[FM18] Finns Can Only Get Better

[deltablue]

Yes, I'm trying an FM18 thread

There has been something I've wanted to try for a while, having been very interested in that aspect of youth saves in particular, and that is to try and improve the fortunes of a weaker footballing nation, Finland in this case. It's currently top of my 'Second Star to the Right' to-do list but I didn't fancy waiting for the right time to come. However I imagine it's going to be tougher on this version if my Mexico experience on FM17 is anything to go by, as well as the nations league coming with expectations, unlike qualifying groups.

However that's some way in the future. Since there's a lot I want to explore in club management as well I thought I'd take over a First Division club, which would have the added bonus of having at least a bit of opportunity to nurture Finnish talent in the long run. One early signing was Kosovan (as I was focussed on fixing a few things as a higher priority) but also with Finnish nationality so any potential formal 'Finns only' policy hasn't technically been broken yet.

The club I chose was TPS in Turku, the oldest city in the country as well as the capital until a couple of hundred years ago. One of the main reasons was the long-term potential of a 12,000 stadium, named after Paavo Nurmi, the legendary athlete of the 20's and early 30's who was from the city. They also only had 'top half' expectations and narrowly beat out Oulu.

I wasn't sure how much I'd play this save or even how much I'd want to, but there are a couple of points in the week where I'd almost certainly not be playing FM otherwise which provides an opportunity to fit this in on a regular basis, and this thread will help provide motivation to give it more attention than previous 'casual diversion saves' (which in theory I like the idea of) have managed, so we'll see how it goes. However it might to pear-shaped early on and we'll see how it goes from there.

[deltablue]

 

Spoiler

TPS
2018, First Division, 5th.
2019, First Division, 2nd, promoted!
2020, Premier League, 4th.
2021, Premier League, 2nd.
2022, Premier League, 2nd, Cup Winners!
2023, Premier League, 6th.
2024, Premier League, 2nd.
2025, Premier League, 5th.
 

Trophy Cabinet
Finnish Cup: 1 (2022)

Finland
2024: International League Division D, 1st.
2025: World Cup Qualifier, 4th.

 

[deltablue]

May 2018

It was nice to have the cup to provide pre-season competitive action, and with all I've read on how tricky this version is, results were almost exactly as expected. We easily beat a fellow First Division team, lost after a good fight against two Premier Division sides, beat a lower league team and frustratingly drew with another after playing the early phase with the wrong tactics, having just set up the additional ones before, and even now the names are the wrong way around.

The league certainly started in busy style, playing 8 of the 27 matches in the first month. It's not been going too badly so far but we have been riding our luck quite a lot (in contrast to my frustrations during the cup about being incapable to get shots on target). It's also happened the other way around, especially at Jaro but to a lesser extent against Gnistan. It's probably no coincidence (ok, it might be) that both times I subbed on completely the wrong player, something that seems to be a lot easier to do in this version.

Despite being in second, it's hard to feel comfortable. There's still a lot I feel I need to get to grips with, too many teams are worryingly close (along with a potential sacking) and having started off on the back foot in terms of squad respect, things need to be going well to avoid any potential problems in the short term. We'll have to see how much 'long-term' I'm able to manage (especially regarding international management). However it could be so much worse so hopefully this isn't a false dawn. It should be an interesting and different experience anyway.

[Bedese]

Good luck Delta!

[deltablue]

On 09/11/2017 at 00:52, Jupjamie said:

Good luck Delta!

Cheers jupjamie. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to go far enough to make much of an impact (even if I do manage a decent number of seasons) given how much time and effort that would take but it will be nice change of pace. 

[DodgeeD]

[BoxToBox]

Hopefully things keep on the up and up for ya.

[Hootieleece]

Finns for the Win! Definitely interested in hearing about team building and tactics.

[deltablue]

22 hours ago, DodgeeD said:

Cheers for that

22 hours ago, BoxToBox said:

Hopefully things keep on the up and up for ya.

Hopefully, once I figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.

8 hours ago, Hootieleece said:

Finns for the Win! Definitely interested in hearing about team building and tactics.

