[FM21] West Bromwich Albion

[RazorsEdge]

Anyone playing with the Baggies? With a very mediocre first team they're definitely a challenge.

In season 1 with no transfer money/no first transfer window I brought in Jack Wilshire on a free and Daniel James on loan in January, with Karlan Grant leading the team to a surprising 12th place in the Premier League. Grant scored 21 goals in 38 games and actually won the Golden Boot.

For season 2 I was given approximately £40M to spend and went about trying to upgrade every position:
Connor Gallagher - retained on loan from Chelsea
Anel Ahmedhodzic - £3M (£3.3M)
Ryan Gauld - £2.7M (£3.2M)
Yusuf Yazici - £4.7M (£5.25M)
Justin Hoogma - Free
Anton Nedyalkov - Free
Peque - Free
Tim Ronning - £5M
Layvin Kurzawa - £3.8M
Allan Saint-Maximin - £30M
Matias Arezo - £2M
Fedor Chalov - £6.5M (7.5M)

Arezo was denied a work permit so immediately went out on loan.

Conor Townsend, Charlie Austin, Kamil Grosicki, Kenneth Zohore, Kyle Bartley and Matt Phillips were all allowed to leave for small amounts of money.

Am sticking with the positive Tiki-Taka that got me to 12th last season, hopefully can improve this season.

How are you going as West Brom?

Edited December 21, 2020 by RazorsEdge

[3rik]

How is Connor Gallagher performing for you? A personal favorite irl but not as much in the games unfortunately.  

[dothestrand]

WBA look a harder job than Fulham. Well done for keeping them up. 

[RazorsEdge]

1 hour ago, 3rik said:

How is Connor Gallagher performing for you? A personal favorite irl but not as much in the games unfortunately.  

He's solid without being spectacular. Good enough to keep on loan so I could invest money elsewhere in the team first.

[RazorsEdge]

The way the ladder looks at the start of December - sitting in the exact same spot I finished last year.

Only 4 wins to our name (Blackburn, Palace, Sheffield United and Burnley) but only 4 losses too (Liverpool, Man United, Fulham, Tottenham). Plus I managed to hold both Chelsea and Manchester City to draws in consecutive matches which was a big win for me.

Ryan Gauld, Karlan Grant and Anel Ahmedhodzic have been my best players so far. Matheus Pereira has been horrid so I've shifted Saint-Maximin to the right wing, put Grant out wide on the left and have Chalov leading up the front. Chalov has 6 goals in 9 games plus a Player of the Month award so he's doing quite well.

Hoping the board give me some money in January so I can strengthen by right back position as Darnell Furlong has been pretty atrocious. If not I might see how an Ethan Laird or someone works out on loan. Matias Arezo was also just granted a work permit whilst on loan at Nimes so that means he can potentially come back in January and contribute to an attacking unit that doesn't have any depth past Grant and Chalov.

[RazorsEdge]

January 2022 I added Venezuelan winger Yeferson Soteldo for £6.25M and Norwegian defender Jonas Svensson for £13.75M. Unfortunately neither really lit the world on fire but they got the job done.

I managed to better last season's effort by 2 places moving up into 10th.

Ryan Gould was the standout player of the season with an average rating of 7.09.

The board have given me around £50M to spend for the new season but I'm really struggling to figure out where to invest as decent players are still reluctant to come to the club as our reputation still isn't high enough.

Hopes for this season are to do what I did again and move up to 8th but I think that might be a bit of a stretch, but who knows!

[richard.cheeseman]

On 23/12/2020 at 09:37, RazorsEdge said:

The way the ladder looks at the start of December - sitting in the exact same spot I finished last year.

Only 4 wins to our name (Blackburn, Palace, Sheffield United and Burnley) but only 4 losses too (Liverpool, Man United, Fulham, Tottenham). Plus I managed to hold both Chelsea and Manchester City to draws in consecutive matches which was a big win for me.

Ryan Gauld, Karlan Grant and Anel Ahmedhodzic have been my best players so far. Matheus Pereira has been horrid so I've shifted Saint-Maximin to the right wing, put Grant out wide on the left and have Chalov leading up the front. Chalov has 6 goals in 9 games plus a Player of the Month award so he's doing quite well.

Hoping the board give me some money in January so I can strengthen by right back position as Darnell Furlong has been pretty atrocious. If not I might see how an Ethan Laird or someone works out on loan. Matias Arezo was also just granted a work permit whilst on loan at Nimes so that means he can potentially come back in January and contribute to an attacking unit that doesn't have any depth past Grant and Chalov.

