(FMT16) Diary of a Mediocre Manager

[Orikoru]

Some brief points by way of an introduction:

• I'm not great at this game. If you like reading about guys somehow taking Vanarama teams to the Prem title in only two and a half seasons, this won't be for you. The last game I owned before this one was FM13, so I've been playing catch-up somewhat - but I have to admit this game has me by the short and curlies, addiction has well and truly set in just like the old days. So if you fancy reading about an ordinary guy doing battle with a game he can best be described as average at, you've come to the right place.
  
• I play touch mode, because it's much closer to what I want from the game. My favourite games were CM01/02 and FM05, and I feel touch mode brings it closer to them, which is great for me.
  
• I've already played through nearly two seasons at this point so I'll quickly summarise them before going into more detail on season 3 onwards.
  
• On the old games I never really used to move clubs, I'd just pick a team and stick with them, and if I got sacked or bored I'd start a new game. But certain things have made the idea of doing a proper career appealling to me this time around.
  
• My laptop is old and poor (bit like me really) so I've only activated English Prem, Champo & League One, and Scottish Prem, Champo and League One.
  

Career Record (to be updated periodically)

Season    Team      Division     Pos.   Record          Achievements
2015/16   Rangers   Scot Champ   1st    28-6-2 90pts    Promotion.
2016/17   Rangers   Scot Prem    3rd    13-15-10 54pts  Europa Qualification
2017/18

[Orikoru]

Season 1

I started my game as Rangers manager. There were a couple of thought processes behind this.

1. I like the idea of restoring a fallen giant to their former level.

2. I liked the idea of having an easy first season to warm up with.

Transfers

Rangers' squad is plenty good enough for their division, plus I had no money anyway, so I didn't bother bringing loads of recruits who then potentially wouldn't be good enough for the Prem anyway. I spent about 300k on Sinan Bytyqi, an unpronouncable young AMRC from Man City who was recommended 4 gold 1 black star potential by my scouts. I extended Zelalem's loan to two years as well while taking the wage contribution down to zero (as recommended on this very forum somewhere!). I also spotted the lack of a CDM so I loaned in Digby (forgot first name) from somewhere (forgot the team as well).

Tactics

We had some decent attacking wingers, but they can't all play wide midfield (Barrie Mackay I'm looking at you here) so I opted to line us up in a 4-1-2-3 wide DM. Ryan Hardie will start up top as he looked a quality prospect, 18 years old and already with 14 finishing to match his impressive pace. Kenny Miller will play inside forward from the left, with Mackay as a support winger on the right. Zelalem advanced playmaker at CM, the other CM was up for debate, while Digby would sit in CDM. I ended up using the 'regista' role for him and he performed well. The defence and keeper were very solid for the Championship, all of them were good enough for the Prem so I had no concerns there.

Overview

Season was as easy as I hoped/expected. We only lost twice in the league, at either end of a 22 match unbeaten run. Ryan Hardie was exceptional and netted 35 goals in all competitions! Including back-to-back hat-tricks at one stage. Tavernier's level of consistency was something else as well, he absolutely stormed it at right back. Halliday was the surprise package, making the CM role his own with some top performances.

Cup performance was shocking though. I pretty much fielded reserves and back-ups in all three cups and got knocked out pretty early in all of them. Oh well!

[Orikoru]

Season 2

I was fairly appalled to discover my board's minimum requirement was 'European qualification by league position', i.e. I had to finish in the top three. And they only gave me around £350k to achieve this. I wasn't feeling confident to be honest.

Transfers

In

Kenny McEvoy - free - signed the winger on a pre-contract agreement last Jan. He was the only pre-contract I managed to get on our meager wage budget at the time.

George Long - free - the young goalkeeper had been released by his club after a long spell out injured, I picked him up as back-up, with the potential to actually surpass Foderingham eventually.

Michael Petrasso - free - another young winger, I had scouted him back when he was at QPR, his wage demands were too high then, but he'd subsequentally been released and thus lowered his demands enough for me to sign him.

Sean Goss - 300k, from Man Utd - with Digby's loaning ending I needed a new CDM. Picked him because of good ability in the regista role. Had reasonable potential at the time of signing.

Rolando Aarons - loan - another winger

Luke Brattan - loan - another CDM

Ryan Ledson - loan - good young CM.

Joseph Dodoo - loan - cover for Hardie at ST.

Nana Owusu - loan - DR/L as cover.

Adlene Guedioura - 180k from Watford - bought on deadline day when I realised that practically all my midfield and attack were under 21 and I thought I'd better get some experience in. He can play a number of central midfield roles and had better current ability than anyone I already owned.

Out

Miller and Templeton were both released as their contracts ended, hence the influx of wingers above. I sold Waghorn for 200-odd thousand as he was moaning about not playing enough. Some other also-rans were released or sold on the cheap as well.

Tactics

All my purchases had been in mind of keeping the same tactics that got me promoted, but before long I realised that the 4-1-2-3 wide DM simply didn't work in the Prem! After that I mainly went to the slightly more defensive 4-1-4-1, and even moved to a strikerless 4-1-4-1-0 late in the season when I got fed up of my strikers being useless. More on that later...