Tactics would be my standard but there's no chance of finding a ball-playing defender at this level so I'm using an anchor man in front of the back 4. I'll probably get a screenshot next time if you want to see the full set-up. Going just for Finns is a good idea, especially seeing 'lots of players with the same nationality/speak the same language' as positives in the dynamics summary. Obviously that makes a lot of sense and some of the dynamics info is stating stuff that's been in the game already but seeing these things spelt out so clearly now helps a lot. New signings have to at least fit within the secondary social group as well.

Since the primary goal is to help the quality of the national team I might have to be more willing to sell players to clubs in bigger leagues, among other things that means playing slightly differently, which will be interesting.

[Jimbokav1971]

I've never managed in Finland, but hope to do so in my FM18 save. I will be keeping an eye on this for some pointers. Good luck. 

The Finnish names put me off a little, but I guess nicknames will sort that.

[deltablue]

50 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

I've never managed in Finland, but hope to do so in my FM18 save. I will be keeping an eye on this for some pointers. Good luck. 

The Finnish names put me off a little, but I guess nicknames will sort that.

As always I'm sure you and some of the others could give me a few tips or two in terms of developing players yourselves

[noikeee]

Oh my god. You finally upgraded from FM13? Welcome to the modern era. 

[deltablue]

1 hour ago, noikeee said:

Oh my god. You finally upgraded from FM13? Welcome to the modern era. 

Just a side project, nothing more

[deltablue]

World Cup 2018

Oh dear, this won't help the accusations that England are overpowered on FM Topping a group with Brazil is eyebrow-raising enough, then there's winning a quarter-final on penalties, against an Ivory Coast team who were the only non-European team to make it this far. I think the cherry on the cake has to be the fact that the winning goal was scored by Danny Welbeck! FM or no FM, that just doesn't quite sound right

Elsewhere, the hosts were the losers in an exciting group won by Mexico, while Italy's first round exit seems like less of a shock given they didn't even make it in real life. Wales then beat the Mexicans on penalties before falling to Portugal for the second tournament in a row. The Portuguese were then on the receiving end of a revenge win from Croatia. Norway were the other surprise package, especially beating Germany on penalties in the second round. That's bad news for Finland who have the Norwegians in their Nations League group, not that I felt they had much chance of coming out on top before.

[deltablue]

Jul 2018

This is last week's update delayed because of reasons. At the start I swapped out my original manager for a higher-rep one that could speak Finnish, since the squad were proving harder to satisfy than the board. That also allowed me to set up the tactics a bit differently which seemed to work when Kastrati gave us the win against GriFK and the lead against Ekenas, though it went downhill again from there. At the end of the orignal shortened session (that's the problem with fitting this in when I wouldn't normally feel like playing FM) we had been hammered by Honka and in the bottom half.

Resuming yesterday, I tinkered with things again, and appear to have hit upon something that's working. I had been worried about Oulu (who were second at the time) but they ended up being the first of 3 wins in a row (for the first time in the career) and only a draw against Haka (not a bad result in and of itself, especially given the narrow escapes at our end) stopped us from overtaking them into 2nd, though it's still as tight from 2nd to 6th/7th as it has been all season long with, Honka having been clear leaders from the start.

It would be great to get the 2nd, which would be a promotion playoff spot, but I think we've been far too patchy for far too long and it may cost us. There's also the fact that this season in general has very much been about finding my feet, deciding what more I need to do (or what I don't need to do which I thought I might) to get results. I also have a much better idea of who some of my prefered players are, as well as where to play them (which with a quite a few central/defensive midfielders meant any number of potential combinations), as I get a better understanding of my squad. I had been worried about an early firing but I have both a happy board and squad for now.

The major off-field news was a club record sale of one of those midfielders. Valimaa was actually my second signing (arriving the day after Kastrati) but despite being theoretically our best midfielder, had struggled to hold down a place in the team and was publically unhappy about it. When getting a bid worth over 60k in total from Miami (as it turned out he had only ever played in the USA before) I went for it, partly because we were 100k in the red and a decent 5-figure sum is still quite a bit of money at this level. The deal fell through which had me worried as I had felt confident enough to respond to a media question about his leaving but thankfully asking him to get interest produced an 80k flat fee, also from the USA. It's not going to help us out that much financially in and of itself but it was still a useful short-term move, especially for a player I didn't imagine we would miss too much.

