[FM14] Building a reputation in Asia - A Short Story

I've decided to do a quick career on here after finally getting into an FM14 save a bit late. I'm hoping it'll help me get back in the swing of a career thread in time for an FM15 one, I've posted a lot on these boards in the past but not for the latest FM just couldn't get into it and when I did two saves I played both crashed and I left the game a lone for quite a while.

I'll give a quick run down of my seasons so far and then flesh my posts out more once I've caught up to where I am in the save, don't worry it's only 5 seasons

I decided to go for a game in Asia although I downloaded a pack containing a load of custom leagues and added 50 playable leagues to my game from North America, South America, Africa and as you can see Asia. The plan is to build a reputation in Asia and then hopefully move to Europe somewhere and see what happens. Although once I've settled at a club I'll add a few more leagues and remove some of the lower reputation Asian ones. Ideally I'd like to go to Europe but I would take a job in the MLS if I got a reputation high enough to get one that is. I've also loaded England, it might be a bit boring at times but because I know the league there's a few teams I'd leave Asia for.

First job I was offered was in the Omani First Division which is the second tier of Omani football. I was successful in the interview(obviously)and took over with the team not far from promotion and with only 5 games left. As you can see we didn't bottle it and easily claimed promotion to the top tier after only 5 games in charge!

Obviously a newly promoted Omani team doesn't get much money, I improved the side the best I could which included persuading the board to renew our star strikers contract meaning he was taking up £1,600 a week of the £8,500 wage budget but to be fair no one else would join us at all. As you can see we had a horrendous start to the season with no win in the first 8 matches. I thought I'd have to start looking for a new job but after switching from a 4-2-3-1 to a flat 4-3-3 I was quite pleased that we put together a string of good results and did enough to survive. My experience on FM14 has always been a poor start and a strong finish but this was ridiculous we were atrocious to start with but I was optimistic about our chances in the next season after a decent finish.

My optimism was cut short when I started to notice the finances we were £500k in debt and as such we got no transfer money and the wage budget cut to £5,500 a week. We couldn't sign anyone and things were looking bleak so I did what I always do in this situation I resigned.........

After a week without a job I passed the interview and got offered a job with Kamatamare Sanuki in the Japanese 3rd Division. As with Al-Taleea the club weren't far from promotion when I took over however as you can see this time we/I bottled it and we faced another year in the 3rd tier. Just like the Omani club Al-Taleea we were heavily in debt but I thought I'd give it another shot. So I made some transfers and headed into my second season in charge.

So after plenty of friendlies to get the team familiar with my tactics we set out into the real season. A decent start saw us fighting for the top spot but then we lost two out of three and the to team even so early on started to run away from us. To top it all off we had no DMC's thanks to injuries and one CB for the next three months. Normally I'd stop and carry on but I was starting not to enjoy it so I resigned in hopes of landing a job at a top tier Asian side somewhere.........

I managed to get a job in the Thai Premier League, this meant I was much closer to getting into the Asian CL than I was in Japan. The side was semi-decent with a couple of star players and most importantly the finances were in pretty good order for such a low rep club, we had £450k in the bank and the projection for the end of the season was £475k not bad at all.

A decent finish for a team predicted to come a few places lower than we actually finished. As you can see from the results we struggled at times but for the next season we had plenty of money around £7k spare in wages a week and a £80k transfer budget which should stretch quite far in this league. I thought I was going to get a trophy in my first season in charge as well with the FA Cup, we were extremely lucky to get through to the final winning on penalties but in normal time we really should have lost quite heavily. In the final it was an even game and in typical "I hate this F-ing game" style we lost the final to a 119th extra time winner from the AI, safe to say I turned the game off to cool down and returned the next day!

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As you can see we blitzed the league with 105 goals and 15 matches won on the bounce. I was shocked things went so well as I said before I'm used to a poor start but strong finish so after such a good start I was waiting for it all to collapse but it didn't. Every signing I made played well and every player already here contributed to the season and now only a couple of seasons after leaving the Japanese 3rd Division I would be playing in the Asian CL. I think what helped with our season was that just like Muangthong Utd during my first season Suphanburi were playing in the Asian CL and as such ended up 5 games behind us at times. Not that they would have caught us anyway but I think we'll face a challenge to handle the Asian CL as well next season.

