[FM10] It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Be a Swan) - Featuring Pile o'Stats

[SnakeXe]

Another excellent league campaign but a shame you couldn't supplement that with a cup. It's strange how a side that can smash 100 league goals in over the season should go out of Europe and both cups essentially because they failed to score. Certainly reminiscent of my Arsenal days anyway!

[Pangaea]

Yep. It's odd how we could basically walk over anything in our path in the league, but face the same teams in the cup and it's tough. We killed Man Utd 3-0 in the second last league game, but two weeks later we can't even get a shot past them.

Europe has been a lot of frustration too, particularly with all the bottling up we do at home. Maybe our style of football doesn't fit in Europe. I don't know. But teams regularly slice us open with offensive football, and we can't really contain them. That's what happened the last two seasons with Catania and Porto anyway. But hopefully we'll succeed there too at some point. I'll give it another whack next season

[Nobby_McDonald]

Another quality season.

Where are Lemona(de) from?

[AK22]

A much improved England performance! At least you're starting to see the fruits of your labour with them now. Finishing third is a great result, and will pacify the FA for a while. In my opinion, the English FA are always over-expecting, and reaching the last eight of a major tournament should be viewed as a success.

Excellent again in the league domestically, although I'm surprised to see you go out at home to Porto in the Champions League. That was a bit of a shocker! Vaca having an off day then?

[Pangaea]

Another quality season.

Where are Lemona(de) from?

From Spain.

They are one of quite a few success stories. Started out in Second Division B1. Promoted to LIGA adelente in 2025/26 (had one season there in 2019/20 but went straight down again). Then some yo-yo-ing between adelente and La Liga, before establishing themselves as a top-flight team in 2031/32 onwards. They have finished 5th, 5th, 3rd and 4th the last four seasons, and last season they had a wonderrun in the Champions League and got to the semi final where Real Madrid stopped them.

Their success is strongly correlated with the takeover of an English tycoon in 2025, but I think it's great that small clubs like that can fly up the leagues and make it big on the ultimate scene of European football. The changes in the power structure in various leagues is one of the things I love the most about long-term saves.

A bit of the same has happened in England with Oldham, Preston and Southampton too, all becoming pretty big challengers for the title, with Oldham winning it once. Southampton were runners-up last season, and have three 3rd places the last 10 years. Further down the leagues are more examples. My old club Trafford, from the previous FM10 save, have come up from level 8 to League 2 for example (and survived there for 2 seasons). That is without any tycoon help too, and they still have the original 2,500 capacity stadium. Conversely, Liverpool are in a pretty big mess. They did finish 2nd some years ago, but apart from that their best finish the last 14 years is 7th, with most season between 13th and 16th.

[Pangaea]

A much improved England performance! At least you're starting to see the fruits of your labour with them now. Finishing third is a great result, and will pacify the FA for a while. In my opinion, the English FA are always over-expecting, and reaching the last eight of a major tournament should be viewed as a success.

Excellent again in the league domestically, although I'm surprised to see you go out at home to Porto in the Champions League. That was a bit of a shocker! Vaca having an off day then?

Thanks. It sure has taken some time, but it felt great to finally get some good results with England. International management is tough. One bad game and it's curtains down for 2 years. Hopefully this wasn't just a one-off though, I'd like to do well in the Euros too and hopefully the World Cup after that. For the first time ever I am actually enjoying (for the most part) managing a national team.

Going out to Porto was very disappointing as I'm sure you can imagine given our domestic performance. We seem to be getting to that stage where the league is in our pocket bar a wonderrun by another team, like Southampton had for a long time, so Europe is the big goal now. Hopefully we'll do better next season

Vaca was okay in the match actually, it was more a case of inefficiency in front of goal and the whole team playing below par. But he had a real stinker in the FA Cup final and I fined him two weeks' wages. I was mighty surprised he was okay with that. He was by far the worst player on the pitch with a 5.5 rating, but I expected him to throw the toys out of the pram and nag to the press.

[Nobby_McDonald]

From Spain.

They are one of quite a few success stories. Started out in Second Division B1. Promoted to LIGA adelente in 2025/26 (had one season there in 2019/20 but went straight down again). Then some yo-yo-ing between adelente and La Liga, before establishing themselves as a top-flight team in 2031/32 onwards. They have finished 5th, 5th, 3rd and 4th the last four seasons, and last season they had a wonderrun in the Champions League and got to the semi final where Real Madrid stopped them.

Their success is strongly correlated with the takeover of an English tycoon in 2025, but I think it's great that small clubs like that can fly up the leagues and make it big on the ultimate scene of European football. The changes in the power structure in various leagues is one of the things I love the most about long-term saves.

A bit of the same has happened in England with Oldham, Preston and Southampton too, all becoming pretty big challengers for the title, with Oldham winning it once. Southampton were runners-up last season, and have three 3rd places the last 10 years. Further down the leagues are more examples. My old club Trafford, from the previous FM10 save, have come up from level 8 to League 2 for example (and survived there for 2 seasons). That is without any tycoon help too, and they still have the original 2,500 capacity stadium. Conversely, Liverpool are in a pretty big mess. They did finish 2nd some years ago, but apart from that their best finish the last 14 years is 7th, with most season between 13th and 16th.

It's also good when your old clubs continue to do well. I remember in one previous save, I think it was on 09, I got Northampton to the Championship before leaving for pastures new, and the AI kept them there for a good few seasons before finally getting relegated.

[Pangaea]

It's also good when your old clubs continue to do well. I remember in one previous save, I think it was on 09, I got Northampton to the Championship before leaving for pastures new, and the AI kept them there for a good few seasons before finally getting relegated.

One-club careers is what I love so have basically not seen that first-hand, but I'm sure that is nice to see when it happens. It's good to see your old team continuing to do well after you leave. It is perhaps an indication of the level of the artificial intelligence in the game, however, that even when you leave them in good stead the club will slowly (or quickly) decline. That is a trend I've seen from various threads in here.

Maybe it's a good thing overall though, in the long term. Because if big money more or less guaranteed success we'd never see the likes of Tottenham, Liverpool or Man Utd fall down the table and even get relegated (like Spurs did in this save), and it would be a lot more difficult for minnows to go up the league pyramid and eventually become big hitters, like Lemona, or to a smaller degree Trafford.

Do wish the computer was better at managing youths though, because I feel that is the area the human smacks the AI in. Given patience and not getting sacked, it really is just a matter of time before the human overtakes the big AI clubs, simply by going for talented youths and sticking with them. A player I just bought is perhaps a good example of that, Dan Furness. A great right-back aged 19, but he wasn't even a starter for a Man Utd side that fared slightly above mid-table. Yet I started the World Cup with him at RB (until he got injured) and having brought him into the Walton & Hersham team now, there is stiff competition between him and Ibrahim Oral (who is described with Worldwide reputation IIRC). Going off on a tangent here perhaps, but it feels like the AI will only go with youths that start out really, really well-developed. Youths with plenty of potential but low current skill tend to rot in the youth and reserve teams until sold for a pittance or more likely being released. Many, me included, have hounded SI for this in the past, but nothing really seems to happen.

[SnakeXe]

I think it was dafuge's FM11 career where he helped FC United up to the Championship and left when they were challenging for promotion to go abroad, then when he came back to manage in the Premier League they were a top-half side. It does happen, to some extent Southend in my thread did well to stay in the Championship for a decade after I left, and Wigan managed Europa League football and a 5th place finish despite largely remaining a yo-yo club. Only Weymouth have really fared poorly and I was only there for a season and a bit so didn't have a huge influence.