Promotion? It's Overrated, My Liège

[wynter]

In the Belgian Pro League, at the end of the season the division splits into the Championship Group and the Euro Playoff after 30 games.

We don't care about the Championship Group.

In the European Playoff teams placed 7-15 in the First Tier and teams 2-4 in the second tier face off for a shot at Europe. There's two groups within this stage, the group winners then face off against each other in a one off match, the winner of that plays fourth place in the Champ Group for an EL place. They win and Europe awaits.

This is what we care about.

Feasibly, this challenge could be easier in England or Germany, where one could manufacture an FA/League or German Cup Run backed by heavy financial assistance to keep and sign a strong enough core of players to compete regularly, relying on elements of luck. This one is more interesting for me though, because you can qualify for Europe through the League and not even be in the top division. 

But that's our challenge.

Qualify for Europe while in the Pro League B

I decided to start with a 3rd Division side, no real reason to it outside of the fact that I just preferred the clubs in that division, some of the Logos were quite nice and one of them even had a lot of history, being one of Belgium's most successful sides.

Who are they?

In terms of still active clubs in the playable leagues, they're the 5th most successful in History and the 7th overall. They're also the inaugural champions of the Belgian Pro League, a club that would relish a return to success.

So... This is going to be immensely difficult.

Time to get started. 

[deltablue]

Top marks for the title

[oriole01]

What a fantastically fraudulent idea this is, nice title as well . Best of luck, will be following closely.

[wynter]

Entering the club we had a solid side, some great prospects shored up by some high quality first team players. Our biggest issue was a lack of central midfielders. We remedied this with Toon Jannsen and Abdelhak Benaniba coming into the side.

Toon Jannsen

Incredibly all rounded player. Does nothing amazingly but offers us flexibility in midfield if we need to adopt separate tactics throughout the season.

In terms of our Youth Prospects, Jacquet and Kalala are both very promising centre backs and will be getting gametime. Jacquet in particular seems the most promising given his nice technical spread.

Being in the 3rd Division and with less technically gifted players, complex tactics are a waste of time. Acknowledging this, I won't be experimenting with assymetrics or anything to extravagant. Instead we've opted for a simple 4-2-3-1 with an attacking edge.

I think we've got a good squad to launch a promotion bid, backed by good facilities to aid our youth development. It seems to be a team that will only get better throughout the season.

 

[wynter]

13 hours ago, deltablue said:

Top marks for the title

Thank you sir 

5 hours ago, oriole01 said:

What a fantastically fraudulent idea this is, nice title as well . Best of luck, will be following closely.

I know it took me ages to come up with  

[CCSantos]

Wow! Liège too? Amazing!

I write my story on Brazilian FM Forum (FManager),  on FM17, claimed "Le Matricule 4", a reference of de inscription of Liège on Belgian Football Federation. And a important info: Actually, the Bosman Law begin in a case between a player for Liège on 90's, so a tip to challenge this is DOSEN'T sign any player with Bosman, for remember the case with club and Dunkerque.

Toon Janssen had a pretty solid second midfielder.

That's the link for my save, if you gonna read, next week I am gonna update with the third part of 2nd season (on Portuguese): https://www.fmanager.com.br/topic/131527-rfc-liège-le-matricule-4-empatite-2005/

I almost write the story here too.

Cheers, and have a good story!

 

[wynter]

1 minute ago, CCSantos said:

Wow! Liège too? Amazing!

I write my story on Brazilian FM Forum (FManager),  on FM17, claimed "Le Matricule 4", a reference of de inscription of Liège on Belgian Football Federation. And a important info: Actually, the Bosman Law begin in a case between a player for Liège on 90's, so a tip to challenge this is DOSEN'T sign any player with Bosman, for remember the case with club and Dunkerque.

Toon Janssen had a pretty solid second midfielder.

That's the link for my save, if you gonna read, next week I am gonna update with the third part of 2nd season (on Portuguese): https://www.fmanager.com.br/topic/131527-rfc-liège-le-matricule-4-empatite-2005/

I almost write the story here too.

Cheers, and have a good story!

 

That's actually a really nice limitation I hadn't thought of, had read about the Bosman but didn't think to use it. Cheers for the tip

Thanks, I'll come over and look at yours as well! 

[wynter]

Solid start, massive result in upsetting Antwerp and as a side we're scoring goals. We just need to cut down the amount we concede to turn those draws into wins.

For being expected to finish 16th and be relegated we're doing much better than initial expectations. Let's hope this stays constant.

[wynter]

Lost a save file halfway through and absolutely sprinted this first season so forgive the massive fixture list.

Strong early form has given way to a recent run of bad luck. The loss vs Genk seemingly leading to a loss of confidence and results are on a downward spiral.

With that being said, we're still doing well, way above expectations of relegation.

[john1]

Good start Loving the title btw  

[wynter]

Strong run of form backed by superb play from our backline.

Van Der Ackervecken has led from the back, racking up a 7.8 average over the last 5 games to drag us up the table.

This leaves us in 2nd with 4 matches left to play. Annoyingly the league is sorted by wins and not GD, which is the only thing stopping us from having a comfortable lead in 1st place. Not much of a difference between 1st and 2nd though as there's no automatic promotion.

