ri916's FM15 Youth Academy Challenge

Welcome back everyone .

The Aim

To win your chosen countries' top division and win the Champions League with a previously unplayable club using only your academy as a way of acquiring new players.

The Available Countries

Any Country in Europe is eligible as long as you can get a previously unplayable side promoted from Holidaying, for example Holland is no longer available as there is no longer any relegation from the 2nd tier.

The Reset Dates (The ones in bold are from FM 15, others have not been confirmed)

France- 19th June

Germany- 19th June

Italy- 30th June

Portugal- 30th June

Spain- 9th July

Russia- 19th June

Turkey- 19th June

Netherlands- 6th July

Belgium- 30th June

England- 24th June

Sweden-

Scotland- 20th June (Save 1st May for choice of teams by reloading)

Greece-

The Database

• Only load the Nation your planning on managing in.
  
• Database size is optional (small, medium or large)
  
• Players Based in your nation
  
• Players from top clubs in europe (or everywhere)
  
• International players is optional
  
• If you're managing in England, you can also add 'players from regional premier divisions'
  

No further customising of the database is allowed.

Attribute masking should be enabled. 'Add key staff' and ' Add players to playable clubs' should be ticked.

Steps when getting started

1. Add yourself as an unemployed manager. Call him holiday man if you want.
   
2. Go on holiday until the reset date of your nation or the day before if your planning on reloading.
   
3. Retire the manager
   
4. Add a new manager with your chosen nationality and the lowest possible reputation and qualifications
   
5. Choose the newly promoted club of your choice
   

Rules for the Challenge

No loans or transfers in are allowed but you can sell and loan players out.

If you are sacked, sorry, you have to start again.

No save game editors are allowed. only cosmetic database edits are allowed. (team/competition names/logos)

No international management until completion of challenge.

Signing backroom staff is allowed. Signing players on trial or signing grey players isn't allowed.

Rules for this Thread

Player naming is allowed.

General discussion on tactics is allowed, although people should not refer to downloaded tactics. They are not banned, but I would expect the majority of people to avoid them.

Screenshots for anything are encouraged but please post links to your pictures, don't post them as images as it makes the pages slower to load. Posts included embedded images may be deleted without warning.

When you join the challenge, could you post a screenshot of your manager's profile on the league reset date.

Progress of your club should be documented using this thread, I want to hear the story of your club all the way through. Please keep us updated, even if you are doing really badly.

Season Update

Youth Candidates

All Tagged Players Attribute page

Transfers (to prove that you havent signed any players)

Squad

League Table

Anything else is optional.

Also, some people like to nickname/tag their best players from each youth intake in chronological order. For example, you could nickname your best player in the intake in season 1 as *their name* YP01a, and so on. But this is not compulsory if you don't wish to.

How to Post a Screenshot

• While in FM, press Alt and F9
  
• A picture will be saved to a screenshots folder, in the FM12 folder in your documents
  
• Upload the image to an image hosting website such as Photobucket
  
• Post the direct Url to the image here.
  

How to Add Links

At the top of the forum, go to 'Settings' then 'General Settings' (on the left). At the bottom, select 'enhanced interface' and save the changes. This will give you access to the extra posting tools that make it easier to post links. Once you've done this, highlight the word you wish to turn into a link, then use the link button (looks like a little globe) to paste in the direct Url to your screenshot.

reserved

Belgium resets on 30th june, so save on 29.

Players should probably also check the "disable use of in-game editor" checkbox .

I won't start this untill the game is out of beta, so two more weeks to wait. In the mean time, good luck to everyone.

Hi

Why are the list of nations limited?

Determined to crack this challenge this year. I really suck at it, or maybe I just chose the wrong clubs last year. I'm going to start in England. I'd like to get Slough, but judging from the Dafuge thread they don't seem to appearing much, and I should really go for whoever has the best facilities to give myself every advantage possible.

I played a bit as Man Utd to get used to the game (and hated managing at that level to start).

