[FM24] 1860 players, much squad depth

[turnip]

Šeašon 14: Dinamo, Croatian First League

Youth Intake

Not sure I'm a huge fan of the 'best' two players being wingers when I've just moved away from using wingers, but eh. I'm happy with this, for sure. 

  

It's hard to be annoyed at getting two wingers when these are the wingers you've been given. Nice personalities, too. Honestly, I'm not sure I could say which I prefer. 

  

Skugor has some gaps in his game, that's for sure, but I think there's a good centre-back to be developed. Bagaric, I think, is slightly better than the 4* rating he was given would suggest, given he's being compared to Casian Arsene. Physicals need some work, but that's a really solid technical base to develop from. 

I'm hoping that our new HOYD should start having an impact on our intakes from next season. Not, I should emphasise, that there's much to complain about here. 

[turnip]

Šeašon 14: Dinamo, Croatian First League

February - May

I forget at what point we clinched the league. Possibly after the win over Istra on 15th March - we had to wait a day or two for Osijek to drop points against Hajduk. Osijek actually spent most of the season in 2nd before Hajduk overtook them with a couple of matches left. 

No surprise that we weren't able to turn the Champions League tie around. We played pretty well and had much the better of the match, but despite an xG of 1.95 (to their 0.70), we couldn't put anything away. 

The combination of winning the league early and being out of Europe meant that we could actually ease up a bit towards the end of the season. A bunch of players got some useful game time. Maks Mitrecic was the main benefactor, albeit in part because of injuries to our centre-backs, but Lassina Gbane, Florijan Curic and Sreten Grbenic also got some games under their belt. We bossed both legs of the Cup Final, but obviously only managed to make that count in the second leg.

Grbenic also made two senior appearances for Croatia, which made me squint a little at my computer monitor. 

 

Analysis

I'm not one for staring endlessly at numbers to try to work out what's worked well and what hasn't, but despite bagging 26 goals in all competitions this season, I have felt that we're not really getting the best out of Casian Arsene. He's inarguably our best player, and doesn't really have a hole in his game when he plays as an Advanced Forward, so he should be flambéeing defenders more regularly than he does. So, having worked up the list of numbers below and stared at it for a while, I'm still not really sure. If we can fend off teams this summer (PSG are the one I'm worried about) we'll tweak our tactic again and see if that does anything. I do appreciate that he's not really bad at anything, according to those numbers. 

The numbers do suggest that I should be trying to find more game time for Vanja Macan, though.

Spoiler

There are actually three first-team players missing from this screenshot, but I only just noticed and can't be bothered replacing this one. 

Away from the raw numbers, it was a good season. We sold Traore in March to Botafogo, for £3m or so. His performances hadn't been as good with us shifting away from hoofball. Our Wing-backs played well; Stefano Russo in particular, although having taught him the mystical art of 'kick it past the other guy then run after it', he seemed to stop doing that as much.  Midfield seems stable - our two Croats are both wanted by other teams, but no-one great, and they've both been happy with me rejecting deals for them so far. I'm not opposed to selling Mauricio or Mokoena (who spends half the time injured) if it means I can give Grdenic more game time. 

We've also got a couple of new strikers arriving - another Romanian my scouts love (and I'm a bit more 'meh' on) and an 18-year old Swede from Brommapojkarna, who I think could be terrific - alongside the usual youngsters and a Colombian DL I think could be electric. 

In terms of the talent at the squad, it looks good. 

As usual, I would probably disagree on a few of these players (Abdalla, Hopland, Imaz, Rui, Ballo, Wilson, Vega and Almeida in particular) but it's good to have the depth. We are struggling to recruit genuine Champions League quality to the club - Croatia being flagged as 'Developing' doesn't help there - so being able to bring in cheap youngsters and grow them into quality is very much the way forward. That said, we'll probably lose a bunch of this lot over the summer, so who knows. 

I mentioned Maks Mitrecic earlier and he's developing really nicely.

He's weirdly prone to under-hitting passes and is still a "decent all-rounder" rather than being on a par with the rest of our centre-backs, but his performances have been respectable and I'm confident he'll turn out to be very good. We're training him in the Libero role, in the hope his attribute development is spread out rather than being hyper-focussed on the usual DC stuff. 

Edited February 25 by turnip

[turnip]

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League

Transfers

The most important transfer was one that didn't happen. Casian Arsene remains with our team. His reputation went up a bit before the transfer window opened, which took his in-game valuation to £62-77m, and I assume that was more than any of the interested teams were willing to pay. 

The outs first. Aymar Tchaoule had been signed for £250k from ASEC and spent last season on loan at Marseille; Antwerp won the bidding war for him, eventually (the little eejit turned down the first offer we accepted). Rafa Imaz isn't nearly good enough to be worth £6.75m + 50% ONS, but that's where that bidding war ended up. Stefano Russo played well for us last season, but would have been vexed if we'd turned down Man City - there's no profit on the main fee, but as usual there's the 50% ONS. Andrea Borrelli was another consistent performer but wasn't likely to improve. Zakaria Al Ayoud played fairly regularly for us last season, but not very well, and spent basically the entire season unhappy about his playing time - there are no clauses, but he wasn't great anyway. 

  

  

Sıddık Gültekin had been on my radar for a while without obviously being interested in joining us, but when another team came in for him, I thought I'd take my chances. That actually turned into quite the bidding contest - we basically outbid most of the other teams (including a couple of Premiership teams), both on transfer value and playing time. To say I was surprised when he agreed to join us is an understatement. There's a little debate about how much potential he has, but I think he's plenty good enough for his playing time anyway - if he ends up having full 5* potential, that would just be gravy.

Yeiner Botero was why I was happy to let Stefano Russo leave. He's already better as a player in just about every way, and has a lot of growth potential. The only negative is the non-EU status, but I can live with that. 

Rami Hjalmarsson is someone I was really excited about. He didn't particularly want to join, which is why we've had to give Regular Starter and pretty generous wages, but I think he could become a fantastic player. 