Overview

So yeah, my formation wasn't working at all and we really struggled to adapt early on. Hardie went from world beater to completely useless overnight. Dodoo was hardly any better. McEvoy performed quite well on the left, Bytyqi having taken a while to settle last season was finally starting to perform. Guedioura was proving a solid addition. After switching to 4-1-4-1 we found some solidity, but really struggling to score. At one stage we got four 0-0 draws in a row. After 14 games I had drawn 9 of them! We were fixed in mid-table and some of the players were getting a bit restless. I assured them performances would improve. Board were mostly just unhappy that we'd been battered by Celtic twice (4-0 in the league, 6-0 with my back-up team in the League Cup), but I don't know what they expect when Celtic have the likes of Jordan Rhodes, Wellington Silva and Narsingh in their team. Rhodes cost them over £7m alone.

In January we still had hardly any funds so I couldn't even afford a striker who was any better than what we had. I terminated Aarons' loan because he'd spent approximately 65% of the time injured. Other than that, I persevered with what we had, just trying to find that tactic that would keep us solid while also enabling us to actually score every now and then. As if it were too much to ask.

Eventually I tried a strikerless 4-1-4-1-0, mostly out of desperation at how poor our strikers had been, and lo and behold, I won three of the four games I used it in, and drew the other one. I don't know whether that was a testament to the tactics, or simply an indication of how much our awful strikers have been holding us back. Either way, the slightly improved form brought me up to 4th after 33 games, when the league splits and the top six play each other one more time.

I kept the strikerless system going into the top 6 play-off. We only got 3 points from the first 3 games, losing to Partick and Celtic but beating Aberdeen. However, Partick and Hearts were not uprooting any trees either - it was like nobody wanted it. In the fourth game I managed a draw with Hearts with a late equaliser, but remarkably the other two games also finished 1-1. With one game left the table looked like this:

We had Dundee Utd on the last day, away. Tough one, but on the upside their season was over - they could only finish 2nd. And Partick were away at Celtic. I had to better their result to get the Europa League spot my board demanded. Joseph Dodoo, who had proven himself to be a bit of a supersub (that's code for he occasionally scores from the bench but NEVER scores when you start him) popped up with a 77th minute winner!

Partick managed an away draw with Celtic but it wasn't enough - Europa is ours!

Most amusingly of all, I hadn't been in third place all season, since game four!

But hey, it's not the journey that counts it's where you end up. That's what people say, right?

[BluesGuy]

Would that have been Paul Digby from Barnsley? If so, he was a legend in my Barnsley save!

This looks good, keep it up!

[Orikoru]

Would that have been Paul Digby from Barnsley? If so, he was a legend in my Barnsley save!

This looks good, keep it up!

Yeah mate, that's the one! He was outstanding in that first season, but I didn't make the move permanent as I didn't think he was quite Prem quality. Bought Goss instead (ended up playing Brattan more often though).

[Orikoru]

So, season 3 rolled round and I was mostly just praying the board give me some money to work with this time. My expectations came in:

Not the best budget in the world, but better than I'd had before. It would take a lot of work but I might be able to make something of it. I was determined not to waste money on anyone who couldn't improve our first team, or at least be of a high standard for the division. The first thing I did was look at strikers, given that we'd scored the least goals in the Prem last season, this was obviously the number 1 area for improvement. I found Dwight Gayle languishing in the English Championship with Norwich and picked him up for under a million. Mainly I was looking for some pace and finishing ability, and he has both. My squad was ok out wide, with Alan Judge coming in on a free from Brentford, and having excellent ability on both wings as well as in the centre. So I focused on bringing in another quality central midfielder. It proved difficult to acquire the quality I was after, with my board tying my hands behind my back - had bids accepted for Drinkwater, and then Colback, but both times the board would let me pay them what they wanted. To be honest I was getting slightly frustrated and my head was momentarily turned by this:

..a post I had been linked to in the media. But eventually I found Liam Bridcutt was available, rated as a 4* player by my scouts and capable of playing DM or CM, so I managed to snap him for 800k.

I'd noticed my youth intake hadn't exactly been top notch, so with my spare cash I looked for regens at other teams that I could bring in - and found GRANT FLYNN at Hibs. He looked like an exciting prospect and came in as already my third best striker after Gayle and Hardie.

The first qualifying round for Europa seemed to come around before last season had even ended. We had so many games through late June and July that I only had to arrange one friendly! We only had time for one friendly. (I would put the results up here but I didn't manage to take a screenshot of them - I'll explain further down.) We had a paper thin squad for these early rounds since my five loan players from last season had obviously left and I'd had no replacements come in - but fortunately we were up against absolutely dross of course so we still coasted through ok. The league campaign started with two comfortable wins as well, but I was not a fan of my new nickname in the media...

Tinkerer?? They make me sound like some sort of pervert, I should sue!

Anyway, with all my transfer business finally done the squad looked like this:

Squad Page 1

Squad Page 2

Looking to keep my squad pretty streamlined, I was happy to use youngsters like McCrorie and Lyon as cover.

Anyway, I'd just shut my game down when I realised I forgot to take a screenshot of my results, so I tried to open it back up and this happened:

http://i67.tinypic.com/23iibn4.png

So yeah, that's the end of that then. I'm absolutely gutted since I had no back-up save files at all - lesson learned I guess. Thanks if you read my short-lived manager story anyway. I'm planning to write one for my next game too, which I think might be Vaduz. Bye for now.