I guess it's obvious but it will make a lot of sense to be a full fledged tracksuit manager, as we won't have many other coaches at first. Do you think there are any vital elements in the other (tactical?) manager side of things?

You might want to put down what level of coaching badge you're allowed Ri.

You might want to put down what level of coaching badge you're allowed Ri.

Ah yeah, remember thinking I'd need to have a look at that when I saw the features video. Cheers

I've barely loaded up the game yet, so will have a look at it tonight.

For those planning to play in Scotland:

The last game of the regular season is on 2 may. This is also the day the team from the lower league that gets to play the bottom team for promotion is chosen. Save on 1 may and holiday untill you like the team that is selected (It's visible in the league screen, and the fixtures of the team that finished last.) Reloading a couple of times gave me about 5 different teams. Cove Rangers is the most likely, followed by Brora. The game is scheduled for 16 may. Save before the game and reload untill the bottom division team wins. Actual reset date is 20 june. (optional: look at the facilities of said team and realize Scotland might not be the best option for this challenge )

I started with the least possible exp and quals. Without giving spoilers it doesn't end up being too much of a problem.

I went with Hereford, by far the biggest club possible. Lots of money, players, but lots of expectations as well. We're predicted to finish2nd. I might get promoted first season, but ass I discovered in one try last year at this challenge, that's not much use if its immediately followed by relegation and then being sacked.

I will do starting screenshots along with end of season /career update on Monday when I bring my laptop to internet cafe.

As stated I put all my eggs into the tracksuit manager bag, even though I started off with almost no eggs.

Incidentally ri said last year, when I pushed for more countries to be included, that the reason for limiting the countries is so that posters have more in common and can discuss the relative ease or otherwise of different countries.

Incidentally ri said last year, when I pushed for more countries to be included, that the reason for limiting the countries is so that posters have more in common and can discuss the relative ease or otherwise of different countries.

Yeah it is this and also partly because it's supposed to be a small club to big club challenge and a lot of the smaller nations only have one division, so you would be walking straight into the top league.

When adding your new manager please select the lowest possible qualification .

Appreciate the feedback. I'm in Belarus which has two tiers and my squad is by far the worst in the league. If I ever gain European football it will be the definition of small club to big club, but in any case I followed Gundo rules by leaving 'add players to unplayable teams' unticked so I'll post there once the thread is up and running. In the meantime I'll enjoy the absolute ease of saving a squad of 14 players from relegation...

Haha, have fun mate .

I think I'll start off in Portugal this year. I've managed too wrangle a week of work just after the game is released too

There's a fairly major bug in the beta which resulted in my suddenly having the top coaching badge. I did notice that my coaching stats had improved since the start of the game, but didn't connect it to coaching badges or look at my profile, so can't undo it without going back to the start of the save. Only checked when saw reported it on the dafuge thread. This is a majorly advantageous bug. Not sure how widespread it is or how it happened. However there are lots of reports of this happening on lower league saves and so people may want to hold off until it is fixed.

There's a fairly major bug in the beta which resulted in my suddenly having the top coaching badge. I did notice that my coaching stats had improved since the start of the game, but didn't connect it to coaching badges or look at my profile, so can't undo it without going back to the start of the save. Only checked when saw reported it on the dafuge thread. This is a majorly advantageous bug. Not sure how widespread it is or how it happened. However there are lots of reports of this happening on lower league saves and so people may want to hold off until it is fixed.

Yeah I'd say this is probably the best thing to do, hopefully it'll be fixed soon.

For those planning to play in Scotland:

The last game of the regular season is on 2 may. This is also the day the team from the lower league that gets to play the bottom team for promotion is chosen. Save on 1 may and holiday untill you like the team that is selected (It's visible in the league screen, and the fixtures of the team that finished last.) Reloading a couple of times gave me about 5 different teams. Cove Rangers is the most likely, followed by Brora. The game is scheduled for 16 may. Save before the game and reload untill the bottom division team wins. Actual reset date is 20 june. (optional: look at the facilities of said team and realize Scotland might not be the best option for this challenge )

The biggest challenge you'll face in Scotland is that teams come up with only 14 or so players, due to weirdness with the expiry date of contracts from the lower league being before the switch over date and half the team being gone between the promotion playoff and when you can take over. That's fine and maybe even a plus for a normal game, but makes it pretty much certain you'll fail this challenge (since you'll be in a position where you can't field even 11 non grey players at some point).