Maicon, meanwhile, is our new DR. Again, someone we'd had an eye on for a while, but with good right-backs not exactly coming up every week in scouting reports, we went in for him. Has the bonus of Italian second nationality. A more defensive option than our first choice, but again, someone I think could improve a lot. 

Elsewhere, Roger Syvertsen is our new mentor, Nicolae Bratoveanu another striker we don't really need, Marcos Cabrera another another striker we don't really need, Walid Refaey and Chukwuebuka Godwin are talented MCs, as is Michal Stanislawski (who is at least spending the season on loan with his former club). 

 

I always love it when I get messages like this:

Fixtures

Without European qualifiers, we've largely been able to play the First XI in every game - although the Second XI were responsible for the dropped points against Sibenik. 

I said in the wrap-up for last season that I was looking to get the most out of Casian Arsene this season, and... I'd say it's worked so far. 

Tactically, we've switched things up again, with a couple of new formations. These are really for domestic matches, where the opposition teams typically park the bus and rely on Counters. We're retaining the 4-1-3-2 for European away days.

  

Our fixtures for the Champions League aren't too this season. 

I think there's a point to be had against Monaco, Roma and Nice and wins against Club Brugge and FC Kobenhavn. Bayern, Watford and Man City seem like lost causes, though. 

[turnip]

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League

Winter Break

Things are proceeding well. The league remains pretty easy - we've dominated possession in just about every game (usually 65-70%) and have the firepower to score goals even if we're not playing all that well. 

In the Champions League, we were deservedly spanked by Bayern, but the win over Man City was a pleasant surprise (albeit quite lucky). The wins over Roma and Watford were pretty emphatic, in performance as well as scoreline. 

In the cup, meanwhile, we're through to the Semi-Finals. The tie falls between league matches against two teams who've already been knocked out, so I can't easily predict who we'll play. Probably Hajduk. 

4 points from the matches against Nice and FC Kobenhavn would put us in with a good chance of qualifying for the Last 16, but Nice are a pretty good team.

Also, with the transfer window due to open again soon, it's pretty clear that Casian Arsene is going to leave. He's been professional enough not to say anything - letting his agent do all of that - but there's a lot of interest in him from teams much bigger than us. Somewhat counter-intuitively (and I'm gonna avoid going on yet another rant about the utterly stupid and broken player valuations in the game), Arsene's reputation went up to Worldwide and his transfer value dropped to £40m-£49m. I explored a new contract, but his agent insisted on a MFRC of at most £49m (  ) and with that level of interest from those clubs, if I can't get over £60m, I'm doing something very wrong. So no new contract. 

We did get Lamin Jammeh on a new deal, though, which is good news as he's both very good and versatile. 

Lastly, with the new patch, my scouts are now finding players again. So that's nice. 

[turnip]

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League

A pretty quiet transfer window. Of the players who left, Hopland is a goalkeeper my scout and coaches all insist could be really good, but hasn't shown any evidence of that so far; Christopher Diaz hadn't really got into the team despite looking like a good player and Jimmy Bwalya is a Zambian MC who I think could be good, but was never close enough to the team (in terms of quality) to justify giving opportunities to. We received a few offers for first-team players, but didn't feel the need to accept any of them and they were all fine with that. 

  

Marius Disler was brought in to be a backup DL. He wasn't particularly cheap, but he's good enough that I don't have to be concerned about playing him, and should have a decent amount of improvement.

Joep Van Der Valk, Marius Samake and Zahid Moran had all been on trial with us while they waited for their 18th birthday. Moran is the best of those three - released from Atlanta United as a 16-year old, but I think he could be a very competent full-back once he's played a couple of seasons. 

 

But, again, the biggest news was that Arsene didn't leave. Consider me very surprised, and very happy. Bayern came in with a couple of low-ball bids - the second was around £50m in total - which I rejected to no complaint from Arsene, and that was it. I warily kept an eye on the end of the transfer window in England/France/Germany, but it passed with no more bids. And, again, I think this is to do with his transfer value randomly changing - this time going up. 

Still, I took the opportunity to offer him a new contract, without speaking to his agent first. And I actually think this was the best idea. Because there were no demands in place. No non-negotiable clauses. I couldn't remember exactly what their wage/fee demands had been last time, so I just slapped down a pile of money, plus a Relegation Release Clause of £0 and they accepted.

I mean, what's the point of having £200m+ in the bank if you can't use it to keep the players you really like? We do need to improve our Coaches, but that's fine. 

Fixtures

We came out guns blazing against Nice and blew them away, and the scoreline against FC Kobenhavn is a poor reflection of how much we dominated that match. We ended up finishing 4th in the League Phase.

 

This will probably be my last season with Dinamo. The ease of winning the league, combined with the difficulty I've had finding good players is a bit of a drag. I'm adding a bunch of leagues to become active at the end of the season and I'll see what my options are. 

[turnip]

Šeašon 15: Dinamo, Croatian First League

Domestically, the season ended much like the last couple had, with total domination. We could almost completely rotate between matches and still roll teams over, as poor Istra 1961 found in the last league game of the season. 

Europeanically, though, I was surprised at how well we played. Coming back from a first-leg deficit against Wolfsburg to smash them in Zagreb was tasty. Chelsea, I was sure would be another bridge too far, but after getting a couple of goals somewhat against the run of play in London, we controlled the second leg and were the better team by a fair margin. Man City were always likely to be too strong, but I'm happy that we gave them a bit of a scare, at least. 

 

And that's that for Dinamo. 

The save's in a bit of a weird place at the moment where there don't seem to be as many good young players around as I'm used to. Scouting - though better since the last patch - isn't really helping massively with that either, and when players do sign, there's often a bit of "Yeah, see boss, about that rating I gave him before...". Plus, as I've already mentioned, there's the whole 'developing' status for Croatia, which seems to be having more of an impact on recruitment than I'm used to. 

