[FM13] From Pors to Rich

[deltablue]

Good Afternoon everyone.

I haven't really felt much like playing FM recently, however I thought this was a good opportunity to try something new, which wouldn't require as much energy or motivation. During my last major career I decided to conduct a little experiment once I had all the money I could possibly need at Milan. I choose a Danish Second Division club to 'fund' though buying a youth player every window and see what happened. The team I chose, Skjold, actually got relegated the first year but had become a yo-yo club between the Premier and First Divisions by the time I left Milan. I picked it up again when I was at Schalke (upping the amount a little to something like £2.5M a window) and they managed to become a more established Premier Division team, even getting into Europe a couple of times, though Copenhagen remained too big and rich an opponent to compete with.

I thought I'd try this again as a little project, this time dedicating a career to it which would potentially go a lot quicker. I would take over a big club (Manchester United as it happens) and do their transfers (including the ones from my chosen club) but otherwise holiday through the season. I wasn't sure which country to go with for the target club, eventually settling on Norway this time. Since I went for an England start date they were about half-way through their season which enabled me to ideally choose one of the 4 teams at the bottom of the Second Division groups. Looking at the tables, Pors Grenland seemed to fit the bill nicely.

I already have some idea what will happen given my prior experiment, beyond the target club hopefully rising up the leagues after a while.

- At that level even a rich club won't be buying players so the wage bill will skyrocket instead.

- They will be potentially held back by their coach, since as they do better he'll be safe from being fired, but his reputation would also soon somewhat outstrip his ability meaning he wouldn't be good enough to be poached by any club he'd actually consider going to. It might therefore be a long time before the club get a coach more suited to the higher level they'd probably have been at for a long time.

- Being at such a low level means that the board probably wouldn't seriously consider facility upgrades, though it helps that Pors start with an 8,000-capacity stadium. In the Premier League they might finally do a bit of upgrading but it remains to be seen how much it possible before the board would go 'Our facilities are fine for our level' again. Maybe in the very long term Pors can help the league reputation improve but otherwise that provides a glass ceiling.

- Pors could potentially do a lot better that Skjold did without the equivalent of a rich and dominant team like Copenhagen that would still be tough to compete with. I'd probably up the amount they get to £5M or even £10M a year if I can, which should be plenty for that level. One of the reasons why I rejected doing it in a big nation (like a Serie C2 club) which wouldn't have the glass ceiling I mentioned in the previous point is how much more money would be needed to make a difference later on.

[deltablue]

Dec 2012

Pors did a lot better in the second half of the season then the first, but as I expected it wasn't enough and they still went down. They should still be back up after a single year hopefully, and in a much better financial position.

[deltablue]

July 2014

This will probably continue for a while longer since I'm too unwell and rundown to properly play my main save. Anyway as expected it didn't take long for Pors to bounce back into the 2nd Division, with things going rather better than last time. They're actually only a couple of points off promotion if you take into account Brann 2 not being able to go up (something not yet reflected in the shading) though I doubt it'll happen this quickly. I also thought it would be interesting to look at the wage bill rankings as well as the thing I knew would likely rise. It's not a surprise to see them spending more than anyone else other than Brann 2 (who naturally would have players on higher wages), and I even loaded up another save file to see what Pors were spending at the start of the game (assuming that would be consistent in each save). According to that, they were spending just under £300k per annum compared to just under £500k per annum now. A clear increase but not an overwhelming one, still it's early days. I'll do transfer updates as well (not that they'll mean much at this stage with no fees being paid) at the end of each season and a 'star signing' to add a little more context to their activity.