[FM 22] An Aussie Idiot Abroad redux [Pentagon]

Butlee · May 17, 2022

Hi everyone! Some mates enlightened me to the challenge that is a Pentagon save - winning 5 CL's on different continents - and we decided to craft some of our own rules and have a run at it. Since this would be a significant undertaking, I felt I wanted to share the journey.

If you're new to any of my threads, my philosophy is to 'stop and smell the roses' along the way. It's not going to be just a few updates per season as we storm through... it'll be many updates - whenever I feel like enough has happened to share the story.
And the story is they key here. I don't want to only post a heap of screenshots in succession - I'd like to share comments and quips and to really narrate through the Managers' journey. If I'm back here after 5 CL trophies are secured, I want to reminisce over not just the good times and bad times, but also the mentality we had and the reasons we took to some decisions.

I'm hoping each continent provides a different challenge, and we'll have to adapt and our approach accordingly with each move!

Feeling a lot more comfortable in life to push this save further than the last effort :-)

<< I'll tend to drop this when I'm speaking out of character too.

Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy sharing it, cheers & 'hoo roo'! - Butlee

An Aussie Idiot Abroad redux - A Pentagon Challenge

Challenges & Rules

Attempt to win the respective Champions League on 5 continents [Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa]
Start unemployed with the least attractive manager possible.
Simulate the game for 14 months to let things unsettle a bit (I want to land just after the 2nd European Summer transfer window).
You can journeyman to whatever country will take you, but once you're in a continent you have to stay there until you win the CL.

Database & Setup:

All vanilla nations & leagues
Small database [176,550 players]
Applying Daveincid's "Increase Realism" Megapack [May Update]

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/560337-fm22-increase-realism-megapack-may-update-by-daveincid-060522/

Thank you to Daveincid. I've not used the megapack before but it came highly recommended!

Butlee · May 17, 2022

Using the Tato skin. Looks slick and I love the matchday tablet! I like rotating through skins over a playthrough.

Bruce McBride

Here's the man with who built his own cabinet with only space for 5 trophies. Brucey was born in Canberra - the nations capital - which makes him about as Aussie as Aussie can be. When asked about his managerial skills, he replies "Well I'm only starting my career, so I'd say 'about average' right now."

Oh yeah, and obviously we created this game 12 days ago!

Since we're in for the long haul, it'll be cool to see Brucey's skills changing over time. Kind of hope he gets some adaptability though haha!

Anyway not too much to say at this stage. Bruce is my avatar for the save and I'll float in and out of first and third person - I know that's a storytelling faux pas but it'll allow me to keep it interesting and most importantly to post on a whim in whatever manner I'm feeling at the time. This isn't going to be done in a month folks, let's get ready to strap in for the ride!

We won't go too ham on the Aussie gags, but I couldn't resist the green & gold shirt-tie combination. Actually, he looks pretty decent there.
And no, it's not an image based on me. I could never pull off glasses and I have been described as 'salt and peppered' in the facial hair stakes.

But let's get cracking!

Edited May 17, 2022 by Butlee

Butlee · May 17, 2022

Quick one before we start - apologies for not having naming packs etc... set up properly. Poor form on my part, but hopefully it's not too damning to the save, cheers.

A little bit of planning

We don't want to get too rigid with our strategy towards 5 trophies, but I think we need to have some kind plan that doesn't leave us trying to jump from, say, Asia to Europe and needing to play a dozen seasons to get that final trophy as we claw our way up the English ladder or something.

That part in mind, Europe probably does need to be our final stop, but we'll need to maybe target a move from North or South America to get to a club once we move over.
That leaves our start in Asia or Africa - the latter represented by South Africa only - as places to target early.

A start in South Africa might help us knock off one continent early and give us easier access to Australia; or to China's top flight; And those might be the best way to get into the Americas for a run. The alternative would be to see if there's say, an Indonesian side who'd take me on and fight up to winning the ACL, but then you move to South Africa - can you take African success and get a move from there?

Because I wonder if you won the ACL, could you get a run in a lower-table MLS side? Or would it be more likely to move to one of the lower divisions in Brazil or Argentina and work your way up there? The intermediate steps will be really interesting!
As will of course the start! How long do we wait? Do we just dive in and make it work wherever? Who would even take us!?

Let's start by taking a look at the world we're in.

01 September 2022

Welcome to the 2nd half of 2022! The world is in a strange future-state where Liverpool won the Champions League / EPL double, Mbappe went to Bayern Munich for Free and Ajax were picked apart losing Onana, Antony, Timber, Klaiber and Gravenberch!

The important thing for us though, is who our self-imposed rivals are for this challenge. Currently it's these folks:

I think the best thing about doing Europe last is that Klopp will be retired!!

McBride's Downtime

Bruce made the most of the past 14 months; following a strict diet of meat pies, inventing new wrestling moves to use on crocodiles and watching football matches every day for an entire year. Well actually it was just 1 match - Australia's only World Record in football. An unlikely win over American Samoa.

It has done wonders for Brucey's skills though. He's now 150% more determined and at least twice as good at coaching attacking and defending....

Job Hunting

Ok we're all here to see what's on the table jobwise. You could argue it's an awkward time of the season - specifically starting just after the winter transfer window for Europe. But a lot of the rest of the world runs off a different cycle, so this may create some opportunities in Asia at the back end of their season. Having said that, the South African season has just started. Maybe not ideal...

An interesting mix of clubs at the top. Definitely a range over many continents and obviously no one we're even close to signing for. Let's take a look at the other end:

Here's where the strategy element comes into it. We'd be most likely to get a look in at the Swedish clubs (largely because we have no knowledge of any of these comps but we do speak English!), but we don't want to dive into Europe yet. I'll wager that league-leaders Kedah won't take an untested manager in Malaysia, so it's down to the Chinese sides.
Jiuniu are 11pts away from safety - so that's on a hiding to nothing - which leaves us applying for just Kunshan. May as well take a look and our quandary of taking this or waiting for a South African side to come up can start if they offer us a deal!

Edited May 20, 2022 by Butlee

Punch · May 17, 2022

Good luck with your new adventure!

vara · May 20, 2022

nice write up, mate
should be a laugh! good luck.

VINEYforthewin · May 21, 2022

I already feel a deep connection with our main man Brucey!

Play well.

Edited May 21, 2022 by VINEYforthewin

Butlee · May 21, 2022

21 September 2022

Welcome to Persiba Balikpapn, Beruang Madu (The Sun Bear) from Indonesia.

I honestly thought this would take longer. We were turned down from 1 job because they already had a candidate lined up and we only had 3 other applications pending when the Persiba board approached Bruce.

For a moment I was considering waiting for the South African post, but we also said we'd roll with the punches a bit if we needed to. Persiba is a great club with lots of potential and it's a fantastic start for Brucey's professional career!

Persiba Balikpapan, 8th in Indonesian Liga 2 [5W 6D 8L]

Persiba Balikpapan are actually quite a competitive professional club in Indonesia, who suffered a bout of financial trouble in 2017 leading to their drop to the 2nd tier of the country. Founded in 1950 they stormed up through the divisions in the 1980's and it prior to the turn of the millennium that they first faltered and relegated to League Two. Half a decade and no less than 4 managers later they managed to get back into the top flight. From there they've hovered between a mid table side and mid-to-top, but haven't really been able to take a proper crack at winning.

In 2017 everything went against them. The Indonesian Leagues moved to their current moniker (LIga 1, Liga 2 etc..) and model that year, the being an older club in their area Persiba struggled to find sponsorship. They were also moved from their stadium as the land owners decided on a redevelopment in that space. Beruang Madu appeared to be left behind by the new world order coming along.

The club ran close to relegating for 2 years until they found new owners and, to quote the Wikipedia page - "The mission to save Persiba begins."

And to wrap the mini-history lesson, I just wanted to take the quote from the new owner, Gede Widiade;

If you can't get behind a guy like that what can you support!?

Liga 2

We enter the competition with 3 rounds to go and us facing another relegation crisis. We lost a lot of players last season and have put together a fairly elaborate rebuild recently. But it's all for nought if we drop down.

But not dwell on the negatives it really is an incredible opportunity we've fallen into. The squad are all between 20 and 28 and there are some some great mature young players in the mix. The mini-rebuild of the playing roster has meant that most players have room to grow. The club is financially sound and we have sponsors for a couple of years to ensure we stay that way. We're sitting on a remarkable, brand new 40k seater stadium, which is owned by the City (of Balikpapan) and rented to us for peanuts. And overall it feels like a team with all the right stuff in place, just waiting for a manager to grab the reigns and drive them back into the top flight and become a real force in this country.

Final note: big credit to the person(s) who put that Wiki article together. Usually through the moderation of Wikipedia a lot of the emotive language is stripped away - which is probably how an encyclopaedia should be. But this article is filled with passion and desire for the club! And it's little moments like these that make me love football, love how global it is, and how love it can transcend all barriers. I get this guy/gal and I love them for feeling this way!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persiba_Balikpapan

Edited May 21, 2022 by Butlee

Chris_ANZFM · May 21, 2022

I have a feeling that this is going to be a very good follow! Good luck with the mandate!

Butlee · May 27, 2022

21 September 2022

The mission to save Persiba begins!

The Club

Part of the journey will be to build up the club. I think, especially for the early seasons in each nation where our local rep is low, we'll need to plan as if we're going to be there for a few seasons.

For now we'll leave these details up and once we're more familiar with the financial state of the club, the playing roster, and have a more defined Club vision in the new seasons, we'll work out which areas to target.