 

[DavidBeckham]

Great improvement in July's results, hope you keep it going mate! \o/ 

[deltablue]

5 hours ago, DavidBeckham said:

Great improvement in July's results, hope you keep it going mate! \o/ 

Thanks. The early months were a bit chaotic on and off the pitch but it's definitely settled down now. It'll be interesting to see how we do in the remaining matches. 

[Sheriff7]

Fair title mate i still cant believe a country with very good players all these year didnt achieve even play of spot for a major tournament  Good luck!!

[deltablue]

On 21/11/2017 at 13:28, Sheriff7 said:

Fair title mate i still cant believe a country with very good players all these year didnt achieve even play of spot for a major tournament  Good luck!!

I'm not sure there have been that many beyond Litmanen and Hyypia though I know a number have at least played in big European leagues. I chose a country like Finland precisely because making a major tournament would be a big achievement but they might have the talent to make it perfectly possible.

[deltablue]

Youth Intake

 

Given it's a little more relevant to this career, I'll feature this for a change. It certainly looks like a strong first intake, though perhaps not the most diverse in terms the positions of the better players. Karjaleinen is perhaps the first standout player for me, especially as he's had a few opportunities from the bench and been surprisingly solid in a team where consistency has been hard to come by, so maybe he won't have to wait long to feature regularly. The keeper Pasanen is only marginally weaker already than our 27yr old Canadian first choice Jon Viscosi in a direct comparision. Speed is the main difference oddly enough, with only a tiny shot stopping difference and slightly bigger ones for Physical and Mental. Dare I throw him in already next season?

[deltablue]

Oct 2018

It's odd thinking of the final 10 matches as a run-in when we still had to face everyone  (and Jaro twice). We couldn't quite keep it up and 4 wins, 4 defeats and 2 draws sums the season up really. For the most part we played reasonably well though things undeniably swung our way on occasion just as they did against us. With so many teams close all season (from 2nd to 7th) it was rather frustrating knowing we could just as easily drop as low as 7th as be on the heels of the playoff place depending on the result.

We looked to have finally clinched the expected top-half place when going 3-1 up at Haka with 2 matches left. The fact that they came back to 3-3 was disappointing enough (though not a terrible result in and of itself) but it also demonstrated how FM somehow manages to show a sense of humour despite being incapable of actually doing so as being in a good mood after our 3rd goal, I'd started listening to 'Things can only get better'. Well played FM, well played. In the end we needed a comeback at the end at Jaro to clinch 5th (the club's worst position in history), being level on points with 3rd.

Looking ahead, there will be a bit of a clearout. We already had a bunch of excess players once I'd finally decided on my prefered selections and having a bunch of young players coming in gives me even more scope to offload people, hopefully raising a reasonable sum in total (though getting almost 800k in sponsorship means we have plenty of money for now anyway) and lightning the wage bill. We already have a transfer budget of over 150k for the new season and wage budget of 5kpw (with almost 20% of that free) so we don't need to do so for financial reasons at least.

I think I might have a couple of players to enable me to use the 'Mattersburg' again (I couldn't before since there wasn't anyone even remotely resembling a Ball-playing Defender), which hopefully will do for TPS what it did for Gillingham in the other career. The fact that there has been some success with it on FM11 and FM16 hopefully proves it can work outside of FM13, as it should if it's genuinely good enough. The cup group stage will help put that to the test, along with the potentially greater use of a few youngsters.

Star Player: Usually this would be someone like Kastrati, but despite some fabulous performances he was anonymous half the time. Instead it goes to Valakari, as the only regular to average over 7.00. He's also our best young midfielder and actually missed our brilliant July because he was at the European U19 Championship, making him our only international so far at any level. Obviously it would be great to have a few more in the Finnish youth teams at least before long.

Squad Stats

[deltablue]

Finland Update 2018

Finland aren't in as bad a shape as I thought, though their top players are getting on a bit. They did better than expected against Norway in the International League (and in fact I even worried if Estonia could be a struggle) with an away draw and it's a pity that a sending off helped condemn them to a home defeat. Still, 69th in the rankings is a low point for over a year.