For all the good in the league we were awful in the cup competitions losing 7-2 over two legs to Muangthong Utd in the quarter finals of the League Cup, in the FA Cup we were out in the in the 3rd Round whcih was the first one we played losing 5-3 at home to Buriram Utd.

As you can tell from this when you get three of your strikers scoring as many goals as ours did you'll always be in with a chance of winning the league. Our best player is Ekkapoom Pichitchaipojanart who despite what this says did not play as a DMC ever. He's also the most expensive player I've signed on this save at £100k. With him and Ar-Romsawa playing on the outer attacking CM's they both get forward a lot and score a lot contributing 26 goals between them. Even Mae got 9 who mainly played as a DLP in the middle of the three but would sometimes end up as one of the outer CM's during injuries.

From now on I'll probably post three updates a season I just wanted to get my seasons played so far out of the way so I can post at the same pace I'm playing at. I expect to complete another 10-15 seasons before FM15 is out also depending on where I end up managing. Thailand has a lot of games and unless no new jobs come up I'll be looking to move on as it feels like it'd take me a long long time to get a squad capable of winning the Asian CL.

I did apply for the Crewe job but they didn't even let me take an interview so it's a matter of staying in Thailand and seeing what the Asian CL does to us next year! And in case you're wondering I couldn't find a larger club badge picture for this thread! Any screen shots or anything that'd make it better for you reading this thread just let me know.

Japan U22's! Is that actually a national youth side in the league system?

Great season Acid, plenty of goals.

I've been inspired to try the 4-1-3-2 with the attacking CM's, very interesting set up, with a central dlp/s it looks very much like a kind of 4-2-2-2 at times. It gives you a lot of bodies in the box when attacking, so I really like the look of it so far.

interesting read so far mate

Japan U22's! Is that actually a national youth side in the league system?

It is indeed, must be an error in the created league I downloaded they're squad is mostly grey players.

Great season Acid, plenty of goals.

I've been inspired to try the 4-1-3-2 with the attacking CM's, very interesting set up, with a central dlp/s it looks very much like a kind of 4-2-2-2 at times. It gives you a lot of bodies in the box when attacking, so I really like the look of it so far.

Cheers! I'm not very good tactically but I finally got the players to do what I wanted with this set up

interesting read so far mate

Thanks hopefully it'll stay that way!

Nothing unusual about pre-season a few friendlies to get the tactic up and running although it was close to full anyway for some reason. Pretty routine stuff several wins and one loss when more youngsters made the starting line up. Good to see John Mary Uzuegbunam scoring in pre-season as he struggled towards the end of last season a bit. Other than that it was a case of blending in a couple of new players.

Only two new signings this season both on free transfers as we were only given a £7k transfer budget despite having close to half a million in the bank. With the League, League Cup, FA Cup and now the Asian CL coming up this season we could struggle as we only have 22 players with a couple being youths. I tried to get some on loan but everyone wanted a fee and it didn't really matter as we've used up our foreign player slots so if I signed a foreigner I'd have to rotate one of my current players out of the match squad. I did attempt another couple of free signings but we can't even afford them.

Mathnani looks very decent for this level and can cover the DMC positions as well as helping out at CM especially as Pichitchaipojanart and Al-Romsawa our best mids will need the odd break now and then. His wage is more than I'd have liked but it's only a two year contract. Aseeri was my main target and I had the deal wrapped up a few months before the window opened, as I said he's also a free transfer and huge improvement over our last GK mainly due to the fact that he has double figures for a few of his attributes!

It's only a minor Cup but every win and every trophy counts. We faced Bangkok Glass who had won the Thai FA Cup, strangely at least in my eyes is that the cup winners qualify for the Asian CL qualifying round unless the league winners also win the cup in that situation 2nd place would go into the Asian CL. We pretty much dominated and should have been winning at half time, when ever a match goes like that I can't help think that the AI will score a goal and sneak a 1-0 but our star player scored first and then our fullback found himself way up the pitch and doubled our lead. We saw the game out and took home another trophy!