 

Anyway, one club had caught my interest as the season progressed. They'd actually brought in a new head coach in December, with things not going well in the league, so I wasn't sure it would be an option but there they are on the Job Centre list. I've applied and in my next update, hopefully I'll have some moderately exciting news. 

Edited March 8 by turnip

[turnip]

Season 16: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

When I resigned from Dinamo, on the 29th May, 1860 were my first choice for next club to manage and I put my application in on that day. I did receive invitations to job interviews with Wolfsburg and PSG, but I was never going to accept those. 

Still, 1860 dragged it out a bit, to say the least, eventually appointing me on 22nd June. The club had just been relegated back from the second tier, having hired a visually-impressive head coach in December who (as it happened) had no previous experience as a manager, but they still gave £10k p/w to. Yeah, me neither.

They're paying me £3.7k p/w, for the record. That said, the board have only asked for a top-half finish this season, which is a more realistic request than you normally get in this situation. 

The first order of business was to get rid of some of the deadwood in the squad. 

I would have kept Mulenda, but apparently some moron at the club gave him a new contract in May with - you guessed it - a £475k MFRC, so that was that. 

We obviously needed to reform the squad into something reasonable. Almost all of these players had been on one of my shortlists at Dinamo, so it was just a question of working out who the priorities were. 

  

  

Axel Soumahoro is a striker who I think could become very good indeed, with an excellent set of technical attributes and plenty of time to develop the physical side of his game. 

Jose Ferraro has come in to be a solid option at centre-back. Already reasonable, so even if he doesn't improve much, he should be more than good enough for this league.

Ange N'Dri is another who I think could develop into someone excellent. He's got 5 assists in 6 appearances so far, which is nothing to sniff at.

Dominik Nojszewski will probably play mostly at centre-back, but can also fill in at DL if needed. Solid all-round for an 18-year old, just needs to work on his Strength and Jumping Reach a bit. 

The values of Soumahoro, N'Dri and Nojszewski have all gone up significantly from when I took the screenshots, by the way. 

  

  

Derek - what a name - is our new first-choice DL. Excellent Pace/Acceleration, combined with equally-great Work Rate/Teamwork, and his awful Natural Fitness means he'll struggle if we get any fixture congestion, but that's why we have back-ups.

Meanwhile, Miguel, Rocco Bernardini and Razmus Barsne are all a product of when you look at a team you've just taken over and think "Wait, how were you so bad?" A staggering lack of quality in midfield, is why. MIguel will mostly play Half-Back, we've promised FCK that Barsne will play MC and Bernardini will fill in wherever he's needed. 

Really, the biggest problem will most of our signings is that the players/agents only wanted 1-year deals. They've all got at least the option of a 1-year extension, so we shouldn't end up losing anyone vital for free. 

It's been a good start to the season. Heidenheim - who've had successive relegations from the Bundesliga - are probably favourites to win the league, with St Pauli and Arminia Bielefeld also rated higher than us with the bookies. 

We probably deserved the win over Karlsruhe in the cup, although we've got Bull Semen PLC in the next round, so lol. 

I'd like us to finish nearer the top than the board have asked for. As always, by recruiting young players, we'll probably finish the season with a stronger set of players than we have now, assuming the team play well and have the potential to develop. So if we can get to Christmas in 6th or above, I put us in with a decent chance of making the top 3. 

[turnip]

Season 16: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

An excellent start to the season. The guy who scored for Dortmund II was worth £62m and gets paid £58k p/w, which is why I really dislike playing in the same league as second teams. Other than that, we've obviously scored lots of goals and haven't exactly been rigidly sticking to the board's favoured culture of "play defensively solid football" (although they're apparently 'pleased' by that one  ). We're averaging 63% possession per match, which the board really likes. 

We are rotating the team fairly regularly, as we've probably got 16 players I'm keen to give a good amount of game-time to. 

The cup win over RBL was a surprise. We rotated more heavily than usual, expecting to get blatted, but they didn't exactly put out a strong team either, and a couple of "eh, I've seen 'em given, but still..." penalties later, we were through to the next round. 

Random Player Showcase

Kweku was at the club when I joined. The coaches don't think much of his potential, but he's been very good for us so far, with 5 goals and 8 assists. In yet another example of atrocious AI contract negotiations, he had a MFRC of about £750k and a clause that was set to increase his wages to around £2.2k p/w just a few games into the season. We negotiated a different deal, which gave him about £600 p/w more than he was originally on and no MFRC, but he does get to leave for free if we get relegated.

We don't have any particularly interesting signings lined up for January, but we'll see what happens. 

[turnip]

Season 16: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

We sent 3 players out on loan in January, but that was the extent of our outgoing business. 

  

  

Ramic was brought in to provide another option at DC. He developed nicely at Dinamo, without ever being good enough to break into the first team, but I think he could be useful for us in the back half of the season. 

Cristian is a winger we found who's just a bit... weird. We're training him as a Wide Target Man if only because of his Jumping Reach. Back-post headers are broken as **** anyway, so why not see what sort of carnage he can create. 

Farota and Ruben are both ones for the future that I'm optimistic about. Honestly, we could play Farota in the first team if we had to, and other than getting bullied by big strapping lads, I reckon he'd do okay. FM24 thinks an AMC is 'excellent' if he's got more than 2 attributes above a 5, so I'm keen to see how Ruben develops. 

We also brought in Tsikrikas from European humiliation-fetishists Olympiakos (no kink-shaming here) to provide a bit of backup at DR. He's okay; no more than that. 

The DFB-Pokal dream lives on! It wasn't a dominant performance against Oppenheim, but it was a very good team effort. The mighty Unknown awaits us in the Quarter-Finals. What fun!

We were a little unlucky to lose against Osnabruck, but we were luckier than that to beat the quite quite bad Lotte, so I can't complain. 