Star Players

Ones to Watch

Again, I was pleasantly surprised. I saw Ytalupa as a reasonable enough prospect in the same Finland U19 squad as Valakari and wondered if that might be it. We're not necessarily talking about players who are set to be big stars but there's still quite a bit to work with to keep the national team at a decent standard, as well as a couple who might well be genuinely good, if not fantastic.

[Jimbokav1971]

Great intake. 

[deltablue]

21 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Great intake. 

It is but I won't be able to make use of all of them. For starters, I already had more central/defensive midfielders than I knew what to do with and there were too many new ones to find 'suitable' tutors for right away (I love that it now makes recommendations), especially since there were a couple of rejections as well. Nor are the personalities of the tutors that good either (a lot of 'Balanced', nothing remotely nearing Professional) but I guess I've just got to work with what I've got on that front. Thankfully there's a lot of potential and in a couple of cases, being decent enough already to get a head start when it comes to getting regular playing time. While the focus is on helping develop the best Finnish youngsters I can for for the national team, having a core of my own homegrown players would be great as well, assuming I don't end up with enough interest from bigger leagues that I have to regularly let them go.

[deltablue]

Now that's an Andrex-soft Brexit. Other toilet rolls are available.

[JMA]

Good stuff mate never been in Finland but as a Liverpool fan loved Hyppia and Jari 

 

Also used to like big Sheki Kuqi wasn’t he Finnish?

[deltablue]

5 hours ago, JMA said:

Good stuff mate never been in Finland but as a Liverpool fan loved Hyppia and Jari 

 

Also used to like big Sheki Kuqi wasn’t he Finnish?

Shefki Kuqi, indeed he was! Who's have thought that getting in a forward on loan (as he was initially) from a lower division club (which Sheffield Wednesday were at the time) would work out so well. We tried to repeat it a couple of years later with Adam Proudlock but it's fair to say that wasn't as much as success. It's probably no coincidence that he was injured when we were blowing our lead at the top of the Championship in early 2005.

[deltablue]

Winter 2018/19

This was set to be a relatively low key close season (I keep having to remember not to say 'summer') with reducing the squad being the main priority once I had figured out who my preferred players were, even before the youth intake. Thankfully that's easier in newer versions but after after early successes there were still a few more that were released (given how little it would cost to do so) or bumped down to the reserves.

In terms of newcomers I had to break what I thought would be a rule of not signing anyone whose report indicated that they wouldn't fit into a social group (though they seemed to manage with the secondary group once they arrived) for a couple of high priority players. Kastrati's main partner last year was the 40-yr old Hyyrynen who was always set to retire, and with Aaritalo one of the players let go (potentially unwisely for squad dynamic reasons) that left us short, so in came Jarvinen to potentially be the Kosovan's partner already. With left-back being a recurring problem across multiple versions, Heinoleinen was the preferred solution for that as well.

That might have conceivably been it but having sold both spare right-backs on request (being lulled by the fact that I didn't need either of them specifically, forgetting I still did one of the two), Salmi came in as a back-up with the first-choice Rahmonen being a 31-yr old card magnet, indeed he picked up his first suspension of the season during the cup group stage, just 5 matches in.

Again that was set to be all but after the DoF gave up on trying to sign the same keeper for the 4th time, I allowed a deal (the only paid transfer despite the fact that we weren't short of budget, especially after getting a 330k solidarity contribution on a 22M transfer of a Finnish defender from Gent to Dortmund) for a defender/midfielder to help solidify the Ball-playing defender position (which I'd actually gone without last year due to the lack of anyone suitable), something it was already clear we needed.

Signings

[deltablue]

March 2019

Well it started well enough. Again we were one of two First Division teams along two from the Premier Division and two lower division teams, and we had the weak two first. There were a few minor changes. The two initial signings were both in along with the extra defender, but the big story was that Pasanen would be thrown in as goalkeeper at just 16, as I hinted I might do. Other than that I didn't mess around with the team that much with the other young players having to settle for a second-choice status that would still give them game time without weakening the team.

We drew with one of out lower division opponents in last season's group stage so it seemed promising to comfortably win the first game, though we left it late to finally learn that shots on target were needed to bring goals in the second. Unfortunately the Premier Division teams (both away at that) were another matter entirely, and even though it would undoubtedly be useful for our keeper to be old enough not to need parential permission, arguably his defence let him down (they were all worse than he was both times, and he still made a bunch of saves in the second game especially), hence the need for a more suitable ball-playing defender than what we had. We weren't actually that bad otherwise, scoring twice to make it 3-2 and 2-2 respectively before it unfortunately fell apart again.

