. Have pretty much developed him myself throughout his career apart from the two seasons I spent with Ruch. He's been awesome but is wanted by richer foreign clubs so could leave soon.

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Apart from the two talented youngsters I have also used Lukic there depending on the situation within the game and the opposition.

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**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 14:34

On the right wing my star player is Knezevic who I signed for Ruch. He's become one of my key players here. Sadly foreign clubs are interested in him so he could be off soon.

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His backup is experienced Romanian Deac, but he's been somewhat of a bust since I picked him up on a free after being released by Schalke. I prefer to use left sided players or strikers playing as an IF here instead.

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The the left my starter has changed since the start of the season. Olarra has come in and made the position his own. He only played due to injuries/fatigue but seems very ready to be a key player for me now.

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His backup is probably more talented but has been less productive so far. It's fine though because he's been a very solid performer and has been used in the centre of midfield as an AP/A due to injuries. He'll be a good long term investment.

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**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 14:35

Ignore/Delete post please

**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 14:52

His my star striker. He's been awesome in Europe and awful domestically. He's probably off soon because he's too good for Romania. Scored 17 in 28 games last season after a slow start. Plays as a lone striker in the role of AF.

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Here's the heir apparent who I use as a P

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This lad hasn't performed well so far but is very young and I'm sure he'll be a bargain at just £240k

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**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 14:54

I am continuing with my conservative tactic, which has been great in Europe so far. I sometimes use 4-2-4 domestically in games we should win although the tactic posted in my main one.

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**Niebiescy** · 29-04-2012 14:58

To summarise.....

I have MAJOR problems with the lack of Romanian players coming through. I currently have ZERO home grown players that I can register for Europe, but that won't be a problem in 2 years time because I have signed tons of good quality kids. I think my big problem will be in a few years time where I won't have eight Romanians to register for the Champions League if I stay with Steau. The youth academy is dreadful and to fix it will take more than a year before it is even average. It will then take years to start producing youngsters who are even adequate let alone good enough for my team. I can't buy from the top Romanian clubs because they are all listed as rivals. I am not sure how I will be able to name a squad for Europe. Right now my squad is four short because I have zero players who have come through the academy. The reason for this is that every player who is picked up is listed as not good enough. If I can't register enough Romanians on top of the lack of academy players there will be real problems. I will keep you updated on this situation but as of right now it is a major long-term problem with no easy solution.

**endtime** · 30-04-2012 22:04

you can holiday past the registration date if you are short on HG players.

**Niebiescy** · 01-05-2012 01:04

Thanks for following the thread endtime. Sadly I had to quit because the game became too slow and was driving me insane. I've started a new career just today and have a thread for it. I'm really angry at losing this one as it's the most fun I've had on FM and my Steau team was top of the CL group after 3 games even though we'd played 2 away from home. Really think I had an awesome team there. Problem was the add/remove leagues bug where you end up with too many players and the game takes forever. Won't be making the same mistake in my new game. Just hope I can get into it like I have here.

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