1 Euro per ticket. In Australia we call that a 'gold coin donation'.

League Two

The 2nd tier of Indonesian football is first split into Groups A & B. I may not have been clear on that during our first showing of the league table (above). 22 rounds in the First Phase - the top 4 from Group A go into a group and Group B likewise. A little round-robin is formed and the top two from each Second Phase Group then combine to create Semi-Finals & a Grand Final!

The two teams in the Grand Final promote, as does the winner of the Third Place playoff!

I find competitions with Finals or Promotion Series much more difficult to succeed in. I'm definitely more comfortable fighting for sustained higher form over a league season than I am being thrown into crunch matches. But in this instance we have to treat every challenge like... well a challenge.

Where this league gets interesting is in the rules around squad building. There's no salary cap, but there is a cap on registered players.

No foreign signings is a big deal - when you promote it goes to 4, which aligns with the ACL here. It makes sense for League Two here though - there's not enough money to be importing players.
What's really interesting is being forced to have 18 players for what I deem a relatively short season.
And restricting over 35's and forcing under 23's - I really like these kind of rules (read: I wish the Aussie A-League would implement something like this so we don't just recycle squad filler players in their late 20's and we don't keep bringing in older players for their final cheque and a holiday before retirement). I think it encourages giving youngsters a chance and always needing to have some coming through.

In the short term l I'm not too worried about targets and goals for the club. We need to gauge the players as best we can during the remaining 3 rounds of the season, see where our finances fall at the start of pre-season, and set a transfer and formation plan from there. Only after that can we talk about where we want to get to in 1-4 seasons!

Instead for now, let's go with First impressions of the players!

The Squad

It is really, really difficult to judge the overall strength of a squad. Reviewing the comparisons tells us that we're competitive in the mid-table, but the Season Preview puts us in 9th out of the 24 combined teams (we're about 16th on a comparative scale atm). So we probably have the player quality collectively to do better. I think there's a lack of cohesion in the players - I don't see a lot of complimentary skills. For example we have a pacey, nimble, sneaky striker but our midfield is built around workers and other pacey players, and lacks a real ballplayer for this level.

It's also hard because this season feels like a complete reset for the squad:

That's 13/21 that were signed for this season. From the 8 that weren't, I don't really consider any long-term prospects. That's going to have to be a target for us - find some players who are competitive and work on player retention.

There are some prospects in the teenage ranks though - we'll come back to these lads once we've settled a bit:

Goalkeepers

The club has been looking for the right long-term keeper for the best part of 4 years now - ever since they went down. Pambudi & Ikhwanudin are probably equally strong from a technical shot-stopping and general eagerness and attitude, but what Syah brings is a bit more athleticism, better overall distribution and he's also a bit more of a team leader. Maybe not first choice captain material, but I'd say about top 5.

To be honest I really like that. I don't know if based on pure FM logic it matters, but I like the notion that we need mature players and team leaders that really know how to bring the club back to glory. So there's no reason to upset the status quo here - Hilman Syah gets first spot!

You can see why it's hard to base the GK decision of purely FM logic or attributes. When faced with two players who look equal you've really got to go with your gut. And boy does Bruce know how to work his gut!

Central Defenders

The test here will be if Syahputra or Kurniawan sticks around at EoS. We're definitely going to leave Aditama in there - he's got 1 more season on his contract after this and we'll be hoping he grows into a fine player.

I think this is a pretty competitive backline to be fair. We don't have the ball skills to pull off any kind of 3-DC shenanigans, but there's enough here that a moderate defensive line and a bit of support from the middle and I think this is and will stay a pretty secure defensive group. You can see from the table (above posts) that defending isn't necessarily our problem, we're under 1 goal conceded per match.

Fullbacks

Probably the first area where I've felt "needs improvement". Both guys are battlers - they'll fight well up and down the wings. Sokoy is more pacey and dynamic whereas Maulana is a but more capable defensively. I think the key to getting something out of these guys is to let them get forward - if we have them sit back on defensive or supporting FB kind of roles, they might just hide from the attack too much and get caught out when their weaker defensive skills are tested.

Defensive / Central Midfield

A surprising amount of pace among these 3 blokes. Arfan will probably absorb a lot of the pressure - I can already see him in a number of DM/MC kind of steady midfield roles.

Wafa is very watch this space - we dropped 6.25k on him as a transfer and so far he's returned 0 goals and 0 assists from 14 starts. He's not a great defensive option, so what's he using his pace for if not to create chances?
Maybe being quick and working hard is enough for this league - I honestly don't know yet. So he'll get a chance and we'll see what happens before the end of this season.

As mentioned, I'd describe Arfan as 'steady' because he is quick and his work rate is ok - but he's not necessarily commandingly strong and I imagine he'll wear out over 90 minutes. Definitely a player we can trust, but he's one of those guys who's hard to find the perfect role for them - and hard to decide if they're good enough to adapt a formation/tactic around!

Offensive Midfield / Wingers

I was hoping there would be a little bit more here. There's pace, but not express pace. There's some shooting ability, but no one who'll be a scoring x-factor out wide. There's a reasonable amount of up-and-back from positioning & movement as well as passing/tackling/marking, so we could play higher or deeper in formation - but there's also not enough definition on a lot of the players to dictate how we should play.

Strikers

How effectively this unit is will depend a lot on our formation and the ability to get balls through for them. It'll be a test for me personally as my preference is more rigid kind of less direct play - but that's why we do this right? We need to learn to adapt to the places we are, the teams we face and the players we have!

Wadhan is really handy - he's a little shy at actual finishing, but it's the type of thing where may we push him to dribble past the keeper and not stress about difficult finishes?? He's a good team leader and seems to be enjoying himself so far.

That's our man! 3rd with a healthy mins/GL ratio and more shots on target than anyone else in the league.

I'm starting to get the feeling that a lot of these games get bogged down in midfield and don't have the polish to fashion a whole bunch of great targets.

General Info

I keep (what I refer to as) a bit of an FM Toolkit in Excel. It's a mix of tracking tables so I can build up a profile over time, and a few calculators and visualisations I've mocked up (with some help from some friends). It's by no means anything mind-blowing, but I find breaking down FM into simple analytics can often be enough.

It's been a few years since I actually sat down and filled out a full spreadsheet , but over the course of this save we'll bring bits and pieces of it into play. For now, an idea of the middling-ages of the squad.

The player age spread on the left mostly helps see if you've got too old of a squad or if you're roughly following any external pressures like signing young players or trying to avoid too many old signings.

The Wage Distribution panels are pretty cool though - I like the percentages at the moment. We're spending over a quarter of our wages on players I don't even want at first glance!! And we're also throwing a quarter of our wages at attacking midfielders - so if we're thinking tactics we have to consider something with a lot of players in the final third.
I don't think there's a right or wrong answer with the percentage splits btw - it's just nice to have them, to draw a few broad conclusions like we have now, and as the team starts to balance out how you want it you can look back and keep note of the ratio of wages that made it work for you at the time!

Edited May 27, 2022 by Butlee

karanhsingh · May 27, 2022

Great intro posts! Good luck with this will keep an eye out.

Butlee · May 27, 2022

21 September 2022

The mission to save Persiba begins!

The Run Home

With 3 games left and a touchy 2 points of safety from relegation, our first priority is survival.

Sulut United are in 5th.
Persiwa are 9th, just behind us.
PSM are currently 4th.

I think we need to go for a win on Persiwa and to steal at least 1 point from the others - that'd force Persiwa & 10th placed PSG Pati to win 2 of their remaining 3 to overtake us. Fortunately our Goal Difference is much stronger.

Tactics

Don't hold too much stock in the tactics for now. I set up the strategy with the above concept in mind - it'll change completely before next season I feel.

This is based on a counter-attacking strategy with a few tweaks to get the attack/defence balance suited to us. I moved up the defensive line and lowered the line of engagement to try and compress the space. I want to force teams to play over us and with our fullbacks not pushing up too much I'm hoping the 4 back there can sweep up a lot of that. I would have gone to a 5-man backline if Syahputra wasn't injured for 2 weeks.

Up top we could have moved the wings up, but I wanted to leave the space for Wadhan to move in. I'm also keen to see if Mandowen is a playmaker or Shadow Striker from AMC, or if we maybe pull him back to MC next season and try to sign a more creative option in the space there.

Otherwise there's not much to it. I want to keep the ball and we hope we can find a few goals by surprising teams with our new formation.

Butlee · May 27, 2022

21 September 2022

Didn't even get through 1 day of training before our first setback, haha.

Goalkeepers don't use their heads... he'll be fine!

Butlee · May 27, 2022

21 September 2022

Not looking to breakdown every match, but with our run home being so tense it's worth walking through it.

Game #1 - Sulut Utd

Long story, told shortly; 0-0

In a way it was to be expected. With our tactics it would require a bit more cohesion to create the good chances and we just struggled. Chances yes, but good chances were harder to come by. Our xG was built around quantity not quality.

We dominated possession and kept the ball well - not just passing it along the back, but having our MC/MC/AMC combo find spaces in the midfield as well. I was really impressed by Wafa's ability to skip past players on occasion and Mandowen put in a big shift, covering a lot of ground up and back.