In between were our division rivals Jaro which we also lost but only because we were caught off guard early on, and over half the time we'd have gotten at least a draw from that. It was still a disappointing development after a promising start (even considering the quality of the first two opponents) but our performances still weren't bad, and we beat AIK in a friendly just a few days after the final group game. Kastrati and Jarvinen seem to have the makings of a strong partnership, with 3 goals each in 5 matches as well as having assisted each other.

The expectations are still relatively low at top-half but if we can pull out good performances out of the bag more often than last year (even if it won't be on anything like a consistent basis on what I've seen so far) maybe a tilt at 2nd and the playoff place might still be realistic. Even with our defensive issues against the big teams, just 1 goal conceded in the other 3 matches with a completely novice keeper isn't a bad record otherwise so maybe I shouldn't worry as much about that. Only the start of the league season will provide enough of a picture.

[deltablue]

After a month that was almost entirely FM-free it's time to try and make progress on this, as it's more time limited than the other career (going on the basis of sharing the FM13 with the current version) with specific goals in mind. I don't anticipate achieving that much however long I have either with a Finnish club or the national team but it would be nice to get TPS up and make them a strong Premier Division team, have at least one international crack (though I imagine being in and out of the door quite a few times if my usual international record is anything to go by), see the development of the young players I already have and in general get quite a bit more save history on the board. 

[deltablue]

This is very frustrating. The trouble with playing this save so infrequently is that there are almost always updates to download first. Ordinarily that wouldn't be a problem. My internet isn't the fastest but it should still have done it in under an hour. Instead for the past couple of weeks it's been a lot worse, not slow enough to make that big a difference doing other things but when it comes to steam downloads it took almost 2 days (for just 262MB!), then this weekend hasn't been the most convenient, though I did finally get going today.

Part 2 of the inconvenience came when my laptop insisted on letting it restart for a windows update while I was playing. I was still able to save and everything first but the disruption helped put paid to any chance of a big update today. The real problem is every time there is such an update FM13 (though thankfully just that game) stops working on that laptop and has to be reinstalled  so I can't play the other save anyway for the time being. However it's surprisingly doing a lot better than the FM18 updates (which might have been more of a server thing) having been worried it would take days.

[deltablue]

July 2019

 

The early part of the season showed off quite a few frustrations I've had in recent FM versions, ever since I took the Czech job in 'Delta's Eurovision'. So often performances are pretty decent but things tend not to quite go our way. In the case of a league like this one, margins are especially tight as shown by the fact that only 3 matches this season have had a multiple goal winning margin, all going our way thankfully. I'm not a fan of rushing to change things, especially with young players providing mitigating circumstances (our keeper just turned 17 in May, and one of our main forwards only done so in January), but while on FM13 I'd feel the confidence to be patient, this time I have felt the need to review my tactics every time I've loaded the game up feeling I needed to do things better.

The switch to the 'Mattersburg' for this season wasn't quite the magic bullet it had been at Gillingham. Speaking of the latter, it was amusing to be linked with them in this career though there was no chance of my taking up the opportunity to be their manager in both games. This save has more riding on be successful (or at least safe) with a single club that my others, especially wanting to keep an eye on a number of players. That made it stressful seeing us struggle to get the results I felt we deserved, though the latest tactical rethink yielded some success.

Even with just a single league defeat in the last 11 (and it's only a 27 match season) it's hardly been a spectacular run, and we've had a couple of close calls that could easily have been further defeats, though you could say the same about a few potential wins, especially the first two matches of the new system which both saw 2-0 leads slip, before I decided to return Kastrati to a deep-lying position (having previously decided to switch a few players to their most ideal roles which briefly left him too advanced and isolated). However it has been enough to take us gradually up the table and make me feel on a firmer tactical footing.

The Kosovan (though he is Finnish-born and not a 'true' foreigner) had actually started the season with an incredible run of goalscoring form, with Virtanen (whose position was most up for debate as something to 'fix') in a strong supporting role though our improved team form has been at the cost of their individual excellence. The lack of injuries has also helped keep a settled side (which is just as well given the backups haven't been that good for the most part) and develop a strong situation regarding dynamics, helping my feeling of things starting to go well. It's still nowhere near good enough (and making 2nd will be a big ask) but hopefully bodes well for next season.