Laird is doing a amazing job for me in my West Brom save

[RazorsEdge]

Summer 2022 transfer window I brought in Ben Woodburn (free), Elisha Owusu (£12.5M), Ben White (£23M), Harvey Elliott (loan), Ronaldo Camara (free), Benjamin Henrichs (£4.8M) (Jonas Svensson was an expensive flop), Chris Basham (free) and Naci Unuvar (£20M). heading out were Semi Ajayi (£8.5M), Sam Johnstone (£4.4M) and Cedric Kipre (£20M).

At the end of October 2022 I surprisingly sit in 5th after 13 games with just two losses to my name (against Everton and Leicester) and 5 wins (including beating Arsenal 3-0). Also managed to steal a draw against Manchester City.

Currently lining up like this:

Kurzawa, Gauld, Yaazici, Owusu, Saint-Maximin, White and Ahmedhodzic are all performing reallt well with the rest of the team being decent enough. Karlan Grant has 7 goals in 13 but Callum Wilson is available to buy for a touch under £20M which is somewhat tempting.

Don't expect to finish in the European places once the full season is over however it is looking to be a better season than expected.

[richard.cheeseman]

Anyone else doing a West Brom save? Come on folks surely someone else is

Lets see how u are all gettting on

[Boothy0910]

Long time lurker, very rare poster.

Usual FM route sees me messing about with Aberdeen til someone gets paid off in EPL. Enter West Brom. I don't know any of their team, other than Periera, and that's from fantasy footie.

First season - The obvious severe lack of transfer funds to begin with, tied with my aversion to ageing footballers on high wages resulted in Austin and Grosicki leaving in first window. In came Zirkzee and Ben Johnson on loan, and Halilovic on a free. Tend to stick w/4231 formation, although do dabble w/442 with wingers on occasion. Horrendous fixtures to start with, Spurs, Liverpool and Man U in first 5 weeks. Didn't get out of bottom half all season. January window saw Peltier, Phillips and Robson-Kanu depart. Signed Ahmedhodzic (who doesn't?). Lost 2nd game in both cups. which matched boards expectations, to Leicester and Man City. Avoided relegation with 3 games to go, finished with 40pts, Karlan Grant was 2nd to Callum Wilson in EPL scorers and European golden boot, 23 goals. Worst defence in league. Fairly standard pos/role/duties, so assume players are poor.

Got £40 million to spend at end of season 1, went bargain hunting. Out went Bartley, Sawyers, Ivanovic, Gibbs, Zohore and Livermore. In came Peter Bockaj (£2.5m), Josha Vagnoman (£5m), Roland Hernandez (£1.5m), Gustavo Scarpa (£4m), Lewis Fergison (£3.5m), Doria (£3.5m), Enzo Crivelli (£3.5m), John Lundstram (free), Christopher Lenz (free), Max Lowe (£200k) and Cameron Carter-Vickers (free). Renewed Zirkzee and Gallacher's loans. Reduced squads average age from over 27 to under 24. 1st game, second season we had 8 (eight) debuts! Tweaked formation, bit more adventurous with the full backs (now that I have some that can dribble and cross), and a bit less adventurous on midfielders to compensate.

6 games in now, mid table. Not convinced w/Sam Johnstone in goals, seems to have a habit of falling on his butt when someone shoots, but maybe thats just the goalie animation this year. Got my eye on Angus Gunn, Freddie Woodman, Alex McCarthy, Archie Mair and Danny Ward as possible replacements.

Obvious Aberdeen fixation, signed Ferguson and Ronnie, and there's 4 Aberdeen connections in the goalie pot. May go back for McCrorie, Joe Lewis would only be a back-up and wants too much wages, Hoban is good enough, but injury prone.

Long term goals - Board - stay in league, full stop. Me - Cup win and/or Europe

[RazorsEdge]

End of February 2023 and the fixture congestion of January really got to us with the team slipping back to 10th (with a game in hand). Injuries to both Allan Saint-Maximin and Yeferson Soteldo have seen youngsters Naci Unuvar and Harvey Elliott play on the wing.

In January I signed Eray Comert from FC Basel for £9.25M as more defensive backup as Hoogma demanded to go out on loan. I also got promising winger Samuel Bamba from Borussia Dortmund for £4M and Czech striker Matyas Kozak from Slavia Praha for a small fee after agreeing an end of contract deal with him.