We're still a bit shy of ideas going forward. The trouble is that we don't have big central players charging into the box, but we do have wide players like Haarlem who just like driving to the byline - then we get struck crossing to players who aren't up for it. It's not something we can solve this season, but we might have to look at someone like Haarlem and figure out how to make that work. Unfortunately Wadhan didn't enjoy the tactics either. I suspect he's getting less support from our Cautious or Balanced mentality - and I've got us playing shorter passing... our striker likely revelled in even quicker, fluid and more direct transition allowing him to move into spaces and chase through balls - I've largely cut that out so far.

Our compressed defensive shape caused Sulut a lot of problems and it wasn't until later on that they found space in the channels, just inside our tiring wingers. You can see they finally got their major chance in the 60th minute with a cross - fortunately Pambudi palmed it over for a corner.

We'll make a few tweaks, but ultimately that's on target with what we wanted. The key will be beating Persiwa next match - hopefully we can get another 17 shots and put one in the net!

Chris_ANZFM · May 28, 2022

22 hours ago, Butlee said:

21 September 2022

The mission to save Persiba begins!

The Club

Part of the journey will be to build up the club. I think, especially for the early seasons in each nation where our local rep is low, we'll need to plan as if we're going to be there for a few seasons.

For now we'll leave these details up and once we're more familiar with the financial state of the club, the playing roster, and have a more defined Club vision in the new seasons, we'll work out which areas to target.

1 Euro per ticket. In Australia we call that a 'gold coin donation'.

League Two

The 2nd tier of Indonesian football is first split into Groups A & B. I may not have been clear on that during our first showing of the league table (above). 22 rounds in the First Phase - the top 4 from Group A go into a group and Group B likewise. A little round-robin is formed and the top two from each Second Phase Group then combine to create Semi-Finals & a Grand Final!

The two teams in the Grand Final promote, as does the winner of the Third Place playoff!

I find competitions with Finals or Promotion Series much more difficult to succeed in. I'm definitely more comfortable fighting for sustained higher form over a league season than I am being thrown into crunch matches. But in this instance we have to treat every challenge like... well a challenge.

Where this league gets interesting is in the rules around squad building. There's no salary cap, but there is a cap on registered players.

No foreign signings is a big deal - when you promote it goes to 4, which aligns with the ACL here. It makes sense for League Two here though - there's not enough money to be importing players.
What's really interesting is being forced to have 18 players for what I deem a relatively short season.
And restricting over 35's and forcing under 23's - I really like these kind of rules (read: I wish the Aussie A-League would implement something like this so we don't just recycle squad filler players in their late 20's and we don't keep bringing in older players for their final cheque and a holiday before retirement). I think it encourages giving youngsters a chance and always needing to have some coming through.

In the short term l I'm not too worried about targets and goals for the club. We need to gauge the players as best we can during the remaining 3 rounds of the season, see where our finances fall at the start of pre-season, and set a transfer and formation plan from there. Only after that can we talk about where we want to get to in 1-4 seasons!

Instead for now, let's go with First impressions of the players!

The Squad

It is really, really difficult to judge the overall strength of a squad. Reviewing the comparisons tells us that we're competitive in the mid-table, but the Season Preview puts us in 9th out of the 24 combined teams (we're about 16th on a comparative scale atm). So we probably have the player quality collectively to do better. I think there's a lack of cohesion in the players - I don't see a lot of complimentary skills. For example we have a pacey, nimble, sneaky striker but our midfield is built around workers and other pacey players, and lacks a real ballplayer for this level.

It's also hard because this season feels like a complete reset for the squad:

That's 13/21 that were signed for this season. From the 8 that weren't, I don't really consider any long-term prospects. That's going to have to be a target for us - find some players who are competitive and work on player retention.

There are some prospects in the teenage ranks though - we'll come back to these lads once we've settled a bit:

Goalkeepers

The club has been looking for the right long-term keeper for the best part of 4 years now - ever since they went down. Pambudi & Ikhwanudin are probably equally strong from a technical shot-stopping and general eagerness and attitude, but what Syah brings is a bit more athleticism, better overall distribution and he's also a bit more of a team leader. Maybe not first choice captain material, but I'd say about top 5.

To be honest I really like that. I don't know if based on pure FM logic it matters, but I like the notion that we need mature players and team leaders that really know how to bring the club back to glory. So there's no reason to upset the status quo here - Hilman Syah gets first spot!

You can see why it's hard to base the GK decision of purely FM logic or attributes. When faced with two players who look equal you've really got to go with your gut. And boy does Bruce know how to work his gut!

Central Defenders

The test here will be if Syahputra or Kurniawan sticks around at EoS. We're definitely going to leave Aditama in there - he's got 1 more season on his contract after this and we'll be hoping he grows into a fine player.

I think this is a pretty competitive backline to be fair. We don't have the ball skills to pull off any kind of 3-DC shenanigans, but there's enough here that a moderate defensive line and a bit of support from the middle and I think this is and will stay a pretty secure defensive group. You can see from the table (above posts) that defending isn't necessarily our problem, we're under 1 goal conceded per match.

Fullbacks

Probably the first area where I've felt "needs improvement". Both guys are battlers - they'll fight well up and down the wings. Sokoy is more pacey and dynamic whereas Maulana is a but more capable defensively. I think the key to getting something out of these guys is to let them get forward - if we have them sit back on defensive or supporting FB kind of roles, they might just hide from the attack too much and get caught out when their weaker defensive skills are tested.

Defensive / Central Midfield

A surprising amount of pace among these 3 blokes. Arfan will probably absorb a lot of the pressure - I can already see him in a number of DM/MC kind of steady midfield roles.

Wafa is very watch this space - we dropped 6.25k on him as a transfer and so far he's returned 0 goals and 0 assists from 14 starts. He's not a great defensive option, so what's he using his pace for if not to create chances?
Maybe being quick and working hard is enough for this league - I honestly don't know yet. So he'll get a chance and we'll see what happens before the end of this season.

As mentioned, I'd describe Arfan as 'steady' because he is quick and his work rate is ok - but he's not necessarily commandingly strong and I imagine he'll wear out over 90 minutes. Definitely a player we can trust, but he's one of those guys who's hard to find the perfect role for them - and hard to decide if they're good enough to adapt a formation/tactic around!

Offensive Midfield / Wingers

I was hoping there would be a little bit more here. There's pace, but not express pace. There's some shooting ability, but no one who'll be a scoring x-factor out wide. There's a reasonable amount of up-and-back from positioning & movement as well as passing/tackling/marking, so we could play higher or deeper in formation - but there's also not enough definition on a lot of the players to dictate how we should play.

Strikers

How effectively this unit is will depend a lot on our formation and the ability to get balls through for them. It'll be a test for me personally as my preference is more rigid kind of less direct play - but that's why we do this right? We need to learn to adapt to the places we are, the teams we face and the players we have!

Wadhan is really handy - he's a little shy at actual finishing, but it's the type of thing where may we push him to dribble past the keeper and not stress about difficult finishes?? He's a good team leader and seems to be enjoying himself so far.

That's our man! 3rd with a healthy mins/GL ratio and more shots on target than anyone else in the league.

I'm starting to get the feeling that a lot of these games get bogged down in midfield and don't have the polish to fashion a whole bunch of great targets.

General Info

I keep (what I refer to as) a bit of an FM Toolkit in Excel. It's a mix of tracking tables so I can build up a profile over time, and a few calculators and visualisations I've mocked up (with some help from some friends). It's by no means anything mind-blowing, but I find breaking down FM into simple analytics can often be enough.

It's been a few years since I actually sat down and filled out a full spreadsheet , but over the course of this save we'll bring bits and pieces of it into play. For now, an idea of the middling-ages of the squad.

The player age spread on the left mostly helps see if you've got too old of a squad or if you're roughly following any external pressures like signing young players or trying to avoid too many old signings.

The Wage Distribution panels are pretty cool though - I like the percentages at the moment. We're spending over a quarter of our wages on players I don't even want at first glance!! And we're also throwing a quarter of our wages at attacking midfielders - so if we're thinking tactics we have to consider something with a lot of players in the final third.
I don't think there's a right or wrong answer with the percentage splits btw - it's just nice to have them, to draw a few broad conclusions like we have now, and as the team starts to balance out how you want it you can look back and keep note of the ratio of wages that made it work for you at the time!

Fantastic write up here sir, really enjoyed the read of this one. Love the depth you've gone into with the spreadsheet and explaining how it will factor into your decision making. All the best for the season!

Butlee · May 28, 2022

01 October 2022

Pressure is on!

Game #2 - Persiwa

It's almost not worth talking about the game pre-red card. We were probably about as good offensively as last time - we got our xG to 1.35 and Persiwa were mostly chasing us around and had only mustered 2 shots @ 0.26 xG.

We had scored a first half goal though - ball to Wadhan's feet in the attacking third and he took the ball sideways, dragging his defender out. It made a big space for Mandowen and our AM (now on "AP" duties, not "SS", so go figure?) rushed in there and was fed the through ball for a nice and easy goal.

After the 63 minutes our right middie Nugroho got sent off for his second yellow. It's his last action of the season and to be honest it's probably his last for the club - my initial notes of him (above) were not flattering.

Fortunately Wada was still keen to go end to end and he broke into the box on a run. His shot beat the keeper, hit the post, and landed in the path of our leading goalscorer Wadhan, who tucked home to seal the deal late.

The stats don't look like they're too bad for us - but we were winning that possession before the send-off, so we absorbed a lot of pressure and absorbed it well!

Safety Secured!!

With that, we've built an insurmountable lead from the 10th, highest-relegation-placed team.