As a work around you can try holidaying another year - I found last year at least they tended to come up with more the second year for some reason. I suspect that's technically against the rules for this challenge though.

Yeah I'd say this is probably the best thing to do, hopefully it'll be fixed soon.

But should have pointed out that I don't wish to restart. I'd got quite a bit into the game before I realised, and am enjoying it, so I hope that you won't mind my continuing.

Actually, I think people have figured out how it happened. Manager details revert to any previous profiles, and the first evening I managed Man Utd to get used to the game (inc having a Continental pro license).

So, if people make sure that they delete all previous (better) profiles before stating, they may be ok.

It turns out that the reason the SAS are located in Hereford are because they're on the board of the football club.

This is my board

https://sp.yimg.com/ib/th?id=HN.607995403256270136&pid=15.1&P=0

The last manager wasn't sacked. Apparently he just disappeared, which saved the club having to pay him any compensation. Needless to say, I'm keen to please, and get the club to the playoffs, which is the minimal expectation.

Anyway, here's some initial screen, erm, pictures.

Manager profile 1 – Proof I started off with no coaching qualifications.

"]Manager profile 2[/url]

Squad

Club Facilities

When I took charge of Hereford, it was immediately clear that the club had lots of players, lots of money, but also lots of expectations. We were predicted to finish 2nd. Hereford is a professional club. We started off with nearly half a million pounds (spoiler alert; it was all gone by the following March) and a transfer budget which I would actually need for the agents of the overpaid and under talented legion of 45 players that I inherited, plus 1 more future signing that inherited from the previous administration, (proof here). Given that many of the teams that we can choose in this challenge come with about 15 or 16 players, I suppose the 46 is a nice figure, but it does spread the available coaching quite thin.

There were some nice players in the squad, but there were also a lot of duds. I resigned a lot of players whose contracts were in the process of running out, just in case they turned out to be good.

I’m not complaining. The squad size and available money for tying up the best players to new contracts certainly makes Hereford one of (if not the) easiest teams to choose for this challenge.

That said I started off expecting to fail to make the playoffs, get sacked, and fail (or give up on) this challenge as I did many times last year. As it turns out, I’m almost certainly going to make the playoffs, so end of season report coming soon.

I think for the 17 or so years I have been playing Football Manager used a 442 formation (and brought in players who fit my system), but 3 of my best players were AML, AMR and DMC. I tried 1 friendly with a 442 formation, but I didn’t think it was ever going to work, so I tried a new formation based around the strengths of the players I have, with immediate promising results. I guess this is one of the rewarding things about this challenge; that we need to adapt to find success.

Youth Intake

The first thing to note is that this now happens a little bit earlier in the game, 6th March in England. My first youth intake was absolute rubbish. My YP1a, Callum Nolan, maybe has 2.5 stars potential in his ideal position of attacking midfielder, but I don’t use central attacking midfielders, and it’s not as though there’s any incentive to change things for him. I hope that their stats improve as the coaching staff get to know them, but I doubt it. I’ve given contracts to three of them, but I doubt any of them have anywhere near the potential to ever get a first team game. My HOYD actually singled out my YP1b Justin Sale and Niki Gooding YP1c may eventually be my third choice goalie, but I hope that things improve in future seasons. If it doesn’t I’m not going to progress very far.

At £80 a go for youth contracts, I don’t think it would be helpful to hand out more than 3. Squad depth isn’t a problem, although less than half my players possess Football skills superior to that of an average 9 year old. I’m reluctant to change my HOYD because he has 16/15 judging stats which come in useful, but he’s not much of a coach so maybe before the next intake I’ll try to replace him with someone with a Resolute or similar personality, as this seems to be very important in the kinds of players that come through your system. (It always has been, but the game now makes this very clear), and I don’t have any Resolutes in my squad at all.