[turnip]

 

Someone's been polishing the seats to make them squeaky, I can tell

[turnip]

Season 16: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

With St Pauli having an excellent season, we couldn't afford to drop many points, and we managed that. The draw against Heidenheim saw St Pauli take over the lead of the table, but they faced Heidenheim themselves the day we played Jeddeloh and lost 2-0, allowing us to recapture 1st place. They didn't drop any more points, but obviously neither did we, so the league was ours. The game against Munster was absolute dross, but otherwise we played pretty well, even if the match against SV Meppen was a bit of an outlier in how hard we crumped them. 

In the Cup, the match against Werder was pretty even, but Mainz decided to play a full-strength team and played us off the park. Fair enough. The money from the cup run was very very nice indeed, though: 3x £500k for TV rights, plus £1.4m for the Quarter-Final, plus some more for the Semi-Final. 

Dortmund beat Mainz in the final and I guess the European place went to the league. 

I feel bad for Heidenheim - 85 points would have been enough to get promoted in literally any other season. They lost to Wurzburger Kickers in the Playoff. Ouch.

Our U-19 team, meanwhile, finished their season with a goal difference of +218.  One of our strikers (a signing of mine) scored 66 goals. 

Off the pitch, we also made a lot of progress. We got 2 upgrades to Junior Coaching, one to Youth Recruitment and one to Training Facilities. 

Youth Intake

An uneven intake, but it certainly looks like the upgrades to Junior Coaching paid off. 

   

Seriously. Ostheimer and Seidel both look amazing, and the biggest problem is that we'll have to wait at least a year before we can give them game time. Potzinger also looks like he could be really good. We're actually going to train Ostheimer as a Wing-Back because those are always a struggle to find and honestly we could probably train Seidel to be a Wing-Back as well (if we wanted to waste CA). 

There's not a lot to be excited about other than those 3, but that's fine. 

 

The plan for next season is to consolidate. I'm pretty sure the non-EU limits are basically removed in the second tier, which should let me hoover up all kinds of players for the team. We've got a decent squad, but more is always better (that is the theme of the save, after all). 

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, German 3. Liga

Transfers

Kledis Sulejmani was a holdover from when I joined the club - a decent player on high wages we didn't need, but I guess a mid-table Polish team did. [shrug]

Derek got a pitiful offer from BMG and had a hissy fit when I turned them down. It took a few more weeks of offering him out before we got something I was happy with. Signed on a free, and sold for £1.5m a year later - fine by me.

Carlos Camacho (our backup DL) was the subject of a surprisingly meaty bid, given how mediocre he is. It didn't take much thought to accept.

Axel Soumahoro got some truly miserable bids from Augsburg that he eventually became annoyed at me for rejecting and threatened to leave at the end of his contract. We couldn't find any decent bids, but we've got some potential add-ons. Better than nothing, I suppose.

Meanwhile, Mirko Dachs wanted a new contract, asked for ~£6k p/w, was unhappy when I laughed him out of the building and then Paderborn met his MFRC. 

  

I'd actually been keeping an eye on Tapsoba since he was 16. Which sounds really bad when I type it out. He's good already, and I think could make the step up to the Bundesliga if/when we get there. 

Yannick Walser is the replacement for Derek. I reckon £1m is a bit of a steal for someone who's as well-rounded as him. 

  

Joao Noronha was brought in to provide a bit of verifiable quality to midfield. HIghly-rated by my scouts, and even if I think he's a bit too highly-rated, he looks very handy for this level.

Mamadou Diarrassouba is an odds-and-sods player who's serviceable at DC and a good option at DM. Again, hard to know how good he could be, but - again - plenty good enough for this level.

  

Dibola Fidjeu Tazemeta is another DM, but one who is our new backup DR and can also play MC. Fairly cheap and another who looks like he could turn into a very useful player.

And then Abdoulaye Samassi is yet another DM, albeit one brought in to play mostly at DC. Probably won't be able to play every match, but should be good when he does get on the pitch. 

  

And, finally, a couple of loanees from Dinamo to round out the gaps in the squad. Bello will obviously play up-front and Maicon is our new DR of choice. 

We also loaned in a keeper from Utrecht to be a backup, but he's not good enough to bother showcasing. 

 

Fixtures

Two good wins, one lucky draw,  one fair draw and two comfortable defeats. A good start to the season, all told. We're now predicted mid-table, which feels fair enough. Our loanee GK was terribad against BMG. 

Again, the idea is that our young players will develop as the season goes along, so we should end with a stronger squad than we have right now. 

[turnip]

There isn't an "Oof" big enough for that. 

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, Bundesliga 2

The loss against Furth was very deserved. Our usual GK was out injured, so we played our loanee backup and he made bad mistakes to give them their second and third goals (the third one he rolled the ball out to a centre-back who wasn't looking and a striker just tapped it into an empty net). I put him in the 2nd Team squad straight after the match, only because I couldn't terminate the loan. 

We were lucky to get the draw against Dynamo Dresden, too. Otherwise, though, we're back to what we saw when we were climbing the leagues with Lusitania Lourosa - get our noses in front and then grab a goal or two extra as the opposition pushes forward. 

It's been a very stop-start season so far, though. There's been at least one international break every month, and when you try to rotate your squad, it mostly means that you've constantly got a squad full of players lacking match fitness. 

It's all fairly close so far. Unless you're Wurzburgers Kickers, who seem even worse this season than they were last (when they needed the Playoff to stay in the league). 

Random Player Showcase

We signed Jose last season, to be backup up front, for £85k. He hasn't been prolific, by any means, but he's progressed quite nicely and provides a useful option as a Shadow Striker. His new contract puts him on more than most of our players, but it's a fair wage for someone as good as he is. 

Ange N'Dri

My scouts weren't huge fans of N'Dri when they made their report, and when he signed for us, my Coaches thought he was mediocre. There's a lot to like about how FM tells you about players, but sometimes the whole "this player has low reputation, therefore he's clearly useless" is kind of laughable.

