FM14: Newcastle United - Vive La Revolution

[toonbalmy87]

Woah, was he transfer listed then? I signed Bony in the end, he's been absolutely brilliant. Still can't believe I got him for so little.

nope just offered 20 mil straight and they accepted he wasnt playing a great deal

[k9killer]

just started a save with newcastle on the update so no cabaye...

only 5million transfer budget

who do you replace cabaye with?

any good cheap strikers?

[DirtyJoe]

Last season's (2013/14) line up for me: Krul, Santon, Colo, Yanga-Mbiwa, Debuchy, Perisic, Tiote, Anita, Sissoko, Ben Arfa, Remy

I've sold Santon for £23m up front to Juventus and I sold Krul to Barca for £13m up front and their midfielder Roberto. Thinking of either signing ter Stegan now for £9m, or waiting to offer him a contract for a free when he leaves Gladbach.

I am getting a lot of interest in Santon, but no offers at this stage. I am hoping to move him on at the end of the season.

Has anyone managed to sign De Jong on a permanent basis?

[james_wilko]

Finally had a chance to get a few games of FM in, around revision and work so I'll be giving a quick update on my team.

I've made a fair few changes this time round, so I'll start with my transfers.

Out:

Remy and De Jong's loans were cancelled.

Cisse joined Monaco for 6mil

Steven Taylor joined WBA for 4mil

Tiote joined Porto for 7.5mil.

Gosling joined Middlesbrough for 500k

Shola joined Sheffield on a free transfer

Dummett also went to Middlesbrough for 800k

Obertan joined Stoke for 4mil.

In:

Mehmet Ekici from Werder Bremen for 3mil.

Pablo Sarabia from Getafe for 4.5mil

Jason Lowe from Blackburn joined for 3mil

Abel Hernandez joined from Palermo for 3.5mil

Neil Taylor from Swansea for 4mil

Naismith from Everton for 3.5mil

Shawcross from Stoke for 7mil.

The team now lines up in a rigid, counter attacking 4-4-1-1 formation, with the regular line up being:

Krul

Debuchy Shawcross MYM Taylor

Santon Sissoko Anita Sarabia

HBA

Hernandez.

Santon is bossing the RM position. I've only played 4 league games and he has 4 goals and 3 assists. I had a feeling he would flourish as a midfielder and I'm glad I'm being proven right so far.

Results have been good, 4 league games and 1 C1C game have resulted in 5 wins in a row so no complaints there.

Started the season away to Sunderland where we won 2-1. It could have been 4/5-1 though, as we managed to hit the woodwork multiple times. Hernandez got a goal on his debut and Santon the other.

Next up Swansea at home, where we came away 4-2 winners. Goals from Sissoko, Santon, HBA and Hernandez.

Then Sheffield Wed in the cup, a comfortable 2-0 win from the B team. Naismith and Williamson getting the goals.

A 5-1 away win over Palace, MYM, Santon (2), Gouffran and HBA with the goals.

And the most recent results a 2-1 win away to Southampton, with HBA and Debuchy (pen) getting the goals.

So not a bad start, sitting top of the league at the moment but no difficult games played yet really. The real test will come when I have to play one of the big clubs, to see if my tactics are going to cut it this year.

[Andrew!]

Finished my second season, finished third after a dominant Chelsea swept away all opposition, with Tottenham coming in second. It wasn't until 36 games when I gained the upper-hand over Man Utd who were above me for most of the season, but a couple of slip-ups in prior weeks ended in me beating them to draw level on points, before a shock defeat to Aston Villa allowed me to move in front.

The transfer window was a resounding success. Steven Taylor left for West Ham (£1.7m), Pepparim Hetemaj left for Spartak Moscow (£3.6m), Mehdi Abeid was bought by Aston Villa (£1m), Ivan Perisic left for Valencia (£5.75m; a torn calf muscle suffered just weeks into the season on international duty left him out for much of the season and his attributes dropped, while I managed without him), Massadio Haidara was bought by Real Madrid (£10m; after initial bids for £1m and about 300k in installments) and Koo Ja-Cheol also went to Valencia (£10m).

Ross Barkley joined us for £22m, along with the sidelined André Schurrle for £18m and in the final week of the transfer window I blew what was left on Marco Reus for £29.5m. I'd previously arranged to buy two Argentine regens, Alejandro Medina (right back, £8m) and Damian Pomo (left back and also switched allegience to Italy, £10m) as well as signing defensive midfielder Ulf Blum from Koln for £4.6m (screenshots to follow), and Ron-Robert Zieler joined us on a free transfer when I noticed he'd left his club. In October I also signed up Andrea Pirlo on a free who provides extra cover, since Tiote is out with a torn hamstring.

My line-up is now: ter Stegan, Debuchy, Shaw, Coloccini, Balanta, Verrati, Tiote, Barkley, Ben Arfa, Reus, Lukaku.

Joe; I didn't sign De Jong because I didn't have the money in the first season, even though I wanted to. He really came to life for me in the second half of the season but I just didn't have the money. I saw more sense anyway in buying Lukaku and Shaw from the money I got selling Santon, Yanga-Mbiwa and Anita.

[smplfc123]

Just finished my first season, just about hanging on to my job. I decided i would take the risk of just bringing in young English players in the first season to build for the future, so that in a few seasons the core of my squad would have a lot more English players than normal. It was a big risk as it meant I had a lot of inexperienced players starting in the premiership and at times they did struggle.