The biggest challenge you'll face in Scotland is that teams come up with only 14 or so players, due to weirdness with the expiry date of contracts from the lower league being before the switch over date and half the team being gone between the promotion playoff and when you can take over. That's fine and maybe even a plus for a normal game, but makes it pretty much certain you'll fail this challenge (since you'll be in a position where you can't field even 11 non grey players at some point).

As a work around you can try holidaying another year - I found last year at least they tended to come up with more the second year for some reason. I suspect that's technically against the rules for this challenge though.

Yeah 14 players in the 1st team for Fraserburgh, but I'm hoping the youth intake adds another 5. It's tight, but the distribution of positions seems fine, so without massive injuries it might be possible. (With some interesting formations once in a while). I'm not sure where to start. There's a bug in the Belgian 3rd division, where the relegation rules aren't implemented correctly. If that gets fixed I'll probably start a Belgian save, otherwise I might give it a shot. Denmark is another 3-division country I haven't managed in for a while. We'll see.

Yeah 14 players in the 1st team for Fraserburgh, but I'm hoping the youth intake adds another 5. It's tight, but the distribution of positions seems fine, so without massive injuries it might be possible. (With some interesting formations once in a while). I'm not sure where to start. There's a bug in the Belgian 3rd division, where the relegation rules aren't implemented correctly. If that gets fixed I'll probably start a Belgian save, otherwise I might give it a shot. Denmark is another 3-division country I haven't managed in for a while. We'll see.

Ri - I don't have any skin in this (Scottish challenge) game, but would it still be within the spirit of the game to allow people to take over a Scottish club on 14 May (or whenever the playoff final is). Given the Scottish structure it's at that point (not the season summary) that they become a newly promoted side, and this old solve the small squad problem, while also punishing the previous computer manager for getting his side promoted despite the fact that he took a lot of money in a brown envelope on the understanding that his side would throw the match.

vikeologist - The newly promoted side doesn't become playable until the season swap over date, so that wont work.

Duroliponte - That's what I mean about being an auto-fail with only 14 players. If your greyed out striker has scored 3 goals then sadly you've failed the challenge, as use of greyed out players is not allowed. The rules talk about not signing them, but ri916 clarified in last season's thread that meant they weren't allowed to take the pitch at all.

(Personally I'd say turn a blind eye and ignore it since the rules as written aren't clear, but ri916 has final say I guess)

Looking forward to starting this yearly addiction soon!

Going to wait until after the day 1 patch hits (and maybe the usual small clean ups that come quickly afterwards) as there seems like a lot of little issues (reviewing the Dafuge thread, the amount of goals is just plain silly atm). (Also gives me a chance to quench my Civilization Beyond Earth needs as well - why would they release my two most anticipated games of the year within 12 hours of each other!!!! )

Unsure of country this year at this point.

England - Really want to complete the challenge here, but the number of leagues and lengths of the league seasons always put me off (once you are 20 games in, and knowing you cannot sign players, you pretty much know your fate for the remaining 20-30 games...)

Spain & Holland - Both look like fun, with huge fights eventually at the top (La Liga might be harder than the Champions League!)

Belgium - Had a lot of fun there 2 years ago, unique league set-up made it interesting

Sweden - Another nostalgia choice, and their very short seasons make for faster challenge progress....

Decisions!

Quick question - does database Size effect the quality of your products

Quick question - does database Size effect the quality of your products

I don't see any reason why it should no .

Vikeologist- I think Shakes already addressed this, but you can't take over the club before the reset date as they are unplayable.

And yeah, use of greys are not allowed unless you have less than 11 fit players to select.

Hmm, if using greys isn't a fail if you have fewer than 11 players then Scotland becomes an attractive option. Of course I'd need to stay alive while using grey players - my first season record in this challenge is about 50/50 even with real players, so it's a tough ask.