Going back to Pasanen, the 17yr old keeper. Despite just 4 clean sheets out of 18 he's generally repaying my faith. He's been more consistent and reliable than some 'grown-up' keepers I've had in the past, and with our matches seeing a lot of chances at both ends he usually gets a bunch of saves to make. Usually it's the defenders in front of him who have been the let-down. There's only so much I can expect from him so far but hopefully he'll become good enough to make more of a difference in future.

[Dexter_Morgan]

Decent enough start delta, hope you manage to give this a proper crack 

[deltablue]

26 minutes ago, Dexter_Morgan said:

Decent enough start delta, hope you manage to give this a proper crack 

I fully intend to really push on with this over the coming weeks as there's a lot I want to try and do, including a national team stint (even if it might not go well) and see Finland in a major tournament or two (anything else would be a bonus). 

There are already a few players whose careers I am eager to develop and follow (even my own players will be let go to bigger leagues if need be) with a good supply of youth talent available judging by my initial experience. So plenty to hold my interest in this one.

[noikeee]

On 31/12/2017 at 18:02, deltablue said:

This is very frustrating. The trouble with playing this save so infrequently is that there are almost always updates to download first. Ordinarily that wouldn't be a problem. My internet isn't the fastest but it should still have done it in under an hour. Instead for the past couple of weeks it's been a lot worse, not slow enough to make that big a difference doing other things but when it comes to steam downloads it took almost 2 days (for just 262MB!)

Woah, that's crazy for these days, I reckon an update like that probably gets finished in a few minutes here... I know you've complained about slow internet a few times but that just seems like there's something wrong, dunno what internet plan you have.

The season seems to be going well though.

[deltablue]

1 hour ago, noikeee said:

Woah, that's crazy for these days, I reckon an update like that probably gets finished in a few minutes here... I know you've complained about slow internet a few times but that just seems like there's something wrong, dunno what internet plan you have.

The season seems to be going well though.

It's been especially slow since before Christmas, which admittedly has been known to happen in the past due to a greater local demand. Even here it should usually only be a matter of minutes and I can do the whole game in an afternoon or so. I think it was more to do with the steam servers in this particular case, not just judging by the rest of my internet speed but the fact that the FM13 re-download (though that's low priority) is more like 50kb/s on a pretty consistent basis (the FM18 update only briefly got anywhere near that at any one time and spend most of the time in single figures), still nowhere near as fast as normal but I can live with that.

The season could be going better but I'm satisfied for now. At least you can look forward to seeing me do plenty more of FM18 at last over the coming weeks

[deltablue]

Had my first crash of the save earlier this evening, when I was over half-way through the remaining games! That in itself wouldn't be so terrible but I lost the youth intake I had previously posted as well. I should still get another good one but I was already starting to use and feel a bond with the ones I had

[The_Gato_In_Goal]

More youth

Will be following this

[deltablue]

11 hours ago, The_Gato_In_Goal said:

More youth

Will be following this

Well it's not youth-only, but there should still be players from the youth system playing an important role

[deltablue]

Oct 2019

I was going to save the leave the youth update for just before the end of season update not imagining it would make a difference but my team had other plans. A loss to Haka seemed to confirm that sealing another top half finish (maybe 3rd if we did well enough) was the best we could hope for but that was followed by a run of 4 wins which took us top, as previous front runners OPS fell away badly. Unfortunately we had a couple of injuries including losing our key inside forward Virtanen for the rest of the season (maybe excepting playoffs) but still should have made it 5 against promotion rivals Jaro.

We had a couple of suspensions for the match after that which didn't help us in our first (and hopefully only) defeat of the league season by more than a single goal, at an OPS side trying to break out of their bad run. We managed to grab a win at GriFK, but only just, and that against the worst team in the league. That was still enough to take us top again going into the final round of matches and a good chance of getting the playoff place at least. We're at home to Tampere while our two main rivals are both away, to Ilves and Oulu, so it wouldn't be surprising to see one or both drop points.