 

[wynter]

Youth Intake Candidates

Another centre back to add to our stacked options, the keeper is welcome though, definitely think he's got some promise for bigger things down the line.

[wynter]

Entering the playoffs on a strong run of form.

Shame Lierse decided to match that run entirely so we're both locked dead even coming into the playoffs.

Each team plays each other twice, top of the group moves on. We have no ground to make up, but simultaneously have no advantage to work with either and I presume Lierse's win record is still keeping them on top somehow so matching them again might just lead to frustration for us. So we need to dominate this group. 

[wynter]

Promotion won with a game spare.

It's been a productive season, straight into the division we need to be in for this save to work and with a quick look at initial budgets there's some promising news.

We're currently spending 8k a week so we've had our budget tripled. I'm also going to look for a senior affiliate to get some quality loan options in and pick up some additional income. Given our additional youth focus we've got the ability to not be entirely reliant on transfers and can hopefully grow some of our players over the next 12 months to build a stable platform for survival in a higher division.

[wynter]

Well I said not entirely reliant but we still overhauled 50% of our squad. Biggest signings in were Rafia and Hendl.

Amazing AMC for this division bought in entirely for free given OL didn't want any of his wages covered.

Hendl could easily be a long-term option at GK given his status as a good player for the division  and he resolved our biggest problem with a lack of a First Team ready goalkeeper.

Tugarinov is interesting as he's a free from Barcelona, otherwise just a nice Centre Back option to partner Jacquet.

 

[Northernpilgrim]

Great start 😀

[deltablue]

Well done on the promotion.

[wynter]

On 31/05/2019 at 18:15, Northernpilgrim said:

Great start 😀

Thanks! Pretty pleased so far

21 hours ago, deltablue said:

Well done on the promotion.

Thanks as well, difference between the teams never seemed that big so was always pretty hopeful. Think Janssen and actually having a strong midfield was the biggest factor in us getting over the hill.

[wynter]

Decent Start to our survival season. First game against recently relegated Mouscron was a dominating affair and after seeing it I felt quite confident in our abilities as a squad.

The Relegation Playoff is very similar to the Promo System where 50% is deducted. Given only one team gets relegated as well, Roeselare are looking prime candidates.

11 Games, 7 Goals 3 Assists

Our most impressive player so far, let's hope he continues to thrive out wide.

[wynter]

Youth Intake led by Jordy de Meyer who looks like he has the potential to be absolutely devastating in the future.

Going to slot him straight into the first team to maximise his development.

Meanwhile Munoz and Legrande are some nice Defensive prospects we'll hope prove useful in the future.

Meanwhile we'll be promoting another player from our U18's one of the added players at the beginning of the game in Baptiste Richert

I think those mentals are great for this level and he'll have some untapped development for either re-sale value or a future great player for the club if we can get a handle on our financial issues.

[FourFiveOne]

Nice thread! 

Do you know where i can download the Belgian lower divisions patch, and how? Thanks

[wynter]

20 hours ago, FourFiveOne said:

Nice thread! 

Do you know where i can download the Belgian lower divisions patch, and how? Thanks

Didn't use one, Belgium loads to Third Tier Already unfortunately. 

 

Sorry! 

[wynter]

Season 2 - 2nd Playoff

Had an issue with a save file that wouldn't load, so unfortunately this is a bit of a mega update. Luckily the rest of the files look fine and normal practice should resume after this one.

Aiming for 2-4 we had a very strong season for our first year in the B League. Just missed out on making the cut though.

The League sorts by Games Won so while we had a better goal difference than both 3rd and 4th we have to settle for 5th and fight through the Relegation Playoff for survival.

In good news though we have 6 games to survive and start with an 8 point lead over Mouscron. So I think we'll be fine 

 

[wynter]

Pretty Comfortable survival all things considered, I can't see how anything could go wrong...

 

[wynter]

Pre-Season

Our primary focus for this season was trying to inject an ounce of Financial Security into our side. To that end I'm faced with either two options to get that red back to white.

A.) Push hard for Europe and hope Qualification Rounds can make us solvent if we crack the Golden Egg.

B.) Develop as much youth as possible and farm them out for decent prices but High Sell On percentages and hope we get lucky with a World-Class Player

Option B is safer, and given our facilities actually feasible, even if it'll mean a few more seasons of struggle before we see any real results.

That being said, we did make some offloads this season to create a little bit of a stop-gap while our finance problems continue.

Jacquet and Tugarinov were our star CBs but 500k in funds was difficult to turn down. In addition we were able to make up for their absence by securing a partnership with Anderlecht. Creating an option for free loans to shore up some gaps and add quality. With the idea that I wouldn't be going too overboard.

To that effect, Dante and Kayembe bring us some quality for free and we'll use Dante to advance our own football, having the leeway to deploy a BPD and add an extra dimension to our backline.

Kayembe is outstanding for this division.

If you look at the Transfers In screen you'll see we brought in a huge name, FM Folklore based in Leya Iseka.

We had 15k to play with and the Toulouse Board were willing to loan him to us on 2.1k per week. I figured it was a nice gamble to add a gun striker to hopefully fire us into the Top 4.

This season has 2 main objectives in getting that 4th place finish we were cruelly denied last year and following the fact I somehow pried 300k for Jacquet, playing De Meyer like a madman to bank on a massive profit in the near future.

Plan B on Steroids effective immediately.