Think I'm tossing up between Scotland, England and Belgium. Hopefully the game can keep me hooked this year, last year was a huge let down after my long running FM13 adventure.

Edit: Strike Scotland off the list after all, I remember why I never played there, they have a stupid "must have a goal keeper on the bench" rule which I boycott on principle.

The good thing about Scotland is that the standard of play in the last division is pretty low. I think it should be possible to stay up, it has only one relegation spot, and you get a rematch against a non-division team if you fail. The big problem will be breaking in to the Glasgow-Glasgow pair, and even after that it's still a long trek to Real Madrid-like stature. Been clicking about in the different leagues, and I must say that at the moment I feel like starting a save in Scotland when the full game is out.

Yeah, I prefer playing in the smaller nations for that reason, it's fun to have finally clawed your way to the top of the league but still be below the standard required for champions league victory. England feels a bit backward to me, never gotten that for there in this challenge but even in a normal game you can win the champions league but still be working on the domestic title part!

another quick question - what do we do with the players already at the club - are we allowed to extend their contracts or do we have to move them on as soon as they end?

I am going to be Margate

You're allowed to extend them.

We achieved the board’s objectives and reached the playoffs in our first season. The two sides that had come into the division from the Conference Premier ended up being the two clubs that went up. We more or less kept up with the season-long leaders, Telford for the first half of the season, but fell away due to inconsistency and injuries. We had a bit of a scare near the end of the season where it looked as though we may drop out of the playoffs. Our penultimate game was away to the team in 6th place, and had we lost we would have been only 2 points ahead of them in the last game, but we won the game comfortably and qualified with a game to spare.

In the first leg of the semi-final we were thumped 3-0 by eventual promoted team Stockport in front of more than 6,000, a record attendance for the division. Back at our ground we quickly went another goal behind. By all out attacking we pulled 3 goals back, and a miracle looked possible, but they rallied and the leg ended up 3-3, (6-3 on aggregate).

To be honest I wasn’t too gutted. I think we’d have been relegated next season if we’d gone up. Hopefully next season we’ll be a bit stronger and the division will be a bit weaker.

Our finances are bad. Although I kept well within our wage budget and we reached the first round of the FA Cup, we made a loss of over £600k on the year. Most of my overpaid players will have to stay because I don’t have viable alternatives. Hopefully the board will put some money in. They did agree early in the season to improve the Youth facilities, but retracted when they say how much money we’d lost by the end of the season.

Star Player – Bradley Fortnam Tomlinson. Only the star player by default as nobody was particularly fantastic. Only started 9 games as early in the season my other 2 strikers were scoring lots of goals and he hadn’t scored any. Near the end of the season he got his chance, hit a rich vein of form of 6 goals in 5 games, and promptly picked up a season ending injury.

By comparison, my other 2 strikers who scored often early in the season pretty much disappeared in the second half. Mor Diop who at one point looked as though he may come back from long-term injury to be the division’s top scorer scored 1 goal in roughly his last 20 games. His star rating was he’s a star, he’s a dud, he’s a star, he’s a dud during the season. I think my final verdict is that he’s a dud that I gave a £850 a week contract to immediately before he forgot how to score. I mean he had literally forgot what scoring is. He spends matches staring blankly at the scoreboard wondering what the numbers mean and asking his teammates why the club is called Hereford O. When someone says the word goal he says he doesn’t know the word and weeps helplessly in a corner with his French English dictionary.

Anyway, next year, Brad’s our starting (lone) striker, and hopefully the future leading striker of our club. Actually, I’ve just checked, and with 22 goals all-time, he already is.

Hot Prospect – Sam Minihan. Came in for a few matches when my first choice right full back was injured and did very well, but the guy he replaced was one of our best players, so didn’t get a lot of games. This season’s occupant fell away, so next season Sam’s a starter.

Our two most promising players, Dean Florence and Lucas Dawson, (according to star ratings) were already in the first team this season, though they were a bit mamahuhu. Hopefully next season will be their break out year.