Whatever happens now, I'm delighted at how the season has gone after such a depressing and frustrating start. It would be disappointing to miss out even on the playoffs but otherwise this would still be a promising sign for the future. The league is so close that it was amusing getting the summary of all the promotion contenders and their run-in schedule with just 4 games left, featuring 7 teams out of 10

[deltablue]

Final Day 2019

I will get to the youth intake eventually, I promise. As I already knew from the FM13 career and before, 'side' updates can feel like a big distraction from the main thread of a career so they've often taken a back seat when something else is going on.

Final days can sometimes disappoint, but this one didn't. We very much had the advantage early on and it was a relief when we took the lead. However our two main rivals were also ahead at the break so we couldn't afford any mistakes. Tampere really came out fighting in the second half and it was a relief to see Jaro had conceded an equalizer since by my calculation, a draw would still give us promotion ahead of Haka on goal difference.

It was frightening to concede a penalty which Pasanen thankfully saved but even after their equalizer it looked like we'd just about do it. However with a few minutes left Jaro got a winner to go ahead, though we still get the playoff ahead of Haka. Given we were otherwise set to go up with single figure goal difference (and just a few more points than when we squeaked 5th last season) we legitimately just hadn't done enough. Even with the Premier Division season still going on we know VPS will be our opponents and looking at their side I think we're definitely capable of winning.

[deltablue]

Youth Intake

Aijala

Askar

Halonen

Julin

Malek

Nurmi

Rintanen

Sanevuori

(hopefully these are the right players/screenshots)

There, you can have the youth intake now I miss the one I originally had but this bunch look decent enough and covering a variety of positions, though not necessarily being best suited for the roles I use. Even among the high potential players, most will will already face a lot of competition from other youngsters (from other intakes as well as their own) even before you get into displacing more established players.

The surprising lack of injuries/suspensions I've had so far (and fitness levels staying high even during the hectic first month or so of a league season) also limits the opportunites for 'squad' players develop enough to get into selection contention, so the success rate will sadly be very low beyond one or two standout players each time. It was Pasanen last year (with Karjaleinen getting sub appearances and Kallio waiting on positional training), Askar already being the breakthrough player when Virtanen got injured, adding to a crowded field even when the latter (who is 31) leaves.

[deltablue]

Playoffs 2019

It really did not look good for a while. We were without our suspended midfield engine-man Gabrielsson for the home leg and looked absolutely lifeless. After they scored, they could easily have gotten another which would have killed our chances already. The second leg was a far higher quality and their dirty play proved to be their downfall. It was a Kastrati penalty which leveled the tie (which I knew we still had a shot at doing), then just before half time their right-back got his marching orders after a second card-worthy foul on Sjoroos. Further justice was done when the resulting free-kick led to Sjoroos firing home to give us the lead in the tie.

There was no away goals rule so the tie was still finely balanced, though not for long as Sjoroos set up Kastrati for the Kosovan (who is Helsinki-born and has had an international youth career with Finland up to the U21 level) to score his 20th goal of the season. They got a disappointingly soft goal back with enough time to make the rest of the match very nerve-wracking whenever they had the ball but we had done enough to turn it around. Premier Division here we come!

Star Player: Kastrati scored the most goals, created the most assists and won the most MOTM awards, so obviously this has to go to Heinoleinen at left-back

Squad Stats

[deltablue]

Finland Overview 2019

World Ranking: 60th (up 9)

It's nice that the revised European International schedule gives me something to look back on each year. This year saw an interesting European qualifying group where Spain were always clear favourites but there would be potentially more competition among the rest (aside from Malta). I knew Finland didn't have much chance of being second but they did managed a home draw against Denmark (who unsurprisingly took the second spot), while getting the better of Northern Ireland with a home win and late away draw to finish a decent 3rd.

While not serious challengers, they do at least look strong enough for the European qualifying group version of mid-table respectability, a bit better than originally anticipated. That reinforces the idea that qualification to a tournament or two eventually is achievable, though also that the bar for my own players to make the national team is reasonably high.

Ones to Watch

Backman is already in the U21 team at the age of 16 (as is our very own Jarvinen, just a year older). The standard of the better international youth team members looks promising enough that I look forward to grabbing them for myself when I get the chance

[Sheriff7]

Congrats for the Promotion mate!!This promotion play-ofs must be very nervous....