Jonas Svensson left to Rosenborg on loan after being displaced in the team by Benjamin Henrichs and Layvin Kurzawa left for £11M to Tianjin after Anton Nedyalkov took his place.

Further to that Marcus Edwards will be joining on a free transfer at the end of his contract at Vitoria Guimaraes, another young newgen winger will join from Monterrey for £500K compensation and Jamal Lewis will also join at the end of the season for £9M as a younger alternative at left back to Nedyalkov.

I'm hoping we can turn our bad patch of form around soon (no wins in last 5 matches, dropping points to teams we shouldn't) and at least finish 8th in the league.

[RazorsEdge]

2022/2023 season:

We fell out of 7th place on the last day  after a draw against bottom side Nottingham Forest.

However, then we did this.

First taste of success with West Brom. Hopefully much more to come. Would like to improve my position by say two spots again as I have been doing but the vultures have started to circle my important players. Plus I've also realised I only have 2 West Brom homegrown players left in the first team after clearing everyone out so some players might miss out on the Europa League squad. Board has set my budget at just under £50M and £1.4M p/w wages.

[RazorsEdge]

Think I've wrapped up my off-season business nice and early.

Out:

Darnell Furlong (£725K)
Ben Woodburn (£2.3M)
Jonas Svensson (£9.75M)
Fedor Chalov (£17.25M)
Allan Saint-Maximin (£56M) (Chelsea activated release clause)
Grady Diangana (£7.75M)
Jake Livermore (£190K)

In:

Tyler Roberts (£16M)
Jamal Lewis (£9M)
Thiago Almada (£10M)
Martin Palumbo (£12.25M)
Marcus Edwards (free)
Daniel Rose (free)
Hugo Felix (free)
Angel Gomes (£33M)
Samuel Kinduelu Mbangula (£5M)
Olexandr Tymchyk (£7.25M)
+ a few other free newgens

Replaced Chalov with Roberts as Roberts is West Brom home grown. Out of all my players that interest was shown in Saint-Maximin was the only one to be bid on (although there still is a week or two to go before the window shuts). Lewis will compete with Nedyalkov for the number 1 left back spot. Almada will be backup/replacement to Yusuf Yazici. Palumbo was available at a cut price deal due to Udinese being relegated and is rated better than Ryan Gauld so I grabbed him. Bought Angel Gomes for the left wing as Soteldo is inconsistent and a bit injury prone. Tymchyk bought as a backup right back.

Hopefully I can secure automatic European qualification this season with these reinforcements.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

I have decided to do a save with WBA.

I am mostly doing it as a youth only save but will bring in good local players, talented players from the lower leagues and former WBA academy players like Rogers from Man City etc.

I always play as a former player so I will be WBA legend Cyrille Regis on this save.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Ronaldo Beckham

[Boothy0910]

Jan 22 update

Transfers out - Bockaj - took offence to being critisised for repeatedly poor training performance, off on loan to Swansea, Halilovic - got offered £7.5m, only a back-up, Ajayi, went to Newcastle £3.3m

Transfers in - Alex McCarthy for peanuts, can challenge Johnstone, Joey Veerman for £10m from under Chelsea's nose, v impressed so far, Helder Costa - £4.7m

Tactic seems to be working, much improved performances/position - point off Euro place, mid-Feb, need to improve away performances

[Boothy0910]

End of season 21/22 update

10th in league, 2pts off euro spot, got to FA Cup semi-final

Quite a turnround of players. Of the original squad, Grant again top scorer, 15 goals from 19 starts, Diangana and Periera still first choice left and right AM, Sam Johnstone came on leaps and bounds with a decent defence in front of him. Sam Field confuses me, fabulous trainer but attributes fairly static, appear to be improving now using Rashidi's schedules.

With regards to West Brom's youngsters, Rico Richards, Jacob Shepherd, Rayhaan Tulloch and Jovan Malcolm will probably be around 1st team squad this season.

[Dong21]

FM Online: Season 2020/2021

Ended up starting an FM Online save with two friends to pass the lockdown hours away and decided to take on the challenge of managing West Brom. Overall I think The Baggies probably have the weakest squad in the division and you start with pretty much no funds to rectify this. As this is an online save it was more a bit of fun and not played with the level of attention to detail I would usually apply to a save - we wanted to keep the pace up - so I'll keep this update brief, but I thought others playing as WBA may be interested to hear how I got on and who I signed.