So next season, hopefully we can at least qualify more easily for the playoffs and make a run for the title. Otherwise I'll probably be sacked, by which I mean I'll have a sack put over my head and never be seen again.

Here's a career summary.

Season    Division    Position    Notes
15/16    V North        3rd        Lost in playoff s/f, FA Cup R1

guess vikeologist was first, was about to say that hereford this year is probably the easiest target to get in order to start the challange on english side :-)

Well done vikeologist on meeting those high expectations, I'm a wimp and pick teams expected to be relegated so I only have the minimum hurdle to jump.

The game seems reasonably stable enough so I might get started rather than wait, going to go with Standaard Wetteren in Belgium. Predicted to come 18th out of 18 of course.

Vikeologist Good job on the first season. Nothing too spectacular in the Youth department yet, but a solid start. Too bad you missed out on the upgrade, but probably a wise choice by the board considering the money issues.

Shakes Good luck in Wetteren. They used to be a solid midtable third division side, so at least some infrastructure should be there. Time to shoot up the leagues and show your neighbours in Ghent how it's done.

Attempt 2

I was sacked in my second season with Hereford. I reached the first round of the FA Cup (beating division rivals in every round) and then took Doncaster from League 1 to a replay at our ground which we lost in the last minute of normal time. Unfortunately our league form wasn't good enough and we were stuck in mid-table all season with my job in serious jeopardy throughout. I survived a board takeover, but they eventually did sack me. (My final game we were 5-0 down at half time. We pulled two goals back in the second half, but then had a player sent off, but sort of put the final nail in the coffin.

This is the problem with Hereford, the expectations of the board are sky high, but I'm not sure the squad I inherited is good or deep enough. I continued the save till near the end of the season, and the manager who took over has taken them straight into the playoffs, but all his best players have been brought in by him.

So anyway, I'd loaded up a holiday save before even getting sacked (writing on the wall) and for at least the third time in this challenge (including last year) I've taken over Piacenza. Let's see if they are (or if I take responsibility, I am) good enough this time. I was a bit surprised they didn't get promoted irl, and are this available.

Next season, the club from a city I lived in for 3 days, before quitting my job, should be available, (although as I never moved out of the hotel and never actually started the job after meeting my new boss, saying I lived there is a bit of a stretch). Anyway, they're in the Excellenza this season, which they should romp through. So, anyway,

Manager Profile 1 I've deleted all previous profiles so hopefully I won't suddenly have a Cont Pro L, although I suppose I won't be too upset if it does happen.

Manager Profile 2

Squad -Current Ability I have a rubbish youth goalie, but if my one senior gk gets injured, I'm in trouble.

Squad - Potential Ability

Facilities

Hi! I have two quick questions.

First of all, why aren't we allowed to load other nations? Since we won't be signing players anyway, it would only allow for a more realistic footballing world and a more realistic European experience when we get to that part. Right? No? So Why aren't we allowed?

Second question is this: I haven't played 2013 and 2014, didn't have the time. Now the board wants you to play a certain style of football and I remember from the past games that some chairmen like Roman Abramovich wants "big name signings" as well. Does that still happen? If so, what if there's a takeover and the new chairman wants signings and fires us just because of that, even though we're successful? Anyone experiencing that sort of thing?

Thought I'd pop on early and get my Portugal game set up. Having somewhat learnt my lesson of picking a team with a tiny 500 seat stadium from last year. This year's team has a much more modest 20,000 seat stadium which they own too.

Having taken over as manager of Alverca

Manager Profile

Manager Stats - looking at my attribute numbers I somehow feel they'd be better off with a greyed out manager, also being able to drag players into your actual preferred formation is nice.

Club Facilities

Looking at the Squad, it's neither particularly big, nor particularly young either so the 4 players I do have under 18 may get some playing time, and I have to hope that I get a decent striker early on since the main man up front is a spry 39 years old.