First hurdle overcome! We can technically still make 7th, but it's not a huge priority here.

What's Next?

Normally I'd do a bit of a season wrap, but there's not much to say here since my initial impressions notes are only from a couple of weeks ago.

Next step is really the planning. Half the squad is looking for a contract renewal now we've survived and the staff are muchly the same. I also noticed this....

.... a few days from now, before the season ends. So Brucey and I will be going away to look over which players we are and aren't keeping, and then to get started on filling gaps and trying to find some handy replacements before they're snapped up!

I think our high-level transfer strategy is going to be less about finding players to fit a tactic and more around finding good players and using next season to build a side/strategy around them. From there we can lock down our medium-long term tactics and start looking for players who fit those. I know there are two kinds of manager - and one of them brings their own tactics, styles and beliefs and makes the team grow into those, but I'm more inclined to adapt to what we have. Maybe longer term we'll create a bit more identity (though I'm not sure Bruceyball has the right kind of marketting ring to it to ever become a thing), but for now let's have some fun seeing what interesting players are out there!

Butlee · June 4, 2022

09 October 2022

Let's talk transfer ideas.

Wheeling and Dealing

One of my favourite aspects about FM journeys is the finding of players. Obviously as the human manager(s) you reach out as far and as wide as you can and you're often taking gambles on signings, giving potential players a go, reviewing and re-assessing who's going to make it and who isn't. And that can be a challenge at all levels - you're scouring the local amateur markets to fill your newly Pro squad; you're trying to somehow attract enough good local talent to make your registration targets; your board has random random links with Spain, or Venezuela, or somewhere in Africa; you're in the MLS fighting to bring Americans home and to secure marketable marquee signings; you're a top 20 club in the world and you want to scout every corner of the globe and find every little sparkle you can before your rivals do it!

For me it's not just about the finding of the players. I really love the stories that stick with you long after they've been and gone, or even after that save has been and gone.

That in mind, I've decided to share some of my stories throughout this off-season window's posts. I hope it's interesting and breaks up the other parts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First one is an FM21 star, Daniel Salinas.

I don't think I've ever had the best player in the world before, until I had Salinas. This is obviously 8-10 seasons into a save and the newgens were taking over. I found Daniel at age 17 hiding away in Mexico, and snapped him up for 12M pounds to come over to play for Marseille. We were in CL and having trouble dismantling the PSG powerhouse in both Europe and Local comps. Salinas wasn't the silver bullet, but every time we did do well against them, it was because of this guy. He was your typical Advanced Forward - super pace & acceleration, fantastic off-ball movement and the dribbling, finishing, first touch trifecta. He was worth >150M pounds at one point.

We were far from a 1-player team, but I'll just never forget the joy it brought me to have 'found' this guy through rigorous scouting and to bring him into his 20's and have him become one of(, if not) the best players in the world. Lad even took up French citizenship to help us keep him here!

Indo-Where?

We (Bruce, speaking of he and his staff) spent a lot of time puzzling over the playerbase landscape here, and specifically trying to see if there were any tricks to finding players for our club. While we didn't come up with much, we at least were able to outline our target areas, and a bit of a priorities list:

The reason we go for Free Agents before loans is because we're trying to break the rotating door of players in and out. The best way to Div 1 is to find players who will stick around and let us build up. Obviously not every player will fit that mould, but even if we find half a dozen players and only 3 stay - it's still the start of something.

First (and only so far!) player we found was a goalkeeper - Aqil Savik

We've taken him on as a 4 week trialist for now so I can see as much of his attributes before signing - but he looks like an improvement skill-wise.

He fits the profile too - he was at Persib who won the Indonesian League One last season and are looking at another top 3 finish. Sadly Muchamad wasn't playing much during his time here and he's been without a club for 6 months. Perfect for us to snap up!

The other good thing with Div 1 releases is that it's October, and our contracts run until December. We've got time to aggressively pursue any players off contract by January nice and early.

The National Team caps - it's like a neat little way to know if the player has reasonable current abilities. Some of the U19 Nationals may not even be that sharp for our club, but some still would - it'd be worth giving a couple a go if they get released. We could afford them a lot of game time!

Positions Needed? Tactics? Roles? What kind of amateur operation are you running!?

I do hear you and I do agree. The trouble is that it's not a question of what roles do you need? It's actually easier to answer what roles DONT you need?

We're pretty happy down the middle - 1 solid striker at least, a couple of AM options and MC options and the DC's are ok.
But I also would have said the GK is a lock-in, until we found Aqil Savik (above). So there might be more talent out there that dwarves some of our current top picks.

Chosen11.com plug

This means our strategy is more about finding players who fit our goals [preferably younger and can stick with us, and hopefully help us grow into a D1 side] and getting the right kind of players and personalities into our squad - I can work the tactical magic to find a way to play with them all later!

Budgets etc..?

We're actually really comfortable financially, as we have attracted strong sponsors over the past 2 seasons. Sponsorships seems a bit odd sometimes so I'm not sure if we'll see another million pounds this year or if that was some kind of 'one-off'.. but our expenses are less than 800k per annum and there's at least another kit sponsor locked in for 300k for next season. If we could cobble together a Main Kit and General sponsor for another 200-300k that would largely cover us.

As you can see there's at least 69k on the table for transfer budget next season and we're well under our wage budget - I can't see us getting close to the wage cap to be honest.

Not looking specifically to buy players if we can help it. If we have a good season and D1 looks to be on the cards within the next season or two, I might go and hand pick some players we could potentially buy to help secure that. But for now it's about staying frugal and building the core - and we'll look at spending some of that money once we have a better idea of what we need. By then we should also have a better feel for the Indonesian FM economy!

Current Players

We've given a few players notice. Rasul and Maulana wanted to leave, and I've listed one of our keepers Ikhwanudin for now.

You can see why I wanted to have a proper look at Aqil Savik - if he's on board we can let Pambudi go as well.
Isir & Kusuma have started 1 match in the past 2 seasons between them so I'm inclined to let them go and to look for something new; or someone fresh; or someone who gives us something different to Wadhan.

And as much as Zidane might have potential - he's played 40 matches for us over 2 seasons and hasn't been improving. Nugroho looks good on paper, but he's just a bitsa kind of player - with a bit of this and a bit of that, but no real defining attributes or features. Plus he got sent off in our important match so I'm just not too impressed with him.

That's how we're slashing our wage budget down so much - obviously we'll replace a lot of these guys and it's a matter of what kind of players can we attract. But you can also see why I'm not keen to pin down tactics yet. If we find great wingers we'll play with wingers, if we find a great partner for Wadhan up front, we'll play two up top etc...

Anyway I think that's all in the prep for now. I'm going to go and review a score of League One teams and see if our reputation is strong enough to attract any of the players we want

Butlee · June 10, 2022

18 October 2022

Small Update. Can't all be big.

Hidden secrets

Sidebar: I've been playing FM for a while - I think my steam acquisitions started in FM09, and I definitely played prior to that - but it's only the past 5-6 few years I've actively sought out to learn and grow. It's even more recently that I've been active in these forums. So I've always had this feeling like there are a bunch of unspoken, generally accepted, golden rules that folks know - and no one ever brings them up anymore because everyone supposedly knows them. And here's me, just a bit late to the party and having missed out on all the ~~pies~~ tricks.

A whole array of things, such as;

Should you play a young player in your seniors for a few matches here and there to 'blood' him?
Exactly what does Discipline, Determination and Motivation do for staff?
Should you always listen to your coaches training advice?
Should you always pass into space? Tackle Hard?
Should you be using non-negotiable on a lot of your transfer and contract negotiations to be more frugal?
Should you always have 1 scout on the local scene to help gain knowledge of your opponents' players?

And just a whole lot of general stuff where I fumble through with changing philosophies, but always assumed everyone else had worked it all out.

I think on my own journey of discovery, that has turned out not to be true. A lot of these things - as they should be - are areas where one answer isn't always right.

That kind of logic also applies to Youth Intakes and how should I choose my HoYD?
Answer - I don't think there's a clear one-size-fits-all answer. I don't think anyone knows 100%, and I don't think you will do irreparable damage no matter what your decision-making factors are.

Head of Youth Development

To determine what makes a good HoYD, our philosophy is to apply a bit of the scientific method. We'll never 100% answer the question because our output data (ie Youth Intakes) will always give us a rather anecdotal view of things, but our target isn't to perfect the the approach, it's merely to improve over time.

There are a whole bunch of things that could influence what you want in a HoYD - Attributes obviously, both mental and knowledge types. There's the style of play. The nationality of the HoYD may come into play - or is it his knowledge of your country - or does knowledge of other countries help? Personality is a factor. As is reputation.
In a big club you really want to go for the best of everything all at once.

But everyone else has to have a trade-off. And I think that highlights the crux of the decision-making for us. What are we willing to give up to ensure we get the things that are important to us?

To answer, first we need to be introduced to Mr Hadiansyah.

We focused on getting the right personality first. We won't turn this into a Personalities segment (not yet anyhow), but the players' personality helps shape their career by impacting them both on and off the field - training or media handling & events to mettle or temperament in moments of adversity on the field.

Considering Persiba are a) looking to rebuild a stronger 'next gen' and b) see ourselves as potential Div 1 titles threats once we get going again, it made sense to aim high and start trying to build a professional culture through the team. With any luck, by the time we are competing in Div 1, we'll have some players coming through, training well and who are ready for the top flight spotlight.

We'll be looking to David to bring us some Fairly Professional players and/or generally improve the professionalism in the youth talent crop. Obviously if the squad itself is professional, there's a chance for fairly professional youths to gain professionalism over their careers as well.

Guide to FM

I used Guide to FM for a quick refresher here. It's got nice, easy-to-digest comments on the personalities types.

Overall we felt that this was an area that we'd get the most gain out of, for the least spend. Once we had David & a few other fairly professional options, we took a list of things we would and wouldn't compromise on and crossed off those who failed.

No compromise:

Had to be Indonesian.
Had to be a similar reputation to the club (we're 1 star - so no overpaying for 2 star rep HoYD's and no underpaying for 0.5 star guys)
Had to contribute to the training, thus needed 'working with youngsters' to be reasonable.

Once we had that, pretty well everything else was deemed less important. Is David the best coach in a smaller coaching staff? No. Is he the best judgement of potential we could have attracted? Possibly not. Does his playstyle preferences match ours? Maybe not.
But for all these factors we traded off by saying at least with the right attitude the players we do get will become the best they can be.

And much like the scientific method, if our analysis turns out that not focusing enough on attributes or style ends up with a shortfall of those big potential stars, maybe we'll change it up after that!
But for now we believe we've committed to a reliable strategy to start the base of our youth development as our club attempts to push up the divisions.

Butlee · July 16, 2022

18 May 2023

Ok now the challenge truly starts.

Where have we been?

I found the first real challenge for this save. I had in my mind that the Indonesian Leagues were on a 'covid schedule' this first season - running June through November - but it turns out 2023 has seen the same fixture window!
That means no matches for 8-9 months!

And while we could have simulated a fair chunk of that, I wanted to be around for our first season since we were clearing out players, trying to be opportunistic in signing some others and taking time to do any of the other peripherals we could touch with one eye on our finances - such as staff recruitment & scouting.

So on a personal level - yeah it's been a month, but it's been months of in-game click, click, click etc.... to get us within a 30 days of our first fixture.

What have we been doing?

Our general idea was to thin out the entire squad as much as we could and to start over. Not easy because the more you thin out the harder it is to attract the players you want, but at least we have a strong wage budget for this league and a few key reputable players to base the squad around.
Then it was all about scouting and watching for free agents or unsettled players, which included some poaching and what I like to call being a vulture.. where you circle less fortunate clubs (usually those facing relegation) and try to pick at them by stealing players. "Oh hey, your side just relegated to League Two. We're in League Two! Why would you stay on that sinking ship when we're on the way UP! You should join us!"

We even found a lad who'd been on scholarship in America!

We didn't stress too much on roles and positions - we let go the players who wanted out or whom we could get money for and we signed any that had promise or that we felt were at a strong level for this league. There wasn't a lot of science in the discussions, we took a few guesses with low scouting knowledge and we had a whole bunch of wins and losses along the way where players wouldn't join us or other clubs outbid us by offering more wages etc...

5 Out, 8 In

Once place where it's rare to have your players whisked away before you can sign them though, is in the Youth Intake. We had some promising players arrive during March. Keep in mind that when your squad is small and there are a lot of positional gaps, it can often inflate the potential of players.

Having said that, all we can do is give these guys a chance until we learn their true potential. So Affandi, Irfan and Agus are joining the Senior Squad in the first instance.

And in case you're wondering if all that mumbo-jumbo from last post about the HoYD and his impact on personalities.... yeah none of those 3 have good or professional personalities! We'll have to hope we can mould them a bit.

The Squad (How have we been doing)?

I'd say this leaves us a little top heavy in the player importance/age hierarchy for a club that's rebuilding & trying to build in more youth and more succession, but for now it's OK. It also looks a little like this because we've got both a U18 and U23 squad, so a lot of the younger or future prospects stay in there while we're not an enormous club that's overflowing with players.

In terms of the players roster, it's complete enough that we could play like this. But we'll still be looking for signings and we'll probably even battle for some loans - so things could improve.

I've marked in orange the new signings to highlight just how much of the squad changed:

Our defensive unit is mostly built around defending first and transitional skills second. If I'm targeting improvement areas, I think we could do with better options on both flanks, while Kurnia maybe evolves into more of a Central Defender.

It'd actually be nice to try a 5-man backline, but without the competitive wingbacks I'm not sure it's viable. Though maybe the trick is to play athletic wingers in there instead.

We trialled a few keepers who were around Syah's level, but I've been impressed with Syah and I couldn't find a significant enough improvement in goal to give up the established keeper.

Going forward there's actually a fair bit of talent that I like - even down to the young wingers. The challenge is going to be in the tactics. Both Rudiyana and Wadhan are probably capable as a solo striker, but I signed the former because I really thought they'd work well in tandem. They're both quick and like to move so they'll be both pulling defenders around, making space for one another.

In a formation sense, how do we get Madowen into a position to feed the front two while getting the most out of our engine in Setiawan and Arfan? Does Wada deserve a start as well? Should we be looking for another winger signing/loan so we can get players wide?

Overall I can see us trying a few different formations in friendlies. We've probably got to try a 5-3-2, some kind of 4-man midfield that puts Madowen at AMC, and some strategy that has just 1 striker to see how that goes.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Butlee

_Ben_ · July 17, 2022

Sorely missed your posting over this iteration! Loved the deep dives into the A-League last time round and will follow this, albeit a bit late to the party.

Sonic Youth · July 19, 2022

Caught up now. Looking like your about to have lift-off (first full season)!

Indonesia feels like a good place to start :thup:

Butlee · August 10, 2022

16 June 2023 - eve of first League match

Let's do this!

Final Status Before Match #1

We're here! We have 25 players! We're ready (maybe?) for the first League match!

From last post we brought in 5 loans and bought a young striker for 25k. It's probably an overpayment, but these last 6 signings for the season were almost entirely blind. We're having real trouble seeing what Div 1 players' skills are.

Total tally in the end was:

9 players OUT
15 players IN (out of 25 total squad)

There is still a big hierarchy / leadership problem at the club. We've managed to keep spirits high, but because of the heavy turnover in the squad the cohesion is shot.

We've moved captaincy off Kurniawan - I don't think he's as likely to stick around as the the younger, more core players Wadhan and Syah in goal.

Otherwise there are no major injury troubles. We have plenty of depth. We've played a few friendlies so sharpness is not fully prepared, but it's not untapped either. And despite having several real life months and 3 times that in-game to keep checking on how we stack up, we still have no idea how we'll go!

Media has us in 7th over the two 'div 2' conferences - so we should be pushing for top 4.

Strategy vs Tactics vs Formation

Trotting out a few of my butlee-isms before we get going. Actually lets call them bruceisms .. that sounds far better!

When it comes to talking about FM, I always try and apply a more traditional, military definition to these terms. And while splitting hairs on terminology doesn't matter too much if you're enjoying playing the game yourself, I always find it easier when explaining your lineup if you have a strict way for speaking about it. So when it comes to setting a lineup in FM, it's basically:

Strategy: The overall plan for your side. It's more of a conceptual phase. What are you trying to accomplish?
Tactics: The specific orders/actions given to execute your strategy. From general things like mentality to team and individual orders. Also including....
Formation: One element of the tactical setup. While formation and tactics kind of go hand-in-hand, I argue that you should aim to play certain tactics and will sometimes have a few formations that make the best use of those tactics - but not the reverse. I know opinions may vary on that statement so don't sweat the small stuff here!

A worked example: My attacking plan (strategy) is mostly about getting balls into my big striker pair. I need to get players wide and deep into the final 3rd to give us options for the angle and weight of crossing (tactics) so I'll be aiming to utilise options like - look for overlaps, runs wide with ball, wide tactics - and for that to work I may go with (formations) a traditional 4-4-2 to get wingers up there, or I could try more like a 5-3-2 with high wingbacks overlapping wider MCR/MCL roles - say Mezzala.

Plan A

Our approach revolves around our club philosophy at the moment - get some core players, preferably ones who can grow with the club into a Top Division product. Translated into an on-field strategy, we want to focus on building around those pillars. For example our top goal scorer last season was Wadhan - he's 25 years old so we can build around a guy like that
His main strengths are pace & movement, and in the brief looks we got last season we found it was difficult to make the most of that with him as a solo striker. He needs players around him to unleash him.

That's how we end up with something like this. Maybe we don't need all 3 on attacking - we can tweak that - but it takes Wadhan and gives him the best support we can. It also allows Mandowan, as another key player, to start in his preferred AMC position.

The second part to our strategy after a few more player-based decisions, is that our main goal is promotion. Is it this season? I don't know. But we want to play like a team that dominates this league - it'll soon tell us how far off the pace we are!
To that end we want to press teams. We want to get up in their faces and we want to win the ball. We're not going to invite teams to come and break us down.

When we've got possession, we're not necessarily going to play high tempo. We are looking to play a bit more direct, but we have to compensate for this physical defensive approach by calming down a bit in attack. We'll back our playmakers and handy strikers to beat opposing defences, and we'll wear down opponents over a match and over a season.

In it's full glory, it looks something like this:

Any formation is a compromise of one thing or another. I feel like this gets the key players (as discussed) in appropriate parts of the field, but still facilitates the pressing we want to do. Having essentially 3 up top should force sides wide and then we have the 3 central defenders there covering for when the wingbacks press higher.

This also lets our athletic-but-not-so-technical wide players operate freely. We're just as happy to attack centrally and that should suck teams in. It'll take pressure off the wide runners. And we'll utilise both wingers and fullbacks to trial for whom locks down those wide areas.

I just wanted to highlight Jatmiko as well - he's 15 but he's tipped for a big future. As a defender with smaller stature it'll always be difficult for him to battle opposing strikers, but playing him in the cover/sweeper kind of role suits his skills. He'll essentially orchestrate the play out from the back and the other two CD's can step up as Stoppers to make the big aerial challenges.

Plan A - Key Signings

As mentioned a few times, we didn't set out to sign players to fit roles - we mostly wanted to sign good players and build up from there. Setiawan is a prime example - he was playing League One and getting starts all last season so the 28 year old is in his prime and he should be strong in the 2nd tier this season. It was an opportunistic signing at the time, but we've been able to let him play Central Midfield (on support) and just let him play his natural game. He should be one of our best.

Rudiyana is another opportunistic signing. So long as we weren't too picky on the style of player we'd get, I was confident there would be a free agent striker fit for this competition. Rudi has been playing the past 2 season's here as a regular starter, so we know he's up for it. He's quick and while he probably just wants to sit high as a poacher, I've going to force him to use that pace to harass defenders.

Then once we started bedding our formation, you can see the loans we snapped up to make sure we had the tools to work it. The one I wanted to highlight is left-back Agus Mahendra, the last player signed.

Obviously we're not signing superstars everywhere, but he's ok in the sense that his primary job is to get up and down the line, help us keep possession and harass other wingers and wingbacks. I'm not really looking for crosses or runs to the opposing byline.
But this is a good example of loaning a guy who hasn't played much recently (11 subs-on for his club last season) that I will back to gain attributes across the board once he starts getting some match time. And we're trying to envision what that looks like with essentially a '+1' to everything. He could be an effective defender with reasonable ball skills and he's already extremely quick for this competition.
I'd say Mahendra is representative of a few of our signings - it's not about now it's about taking a few chances on them growing into the players we need for the whole season.
And what's the point of a prospect player on loan? Well his contract is up at EoS with his owner club, so if it goes well we may be primed to secure him full time.

Butlee · August 13, 2022

17 June 2023 - First Ever League Match

I'll be reporting in live for this one:

[Min 1] - Rumere from Sulut gets a yellow card!
Yep, I did NOT think that was going to be the first highlight of this save, but here ya go!

Also it's 25 degree's C and wet. Can you imagine the humidity? Can you imagine what it's going to be like in summer!?

[Min 6] - Both sides feeling each other out a bit - a freekick into the box finds Kurniawan who heads over. First shot of the game for them.

[Min 7] - A minute later I can see us trying to put the press into action, we're just a little sloppy. Sulut get in between our lines and hit a fairly tame 20 yard shot straight at Syah in goal.

[Min 25] - It's a bit of a stalemate at the moment - maybe favouring the visitors. We aren't doing well keeping the ball, but we're reasonable at winning it back once we've lost it. Sulut are really lacking any kind of creativity in the front third though and have whacked a few shots from range - mostly off target. I give the lads a bit of a spray to see if they'll buck up their ideas.

[Min 28] - Just something to show that the game is still quite interesting from a reviewing tactics point of view, even if there isn't a lot of fan-entertainment kind of value right now.

[Min 32] - Off a wide freekick, gotta love this shot from 1 frame after Kurnaiwan gets among four Sulut defenders and wins the header. Ball popped out off the cross bar!

[Min 34] - New signing Setiawan looking to show us how it's done with this athletic effort! It drew out a diving save from the keeper.

Should note that their keeper Savik - that's one of the earliest loans we took on as a potential battler for our GK's spot. Ultimately both keepers were fairly similar in talent and I wanted to keep Syah - the guy we already knew what to expect!

It feels like we've seen off the first 25 minutes of pressure and we're able to string some passes together and start playing our game.

HALF TIME

Honestly it's been a tough one as a manager so far. I was hoping we'd get right up in their faces and really make it a more end-to-end kind of match... but instead it's a game that's really getting bogged down in midfield. There's a lot of sideways passing and not a lot of final third penetration / creativity. Ultimately I'm not too upset by what was probably a fairly even half.

And before you scoff at me on the shot count and xG, heres's what I was saying about the shooting:

They've been a little more wayward in their shots, and while that crossbar shot counts as an off-target, it was also the only one the keeper didn't have covered - so it's probably a low xG shot, but it's the closest anyone has got to scoring!

If we're looking for positives to date - we're leading the tackle count 13 to 7 and the intercept count 8 to 6 - so our press is working to an extent. I'd just love to see us force a turnover and snag a quick goal - might liven the game up a bit!

I've asked the lads to up the tempo a bit (we play on 'low' as default at the moment) to see if we can play in those wide guys a bit quicker. We're already playing slightly more direct - so hopefully our midfield triangle knocks it about and then launches to strikers or wingbacks. Here we go!

[Min 50] - Wadhan finally finds the right run and is played in out wide - he skips past the fullback, but the DC sweeps in and knocks it out for a corner. It's nice to see our star man finding his groove early on!
How do we do on corners? Terrible!! Keeper comes out and saves!

[Min 55] - PENALTY!

You will not see a clearer penalty this month in Indonesia!

Rudiyana steps up to give us the lead [1-0]!

It's so easy to say in hindsight, but I almost made a comment about (what we can call) "2nd half Rudi". Just before the break he got a yellow card and in a few highlights since then he's been more involved - both in pressing and in looking for the ball. And there are generally only two ways these things can go with senior players - they're either about to lose the plot in frustration, or their wise heads play them into the game and they start to really perform.
I'm hoping the goal, and the release of a debut goal for Rudiyana at our club helps him channel this into the latter option. I don't want him sent off on day 1!

[Min 70] - The match went into another combative phase after the goal. Naturally Sulut reacted to going down, but we are starting to play with a lot more freedom and and we're keeping the ball much better in the 2nd half. Morale is up and our defence line is still solid.
A chance comes where Wadhan drifts to the right and exchanges some short passes with our WBR Mulyana, and eventually they find Rudiyana's head about 8 yards out. He doesn't quite get the power and Savik saves again.

[Min 75] - SUBS
Usually I'll sub earlier, but I didn't want to upset the balance of things while we were leading/edging the battle.

Rudiyana OUT - Marcal IN
Syawaludin OUT - Alghazali IN
Arfan OUT - Wafa IN

Finally subbed out 31yr old Rudiyana. Brought in Wafa for fresh legs in midfield (thinking more about having 4-5 games in a short space of time rather than saving his game specifically). Made the left back switch because our two best WBL options went down injured just before the match, and 3rd-stringer was pretty poor... maybe 4th string WBL will do an adequate job!

[Min 83] - They nearly get us with a sneaky quick freekick into the path of their striker Ohorella - but the angle isn't the best and he skies it.

[Min 85] - Marcal (who's been pairing with Wadhan really well since coming on) peels wide and throws in a long cross to his strike partner. It's not a powerful header, but our skipper does get it on target and force the save.

[Min 90] - A deflection off another longshot leads to a Sulut corner. Here we're giving Syah for coming out and punching late in the game - taking charge of his area and acting like a team leader!

FULL TIME [1-0]

We did it!
It didn't turn out to be the massive statement or spectacle that I was hoping for as the first memorable fixture in a long road down this challenge, but we still did it! We definitely were the stronger side in the 2nd half and I'd like to think the penalty came about because of our pressure - you make your own luck sometimes!

You can see the 2nd half turn around - we really did bring it home. We scored and were able to keep them at bay for the remainder of the match. I'll take that as a hard fought first round!

It's one of those weird matches actually, where if you win you go looking for things in a positive light - Setiawan got a lower rating than most for example, but you saw that shot and I generally felt he was around a lot of the play, steering the ship. Our worst rated player was Mandowen, but he covered an insane 13.5km this match! He was great at coming deep to receive the ball and also getting in between the defensive lines, looking for those key passes. So our young AMC can get a low rating, but also complete the most passes of anyone... about 1/6th of our side's total... at 80% accuracy,, that's not bad for a playmaker!

Player of the Match goes over to our backline - DCR Aditama. We knew this guy was good, and the reason he's DCR and not the central role is because I want the bigger guys at DCL & DCR to set up and leave a mark on the game. To that end he did his job perfectly - unbeaten in the air, made tackles, highest intercept count on the team and kept a high standard of defending throughout!

I know it's only been 1 round, but some more early backup to the effectiveness of our press. I especially like the tackles attempted stat. It means we're getting close enough to challenge, which is the whole point. Obviously long-term fatigue is something we'll need to monitor with these tactics, but that's why we brought in some loan players later in the transfer window.. to help share the load a bit.

Anyway I don't tend to have set time passages for uploads (ie, every in-game month etc..) - I just post on a whim. But we might get a half dozen matches under our belt before and get a real feeling for how it's going.

Then it'll feel like the challenge is really rolling on too!

Butlee · August 13, 2022

01 July 2023 - Eyes on the Prize

The Big 5 Trophies

Every July we're going to keep an eye on who the trophy-holders are. Hopefully we can add our name to the list at some point (hopefully several times!

Interestingly not one team managed to back up - but fair play to Mexico for at least keeping the trophy in their nation!

Apologies for the slightly blurry flags.

I won't go into every group - that'd take forever and for the most part it's not relevant to our save and will be for clubs and players that folks don't hear about. But lets keep one eye on Europe as that's likely the main prize, and the other on our local challenges.