Transfers in:

Jordan Cousins

Jesse Lingaard

Michael Keane

James Ward-Prowse

Charlie Austin

Ruben Garcia

Out:

Obertan

Cisse

Ben Arfa

Gosling

Marveuax

The season was very inconsistent, my main problem was putting more than 2 or 3 wins together at one time. I ended up in 13th, with Liverpool and Chelsea occupying 11th and 12th respectively. Man City won the league, Utd the League Cup and Everton the FA Cup. Despite being 7 places below my original aim, i was only 11 points off, less than 4 wins away from being in the top 6 and now that a lot of these players have matured, I think they will kick on next season.

Transfers in:

Vidic

Kelly

Borini

Parejo

Ince

Sinclair - Loan

Flethcer - Loan

Out:

Anita

R taylor

Santon

Collocini

Guttierez

The introduction of Vidic and Fletcher I hope will be invaluable to giving some experience to the squad and helping the young players develop.

I've also just received a bid of £17.5m for Krul from Barca, so if he is to go, i may bring in 2 keepers, one experienced and one youngster.

The board have given me an Ultimatum of having to get 9 Points from my first 5 games or i could be sacked. This could be tricky as i have Noriwch H, Swansea A, QPR H, Arsenal A, Chelsea A. It looks like i'll have to win my first 3 games if i want to stay on as boss!

So my squad going in to the 2nd season:

GK: Krul? Elliot

Rb: Debuchy, Kelly.

Lb: Haidara, Dmmett

Cb: MYM, Taylor

Cb: Vidic, Keane, Williamson

CDM: Ward Prowse, Cousins,

CDM: Tiote, Flethcer, Sissoko

LW: Garcia, Ince, Sinclair

CAM: Lingaard, Parejo

RW: Gouffran, Borini

St: Austin, Ameobi, Campbell

Like I said, i've taken a longevity approach to this, hoping to be given time to build around the nucleus of young English players! Wish me luck.

[smplfc123]

Krul went to Barcelona for £17m so i brought in Forster and Johnstone for a combined total of £5m.

Won the first league game 1-0 at home to Norwich, tough away game at Swansea next.

[Andrew!]

How much did Ward-Prowse set you back? Southampton are currently 20th after 30 games in March 2016 so I'm hoping to get him cheaply.

Since my last post Newcastle has been taken over and is now a PLC and I was also given a transfer budget in the winter of £100m . Verrati was sold to PSG for £20m up front, and the under-performing Bony also went to PSG for £7m. I have bought Phil Jones from Man Utd, and Paul Pogba from Juventus as well as a brilliant Brazilian CB/DM/CM regen called Michael for £3.5m. Chelsea are still dominant in the league this season, and I sit in a fairly distant 3rd place, level on points with Man Utd but with a game in hand. Also managed to fend-off bids of up to £29.75m for Sergio Roberto from Man City.

[NLH]

Got Ward-Prowse for £3.8m check to see how long his contract is since he was in his final year for me

Another player you could buy is Pierre Emile Kordt Højbjerg (Bayern Munich) if you plan on playing JWP as a DLP(S). he can also cover as a DM or AM

[Andrew!]

Southampton have indeed just been relegated with 4 games to go, hopefully I can get him and possibly Lallana cheaply as I did with Bony when Swansea got relegated. Meanwhile I am in the Champions League Semi-Final against Barcelona, 1-0 down on aggregate (played away). Let's hope I can make it through! Would love it if I did

I slipped up in the league against Aston Villa and now Man Utd and me are racing neck and neck for second place! Pity I'm playing the leaders Chelsea next

[smplfc123]

As i got him straight away he's costing me £16m potentially, but only £4m of that was upfront and he's worth every penny and he's only going to get better.

Joint top after 9 games! So much for feeling the pressure of having to get 9 points from my first 5 games. I'm glad the board stuck with me and gave me the chance to take this young squad forward!

Top 6 is still my aim though. Charlie Austin 7 in 10 so far!

[Andrew!]

Nice, keep it up!

I didn't get Ward-Prowse in the end as I decided my packed midfield is more than good enough; I have Pirlo, Tiote, Nocerino, Hughes, Sergi Roberto and Ross Barkley. Having another young creative midfielder will only mean less playing time for Hughes as Roberto is first choice at the minute. I finished second in the league as Man Utd slipped up on the last day by losing 2-0 to Nottingham Forrest. Unfortunately I lost the Semi-Final against Barcelona, winning the game 3-2 but losing on away goals; a silly backpass from Papadopoulos allowed them to score their winning goal, but I did have a shot kicked from off the line and a header directed straight at the goalkeeper within injury time . I was so disappointed to have lost like that, I then forgot about the FA Cup final until after the last game, only for me to lose 3-1 to Chelsea after going in the lead from Pirlo's excellent free-kick.

Ah well! The board expects me to challenge for the title this year, and have given me a budget of £150m (would have been £200m for the title winner). Let's see if I can tempt Lamela and Januzaj away from their clubs!

Edit: The European Championship is over, England got knocked out by Switzerland in the Quarter-Final and Croatia were the eventual winners. I've declared my interest in the England job and they have said they are considering me but in the meantime Spain have offered me their job! I want to manage both!

[smplfc123]

Yeah he is class but that is an impressive group of centre midfielders you have there!

Have you got many of the original Newcastle squad left?

[Andrew!]