I was really pleased to steer West Brom away from the relegation zone and secure a 13th place finish. When the season ended, however, it was tinged with disappointment as we lost six of our last seven games which scuppered what was looking to be a top half finish. The table is really interesting, as you will see that Leicester and, in particular, Tottenham massively underperformed. I think this may have been skewed as there were three human managers in the game, with my friends overachieving at Sheffield United and Fulham (chosen as the two teams with the closest challenging scenario to West Brom, in our opinion).

My key player was unquestionably Sam Johnstone, who was kept very busy. On field, loanee Gallagher was probably most influential. 

Karlan Grant did great, as I've read he has done for others, scoring 19 goals in all competitions. My top providers were Janmaat (see below) and Periera with nine and eight respectively.

Summer Transfers

With almost a non-existent transfer budget, I looked to see if there were any players I could sell to raise funds to improve the squad. The options were limited and I only managed, at first, to raise funds from offloading Field and Robson-Kanu. Austin begins the game transfer listed for £4m but no self-respecting club will pay that when they have his huge wage to also deal with. On £50k per week he is the club's highest earner, but is rated one of the poorest players at the club by your staff. In the end, I decided to cut my losses and offload him for a smaller fee in order to free up wage budget for other signings.

With funds so limited, it was always going to be loans and free agents that I turned to. I signed Jack Wilshire to add quality to the centre of midfield. I did have concerns about his fitness - but having him for a season at Milan on the BETA with no injuries I decided to take my chances. My judgement proved sound, as he survived the season unscathed. The defence was my biggest concern so I recruited Joe Rodon on loan from Spurs. Ivanovic was rated the best RB (and defender) at the club, but I had no intention of playing a player that slow in the Premier League. I was pleased to snap up Daryl Janmaat just after he recovered from a small injury he starts with.

With Austin sold, I used some of the wage budget to bring in Fernando Llorente as my new second choice striker (a big improvement on much lower wages  - I covered £30k p/w) and Bayern centre back Tanguy Nianzou who was already better rated than all other centre backs at the club at just 18 years of age. Rhys Healey was brought in as a cheap 3rd choice striker (£1.4k p/w wages), signed in case of emergencies.

Winter Transfers

In January I began clearing out players who were not featuring and who were generally not of Premier League quality. I was particularly pleased to get the significant wages of Ivanovic and Zohore (who gave him £40k p/w?!) off the books.

In December I approached the owners and asked if I could be provided with additional transfer budget - reasonable, I thought, considering I hadn't had one to start with. I was pleasantly surprised to have my request accepted and was provided with £10m to play with. I agreed deals for Victor Kovalenko and Joaquin in mid-December, therefore the deals went through the day the window opened. They gave us a significant boost, as we won six out of nine fixtures in January. They were both significant improvements in quality on my CAM and CB options prior to the market opening.

I made the loan signing of Davide Santon as his quality and versatility appealed to me. Although primarily a right back, my plan was to use him as an upgrade on Gibbs. Unfortunately he picked up a series of knocks that meant he was only able to feature eleven times. When he did play, he looked good.

Toulouse recalled Healey because I never played him (fair enough) and Llorente was ruled out for two months, so I signed Josh Maja as my new squad option striker. I can't deny that the documentary Sunderland Till I Die was a factor in my interest.... Right at the end of the window I decided to be a bit flash and splash out on a big signing. I had signed Jose Juan Macias for Man United on FM20 so I knew he had a lot of quality. I was surprised to find he was interested in joining and as RB Liepzig were also interested I decided to move quickly to secure a player I thought could take us up a level. The fee will be split over three years, to enable us to do the deal. Since joining he has had four minor injuries, which is a cause for concern, but four goals in an initial ten Premier League games is promising.

If we continue onwards with this online save, as I imagine we will, I will share how I get on.

Edited January 31, 2021 by Dong21

[Dong21]

Staff Overhaul

During downtime in the FM Online save (primarily when my friends were scouring the transfer market) I decided to overhaul the staff at the club. As I replaced nearly every single employee, I thought it might be of interest to share (maybe it will save somebody some time!). Although we didn't have enough funds to make huge player upgrades, it was very achievable to enhance the coaching and recruitment team. Control the controlables.

Here are new recruits: