[FM21] Upwards and onwards in Berlin.

[Reiver]

In former East Germany, there were two main chain of stores. You had Konsum, a cooperative owned chained, and Handelsorganisation (HO), a state owned company that ran everything supermarkets and department stores to specialised shops like clothes stores and chocolate stores, to hotels and industrial goods. It was in the building pictured above, one of the first HO department stores to eve open that the team I'm managing was founded in 1949, as  Betriebssportgemeinschaft Handelsorganisation Berlin, or BSG HO Berlin for short. Dissecting the name, it just means the Company Sports Team HO Berlin. Founded with 60 members playing football, handball, ice skating and boxing, just one year later the numbers had reached 800, and swimming, cycling and rowing sections had been created. In the same year, the GDR would reform their sports associations, creating centralised club associations where all teams had to join based on what company had formed or was sponsoring them, and this the team became BSG Empor Nord Berlin. Empor, meaning Upwards, was the club association for teams associated with trade and food industries. In the late 60s they were briefly merged with another Northern Berlin team, BSG Aufbau Berlin Nord; the merger lasted just a year. From the laet 70s, up to German reunification, the team was known as BSG Empor HO Berlin.

During the GDR era, the football team stayed in the lower depths of german football, one of the many amateur Empor teams - the main team from the association was Empor Lauter, which relocated to Rostock in 1955 to become Empor Rostock, which would eventually become Hansa Rostock. That's not to say that the team was without trophies - Empor had boxing and judo champions from the very beginning, and even when the team lost prominence as East Germany created professional teams to train possible Olympic level athletes, Empor became a trailblazer, being pioneers in East Germany at subjects as diverse as body building and skateboarding.

By the time the two Germanys merged, Empor, a local club from the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin, had around 4800 athletes enrolled, with almost all teams at all levels playing in at least the highest regional level (such as the football team, in the then 3rd GDR tier), and in some cases even GDR champions, like in chess. When the GDP disappeared, so did HO, and the subsidies the government gave local sports teams. The team would change their name to Sportverein Empor Berlin, and started anew.

The team has now become a local staple: it markets itself as a "neighbourhood club", focusing on serving Prenzlauer Berg and Pankow in Berlin, with 23 youth football teams, and a cooperation agreement with 1.FC Union Berlin. It still boasts around 2000 members playing several sports. They've played in the Berlin-Liga, the highest level of local football in Berlin, which sits in the 6th tier of German football for over a decade now. It has been the starting point in the careers of a few professional players, including Christian Stuff who went on to have 213 games for Union Berlin, Linton Maina, now at Hannover 96 that played for Germany on all youth levels, and most importantly Marko Rehmer of Hertha and Germany fame.

Empor Berlin never had their own stadium, and has played at Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sportpark, Dynamo Berlin's stadium since the 50s. It's not really a ground share you see, the sports complex has more than one field, and while Dynamo play in the big stadium (the one clearly marked as "Grosses Stadion" in the image above, Empor play in the small stadium ("Kleines Stadion").

All that I've mentioned is mirrored in-game. The team is affiliated with Union Berlin in a deal where they have first option over our players, can send players on loan, and they share their youth training facilities with us. Win/win in my book. This makes us have fairly basic youth recruitment and below average training facilities, but then average youth facilities and academy coaching. We're a semi-pro team playing at the 6th tier of football in Germany. I have holidayed one year into the future, and I am about to begin this journey.

[SixPointer]

I’ve been to a union Berlin game and it blew my mind. Nice to see you taking control of a lower league Berlin side with links. Following and good luck 

[Sonic Youth]

I was hoping to be the first Berlin story, but with Viktoria 1889 Berlin because of the links back to beginning of the league. Just not having time.

Nice introduction and will be reading 

[Reiver]

 

Like I mentioned before, I holidayed a whole year. I sometimes find that when you're playing way below the levels where SI has done their proper research his ends up being a good thing - in the first year you have many teams without managers, teams with reduced rosters and many players available on a free that in real life have already retired or found another lower level team, and it becomes even easier than usual to create a super team for the level you're in. So I have taken the reins of Empor Berlin in July 2021, a full season after the start of the game. And many things have happened in this first year: Bayern won every competition they were in, domestic or international (beating Manchester City for the Champions League), except for the UEFA Supercup. Speaking of Man City, they got the English title, PSG won in France, Juventus in Italy and in the only "surprise" in the big leagues, Atlético  won in Spain. I hink the biggest domestic upset in Europe was Sturm Graz finishing ahead of Red Bull in Austria. In international football, France beat Belgium 1-0 to win the Euro 2020 thanks to a Pogba penalty. The Final Four of the Nations League has been decided, with England playing Germany and Portugal against the surprising Poland. No crazy transfers have happened yet - in fact i think the craziest move I've seen so far was Julian Draxler to Man Utd... on a free.

But I'm digressing, back to the depths of German football and what I want for the save. I had it in mind that i wanted a game in Germany as I hadn't had a good Germany save since Lok Leipzig in The Dugout in something like FM14 or FM15. I wanted a team from a big city that had space for the team to grow - I considered at first big German cities that never had a big team; Bonn at around 300 thousand people and Bottrop at 150 thousand were contenders, but two things set me back: these teams, while big, were around much bigger cities with much bigger teams, and the teams themselves, they weren't interesting to me. In the end I saw myself drawn to former East Germany teams. I didn't want to go for Leipzig again, and I ended up going for Berlin - such a huge city, with so many football teams, and it's amazing only two of them are "big" teams, and even those two are not that gig, and the rise of one of them is very recent. Berlin has the space for this team to grow, that's for sure.

As for the game itself, i am always a sucker for trying to make things realistic and it is what i will be going for in this save - a lower league German team will not be able to pull players from very far away, so I will not try to - until we're big enough our recruitment efforts will come from local East German teams. We have 3 scouts but their values are so bad I can't use them for anything other than finding out the actual attributes of players (not like at this level there's any point in looking at a player's potential), and despite being semi-pro we can realistically only offer non-contracts, and that hurts our chances to get players; during this summer season we trialed some 40 players (mostly young players released from Union Berlin, Cottbus, Hallescher and Dresden), offered contracts to probably 20 to 25 of them, and in the end signed 6 players! Our signing policy has actually served me well, as seen by the reason the last guy we signed gave as to why he has joined us:

 

And this is our current team. The team had 3 real players when I took over, and the rest were regens. Then I managed to sign a few more, as mentioned before. Just so you have an idea of our level of football, I'll actually show my first options (regens will not have the career history at this point):

• Goalkeeper

Varrelmann was already at the club when I took over, and has actually had a decent start of a career at higher levels than ours, and it shows, he's great at our level, will be great even if we go up, but, he's also one of the few players with an actual contract, it's up like a 6th of my wage budget, and I am unsure if he'd be willing to renew the contract. For now his stance is one of "I might be willing to do this later in the season". Terrible stats for a sweeper keeper, decent ones (even if we a few weak spots) for a regular shot stopper.

• Left Back

The first of our Union Berlin alumni, that has been with us for a few years. Decent marking and tackling plus great pace and acceleration, good first touch and decisions topped with great determination? Sign me up! At this level, I don't even care for his low crossing and passing; his speed and determination means he will get forwards and backwards faster than the opponents whenever needed, and if you outpace your opponent every time, one of those times you're ought to do something good out of it.

• Right Back

What I said about Brenneisen I can say about Schade. This kid isn't as good at marking, but compensates with better positioning - still it's because of the marking, together with his strength, heading and height that he plays at full back despite being a centreback natural.

• Centre Backs

Two regens at centreback, formed at the club. Are they any good? No, I wouldn't say so. Have I been able to find better ones willing to join the club? Not yet, so for now I have to live with them.

• Defensive Midfielder

In real life this kid has Peruvian second nationality, which is not present in game. It's not like he had any chance of international football there either. This guy is my midfielder that sits in the deep. He's not strong (nobody really is at this level) but he's decently fast, has decent work rate, tackling and first touch, and is very determined. What's not to like?

• Central Midfielders

In midfield we have oour "Austrian" duo. Hutter, the only foreign player in the team joined Empor from SV Reid's B team, and works as the more defensive minded midfielder, sometimes swapping with Mentrup. On the other hand, Maciejewski is a natural winger that I am playing in central midfield out of necessity (we have other decent wingers, we don't have other decent midfielders). He is an absolute beast for this level, as can be seen not only in his stats, specially his physicals, but also in his CV, he comes here from a 12 game season at Austria's second tier! Considering he's on a non-contract, I'll be lucky to hold him past the winter transfer season, but he'll be busting this league open until then.

• Left Winger

Nijol is the son of Ronny Nikol, a former 2.Bundesliga regular that played for Nürnberg, Cuttbus, Dresden among others, and had his longest footballing spell at Union Berlin (for 6 years). As expected, that where his son trained as a youth player. Fast and good at dribbling, he pairs with Breinnesen in my if you outpace your opponents eventually you'll make something out of it.

• Right Winger

Nico Kovacs, no relation with the more famous one, was formed at the club. While he doesn't have the athleticism of your left wing counterpart, he makes up for it by being (marginally) better at the technical side, specially his crossing and passing.

• Striker

I have the same problem with strikers as with defenders. Is Heinrich any good? Not really. have I been able to find better? Not really. Until I do, I'll use the best I have.

 

[Reiver]

13 hours ago, SixPointer said:

I’ve been to a union Berlin game and it blew my mind. Nice to see you taking control of a lower league Berlin side with links. Following and good luck 

Thanks!

9 hours ago, Sonic Youth said:

I was hoping to be the first Berlin story, but with Viktoria 1889 Berlin because of the links back to beginning of the league. Just not having time.

Nice introduction and will be reading 

Sorry for stealing your thunder!

[Reiver]

 

The First Months

I forgot to mention before, we are currently competing on two fronts, the Berlin-Liga, has mentioned previously, but also the AOK-Landespokal Berlin, the regional cup. Winning this means qualifying for the national cup next year (only teams from the Bundesliga and the best teams from the 3.Liga get direct access to the national cup). Considering that there's teams from 2 and 3 divisions above me in the cup, it's not likely we will even get close to winning it - fittingly the board just wants me to be competitive in it. When it comes to the league, the board wants us to finish in the top half, in view of getting promotion next year. Media predictions align with it, predicting the team to finish 8th (out of 19) before any of my signings. After our 6 signings and the first games of the season, we shot up to first with 1-10 odds to win the league - which I fancy we can do this season.

I think I could call our pre-season a decent one. i t served to give the players some rhythm, to test our trialers and see how we fared against teams around our level. We started with a game against our parent club, where the result was exactly as expected, but it did allow us to rake in around 7000€ in entrance fees. We had some decent results then against teams at and above our level (Neuruppin and Sachsenhausen play in neighbouring 6 tier leagues, Górnik in the Polish third tier), followed by narrow defeats against another Polish third tier team and against a team in our division - despite the result, they were games in which we outplayed the opponents,so I was not too worried at this point.

Look! The Berlin bear is playing football! Funny logos aside, we had an incredible start of the season:

4th and I'm yet to play any of the 3 teams one point above me. Not much to point out - the team is playing well, and we've dominated most games. We started with a thumping of Croatia Berlin, then we had a game against Rudow where we just couldn't make our chances count, and to top up July (this league starts early!) a nice win against Biesdorf. August brought us a tie against Reinickendorf, where both teams scored in the last 5 minutes of the game, another tumping against Charlottenburg, followed by the most annoying game of the season so far against Al-Dersimspor: we were up by 3 on the 30 minute mark, only to let complacency seep  in and ruin the night for us - they also somehow managed to score 2 goals in the same minute. It didn't affect us and we managed to get two more wins. It's still early, but already there seems to be a top 4 trying to run away from the rest in the challenge for the title and that one promotion spot.

The board wanted us to be competitive, we already managed to beat their expectations by winning the first round against fellow Berlin-Liga team Croatia Berlin. I believe we can keep going further, as our next opponent is also from our division - FC Brandenburg Berlin.

All in all, things are going well. The team is playing well, our tactic is working as intended, Life is peachy... except in the finance part: we are slightly over our wage budget paying a maximum of 5310€ per month on wages (depending on who's in the match squad), but our match income actually covers that: last month we got 4200€ in wages out, but 7000€ euros in. Our problem is actually in the staff wages - I have noticed this just a few minutes ago, and I've already let go of all superfluous positions at this level: no more Director of Football, Recruitment Analyst or Loan Manager. We also let one of our scouts go and I'm on the search for a HOYD and an Assman that ask for less wages. We're currently only 40k€ in the red, but I want to nip this before it starts piling up, as we're still some season away from being able to make any kind of money.

 

[SixPointer]

Unbeaten start 

[Sonic Youth]

Good start to the season, though wouldn’t have expected such a start from the friendlies.

Sounds like you had a few staff that could be trimmed from the wages of your backroom staff for extra savings 

Pretty competitive at the top after 8 games. Looks like the next couple of months will be interesting to see what happens!

 

[Reiver]

6 hours ago, Sonic Youth said:

Good start to the season, though wouldn’t have expected such a start from the friendlies.

Sounds like you had a few staff that could be trimmed from the wages of your backroom staff for extra savings 

Pretty competitive at the top after 8 games. Looks like the next couple of months will be interesting to see what happens!

 

Thanks! When i noticed the staff stuff i was fuming - not only am I being paid more than 3k per month, but I had several people i don't need, and the ones I need getting 1.2 to 1.6k€ - I managed to send some of them away, and replace some of the ones getting a lot of money with new hires just as good receiving half of what the original staff did - I hope this will help in the long run.

[Reiver]

We might be in the lower leagues, it doesn't mean we can't score with flair.

Edited March 6, 2021 by Reiver

[Reiver]

Next update coming soon, but in the meantime...

5 days to 5 months?

[Reiver]

Half Season Update

We had a quiet month in September, as there was a week without games, which was followed by your bye round. Still, a nice month all around, including a win against Berliner SC, which might be important further down the line now that they're top of the league. On the other hand, October was a very busy month. It started with 2 games where we slipped; the Inter Berlin was undeserved unfortunately, we dominated the game and ended up without the result to show it, while the game against Türkiyemspor was the first time we were truly outplayed this season. It didn't help that around this time we lost our best player, Maciejewski to a month long injury. We had two games against Brandenburg and managed to easily won the wrong one - while it's nice to have a cup run, and I'm in line with what the boards wants us in the league, I'd drop the cup run in a second for a chance to be up there at the top of the league. We then dropped points against against Wilmersdorf (undeserved) and against Steglitz Stern (very deserved, they outplayed us).

We're there at the top, we still have a chance to go up, and the way we've been playing shows that we deserve to be up where we are, but we've been a unlucky in a few games where our opponents haven't given us slip ups for us to take advantage of and get to the actual top of the league. We currently have to make up a 7 point difference, and have 18 games to do so. Not easy, but definitively doable. Our cup run is most likely done for - we got the cup holders and favourites in the quarter finals: BFC Dyanamo  are having a horrible season(I mean it, look at it - ), but they're having a horrible season as a professional team in the 3.Liga, that's 3 divisions above us, and I think that's enough to make them 99% favourites to win.

Throughout these months we signed one more right back, Sven Hansen:

Now, if you remembered that I mentioned I wanted to go for realistic moves, what the hell am I doing going for a player that played in Austria his whole career? And i say, when the player was suggested, I googled him to understand if the player could have any connection to Berlin, and for this guy you can actually find a lot of information on the internet: he was born and lived in Berlin until it was time to move to University, where he studied in Innsbruck and in the US, and then had a career with Union Innsbruck - it would not be out of the ordinary that at some point he'd move back to his home town of Berlin.

We have one more future transfers arranged for the winter window: Linus Czosnyka, another Union Berlin alumni I tried to sign in the summer that ended up singing for 4th tier team Germania Halberstadt spent the first half of the season in their B Team on a non-contract. I thought that because of his lack of chances in there I might get a shot at convincing him to come back to Berlin, and I was right!

He's a one trick pony, with nice Finishing and Heading (despite no jumping Reach) and Speed, but he's a one trick pony that fits perfectly with what I want my Striker to do right now, so when he comes in he will most likely be my first choice striker.

 

[Reiver]

 

Rumours abound during the winter break; who knows if it'll happen and what will come of it - probably nothing.

[Reiver]

 

I always take this with a grain of salt, specially at lower levels, but considering we share youth facilities with Union Berlin, there might be some gems for this level waiting for us in the intake. Let's wait and see.

[oche balboa]

This is looking good, Which update are you using ? as I've seen some German expansions which includes Bundersliga clubs in regional competitions 

[Reiver]

10 minutes ago, oche balboa said:

This is looking good, Which update are you using ? as I've seen some German expansions which includes Bundersliga clubs in regional competitions 

I used the last version of the file from https://www.meistertrainerforum.de/

Here's the actual thread:https://www.meistertrainerforum.de/index.php/topic,27989.0.html i just google translate it.

[Reiver]

This I did not see coming.Their form is the worst I've seen in FM in a really long time (1 win and 19 defeats in the league so far, 7 goals for, 58 against) but they had won their last cup game against a team one level above me 5-1. I'd say they started strong and dominated the first 15 minutes. I reacted, pulled the defense down, changed from a pressing/route one style to a more classic counter attack game and the game was actually very even from then on - we had lady luck on our side and scored and they didn't. After their second goal they started piling on us but we managed to hold our ground for our biggest win yet. Funnily enough, the 2 Oberliga (5th tier) teams that played against Regionalliga (4th tier) teams also won.  Let's see what the semi-final draw brings us.

[Reiver]

In some rest of the world news, Dortmund with the shockingly bad team management:

[SixPointer]

34 minutes ago, Reiver said:

In some rest of the world news, Dortmund with the shockingly bad team management:

Bayern doing Bayern things!

[Reiver]

A lesson for the people won don't save often enough - a power outtage in the area means i have to replay the game against Dynamo...

[Reiver]

Youth intake day! A bit of a mixed bag here - sure, several players with decent potential, but in the 6th tier of German football, even if we have semi decent facilities, we're semi-pro, with just a couple of coaches, odds of getting there aren't high, even in the cases where the personality is a positive one. Valon Pira is a playmaker with good first touch, decent dribbling but really bad passing (5). I will sign him just in case he improves, but I don't really see what kind of role I'd trust him with. Robin Jager, on the other hand is a very fast player with good work rate. His defensive and offesnive stats are both mediocre, and I'll probably retrain him as a AML where we can make use of his speed. Johann Hofmann is a bit akin to Pira. A bit faster, but not very good at anything else, and being a casual player makes me thing twice before signing him. On the fence here. Steve Beckius is Driven, and he doesn't have any immediate red flags wile not being amazing, so I might sign him to keep as a potential emergency back up. The rest will most likely be let go. 

[Reiver]

When we had to replay the cup we did not have the same luck as before. The game against Dynamo was as tight as the first one but the result hang to the other side - a penalty in the first half and a goal in the very last play of the game saw us out of the cup in the quarter finals. We went out with our heads held high, having gone beyond expected and losing against a team 3 divisions above us. 

In the league we'd been chasing Berliner SC and BFC Preussen, and just a few games ago things seemed a lot tighter at the top - we were 6 points behing Preussen and tied with Berliner SC... and then the last 3 games happened. Three games where we outplayed our opponents and yet failed to score, or let them score in the last 5 minutes of the game, or lost from a penalty. And this is how you lose a promotion race in three games...

[Sonic Youth]

I’m blaming the black out for the reversal in fortune 

Otherwise, you’ve had a pretty decent season and look promising for next 

[Reiver]

Close But No Cigar

I almost feel bad for BFC Preussen and how they only managed 4 points from their last 6 games and threw their top spot away. This also makes our final position a lot closer to the top than we were at the last update, in 4th just 3 points behind the 80 point trio. All in all, I can't say it was a bad season, even if we lost a bit of steam in the last third of the season. We were predicted to have a mid table finish and yet, even if we were never actually in first place, we were always close by, chasing the top teams, spending most of the season in 3rd and 4th place. Give us a nice frame to work for next season, where the board is asking us to finish in the top two spots.

I have to say that the main heroes of this squad this year was our first choice striker Heinrich, who managed to survive us signing a theoretical better striker in the winter transfer season (who ended up playing so badly he ended the season in the B team) and then the wingers, Nikol and Maciejewski.  The latter has no business playing this low in the leagues and he is the one player I seriously doubt will be here by the time I'm updating you guys on the next season's start - there's some bigger teams interested in him, including a few fully pro teams like Lübeck, Cottbus and Ingolstadt. I am confident I will be able to hold on to almost everyone else, at least based on the kind of interest being given to them right now. My plan is to follow the same strategy of this year, looking at local players, and paying special attention to players released by the bigger East Germany teams, and if I manage to get a few improvements, like better central defenders and another good striker to give me the option to play with a duo upfront, we will be looking at promotion next year.

 

[Reiver]

18 hours ago, Sonic Youth said:

I’m blaming the black out for the reversal in fortune 

Otherwise, you’ve had a pretty decent season and look promising for next 

I think next year's the year we go up, after what we learnt this year, and I think we«ll go better prepared. I think if we went up this year we would have struggled a lot - the league above us will have a few decent teams.

[Reiver]

A New Season

This next update sees us already at the beginning of September 2022, as I like to wait for the transfer window to close and to have the squad for the year set before updating, and it also gives a feel for how the team is going to do throughout the season, to feel the pulse of the season. First let's talk who left the team:

I knew from the moment we signed him that Maciejewski would not last long in the team - even if we had been able to get him a semi-pro contract instead of a semi-pro contract, he was way too good for this level, and teams with too much pulling power would be sniffing around for him. So off he goes to recently relegated to the 4th tier Cottbus, where he'll be a regular starter and will make 5k€ per month. Czosnyka, on the other hand, never managed to get his spot in the team last year, and now he had a much slimmer chance after our new signings came through and when Dresdner SC came for him I made no effort to keep him around.