Yeah I've got Ashley being kind enough to sell the club to thank for my squad haha (side note: he is now owner of FC Twente). I have Sammy Ameobi, Debuchy, Elliot and Alnwick are still there, Marvueaux only left this summer (2016), Coloccini is still captain and played 35 league games in 2015-16, Tiote is still here holding the midfield, Hatem Ben Arfa too (was my top scorer in 2014-15 with 41(4) played and 23 goals) and I've also got Campbell.

[Gungner]

Just started a save with Newcastle...

Have only managed to sign Wilfried Zaha on loan and Steven Whittaker for £3,2 million. I can't seem to attract anyone to the squad. Went for Honda, but he decided to sign for Everton.

[Gungner]

Too close to call?: http://puu.sh/97NYz/370e9e215a.jpg

Just sold Santon to Bayern for £20 million, which gave me £14 million to shop for (since I only get 65% of transfer income available). And despite being £70k in the plus in the wage budget, I can't offer high wages. In desperate need of a CM, but I couldn't get one do to the wage thingy. Did manage to sign Darren Fletcher from Man Utd., which will have to do.

[Pvphil]

Hi, was just wondering, has anyone ever had a new stadium built? I'm in September 2019 of the winter update with Newcastle. St James' Park was expanded to 58155 about 4 seasons ago and I've asked every season for a new stadium with no success. We are currently the most reputable club in the world and are also the most valuable at 1.2B. I also have 150mil in the bank. Any help or advice to get a new stadium would be much appreciated!

[DandyDon]

Afternoon all, not been on my Newcastle save in a while as computer problems have meant I needed to replace motherboard and ram, then needed to do a reinstall of windows. I've eventually got round to downloading all my steam games again and whilst I do have a copy of my original Newcastle save with my all English team on an external drive I've decided to give a fresh save a bash starting with the squad as it is in the latest update, so no Cabaye and just the £5 million starting transfer budget.

I'll put a full update on later on, but I'm planning to try and sign a target or maybe 2 that Newcastle have been linked with in real life after raising some extra funds. I'm going to be fairly ruthless with the existing squad, not actively try to flog them, but anyone who complains about wanting to move to a bigger club or whatever is getting shipped.

Also going to try and resist temptation to go for the likes of Barkley, Hughes and Ward-Prowse etc after signing them on my other save. Main difficulty I forsee is trying to bring a decent striker on a permanent deal in the first season, may have to content myself with the existing loan deals in place.

[Andrew!]

Barlas Acar came from Galatasaray for £2.9m, joining on 1 January 2018.

Jim Lawrence came from Hibernian for £1.1m after the first season.

Michael came from Botafogo for £3.5m in 2015-16 (currently on loan at Bayern Munich as he wanted to go out on loan and I've got plenty of CBs for now (though he'll be a starter next season). He made 10 appearances in 2016-17 and won the league and 6 in the first half of 2017-18.

Alejandro Medina came from River for £8m in 2015-16 and is looking ready to replace Debuchy as first choice RB; 13, 14 and currently 12 league apps in the 2 1/2 seasons I've had him.

Damian Pomo came from Boca for £10m in 2015-16 and is my favourite player at the club atm.

These are some of my regens, there are several others who are of great quality who I've bought (mostly) but two or three (pictures to follow) have come from the club itself. The future is looking very promising indeed

In February 2018 I'd say my best XI would be: ter Stegen, Pomo, Phil Jones, Papadopoulos, Debuchy, Roberto, Ross Barkley, Januzaj, Marco Reus, Antonio Allione, Lukaku.

[NLH]

Some very good players there, could you post a screenshot of Lukaku?

Michael is going to be a beast at corners

[DandyDon]

Some very good players there, could you post a screenshot of Lukaku?

Michael is going to be a beast at corners

Looks like he's just going to be a beast full stop

[DandyDon]

2013/14 - Back to the start save

Made some progress on my new save started earlier this week, got to the start of December so far. Things are going pretty well so far. My first objective before the season started was to try and get a little more creativity into the squad. I wasn't planning to actively try and get rid of any of the starting squad, but I was going to be willing to consider decent bids for anyone and wasn't going to mess around trying to persuade any players who wanted out to stay.

With only £5 million pounds to spend I'd settled on a couple of potential targets the youngster Angel Correa of Rosario or the transfer listed Matias Fernandez of Fiorentina. Both were available for about £2.5 million, unfortunately I missed out on Correa when Dortmund snapped him up one day in to my new save.

I put a bid in for Fernandez and whilst waiting for that to go through and after playing our first friendly PSG and Arsenal came in with bids for Hatem Ben Arfa. Neither were particularly great starting bids considering his value at the time was rated at £17.5 million so I turned both down. Ben Arfa immediately wanted to know why he hadn't been allowed to discuss terms with PSG, despite being told that I didn't consider the bids to match his value to the club he stated he wanted to leave. So I took him at his word, offered him out for £30 mill and received a £23.5 mill bid from PSG straight away. Arsenal bid more but only £5 mill upfront, so I accepted the PSG bid and HBA was gone. Not too long after that Tiote raised his concern that he wanted to move to a bigger club, wouldn't accept my response that I felt we could match his ambition so he ended up on the transfer list. He then complained that I turned down a paltry £6.75 mill bid from Real Sociedad (really not sure I'd class them as a bigger club Cheick....). In the end I was able to talk Sevilla into offering a deal that would reach £12.5 mill for Tiote and he finally got his more a few days before the end of the transfer window.