18 months after signing for us, in no small part thanks to playing more or less every game, he's developed into a really good player. In a squad where most of our players are lacking match fitness, he's basically always ready to play. 

 

We've got a couple of transfers arranged for the January window: yet another DM from Africa, and a new DL from Brazil. We'll probably have some interest in our players, but I'm not too concerned. There's money in the bank and we've got a pretty large shortlist, so we should be fine with all but the most aggressive fire sale. 

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, Bundesliga 2

January and Transfer Window

  

Add Anthony Usman to the 'talented DM' stable. God knows how I'm going to give him, Tazemeta, Diarrassouba and Miguel the game time they want, while also providing opportunities for Potzinger and Ostheimer (who we can now register). Eh, whatever. He's good.

Guilherme Cardoso was brought in to be a more creative (read: defensively crap) option at DL and generally a reliable backup for Walser. I think he could be quite good, and if nothing else, getting called up to the Brazil U20 squad should give his value and rep a nice boost.

  

Barbosa looks like a bit of a weapon. Needs to work on his technical game a bit, but assuming there's potential there to use up, he could be dynamite. Wait, is dynamite a weapon?

I have no idea how Jim Daly ended up at Llanes. I mean, I do - he came through the academy at Atletico Madrileno and Llanes got him from them - but he doesn't have Spanish second nationality, so... ??? Still, as soon as I saw him, I knew I had to sign him. On top of solid physicals and a good technical base, he's got Evasive and Reserved media handling to go with his Resilient personality. And he's 16 years old. Again, assuming his potential holds up, this kid could be a superstar. 

Fixtures

We came back from the winter break and got slapped around by Hansa Rostock, then had to work hard to eke out a win over 16th-placed Ingolstadt. To say I was surprised that we followed those up with our result against table-topping HSV would be an understatement (it definitely wasn't a 3-0 game, though). 

The match against Hamburg was notable in another way. Our GK got sick a few days before the game so wasn't available, and I still haven't signed a backup, but rather than play the loanee (who was terrible in the Cup in August)  I put one of our development players in goal instead.

Go go Gomez.

Arrizabalaga is another DL. He came on as a sub for the injured Walser, because Cardoso is off playing in the SAM U20 Championship, because of course he is. 

 

The Youth Intake preview looks decent. We've got another upgrade to Junior Coaching (and Youth Recruitment) since the start of the season and that does seem to have some immediate pay-off, so I'm hoping we'll get a couple of good players through. 

Edited March 25 by turnip

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, Bundesliga 2

Youth Intake

  

Gabriel Kothny is this year's sole exception to the "abandon all kit ye of Low Determination" because I guess we can add 'Goalkeepers' to the list of positions I'm struggling to find good options for. Honestly, he doesn't look great, but needs must, innit?

Joel Krawczyk as presented for your viewing disdain looks a bit lame, but add +1 across the board and he looks pretty good. Add +2 to everything associated with being a Wing-Back and... well, he's still not making the German national team, but I wouldn't feel bad picking him in the Bundesliga. 

 

It's hard to get too excited about these two bozos. Partly because they both look kinda crap, but also because AMCs make up about half of my scouting reports, and the ones my scouts tell me about look better than these two. 

I'm actually going to train Tremmel as a Box-to-Box Midfielder, because he has reasonable tackling and he at least looks like he could break a Ryvita in half. 

Caidi, meanwhile, will train as an AMC on Attack until someone comes in and offers him a packet of Takis Fuegos and half a can of Diet Cola to play for them. 

 

The rest of the intake is fairly forgettable, but I wouldn't be surprised if one or two players end up better than expected. 

 

I did manage to persuade the board to upgrade Youth Recruitment, and I hired a new HOYD - the new guy's a Perfectionist, so we'll see if that brings any benefit. 

 

 

Also:

[turnip]

Vs bottom of the league:

 

[turnip]

Vs 15th in the table

Erm, hey guys, think about your manager's blood pressure, yeah?

[turnip]

Season 17: TSV 1860 München, Bundesliga 2

Fixtures

Some good performances in the run-in, but also definitely some nerves. Possibly the yips. 

We definitely struggled more once teams came to terms with how to play against us. And although our players have mostly developed quite well as the season went on, they were mostly third-tier standard to start with. And young, so pressure gets to them in a bigger way. 

So how did that affect things?

Well, it kept it spicy. Paderborn closed the gap to 3 points, but obviously fell off. We spent quite a large part of the season tussling with Hamburg for top spot, with Furth largely a few points off. Going into the final day, we were level on points with Furth and although our GK (actually our GK, back from injury) had a stinker, so did their's as they lost to Hannover 3-1. 

67 points is actually just about bang-on for promotion from this division. We have overachieved in a somewhat horrendous way. Our top goalscorer is an academy graduate who's basically a crap version of Mor Talla Traore (who's recently retired, RIP), has a contract that's running out and isn't really worth giving a new one to.

We've got quite a few players going into the final year of their contract who I want to keep. However, I've been relying on offering Relegation Release Clauses of £0 to keep wages low and that's a strategy that I feel comes with an element of risk. Y'know, as a small club promoted far too early into the top tier. 

Speaking of, the day after promotion was confirmed, the board announced our new budgets:

Which feels like something that should be raised as a bug, because only a couple of days later we got the next message:

I tried getting a couple of upgrades from the board, but they wouldn't approve new Youth Facilities because they want me to focus on signing players. And they wouldn't improve the Training Facilities because they want me to sign players who are ready for the first team.

With a transfer budget of £1.86m.      

No huge surprise that Noronha swept the board. He hasn't really improved this season, but he's still a good player. 

I really want a new Goalkeeper - our first-choice was a good player in the third-tier, but has been a bit of a liability at times this season. We also really need a new DR, as Maicon has been on loan and our backups aren't ready yet. 

We're okay at centre-back. Tapsoba is supposed to have a lot of room for development, but hasn't improved one iota, but Samassi had a good season and nailed down his spot as our Cover player.