Coming are 10 new players, which I'll introduce based on their position:

Keepers:

Grosse comes to be our new second choice goalkeeper, meaning we won't have to rely on a 16 year old youth player if our main choice Niko Varrelmann gets injured. 

Defenders:

I've found that in this save the hardest area to improve has been the defense - I haven't been able to attract decent defenders (specially central defenders) to the club, and for this season I've had to put my faith in some veterans. Wuttke , a Carl Zeiss Jena man through and through comes to be our first choice full back on the right. I hope he sees this a door back into football after a few years out, and that he is able to give us a couple more seasons of football. Dymek comes from the north of East Germany. He does have experience at a professional level in Poland (4 games in the second division 13 years ago). I wish he had more on his legs, his physicals are very bad, but still half decent for a backup option at this level.

Midfielders:

If you were wondering where our former Union Berlin players were, they're here! Hajjaj with his decent speed, decisions, first touch and passing is an obvious first choice for my midfield, while Reinhardt is very likely to be my first choice for left winger. Good first touch, and decent crossing, technique and passing for this level, great determination and flair, decent pace and great acceleration, i can't ask for more at this level.

That's not to say we didn't get alumni from other Berlin clubs: Borowski, formed at Hertha, has a lot of versatility which will help us. He's accomplished in all of the left wing, from defender to attacking midfielder, and he can play right midfielder too. Amamoo comes from TeBe Berlin as a rotational option for the right wing. He will have to fight for the position with our next signing...

Kunert,  formed at Aue in the south of East Germany and has his physical stats as a great advantage at this level.

Attackers:

We also got two strikers, both formed at Halle, whcih will actually see us change from a 4-1-2-2-1 formation to a more classic 4-4-2  with 2 attacking forwards. I have to mention Diedhiou. With high values for this level at all things needed, he's already tearing this division a new hole, with 14 goals scored in the first 6 games!

Our pre-season was small and unenventful, and we used it not only to give some match form to our players but also to try out a couple of trialists. then we went straight into the season!

 

We were given ridiculous odds to win the league: 1-91, and as mentioned in the previous post, the board expects us to finish top two. My only goal this year, with the team I managed to put together, is going up, and as you can see, thanks to DIedhiou's supershow, we're right on track to do that! I don't think I've ever had such a strong league start. I think it's a combination of two factors - not only we have better players, but we assembled a team that allows me to play in a much more offensive and dangerous tactic, and you could see that effect immediatly!

 

But life cannot be made only of good results. The board wanted us to reach the Quarter Finals of the Berlin Cup... and then we went and got TeBe Berlin, one of the favourites, in the first round. They play 2 levels above me! We managed to score first, in the very first highlight of the day... and then proceeded to do pretty much nothing else the whole game. It was a more than deserved victory for the favourites, and we're out early this year in the cup - which on the other hand allows us to focus 100% on the league.

[deltablue]

That's a good start to the league season.

[Sonic Youth]

Yes, that’s a good start to the league. All the fans at the ground must be really enjoying all the goals flying in 

Edited March 21, 2021 by Sonic Youth

[Reiver]

On 21/03/2021 at 10:52, Sonic Youth said:

Yes, that’s a good start to the league. All the fans at the ground must be really enjoying all the goals flying in 

All 500 (in the big games - other wise 200) or so of them, yeah!

On 21/03/2021 at 09:59, deltablue said:

That's a good start to the league season.

Thanks!

Edited March 22, 2021 by Reiver

[Reiver]

It's the Amoro Diedhiou Show.

We've reached the long winter break, and what a season this has been so far. All because of this guy - Amoro Diedhiou. At this moment, selecting the starting 11 is Diedhiou+10. Just look at these numbers - 1 goal every 73 minutes, 15,38 xG - that's nearly as many xG as the whole of TeBe Berlin II, and close to Hilalspor and Türkiyemspor. He's making this season a walk in the park.

As expected when you have one player giving us those kinds of numbers, we're dominating. Undefeated so far, even if we've had our share of draws. In this case, it's not because of some fancy schmancy tactic change or system were playing - we're playing a fairly simple 4-4-2 with lots of through balls to take advantage of the speed of the strikers and wingers and the defensive weaknesses of the other teams. This is just because we managed to build a team that is just a lot faster than the average of this league.

Not all is good news though...

They tell me to be optimistic but there's no good players on any position? Good grief...