In the meantime I used the money raised by the sale of Ben Arfa to secure a deal for a real life Newcastle target and bought in Clement Grenier from Lyon. The price will reach £12 million eventually and along with the confirmation of the deal for Fernandez should mean we wouldn't miss Cabaye or Ben Arfa too badly. I also used some of the Ben Arfa transfer cash to add a winger, snapping up Chris Brunt from West Brom for £3.7 mill and strengthened central defence by bringing in Bruno Ecuele Manga from FC Lorient for a fee that will rise to £6.5 mill. I used the last of the HBA money to activate Mohamed Diame's minimum release clause from West Ham for £3.5 million once Tiote had put in his transfer request.

Once the deal for Tiote went through I put it to use as well. I tried to sign a couple of potential striker targets, Alberto Gilardino wanted too much in terms of wages for my liking and a couple of other younger targets were just out of reach in terms of the fee, or not interested in a move to SJP. So instead I completed a couple of deals on the last day of the window to bring in some extra depth to the squad. Juan Sanchez Mino from Boca Juniors is predominantly a left midfielder but can play anywhere on the left wing or in central midfield and he can provide cover for Santon or Haidara at left back, but also Brunt or Marveaux further up the pitch. Callum Chambers was brought in from Southampton, adding another english player to the squad, and providing back-up to Debuchy who he'll replace in the long run.

I'm pretty happy with the balance overall though I would have liked a better striker perhaps as I felt we might be reliant on Remy when he recovered from injury. There's a decent mix of skill and creativity in midfield and with Fernandez, Grenier and Brunt there's some real threat from free kicks too.

Results so Far

I was slightly concerned going in to the start of the season with only De Jong and Cisse fit upfront having not managed to sign another striker, and things didn't look promising when we got crushed in friendlies by Reading and Fiorentina where we barely mustered a shot on goal.

We got a major confidence boost though when the league got underway properly, debutants De Jong and Fernandez scoring as we notched up an easy win against Sunderland. We managed a hard fought draw against Swansea away where De Jong continued to impress for me, playing as the lone striker with a target man role. We went behind twice in the game but fought back both times and actually edged Swansea in terms of possession on their own ground which I was happy about.

I rested some key players for our first League Cup match against Wolves and it almost backfired spectacularly as we were 3-0 down with half an hour to play. A burst of goals from Cisse, Sammy Ameobi and a fluke own goal somehow got us into a 4-3 lead but Wolves forced extra time late on. Thankfully they must have tired badly after that as we domnated extra time and Cisse scored another 2 to see us into the next round.

Confidence was fairly high by now and we won the next 3 league matches on the bounce to have us up near the top of the table. Grenier and Fernandez were settling in well, while De Jong was exceeding any expectations I had of him.

I rested key players again for the League Cup but we were still dominating the match. Unfortunately we got caught out by my insistence on keeping the high defensive line we'd been using so far, three defensive mistakes let Cardiff players run in on goal to score after we took a lead on 10 secs. Remy playing his first game back from injury impressed though, grabbing a brace. We should have at least taken the match to extra time but Chris Brunt had a penalty saved and somehow managed to stab the rebound straight back at the keeper lying on the ground.

After a rather fortunate 0-0 draw with Man Utd (who were in dire form at the time and bottom of the league) we put in our best performance so far to beat Chelsea 2-0 in a very even match, before losing our first league game away at Spurs (they're a real bogey team for me at times). We recovered from an awful start in our next home game, down by 2 goals with 15 minutes to the current league leaders Everton, eventually dominating the rest of the match but couldn't find the winner we deserved.

After that we've had a run of what the pundits might call 'very winnable' games and managed to secure 5 wins from 5 to take us level on points with Everton at the top of the table. Liverpool and Man City sit just behind us, but both of them have games in hand at the moment.

Two players in particular have helped this run, playing far impressively than I'd hoped for at first. Luuk De Jong has 11 goals in 14 appearances for me so far and is currently topping the league scoring charts . Almost as impressive has been Sylvain Marveaux who has scored 3 so far but made 10 assists from 13 appearances.

We're quite a bit ahead of where I expected to be in terms of league progress but I think we've been very fortunate with our fixture list really, we've been able to build a lot of confidence which helped in some of the tougher games. December in to January should be interesting as we have some very matches coming up against Arsenal, Man City and Liverpool in the space of a few days.

[DandyDon]

playing Man City, had the ball in back of their net twice in first 4 minutes...both chalked off. 5 minutes and Kompany scores from a corner.....not going to be our day methinks

[upthetoon]

hi guys. i played this newcastle game with the intention of forming a team consisting of english players. i finished 2nd in the 2nd season. luuk de jong was absolutely outstanding in the first season and i marked Charlie Austin to be the man to replace him.

instead of going for players with plenty of red stats(>15), i went for players who are english and decent stats and very affordable. like in real life newcastle where cashley doesn't open his purse strings. and i intend for 5 from my starting 11 in 5 years time to be from my academy.

tom ince. outstanding. bought him for 1.4million pounds! scared plenty of important goals.

jason lowe. proved to be a very decent and consistent performer. not spectacular but very solid. cost 4.2million.

cream of the crop. Charlie Austin. brilliant player who is the most important player in my tactic. he makes the entire forward line move with his hold up play.(target man support)

charlie austin finished as top scorer.

very enjoyable game. and im continuing in my pursuit for ward-prowse or will hughes. and plenty of youths will be developed and promoted.

[dan99]

Guess which other team in black and white stripes I'm trying to emulate

Current starting eleven, going into the 3rd season.

Back up;

GK: Rob Elliot. Solid enough back up, never complains about not playing and low wages.

CB: Smalling, Kara and Mazuch. All bought before the 3rd season. Smalling wasn't playing at Utd, so got him for £7m. I wanted a player with a bit of height, as my starting back 3 aren't that big. Kara provides that height. Mazuch was brought in on a free, 6th choice and won't play much.

WB: Coleman for back up on the right, quite cheap at just over £6m. Digne came in on loan to provide back up for the left, Ayew was retrained to be able to play there as well.

DM: Anita, does a good job when called upon. Can cover the 3 midfield roles and both the wing backs, so great to have on the bench.

CM: Gil Romero covers the BWM role. Once he's progressed more I expect him to win and hold that role. Sissoko & Lucas Romero are the back up BBM. Lucas Romero is worth £17.5m despite now playing every week. Hope he can progress into a proper BBM.

DLF: Pratto is back up. Handy as well, if I'm protecting a lead, he can come on and I'll change the role to DF.

TM: Mandžukić was a must sign after I saw him on the transfer list for £9.5m. Harry Kane is the back up, but I'm hoping he gets a lot of game time. He's my number 9 and labelled the next Shearer

Finished second in the first season, which was great. Won the league in my second season, and after that, Ashley sold the club to some dude who'd had something to do with St. Mirren. Very happy with my defence so far, Krul got 21 clean sheets in the first season, 20 in the second.

[DandyDon]

Lost Marveaux for a few games last night due to a niggling ankle injury and Sammy Ameobi has put in a little run of three very impressive performances. Grabbed 2 goals and 2 assists in the last three matches. Got into January still in the European places for now, though leaders Everton have opened up a 5 point gap.

Don't think I'll be making any moves in the january window unless we have a major injury crisis, nobody interesting has popped up on the transfer list and no-one has made any bids as yet for the likes of Santon, so should be fairly quiet month.

[Jean0987654321]

Guess which other team in black and white stripes I'm trying to emulate

Current starting eleven, going into the 3rd season.

Back up;

GK: Rob Elliot. Solid enough back up, never complains about not playing and low wages.

CB: Smalling, Kara and Mazuch. All bought before the 3rd season. Smalling wasn't playing at Utd, so got him for £7m. I wanted a player with a bit of height, as my starting back 3 aren't that big. Kara provides that height. Mazuch was brought in on a free, 6th choice and won't play much.

WB: Coleman for back up on the right, quite cheap at just over £6m. Digne came in on loan to provide back up for the left, Ayew was retrained to be able to play there as well.

DM: Anita, does a good job when called upon. Can cover the 3 midfield roles and both the wing backs, so great to have on the bench.

CM: Gil Romero covers the BWM role. Once he's progressed more I expect him to win and hold that role. Sissoko & Lucas Romero are the back up BBM. Lucas Romero is worth £17.5m despite now playing every week. Hope he can progress into a proper BBM.

DLF: Pratto is back up. Handy as well, if I'm protecting a lead, he can come on and I'll change the role to DF.

TM: Mandžukić was a must sign after I saw him on the transfer list for £9.5m. Harry Kane is the back up, but I'm hoping he gets a lot of game time. He's my number 9 and labelled the next Shearer

Finished second in the first season, which was great. Won the league in my second season, and after that, Ashley sold the club to some dude who'd had something to do with St. Mirren. Very happy with my defence so far, Krul got 21 clean sheets in the first season, 20 in the second.

Juventus West

[DandyDon]

2013/14 - Progress Report

Going into the final few weeks of my new save and we've rather miraculously kept the good form going whilst Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool are all have pretty awful seasons. Early pace setters Everton have fallen away badly in the second half of the season too allowing us to somehow open up a decent gap at the top of the table.

Results so far

We've managed to keep plugging away, succeeded in grabbing a draw away at the Etihad in a strange game that saw three chalked off goals for both sides.Thought we were heading for a bad run of form after we lost narrowly to Arsenal with a last minute goal and could only scrape a draw against a woeful Fulham side, but we grabbed a rather lucky win at Liverpool which kept us up there near the top.

We had a fantastic run of form in January and February that saw us go top of the league on our own and grab 2 vital wins against Man utd and Chelsea. The win away at Chelsea was especially sweet as we came back from 2-0 down with Luuk de Jong grabbing a rapid fire hattrick in the second half. We went out of the FA Cup after I put out a bit of a B side in the replay with Chelsea and we got promptly spanked, but I wasn't too unhappy with that.

Our best performance so far came with a 5-0 win away at Southampton which wasn't one of those freak results where the stats are pretty even but you somehow score with all 5 of your shots on goal. We dominated from start to finish with 61% of possession and 23 shots against a team that had been pretty good defensively in the weeks running up to that match.

Luuk de Jong is now way out on his own in the goalscoring charts with 28 league goals, 11 more than Suarez while Marveaux and Remy are currently the top two in the assists with 19 and 11 apiece.

Table as it stands

So with 6 games left to go we're 6 points clear amazingly, and we have a chance to make it 9 points if we win our next match. Our remaining games are Aston Villa (H), West Ham (A), Man City (A), Fulham (H), Arsenal (A) and finishing with Liverpool (H). I think if we can grab the three points against Villa we should be champions, as long as we do the business against West Ham and Fulham. Chelsea do have an easier run in on paper as they only have to play Liverpool from top half of the table, but they do have distraction of an FA Cup semi final and possible Cup final after that....so fingers crossed

[DandyDon]

ok well our push to the title hasn't gotten off to greatest start...went behind 1-0 to Villa in first 5 minutes to a Benteke screamer, then spent next 80 odd minutes missing chance after chance, so we haven't opened up that lovely 9 point cushion after all.

[lewis999]

What formation you using Don? Was thinking about starting a Newcastle game earlier today.

[DandyDon]

I'm switching between my own 4-2-3-1 formation and Minimal Fuss' Fussination tactic. Generally start all home matches and easier away games with my own tactic. Use the Fussination formation in games where I want to keep things fairly tight.

In the 4-2-3-1 have the AMR set as an Inside Forward and usually play Remy there, the AML is a winger either Marveaux or Brunt. Luuk de Jong is usually starting striker and plays as a Target Man Attack which seems to work fairly well with my team. Have the team set hold a fairly high defensive line which I'm considering dropping as we do quite often get caught out by very quick counter attacks.

[DandyDon]

Crisis time maybe?

Dropped more points against West Ham after a rather poor performance by Tim Krul. They too the lead against run of play when we gave away a free kick, Krul got a hand to it but only to push it into the net. We managed to equalise before half time and were looking good when Demel got sent off...but then a massive clanger from Tim. A ball over the top saw Morrison running in on goal, Krul runs out beyond his six yard area so Morrison thumps a shot straight at him, but krul only knocked it up in a slow loop over his own head. Then just stands and watches as it bounces over the line.....cheers Tim.

Thankfully Anita managed to smack in a long range effort to grab us a draw at least.

EDIT: ooof! Swansea just did us a massive favour beating Chelsea 3-1. We still have a 3 point lead with our final 2 games to come and just picked up a morale boosting 4-0 win against Fulham in our last match. We haven't quite blown it yet

[DandyDon]

Well Chelsea's slip against Swansea proved to be key. meant we they only had one match left and were three points behind. That left us only needing a draw from our second last match against Arsenal, which we managed to secure. We were actually leading 2-1 until a last minute o.g. from Diame.

We couldn't quite wrap the season up in style with a win against Liverpool either, letting another lead slip near the end as Sturridge equalised with just 2 minutes to go in another 2-2 draw. However it would have been pretty churlish to give the players a row for that when we'd just won the premier League.

Still Chelsea really should have taken advantage of our form in those last 6 matches one win, two defeats and three draws came pretty close to throwing it all way.

The summer promises to be a busy one as I'll need to strengthen the squad to cope with Champions League football and to put on a respectable defence of our title. Cisse, Gouffran, obertan and Williamson all put in transfer requests before the last match and Monaco are looking at Santon and Debuchy. I've put in the necessary bid to make Luuk de Jong a Newcastle player and I've also agreed a deal for the transfer listed Lewis Holtby and offered a contract to Tom Ince. Should we have enough funds available I'm hoping to bring Remy back on a permanent deal as well.

[NLH]

Just beat second place Chelsea 6-1, 3 goals from Gabriel Barbosa, and a goal each for Zouma, Balanta and Corchia

Currently in February 2018, top of the league by 11 points with Chelsea, Arsenal and Man City making the top 4. Haven't won the F.A cup or Capital One Cup yet, the Champions League has also eluded me with Manchester United winning it 4 times in a row . Everton somehow has a higher reputation than me somehow (they are currently 2nd in the world) not sure if it is something to do with the tycoon takeover they had this season

[NLH]

Objectives

For the 2017/18 season the main targets was to challenge for the English Premiership title, to get into the finals of the Champions League and give to give my younger players game time to develop.

I have won the EPL for the third consecutive year by drawing with 2nd place Manchester City. I didn't have as much success in the Champions League, with my club bowing out of the competition in the quarter-finals to Juventus. I think I did quite well in balancing game time for my younger players and winning competitions, they were given time in domestic cup games. They were knocked out early in the Capital One cup by Watford in the fourth round and reached the semi-finals of the FA cup.

Transfers

Most of the players bought were under 18's which will be posted later, Obiang was bought to give us more options in midfield and Gaitan was brought in on loan to teach Goddard the "Curls Ball PPM".

Hughes was an unplanned sale but he was going to be sent out on loan again before Utd came in with a bid. Cardozo was another player I was planning on loaning out so I could give more game time to my regens. Draxler was sold after an average season because I couldn't find a way to fit him in along with Bernard, Correa and Rodriguez

Tactics

The roles in this usually change depending on who I play but this is the tactic I mainly use along with another one which uses a DM instead of an AM.

Notable Performances

A 2-1 win against Man City to to win the Community Shield, Goals from Barbosa and Agustin Allione

A home win against Liverpool that ended 4-1 with Bernard grabbing a hat-trick and a goal from Kurt Zouma

A win at St. James' Park that saw Chelsea lose 6-1 with goals from Balanta, Zouma, Corchia and three for Barbosa

A 6-0 win against rivals Sunderland at St James' Park with goals from Barbosa, Balanta and a brace from Bernard and Zouma

Angel Correa - Ended the season with 39(4) appearances scoring 6 goals and assisting 28 (4 goals, 22 assists in 33 league games)

Gabriel Barbosa - Finished the season as the top goalscorer, scoring 35 in 45 games with 6 assists to his name (34 league apps, 25 goals and 4 assists)

Éder Álvarez Balanta - Part of the defence that kept 19 clean sheets in the league.