[noikeee]

What a comeback in the playoffs 2nd leg! Cmon the TPS! Congrats!

[deltablue]

On 1/3/2018 at 21:33, Sheriff7 said:

Congrats for the Promotion mate!!This promotion play-ofs must be very nervous....

I've been playing FM for 13 years and it wouldn't feel right if the game wasn't making me nervous on a regular basis

20 hours ago, noikeee said:

What a comeback in the playoffs 2nd leg! Cmon the TPS! Congrats!

Cheers, I really thought I'd blown it after the home leg, along with the disappointment of losing top spot with just a few minutes to go on the final day. It's definitely a big weight off my shoulders as I knew getting promoted was something I needed to aim for in the short-term with a relatively big club like that (even if they weren't the board expectations) and it makes my position at the club more secure. It also gives me a bit more confidence that I might just be ok on this version after all.

[deltablue]

Winter 2020

We started pre-season in a very strong financial position, and going fully professional will help a lot. That did mean that offering a lot of full-time contracts to younger players in particular used up a lot of the spare wage budget though as we were only using half initually we were still left with quite a bit spare and a 1.7M transfer budget (which I knew I'd only be using a fraction of) to put a little more back into it. The board also agreed to finance an improvement in training facilities though that won't take place until the end of the year.

The early signings were fairly low key, including a back-up keeper which meant being able to ditch Viscosi, the only full foreigner in the squad, leaving just the very Finnish Kosovan Kastrati. Vielma was a first-team signing for defence but he was only a minor upgrade, though with a lot of positives attached. Lahti was a bit more of an improvement from the VPS side we beat in the playoffs, and he was soon followed by his versatile colleague Voutilainen. Lahdenmaki completed a trio of cental defender that made us far stronger in that area.

I wasn't quite able to grab the cream of Finnish youth from other clubs, not without assurances of European football or a trophy in a few years which I wasn't willing to commit to. The one player I did try and go for anyway unsurprisingly chose HJK instead. No doubt such signings will be more realistic in future, with a midfielder from HJK the only example of this sort of transfer this time around.

We ended up being the top spenders in the division (though Kami made a big signing from HJK to get close, as the only other team spending over 100k in total), even with so much money and budget to spare beyond what I already used. 5 of the 12 clubs hadn't spend anything at all so admittedly as a club with relatively good financial resources it wasn't difficult to match the others for transfer activity. The players didn't seem confident that we could avoid being in big relegation trouble but from what I had seen of Premier Division teams in the past (even HJK) I don't think we should be too afraid of anyone.

Signings

[deltablue]

Cup 2020

The draw was not kind. I'm used to there being two Premier Division teams in a group but a couple have to have three (since there are 5 groups) and we still ended up with two even as a Premier Division team ourselves now. We had to face both of them away as well. It started strongly enough with a big win over TP-47 (got to love all those acronym names), the weakest team in the group, and when we managed to take down Jaro away I felt we were in a strong position to qualify. They had actually just about edged a tight game on the balance of play so it was just as well we missed a late penalty that would have made it 4-1 as that would have been even more of an embarassingly generous scoreline.

Things started to go pear-shaped with a shock defeat at KPV (having had by far the better of things), and we were then easy meat for an SJK team who kept up their 100% record. There was one bright spot with a first goal for Askar, one of our own youth players. We were now out of the top 2 but with a home game against Oulu while Jaro faced SJK I felt we had a good chance of getting the 2nd qualifying spot instead, and so we did after bouncing back with a very good win. Jaro still qualified as the best 3rd place team.

That means 11 teams qualify, but the 5 group winners go straight into the quarter-finals leaving the other 6 as the only ones to face the second round for the other 3 places, which makes it logical after all to have a 3rd place team qualify as well. It's nice to now have a better picture of how the format works having only dealt with the group stage before now. Our tie is at home to VPS, and hopefully we'll do a lot better that our home playoff leg, especially as we've signed two of their key defenders. That gives us a good chance of making the quarter-finals as a good way to start the regular reason.

[Dexter_Morgan]

Good work on promotion  Good to see you get through the group in the cup, hopefully a few games against top flight clubs will give an indication of how good you'll be in the league