Might as well start with this quite painful experience, it was obvious that we were going to struggle in this competition after being drawn with a Chinese side, a South Korean side and a Japanese team. I know player value is not the be all and end all of how good a player is but any of these sides two lowest valued players are worth more than my whole team put together. We were given false hope when we travelled to Japan and won 4-2 in quite comfortable fashion, we had let them recover from a 2-0 position but we scored twice in the last ten minutes and could have had more. Then it all went as expected the AI scored goals seemingly at will and this was a lesson in just how far off being competitive in the top Asian competition we are. More importantly it's a pointer to me that if I want to stay in Thailand and build a team good enough to take on the challenge of winning the Asian CL it could well take me decades not seasons. We were also denied a last match win in typical FM fashion when a player playing in his 16 game of the season scored his first goal. I suppose there's always next year if I'm here!

Looking at those results you'd expect us to be topping the league or at least close to it, however it seems that Muangthong United have taken offence at us smashing the league last year. They now lead after winning all 11 games, looking solid at the back and very decent up front. We have a game in hand but in 7 games time we'll be playing against them at home, I think we will need to stay in touching distance and we must beat them at our place to stand a chance of retaining the league title. The last match was really annoying we just didn't turn up and we were 4-1 down at half time, we made a decent attempt to come back but that defeat ended our 23 match undefeated run. We have another away match next and even at this stage of the season it's bordering on a must win game. I'm going to enjoy the challenge of catching Muangthong Utd at the top, it looks like every club suffers the following season when they or we play in the Asian Champions League. All our wins have been quite easy apart from the 3-2 against Phuket which we probably didn't deserve to win.

We are suffering at the moment in midfield with Pichichaipojanart and Al-Romsawa not playing well, Pichichaijojanart is starting to find some form with a few goals in his last few matches and it'll need to continue for us to challenge. We've been playing a game every 4 days or so with the Asian CL matches and losing most of those wasn't good for morale but that's out of the way now.

We've regained top place from Muangthong quite easily as well. The one result that sticks out there is obviously the 3-0 crushing of Muangthong, I'd love to say that we were the first team to beat them but they had already lost 3-0 against Suphanburi and then 4 matches later again against Police Utd 3-0. We should have won by more as you can see being 3-0 up at half time we always want more. The win saw us reclaim top place and the two wins after saw us gain a 5 point advantage over them, our recent good form has been due to Pichichaipojojart finding his form from last season and our strike force of Buschening and Uzuegbunam clicking and demolishing teams. We should be on for the league title now as long as we can keep playing the way we are, I always suspected that Muangthong couldn't keep going like they were as it seems a trait that a lot of early leading sides have on FM.

Also nice to see Naruphol Ar-Romsawa become the league appearance holder for the club with 144 games he should continue to smash that record as long as I'm here, he's 29 and will continue to be a key first team player for the next 3-4 years whilst I'm here. Pichichaipojanarts hat trick against TTM Customs was the highlight for me, got to love three goals in one match from a CM who constantly breaks into the opposition box and scores! Only Bangkok Glass stopped us from having a perfect record in this run of games but I shouldn't complain about 8 wins and one draw!

Things are looking good in the cup competitions so far, obviously the match that stands out is the first one. A great game for neutrals not so good from me to watch though, we raced into a 2-0 lead and I thought we'd continue like that and completely smash them but it didn't quite work out like that. They come back from 2-0 down and again from 4-3 down in extra time they took the lead and as the minutes ticked by I was convinced we were out, however substitute Ham Hyeong-Kyu popped up with a last minute goal to take us to penalties. We won 4-2 which I was amazed at as I usually lose the penalty shoot outs! Couple of routine wins that weren't as close as the scoreline suggests booked us a place in the quarter finals against 2nd Division side Kaestsart Univ. We went out at this stage last year so it'd be good to go past it. We also won 6-0 in the FA Cup where the AI failed to register a single shot on goal all game!