Squad

Well that went badly - after the first phase of the season we had 20 points from 10 games and only goal difference was keeping us from top spot. After that our player who had been a star goal scorer lost form and defensive failings were exposed. Ended up getting just 18 points from the remaining 24 and got relegated after failing to manage a draw in the last game.

Going to go somewhere else to try again, not sure where yet.

Hi! I have two quick questions.

First of all, why aren't we allowed to load other nations? Since we won't be signing players anyway, it would only allow for a more realistic footballing world and a more realistic European experience when we get to that part. Right? No? So Why aren't we allowed?

Second question is this: I haven't played 2013 and 2014, didn't have the time. Now the board wants you to play a certain style of football and I remember from the past games that some chairmen like Roman Abramovich wants "big name signings" as well. Does that still happen? If so, what if there's a takeover and the new chairman wants signings and fires us just because of that, even though we're successful? Anyone experiencing that sort of thing?

You are right to be honest, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to load other nations if you want.

You can normally negotiate expectations like signing high profile players out, but even if you can't it's only a small contributor to board confidence and at the end of the day if results are going well you're not getting sacked for not signing anyone.

Alright then, thanks a lot And thanks for this nice challenge as well of course

Korvalis Good luck in Portugal, haven't played there in years. How is the lower league setup?

Vikeologist Good luck in Italy this time. The squad looks doable (I'd be more nervous about the lack of replacement after your DL,). A 20.000+ seat stadium should be enough for the foreseeable future.

Shakes Degradation takes precedence over the period titles, so at least it's not a one goal difference that cost you the season . Pretty big implosion. I read a couple of times that player happiness is pretty flaky in the Beta, was it related to that ?

Has some moaning from players about wanting to play and siding with others who wanted the same, but honestly the team just weren't very good and overachieved on the back of one player having a hot streak at the start. Just didn't have defenders to hang on, was relying on too many old guys on their last legs, gave up a ton of goals from balls over the top and set pieces. Just couldn't score enough at the other end to stay afloat.

Ah well, surviving the first season is always the hardest. Might give Scotland a try, I managed to get Gala Fairydean Rovers up, a club formed in 2013 so taking over something with zero history appeals. Will have to somehow navigate the tiny squad issue though.

Jintro, the Portugal lower league setup can only be described as weird. The first stage is 8 groups of 10 teams, the top 2 from each of the 8 groups goes into 2 further groups of 8. The top teams from both these groups gets promotion, and the 2 2nd placed teams have a two game playoff for the 3rd promotion spot.

The other 8 teams from the 8 original groups play another set of games with the lower 2 from each group being relegated and the 8 6th place teams have a playoff to decide the other 4 relegated teams.

Sounds like something only a Belgian could come up with. Hope you have the squad depth to handle that number of games.

Good luck to everyone else currently trying this. It has one hell of a rate of attrition and its hard putting so much effort into something with such a low chance of success.

After 2 relegations in the first season with Piacenza last year, I have finally managed to keep them up, though as sides below me played each other and started catching up while we played the top teams in our last few fixtures, we went from 6 points clear to being ahead on goal difference before the final game. Luckily we were playing the rock bottom club and won3-0 while the other club went 3 goals behind immediately in their match so it wasn't too stressful, and we avoided the relegation playoffs.

End of season report tomorrow.

Scotland was a nightmare, 13 players in the squad with the rule to only play greyed out players if needed to actually field an 11 meant so many games finished with less than a full compliment. That really didn't help when I already had a side that was rated worst in the league in nearly every category, as well as starting with no natural strikers.

Ended up losing touch with the other teams about half way through the season and just hanging out for youth intake day and hoping we could get enough form together to take some confidence into the relegation play off. We did see an up tick in form (and finally a bench!) but lost it after having a player sent off at 57 minutes, still managing to come back from one behind, but losing the shoot out.

Ugh, bit disappointing, I had got a striker through the youth intake who was already rated the second best player in the side with potential to be a good player in the Championship. He scored 6 and assisted 3 in his 10 appearances, looked like I might be able to build a real team around him. Oh well, not to be.