DL is fine, with Walser and Cardoso two good options. DM is still probably Miguel's spot - the coaches thought his cap was third-tier when he signed, that went up to second-tier for the start of this season and now they think he could be Bundesliga-standard in future. 

We've got new players come in on both Wings. I'm unreasonably excited about the AMR, but the AML also looks very promising. Still, at 18 and 17 years old, it's fair to say that neither is going to be worrying defenders too much next season. 

I do think we're going to be relying on loanees to a heftier degree than I'm used to. 

 

Next season - pain.

[turnip]

Transfer retrospective

Season 1:

Two players stand out for me from this season. 

Mahamadou Diagola. Signed for basically a nominal fee from a club in Mali, Diagola was never a great player, but was a pretty consistently good one. A good career all-round, I'd say. 

Jaime Silvestre

Signed on the cheap from Sporting, Silvestre demanded to leave when we reached the second tier and went on to be on the losing side against us an awful lot for Ac. Viseu. Joined Dinamo for far too much money before finishing his career being crap in Italy.

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

Transfers

We let a few players leave at the end of their contracts. The only notable one was Janick Sieger who'd scored 34 goals over the last two seasons. A bad idea? Maybe, but sometimes you have to take the 6'5" training wheels off. Mboup was the only end-of-contract player we didn't release, keeping him on a month-to-month deal until ManUre came in and gave us £500k for him. 

Kwaku Sarpong wanted a new contract, but we didn't need him, so I offered him out and Pescara took us up on the offer. Muhlig - our former GK - also wanted a new contract but I try not to reward **** with actual money (which he wanted) so we got rid. Bernard Nnapere was one of our development DLs, so getting over a million for him was a laugh. Meanwhile, Rafa was a development ST who had a pretty meh loan in the Spanish 4th tier last season; some teams have more money than sense.

  

Delgado and Pablo were the two wingers I was excited about. The scouts and coaches prefer Pablo - and I can see why - but I still think Delgado will be a more interesting long-term option for us. The set pieces are the difference for me, for now. That said, Pablo should go on to be a phenomenal player. 

They'll both be second-choice in their respective positions this season, but neither is much of a downgrade from Cristian or N'Dri. 

   

The other Pablo we signed is another Spanish U20 player. And, obviously, another DM. (5th-tier) Toledo are getting some great players through their academy and although I don't think Pablo is quite ready for the Bundesliga, I thought giving him the playing time was a price worth paying for someone as promising as he is. 

With our DR's loan finishing, we needed a new player and Winai Sa-ngapol was our best option. Another who's probably not quite at Bundesliga-level yet, but can get up and down the flank at speed and should develop the technical side of his game a fair bit. 

  

As discussed, we needed a new GK and Rodolfo Dimas was - yet again - the best option available in our price range. At the press conference afterwards, we were asked if the age difference between him and the rest of the squad would be a problem. Yep, he's 25...

The need for another striker was something that came a little later in the window, when I noticed that an 18-year old who played 6 matches last season would be our second choice. Nicu Ispir is an upgrade over Janick Sieger in every aspect, including wages, and honestly looks great. 

The other signings are youth players. 

Fixtures

I wasn't sure how we'd match up to teams this season, and after edging a close-ish game against 3rd-tier Bochum in the cup, we utterly dominated BMG in the opening league match but still conceded a couple of cheap goals. Having then kept Augsburg at arms-length for 90 minutes, the game against Werder was just carnage all-round. They deserved to win, but as long as we have N'Dri on the left pinging crosses to the back post, we'll always have a chance. 

We probably have to go on the attack to get much out of the league this season. We'll have some good defensive performances, but I think we're just better going forward.

I was holding off renewing some contracts to see if any clubs would make bids for the players in question, so the wage bill will go up. That said, at £5.59m per year, our current salary spend is just over 2% that of Bayern's. There are just 7 players in their first-team squad on lower wages than our entire wage bill.  There are only two other teams in the league whose financial status is better than "Okay" - Frankfurt and Freiburg - and in the case of the latter, that's probably because they just sold a player to Bayern for £82m. 

 

We did end up getting an upgrade to Youth Facilities. Apparently the board wanted to take the credit for the idea, so they proposed it at the end of the season. Well done, lads, we're all very impressed. 

[turnip]

 

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

Fixtures

Things have gotten tougher as the season's gotten longer. No real surprise; man-for-man our players kinda suck compared to every other team. That said, there have been some good results.

The win over Dortmund - second in the table - was great: we changed tactics 3 times during the match, but managed to hold out for the win after Ispir scored his very funny goal (video above). Ispir got his second hattrick of the campaign in a very silly match against Koln.

On the flipside, we were crushed by Bayern, barely getting within a mile of a whiff of a chance. We defended well against Hertha (3rd in the league) but conceded to one of the derpy FM24 goals I hate: a goalkeeper long-ball that bounced off the head of my centre-back straight into the path of their striker, who finished. (Seriously, I don't even know what's supposed to be happening with those chances). 

We've built up a good number of points so far, and although I suspect fixtures will get harder as the season progresses, our players are mostly improving, too. And with BMG and Hamburg stinking things up early on, I do think we're in with a good chance of avoiding a proper relegation scrap. 

Random Player Showcase

We signed Rizzi at the start of last season from Serie C Carrarese and he's had a few sub appearances to date. With my deeply-stupid transfer strategy of signing every half-decent DM/MC I find and giving them Playing Time promises they don't really deserve, I've struggled to give him the game-time I wanted to. Still I think he could be terrific, so I'm going to try to find a good loan deal for him. 

 

We've got the usual rag-tag group joining us in January - mostly youngsters (again, as usual) but we do have some DC backup arriving in the form of a [sigh] 18-year old from Génération Foot. Look, they say the first step is recognising you have a problem, don't they?