Youth Development

Silviu Radu Expecting this one to overtake Krul for the No. 1 top in a few years, looking to loan him out after the 18/19 season.

Freddy King* My current back up RB, reports say he is injury prone but managed to stay fit throughout the whole campaign

Paul Cartlidge*

Giovane

Luis Miguel Mucino Bought this season, managed to make a few 14 apps with an average rating of 7.19, looking forward to more of the same.

Luis Was also a new addition this season, costing 17m, I haven't decided what role he should be playing yet

Tommaso Miracapillo Made 29 appearances in all comps, I've decided he will be my future DLP(d)

Ian Sniath* An academy product that came through towards the latter stages of '16/'17 season. not sure what to do with him quite yet.

Andrew Cruse* Another Academy product that came through this year, Future England midfielder along with Snaith hopefully, not sure how to develop this one either

Ozkan Ergin Was injured with a broken foot for 5 months shortly after he arrived, looking for big things from this lad

Lee Goddard* Well on course to reach his potential, will look to get him more involved this year.

Jacques RenaudAnother person on course to reach his potential, will look at a loan move for '18/'19 or '19/'20 season

Alexey Kuzyaev Doesn't get many games because of Renaud, and because I don't know what to do with him. No clue at all

Sebastian Enrique Future IF(a) on the right wing.

Tomas Brunclik Bought for no real reason, Looks like a solid Adv Forward in the future.

Dean Ashby* His physical attributes has improved a lot, but hopefully his technical skills are next in line to improve

Gary Tobin* Aiming to develop Tobin into a powerful striker that can player either as a CF or a Target Man next to Barbosa/Ashby

Danny Robinson* Didn't really get too many games/goals this year, Has been sent out on loan for the 18/19 season

* next to their names means that they came through Newcastle's Youth Academy

[Andrew!]

Not had much time to play what with the World Cup and all. Currently in November 2018 in first place though. I've noticed that Thiago and Lamela at PSG are both up for sale for a combined £40m because they want CL football. I know I can't sign them, but I want to!

[NLH]

Why can't you sign them? I've had a few chances to sign Lamela but he's at Real Madrid now, I was thinking about signing Sandro for £20m but I already had Deigo Reyes.

Currently in December, in pre-season I sold Massido Haidara for £10m, Agustin Allione left to join Man Utd for £42.5m and Corchia left to join Arsenal on loan. I've had bids from Man City for Barbosa for ~£62m rejected them all . Bernard was close to joining Arsenal for £30m before Utd bid for Allione because I didn't know if I could give them a lot of game time. Utd also bid £35.5 for James Ward-Prowse, Didn't accept it because I couldn't find a replacement for him

I brought in Rafeal from Utd for £53m who was transfer listed by request for £42m . Massimo Bruno was brought in from Real Madrid for £9.75m.

Currently 4th place in the EPl trailing Utd & Chelsea who are joint 1st on 36 points with 16 games played. I've lost against Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City and Southampton who are 3rd atm and Stoke who are 2pts behind me. Not the best first half of the season I've had but I'm still in all competitions.

Bernard has been out with a torn calf since end of September, Barbosa has also been out injured for 4 weeks and should be ready to play before the new year, he's missed a few games for complaining about being fined for poor perfomances a few weeks before he got injured. I recently found out Mucino can't use his left foot despite being a LB

[NLH]

Got Man Utd in the capital one cup semi-finals, Chelsea got Norwich . Also got to play Arsenal in the F.A cup 3rd round and Shakhtar in the ECL 1st Knock-out round

[dan99]

I can understand why you rejected £62m for Barbosa, he's class. I've had bids of £65m for him, but his value is now £57m.

[fatlad86]

hi, just started new game with nufc. i want to sell either santon or debuchy to raise transfer funds. who would u people recommend to sell? im thinking debuchy cus he's older ? hmmm

[NLH]

I'd wait untill the end of the first season to sell either, if your playing on the Jan database you can ask the board for a higher transfer & wage budget. Try and sell Cisse, Obertan, Gosling and I got rid of Williamson.

Depending on if you play with a AMC either bring a RW in so HBA can play central or you can loan/buy Matias Fernandez of Fiorentina and keep HBA on the RW

[fatlad86]

thanks. i decided not to sell either, will play santon as lb for a season then will sell one next season as got jonathan silva coming in. gonna keep cisse for a season, cant sell gosling or obertan which is frustrating, or marveaux aswell, as i dont rate him. sold tiote as anita is more than capable of doing a good job there imo. i play HBA as rw cutting in and luuk de jong as amc. if anything i would like a good cheap right footed left winger. playing gouffran there in the meantime, will probably put remy there when he's fit

[NLH]

Won the Capital One Cup, Beat Chelsea 3-1 after extra time to win it, also played Nottingham Forest, West Ham, Fulham and Man Utd who I lost to in the Semi-Final first leg

[NLH]

Got drawn against Barcelona in the ECL Semi-Finals, Whilst Chelsea face Zenit

Currently 1st in the EPL with Man Utd in 2nd with 1 game in hand and 2pts behind me, I still have to play them at St. James' Park.