[Europe] Bayern Munich

This ended up being an all-German final, with Dortmund going on a rampage until they fell short in a 2-0 loss to their countrymen at the final hurdle. Gnabry and Lewandowski bagged the goals.

I think the most impressive thing about these two sides is their transfer business that lead to the CL Final though.

Bayern

First and foremost, they signed Mbappe. Huge talent, mega signing, no further explanation needed.
They then let go Sule for free (to Dormund no less) and sold Upamecano to Manchester United [64M pounds]. Seems crazy, except that they had secured Matthias Ginter (from Borussia M'gladbach) and invested 60M back into Felipe (Real Madrid).
And they also secure Free transfers for Kamara (Marseille) and Grillitsch (Hoffenheim) who had bumper 21.22 seasons at their respective clubs!

But that's just the transfers that ended up nett neutral. They then spent:

62M on Raphinha from Leeds, to compliment Mbappe.
43M on Dalot from Manchester United.
22M on Philipp Max from PSV, purely as backup for Davis at WBR.
10M more on a young Turkish midfielder [Arminia Bielefeld] and a solid Swiss keeper [RB Salzburg] for if Neuer [37yrs] ever decides to retire.

Dortmund

Obviously the biggest question is what happened to Haaland, since it was only recently that City managed to snap him up.

The reality is that only so many clubs could afford this guy and it would be unlikely Dortmund would sell to Munich (plus Munch still have Lewandowski on club legend money). So it's not that much of a surprise that Manchester City swooped in, paying a cool 140M for the big guy.

With that kind of money to spend, they didn't go after too many whales like their frienemies at Munich.. instead they embarked on some smart shopping - finding players in great for from a series of top flight clubs, but not the biggest clubs.

The best two examples for mine comes in their centre back pairings. As mentioned, they took Sule from Bayern and turned him into a European-dominant central defender. He just embraced the extra responsibility.
To work with him they threw 12M as a 22yr old Brazillian - Morato from Benfica. Bloke is an absolute monster and it's only a matter of time before he gets a national cap.

From there, a series of similar pickups - not so many household names at Bayern, but plenty of talent for them to build off.

54M for the now not-needed Calvert-Lewin at City. Probably a knee-jerk reaction and one that hasn't really paid off yet.
27M for Ivan Ilic, who was relegated with Verona in 2022, but was simply too good for Serie B and stepped straight into a First Team spot and continued his form with the Germans.
16M for Jovane Cabral after a great season and a half at Sporting Lisbon.
20M more spread over DR Molina (Udinese), AML Sahraoui (Valerenga) and young DC Rouault (Toulouse).

The competition

What's hilarious is that Dortmund actually beat Manchester City in the Quarter Finals after the Haaland move. They then took out Liverpool in the semi's.

Bayern didn't have it easy either though, with a plucky Porto and Barcelona to take out.

[Asia] Al-Sadd

Before we get into this too much, we should explain how the competition works a little in Asia. They essentially split the competition into two halves - the Eastern/South-East Asian clubs face off and the Northern/North-West/Middle Eastern Asian clubs meet as well. The competition essentially plays like two separate tournaments right up until (if I remember correctly) the Semi-Finals, where opponents are randomly chosen.
The reason for this is partially for practical reasons. I can take literal days to travel from Australia up to the Middle East and vice versa. I suspect there is also a lot of animosity culturally and politically that makes it easier to let both zones handle their own affairs and to only come together at the pointy end of proceedings.

The final was Al-Sadd versus Japanese club Yokohama.

The Qatari club were definitely the stronger side on the day - they went up with an early penalty and were relentless in attacking un they got a second. Yokohama did pick one back through their Japanese legend (119 national caps, 50 goals) Shinji Okazaki, but it was a 1-way street really. Eventually they Al-Sadd finished the deal in the 81st minute.
For perspective, it was 60/40 possession split and Al-Saad made almost double the passes at an impressed 94% accuracy. They were NOT giving up that ball! 14 shots to 6 and a 3-1 comfortable win!

Last year's winners from Iran were knocked out in the group phase.

Parting Thoughts

That's actually really cool to look through and follow some stories not of our own. Asia's not the deepest simulation in FM as it stands, so as we move into the Americas some of these annual 'big picture reviews' should get a lot more interesting.
I've actually recently played a long save (17 seasons) in FM22 with a reasonably large database - starting at lower tier Sweden and ending up at Chelsea - so I have one benchmark telling me how that save went in terms of which clubs go crazy (Napoli got a massive investment and were terrorising the big clubs and the other significant buy-out was Aberdeen of all clubs - who took control of Scotland!!). It'll be exciting to see how Europe especially unravels as the save goes on. It'll also be interesting to see how Continents go after we've moved on and left a mark. Will any of our legacies endure!?

It's also interesting to get an idea of where to head in the save. In Africa we're going to have to take a South African club, it's inevitable. But South America has competitive clubs in Argentina and Brazil - that's good knowledge. In North America it looks like Mexican sides always win the competition - so the Americans with their salary-capped clubs aren't competitive I guess?

It's all good food for thought while we're playing our trade down here in lower-league Indonesia

Butlee · August 20, 2022

13 July 2023 - 2nd in Indonesian 2nd League [4W 4D 0L]

It's a steady start. But maybe it's just what we needed.

Sedate Eight

I find a 5-3-2 tactic both the easiest and most difficult tactic to pull off at the same time. On one hand it can be about as safe at the back as you can be as you will pretty well always have a spare man. On the other, how do you turn defensive superiority into a way of scoring and winning league matches consistently?

One things for sure, we haven't worked it out yet!

We haven't played PSM yet, but also have Persiwa and Madura FC to round out the first leg.

Ultimately we're still happy with this start to the season. Considering we rebuilt the squad with so many transfers, knowing we also missed a lot of players and that we weren't completely happy with every position on the park (lookin' at you, my 4 left backs grrr!), we've had side newly playing together and in a new formation. Cohesion is shot and the on-field links and bonds haven't been forged yet!

Despite a formation built around link-up play, we haven't yet formed the connections we will want.

So despite scoring just 6 goals in 8 rounds, we back ourselves to grow in familiarity and support for one another and we trust the team to get more and more accustomed to the tactics we've employed. It has to get better and as it does, the goals will come more regularly.
The fact that we're still a comfortable 2nd - and even more comfortable in the top 4 (which is really all that's needed to get into the 2nd phase on the way to promotion) - makes this start to season about as good as we could have hoped given the context.

Q.E.D.

In school I used to mistakenly interpret the (translation of the) phrase as "That which we set out to prove" and while I know now that it doesn't quite fit what I'm trying to express, I don't know enough Latin to say "Hey lets break down what we're trying to accomplish into it's smaller parts, and test them."

For example, we might not have the big picture of scoring endless goals and preventing all of the goals against, but we did commit to pressing:

I didn't realise we were so far ahead of everyone until just now. It's a good feeling! We are getting close to 20 duel wins every match - and that doesn't count interceptions and forced errors from our opponents (ie, kicking the ball out, or being forced to kick long for us to get possession back),

Most of us also need to take a step back and consider Indonesia as a country, and the playing conditions that the players are facing while trying to press for 90 minutes!

This dotted line through Indonesia is the equator. It's very humid!

Another key metric for us was trying to create a core of players who could grow with the club. Which meant we didn't want to chase too many older players, and we also needed players who were already capable at this level. It would be no good to us if we found a 20yr old who was a bit off pace here - by the time he would be good enough for League Two, we'd want to be in League One!

It's not perfect. I deliberately left the warts-and-all in there to show the true progress on this. But I think there's enough there - Aditama, Syah, Mandowen, Setiawan, Jatmiko (more to come on him!) & Arfan - that's a core that we can retain for a couple of seasons, who are already playing well enough here who hopefully can stay competitive if we promote.

We should also address the elephant in the dressing room:

It's not ideal, and likely does have an impact on our scoring capabilities - but we're keen to not make excuses.

First Steps into Management

As discussed we had a very cold-hot first match and we thought we came up against a very beatable PSBS in the 2nd round - except an 18th minute red card saw that one off. I was so upset that even when Mulyana (playing WBR) came back we dropped him for a 2nd match!
We were dominant in the Gresik game and we thought a great drive from Wada would be have it sealed for us. Alas they scored late from a corner kick.
Determined to do better we came out and scored two early against PSBI, but then Kamri was sent off in the first half! It's our 2nd WBR send off in 3 matches. I don't like to admit to playing negative football, but we pulled all the lads back and camped as much as we could, desperate not to repeat our fate from last match.

Wafa's goal against Gresik - yes he hit that curling away from the keeper!

After that things improved. We were good for wins against Kalteng Putra and Mitra Kukar - we're starting to see goals from Rudiyana, Mandowen and Marcal who came in for Wadhan, so it was very rewarding.

Then we drew with the other two teams in the top 4. Which is why I don't mind the results - if we believe we're looking to improve as we get used to one another, we haven't lost too much as yet and we'll be more competitive in these tough matches in the return legs!

Heroes and Villains

The main hero we have to highlight here is 15 yr old Agus Jamiko. He's a defender small in stature, but he's already acting as the marshal of the backline from the central "DCC" part of our backline. He's been 2x PotM from defence. The Indonesian U20's have also called upon him.

We have to be really focused on getting the club into League One else we risk losing Agus. He's ticking every box put in front of him and our staff rate him as 5 star potential compared to his club peers.