I decided to add a few leagues so I can hopefully leave Thailand in the next few seasons, I've removed a lot of Asian leagues leaving Thailand, Kuwait, Japan, China, South Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Austrailia. I've added the MLS, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Scotland might add Switzerland and Austria although ideally I'd like to manage a bigger club in Asia before moving to Europe

We've some how managed to mess up a 5 point lead and turn it into being 6 points behind. Three defeats and 2 draws in the last 11 league matches isn't good enough especially given that since Muangthongs blip they've won 11 of the last 12 and drawn one. Things could have been so much better for us, we were flying scoring 4 then 6 then 3 but then came the first defeat of this run, a 2-1 loss to a team that I always hate playing as they never fail to make things difficult. We then threw away a two goal lead to draw 2-2 but bounced back with a 50- win and a 1-0 win. In the match against Phuket we were losing 3-0 but got back to 3-3 and probably should have won the match. A top of the table clash came next and whoever won would be in pole position for the title, we bottled it and lost 1-0 in a very even game. No problem we'll bounce back win the next match and hope they drop points, wrong! We failed to win despite complete domination and in true FM fashion we lost when they scored 2 of their 3 shots at goal. I don't think we can win the league now but if we win all our games there's still a slight chance.

Surprisingly 2nd Division side Kasetsart Uni put up one hell of a fight in the first leg managing to take the lead a couple of times but we just about got a draw and then beat them with ease in the second leg. Maybe BEC's victory over us in the league was revenge for us knocking them out of the cup with a convincing 3-1 win. We then beat Bangkok FC 3-1 away to progress to the semi-finals where we face mid table side Samut Songkram, qualification for the Asian Champions League is on the line. If we beat them we'll face the winner of Muangthong Vs Army Utd, if Muangthong don't do the double then the team that finishes 2nd in the league(most likely)us will go into the Asian CL. If Muangthong or us don't win the FA Cup then our only way into the Asian CL would be to win the league, which to be honest is looking unlikely.

Not the best update form wise but it should bring a quite decent ending to the season for the neutrals out there!

Japan U22's! Is that actually a national youth side in the league system?

Interestingly enough, it looks like that is correct based on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J3_League

The idea is that playing as a team in the league system will help them for the Olympics; I think Russia is contemplating a similar approach with their senior national team. The USA has tried this before (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America_(NASL)), it did not go well.

Although we finished the season strongly we didn't do enough to retain the league title. A single goal less than last season but 7 more conceded along with a big 12 points less, it's starting to look like our league winning season was just a case of everything falling our way. We could still have clinched it had we not lost to Chonburi and converted one of those draws into a win, as they say though buts and ifs don't matter and overall Muangthong deserved to be crowned champions. I was thinking of leaving but it doesn't look like I'll be able to get a job in a higher reputation league yet so I'll stay for another season or two to try and win the league titles once again. I find it strange that the board don't back me with a contract longer than one year nor do they really back me financially. We made a profit of £738,000 this season yet the wage budget has stayed at £18k for the upcoming season and the transfer budget is £100k however most of this will be moved to the wage budget to try and sign a few free players.

Just a quick reminder of how we got through to the final of the League Cup. An amazing game to start with was followed by some routine wins, both teams we faced in the two leg matches made it hard for us but the semi-final was over after the first leg. We then faced Suphanburi in what stats wise was a very even game apart from them shooting at the goal and my players shooting at anything but. We got smashed and they opening the scoring after only 27 seconds, from then on I really knew it wasn't going to be our day. They scored three more times before the end for an emphatic 4-0 victory.