[NLH]

Been knocked out of the ECL by Barca on Aggregate, really annoyed by it since Zenit beat Chelsea to progress into the final as well. Hopefully I can at least draw with Man Utd and get a win at Crystal Palace to win the EPL

[Scully11]

I'm back but I'm starting a new Newcastle save only this time I'm only buying ayoze Perez, colback and siem and whoever else we buy this transfer window I've sold dan gosling as I don't need him and I'm going to play a standard 442. I won't be buying any other real world players unless newcastle sign them I'm real life and I will try to develop any youth I have into first team players. I will be updating every now and again until I get my new broadband sorted then after that I will post regular updates along with screenshots and whatever anyone else would like to see. Look forward to hearing from you guys good luck on all your games

[newcastleunitedfc]

right people starting a new newcastle save coz am getting bored with my wolves one, anyone got any good signings or formation tips for me to start off with cheers

[james_wilko]

Depends, have you got one of the updates with the new signings (Cabella, De Jong etc) or are you using the official update that will still have Luuk De Jong and Remy at Newcastle?

[NLH]

Depends on your formation & database, if you are using the Jan patch and use 4-5-1/4-3-3/4-2-3-1, then I'd buy a 1st team creative mid, left winger (or 2nd if you plan on using remy there), and a 1st/2nd choice right winger depending on where HBA plays. Promote a few players from the U21's as well

[DandyDon]

2014/15 Season Report

Well after a long break away from FM, watching World Cups and Wimbledon and getting addicted to Payday 2, finally got round to finishing the second season of my current Newcastle save. My squad is developing rather differently on this save as I've not bothered to focus so closely on signing homegrown players and potential.

Transfer dealings

After managing to win the title in the previous season I had a fairly healthy transfer budget of around £25 million. I'd already used what left of the first season budget to make Luuk De Jong's deal permanent since he'd been so successful for us. I raised another £10 mill or so by selling Obertan, Gouffran, Williamson, Jonas and Cisse. I missed out on bringing Remy back to the club as I'd missed the chance to get him for the arranged price when his loan ended in May, his asking price went up to £10.5 mill which I didn't have till June and by then he'd decided he wasn't interested in signing for us. Also failed to persuade Montpellier to sell Remy Cabella, at least at a price I was willing to pay.

My first two deals of the summer window were for players with some experience of the Premier League snapping up Lewis Holtby for £3.9 mill and Tom Ince for £1.2 mill, both having been transfer listed by their clubs. I then made a move for Matthias Ginter of Freiburg, managed to secure him for £8 million upfront (and about another £6 mill in addons). I always like to have one good passer in centre of my defense and Ginter looks like he can be that player plus my long term replacement for Colo. The other big target was to find another striker and after missing out on a couple of targets I gambled on Man City's transfer listed Stevan Jovetic. The fee was fairly reasonable as City were asking for £8 million, I'm a little more concerned that we've ended up paying him £83,000 a week though. Wtih Europe in mind our last big deal of the summer was to bring in Nathan Redmond from Norwich to add another englishman to the squad. Think we might have overpaid here in the end as the deal will eventually reach £14.25 million.

I added a little extra cover to the squad with a couple of loans from Serie A, bringing in Ishak Belfodil from Inter on a season long deal as our third striker and Leonardo Capezzi from Fiorentina for 6 months to provide a little backup to Grenier. Capezzi ended up impressing me enough that I offered him a contract deal in January and he'll be joining us on a free in July 2015.

The board made some extra transfer funds available in December and during the January window I brought in Slovenian midfielder Kevin Kampl from Red Bull Salzburg for £2 million. His best position is at AMR but he's capable of playing anywhere in midfield comfortably and we had need of some midfield cover at that point of the season. I also tried to bring in another keeper at that point, but couldn't get work permits for a couple of options I tried and proved to be rather costly in the end.

The Results

After a slightly shaky start losing to Man Utd twice in the space of a week we got things settled down and were looking pretty good in the league. We also managed to recover from losing our opening Champions League fixture away in Milan to qualify top of our group just one point ahead of the Italian club. Most of the squad, old and new, were playing pretty well but Jovetic was proving to be a major concern. From August until January he only scored three goals and two of those came in the 4-3 win against Porto.

Despite his lack of goals we went into the second half of the season neck and neck with Chelsea at top of the table. De Jong wasn't having quite as prolific a season for us this time round but was still scoring regularly while Ince and Redmond were also providing a goal threat. Then Jovetic started to find his feet, providing several assists in the first couple of games after the new year he went on to score 6 goals in 3 games toward the end of the month.

Unfortunately things went a little awry, after beating Hull 3-0 with ease we lost Tim Krul to a season ending injury. With Luuk De Jong out for a few weeks we then lost Jovetic to another season ending injury during the first half hour of the Norwich game. The injury to Krul proved the more damaging in the end as we lost or drew several matches we probably should have won, poor goalkeeping displays also led to a couple of shockers with 5-2 hammerings at the hands of Villa and Chelsea. We'd had by far the best defensive record during the first half of the season, but that vanished now.

Despite all that we went into the final day with a slim chance of still defending our league title if we could beat Spurs and Chelsea slipped up but it wasn't to be this time. We shipped a 94th minute equaliser at SJP while Chelsea romped home with a 4-0 win over Fulham.

Final Table

Second place was still a very satisfactory result overall, but I hope to improve on our cup showings next season and possibly get a little further in the European knockout rounds if possible. The main target during the summer will be to sign a better backup option to Krul and possibly sell off a couple of older players like Coloccini to free up their wages. I'm also considering moving away from my current 4-2-3-1 tactic and may make a couple of signings to fit in with a new formation if need be.