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

January

We accepted an offer for Cristian from ADO Den-Haag, but having strung us along for the second half of the month, it fell through when it turned out they didn't have the money. Cheers, dudes; very helpful.

That meant the only departures were some loanees (I'm ignoring Dzaferovic who was a useless U19). Rizzi, Daly and Bernardini should get the first-team football we agreed to; I'm sceptical that Balducci and Manuel will, though. 

  

Levi Phillips is your stereotypical English clogger DC, even if he is Welsh. We needed someone first-team ready to bring some stability and he looks capable of doing just that.

Hamidou Gomis is the one I think could be excellent. An excellent technical base for a DC and the Mental/Physical side of his game should improve as he develops. Again, he wanted Squad Player... I can't wait until the club's reputation improves. 

  

We brought Dragan Pesic in as a replacement for Cristian... In fairness, I think Pesic is better as an out-right Winger and if his Potential holds, he'll be a bit of a weapon out wide. 

And Aitor Alonso is just our young Spanish SC signing for the window. Looks like he could be really good (don't they all) but needs to develop his Mentals a bit. 

We scraped past Leverkusen and Werder, which was to be expected - the performances, I mean, not the results, which were very much unexpected.

We rotated fully for the cup game against Bayern and got what we deserved from that match. Nice to see Delgado getting himself a goal, though. No such dignities in the dismal display against deadly Borussia Monchengladbach

And then, 3 days after getting schooled in the Munich derby, we utterly crushed Augsburg, with 72% possession and restricting them to only 0.6xG. 

So what have we learned? I have no idea. 

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

Youth Intake

A good intake, by any reasonable standard. No strikers, but who needs strikers in the youth intake when the third, fourth and fifth tiers of Spain exist?

  

I long ago gave up trying to work out whether a highly-rated goalkeeper at youth intake would be any good, and I'm not going to bother with Fiand. 3.5+1* Potential rated. Yay?

Hocine Abdellaoui is a different matter, though. The kid's gonna get sick of working on his Stamina & Work Rate, but them's the breaks. 

  

Cyril Bessard isn't too impressive on first look, but does have the attributes to turn into a decent centre-back if he develops well.

The slightly cro-magnon-looking Stefan Dietl is the pick of the bunch, though. Obviously.  I don't quite know what to do with him, though. 15 Finishing is utterly wasted on a FB/WB, but with his Physicals, he could be a monstrous CWB. Maybe an Inverted Winger on Attack (from ML, rather than AML)? Hmm. A damned good problem to have, I will admit. 

[turnip]

Transfer Retrospective

Season 2:

The first one is the most blindingly obvious: Albert Bucur

Signed at 16 year old from a Romanian youth team, it took him the best part of 3 years to make the first team but then he simply didn't leave until this season when the siren call of Saudi money sung him to a pre-retirement slumber. 12 Portuguese Premier League titles, 8 Portuguese Super Cups and 7 Portuguese League Cup wins, alongside solitary Champions League and UEFA Super Cup wins.

Philip Behnke:

We paid £250k for him, got one okay season of him as our player, then 2 excellent seasons as a loanee. RB Leipzip probably could have found a better striker in terms of raw ability, but it's hard to argue with that goalscoring record. The biggest shame/surprise [delete as appropriate] is that he only got 7 caps for Germany. 

[turnip]

Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

 

das spitze Ende des Stocks

Against Stuttgart, we did very little until a backpost cross found Ange N'Dri exploiting the match engine's hard-on for broken back-post headers (BBPH). Our high press caused the panic and mistake that let us beat Hamburg. 

Bull ***** FC gave us a good game but also a BBPH. We had no recognised (good) strikers against Mainz, so played Cristian and N'Dri up top and the Great Dehumidified One lofted a delightful ball for one of the Pablos to finish. 

An arid BBPH and penalty saw off a spirited Furth before (we will utter no details of the atrocities witnessed against Dortmund) an error-strewn performance saw my delicate voice shredded by constant screaming, shrieking and profanities as we drew Hoffenheim.

Freiburg can consider themselves unlucky to have lost against us, but we did whip out a BBPH against Eintracht Frankfurt as part of a deserved win. 

We lost convincingly against Hertha and Bayern but good performances against Koln and Wolfsburg left things pretty tasty going into the final round of matches. How tasty?

So we were left with a match against Leverkusen, while Hoffenheim were playing Bull ***** FC, with whoever finished higher qualifying for the Champions League.

Mind you, we weren't just playing Leverkusen, we were facing Wichai Wongsrikeaw, one of the most detestable little snots I'd managed at Lusitania Lourosa. A central defender we signed from Thailand, who thought he was hot **** despite having single-digit Jumping Reach, and who spent most of his miserable time under my management complaining about one thing or other and just generally being the kind of immense pain in the arse that you remember with hatred 12 seasons later. Now, according to the game, he's "one of world football's global superstars", with 124 caps for Thailand and commanding a regular spot as one of Leverkusen's centre-backs.

However...

The reason he was pissed off with me at Lusitania Lourosa was that I never played him at centre-back. Why? Well, because his single-digit Jumping Reach made him a liability.

Leverkusen play him at DCL.

So, theoretically, if Ange N'Dri - our AML, if you've forgotten - were to put a far-post cross into the box, aimed at Nicu Ispir...

Yeah. Basically, get ****ed Wichai Wongsrikeaw.

Obviously, I'm delighted (I'd say "astonished" but I'm not sure you can claim that at the end of a 34-match season) to have finished 4th, but arguably I'm just as thrilled that Hertha won the Bundesliga. The first time in 110 years. 1860 Munchen finished second that season. I'm just saying. 

Thing is, though, I've said throughout the season that we've massively overperformed. How badly?

Genuinely, I think the correct response to this is: "lol, lmao".

If you'd offered me 14th at the start of the season, I'd have been thrilled. 

Nicu Ispir is the best player in our squad and he's a "Good Bundesliga player". The rest of the squad ranges from "decent Bundesliga player" to "good Bundesliga 2 player". Our team stats are generally slightly better than the 14th the xG table has us at, but not by much. 