All pretty easy up to the final all very easy matches with no one testing us at all. We then faced Muangthong Utd who had already beaten us to the league title. Buschening opening the scoring after only 2 minutes with a great counter and finish I thought we were on for an easy win like the home match against them in the league. They levelled and my mood changed straight away, I thought we'd crumble but we played excellently for the remainder of the match. It's a pity we won by an own goal but what an own goal it was, our corner was cleared but our player lurking outside the area launched it back in, Buschening got a head at goal but their CB volleyed it off the line straight into the back of a team mates head and it bounced into the goal. I don't care I'll take it and this all means we go into the Asian CL but it's the qualifying and that has seen a few other Thai sides knocked out easily against Australian sides.

Not as good as last in a few areas but some really good individual performances throughout the season Pichitchaipojanart once again was brilliant winning Fans Player of the Year and the leagues Young Player of the Year, he also bagged 18 assists to go with his 20 goals all from CM not DMC like the best 11 suggests. Dennis Buschening and John Mary Uzuegbunam were great up front but Buschening's goal in the final meant he broke the record for most goals in a season also playing a few less tan his strike partner. Anuwat Parnmee was useful up front getting 13. Apichart Thongdee went a bit crazy at one point and put in great performance after great performance and earned himself what the media described as a surprise National team call up although obviously a deserved one. Even the CB got 10 goals although to be fair Srisai did start several matches at right full back. It's a pity that Natthaphong Samana couldn't score so that every player selected had at least a single goal.

As I mentioned I've been actively looking to leave over the last few months but it's just not happening, I've got a continental rep but my world rep must be too low. I get laughed off for jobs with English League Two side and Scottish Championship sides. So I'll stay for another season and assess what's out there and work out if I have a chance of getting it. Ideally I'd like to move to the top tier in Japan, China, Iran or South Korea but that is just not possible at the moment. Maybe if I can win at least one trophy this year it'll help, I don't even get an interview at the moment!

Damn, this is the draw I wanted to avoid, I can't see us progressing past an A-League team at the moment

We've over achieved already in the Champions League by beating Melbourne in the qualifying round. Over the years the Australian sides have constantly beat Thai team in the prelims, however we had other ideas and surprisingly dominated the match. After scoring early on I couldn't help think that it was just some false hope this was confirmed when they equalised but we regained the lead through a tremendous strike from the edge of the area after a corner was put there for Wai-ngan. Then came the draw where we would face Ulsan from Korean, Renhe who beat us in last years competition and Osaka AC who easily won their league. We've won the first game same as last time but lets hope we can build on it this time round, it was down to an own goal but we were the better side by quite some distance.

The Thai version of the Community Shield, I hope this isn't setting the scene for the rest of the season. We blew a 2-0 goal lead, at the time we were comfortable but then they fired themselves into the lead as we collapsed during a very frustrating 16 minutes of football. As I said hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come and we can get on with winning the league again although it'll be a tough task.

Shame you couldn't get the title last season, you were really storming for a while as well.

Shame you couldn't get the title last season, you were really storming for a while as well.

The back to back defeats against Muangthong and BEC really ruined the league for us.

Unbeaten start to the season but it looks like the league could be more competitive this season than last. Three draws in a row including us coming back from 2-0 down to go 3-2 up only for Chonburi to equalise in the 93rd minute. We also went 1-0 down and down to 10 men against Buriram Utd only to come back and win 2-1. There's been some good wins and at the moment due to the Asian Champions League we have games in hand that I'd love to win. We seem to have defended a lot better over the last 5 league games than we did the first 5 league games. I think we'd have done even better if Pichitchaipojojanart wasn't injured for close to 2 months. We've got to just keep going now but we do have some tough away matches coming up.

As expected we finished bottom of the group although I was surprised to see we didn't let in the most goals! It all started well just like last season and we won our first game as I've already posted but from then on it was downhill. I did get to witness a great comeback against Ulsan where we were trailing 3-0 until we scored in the 83rd, 85th and 86th minute to draw the match. The Asian Champions League is half the reason I would like to move I don't think I've got the time or finances to build a team that can win it, a lot of that is down to the foreign player rules of the competition. I guess all I can hope for is to somehow qualify from the group if I'm still here over the next few years.

Wow, that was a crazy group with all those goals!

Probably going to always be tough since you always get a Chinese, a Japanese and a South Korean team in your group.