Honourable mentions in the heroes category:

Syah & Aditama as team captains/leaders (especially with skipper Wadhan out) - especially in their performances. They exemplify 'lead by example' at the moment.
Our new striker Rudiyana - he's got a few goals already, but it's the rest of his play that's impressive. His ratings don't show it because we're not converting many of our chances yet, but this guy is a great extra creator in the squad while still leading our scoring tally.
Marcal as a loan-in striker who had to step up when Wadhan was injured and contributed goals and assists and linked up well with Rudiyana.

I don't have a specific villain - I'm going to offer a 4-way split of the title to everyone who has played left back for us this season!!

The stats alone probably don't paint the picture - especially when you see most of them still making multiple tackles per game. But it's all the other stuff that really hurts - none of them mark or chase well, none of them can land a cross and even despite Mahendra's key passes they're not giving us the kind of product you need when you're playing 5 across the back. Your wingbacks need to be an attacking outlet!

We have been using AML and AMR specialists at wingbacks, so I completely accept that they're not the best defenders. But on the other side we're seeing a collective of 20 key passes and an average in crossing accuracy nearer 30%! So we're not getting the boons in attack on the left nor are we getting reliable defensive output. I don't have an answer yet. We're hoping Malaikosa's athleticism will make up for a lack of technical skills when he gets back from injury!

Butlee · September 24, 2022

20 October 2023 - 2nd in Indonesian League Two [12W 8D 2L]

Let's try ramp this up a bit. I'll probably keep running through the FM23 cycle, because I do want to see how this goes as a challenge. Just going to have to push it a bit quicker so I'm not still here in 12 months doing this!

Promotion Path

It took my a little while to get my head around it despite there being a 'rules' section in-game, but we now know what's required for promotion.

Stage 1 (League):

Groups A & B play 22 rounds.
Top 4 go into the Promotion Playoffs

Stage 2 (Promotion Playoffs):

All points are reset to 0.
Groups A & B play 3 rounds.
Top 4 go into Semi Finals
Of those 3, the two Finalist teams are promoted and the winner of the 3rd place playoff is also promoted.

Long story short - come top 4 in league and top 2 in the playoff groups and if you need to, win the 3rd-place-playoff!

Promo Woe

Our Target this season is to get to the 2nd Stage as noted above, so why are we focused on promotion? It's because we're struggling to keep our good players - and a bunch of them are running down their contracts to leave for free!

Mandowen would be the biggest loss - he could mix it with the First Division and he's only 22. We let go a lot of keeper prospects so to lose Syah wouldn't be fun either.

One focus we had was getting the hierarchy a bit more stable, but guys like these are struggling to take team leader roles because their personal reputation is dropping as their potential drops (from wallowing in a division below their talent!).

We managed to secure skipper Wadhan and Aditama as important players, but we're struggling with Starting midfielder Arfan as well. The player base is close to tearing away at the seams and we really need a promotion now or else it'll be a complete reset to prepare for our next promotion dash!

Contract Woe

I feel like this is exemplified by a 1 year extension. The Board isn't willing to commit to anything longer until they see if we promote and/or lock down our talented players. Despite generally good results in the League, they're not particularly happy with signings nor our consistency on the park.

League Season

As you can see in the posts title, we've held onto 2nd in the League throughout the First Stage, and we have indeed qualified for Stage 2.

We didn't lose a League match until round 12 which already kind of set the tone. Our September was rocky, including a touch-up from League-leaders PSIM [0-3] but we ran home with 3 strong wings in October, including a great showing at home in front of 13,002 supporters to round out the regular League season!

And as you can see, we lost in the Cup Quarters after we eventually met a League One side.

From Form To Formation

You might notice a bit of an odd formation there. 3-4-1-2. It's actually similar to what we've been using from the start - I just moved the wingbacks up to defensive wingers. They're essentially patrolling those flanks all by themselves anyway, and I felt like wingbacks are more conducive to overlapping runs and that's not really what I want - we're more interested in the width to create angles & space for balls to the feet of our front 3.

I don't think it's a healthy long-term solution. In fact if we did promote I'd be more inclined to play a flat back 5 with FB's instead of WB's and try a bit more counter-attacking maybe. But our left and right flank players have been so ineffectual all season we just keep trying new things to see how we can bring them into the game more. For the DL/WBL/ML/AML role we're onto candidate #7 with a recent Free signing Alfa Desanto Taemnanu.

Overall our success is as a strong defensive side rather than an offensive one. In attack we're middling in possession, and we try to play a short passing game - though it's often sideways unfortunately - and no matter what we do it still feels like we're relying on risky through ball attempts too much. But we're getting results on the back of persistent pressure and some good combinations in the front 3 so we'll take what we can get.

The count of shots against us is just 182 - best in the league - which means 8 shots per match. Keeping in mind that's not 'shots on target' that's total shots. So sides are struggling to get at us.

Our pressing has actually been pretty good - good tackle count per match, good tackling wins percentage. We do commit a lot of fouls but even then you can see we don't have a massive yellow card count. We're ticking some boxes there!

Players - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Good

Jatmiko
Rudiyana
Mandowen

It goes without saying the Jatmiko has been one of the key players - he holds the backline together with help from Syah, where everyone else has really been hot-cold for us. Aditama's the worst purely because some days he's a leading League Two defender and some days he's terrible. Everyone else you can assume to be consistently terrible!

Rudi has run away with the goal scoring, with 17 to his name. His greatest strength is also his weakness - he does what he does well, and doesn't do anything else. He won't challenge for headers in the middle of the park or run with the ball for example. But he will act as the poacher and he will take balls to feet and play in players around him. He's shooting at 55% hitting the target which tells me he also doesn't shoot unless he's fairly confident of challenging the keeper.

Mandowen is then your typical guy who looks a bit held back by his peers. He doesn't score excessive amounts of goals because there are two guys in front of him supposed to do that. He doesn't have an excessive amount of assists either - many key passes and chances created, but the team around him isn't converting. He carries as much of the passing and ball distribution workload as the MC's behind him and he's even handy enough for a couple of tacklers per game on our press. Lad needs some better quality team mates and a better quality division to face.

'Mando'

Bad

Kurniawan
Mahendra
Mulyana

Sometimes when I first take on a side in FM I convince myself certain players are better than they are and when I'm solving a lot of early problems at once, that player can get a lot of match time before I get around to realising they're not doing well. That was my story with Kurniawan who fronted for 20 competitive matches this season (incl. Cup games) before we finally swung the axe on his Starting position.

As you can see, the damning thing was his passing - we're playing some form of 5-3-2 and the backline needs to be able to pass a lot more than you'd expect from a 4-defender formation. For a side pushing for promotion, spoiling so much of your passing duties was hurting us.

Mahendra and Mulyana are just the fall guys for 'most appearances on our troubled left and right flanks'. There are moments of brilliance and that's why they started ahead of other options, but mostly these guys were terrible!

Ugly

Wadhan
Kamri

I hate to say it, but Wadhan has had a bad season. He's been battling with injuries and never got back into consistent goal-scoring form! He's still making chances, but I wonder if he hasn't lost half a yard of pace and anticipation! A lot of what Rudi and Mando were putting on for him, he couldn't turn it into goals, and we actually had one of our loaned strikers, Marcal, in form sometimes to the point where I didn't want Wadhan to come back and demand a spot!

Kamri was one of our 16yr olds through the intake and I was hoping to give him the WBR/MR role - bit the lad put in almost successive dangerous tackles garnering multiple red cards and a half dozen matches suspended. After that I was weary in going back to him. Don't get me wrong - he's a natural winger and I was asking him to play very deep and defend a lot, so blame is definitely partially in the hands of ol' Brucey, but it's definitely 'ugly' to see yourself out of the squad on aggression/temperament/disciplinary reasons.

League & Playoffs

Here's how the League played out:

It makes it seem like we did well early and were embroiled in a 2-horse race to the finish, but in reality we were a long way behind in 2nd, and when PSIM belted us about a month ago we were as low as 4th. We locked down the top 4 spot fairly early and that actually seemed to spark a little form on the run home. Look at how bad our scoring record is though! Rudi has more than half of those!!

The cool thing with this 2nd phase is that it takes the top 8 teams over Group A and B and puts each top 2 versus the others' 3 & 4. So PSIM and us go in the same group against 3rd and 4th in Group B:

And because the top two of these groups go into the Semi-Finals (where 3/4 of the teams promote), it gives us a good chance.

Next Season

Transfer activity has been a little wild to be honest. With some of our players refusing to sign new deals it's tough to fight off incoming contract offers. Everyone Indonesian club wants a piece of Jamitko, and we've been actively trying to release/sell/arrange transfers for a lot of the dead wood because they're bringing the morale of the place down.
To offset this we've obviously been scouting hard and trying to secure signatures of free agents.

It's all been a fairly exhaustive process when I look back and consider how few movements we've coordinated, but I guess that's the life if you're trying to be a proactive manager.

By my current count we have let 1 guy go, and had 1 loan recalled. We've arranged for 5 guys to leave at EoS, with 3 more loans going home as well. And we have 4 players who won't sign new deals until they know we promote or not. That's potentially 14 guys gone at EoS!

To offset that we've secured 4 new signings already. 3 backs and a creative attacking midfielder. Obviously it's too early to tell if they'll slide in as Starters - especially since we don't know what league we'll be in!

I imagine if we do get that promotion, we'll flex our financial arm a bit. It was pointless having a big transfer budget this season when no one worth that kind of money would move to League Two. If we are League One, all bets are off and we might try and do a Newcastle United to buy our way up the League One ladder!

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