We finished 4th in the league and only 4 players had an Average Rating of over 7.00. This is so stupid it's hard to parse. 

I do love Nicu Ispir and he will need a new contract at some point in the next 12 months. Thankfully, I don't think he's good enough yet that someone will drop £54m to trigger his MRFC. Ange N'Dri continues to defy his modest CA by just being good at crossing and passing, and obviously knowing when to pull the trigger on a BBPH. 

Rodolfo Dimas turned out to be just the kind of keeper we needed - mostly reliable, but with a bad habit of hoofing the ball aimlessly downfield when he's nervous. Abdoulaye Samassi, meanwhile, is just a very competent centre-back; he rarely does anything other than defend and he's very good at that. 

We are going to need to improve in the summer, though, and in a big way. Thankfully, the board have decided that being stingy is somewhat uncouth:

 

Also, the whole "sign 'em, play 'em, make 'em better" thing is - slowly - working out for us.

Biagioni is worth about £170m, but I might be able to get Brard with our new-found wealth. That would be nice...

 

We got £78m for finishing fourth, which is very nice. 

Edited April 13 by turnip

[turnip]

In Search of Incompetence

18 seasons into this save, and I've had every available European league running as - at least - VIew-only for the whole time. Some on Playable. 

That's a lot of opportunities for AI managers to battle it out for the title of 'most incompetent'.

I'm not talking about big clubs failing to reach Europe; I'm talking about teams doing profoundly, impressively badly in their league.

Spanish D2 - 2036; Tarancon; 2 points -------- 2037; Mirandes; 2 points. (Impressively, in 2030, Mirandes finished with 3 points )

Spanish La Liga - 2040; Ponferrada; 7 points

Slovenian Second League - 2027; Tolmin; 7 points

Slovak Second League - 2039; Spisska Nova Ves; 4 points. (Sered finished second-bottom that season with 5 points)

Portuguese Championship - 2040; Bustelo; 2 points

Icelandic First Division - 2037; KV; 4 points 

Icelandic Premier Division - 2035; IBV; 7 points 

Greek Super League 2 - 2026; PAO Rouf; 5 points

Greek Super League 1 - 2025; Panserraikos; 7 points 

German Liga 3 - 2040; Jena; 6 points & 2037; Altona 93; 6 points 

French National 2 - 2038; EFC Frejus Saint-Raphael; 2 points

Finnish First Division - 2032; Atlantis FC; 5 points 

Czech Second Division - 2037; Zapy; 4 points

Belgian Jupiler Pro League - 2037; RE Virton; 7 points 

Austrian Premier Division - 2031; FAC Wien; 7 points

 

and I've left the best 'til last

Bulgarian Second Division - 2031; Svetkavitsa Targovishte; 1 point

 

In mitigation, despite me running a gigantic database, for some reason Bulgarian second-tier teams really seem to struggle for players. 

[turnip]

Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga

Transfers

No significant players left us, except Walser on loan (he wanted a new contract but unfortunately, his PA got dialled down to 'Good Bundesliga 2 player'). We tried to sell him, but no-one was interested. 

The biggest sales were all of young players we didn't need. Luke Hernandez is a crap American midfielder. Adonay Bercomo was signed from from an Amateur team, didn't develop last season, and is crap. Ilsinho I would have preferred to keep, since he's a Cayman Islands international, but he is also crap, so...

   

Slavik and Shalonikov were both signed from Trencin, whose Youth Academy obviously got a lucky roll on the old Random Number Generator the year they came through. Slavik was actually the first one identified since he was in the Slovak national team, and when I had a look at the Trencin squad, there was Shalonikov. 

Shalonikov is the more obviously ready for the first team - probably alternating between AMR and ST - and the plan is that Slavik will get regular game time as injury cover and in our midweek team. 

  

Ally Sulieman (he has Eritrean second nationality) was someone my scouts found. Obviously very good but wasn't an immediate target for the summer until other teams started going in for him and I decided he was too good not to go in for. Will swap between DR and DC this season. 

We needed a backup GK but there's still a massive shortage of 'good enough' young players, so we had to pay a premium to bring in Gustavo. We probably could have brought the wages down if we'd promised more game-time, but Dimas was so good last season I couldn't justify demoting him. 

 

Baliko is a good, pretty flexible midfielder who gives us cover in 2-3 positions on the pitch (tactics-dependent), lively enough to be an issue coming on as a sub and should have plenty of potential for development. 

Meanwhile, with Walser having a tantrum over not being good enough to get a new contract, we needed a new DL. Berndroth only played a couple of times for Stuttgart as they got relegated last season, but I think he could be terrific. Finding good full-backs who can jump is hard.

  

Alan Burger is another player I've been aware of for a while. He got a full season with Las Palmas' first team last year and looks to be a very solid DC, even if he doesn't develop (which my scout and coaches all agree he should). 

We needed another striker and without wanting to pay £10m+ for a backup for Ispir who'd probably just get annoyed when he inevitably doesn't get enough game time, we brought in a rare older player in Gaizka Albisu, who's had 6 very good seasons in La Liga with Cadiz. A good all-round player. 

 

Fixtures

We had a good pre-season, with a nice little tour of Uzbekistan and - of course - were one of two Bundesliga teams to get drawn against second-tier opposition in the first round of the cup. A tough match, but a win for the second-stringers. Dortmund are up next; unsurprisingly, considering we play them 3 days later in the league.

The matches against Furth and Hoffenheim were fairly straight-forward affairs, with us outplaying our opposition. We also arguably out-played the team whose name I always make fun of, with a penalty for them the only reason they had a higher xG than us. 

The Champions League looks tough, with Away games against Lazio, Man City and Sporting alongside Home matches with Nice, Juventus and Real Sociedad. A Home game against Celtic and road trip to Hammarby look to be our easiest games.