Shakes - (Reticently since my last suggestion to solve this was so flawed) did you load a big database and every possible player from Scotland that you could when setting up the game?

i spotted the problem with hereford though, seems like every year you only get 0,5 star potential youth intakes lol

Shakes - (Reticently since my last suggestion to solve this was so flawed) did you load a big database and every possible player from Scotland that you could when setting up the game?

Well, Gala Fairydean are such a small team that they don't have the players in the database to start with, so I was working with a bare bones generated side, but even other teams still suffer the same issue due to the season changeover date in Scotland being after the contract expiry date. Just a weird quirk of the league compared to the way most work, probably because Scotland never had promotion before.

No big deal to me really, the season was pretty quick to play given there wasn't much choice involved - pick as many fit players as I had available and jam them into a team as best I could, and watch the goals fly in against me.

Will probably wait for release until I give it another go, not sure I'll have the time to get far before then anyway. Might give England a go after all, I figure I've failed at the other two on my shortlist it must be trying to tell me something.

i spotted the problem with hereford though, seems like every year you only get 0,5 star potential youth intakes lol

Yes. I only loaded the youth intake twice (the second time to ascertain whether I'd been incredibly unlucky. I used the first load of course. (What would I have done if a 5 star player came up the second go? I would have gone back to the first load of course

.

Probably.

Anyway, Hereford is behind me.

League Table

Transfers

As related before, although the league table makes it look fairly comfortable, as the 16th-19th placed tams go into a relegation play out, it went to the last day.

A bit of a grumble. Even though 1 side was promoted and 3 relegated, for the 16/17 season, Division C/A has been given 3 (out of the 4) teams relegated from Serie B and just 1 newly promoted team, making the division tough (for the next few seasons potentially given that probably only 1 team gets promotion each season).

Hot Prospects (screenshots from their youth intake day). My HOYD is 'Resolute'. I deliberately found a HOYD with that personality, and that did seem to produce an intake with helpful personalities, though none actually resolute.

Fausto Armani YP1a (screenshot not loading so unavailable. If this omission has ruined your life, let me know and I'll have another shot) ) Not sure how good he is going to be. He's a goalkeeper, and instantly became a sub for the first team. Given that I only had 2 goalkeepers last season, and my top guy picked up a couple of medium term injuries, he may be quite useful. To be honest, although my first choice goalie (Di Graci) has much better stars, is only 22 and improved consistently last season, he had a lot of bad games with terrible mistakes. He's weak at handling, and given the many matches I watched last season, has the positioning of a tanning salon in a desert. I am tempted to throw all my eggs into an Armani handbag. Scaoll (my non-starred and extremely raw youth goalie who played in 6 cup and league games last season) conceded 1.91 goals per game,whereas DiGraci conceded 2.35, and as I say, a lot of those goals he tried to save very unconvincingly. Really, I could stand in between the goalposts and hold out a hand helplessly when someone kicks the ball at me.

Daniele Vicini YP1b - Has the potential to be a Serie B attacking midfielder according to my Assman. Trouble is I don't use attacking midfielders so I'm retraining him to be a central midfielder

Star Player - Emanuele Orlandi - A right winger. Crucial to the team not least because my backup is in his thirties and wants first team football (and if I can get some money for him, I will let him go and rely on an admittedly promising youth player from the intake before I took over).

My finances are a bit wobbly. It's not helped by not being in the Copa Italia for the second straight season. I don't know if this is a bug, or because I only finished in 15th. I'll b really annoyed if the teams that finished below me get entered. I've set up a few lucrative friendlies, but I need to bookend them with matches that we'll win to boost morale before the season starts. It could be another tough one.

Team		Season	Division	Position	Notes
Hereford	15/16	V North		3rd		Lost in playoff s/f, FA Cup R1
Hereford	16/17	V North		sacked
Piacenza	15/16	C1/A		15th		Avoided relegation playouts by 1 place